Jeffries Opposes Bid to Cut Off Aid to Israel as Democrats Split

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has announced that he will vote against Representative Thomas Massie’s measure to cut off all aid to Israel—even though it’s a policy that the vast majority of Democratic voters agree with.

“I will be voting no on Republican Amendment #8.… It is overly broad in that it prohibits or would limit the use of funds for longstanding initiatives related to humanitarian aid, refugee resettlement, peace-building and U.S. Embassy operations,” Jeffries wrote in a letter to his Democratic colleagues Tuesday. “In addition, the so-called Massie amendment would restrict our country’s ability to confront Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations in the region who are sworn enemies of both the United States and Israel. In my view, there are more decisive ways to achieve the urgent change necessary when it comes to the far-right Netanyahu government.”

In his letter, Jeffries noted that the liberal organization J Street also opposed the measure. In response, the Jewish group hedged its opposition, saying it supports Jeffries’s position while also respecting that he won’t whip against the measure. The group suggested that Democrats could vote “no, present or yes” to reflect their concerns about “the way American military assistance and American-supplied weapons have been used by the Israeli government in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and elsewhere.”

Jeffries opposed the amendment while mentioning that the U.S. and Israel need a “new security arrangement” that would “undergird the maintenance of Israel’s qualitative military edge against Iran and other malign actors in the region.”

Dozens of Democrats are expected to vote for the amendment, which would be attached to the spending bill.

Jeffries’s letter reveals the ideological gap between party leadership and the party’s base. The second-most-powerful Democrat in the country thinks that cutting off aid to Israel—which has been committing a genocide against Palestinians for nearly three years—is too extreme, and that the problem lies solely with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and not the decades of apartheid that preceded his nonconsecutive 20 years in leadership.

This isn’t just coming from congressional Democrats. California Governor and 2028 presidential hopeful Gavin Newsom refused to call Israel an apartheid state and doubled down on his support for Israel in an interview with Axios on Monday. And even Democratic Representative Ro Khanna—who was just held at gunpoint by Israeli settlers on his trip to the West Bank—stopped short of calling for a full embargo against the Israeli government.

“Inexcusable moral failure by the ‘opposition’ party leadership,” Middle East analyst Omar Baddar wrote on X. “If a genocide (sniper bullets in the heads of toddlers, systematically murdered medics & journalists, rape of prisoners … etc.) isn’t a red line, then what the hell is?!”

Donald Trump has finally paid E. Jean Caroll.

The columnist has received $5,625,000 from a court-controlled trust, according to court documents filed Tuesday.

The distribution of funds comes more than three years after Trump was found civilly liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a department store in late 1995.

“Three years ago, a unanimous nine-person jury found President Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming E. Jean Carroll,” Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, told CBS News. “Today, we are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment the jury awarded her as a result of that verdict.”

After many legal challenges, Judge Lewis Kaplan (who shares no relation to Carroll’s attorney) decided last week that Carroll should receive the money, despite yet another pending appeal from Trump’s team on the Supreme Court docket. The Supreme Court had originally declined to hear Trump’s petition on June 29. That day, Carroll wrote on her Substack: “THIS WIN IS FOR EVERY WOMAN IN THE WORLD!”

In a six-page memorandum penned Wednesday, Judge Kaplan noted that Trump “has been stalling this case for years.”

“It is time for him to ‘do equity’ and pay the judgement,” Kaplan ordered.

The aggregate payment consists of $5 million owed from the original case, along with an additional $625,000 in interest. Yet it’s really just the tip of the iceberg for how much Trump owes the beleaguered writer.

After the 2023 civil case, Trump tried and failed to sue Carroll for defamation. Kaplan later ruled that Trump had continued to defame the advice columnist by denying the sexual abuse on the basis that she wasn’t his “type,” and by accusing her of making up the sexual assault allegations against him for the benefit of her book.

A jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in that case, though Carroll has not yet seen any proceeds from that decision.

This story has been updated.

Even Republican lawmakers are beginning to doubt Senator Mitch McConnell’s recent health update.

Speaking with Real America’s Voice’s Eric Bolling on Monday, MAGA Senator Ron Johnson suggested that the image circulated by McConnell’s office was not actually taken that day.

“I’ve just heard from some other sources that was an older photo. So I really don’t know,” Johnson said. “I haven’t talked to Mitch—I certainly wish he and his family well, I hope he can recover. Listen, it’s sad to watch people age, no matter who that person is.”

The Kentucky senator went missing for nearly a month, with little explanation offered by his office, after he was found unconscious in his Washington residence and rushed to the hospital on June 14. The media blackout finally ended on Sunday, when McConnell’s office shared a photo of the lawmaker beside his wife, holding a copy of The Washington Post’s Sunday sports section in his lap.

In a statement released by McConnell’s office alongside the image, the lawmaker explained several things that had not happened to him—including that he didn’t break any bones or suffer a concussion, and he hadn’t had a heart attack or stroke—rather than what had. The 84-year-old Republican did not offer any clarification on his current health condition, other than to say he had dealt with a “mild case of pneumonia” during his time in the hospital.

He also did not offer a projection for when he might return to work, noting that he has since been moved to a rehabilitation facility and is still “working closely” with legislative staff.

Far-right influencers immediately jumped on McConnell’s statement, baselessly suggesting that the picture had been AI-generated while demanding that McConnell release a video statement to address public concern.

Johnson, however, changed his tune within hours of the broadcast.

“It was a rumor. Just discount it,” Johnson told reporters. “I have no idea. I just, I heard that. I just heard it. So just assume it’s false.”

In a post on X, Johnson urged people to “beware of clickbait” and “watch the full clip.”

“Most importantly, I hope @SenMcConnell makes a full recovery and returns to the Senate,” he added.

An aide to Lindsey Graham called emergency services shortly before he died Saturday, after the South Carolina senator told her he was experiencing chest pains, according to a fellow GOP lawmaker.

Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama provided new information about Graham’s unexpected death to reporters Monday evening.

A woman who worked as Graham’s scheduler, and who had previously been Tuberville’s scheduler, received a phone call from the South Carolina Republican Saturday night. While Tuberville did not identify the scheduler, a staffer named Taylor Stephens was the scheduling director for the late senator, and previously held the same role in Tuberville’s office.

Graham called her, Tuberville recounted, and “basically he said, ‘Listen, I’m having chest pains. I need to do something.’ The scheduler asked if Graham had called 911. He goes, ‘No, that’s the reason I called you.’”

The woman, who had been at a restaurant with a current staffer of Tuberville’s, then contacted emergency services before going to Graham’s residence, where emergency personnel had “knocked the door down, and they were working on him.”

The information elucidates the events of the senator’s death by “aortic dissection due to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease,” per his office. Previously, outlets including Fox News reported that the 911 call was made after 8 p.m. Saturday for cardiac arrest. About 25 minutes after the first dispatch, emergency personnel were reportedly conducting CPR.

The most recent draining of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has made President Trump’s claims of “vandalism” all the more doubtful.

The president made this claim after the “American Flag Blue” paint began to peel off in massive chunks and discolor the water, attributing the failed renovation to a “350-foot gash, made by a very sharp knife or razors.” Yet Monday’s draining revealed no such thing, only what appeared to be tire marks—likely from the president’s motorcade driving through the empty pool in May.

Even still, the president continues to double down on these spurious claims.

“ABC Fake News and its shaky anchor, David Muir, said that the Reflecting Pool was drained to address Peeling Paint (there is no paint, it was slashed with a knife, or box cutter, high grade colored waterproofing liner—it was VANDALISM!) and Algae Blooms (also caused by Vandals, but removed long ago!),” he wrote late Monday night on Truth Social. “In other words, the story was FAKE NEWS, but heavily slanted away from the real cause of the problem, Vandalism. It will be fixed soon, and better than ever. 60 monuments and fountains have been cleaned and fully renovated in D.C., and crime is at record lows! Washington has never looked better, or been safer!”

Six people have been arrested for alleged vandalism, even though one of them— former Olympic canoe racer David Hearn—contends that he was only grabbing one of the massive chunks of the pool’s lining that had floated up to the surface.

No one is buying this. In June, the president said that this so-called “gash” was just 250 feet long. Then it changed to 300 feet, 350 feet, and finally, 300 yards long, the size of three football fields. And yet all that has been revealed in this recent draining is what resembles tire marks, most likely left by the president himself, not vandals with box cutters. And to make matters worse, this failed vanity project has cost American taxpayers over $14 million.