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This week, Graham Platner prevailed in Maine’s Democratic Senate primary. He will take on longtime GOP incumbent Susan Collins in the general election.

Platner’s candidacy has sparked a vast debate about the direction of the Democratic Party. He’s a veteran who advocates for free healthcare and wants higher taxes on the rich. He’s also to the left of most Democratic lawmakers on foreign policy, repeatedly calling for an end to the war on Iran and openly calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide.

“I stand with all people seeking peace, democracy, and self-determination. In this moment, that means a clear-eyed condemnation of the Gaza genocide, and the use of every means available to America to bring it to an end,” declares his campaign website.

These stances have made Platner a target of the pro-Israel crowd, and they have some fodder to work with. Years ago, he got a skull tattoo, which is recognized as a Nazi symbol, but says he didn’t know about its significance when he got it. The New York Times also ran a story in which an ex-girlfriend claims Platner grabbed her by the shoulders and once locked her in a room, which Platner denies.

Israel supporters have strived to establish a connection between Platner’s tattoo and his support for Palestine. “Along the way, Platner has courted multiple rounds of controversy over Israel and Jews,” claims the Jerusalem Post, even though a vast majority of Democratic voters now have a negative view of Israel.

Platner’s criticisms of AIPAC have been attacked as antisemitic by groups like the ADL. “Such accusations call up the age-old dual loyalty trope that casts Jewish Americans as more loyal to Israel than their own country,” said the group in a recent tweet.

After his victory, Trump lambasted Platner in a statement that predictably lacked any sense of self-awareness.

“He’s a thug, and they’re trying to make excuses for him,” said the President. “I mean, he’s worse than any human being that’s ever run for office, probably.”

(The irony is palpable.)

None of this stuff has seemed to have much of an impact on Platner’s poll numbers, as all signs still point to the fact that he has a great chance of unseating Collins. It’s not the only pro-Israel smear campaign to fall flat recently. Earlier this month, Dr. Adam Hamawy won New Jersey’s 12th district primary despite dubious allegations of terrorism connections, and Chris Rabb won in Pennsylvania’s 3rd district despite the usual claims of antisemitism.

Lately, videos of reporters interviewing Maine voters have gone viral across social media. The vast majority of them seem completely unfazed by the attacks and committed to beating Collins.

One supporter shrugged off the tattoo allegations, saying she didn’t believe he knew it was associated with Nazis. When the reporter asked whether she’d be that forgiving if Platner had a tattoo of the Israeli flag, she confirmed that would be a dealbreaker.

“I don’t support genocide, and he doesn’t either, and that would show that he’s being inconsistent,” she explained.

“This should not be welcome in the Democratic Party!” said Rep. Josh Gottheimer in an angry tweet, but again, the Democratic base has already turned on Israel. The only outliers in the party are the lawmakers.

AIPAC intervenes in Maryland

Let’s turn to Maryland, where longtime incumbent and pro-Israel zealot Steny Hoyer is retiring in the state’s 5th district.

Last weekend, AIPAC spent over $1 million boosting state delegate Adrian Boafo, who calls for strengthening the U.S.–Israel alliance.

Maryland Matters points out that the Israel lobby’s transition from Hoyer to Boafo has been fairly seamless. “Hoyer’s close ties to pro-Israel organizations have also resulted in a financial windfall for Boafo’s campaign,” notes the website. However, they also observe that this backing comes with “some political risk,” as Democratic voters have soured on Israel.

Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen is sounding the alarm on the outside spending in this race, which has also come from Crypto lobbying groups.

“Voters need to understand that these groups are not investing in this race out of charity,” he explained during a recent press conference. “They are spending because they believe the beneficiary of their spending — in this case, one candidate, Adrian Boafo — will be a dependable vote in support of their special interests.”

“It’s no secret that AIPAC’s position of providing unconditional American taxpayer support for the government of Israel is not a popular position,” he later added.

As Jewish Insider notes, AIPAC is betting on Boafo because he’s a party favorite, and Steny Hoyer’s district probably won’t generate much anti-Israel sentiment. However, the same article quotes an anonymous Maryland Jewish leader, who tells the website that the lobbying group would spend its money on more threatening races, as there appears to be no threat of a pro-Palestine candidate emerging as a contender in this contest.

“AIPAC would be better off spending money to back good candidates in races where bad candidates could win,” he said.

“In other races, though, where candidates backed by AIPAC are running, the group is viewed negatively by Democrats, raising questions about whether it would hurt their prospects if it engaged openly or even with a shell PAC,” points out JI.

Last month, Responsible Statecraft’s Ben Freeman reported on a provision buried in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that seeks to deepen connections between the United States and Israeli militaries.

Section 224, the “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative”, would synchronize efforts between the the two countries “to expand and accelerate bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation.”

“The result could well be a U.S. political system even more susceptible to the whims of an Israeli government that seemingly has no qualms about drawing the U.S. into military conflicts in the Middle East,” wrote Freeman.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) introduced an amendment to remove the section, but it was defeated by a voice vote in the House Armed Services Committee. “The American people are tired of the arrogance and insolence of Prime Minister Netanyahu telling America what we should do,” said the Congress member during the bill’s markup.

The section was also criticized by progressives like Bernie Sanders, who tweeted that the “American people do not want more U.S. military aid to Israel.” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), the Kentucky Republican who recently lost his primary, thanks in no small part to Israel lobby spending, declared that he would introduce an amendment to strike the section.

Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned over the Biden Administration’s Gaza policy and is a co-founder of the political action committee A New Policy, told Mondoweiss that, among other things, the change would enable Israel to steer U.S. foreign policy more directly.

“This integration of the U.S. and Israeli defense industrial bases would expose our most sensitive technologies to a country — and an industry — with a track record of industrial espionage, and would give Israel leverage over U.S. foreign and defense policy through making us reliant on their supply chain,” Paul told Mondoweiss.

The NDAA provision comes with a legislative backstory. Earlier this year, the United States-Israel Framework for Upgraded Technologies, Unified Research, and Enhanced Security (Futures) Act of 2026 was introduced in the House and Senate. The bipartisan bill would authorize $150 million annually to jointly develop military technology.

“This bipartisan initiative will enable long-term collaboration on shared security goals between the United States and our vital democratic ally Israel. We must strengthen our military and technological capabilities to counter continued and future threats in the region,” said Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who cosponsored the bill in the Senate.

That effort was backed by pro-Israel organizations like the neoconservative think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the lobbying group AIPAC, which also put out a memo championing Section 224.

The push to establish the military partnership is not occurring in a vacuum. It comes amid talks to between the Trump administration and the Israeli Ministry of Defense to establish a “new security cooperation framework,” as Israel memorandum of understanding (MOU) on military aid is set to expire in 2028.

For months, […] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly stated that he wants to wean Israel off of the $3.8 billion it receives from the United States, and allow Israel to buy its own weapons.

“I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have,” he told 60 Minutes last month. Under this proposed arrangement, Israel’s existing policies of occupation and apartheid would presumably stay the same, but the United States would refrain from footing the bill. This shift has been embraced from everyone from Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to the liberal Zionist group J Street.

On June 3, Reps. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) and Abraham Hamadeh (R-AZ) introduced a resolution “In support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s initiative to transition the United States-Israel relationship toward mutual defense cooperation and joint economic investment, recognizing the contributions of Israel to joint military operations against Iran, and condemning the global rise of antisemitism.”

The Washington Post reported that Netanyahu had rubber-stamped legislation before it hit the House floor. “I like it…this is the direction I’ve been wanting to go for a long time,” he told the Congress members. He also wrote them a letter publicly expressing his support for the plan.

Analysts say that Section 224 cannot be disentangled from these efforts, as it essentially paves the way for an enhanced relationship in which Israel is allowed to, in Netanyahu’s words, “stand on its own.”

“Let’s be clear: Netanyahu’s call to ‘taper off’ US-taxpayer funded weapons to Israel in favor of this new ‘co-production’ and ‘co-development’ model won’t end U.S. taxpayer subsidization of Israel,” IMEU Policy Director Josh Ruebner told Mondoweiss. “In fact, the opposite is true: it will increase the benefits to Israel. Instead of U.S. taxpayer dollars funding the provision of U.S. weapons to Israel, now U.S. taxpayers will foot the bill for the Pentagon to purchase Israeli weapons.”

“This is a double bonus for Israel because it will likely increase the actual amounts of money being spent, and the profits will benefit Israeli weapons makers, some of which are government-owned, and all of which continue to profit from Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians,” he continued.

In an article in The Guardian, Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick, co-authors of a forthcoming book on the Israel lobby, point out that this vision is detailed in a recent report called “Israel 2048: A Blueprint for a Rising Asymmetric Geopolitical Power.”

The paper imagines the U.S. and Israeli militaries integrated in order to combat the threat of Russia, China, and an alleged alliance between Marxists and Muslims.

“For Israel, this means not just ruling all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, but dominating the Middle East, launching wars of ‘prevention’ against all potential adversaries (including Turkey, Iran and even Egypt) and, with Britain and France succumbing to the influence of foreign immigrants and the disease of ‘European secularism’, serving as the US’s most important ally in its global struggle to preserve “civilization” — labeled either ‘Jewish-Christian’ or ‘western’,” explain Clifton and Lustick.

“The extravagance of such ideas clearly marks the origins of the project, exposing the influence of well-funded dark-money groups and think tanks exerting their influence on behalf of Israel’s government,” the authors continue.

That paper was co-authored by David Wurmser, who served as an adviser to Dick Cheney and an assistant to John Bolton. In 1996, Wurmser and a number of fellow neoconservatives, such as Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, authored the infamous “Clean Break Report,” which called for an end to the Oslo Peace Process, the removal of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and the military containment of Syria. The infamous document was prepared for Israel’s new Prime Minister: Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel’s push for a redefined relationship is also no doubt partially motivated by its declining image among the U.S. population. An April Pew poll found that 60% of U.S. adults have an unfavorable view of the country, including 8-in-10 Democrats. However, there is also a skepticism toward Israel among President Trump’s own base, and the feeling is poised to grow in the coming years. The same poll found that 57% of Republicans ages 18 to 49 have an unfavorable opinion of Israel, which is up from 50% in 2025. Last November, Axios reported that Israel was seeking a new, 20-year security agreement with “America First” tweaks.

“It is clear that public opinion in the U.S. has undergone a transformation when it comes to perceptions of Israel, and not even Israel’s most fervent supporters believe it is feasible that the ‘blank check’ is viable for much longer,” says Paul.

This video by Adam Ragusea (a pretty mainstream food channel) looks at how U.S. hereditary farms often preserve quasi-feudal relationships where large farm landowners exert control over migrant and trafficked laborers, recreating power imbalances similar to feudal lord-serf dynamics.

Along the way, he makes a nice overview focusing on the advent of capitalism as a progressive force against feudalism, and how US farmers, whose practices are descended from southern feudal slave plantation owners, still preserve some unproductive, harmful aspects of feudalism.

Here is good news, won by the hard work and courage of immigrants and immigrant rights advocates in Milwaukee. Beloved Milwaukee Public Schools teacher Yessenia Ruano, who was forced to take voluntary departure to her native El Salvador with her young twin daughters last June, will be allowed to return to the U.S.

Last year, Ruano came under deportation orders despite her pending visa application as a victim of sex trafficking. Ignoring such human rights provisions is consistent with the current functioning of the Department of Homeland Security.

Hundreds of people, including local Never Again Action leaders, turned out to support Ruano during the frigid winter of 2025. Immigrant rights advocates continued to work to support her case while Ruano and her family tried to adjust to their new homes.

Though the court ruling allows only a temporary return, Ruano and her supporters will continue to fight for her right to remain. In a recent text exchange, she talked about her gratitude and about how excited her daughters are to come back to school and the friends they were forced to leave behind in Wisconsin.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

At Camp East Montana, in Texas, a coalition of organizations have launched a class-action lawsuit with four detainees named as plaintiffs suing on behalf of themselves and everyone imprisoned in the largest detainment facility in the U.S. We have featured descriptions by detainees of the horrific abuses they have experienced at Camp East Montana before in this newsletter. The allegations in the complaint paint yet another truly horrifying picture.

As quoted by the Guardian, the lawsuit alleges: “[a]bhorrent medical and mental health care”; “inappropriate use of force”; “indiscriminate use of solitary confinement”; “terrible, rotten, spoiled and inadequate” food; “outbreaks of disease”; “unsanitary living conditions”; “sexual harassment by guards.”

ICE spokespeople categorically deny any wrongdoing or prisoner abuse, a position which seems ever more out of step with all of the available evidence (and remember, ICE often lies). Even in their denials, they were forced to admit the measles outbreak that occurred in the camp earlier this year.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

Demonstrators gathered in front of the Edward R. Roybal Federal building in LA are fasting to show solidarity with the detainees who are participating in a hunger strike at Adelanto ICE Processing Center and Desert View Annex. They are demanding: bond reform, improved conditions, adequate medical and mental health care, nutritious food, accountability for deaths, the right to organize and communicate, and to shut down Adelanto.

“They’re risking their own health, because their complaints… aren’t being heard. This isn’t normal and we shouldn’t accept it as normal,” Bladimir Argueta, a fast participant, told LA TACO in Spanish.

Action item: Check out this toolkit for ways to support the Adelanto hunger strikers.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action. Emphasis original.)

In the past two weeks, people imprisoned in ICE detention centers in Adelanto, CA and Newark, NJ have organized themselves in an effort to get free. Read a letter from striking prisoners inside Delaney Hall.

This past weekend, protestors have shown up consistently in front of the New Jersey ICE prison where a hunger and labor strike was initiated by up to 200 people inside. Protestors called on elected officials as ICE officers unlawfully assaulted protestors, beating them with sticks, throwing tear gas at them, and generally using violence on unarmed people. Before the weekend was over, NJ Governor Mikie Sherrill ordered ICE to stand down and ordered New Jersey state troopers to take their place, which she promised would be “safer” for protestors. As the weekend progressed, unarmed protestors faced escalated violence as those on the inside suffered retaliation from guards for refusing food and refusing to work.

What can we learn from these actions both inside and outside Delaney? The militarized violence of ICE is no different than the violence of state sanctioned law enforcement. Whether it’s ICE officers retaliating against imprisoned folks or people on the outside peacefully protesting and getting beaten by state troopers, the violence is the same. Abolish ICE. Abolish detention centers. Abolish prisons.

Action items:
Cosecha letter campaign: Free Them All
Linktree to support detainees at Delaney Hall
Follow real-time updates from Delaney Hall
Indivisible event TODAY; learn how to take action no matter where you are

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action. Emphasis original.)

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani's decision not to march in Sunday's Israel Day Parade, themed "Proud Americans, Proud Zionists," has been met with an avalanche of condemnation. A wide array of community leaders from former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to Jonathan Greenblatt's Anti-Defamation League have joined in to brand his absence as a slight against New York's Jews.

According to this narrative, Governor Kathy Hochul, Senator Chuck Schumer, Representative Dan Goldman and State Attorney General Letitia James, among the other prominent New York politicians who were in attendance, can say that they were there (in Greenblatt's words) not as a "political statement" but merely to affirm that they are bona fide "friends of the Jewish community."

Attendance at "the city's largest and most visible Jewish celebration" is, it seems, a basic requirement to assuage Jewish communal anxieties, amid rising antisemitism, that the mayor cares about protecting this community.

I demonstrated against the parade along with around two dozen activists from the grassroots activist group Israelis for Peace; we held up signs that read "This Israeli government belongs in the Hague, not NYC," "Yes, peace" [in Hebrew, English and Arabic]" and "Equality and Justice for Palestinians and Jews!" Having seen the parade firsthand, the actual offense here isn't Mamdani's absence.

The real one is that American politicians, Jewish communal leaders and thousands of individual participants would show up to legitimize such a grotesque spectacle lauding war criminals.

New York, and especially New York City, leans heavily Democratic, and this was reflected in the partisan lean of the elected American politicians who came to the parade. However, this is decidedly not the lean of the Israeli government, which is the most right-wing in the country's history.

Among those attending the parade were Likud Knesset member Ariel Kallner and Speaker Amir Ohana. Ohana's inspiring diplomatic proposal for finally resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? "If you want a Palestinian state, build it in London or Paris" — a plan he devised after learning that the U.K. and France intended to recognize Palestinian statehood.

Kallner's peace-building résumé includes advocating for a second Nakba in Gaza to "overshadow the Nakba of '48" immediately following the October 7 attacks.

Ministers Yitzhak Wasserlauf and Amichai Eliyahu of Itamar Ben-Gvir's far-right Otzma Yehudit party also attended. In a motivational speech via telephone to Israeli soldiers in Gaza, Wasserlauf, when prompted to give "30 seconds of Zionism," encouraged the soldiers to strike their enemies, seize their babies, and dash them against the rocks, quoting Psalms.

Eliyahu has called the Green Line separating Israel and the West Bank "fictitious" and said, "The government is rushing to erase Gaza, and thank God we are erasing this evil. All of Gaza will be Jewish," adding, "We don't need to be concerned about hunger in the Strip. We have completely lost our minds." According to Eliyahu, anyone who waves a Palestinian flag "shouldn't continue living on the face of the earth," suggesting one option at Israel's disposal during the war in Gaza could be to drop a nuclear bomb on the Strip.

As for Religious Zionism's Bezalel Smotrich, the Finance Minister's appalling views vis-à-vis the war in Gaza and the Palestinians are well documented.

He has fantasized out loud about reoccupying the Strip and forcibly expelling the Palestinian population; he called the starvation of the entire population of Gaza "justified and moral." The effective governor of the West Bank, he has relentlessly pursued an annexationist vision to systematically erase Palestinian statehood.

Recently, the ICC reportedly drew up an arrest warrant against him. Responding with the sort of statesmanship and tact that he's known for, Smotrich threatened to order the demolition of Khan al-Ahmar, a Bedouin village in the West Bank.

These are the politicians who are being applauded to the gleeful chants of "Am Yisrael Chai."

Senator Schumer, in fact, proclaimed this into a microphone, wearing a ribbon denoting him as an 'honored guest.' This is what is outrageous.

Today, the most prominent senator in the Democratic Party — the same party in which 62 percent of its voters believe that Israel's actions in Gaza were unjustified, and 48 percent believe that the party has been too supportive of Israel — participated in a celebratory event where those aforementioned ultranationalist extremists and criminals were, like him, treated as distinguished guests.

And yet, the reality of what happened at this event has been so thoroughly distorted that those who purportedly represent American Jewry, like Greenblatt, can not only make the farcical claim that this parade is apolitical, but also put on a display of astonishment if anyone has the audacity not to play along.

Some politicians have attempted to distance themselves from Smotrich specifically; Hochul, for instance, issued a statement condemning his participation and his "hateful and divisive rhetoric."

If these statements are intended to demonstrate care or understanding, they are wholly inadequate. They ignore the larger problems at stake: Smotrich's criminal, discriminatory policies (not only his hateful rhetoric), the many other Knesset members marching in the delegation who share Smotrich's visions but lack his notoriety, and the fact that the country which they represent is responsible for the systematic destruction of healthcare, infrastructure, education, and habitability in Gaza and has implemented a legal régime in which Palestinians face structural, ongoing subjugation.

For politicians to choose to still march in this parade, given all of this, means that such condemnations ultimately ring hollow. For their part, some observers and attendees have resorted to denialism to detach themselves and the parade from the unsavory members of the Israeli government who were present, claiming that Smotrich and others "crashed" the parade and were not invited.

In reality, it seems that they were brought to the parade with a group from Israel's consulate, where, in order to enter, they would have had to go through security points, undergoing screenings. If these members of Knesset were truly unwanted intruders, one has to wonder why the dozens of NYPD officers, community security guards or parade organizers marshaling the "safest ever" Israel Day lacked either the sufficient ability or willpower to successfully remove them from the premises.

Such delusions are not entirely new territory. For years, otherwise liberal American Jews have sustained the cognitive dissonance of supporting the State of Israel by inventing a mythological 'Neverland' Israel, where all citizens are treated equally, there is a robust democratic system of checks, balances, and accountability to punish the rare few bad apples, and Jewish safety is guaranteed in perpetuity.

Those of us who see Israel's régime as inherently unjust have generally assumed that if and when these liberal American Jews do take a clear-eyed look at Israel and see the neo-Kahanism that continually runs rampant, they will turn their backs in disgust. For some, that process is already happening. For others, this transformation may remain possible. And of course, some cannot and will never let go of 'Neverland' Israel, no matter the evidence that is presented. But at the parade, I observed something more disturbing.

As I held my "This Israeli government belongs in the Hague, not NYC" sign, some passersby stared in perplexity. Many booed, took photos. A dad, as part of the delegation for a Jewish day school, gave us the finger, next to his children. An influencer recorded us as we left the protest and called us "Hamas."

One woman informed us that we were Kapos. Another woman next to us chanted "mamzerim," Hebrew for "bastards," and demanded (unsuccessfully) that the police get rid of us. And the attendees to the left and right of us, chanted, in protest of our protest: "Send them home."

Floats were celebrating illegal settlements and flags celebrating the army brigade responsible for the extrajudicial execution of 15 Palestinian Red Crescent emergency responders, clearly marked as unarmed medical personnel, in Gaza. Thousands of people chose to attend this parade and saw the Israeli government as it exists — proudly represented by MKs Ohana, Kallner, Wasserlauf, Eliyahu and Smotrich.

The participants have decided they like what they see.

California state Sen. Scott Wiener handily won his primary race to replace retiring former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Congress on Tuesday, in a race that saw his relationships with the local Jewish community tested.

He will face San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan, who placed second with Pelosi’s endorsement, in November’s general election, which under state law will be held between the top two vote-getters regardless of party.

Saikat Chakrabarti, a progressive who ran to Wiener’s left on Israel and who campaigned with the anti-Israel influencer Hasan Piker, failed to make the ballot.

With 50% of votes tallied as of Wednesday morning, the Associated Press called the race for Wiener and Chan. Wiener took 41% of the vote, with Chan at 28% and Chakrabarti a distant third at 15%.

“Tonight, the voters sent a clear message: they’re ready for a new vision on housing affordability, ICE accountability, smart guardrails on AI, single payer healthcare, and affordable clean energy,” Wiener wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter) in a victory statement that did not mention Israel. The senator said he would tackle “rising authoritarianism” and “defend immigrants and trans people” if elected to Congress. In his victory speech, Wiener decried President Donald Trump’s “disastrous wars.”

Over the course of the campaign, Wiener, like his two top rivals, concluded that he believed Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. His remarks upset his local Jewish constituents

Normally I hate to interrupt these reports, but I need to warn you that the Jewish Telegraph Agency has a very annoying tendency to write ‘Jew’ or ‘Jewish’ when they really mean ‘Zionist’. This conflation is irresponsible, increasingly dated, and I believe that the agency is doing it purposely to encourage allosemitism.

and cost him the leadership rôle with the statehouse’s Jewish caucus, but some local Jews still urged their community to back him.

“It is a hard year to be a lefty Jew running for Congress,” Wiener told news outlets during the campaign.

The race was roiled in its final day by disputed reports that pro-Israel PACs, including AIPAC and Democratic Majority For Israel, were secretly funneling money to Chan via an elaborate shell game. A person familiar with DMFI’s thinking denied the reports to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and said the group’s PAC wasn’t spending for Chan. A representative for AIPAC did not return a request for comment.

Candidates backed by Jewish and pro-Israel groups had a mixed record in other House primary races in the state.

• A pro-Israel challenger to progressive Rep. Ro Khanna, entrepreneur Ethan Agarwal, was lagging far behind two GOP challengers in the 17th District as of Wednesday morning. The AP has yet to call a second-place finisher, but Khanna’s lead positions him to potentially avoid a runoff.
• In the 14th District to replace disgraced Rep. Eric Swalwell, entrepreneur Rakhi Israni (who had the backing of Bay Area Jewish Coalition-Action) was similarly trailing far behind other candidates. State Sen. Aisha Wahab, the daughter of Afghan refugees who has worked with Jewish groups on refugee issues while also taking a tough line on Israel, clinched the top spot with more than 34% of the vote.
• DMFI-backed San Diego council member Marni von Wilpert bested her Democratic rival Ammar Campa-Najjar — the grandson of a Palestine Liberation Organization founder — in the 48th District primary, and will go on to face Republican Jim Desmond, the top vote-getter, in the general.
• The 22nd District primary race in the Central Valley, in which DMFI had spent heavily in favor of moderate state assembly member Jasmeet Bains, remained too close to call Wednesday morning between Bains and progressive school board member Randy Villegas. The race, seen as a bellwether for Democrats nationally in a district they hope to flip, turned ugly as DMFI-backed attack ads drew on Villegas’s alleged rôle in a school district sexual assault settlement. Bains had walked back her stance that Israel committed genocide after DMFI got involved in the race. Villegas was ahead at press time.

As of the time of writing, detained immigrants are on hunger strike in Delaney Hall in New Jersey, at the Adelanto detention center in California, at the North Lake detention center in Michigan, and at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania. The demands from every group of strikers are, at their core, the same: treat us like human beings.

Detention Watch Network’s press release quotes Nanci Palacios Godinez: “The hunger strikers at Adelanto and Delaney Hall are bravely calling attention to a long-known truth: Immigration detention as a whole is unnecessary, rife with systemic abuses and completely arbitrary — full stop. People in immigration detention are describing it as ‘hell on earth’ because it is. ICE’s immigrant detention system deprives people of freedom, isolates people away from loved ones, and subjects people to abysmal conditions, including inadequate medical care and mental health services, inedible food, and racist abuse… No one should suffer in these conditions. Immigrants are our family members, neighbors, friends, and coworkers — worthy of dignity and respect regardless of where they came from or how they arrived in the U.S.”

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)