Politics

Inside the DNC’s Middle East (not) working group

Published

2 months ago

April 10, 2026

After the Democratic National Committee punted on two resolutions in August that highlighted the party’s deep divide on Israel, DNC Chair Ken Martin convened a task force “to have the conversation” and “bring solutions back to our party.”

Seven months later, the Middle East working group — meeting today in-person for the second time — still has work to do.

The group, composed of eight DNC members with backgrounds in Jewish and Palestinian advocacy, has struggled to meet consistently or coalesce around shared objectives. Part of that is due to the difficulties of coordinating across schedules and time zones, with at least one member actively running for office. But atop those hurdles come the challenges of productive discourse about one of the party’s most contentious debates among a cohort with sharp ideological divides.

“People aren’t comfortable with being uncomfortable,” Steph Newton, a DNC member from Oregon who’s part of the working group, told Blue Light News. “These uncomfortable discussions are how we’re going to be able to move the party forward and find a solution.”

The working group met for the first time in December at the DNC’s winter meeting in Los Angeles, and convened virtually two more times, on March 1 and March 18. Those meetings mostly centered on figuring out what the group should be working on in the first place. “Most of the time, what we’ve talked about is, ‘What are we supposed to be doing?’” said James Zogby, another member from D.C.

The working group comes as divides over support for Israel remain a persistent liability for Democrats, and as AIPAC’s involvement in midterm primaries presents a new purity test for candidates. “No one gets anywhere by trying to shout the other side of the room — as a matter of fact, I think that would be harmful politics,” Andrew Lachman, another working group member from California, said.

A DNC spokesperson emphasized the group’s goal is to figure out how to talk to voters about the Middle East in a way that ultimately helps the party build coalitions and win elections.

The group’s inaction so far came into sharper focus yesterday at the DNC’s spring meeting in New Orleans, when the party’s resolutions committee considered one brought by Joe Salas, another member of the working group from California, to recognize Palestinian statehood.

“It is necessary for the Democratic National Committee to address the ongoing heinous and illegal acts against the Palestinian people. Some here may say that there is a working group. To that, I say that we are in a midterm year and they are yet to produce any results in a moment where anger has only grown amongst the American people,” said Cameron Landon, VP of the College Democrats of America, who spoke on behalf of Salas.

Salas, who wasn’t at the meeting, submitted the resolution without discussing it with the other members of the Middle East working group, according to Zogby and Newton, who said she was “surprised” to see it in the resolutions packet.

“I would assume that if we’re on a work group together discussing these issues, you say, ‘Hey, work group members, teammates, I want to submit a resolution on X, Y and Z. I know we’re working toward something like this together. Is this something that we can discuss?’” Newton said.

Deborah Cunningham-Skurnik, another member of the group from California, told the resolutions panel yesterday that there were “some parts of it I would like to go bit by bit over with” Salas.

Salas said in an interview ahead of the vote he wouldn’t attend the New Orleans meeting because “I’m just gonna let them have those words and reject them, accept them, modify them, whatever they want to do.” He didn’t respond to further requests for comment about why he didn’t tell the working group he submitted the resolution.

The panel ultimately referred those resolutions back to the working group — with a warning. “As a body, we recommend this going back to the task force,” said Ron Harris, the resolutions committee co-chair. “But then we can put some — I don’t want to say ‘constraints,’ but expectations that we hear back.”

John Verdejo, a DNC member from North Carolina, was more direct. “It can’t just be we have a task force and then the next time we have a DNC meeting, it just comes up again. No, we want to see your progress. You want to have a task force? You want to make the hard changes, have the hard discussions? Then do it,” he said.

Allison Minnerly, another working group member from Florida, said after the snafu that “so long as the party does not prioritize this conversation, you will see what happened today, which is that DNC resolutions committee members have many questions on the inaction and the results of the working group. It’s really clear that this issue will keep coming up at every subsequent DNC meeting until there’s a clear direction, solution, talking points.”

Now that the party has referred the resolutions to the working group, it finally has a clear, near-term objective for its meeting today.

“I actually am pleased that we will now have a very specific charge that we must accomplish in a defined period of time,” Zogby said. “We have not had a defined agenda, and it’s been difficult to get people together. Now we have to get this done, and there’s just no way we can duck it at this point.”

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Politics

The US-Australia face-off that isn’t happening

Published

10 minutes ago

June 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Who’s not here at Seattle’s Lumen Field for the Pacific Rim face-off between the United States and Australia?

If they’re following the match, the two countries’ elected heads — President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese — are doing so from afar.

Politics

The soccer boss in Mark Carney’s ear

Published

40 minutes ago

June 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

VANCOUVER — Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber joined Prime Minister Mark Carney on Friday to watch Canada’s thrashing of Qatar. Garber probably did not want Carney to enjoy the stadium experience too much.

BC Place is Major League Soccer’s most troublesome facility. The arena is old, was not designed with soccer in mind, and is owned by a government agency — the BC Pavilion Corporation, which also controls the Vancouver Convention Center — that forces the Vancouver Whitecaps to fight for dates on the calendar against concerts and other events.

“We want to be the ones that control our destiny, like every sports team does,” Garber told reporters Friday in Seattle.

The Whitecaps are now up for sale, and Garber is actively pushing British Columbia’s political establishment — including Premier David Eby and Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim — to find a solution can keep the team from decamping to Las Vegas. While the government has been willing to renegotiate its financial relationship with the team, a proposed new stadium would take “four-plus years” in construction, which Garber said was untenable.

“It unimaginable how long we’re going to be out of the stadium,” he told reporters Friday in Seattle. “They are very relevant club that doesn’t have a good business model, and you can’t be sustainable.”

Garber recounted he met with Eby while in Vancouver, and sat with Carney and Victor Montagliani — the head of regional soccer confederation CONCACAF and a close ally of the prime minister — during the match itself. Garber said he has placed a league official in Vancouver full-time to manage the negotiations with local officials over the Whitecaps’s future.

“We want to be the ones that control our destiny, like every sports team does,” said Garber. “It’s easier for business people to make decisions, a little harder for politicians.”

Politics

The accidental American

Published

1 hour ago

June 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

In 2001, airline employees stopped a seven-months pregnant Florence Balogun from traveling home to London, deeming her too pregnant to fly. She stayed in New York, where she was visiting, eventually giving birth to a son, Folarin, before returning to London.

Twenty-five years later, Folarin Balogun has attracted global notice as a rising soccer star. Despite training in Arsenal’s youth academy and spending much of his career playing for England’s youth teams, Balogun — legally an American citizen, thanks to his Brooklyn birth — has emerged as a key contributor to the U.S. team’s attack at this year’s World Cup. The striker scored two goals in America’s opener against Paraguay last Friday, hoisting his team to a record-breaking 4-1 victory, the most goals the U.S. men’s team has ever scored in a World Cup game.

While Balogun’s performance has fueled fresh hopes about America’s World Cup prospects, he’s also found himself in the middle of America’s ongoing birthright citizenship debate.

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order overturning the country’s long-standing birthright citizenship practice. The American Civil Liberties Union then sued to block the move, taking their legal battle to the Supreme Court. The court is expected to issue a final ruling soon — though it seems“broadly skeptical” of Trump’s effort.

“The executive order itself doesn’t claim to strip away [Balogun’s] citizenship or or the citizenship of other people born before [Feb. 19, 2025],” Cody Wofsy, the lead lawyer in the ACLU’s case, told Blue Light News. “But the constitutional theory that the government is asking the Supreme Court to adopt casts a shadow over the citizenship of millions and millions of people who were born in this country and have lived their entire lives as citizens.”

Examples of high-profile birthright citizens — like Balogun, but also politicians such as Kamala Harris and Marco Rubio — help illustrate the reality of banning birthright citizenship, Wofsy said.

“We don’t know what the justices are thinking,” he said, “but I would hope that they understand just how grave an action the government’s asking them for.”