Here’s the Next Squad Member in AIPAC’s Crosshairs

After Representative Jamaal Bowman’s defeat Tuesday night, Representative Cori Bush could be the next progressive in Congress to face trouble, as a new poll shows her narrowly behind a primary challenger.

The poll, commissioned by Democratic Majority for Israel, shows Bush behind St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell, 42 percent to 43 percent. DMI was one of the major donors to Bowman’s opponent, George Latimer, helping to make that race the most expensive House primary race ever, with Latimer outraising Bowman $5.7 million to $4.2 million.

While the poll was within the margin of error, a previous poll from January showed Bell trailing by 16 percentage points, suggesting that something has moved public opinion against Bush. Judging by the commissioned poll, it could be for the same reason that Bowman suddenly had a well-funded challenger: donors aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its PAC, the United Democracy Project, who flooded the race with money supporting Latimer after Bowman accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. Latimer now calls himself a staunch supporter of Israel, opposing potential cease-fires on the basis that Hamas is a terrorist organization.

Bush seems to think something similar is happening in her St. Louis district, telling The New York Times in February, “I’m being targeted by AIPAC because not only do I believe Palestinians deserve to live freely and peacefully just like Israelis, but because I want to protect our democracy from Republican extremism.”

Bell claims that his focus is more on local issues, but his website reads, “In Congress, I’ll fight to make sure the United States remains Israel’s strongest ally.” He is also the recipient of plenty of United Democracy Project money. This has not endeared him to some progressives in Bush’s district.

“I don’t see Wesley Bell as a progressive,” Hannah Rosenthal, co-founder of Progressive Jews of St. Louis and a Bush supporter, told the Times. “His allegiance with AIPAC supporters is a prime example.”

As the war drags on, with the U.S. funding weapons that kill more and more Palestinian civilians each day, it seems that pro-Israel donors will keep spending as much as they can in local political races to ensure that Israel can continue the war indefinitely with U.S. support. Politicians and voters should realize this will only perpetuate a human rights catastrophe. Such donors are even on the wrong side of the NAACP when it comes to Israel’s brutal war in Gaza.

Perhaps these donors are afraid of actions that would actually end the conflict and promote peace: spurning a prime minister accused of war crimes and ending weapons shipments to Israel to force an immediate cease-fire.

If you take Republicans at their word, small businesses are the lifeblood of the party. But their mom-and-pop worship does not appear to apply to Milwaukee, the site of the 2024 Republican National Convention.

According to a new report from longtime Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer, the RNC, which pitched a projected $200 million in economic impact in its bid to secure Milwaukee as a host city for the convention, has failed to book the expected number of local venues, leaving businesses set to close for the week to accommodate reservations and events related to the convention high and dry.

“That kind of anticipated economic impact that everyone was high-fiving and champagne-popping and press conferencing about. At this point in time, none of that really has come true, for the most part,” Gary Witt, president and CEO of the Pabst Theater Group, which owns several venues that have hosted presidential town halls in the city, said. “It’s 100 percent a case of ‘overpromise, underdeliver,’ on all parts, by everybody.”

The party of personal responsibility reportedly promised to book out theaters to host events throughout the week, only to back out. The same is true of restaurants, many of which blocked off reservations in advance, only to never hear back. “I have a feeling this is going to be a business killer.… “If the (reservation) book stays the way it is, we’re not going to make enough money to cover costs,” Gregory León, a restaurant owner in the city, said. “[This is] certainly nothing like we were told or promised, and I believe it is that way for almost every restaurant in the city, with the exception of the big restaurant groups. We were told that restaurants and venues would be booked months in advance.… It’s turned out to be quite the contrary.”

Witt characterized the RNC planning as “underwhelming” and a “failure.”

News of the empty venues is the latest chapter in the Republican Party’s bizarre project to antagonize the city of Milwaukee at every turn before the start of the convention. Donald Trump trashed the city repeatedly, calling it “horrible.” The RNC’s reneging on deals it promised to make with local businesses, on the other hand, is all too predictable, given that the committee is now a Trump family affair; Lara Trump was named co-chair in March 2024, and stiffing lawyers, cops, and contractors is something of a Trump tradition.

The Republican National Convention is set to begin July 15. In the meantime, the GOP may have found a new slogan: “‘Overpromise, underdeliver,’ on all parts, by everybody.”

Republicans in Congress are desperately trying to save Steve Bannon from prison—and they’re coming up with some insane legal theories in the process.

Representative Barry Loudermilk filed a brief with the Supreme Court Wednesday not only asking them to throw out Bannon’s contempt of Congress case but also adopting the standard that if any witness in a congressional investigation thinks a subpoena isn’t valid, they can ignore it.

It’s a crazy thing to push in a legal filing, and it completely ignores the facts of Bannon’s case: He didn’t make any such legal arguments until after he had flouted the subpoena against him. Subpoenas are meant to compel someone to come to court and testify. The idea that a witness should be allowed to ignore one would defeat their entire purpose.

Loudermilk’s filing didn’t even come from House lawyers, but rather outside counsel: Stephen Miller’s America First Legal firm, to be exact.

The move follows another last-ditch effort late Tuesday night, when Speaker Mike Johnson and other GOP leaders held a secret vote to reject the previous Congress’s formal position on the January 6 committee. The Republicans’ hope was that their vote would undermine the legitimacy of the congressional committee and its subpoena of Bannon in turn, and allow members of Congress to file briefs on behalf of Bannon against the committee. It seems that Loudermilk’s brief came as a result of their efforts.

It’s unclear whether House Republicans will be able to make Bannon’s indictment, conviction, and four-month prison sentence just go away. Former Trump White House aide Peter Navarro also appealed to the Supreme Court to dodge his contempt of Congress sentence and failed, but he didn’t have America First Legal and House Republicans backing him. It remains to be seen whether this right-wing Supreme Court will help Bannon avoid serving time in a place such as Rikers Island.

Trump’s debate preppers are begging him to not be a “raging asshole,” according to sources who shared their sigh-inducing strategies with Rolling Stone ahead of Thursday’s presidential debate against Biden.

A Republican who recently provided debate prep to Trump paraphrased their advice to Rolling Stone as, “Don’t be a raging asshole while you’re on stage with Biden.” The unnamed Republican also discouraged Trump from taking the bait from Biden to devolve into the aforementioned “raging asshole” like he did in 2020. During those debates, Trump opened by derailing what NPR at the time described as “maybe the worst presidential debate in American history,” then took a restrained approach for the second, which led to him face planting.*

Trump appears to be taking the advice seriously. According to Rolling Stone, Trump has privately acknowledged that Biden would try to make him act “crazy” during the debate, which for Trump is just something he typically does all on his own. Rolling Stone also notes the topic has come up at rallies. At a rally in Atlanta, Trump reportedly told the crowd that multiple advisers had told him he “should be nicer.” At another rally in Pennsylvania, Trump asked attendees how he should act during the debate. According to Rolling Stone, he asked the crowd, “Should I be tough and nasty, and just say, ‘You’re the worst president in history’? Or should I be nice, and calm, and let him speak?” The crowd overwhelmingly cheered for him to be the “raging asshole” his debate preppers have urged him against.

Allies and advisers around Trump are concerned he’ll let Biden get to him, with pressure points aplenty amid a historic felony conviction, allies getting creamed in state courts across the country for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election, his election-denialist base getting carted off to federal prison for participating in the January 6 insurrection, and Trump-endorsed candidates losing their primaries. They’re also concerned Trump will be a “raging asshole” about Biden’s age.

“You can be strong and fight, but most people won’t like to see you beating up too hard on grandpa,” one source told Rolling Stone, referring to attacks on Biden’s age. Dan Eberhart, a longtime GOP donor who claims to have spent a lot of time around Trump recently, also urged caution, telling Rolling Stone, “He needs to be careful to be assertive but not aggressive with Biden. If he’s too aggressive, it’ll turn off female voters.”

Trump and his followers are already convinced he’ll lose the upcoming debate, naturally claiming it is rigged: Both Trump and his daughter-in-law Lara Trump have pushed a doping conspiracy that claims if Biden is anything other than altogether boring during the debate, it’ll be due to drugs. Other allies like Steve Bannon and Marjorie Taylor Greene, both everlasting sources of nonsensical conspiracy theories, have preemptively decided Trump will lose the debate because the moderators are biased against him.

Meanwhile, Trump claims the entirety of his debate prep is just … being interviewed by conservative outlets. Ahead of his rally in Philadelphia last Saturday, Trump told conservative radio talk show host Chris Stigall, “People say, ‘How are you preparing?’ I’m preparing by taking questions from you and others, if you think about it.”

If Trump shows restraint in Thursday’s debate, it won’t be because he’s magically developed a mature and level-headed “presidential tone”—but because he listened to his advisers begging him not to be a “raging asshole” for once.

* This article originally misstated the number of Trump-Biden debates in 2020.

Good news for Joe Biden and the Democratic Party: The swing-state voters most likely to decide the election believe that democracy is on the ballot in November. The problem: They trust Donald Trump to protect it more than Biden.

A new poll from The Washington Post and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government shows that the Biden campaign’s effort to frame the 2024 election as a battle between democracy and the rising tide of authoritarianism—the “most important election of our lifetime”—has been successful; 61 percent of surveyed swing-state voters described “threats to democracy” as “extremely important” to them.

But the campaign’s messaging does not seem to have translated to support for Biden. Remarkably, 44 percent of swing-state voters trust Trump to best handle those threats over Biden’s 33 percent. Among undecided voters, the numbers are just as bleak: 38 percent trust Trump and 29 percent trust Biden.

The troubling numbers come as Trump faces an election interference trial in Georgia and an investigation by special counsel Jack Smith over his involvement in the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Amid his legal woes, the former president has continued to peddle lies about the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

Biden’s messaging problem is surprising. Voters appear to agree that democracy is in danger, a central theme of Biden’s stump-speech pitches and campaign ads, many of which contain footage of the mob outside the Capitol on January 6, 2021. They just don’t trust that he’s best suited to guard it. Claims made by Trump of the threat to democracy in the wake of his felony conviction in his hush-money trial may partially explain the poll’s results, as may frustration with Biden’s insistence on continuing to fund Israel’s unpopular assault on Gaza, even as he violates international and domestic weapons transfer laws to do so.

But whatever voters think threats to democracy entail—like a president sowing doubt in elections and refusing to submit to the peaceful transfer of power—Biden, who has prioritized comparatively abstract messaging on democracy at times during his reelection campaign, will need to figure out how to fully get through to voters on the issue, or change course soon.