Seventy Years of Political Action 1953 - 2023
Progressives are grappling with the killing of two people who worked at the Israeli embassy in Washington by a gunman who echoed a slogan that has become a rallying cry for many American liberals since the start of the war in Gaza.
After his arrest, the man suspected of killing the couple outside the Jewish Museum in Washington on Wednesday night exclaimed “free, free Palestine,” a phrase that has become ubiquitous at peaceful demonstrations and on social media over the past 18 months.
The attack brought renewed focus to a strain of violent radicalism on the left, even as progressives pointed out they share nothing with the gunman except his apparent support for Palestinian rights. What the attack did, they said, was hurt their cause.
“It betrays our values and hands more power to those already pushing authoritarian crackdowns,” said Layla Elabed, an organizer in Michigan and the leader of the Uncommitted National Movement, which arose in protest of U.S. support for Israel’s response to the Hamas attack launched on Oct. 7, 2023.
It’s also putting pressure on progressives to respond.
“Where’s our Martin Luther King today? I don't know where that individual is. Who is that individual?” said a progressive strategist granted anonymity to speak freely. “We just don’t have big moral leaders in our society, period, let alone on the political front.”
A fringe, more radical wing of the pro-Palestinian movement has blinked in and out of national attention since the onset of the war in Gaza. Thousands of protesters have been arrested, including dozens who forcibly entered and occupied university buildings. And last year, POLITICO reported that an online network of pro-Palestinian activists in the U.S. included resources on how to “escalate” political actions beyond legal bounds, as well as pro-Hamas content.
Asked if members of the left are doing any soul searching, Kevin Rachlin — the Washington director of the Nexus Project, a left-leaning Jewish advocacy group — said, “I think they are.”
“This is more and more proof that we need to address antisemitism as a full society versus addressing [it] on the left or on the right,” Rachlin said.
Antisemitism historically and in recent years has more closely been associated with fringe groups on the alt-right, including most notably the 2017 “Unite the Right” neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia. President Donald Trump himself dined with white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago resort in 2022.
Supporters of the pro-Palestinian movement, including liberal lawmakers, found themselves on the defensive after the shooting outside the Capital Jewish Museum in a way that conservatives have had to respond to far-right violence in recent years.
Now, some pro-Palestinian activists worry the shooting, which federal authorities called a targeted act of antisemitism, could set back any progress they’ve made in their policy goals amid an increasingly dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza and an expansion of Israel’s military operation in the decimated territory.
"We hope and caution against this vigilante violence being used to undermine the movement to end the genocide, a movement of hundreds of thousands of Americans calling for ceasefire and arms embargo,” said Sandra Tamari, executive director of the pro-Palestinian Adalah Justice Project.
Alex Pascal, a former Biden administration official who helped craft its strategy to combat antisemitism, said, “We cannot allow this violence to be weaponized by those who might exploit it to further degrade our democratic rights and freedoms.”
Trump and Republicans for years have cast the pro-Palestinian movement as a group of radical terrorist sympathizers. As the Trump administration has taken increasingly severe steps to suppress the movement and punish its leaders, Democrats and advocates have pushed back on that characterization, framing Republicans’ actions as an attack on free speech.
Pro-Palestinian lawmakers rushed Thursday to condemn the murders and call them acts of antisemitism. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said he was “appalled” by the “heinous act.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) emphasized, “Absolutely nothing justifies the murder of innocents.”
Republicans were quick to paint the attacks as just part of broader extremism in the movement.
“The Palestinian cause is an evil one,” Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) said Thursday on “Fox & Friends.” “The only end of the conflict is total surrender by those who support Muslim terror.”
As details about the attack emerged late Wednesday night, the Trump administration jumped into offense. Attorney General Pam Bondi and D.C.’s newly tapped interim U.S. attorney, Jeanine Pirro, visited the scene. And on Truth Social just after midnight, Trump wrote: “These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW! Hatred and Radicalism have no place in the USA.!”
The left has had to walk this line before. Earlier this year, when federal immigration agents detained and moved to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian green card holder and leader in last year’s pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, the Trump administration justified the arrest by claiming Khalil was a supporter of Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.
Democrats have largely united around detained pro-Palestinian activists as victims of the Trump administration whose constitutionally protected political speech is under attack — but also hedged their statements by emphasizing they didn’t endorse Khalil’s opinions on the subject.
“I abhor many of the opinions and policies that Mahmoud Khalil holds and supports,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said at the time on X. But, he added: “If the administration cannot prove he has violated any criminal law to justify taking this severe action and is doing it for the opinions he has expressed, then that is wrong.”
Holly Otterbein contributed to this report.
Elon Musk’s pledge to step back from campaign spending — if he means it — is rippling across the nation’s political landscape.
Some Republicans are worried that they might be losing their whale. Some Democrats fear they are losing their foil.
It matters because Musk injected an unprecedented level of spending into the presidential race and could do the same in November’s Virginia governor’s race and around the country in the midterms.
That was suddenly put in doubt Tuesday, when the Tesla CEO told an interviewer that he’s backing away from political spending after shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars to help Donald Trump win the presidency last year.
“Taking his toys and going home,” said Steve Bannon, a Trump ally who has verbally sparred with Musk.
Musk, the world’s richest man with a net worth estimated at more than $420 billion, announcement that he will “do a lot less” political spending, a surprise reversal of his promise to continue to play a major role influencing U.S. elections. It’s a significant turnaround from the days after Trump’s win in November, when Musk posted on social media that he would “keep grinding” away at election funding and “play a significant role in primaries.”
Musk’s group, America PAC, spent nearly $20 million aiming to boost Republicans in swing House districts. He also joined Trump regularly on the campaign trail last year and offered cash giveaways — including $1 million prizes to a few voters. He eventually spent more than $260 million on the 2024 election cycle and even contributed to two Florida special elections this year.
But Musk’s political capital seems to have faded after he and groups he backed — America PAC and Building America’s Future — contributed more than $19 million to support Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel, a Republican who lost by 10 percentage points. The public face of the Department of Government Efficiency’s massive overhaul of the federal workforce, Musk earned the ire of many Americans. His car company Tesla faced financial headwinds, and Musk said he’d refocus his efforts on the flailing company along with his other businesses.
In Virginia, Republicans were expecting Musk would want to make his mark, given that’s where the most competitive statewide races are taking place this year. Some are still holding out hope that will happen: GOP gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears faces a major cash disadvantage against Democrat Abigail Spanberger.
Whether or not Musk actually stops contributing is still an open question. Asked about Musk’s decision to withdraw as a GOP donor, one Virginia Republican, granted anonymity to speak freely, said: “Eh, we’ll see.”
In Pennsylvania this year, Republicans and Democrats are gearing up for Supreme Court races, where three justices are up for retention in November. It could bring a repeat of the Wisconsin election: Democrats and Republicans started discussing whether Musk would play a role in the races, withthe Philadelphia Inquirer reporting that one Democratic candidate, Justices Kevin Dougherty, warned that “Elon Musk has already invested $1 million,” though that couldn't be verified yet through campaign reports.
Democrats especially don’t expect the tech billionaire to fully withdraw from political spending, and they expect him to funnel contributions legally through non-public, dark money means.
"I believe he will start moving his money in the background, through nonprofits," said Pat Dennis, president of American Bridge, a major Democratic super PAC. "It'll be a lot more of that now."
Dennis also argued that Musk stepping away publicly may help Democrats narrow their focus back on congressional Republicans for cutting federal programs and that Musk had initially served as a "shield" for them when he was the de facto head of DOGE.
A spokesperson for America PAC declined to comment on what Musk’s announcement meant for the group.
Even some Republicans are unsure exactly what Musk’s announcement will mean for the future.
“I believe he means it right now. But every election is unique,” said Republican consultant Josh Novotney. “So he may be motivated to be active again in the future.”
Even if Musk greatly reduces his amount of campaign spending, several lawmakers on Wednesday said they appreciated what Musk had done for the party.
Sen. Ted Cruz said Musk made “an extraordinary difference in the 2024 race.” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said he texted Musk Tuesday to say how thankful he was for what he’d done.
“He's worked hard. He wasn't involved in politics and he jumped all in because he saw an opportunity to make a change,” Mullin said. “Now he's going back to his life. I don't blame him. In fact, I commend him.”
Elena Schneider and Jessica Piper contributed to this story.
Twenty-four hours after the Sunday announcement that former President Joe Biden has an aggressive form of prostate cancer, one of his staunchest supporters, Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, said Monday he had yet to connect with him. Another close Hill ally, Sen. Chris Coons, had not spoken with his fellow Delawarean as of midafternoon Tuesday.
Biden’s longtime friend Bob Brady, the former House member from Pennsylvania who has known Biden for decades, said as of Tuesday afternoon that he hadn’t talked with the former president directly since his cancer diagnosis, though he did touch base Monday with his family. All three said they planned to speak with him soon.
Before his cancer diagnosis, Biden had been taking the train from Delaware to Washington, meeting with his post-presidential staff, allies and former Cabinet secretaries, according to a Biden aide granted anonymity to speak freely. In New York City for his appearance on "The View," he met with former President Bill Clinton. And last week he met with Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a rising star in the party.
But Biden, an inveterate creature of Washington who for most of his career seemed to gain life from glad-handing and working a room, hasn't yet talked to some longtime allies on Capitol Hill in the wake of his diagnosis. Months removed from his presidency, Biden has receded as a fixture of official Washington and has instead become a focal point of his party’s recriminations — his planned reemergence after departing the White House running headlong into a devastating health diagnosis and an unsettled party growing increasingly anxious in the wilderness.
Some Democrats said they are drafting notes or plan to speak with him. Coons said he was working on finding a time to connect with Biden. Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware said she has reached out to people ”very close” to the family “and just shared my love, my prayers.” Politicians on both sides of the aisle wished him well.
Most Democrats are trying, yet again, to pivot from Biden’s health to stay on message as the GOP advances President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda.
Rep. Gabe Amo of Rhode Island, the only former Biden White House aide who now serves in Congress, faulted Biden’s critics for capitalizing on what he called the “politics of the moment.”
“It's in their interest to talk about this rather than the issues of the day, so we're stuck in that unfortunate reality," Amo said. "I hope that people are focused on one, a legacy of public service, and two, wishing him well in his recovery.”
Or as Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas, a Biden reelection co-chair, put it, “We are living through a historic, terrifying backsliding of our democracy … I am so profoundly uninterested in talking about this issue.”
Not everyone wants to change the subject. Some Democrats, perhaps feeling burned by how Biden’s decline was kept out of public view, are asking pointed questions about his cancer diagnosis — both publicly and privately.
On Monday, Ezekiel Emanuel, the oncologist and Biden’s former pandemic adviser, opened the door on MSNBC’s Biden-friendly “Morning Joe” to a round of questions about Biden’s health when he said that Biden “did not develop [cancer] in the last 100, 200 days. He had it while he was president. He probably had it at the start of his presidency in 2021.”
At best for Democrats, his remarks scanned to some observers as concern about the care the president received while in office. At worst, they fueled more accusations of a White House cover-up.
In a Monday interview, Emanuel said he could not rule out the possibility that Biden had been diagnosed earlier but that information somehow wasn’t released.
“Look, I’m not his doctor,” Emanuel said. “I can't rule out that possibility because I don't know what transpired there.”
A spokesperson for Biden said Tuesday the former president’s “last known” prostate-specific antigen cancer screening test was in 2014 and that “prior to Friday, President Biden had never been diagnosed with prostate cancer.”
This isn't the first time Biden has faced health challenges. When he was running for vice president in 2008, Biden disclosed that he had an enlarged prostate and a biopsy but that no evidence of cancer was found. His medical records also showed he had undergone prostate-specific antigen tests, which yielded normal results.
More than a decade later, when he was campaigning for the White House in 2019, Biden revealed he had been treated for his enlarged prostate, first with medication and later with surgery. The files stated he “never had prostate cancer.”
Trump seized on questions surrounding the timeline of diagnosis — something that had quickly become an obsession of Biden's right-wing detractors online — telling reporters he was “surprised that it wasn't, you know, the public wasn't notified a long time ago because to get to stage 9, that's a long time.” (Biden's diagnosis is stage-four prostate cancer.) Vice President JD Vance said he blamed the “people around” Biden.
Asked about new allegations of a conspiracy to keep Biden’s illness secret, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said of Republicans advancing the idea, “What a soulless bunch. Anybody who's spending time doing that, I'll pray for him in mass this Sunday.”
To some allies of Biden, who relied on a small and, critics said, insular circle of advisers during his presidency, even acknowledging such questions is fraught.
“This just feeds into the conspiracy theories. You have an electorate who doesn’t pay attention, and this is breaking through,” said Democratic strategist Kellan White, who worked as a senior adviser to Biden’s campaign in Pennsylvania in 2024. “All a Gen Z voter who barely pays attention is hearing is, ‘They weekend-at-Bernie-ed Joe Biden who now has cancer, which he probably had for 10 years.’”
Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who’s long been close to the Bidens, said in a brief interview she’d sent a message to the former president through his team and “and expressed that I was praying for him and reiterated that he's in the hearts of every Delawarean right now.”
She said she’d spoken to him last at a St. Patrick’s Day event in Wilmington and “he seemed in good spirits. He seemed healthy.”
Biden’s diagnosis came just as some of the Democratic Party’s brightest stars had begun to grapple with questions about ramifications of his decision to run for reelection — and the fallout for the party.
“The historians will have to sort out the politics of the whole thing,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who weathered his own cancer diagnosis, said in an interview.
He added that he had not spoken to Biden but was drafting him a note. He said, “But at this point, there's nothing to do, but for those of us who love the guy, to express our solidarity and our sympathy.”
The largest Democratic fundraising platform has found itself in President Donald Trump’s crosshairs. And its CEO is coming out against the “authoritarian” tactic — while acknowledging ActBlue needs to “build some new muscles” to fight back.
Trump signed a presidential memorandum last month ordering Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the use of online fundraising by foreign actors to make so-called “straw donations” influencing American elections. ActBlue, by far the largest online fundraising platform for Democrats, was the only one named in the memo.
"We almost were in a, ‘This can't be real, this can't be serious. These are not serious people, these are not serious allegations,’” Regina Wallace-Jones, ActBlue’s CEO, said in an interview with POLITICO. “And instead held on for a very long time to our traditional posture."
That posture was to stay out of the spotlight even as the platform has faced increased scrutiny, and accusations of fraud, from Republicans for years. House Republicans have been investigating ActBlue over a range of fundraising practices since 2023, and that probe remains ongoing. An interim report released by the committee weeks before Trump’s memorandum accused ActBlue of allowing donation fraud, though its only examples of attempted fraud were those identified by the company itself in internal documents.
Now ActBlue has realized it can no longer keep a low profile. Wallace-Jones, who took the helm at ActBlue in early 2023, appeared on MSNBC in April when the Trump memorandum first came out, and has made the media rounds in recent weeks, doing interviews with Pod Save America and activist Aaron Parnas. And she told POLITICO that — while she’s confident investigations into ActBlue will lead “nowhere” — she now sees the need to tell the public more about what ActBlue actually does. That new stance puts the fundraising platform in rarefied company – one of the few progressive forces fighting against administration policies instead of acquiescing to its demands.
“It's only now that we are taking the position that our silence is actually hurting the perception of who we really are,” Wallace-Jones said. “And so could we have been more vocal sooner? Sure.”
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What was your reaction to the president’s memorandum?This is something that was not expected. But it was also unsurprising in the sense that there has been a slow crescendo from grassroots individuals all the way up through various legislative bodies, on the Republican side to look at ActBlue.
We are an organization that wants to do fundraising right. It's a first principle of ours, and we are always interested in things that can make us even better.
The targeting of ActBlue is deeply political in nature. It is clearly not oriented towards cleaning up fundraising in general, but specifically targeted toward the largest and most successful fundraising organization in the Democratic space, and I see that for what it is. It is an attack on the power of the grassroots. It is an acknowledgement that we do this better.
I don't see it at all as a way to improve anything, but rather to exercise an authoritarian tactic to try to push out opposing voices. And we are not in a world where that would ever be OK for us.
In hindsight, now that it's gotten to this point, do you feel like there's anything ActBlue could have done or should have done over the past few years that could have addressed these lines of attack?Listen, we have always seen ourselves as such a good actor in this space. And because of that, I think that we almost were in a, ‘This can't be real, this can't be serious. These are not serious people, these are not serious allegations.’ And instead held on for a very long time to our traditional posture, which is to be background plumbing.
It's only now that we are taking the position that our silence is actually hurting the perception of who we really are. And so could we have been more vocal sooner? Sure. It took us a bit of time to actually embrace the idea that this is just a political attack, and in response to that, to build some new muscles.
That's what we're doing right now, and that's what we will continue to do until this navigates exactly to the place that it should have been to begin with, which is nowhere.
We've seen obviously over the last 5 to 10 years that political attacks can sometimes still have consequences. I'm curious if you've heard from organizations or campaigns that use ActBlue if they've been concerned about where all this could lead, and what is your message to them?Bad-faith attacks have real consequences for real people. And part of that for ActBlue is that it has spawned a heightened sense of need to secure ourselves from the danger of those who hear these bad-faith attacks and believe that they are cleansing the ecosystem by taking negative actions on good actors.
This has created a really profound conviction on our part to offer that reassurance.
Our position is we have nothing to hide. And we stand by that every day, which is why we are so transparent in the way that we operate, the way that we engage, the way that we respond.
You've talked about being more vocal. Is there anything else ActBlue needs to do to ensure it remains a trusted platform in light of these attacks?Listen, there are things that we have always done and, again, we don't super publicize the actions that we're taking.
Being more vocal about how we do that is clearly what is needed in this moment and the posture that we will take going forward just to make sure that in the presence of truly bad actors that thing that we have worked so hard to preserve stays intact.
On the issue of trust, last cycle we saw for the first time ActBlue kicked off some “scam PACs” from the platform. Could you talk about that decision to decide certain actors shouldn't be raising on ActBlue, and whether that is something going forward that ActBlue is going to continue to focus on?I'm very reticent to use the word “scam PACs” because it doesn't have a formal definition. There are issues that come along with any entity, being a long-standing entity versus a brand new entity.
So for example, a PAC that's been around for many years has a lot of historical information that we can look at to see, are their fundraising practices good? Do they actually have a virtual presence that we can look at? Can we study their budget and decide that the dollars that they are deploying are dollars that are in line with what they said they're here to exist to do? Or are they spending dollars raised on the backs of hardworking small dollar donors to elevate themselves?
These are things that you can learn pretty quickly from an entity that has existed for a long time, and new entities don't have the benefit of that historical information, so in some ways you have to learn as they go and make decisions as they grow about how they're behaving.
We've seen in recent years, there are other platforms that have emerged as means of Democratic giving. When you look at the landscape, is there anything ActBlue can learn from emerging competitors or any ways you've thought about changes ActBlue might need to make to keep up with the landscape and the competition?We've adopted a phrase recently that is, “When they go low, we innovate.” And this is something that is important not just for ActBlue but for any technology organization.
The good thing about being the largest is that there are many benefits that come with being the largest. There's economies of scale that we gain, there are network effects that we gain and — you asked the question about other smaller competitors — these are not things that you gain overnight, right?
There are always things that we can learn from smaller organizations that in some ways might be more nimble. They have lower risk. They have fewer customers that they have to notify when changes are coming forward. They have a smaller platform to make sure that the things that they're implementing actually work.
We've got a huge network and we've got many, many more constituents that we have to work with. Organizations like that, who reach the position of large scale, do two things: One, they force themselves to evolve eternally, but two, they also look at opportunities to bring in through acquisitions some of those new ideas so that they can grow more quickly.
