Cori Bush Loses Missouri Primary After Massive AIPAC Bid to Defeat Her

Missouri Representative Cori Bush became the second “Squad” member to get knocked out by the efforts of pro-Israel lobbyists Tuesday night, losing her primary race to St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell.

The race was tight, but Bell held a small but steady margin over Bush as the votes were counted.

The blow-up race became yet another temperature gauge on Democratic divisions over hot-button political issues, including the Israel-Palestine conflict. The fundraising arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC—the United Democracy Project PAC—spent more than $7 million on Bell’s campaign to undermine the pro-Palestine Bush’s influence in D.C.

The hotly contested issue made Bush’s race one of the priciest House primaries of all time—though not quite as expensive as New York Representative Jamaal Bowman’s primary, which he lost to Westchester County Executive George Latimer in June over similar issues. More than $23 million was spent on advertising alone in that race.

Bush has argued that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and was one of the first representatives to call for a cease-fire, just weeks after Hamas’s October 7 attack.

Even in the waning days of the race, Bush staunchly defended her position on Israel’s war, which has so far killed more than 39,000 Palestinians. In an interview with The New York Times published Monday, Bush refused to call Hamas a terrorist organization.

“We were called terrorists during Ferguson,” Bush told the publication, referring to the anti-racism protests in Ferguson, Missouri, where she made her name as an activist. “I’m not trying to compare us, but that taught me to be careful about labeling if I don’t know.”

Her campaign later walked back the comment.

Meanwhile, her opponent had aggressively campaigned alongside Jewish advocacy groups in the St. Louis area. That could have helped him cinch the district’s 2.8 percent Jewish population—a demographic that Jewish Democratic Council of America chief of staff Sam Crystal told ABC News could “make the difference” in a close race.

“That he is not just expressing support for the issues that Jewish voters are prioritizing but taking the time to actually reach out to Jewish voters in the district and to create relationships with the Jewish leaders has been a big impact on why he’s gained so much support in the district,” Crystal told the outlet on Monday.

Ultimately, there were few policy differences between Bush and Bell. Instead, the election boiled down to foreign policy stances and political rhetoric, according to The Washington Post: a choice between a candidate who would vote alongside the Democratic establishment or one who would continue to challenge it.

Donald Trump’s campaign really does not want to talk about the presidential debate he backed out of, originally scheduled for September 10.

On Tuesday morning, Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, was interviewed on Newsmax, telling hosts Shaun Kraisman and Emma Rechenberg that Trump “will never back down from the hostile fake news media. He’s not afraid.”

“But why won’t former President Trump debate on ABC News, the one he committed to with Biden? Harris said she’d show up to that one. Do you have an answer for that? Does he have an answer for that?” Kraisman asked.

Leavitt initially hesitated.

“Yes, we do. Well, first of all, that debate was committed between President Trump and Joe Biden. The race has changed,” Leavitt said. The Kamala Harris campaign pounced, posting the interview on X (formerly Twitter).

Later on Tuesday, Trump campaign adviser Danielle Alvarez claimed on Fox News that the former president and convicted felon was ready to debate, noting that he “accepted” a debate that would be hosted by Fox.

“Kamala Harris is running scared, and I don’t blame her because President Trump delivered a knockout punch to Joe Biden in that first CNN debate. They formed a coup and forced him out. President Trump is absolutely prepared to debate,” Alvarez told Fox’s Bret Baier. “He takes tough interviews all the time, and it’s in stark contrast to Kamala Harris, who has not taken an interview in the 17 days since she ascended.”

“Well, he obviously stepped back from the ABC debate offer on September 10,” Baier pointed out. “But you’re saying that there’s a belief that Kamala Harris will accept a debate?”

“She absolutely should accept a debate,” Alvarez replied. “She needs to explain to the American people the failures that are occurring, especially in the last 24 hours.”

It’s funny to say that Harris is scared, when Trump refuses to take part in a debate with ABC News moderators who won’t be on his side, unlike at Fox News. Trump has made multiple excuses—from made-up polls to former President Barack Obama—for backing out of the previously agreed-upon debates. In reality, the truth is that he’s probably the one who is running scared.

So much for the law-and-order party: FBI agents recently executed a search warrant for Representative Andy Ogles, a Tennessee Republican, last week over his fraudulent campaign finance reports.

Nashville TV station NewsChannel5 broke the news Tuesday, reporting that sources said the warrant might have been limited to Ogles’s electronic devices. Ogles’s attorney didn’t deny that a warrant was issued, but declined to comment, as did the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee.

Only last week, Ogles won his primary race for the Tennessee 5th congressional district, meaning that he could be under FBI investigation during the general election in November. The Department of Justice generally doesn’t make overt actions in investigations of political candidates 60 days before an election.

In May, Ogles filed amended campaign financial reports, admitting that when he first ran in 2022, he hadn’t loaned his campaign $320,000 as he had previously reported. He also filed more amendments retracting claims made in his financial reports of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions and expenditures.

At the time, Ogles was compared to disgraced ex-Congressman George Santos, who is facing criminal charges for inflating campaign fundraising numbers after also reporting loaning his campaign a lot of his own money.

NewsChannel5 reported last year that Ogles didn’t have the resources or assets to make such a loan to his campaign, raising the question of where the congressman got the money from, and if he made some illicit or extravagant purchases like Santos. Like Santos, Ogles was found to have lied about his background, making up details about his education. He also raised $25,000 on GoFundMe to build a garden in memory of his stillborn child, but the garden was never built.

It appears that the law might soon be catching up to Ogles, who has a history of sponsoring futile, symbolic bills. He has proposed sending protesting students to Gaza, tried to lift the gag order in Trump’s hush-money trial, and has tried to require the White House to inform Congress any time President Biden takes a drug “that could alter his alertness, judgment or mood.” It looks like he’ll finally have to spend his time doing something more serious: fighting possible federal charges.

Elon Musk is hoping to scare advertisers into returning to X (formerly Twitter) by suing a group of advertisers who he claims concocted a plan to cost his social media company billions of dollars.

The billionaire technocrat filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, or GARM, a coalition of advertisers, media agencies, and platforms that focus on safety in media and technology, accusing them of coordinating a campaign to stop working with him. The lawsuit also targets the World Federation of Advertisers, which oversees GARM, and four of its members: CVS Health, Mars, Unilever, and Orsted.

Ever since Musk took over as the owner of X, bringing with him a rise of antisemitism and hate speech on the social media platform, advertisers have fled en masse. In November, shortly after Musk promoted a neo-Nazi talking point, Media Matters published a report saying that X had been placing ads for brands including Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity next to posts promoting Hitler and Nazi beliefs.

After Musk levied a profanity-laced tirade against advertisers for leaving him, he continued to elevate hate speech on X. In May, he invited neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes back to the platform after he’d been banned.

As a result, X’s revenue has taken a dive. X earned $114 million in the United States in its second quarter, a 25 percent decline from its first quarter and a 53 percent decline from the same period last year, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.

But Musk claims it wasn’t his own support of hate speech that scared advertisers away. He thinks GARM is responsible.

In the nearly two years since Musk took over, 18 companies represented by GARM stopped advertising on the platform altogether, while dozens more shrank their spending by 70 percent, according to the lawsuit. Even as X dropped the prices of its ad spots to lure advertisers back, none returned. Musk’s lawsuit argues that advertisers’ failure to come crawling back constitutes an antitrust violation.

“By refraining from purchasing advertising from X, boycotting advertisers are forgoing a valuable opportunity to purchase low-priced advertising inventory on a platform with brand safety that meets or exceeds industry standards,” the lawsuit said.

In an open letter posted by X CEO Linda Yaccarino, she cited a report published in June by the House Judiciary Committee, titled “GARM’s Harm.”

“Evidence obtained by the Committee shows that GARM and its members directly organized boycotts and used other indirect tactics to target disfavored platforms, content creators, and news organizations in an effort to demonetize and, in effect, limit certain choices for consumers,” the report said.

“To put it simply, people are hurt when the marketplace of ideas is undermined and some viewpoints are not funded over others as part of an illegal boycott,” Yaccarino wrote in her letter, before accusing the defendants of cheating X out of billions of dollars.

It seems that other platforms were inspired by Musk’s war on advertisers. Rumble, a right-wing video-sharing platform, signed onto Musk’s lawsuit.

“I strongly encourage any company who has been systematically boycotted by advertisers to file a lawsuit,” Musk wrote Tuesday X. “There may also be criminal liability via the RICO Act.”

Ruben Schreurs, the chief strategy officer at Ebiquity, a marketing and media consulting firm, told The New York Times that to advertisers, Musk’s claims sound “so far-fetched and frankly ridiculous.”

“To the extent that Elon hadn’t already burned all bridges and ties with the entire advertising community, I don’t see how this will get any advertisers to come back to X,” Schruers said. “It’s a last-ditch effort to force brands who don’t want to be in the cross hairs of this kind of legal action to return to the platform.”

While one might think that you can’t actually sue someone for not wanting to work with you, it doesn’t mean that Musk won’t try.

Organized labor is giving a resounding thumbs-up to Kamala Harris’s vice presidential pick.

Following Harris’s announcement Tuesday that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz would be her running mate, union endorsements poured in one by one.

The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, or AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions, announced its support of Walz. “By selecting Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, Kamala Harris chose a principled fighter and labor champion who will stand up for working people and strengthen this historic ticket,” said Liz Shuler, president of AFL-CIO.

Another exciting endorsement came from the United Auto Workers, which had initially taken longer to endorse Harris. “Tim Walz has been a great governor and is going to make a great vice-president. He’s stood with the working class every step of the way, and has walked the walk, including on a UAW picket line last fall,” said UAW President Shawn Fain, who leads nearly 400,000 active members, including more than 100,000 in the swing state of Michigan.

Other unions also celebrated Walz’s pick, including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, the National Education Association, or NEA, and the American Federation of Teachers, or AFT, with their union president, Randi Weingarten, writing that the “AFT’s 1.8 million members will stand with Walz and Harris over the next 12 weeks as they campaign to realize the promise and potential of America.” Union leader Sara Nelson of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, or AFA, also chimed in, writing that Walz is “in touch with the country and what we need to win.”

Prior to Harris’s announcement, more than two dozen labor leaders in Minnesota sent a letter to Harris asking her to pick Walz as her running mate. 

In his time as governor, Walz fought for Minnesota workers, passing paid sick leave, parental leave, and protections from noncompete agreements and anti-union meetings. He also passed the “nation’s strongest set of protections against wage theft.”

Before working in politics, Walz was a social studies teacher and union member.

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance is desperately trying to find a line of attack after Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s addition to the Democratic presidential ticket. And all he’s come up with so far is that Kamala Harris is caving “to the Hamas wing of her own party.”

Vance made the remarks after his flight landed in Philadelphia Tuesday morning, where he later spoke at a rally for the Trump campaign.

“Many, many people said repeatedly that the reason Kamala Harris was going away from the Josh Shapiro selection is because they were worried about antisemitism,” Vance said on the plane. “They were worried about certain voters; they were worried about some of the leaders and the grassroots activists in their party wouldn’t take a Jewish nominee.

“I think it’s despicable. I think it’s disgusting. But that is right out of the words of many members of the Democratic leadership, and so now we have Tim Walz,” Vance added.

Later, at a press conference in the city of brotherly love, Vance again claimed that Harris and the Democrats were motivated by prejudice by not choosing Shapiro.

“I genuinely feel bad that for days, maybe even weeks, the guy actually had to run away from his Jewish heritage because of what the Democrats are saying about him. I think that’s scandalous and disgraceful,” Vance said. “Whatever disagreements on policy you have about somebody, the fact that that race, the vice presidential race on the Democratic side, became so focused on his ethnicity, I think is absolutely disgraceful.”

Vance’s comments seem to be piggybacking on attacks on Walz from earlier on Tuesday. Several Republicans, including Senator Tom Cotton, called the decision to choose Walz over Shapiro antisemtic. Even before the Harris campaign made the announcement, Vance claimed that Democrats’ overlooking Shapiro would be due to antisemitism.

If this is what Republicans think will work, it’s kind of a joke. Neither Vance nor Trump are Jewish, and of the 33 Jewish members of Congress, only two in the House are Republicans, with zero Jewish Republican senators. Harris’s husband, Douglas Emhoff, as well as her two stepchildren, are Jewish.

This attack certainly won’t stop people from calling Vance and Trump weird, especially since the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, also happens to be Jewish, which he pointed out on X in response to these attacks.

Meanwhile, Trump isn’t making any campaign appearances until Friday, when he’s scheduled to speak in Montana, while the Harris campaign’s schedule is packed with battleground states with only Vance making similar stops. And that isn’t the only way the Trump campaign is trailing Harris’s, aside from the polls: Vance tried to call Walz earlier Tuesday morning, but only got his voicemail.

Donald Trump’s campaign is taking aim at Minnesota Governor Tim Walz for backing a policy that gives convicted felons the right to vote, conveniently forgetting that their candidate is also a convicted felon.

Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt released a statement Tuesday decrying Vice President Kamala Harris’s selection of “Radical Leftist Tim Walz” as her running mate.

Leavitt criticized Walz for “embracing policies to allow convicted felons to vote,” as part of his obsession “with spreading California’s dangerously liberal agenda far and wide.”

As Minnesota governor, Walz signed a bill in June 2023 restoring the right to vote to more than 50,000 Minnesotans on parole, probation, or community release due to a felony conviction.

Despite Leavitt’s griping, Trump himself is the beneficiary of a policy allowing convicted felons to vote.

Trump is currently still eligible to vote in Florida, where he is registered, because Florida election law says that he has that right so long as he is able to vote in the state where he was convicted. In New York state, a person is only disenfranchised while incarcerated, so unless Trump is sentenced to prison in his New York hush-money trial, he can still vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

In an astounding feat of doublethink, Team Trump seems to want voters to be angry that convicted felons can vote, while simultaneously hoping that they’ll vote for a convicted felon—and that said convicted felon can vote for himself come November.

After Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was chosen as Kamala Harris’s running mate, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders immediately attacked him—only to get trolled by the internet.

“In her first big decision Kamala reveals who she answers to—the far left,” Sanders posted on X (formerly Twitter) Tuesday morning. The replies to her tweet quickly called her out.

Several commentators pointed out the contrast between their records as governors—Sanders loosened child labor protections while Walz made school lunches free. Even their photo ops with children show disappointment versus happiness.

Others pointed out the absurdity of calling Walz “far left”—as if that attack line would work on a military veteran, high school football coach, and teacher.

These early attacks, along with a panicked angry email from the Trump campaign, show that the GOP doesn’t have much of an attack line against Walz right now. It’s fitting that the man who coined the Democrats’ favorite “weird” criticism of Republicans isn’t easily attacked himself. On top of that, Trump and Republicans still haven’t come up with a good way to attack Harris. The only question is whether all of this will lead to Democrats retaining the White House in November.

Conservatives have begun claiming that it was antisemitic for Kamala Harris to tap Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate on Tuesday, instead of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. But when examining Walz’s actual record on Israel, their phony meltdown doesn’t quite ring true.

It seems that Republicans are hoping to push the narrative that Walz was selected over Shapiro because Shapiro is Jewish.

“Let’s be clear: Kamala didn’t *cave* to the antisemitic, pro-Hamas wing of the Democratic Party. She *belongs* to the pro-Hamas wing of the Democratic party,” wrote violently pro-Israel Republican Senator Tom Cotton in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

Conservative radio talk show host Dana Loesch claimed that picking Walz over Shapiro was done to “not upset their anti-Jewish voters who carry a lot of influence in their party now.”

Fox Business correspondent Charles Gasparino seemingly couldn’t believe that Harris had selected Walz. “Unless @JoshShapiroPA was caught in bed w a live boy or dead girl this VP choice tells you something scary about the Dem Party and antisemitism pure and simple,” Gasparino wrote in a post on X.

Before Walz was even announced, Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance claimed that if Harris didn’t pick Shapiro, it would be “out of anti-Semitism in their own caucus and in their own party.”

Republican commentator Eric Erickson wrote simply, “No Jews allowed at the top of the Democratic Party.” Of course, of the 35 Jewish members of the current Congress, only two are Republican. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is also Jewish.

Like Erickson’s hollow critique, this conservative meltdown is completely made up: For a pick determined by so-called antisemitism, Walz’s appointment has already received significant support from pro-Israel groups.

As soon as Harris’s decision was announced Tuesday morning, the Democratic Majority for Israel released a statement expressing its support for Walz, and lauding the moderate Democrat for his record on Israel.

“As governor, he has been a steadfast supporter of the pro-Israel movement in Minnesota,” the statement said. “In the wake of Hamas’ barbaric October 7th attacks, Governor Walz ordered state flags to be flown at half-mast and condemned the ‘horrific attacks on Israel by Hamas,’ and, at a vigil for the victims, asked anyone who did not immediately condemn the assault to ‘reevaluate where you’re at.’”

The group highlighted Walz’s support of U.S.-backed military aid to Israel and work to increase Holocaust education in Minnesota. When speaking at an AIPAC conference in 2010, Walz called Israel “our truest and closest ally in the region, with a commitment to values of personal freedoms and liberties, surrounded by a pretty tough neighborhood.”

J Street, the liberal pro-Israel lobby also released a statement supporting Walz, obtained by Forward. “We know the Harris-Walz team will stand up for our shared values, protect our community, and pursue smart, pro-Israel, pro-peace leadership abroad. We’re all in,” said the group, which had previously endorsed Walz.

Recently, Walz has presented a more nuanced stance on Israel. During the primaries, he said that those who voted “uncommitted” to protest President Joe Biden’s support for Israel in its catastrophic military campaign in Gaza were “civically engaged.”

“People are frustrated, but it bodes well, for me, that they’re actively engaged to go out and cast this vote and ask for change,” Walz said at the time.

As pro-Palestinian protests spread across the country, Walz said that students “need to be able to express opinions,” and that included Jewish students as well. “When Jewish students are telling us they feel unsafe, we need to believe them, and I do believe them,” he said.

Walz’s apparent open-mindedness and more moderate position came in sharp relief to Shapiro, who has been egregiously bad on Palestine. As former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on CNN Monday night, dismissing Shapiro had little to do with antisemitism.

“I think it’s probably more about policy,” she said.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has only just been named as Kamala Harris’s running mate, but Donald Trump is already mad.

The Republican presidential nominee and convicted felon’s campaign immediately fired off a fundraising email Tuesday morning with some over-the-top but unspecific attacks, with an insane subject line not likely to gain traction beyond the MAGA faithful.

The email continued along the same lines.

“He’ll unleash HELL ON EARTH and open our borders to the worst criminals imaginable,” the email read. “He’ll rubber stamp Kamla’s [sic] GREEN NEW SCAM and light TRILLIONS of dollars on fire. But the real killer: he’s already pulled in MILLIONS in dirty cash to buy the White House!”

As The Washington Post’s Philip Bump noted, Trump probably had this email ready to go with an empty space for Walz’s name. The attacks on Walz could have been used against any generic Democrat (except perhaps Joe Manchin). But Trump and the GOP now have the difficult task of taking on the Democrat who coined the very effective “weird’ attacks against them. And compared to J.D. Vance, Walz is likeable, a great communicator, and has a compelling story.

We’ll have to see in the coming days whether Republicans and Trump will have any effective attacks against Walz, but if their flailing attacks on Harris are any indication, they may not have anything good.