Politics

A Democrat in the middle of the Israel firestorm

Published

11 months ago

July 31, 2025

Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs personifies the conflict within her party over U.S. support for Israel and the nightmare in Gaza — and the increasingly precarious balancing act for any politician trying to navigate it.

The third-term member of Congress from San Diego is Jewish. She has family in Israel. So the country’s security is not an abstract notion. As a millennial, and the youngest member of Democratic leadership in the House, she doesn’t view criticism of Israel as off the table. But she also sits on the Armed Services Committee and represents one of the nation’s most military-centric districts, so she is acutely aware of Israel’s security needs and its role as a key U.S. ally in the Middle East.

All of those roiling elements were on full display last night, in Washington and at a town hall meeting in her district. The Senate voted down a resolution from Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) to block the sale of U.S. weapons to Israel. The measure failed, but 27 Democratic senators, more than half the caucus, voted in favor — a sign that the horrific images of starvation coming out of Gaza in recent months are starting to erode the largely unconditional support that Israel has long enjoyed among many Democrats.

Jacobs says she would have voted in favor of the resolution, though she wants the U.S. to continue supporting Israel’s defense, including by helping to pay for the Iron Dome missile defense system.

She tried to lay out her nuanced position at the town hall, where pro-Palestinian protesters gathered noisily outside the high school auditorium in a suburban section of San Diego where the event was held. Inside, one of the first questions was what is she doing to ensure the people of Gaza are receiving humanitarian aid and whether Israel has committed genocide.

Jacobs, who worked for the United Nations and State Department before she was elected to Congress in 2020, tried to thread the needle — saying that Israel “might” have committed genocide.

“But I am not a lawyer, and that is a legal determination,” she told the restive audience. “I think we’ve clearly seen serious atrocities. I think we’ve likely seen war crimes, and we’ve definitely seen forced displacement that could amount to ethnic cleansing.”

Soon, members of the audience were yelling at her — and each other. Her efforts to explain her support for a ban on offensive weapons, but not for defense, were drowned out. “Weapons are weapons,” a woman shouted. A man stood and chanted “free free Palestine” while waving a black-and-white keffiyeh. Members of the crowd shouted back at him.

After about 20 minutes, police escorted the man with the keffiyeh out of the auditorium and the town hall turned to other topics — mostly expressions of anger about various actions by President Donald Trump wrapped into a question.

Jacobs said the next day that she welcomed the protests and is less worried about the politics of the issue within the Democratic Party than she is about addressing the larger issues. “The thing that needs to be worked out is how we get unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza, and then how we get back on a path to a situation where you have two states where Israelis can live safely and securely and where Palestinians can live with dignity and autonomy and self determination,” she told Blue Light News today.

The bitter politics of the conflict aside, Jacobs contends there’s a middle position in which people can condemn both the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and the Israeli response that authorities say has led to about 60,000 deaths, mostly civilians in Gaza.

“I truly believe both that Oct. 7 was horrible and we should be calling for the release of the remaining hostages, and that what’s going on in Gaza right now is horrible, and those don’t have to be mutually exclusive,” she said. “Civilians shouldn’t be blamed for their government actions, and that’s true of Israeli civilians, and it’s true of Palestinian civilians, and it’s true of American civilians.”

Despite what happened at her town hall, the protests over the war in Gaza around the U.S. have, for now at least, ebbed since last year and many Democratic voters in general have turned their attention to other issues. But it’s not clear how long politicians like Jacobs, or her party, will be able to walk this precarious middle ground.

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Politics

Centrist Democrats are freaking out about progressives’ winning streak

Published

7 hours ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Moderate Democrats are sounding the alarm after massive losses in New York’s primaries. They fear they’re on the verge of losing the party’s ideological civil war — and hurting its electoral chances.

Leftist candidates swept a trio of deep-blue House seats in New York City, a seismic victory that toppled two incumbents, including the powerful chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. And after a string of progressive battleground wins in earlier primaries, moderates are making it very clear that the left’s winning streak is potentially just starting.

The far left is eyeing even bigger targets in key battleground primaries that will determine control of Congress as well as governorships in crucial swing states. Most immediately, moderates fear that a progressive primary sweep could imperil the party’s hopes of beating Republicans this fall.

They also have a more fundamental fear: that progressives are becoming more mainstream as they keep winning — reshaping the Democratic Party.

“Centrist Democrats, normie Democrats, need to realize we’re the insurgents, and they’re the new establishment,” said Liam Kerr, a co-founder of the moderate-aligned WelcomePAC. “It’s a long term structural problem more than it is any one particular win.”

Progressives have romped through Democrats’ spring primaries, notching a series of wins across both safe and competitive districts and upending House and Senate Democrats’ battleplans. Left flank candidates Randy Villegas and Matt Dunlap trounced the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s preferred picks in a pair of battlegrounds in California and Maine. And populist insurgent Graham Platner pushed out Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s handpicked recruit in Maine, Gov. Janet Mills, before voting even began — only to see his poll numbers slip amidst a series of personal scandals.

With New York in the rearview, upcoming races in Colorado, Michigan and Wisconsin will test whether the insurgent left can continue its hot streak.

“It’s happening in New York, it’s happening in Michigan. I think we’re seeing it happen across the country now, that folks are sick and tired of being sick and tired,” said Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and locked in a bitter three-way primary. “So, certainly we’re going to harness that.”

First up will be Colorado, where Democratic Socialist Melat Kiros is mounting a strong challenge against longtime Democratic incumbent Diana DeGette in a safe seat. In the state’s battleground 8th District, the more progressive-aligned Manny Rutinel is facing establishment-backed Shannon Bird. Whoever wins will face freshman GOP Rep. Gabe Evans.

Even if those progressive candidates end up falling short, establishment Democrats are worried that President Donald Trump and the GOP will be able to successfully tie their more centrist nominees to the most-fringe members of the party, forcing them to respond to progressives’ most controversial comments and positions — like defunding the police or getting rid of prisons entirely.

“These races might have some impact on 2026 if Republicans weaponize the craziest ideas of these candidates against mainstream Democrats running in blue districts,” said Matt Bennett, a co-founder of the moderate think tank Third Way.

The Blue Dogs, Democrats’ House centrist coalition and campaign allies, are worried as well.

Blue Dog Action’s Phil Gardner said it’s imperative that moderate Democrats in swing districts address Republican attacks head-on and put distance between themselves and the left flank of their party.

“The reason they do that is because it works,” Gardner said of GOP efforts to tie moderates to progressives. “Candidates running in these competitive seats should not rely on just anti-Trump sentiment or the Democratic brand, because you’re basically putting your destiny in the hands of forces far outside your control.”

Some on the left are growing frustrated as the establishment increasingly makes them pariahs.

“Having party leaders not make the newest and most exciting members of the party feel like they belong is counterproductive for a party that wants to keep growing,” said progressive strategist Rebecca Katz, whose firm Fight Agency works with El-Sayed and Platner, among others.

Still, establishment Democrats are rushing to shore up primary victories in key battlegrounds. In Michigan, where El-Sayed is leading in new polls, establishment Democrats have begun spending millions of dollars in recent weeks to boost Rep. Haley Stevens and stave off his rise. Reinforcements are also flowing in for El-Sayed.

And in Wisconsin, another key perennial battleground state with major down-ticket races, establishment panic about democratic socialist state Rep. Francesca Hong’s momentum in the crowded gubernatorial primary has led some in the party to start coalescing around moderate Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez. One Democrat dropped out and endorsed Rodriguez to try to consolidate the center-left vote.

“True leadership means stepping aside and making sure that we coalesce around someone who can win in November,” Democrat Missy Hughes said during a press conference shortly after she suspended her campaign on Monday.

Hong, in an interview Wednesday, said that the centrist lane is no longer the path to victory.

“I agree, we should coalesce around a leader that can win in November. And I think that I’m that leader,” Hong told Blue Light News. “The strategy of running moderates — we’ve lost the House, the Senate and the executive office. … Using the old playbook and looking at the results, I would hope that the course correction is to run some different plays.”But Republicans are salivating over Hong’s prior hardline stances and comments, including previous calls to defund the police. She has sought to alleviate concern about that issue: “there’s no way I’m going to cut public safety, I want to deliver it,” she said in a recent video.

While the left’s wins in safe seats are top of mind, there have been a string of victories for centrists in a number of other Democratic primaries in the most important battlegrounds. The Democratic establishment’s pick prevailed in the New York battleground seat to take on GOP Rep. Mike Lawler on Tuesday, and moderate Rebecca Bennett won the primary to take on GOP Rep. Tom Kean Jr. in a top New Jersey battleground. Some battleground wins for moderates came even as GOP groups meddled to try and boost left-leaning candidates in Texas and Nebraska.

In Senate races, moderate candidates like former Gov. Roy Cooper (D-N.C.) cleared the field with no real challenger. And Texas’ James Talarico and Iowa’s Josh Turek were able to best their more-progressive challengers.

“In most of the flippable seats, you still do have electable Democrats, either winning the primaries, or there was just never really a primary to begin with, and people sort of coalesced,” Gardner said.

Schumer told reporters on Wednesday that every wing of the Democratic Party — not just progressives — was on the rise.

“You’re seeing centrist energy in Virginia, Iowa, and New Jersey, progressive energy in New York City,” Schumer said. “We’re going to harness it all to win in November. Because all Democrats are united in the mission of taking back the Senate and defeating Trump.”

Some progressives were also quick to call for unity after their wins Tuesday, and vowed to help their moderate counterparts this fall.

“I’m going to go help some frontliners win their races,” former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who defeated Rep. Dan Goldman by more than 30 points, told reporters on Wednesday. “I hope some moderates will come help Randy Villegas and other progressives win theirs.”

But the prospect of the left picking off a battleground seat in November has major implications for the party’s direction.

“We love the statistic that [progressives have] never flipped any seats. We love to say, ‘look at the polling,” said Kerr, the co-founder of the centrist WelcomePAC. “But we haven’t been scared enough. We’ve been high on our own supply of data while they’ve been organizing.”

And outside of this year’s midterms, there’s a broader fight to come in 2028, where an open presidential primary will shape the party for years to come.

“It is vital that Democrats do not mistake the radicalism of a very small electorate in very blue places with the desire of the larger Democratic Party to move sharply to the left,” Bennett said. “Those things are not the same, and Democrats running for president must resist the urge to believe what they see on social media and the siren song of the DSA and the activist left.”

Politics

YouTube settles case brought by minor alleging harm

Published

11 hours ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

YouTube settles case brought by minor alleging harm

Google’s YouTube reached a settlement with a minor who sued multiple social media platforms for allegedly impacting his mental health, lawyers announced Tuesday. The settlement, the terms of which are confidential, comes nearly a month away from the trial’s July 27 state date in Los Angeles…
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Politics

5 things to know about the ‘Great American State Fair’

Published

11 hours ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

5 things to know about the ‘Great American State Fair’

The ‘Great American State Fair’ will open to the public with fanfare Thursday morning against a backdrop of partisan fighting and public fallouts over the celebrations marking America’s 250th anniversary. The 16-day fair, which boasts more than 150 exhibits featuring U.S. history, will kick off with a speech from President Trump on Wednesday evening…
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