Politics

This House Democrat may lose her primary over past support for Israel

Published

2 months ago

March 2, 2026

Four years ago, Valerie Foushee’s support of Israel helped get her to Congress. On Tuesday, it could send her home.

The politics surrounding Israel have shifted so much since the war in Gaza began in 2023 that a candidate who benefited from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee spending more than $2 million to shore up her 2022 primary win has now disavowed the group entirely. Now, Foushee has spent her reelection bid fending off well-funded attacks from the left over her former ties to the group.

And that was before this weekend’s joint U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran cast an even brighter spotlight on the issue.

Foushee is locked in a tight and expensive rematch of her 2022 race with Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam, a Bernie Sanders-backed progressive who is the first Muslim woman to hold political office in the state. This time, Allam is backed by heavy spending from a coalition of groups, led by a new super PAC founded to counter AIPAC’s influence, and supporters of both candidates say the race is vanishingly tight.

The election is being fought over a whole slew of issues and interests, including cryptocurrency and AI, but it’s Israel as a political issue that has fueled the big spending against Foushee. The new anti-AIPAC group, American Priorities PAC, is the single largest spender in the race, and it makes up the majority of pro-Allam advertising spending. And Allam and her allies have leaned into the topic: Every single ad supporting her over the last week has mentioned AIPAC.

The joint attack on Iran has pushed the U.S.-Israel relationship into the headlines again in the final days of the primary — and Allam has jumped on the topic.

“Trump’s illegal and reckless war will inevitably be on voters’ minds as they head to the ballot box on Tuesday. They are ready to hold every leader who co-signed a blank check to the Israeli war hawks accountable — including my opponent,” Allam said in a statement to Blue Light News after the attack.

Foushee has also been sharply critical of Trump’s attacks on Iran, promising to do everything she could to stop Trump’s “illegal war with Iran.” She also defended her views on Israel again in the wake of the Iran strikes, emphasizing that she broke with AIPAC last summer during a town hall and urging voters to “check my voting record to see how I have voted and what I have voted for as it relates to the people of Gaza.”

“My voting record and support for legislation to stop arms sales to Israel speaks for itself. It is clear to me and my constituents that the Netanyahu government’s indiscriminate killing of Palestinians cannot continue,” Foushee said in a statement, highlighting her votes against military aid to Israel and her refusal to attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress in 2024. That came after she was part of an AIPAC-organized trip to meet Netanyahu in March of 2024, something her opponent has mentioned repeatedly on the campaign trail.

It’s the latest flashpoint in a primary that’s been consumed by nearly all the tensions rippling through the Democratic Party — generational change versus institutional experience, the U.S.-Israel relationship, battles over Big Tech, the influence of dark money, Black leadership in the party.

The primary results from the safe-blue chunk in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, coming Tuesday, could yield early clues for the rest of a chaotic and crowded primary season for a party still finding its way out of the political wilderness.

“It’s establishment versus upstart … it’s a debate about style versus substance,” said North Carolina Democratic state Sen. Jay Chaudhuri, who has endorsed Foushee in the primary, adding that the results “could provide a peek into what the 2026 primaries and the 2028 presidential nomination fight might look like.”

The race has attracted more than $3 million in outside spending, part of an explosion of money that special interests from crypto and AI-backed super PACs to pro-Israel groups are dumping into Democratic primaries across the country, looking to shape the internal politics of the party.

Foushee has the backing of a mysterious pop-up super PAC and one aligned with the AI company Anthropic, which together have spent more than $1.1 million on ads boosting her campaign.

Foushee, a former state legislator, is endorsed by dozens of elected Democrats in the state, including Gov. Josh Stein, as well as the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The 69-year-old sophomore lawmaker, facing an opponent less than half her age, pushed back on the idea that the seat needed a younger face.

“I think the American people are looking for strong leaders, and I don’t think that they’re attaching a generation to it,” she said in an interview.

Allam is a 32-year-old savvy social media campaigner who worked on Sen. Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. She has argued Democrats must be more forceful in attacking Trump over his immigration crackdowns, which included the Raleigh-Durham area last fall.

Democratic voters in 2026 want to “use the leverage that a safe blue seat has to put up the strongest fight against right wing extremism,” she said in an interview.

The multi-candidate primary in 2022 drew nearly $4 million in outside spending, a record for a single North Carolina congressional primary at the time. Foushee was the primary beneficiary of that cash, with help from both AIPAC and a pro-cryptocurrency super PAC funded by Sam Bankman-Fried, and she defeated Allam by nine points.

The outside spending landscape has shifted this year.

Allam initially benefited from the lion’s share, with American Priorities PAC’s $1 million supplemented by $400,000 in spending from David Hogg’s Leaders We Deserve, a group focused on electing generational change candidates, and a smaller sum from the left-leaning Justice Democrats.

That left the incumbent heavily outspent, since Foushee’s biggest 2022 backers stayed out this year: Bankman-Fried is currently serving time in federal prison for fraud and AIPAC is staying out after Foushee disavowed them.

“Rep. Foushee rejected AIPAC support and we are not involved in or participating in any way in this race,” Patrick Dorton, a spokesperson for AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, told Blue Light News.

But a pair of super PACs have popped up in the last two weeks to back Foushee, helping even the scales. Jobs and Democracy PAC, the Anthropic-aligned super PAC is spending nearly $1 million to boost her in the final days, while Article One PAC — the new group whose funding will not be disclosed until after the primary — has spent about $300,000.

“The establishment at the last minute is panicking and throwing in millions of dollars when the cake is baked,” Hogg said.

Allam and her allies are attacking Foushee over her backers. Sanders (I-Vt.) says in an Allam campaign ad that she is the only candidate with “the courage to take on all of these special interest groups who think they can buy American democracy.”

In a video posted to Instagram, Foushee said there has been a lot of “misinformation” surrounding her position on data centers and that she does not support one being built “in the heart of our district.” Still, she said she trusts local leaders to make the final decision.

Some establishment Democrats believe targeting a Black woman is the opposite of what the party needs.

“For Justice Democrats to target an African-American female, is just, is disappointing, very, very, very disappointing,” said former Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.).

Butterfield said it “is important to reelect Valerie, not just because she’s an African-American female, but because she’s getting the job done.” But he acknowledged that “there is an element within the fourth district that just wants change.”

Politics

It’s showtime for Trump’s revenge tour. Will he win?

Published

19 minutes ago

May 5, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump’s power as the GOP’s kingmaker faces a major test with this month’s primaries. So far, he’s on rocky footing.

His revenge tour kicks off Tuesday in Indiana, as he tries to oust eight Republican state legislators who blocked his redistricting effort there. Then it moves on to Louisiana and Kentucky, where he’s backing challengers to two longtime enemies, Sen. Bill Cassidy and Rep. Thomas Massie, who he’s been itching to unseat for years. Trump has also selected his favorite candidates in the crowded GOP primaries for Alabama Senate and Georgia governor.

But his picks have struggled to dominate their fields, with most holding only narrow leads in polling and some failing to pull far ahead in fundraising. In Indiana, even a few allies of the president are tempering expectations of a full eight-lawmaker sweep.

The results will reveal how effective the president’s political operation is at turning out Republicans when Trump is not on the ballot, and how motivated MAGA is to go along with his ongoing retribution campaign. It’s also a potent expression of his power ahead of the likely lame-duck phase of his presidency.

Some Republicans — even those involved in the races — say the shaky standing of Trump’s preferred candidates suggests that his ability to move his base en masse is beginning to slip. MAGA, they note, may be developing a mind of its own as the party begins to look beyond the Trump era.

“He’s hit his max power and now you’re seeing the backside of that power curve,” said former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a frequent target of Trump’s wrath who retired from Congress amid intense backlash for his 2021 vote to impeach the president and a new congressional map that would have left him in a member-on-member primary. “This will be his last competitive election cycle that will have any impact on him. And I think the base is starting to think into the future.”

Trump has a long history of unseating his congressional opponents, backing primary challengers to his critics and wielding his social media platform and his official bully pulpit to create such politically hostile conditions that many of his adversaries simply retire. Republican candidates have long jockeyed — and continue to trip over themselves — for his stamp of approval, hoping not to end up on the wrong side of his anger.

“The Trump endorsement is the most powerful and influential endorsement in the history of American politics,” said White House spokesperson Davis Ingle. “President Trump’s sterling record with his endorsements speaks for itself.”

Still, he’s produced a very mixed track record in contested races. Trump’s candidates have felled some of his biggest foes in GOP primaries, including former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and other Republicans who voted to impeach the president in his first term. But he’s also suffered some high-profile losses; he failed to oust Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and has watched several of his picks fall short in congressional races over the years, including Sen. Luther Strange in Alabama and scandal-plagued Rep. Madison Cawthorn in North Carolina.

Success will be even trickier this cycle: The May contests come as he continues an unpopular war in Iran that’s causing voters pain at the gas pump, as people sour on his economic and immigration agenda and as his approval ratings continue to sink.

“The [Trump] endorsement just isn’t moving voters. It just isn’t,” said a GOP operative working on the Alabama Senate race who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “When you’ve endorsed more than 800 people in 10 years, the potency of an individual endorsement wanes.”

May 5: Indiana

As the redistricting wars become a defining element of the midterms, Tuesday’s election will illuminate the president’s ability to maintain his grip on the Republican coalition.

While the White House and its allies have deployed the full force of its political operation against eight Indiana legislators — spending nearly $10 million across the races — they’re beginning to downplay the likelihood they will sweep all of them. Critics of the revenge effort say the strategy has been scattered and undisciplined.

How many incumbents survive will be an important piece of evidence predicting how the rest of May will go for the White House.

“We’ve tried to be helpful, as we always are, with our colleagues that are incumbents right now and will continue to be,” Rodric Bray, Indiana’s Senate President Pro Tempore who led the charge against Trump’s redistricting push, told Blue Light News. “The challenge, of course, is that money matters in politics. When $9 million is spent, that has a huge impact, and we’ll see what the result is.”

May 16: Louisiana

Trump-backed Rep. Julia Letlow is struggling to dominate the polls in her primary challenge to unseat Cassidy, who earned MAGA’s ire for voting to convict Trump on impeachment charges in 2021. The latest Emerson College poll shows Letlow locked in a close three-way race, with her at 27 percent, State Treasurer John Fleming at 28 percent and Cassidy at 21 percent. Nearly 1 in 4 likely GOP primary voters are undecided.

Letlow entered the race at Trump’s urging. She boasts endorsements from Louisiana’s GOP Gov. Jeff Landry and national groups like the Make America Healthy Again PAC, which has promised $1 million in support like distributing mailers — a needed financial boost given her middling war chest compared with Cassidy’s.

But Trump has not sent the calvary for Letlow, withholding his own war chest and not making any trips to Louisiana on her behalf. The president recently doubled down on his campaign against Cassidy, telling GOP primary voters to kick the incumbent “OUT OF OFFICE” — but Trump notably did not name-drop Letlow or urge voters to back her.

May 19: Kentucky, Alabama and Georgia

Trump faces two very different tests of his influence in Kentucky, where he is simultaneously boosting Rep. Andy Barr as retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell’s successor and pushing to oust a longtime thorn in his side in Massie.

The president waded in late for Barr, endorsing the representative less than three weeks before the primary while also offering one of his two rivals, businessman Nate Morris, a job in his administration — a move that could help propel Barr past former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron.

But it is Massie’s 4th District race that may prove more troublesome for Trump. The president finally fronted a challenger to the renegade Republican after Massie voted against the party’s signature tax-and-spending package last year, and Trump’s allies have now poured over $10 million into sinking the incumbent.

So far, Massie has withstood the onslaught. He leads his rival, former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, in polling, fundraising and name ID. One recent survey showed half of likely voters in his deep-red district with a libertarian bent preferred an independent-minded lawmaker, compared to 37 percent who wanted a strong Trump supporter.

Massie, who threads that needle by saying he’s with Trump “91 percent of the time,” argues that supporting him and the president aren’t “mutually exclusive things.” And he thinks the Trump-directed flood of outside money against him has its limits.

“If outside billionaires spend millions of dollars, they can change somebody’s profile,” Massie said in a recent interview. “But I think what they’re going to find out is that my brand is established well enough … that [they] can persuade some of the people, but they’re not going to be able to persuade enough of them.”

The president isn’t being driven by revenge in Alabama. But even there, his chosen candidate is battling to break through a crowded GOP primary field for Senate: The Trump-backed Rep. Barry Moore has a slight lead in public polling, while Attorney General Steve Marshall, who has been in office for nearly a decade, is holding his own.

Meanwhile in Georgia, Trump’s backing of Lt. Gov. Burt Jones’ gubernatorial run is a rebuke of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who rose to national prominence by defying the president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and is himself running for governor.

Still, Trump’s endorsement has its limits: Rick Jackson, a health care executive, has a slight lead over Jones in most polls for the GOP primary as he also makes a play for the MAGA base. He’s been pummelling the lieutenant governor with millions spent on attack ads.

“If any other candidate had received that amount of negative, they would be polling within the margin of error of zero,” said a Georgia-based Republican strategist who is unaffiliated with any candidate and was granted anonymity to speak openly. “When you’re looking at the reasons why [Jones] is now in a toss-up race, I would say the President’s endorsement is by far the top reason why.”

As both Jackson and Jones compete for the same slice of voters, some Republicans see Jones’ inability to dominate the race as evidence of Trump’s waning influence.

“It’s not just Donald Trump — Georgia candidates historically have not benefited very much from endorsements from out-of-state celebrities,” said Jason Shepherd, former Cobb County GOP Chair.

May 26: Texas run-off

After Sen. John Cornyn finished ahead of Attorney General Ken Paxton in Texas’ March primary, Republicans in Washington were on standby for Trump’s expected endorsement. It never came.

Perhaps in the clearest example of MAGA beginning to make decisions without Trump’s explicit approval, Texas Republicans have rallied around the scandal-plagued Paxton. Polling now shows that a Trump endorsement for Cornyn, at this point, likely wouldn’t sway voters significantly — and Paxton would maintain his edge.

GOP Texas consultant Vinny Minchillo that if Trump does decide to weigh in, he “will have to sell this to the faithful and tell them exactly what to do. Especially if he endorses Cornyn.”

Trump’s endorsement still matters, he said, but “less so with each day that passes.”