10 Reasons Hakeem Jeffries Should Not Be House Speaker

 

From left, Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., chair of the House Democratic Caucus. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, (D-NY) and Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.)chair of the DCCC, conduct a news conference at the DCCC after the Democrats took control of Congress in the midterm election, on Wednesday, November 4, 2026.

(Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Voters did not reject Republican extremism just to see Democratic leaders continue pouring billions into wars and corporate interests while families struggle to afford housing, healthcare, and basic necessities.

Medea Benjamin

Nov 09, 2026Common Dreams

Now that Democrats have swept the House, a key question is: Who should lead it?

Hakeem Jeffries is in line to become the first Black Speaker of the House, which would be a historic milestone. But members of Congress must examine Jeffries’ record, his priorities, and the kind of leadership he would bring to this moment.

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Here are ten reasons why Jeffries should not be Speaker.

1. He has abandoned Medicare for All

At a time when millions of Americans struggle with unaffordable health insurance, medical debt, and the threat of financial ruin from illness, Jeffries has distanced himself from one of the most important progressive reforms: Medicare for All.

Jeffries co-sponsored Medicare for All legislation from 2013 through 2021. But in an August 2026 interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, he said it is no longer legislation he supports or cosponsors. Ironically, he made that statement on the same day a CBS poll found that 90 percent of Democratic voters back the idea.

This reversal puts him at odds with party voters, but also with a majority of Democratic representatives in the House. As of late October, Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s Medicare for All Act had 118 Democratic cosponsors. A “leader” who won’t back what his own caucus and voters want is not a leader.

2. He refuses to break with Israel

Perhaps nowhere is Jeffries more out of step with the progressive base than on Israel.

For decades, Jeffries has been a staunch defender of the U.S.-Israel alliance. At a pro-Israel rally in 2014, during Israel’s military assault on Gaza, Jeffries proclaimed, “Israel today, Israel tomorrow, Israel forever!.” In 2020 he told an AIPAC conference that New Yorkers consider Jerusalem their “sixth borough,” totally disregarding the plight of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.

Even as Israel’s genocide in Gaza sparked worldwide outrage, Jeffries continued to resist calls to end U.S. military support.

In July 2026, 103 House Democrats voted to cut $3.3 billion in military aid to Israel, including the party’s second-ranking House leader, Katherine Clark. But Jeffries joined 97 other Democrats and nearly every Republican in voting to preserve the funding.

In a May 2024 60 Minutes interview, when asked whether Israel’s bombing of Gaza had been indiscriminate, Jeffries said no. By then, nearly 35,000 Palestinians had been killed. When the interviewer pressed him, saying, “You seem reluctant to criticize Israel at all,” Jeffries responded, “I’m dealing with the facts on the ground.”

Jeffries has also refused to cosponsor the Block the Bombs Act, which would restrict transfers of some of the deadliest offensive weapons to Israel, including 2,000-pound bombs, bunker busters, precision-guidance kits, and tank and artillery rounds. As of November 2026, the bill has 82 Democratic cosponsors and the endorsement of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Caucus Chair Greg Casar has pledged to push for a floor vote if Democrats regain the majority. Yet Jeffries has not signed on, and as Speaker, he would have enormous power to determine whether the bill ever receives a vote.

While Jeffries has acknowledged that U.S. policy toward Israel needs to change, he continues to support Israel’s military superiority and joint missile-defense programs. He has also refused to condemn Section 219 of the NDAA, which would further integrate U.S. and Israeli military research, technology, and production.

Ironically, both Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have recently suggested that the U.S. should stop giving Israel nearly $4 billion a year because “Israel doesn’t need it.” Whether or not we believe them, it is striking that we have yet to hear a similar call from Hakeem Jeffries.

3. He has failed to champion major cuts to the obscene Pentagon budget

At a time when Americans are struggling to afford basic necessities, Trump is demanding a staggering $1.5 trillion military budget—an increase of nearly $600 billion, or 66 percent, over the previous year’s base funding. Yet Jeffries has not made substantially reducing Pentagon spending a central priority of Democratic leadership.

Yes, he has opposed funding for Trump’s war in Iran but he is a staunch advocate of continued U.S. military aid to Ukraine and has sharply criticized Trump for failing to provide sufficient support. He said “America is stronger when Russia is weaker.” In September 2026, he pledged that Democrats would continue backing Ukraine “until victory is won,” signaling his commitment to greater U.S. involvement and military assistance instead of a commitment to a diplomatic solution that would end that terrible war.

Jeffries is also an enthusiastic defender of the aggressive alliance NATO, which should have dissolved when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991. He has called NATO “the most successful military and diplomatic alliance in the history of the world.” NATO, at Trump’s insistence, has called for all members to dramatically increase their military budgets to 5 percent of their GDP (the US is presently at 3.1 percent).

Jeffries’ ties to the military-industrial complex are particularly troubling. During the 2026 election cycle alone, Jeffries’ campaign reportedly received approximately $212,000 from military PACs.

Democrats cannot simply promise better healthcare, affordable housing, quality education and climate action while supporting a massive military budget. Real change requires shifting resources from weapons and war to the needs of ordinary people. The next Democratic Speaker must be prepared to challenge the military-industrial complex.

4. He continues to accept pro-Israel lobby money

Jeffries’s position on Israel cannot be separated from his longstanding political relationship with the AIPAC lobby.

At a time when AIPAC funding has become toxic and so many Democratic candidates rejected AIPAC money, Jeffries has maintained his ties to the organization.

According to Track AIPAC, Hakeem Jeffries has received more than $1.5 million in campaign contributions from AIPAC and other pro-Israel lobby groups over his congressional career. During the 2026 election cycle alone, his campaign received nearly $300,000 in contributions from pro-Israel PACs.He has also taken five AIPAC-sponsored trips to Israel since arriving in Congress.

Following the November elections, AIPAC publicly celebrated Jeffries as one of the candidates it supported.

How can congressional Democrats be led by someone so closely tied to AIPAC, a lobby increasingly toxic to their own voters?

5. His Backroom Dealings with Jared Kushner Raise Serious Questions About His Judgment

At a time when Americans are demanding investigations into the Trump family’s financial dealings, Hakeem Jeffries chose to sit down privately with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and influential adviser.

In August 2026, reports revealed that Jeffries had met with Kushner to discuss possible cooperation on housing, immigration and affordability. Yet Kushner, who holds no official government position, continues to wield influence over U.S. foreign policy while maintaining lucrative financial relationships with Gulf governments through his investment firm.

House Judiciary Committee Democrat Jamie Raskin has already launched an investigation into Kushner’s foreign financial entanglements, demanding documents and communications about his dealings with foreign governments. So why was Jeffries meeting with him behind closed doors?

With Democrats taking control of the House in January, they need a speaker committed to untangling the dirty web of corruption committed by Trump and his inner circle.

6. He Has Elevated Warhawks to Key Foreign-Policy Positions

You can tell a political leader’s priorities by whom they put in power. And Jeffries’s choices speak volumes.

In August 2026, Democratic leaders elevated Rep. Jared Moskowitz, one of the House’s most outspoken pro-Israel hawks, to the top Democratic position on the powerful House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa. Moskowitz has been an unwavering defender of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, continued U.S. weapons shipments, and Israel’s brutal military operations in Lebanon. He has also openly supported both Israeli attacks on Iran and Trump’s 2025 bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, and initially opposed congressional efforts to prevent the 2026 war before later backing War Powers restrictions.

With Democrats in control of the House, Moskowitz will be positioned to chair the Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee, wielding significant influence over congressional oversight and policy toward Israel, Palestine, Iran, and the entire region.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Wesley Bell, two other staunch defenders of Israel, were added to the Foreign Affairs Committee. Bell had defeated progressive Rep. Cori Bush in 2024 after massive spending by AIPAC’s super PAC. Progressives are still steaming over the role of Wasserman Schultz in undermining Bernie Sanders during the 2016 Democratic presidential primary.

The backlash to these appointments was immediate. Rep. Ro Khanna warned, “Don’t put Israel hawks out of touch with our voters in charge of our Middle East policy.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the appointments as an insult to voters and an attempt to shield Israel from accountability for its actions in Gaza.

7. Jeffries Represents the Democratic Party’s Dependence on Corporate Money

The Democratic Party claims to fight for working people, but Jeffries remains deeply connected to the wealthy corporate interests that dominate Washington.

His campaign has benefited from millions of dollars in contributions associated with Wall Street, pharmaceutical and insurance companies, real estate interests, Big Tech and military contractors.

These financial relationships raise a fundamental question: How aggressively will Democrats challenge corporate greed, Wall Street speculation, soaring healthcare costs and the military-industrial complex when their leader maintains such close ties to these powerful interests?

Progressive Democrats have demonstrated that grassroots organizing and small-dollar fundraising offer an alternative to corporate PAC money.

The Democratic Party cannot credibly promise to take on corporate power without confronting the influence of big money within its own leadership.

8. He has defended the Democratic establishment against progressive challengers

Jeffries has a long history of protecting entrenched Democratic incumbents against progressive challengers.

In 2020, he backed longtime pro-Israel congressman Eliot Engel against Jamaal Bowman, who defeated Engel in a stunning primary upset. In 2022, Jeffries traveled to Chicago to campaign for veteran Congressman Danny Davis against young progressive organizer Kina Collins, who came within seven percentage points of victory.

And in 2026, Jeffries backed Dan Goldman, Adriano Espaillat and Shri Thanedar against progressive challengers Brad Lander, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Donavan McKinney. All three incumbents lost their primaries, and all three challengers went on to win in November.

This pattern is no coincidence. In 2021, Jeffries joined forces with centrist Democrats Josh Gottheimer and Terri Sewell to establish Team Blue PAC, designed to protect Democratic incumbents against primary challengers.

While voters are demanding a new direction, Jeffries has repeatedly sided with the establishment candidates they rejected.

9. He Wants to Reform ICE, Not Abolish It

As ICE agents terrorize immigrant communities, separate families and carry out violent raids, the question of how to dismantle Trump’s cruel mass-deportation machinery has become increasingly urgent.

Jeffries has condemned ICE’s brutality and demanded greater accountability. But he has stopped short of calling for the abolition of ICE or the dismantling of the Department of Homeland Security, insisting instead that these agencies can be reformed.

Contrast that with Rep. Delia Ramirez’s groundbreaking Reimagining Safety Act, which would abolish ICE, dismantle DHS and establish a new Department of Community Safety, redirecting resources toward housing, healthcare and community well-being. Her legislation challenges the very definition of national security, arguing that real safety comes from meeting people’s needs, not militarizing their communities.

This is the kind of bold, visionary leadership that offers a fundamental alternative to simply “reforming” an out-of-control immigration enforcement system that is terrorizing immigrant communities.

10. He Has Failed to Champion Bold Climate Action

As devastating wildfires consume entire communities, record-breaking heat waves threaten lives, and floods and droughts wreak havoc across the country, the climate crisis demands bold, urgent leadership—not business as usual.

Yet Jeffries has refused to endorse the Green New Deal or champion demands to halt the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure and eliminate taxpayer subsidies to the oil and gas industry. In 2022, when more than 70 House Democrats publicly opposed legislation to fast-track fossil fuel projects, Jeffries declined to join them.

More recently, he has distanced himself from calls for a moratorium on new AI data centers, even as a powerful grassroots movement is sweeping the country, with communities organizing against these energy-guzzling facilities that drain water supplies, drive up electricity bills, strain power grids and threaten the environment.

Jeffries supported the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean-energy investments, but he has not embraced the more ambitious climate agenda advocated by progressive lawmakers and community groups.

At a time when climate disasters are destroying homes, livelihoods and entire communities, the Democratic Party needs leadership with the urgency and ambition to confront the climate crisis.

A Democratic Majority Deserves Progressive Leadership

More than any single vote, contribution, or appointment, the problem with Hakeem Jeffries is the establishment politics he represents—politics that protect the powerful, accommodate corporate interests, and offer timid reforms when the country is crying out for transformative change.

Voters did not reject Republican extremism just to see Democratic leaders continue pouring billions into wars and corporate interests while families struggle to afford housing, healthcare, and basic necessities.

And the grassroots are making their voices heard. In just a few days, more than one million people have signed a petition demanding new leadership. Congressional offices are being inundated with calls, and several incoming Democrats—including Melat Kiros, Claire Valdez, Chris Rabb, and Adam Hamawy—are withholding support for Jeffries.

The Speaker of the House holds enormous power. That power can be used to confront the military-industrial complex, challenge corporate money and AIPAC, stand up for immigrants, and put human needs ahead of endless wars. Or it can be used to protect the very system that has brought us to this crisis.

That’s why we need a new generation of leadership willing to fight for real change.

Sign the petition demanding new leadership. Call your member of Congress at 202-224-3121.

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Labour’s message to UK voters: Israel is more important than your needs

 

Tom Blackburn

MEE, 9 November 2026 12:18 GMT

In response to ‘Zionism is racism’ motion, Burnham’s party is set to break local cooperation deals with the Greens

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham speaks to the media in St. John’s, Antigua and Barbuda, on 4 November 2026 (Kin Cheung/AFP)

The UK Labour Party has signalled its intention to break local co-operation deals with the Green Party over the latter’s “Zionism is racism” motion, passed at the Greens’ conference last month.

Eleven power-sharing agreements with the Greens look set to be terminated, including in Stafford and Warwick councils, where local Green parties have refused to renounce the motion, as demanded by Labour.

Hundreds of thousands of people could be affected as their local councils lose working majorities, with the Labour leadership’s diktat forcing its council groups to either find alternative coalition partners or govern as minority administrations.

Several local coalition agreements have already been ended, with councils being run without a majority in places such as Derbyshire, Havant, and Lewes. Sheffield’s Labour-Green joint administration, which governs over half a million people, is holding on after the two groups reached a last-minute deal on 4 November.

The Labour Party, it appears, has decided that ideological conformity on Israel is more important than the needs of residents.

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The arrogance of this move is striking. Labour spent the best part of three years backing Israel to the hilt, both militarily and politically, as it inflicted genocide on Gaza, only latterly expressing reservations after coming under increasing domestic and international pressure. Now it presumes the right to lecture the Greens about standards of morality and political hygiene, as if it has any claim to the moral high ground.

This also risks backfiring on Prime Minister Andy Burnham personally, given his attempts to put clear daylight between himself and his predecessor, Keir Starmer, on Palestine – for example, by offering an apology for Labour’s handling of Gaza, and imposing limited (and “symbolic”, according to UK diplomats themselves) sanctions on illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The decision to break local coalition arrangements with the Greens over the Zionism motion has undone much of that carefully calibrated positioning in one fell swoop.

Clear dividing line

Whatever the rhetorical differences under Burnham, the fundamental line in the sand remains the same: criticism of Israeli government policy is permissible up to a point, but challenging the ideology of ethno-religious supremacism that underpins it – Zionism – is beyond the pale.

One thing the Green Party’s motion has done is to draw a clear dividing line. On one side are the Greens, who despite some internal disagreement, have adopted an explicitly anti-Zionist and anti-genocide position; on the other is Labour, still so tied to Israel that it is prepared to tank its own councils rather than sully itself (perish the thought!) by remaining in local coalitions with Green groups that refuse to repudiate the motion.

This is especially revealing when set against the common accusation that supporters of Palestinian national liberation are “obsessed” with the issue.

Labour has made its choice. It is up to the Greens to ensure that voters understand it

In fact, it is Labour that has chosen, perversely, to make adherence to Zionism a litmus test of political purity, even to the point of putting it before the interests of the people it purports to represent – thus jeopardising local services, rather than tolerating an avowedly anti-Zionist coalition partner.

There is a glaring contrast between the energy with which Labour rushes to defend Zionism, and its lethargic response to growing far-right agitation at home. In recent months, the nationalist group Patriot Platform has blockaded the port of Dover; lifeboat charity volunteers have been targeted by fascists for rescuing migrants in the Channel; and in Greater Manchester, Burnham’s old stomping ground, multi-tenant properties and even ordinary family homes have been attacked.

There is no equivalent zeal from Labour in confronting any of this.

Accusations of antisemitism have become a magic button, which the political establishment thinks it can press to destroy challenges from the left. The Greens now find themselves on the receiving end of this treatment, despite being the only British political party with a Jewish leader in Zack Polanski.

Fostering illusions

There is nothing inherently antisemitic about anti-Zionism, and anti-Zionists are typically at pains to distinguish between Zionism and Jewish people; rather, it is Zionists themselves who are always eager to collapse the distinction.

Zionism cannot be placed beyond political contestation or criticism. Its defenders might insist that, theoretically, there are benign variants of Zionism, and that it cannot be considered monolithically racist. But the real-world historical record – one of large-scale ethnic cleansing and mass murder over eight decades – is what counts.

Zionism is, and has been from its inception, a settler-colonial project privileging one ethno-religious group, namely Israeli Jews, over the Palestinians who had lived on that land for millennia prior to the onset of Zionist colonisation.

UK Green motion on Zionism: Why we need to change the conversation

Read More »

Liberal Zionism, to which the Labour Party still clings, has played a uniquely pernicious role. It has helped to sustain illusions that the Zionist project can somehow be reformed and humanised, while singularly failing to actually do so.

By fostering such illusions, it has bought time, which the Israeli state has used to seize more territory, build more settlements, and displace and kill more Palestinians, culminating in the Gaza genocide. Its aggression and covetousness also extends into occupied southern Lebanon and Syria.

The Greens are in the right, morally as well as politically, and should resist the temptation – along with the demands of certain party grandees, signal-boosted by the media – to capitulate to the smears and row back on the Zionism motion.

Labour has committed what may well prove to be a serious miscalculation, and an act of political self-sabotage – all in defence of Zionism. Even many voters who understand little about Palestine are likely to question why Labour is destabilising their local councils over a foreign policy dispute.

What really sticks in the craw is Burnham’s hypocrisy and opportunism, having come to power promising a break with Starmerism – only to, like Starmer, make support for Zionism an effective red line. His carefully worded apology and sanctions are now shown for what they are: public relations exercises, not a genuine change of course.

Labour has made its choice. It is up to the Greens to ensure that voters understand it.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Tom Blackburn is a writer from Manchester. A founding co-editor of New Socialist, he has written for publications including The Guardian, Tribune and Jacobin.

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An Electoral Victory Is Not Liberation: The Fight Against Gangster Capitalism

 

Defeating authoritarian politicians at the ballot box does not dismantle the systems of power that made their rise possible.

• Henry A. Giroux
• Nov 4, 2026

With the Democratic Party’s landslide victory, a day of reckoning appears to have arrived for Trump and the far-right, white nationalist forces that have turned cruelty into a governing principle and hatred into a political language. Something has broken in the machinery of fear. The old fascist ideas, the politics of racial hatred, and the relentless assault on human dignity have encountered a moment of resistance. Too much suffering, too much misery, too much authoritarian violence. Too much blood in the streets, too many deaths, screams, and a deafening silence. Enough is enough, at least for the moment. The Trump regime has exposed some of the darkest impulses of political life, resurrecting the ghosts of a past that should have taught us where the glorification of state violence, racial cleansing, the crushing of dissent, and organized cruelty inevitably leads. Its legacy is written in the expansion of the carceral state, the staggering investment in prisons and punishment, the unleashing of masked agents of repression across the country, and the unapologetic embrace of a language of racial cleansing that strips entire populations of their humanity and destroys lives and civil liberties.

France’s Student Uprising: A Generation Revolts Against Capitalism

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Yet the celebrations now dominating liberal and mainstream media risk turning this electoral victory into an exercise in historical amnesia. Trump’s defeat is being hailed as a crushing repudiation of the far right, as though the political conditions that made his rise possible have suddenly disappeared. Missing from this triumphalist narrative is any serious reckoning with the Democratic Party’s own complicity in creating those conditions. From Clinton to Obama, Democratic administrations embraced neoliberal policies that deepened economic inequality, strengthened corporate power, weakened working-class institutions, and helped create the social and political landscape in which authoritarianism could flourish. Nor can the party’s leadership escape responsibility for its support of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, its exporting of horrendous military weapons, and its broader allegiance to a colonizing authoritarian order, sustained through violence and dispossession. A party so deeply implicated in the machinery of neoliberal capitalism cannot be entrusted with dismantling the very structures of power it has helped legitimate and preserve.

For a fleeting moment, democracy may be able to breathe again. But breathing is not liberation, and an electoral victory is no substitute for dismantling the gangster capitalist order that breeds authoritarianism, feeds on human suffering, commodifies every aspect of life, and makes fascism an enduring possibility. The forces that produced Trump did not emerge overnight, nor will they disappear with an election. They are embedded in institutions that concentrate wealth, manufacture fear, normalize inequality, and transform human misery into a source of profit and political power. Trump may be defeated at the ballot box, but Trumpism cannot be defeated without confronting the economic, political, and cultural foundations of a system that turns greed into virtue, cruelty into policy, racism into a badge of honor, and human disposability into a governing principle.

When Words Become Weapons of Racial Terror

Read More

Unless those foundations are dismantled, the nightmare will return, perhaps wearing a different mask. The serpent’s egg, to invoke the haunting metaphor associated with Ingmar Bergman, has not been destroyed. It lies beneath the surface of seemingly democratic societies, nourished by the dark and volatile forces of a capitalist order that breeds inequality, authoritarianism, and organized cruelty. Brecht understood that fascism could not be confronted without exposing the capitalist relations of power that give rise to it. The serpent’s egg remains embedded in the political, economic, and cultural machinery of gangster capitalism, waiting for the conditions under which it can hatch again. Fascism may suffer an electoral defeat, but the serpent survives, sustained by the very system that gave it life.

There is another historical lesson that cannot be buried beneath the celebrations of an electoral victory: the need to recover the spirit of the Nuremberg trials. Nuremberg established a principle that must never be forgotten. Those who organize, authorize, and carry out state crimes cannot hide behind the authority of government or the excuse of following orders. The Trump regime has left behind a record of actions demanding criminal investigation, from the killing of people aboard boats in international waters, including attacks that legal experts have warned may constitute war crimes, to the abduction, imprisonment, and deportation of people in violation of fundamental rights and due process.

The Democratic Party has a responsibility to ensure that these abuses are investigated and that those responsible, from Pete Hegseth to Stephen Miller and others who directed or enabled such policies, are held accountable wherever the evidence establishes criminal responsibility. There can be no reconciliation purchased at the expense of justice, no national healing built on organized forgetting, and no democratic renewal that grants impunity to those who turned the machinery of the state into an instrument of terror. The lesson of Nuremberg is not that history repeats itself in identical forms, but that crimes committed under the cover of state power must be exposed, judged, and punished through the rule of law. Without accountability, the promise of an electoral victory in the spirit of reviving democratic values and policies becomes another empty slogan, and the forces of authoritarian violence are given permission to return.

I do not want to underestimate the magnitude of what amounts to a historic political rebuke. As Ryan Bort observes, Democrats swept the House and Senate, captured governorships once considered beyond their reach, and delivered a crushing defeat to Trump and the Republican Party.  As Jeffrey St. Clair rightly reminds me in an email, there is no shame in celebrating, even for a moment, “the crushing defeat of some of the most venal people on the planet.” Nor should we minimize the repudiation of Elon Musk’s obscene efforts to purchase political power, the ability of voters to overcome the assault on voting rights and “the extreme gerrymandering enabled by the Supreme Court, or the triumph of El Sayed running a pro-Palestinian campaign over AIPAC and the Islamophobes?” Taken together, these victories mark a powerful rejection of the machinery of racial hatred, billionaire domination, and authoritarian rule. Yet celebration must not become a substitute for political reckoning. The defeat of Trumpism at the ballot box, however historic, does not mean that the economic, political, and cultural forces that produced it have been dismantled.

The possibility of genuine transformation will not emerge from the exhausted leadership of a Democratic Party unwilling to break with the capitalist order it serves. It will emerge from the streets, from organized workers, from young people refusing to be written out of history, and from collective struggles that reject the politics of fear, austerity, racial hatred, and disposability. Elections may interrupt the march toward authoritarianism—a crucial pedagogical function– but they cannot abolish the conditions-the myriad economic, political, and cultural forces-that make fascism possible. The task now is to turn this moment of resistance into a sustained struggle against the structures of power that have made democracy increasingly subordinate to wealth, militarism, and corporate domination. The future cannot be entrusted to political elites in suits, who promise to rescue democracy while preserving the economic order that is destroying it. The struggle is not simply to defeat one authoritarian leader, but to dismantle a system that makes authoritarianism possible and to build a world in which justice, equality, collective freedom, and human dignity become the foundations of democratic life.

The opinions expressed here are solely the author’s and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the LA Progressive.

CapitalismGangster CapitalismElection Results

By

Henry A. Giroux

Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His latest books are The Burden of Conscience: Educating Beyond the Veil of Silence (Bloomsbury in 2025); Assassins of Memory: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Erasure (Bloomsbury, 2026). He is LA Progressive’s Associate Editor.

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Israel Continues Bombing Gaza as Floods Devastate Families Living in Tents

 At least two Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks, while five others died when a sand dune collapsed amid severe flooding

by Dave DeCamp | November 8, 2026 at 5:34 pm ET | Gaza, Israel

Israeli attacks continued to pound Gaza on Sunday despite the devastation facing displaced Palestinian civilians after heavy rains flooded tens of thousands of tents over the weekend.

The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that on Sunday night, an Israeli strike on the al-Mawasi tent camp west of Khan Younis, southern Gaza, killed at least two Palestinians, including one woman. Several other Palestinians were also wounded in the attack.

The Anadolu Agency reported that an Israeli strike in northern Gaza wounded at least four people, including one who was in critical condition. Sources told the outlet that there was also a strike in central Gaza, and a woman was injured by gunfire to the northeast of Khan Younis.

Displaced Palestinians stand at a tent camp during a rainy day in Gaza City, November 7, 2026. REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

Also on Sunday, a steep sand dune collapsed onto tents in Ard El-Rebat displacement camp in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, killing at least five Palestinians, including three children. At least one building damaged by previous Israeli attacks collapsed on Saturday.

Amid the devastation due to the heavy rains, official Israeli social media accounts made light of the situation, with a State of Israel X account run by the Israeli Foreign Ministry writing, “Contrary to popular belief, Israel does not control the weather.”

But Israel does control what enters Gaza, and Palestinian civilians are still living in tents and bombed-out buildings more than one year after a so-called ceasefire deal was signed due to a joint US and Israeli decision not to allow reconstruction to take place.

Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and a family friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said back in August that the US “will not allow Gaza to be rebuilt” until it is “demilitarized.” His comments came about a month after the US announced that Hamas agreed to a deal that would see the group give up its weapons, a proposal that Netanyahu rejected.

The US has continued to back Israel’s attacks despite Israel rejecting the Hamas disarmament proposal. Since the ceasefire deal was signed in October 2025, the IDF has killed at least 1,610 Palestinians and wounded 5,819, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, as Israel has constantly violated the agreement with daily strikes.

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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

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Till Death Do Us Part: The Unholy Matrimony Between the U.S. and Israel

 By M. Reza Behnam, November 4, 2026

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

 

Image by U.S. Embassy Jerusalem, Creative Commons 2.0

The standard narrative of American foreign policy has long rested on the pillar of moral exceptionalism: the assertion that the United States acts as a global guardian of human rights, international law and democratic governance.

However, Washington’s support for the ongoing holocaust in the occupied Gaza Strip, West Bank and unlawful war on Iran have exposed glaring contradictions at the heart of this narrative.  They reveal the true character of a political system defined not by its lofty noble declarations, but by its iniquitous decisions and actions.

These inequalities accentuate the true nature of U.S. geopolitics; essentially that human rights ideals are of little account to predatory imperial powers.

For over a century, the subjugation of Palestine and West Asia has been orchestrated through a legacy of colonial bigotry and pro-Zionist geopolitical engineering.  The region has been treated not as home to sovereign peoples but as an imperial chessboard ripe for exploitation.

The wars throughout the region, particularly on Palestine and Iran, are the culmination of imperial agendas set in motion a century ago.  The current geopolitical course began with the stroke of a pen set to the Balfour Declaration in 1917, in which a distant European empire casually bartered away a homeland that was not theirs to give.  This colonizing scheme reached its peak in the 1996 “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” document—a stratagem advanced by American neoconservatives and Zionist hardliners to reshape West Asia in Israel’s image.

Together these imperial blueprints established frameworks for domination that have led the region and global community to the precipice of disaster.

Underpinning these policies is a deeply-rooted colonial chauvinism that views the indigenous people of the region as obstacles to be displaced, managed or crushed, rather than human beings with inalienable rights to freedom, self-determination and dignity.

When examined across a century, the trajectory from Balfour to “Clean Break”  demonstrates a consistent structural logic. Whether foreign powers use imperial decrees, global mandates, diplomatic accords or military force, the goal is always the same: to secure and maintain control, fundamentally disregarding the rights of the native populations to govern themselves.

The bilateral partnership with Israel, originally formed to secure its existence, has now become a strategic liability.  The Israel that once proved useful to Washington as its regional enforcer, now seems to be in the catbird seat.

The eventual subordination of American foreign policy to Israeli strategic ambitions is not a historic accident, but the predictable outcome of a powerful deeply-entrenched military-industrial-security nexus that long ago equated regional dominance with U.S. national interests.

What began as a Cold War strategy to project American power across West Asia without a large-scale troop presence, has evolved into an institutionalized, self-perpetuating deadly alliance, in which the balance of control has become blurred.

Decades of deeply-entrenched military, intelligence and industrial ties with Tel Aviv have created an institutional inertia so powerful that Washington now reflexively accepts global criticism, regional anger and multi-trillion-dollar detours into foreign interventions as a matter of course—as a worthy price to pay for their “special relationship.”

Instead of exerting its strategic agency over a client state, the United States has become captive to Israeli dogmatism, which asserts that anything less than unconditional support signals U.S. weakness and vulnerability.  Consequently, this has fallen on American taxpayers to subsidize and service members to fight military campaigns that compromise the nation’s interests and long-term stability.

Adding to this geopolitical trap is a domestic political echo chamber engineered to penalize flexibility and alternative strategies, while rewarding absolute conformity and compliance with Israeli objectives.

The alliance with Israel is so thoroughly embedded in the American body politic that it functions as a “third rail” of U.S. foreign policy and public discourse.  It remains above criticism through a combination of highly organized influential lobbying groups, massive political campaign financing schemes, a powerful evangelical voting bloc, and weaponization of the anti-Semitic label.

When paired with a deeply-ingrained pro-Israel media and cultural narrative that frames regional escalation as inevitable, rather than preventable, Washington’s political class most often chooses the safety of domestic capitulation over the discipline of sovereign statecraft, guaranteeing political submission to Israeli goading.

The result is a chronically unsettled America perpetually drawn into Israel’s expansionist wars.  This involvement is driven not by clear strategic necessity, but by a systemic inability in Washington to break free from domestic pressures and external mandates.

From the colonial promises of the Balfour Declaration to the “Clean Break” document, Israel has consistently prioritized expansionism over international law, formal agreements and even the strategic interests of its closest ally and main benefactor, the United States.

A core folly in Washington’s Israel/West Asian policy has been in treating a strategic burden as an indispensable ally.

Prioritizing the regional ambitions of a hegemonic foreign “ally” over core U.S. interests have entangled America in Israel’s reckless wars and conflicts.  Decades of blank-check diplomacy have inflamed anti-American sentiment, compromised its global credibility, strained vital alliances, and drained finite military and economic resources that would be better directed toward urgent domestic needs.

Paradoxically, the imperial strategies meant to safeguard Israel at the expense of West Asia are now taking a toll on America as well.  The United States will not, and cannot, recover its strategic autonomy and moral leadership unless it makes a clean break from its damaging relationship with Israel. 

M. Reza Behnam

Dr. Behnam is a political scientist who specializes in comparative politics with a focus on West Asia. His “Cultural Foundations of Iranian Politics,” published by University of Utah Press, and still in print, was recognized by Choice as Outstanding Academic Book for 1987–1988.

Trump’s Statement on Ending Israel’s Military Aid by Year’s End Aligns With Netanyahu Push for Deeper Military Integration

 by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, November 3, 2026 

 

President Trump claimed on Tuesday that he will end the nearly $4 billion in military aid Israel receives from the US each year at the end of 2026, a statement that aligns with a plan backed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to further integrate the US and Israeli militaries.

“Now, as far as paying Israel, Bibi Netanyahu and I have made a deal that we give Israel $4 billion a year, and we made a deal ​months ago that we’re stopping,” Trump said on Fox & Friends. “We’ve already agreed that by the end of this year we won’t be paying Israel. Now we’ll help Israel if they need it.”

Trump’s comments are seen as a last-minute election maneuver, and he mentioned that US military aid to Israel is being used as a talking point by Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee in the Michigan Senate race. “Because they (Israel) don’t need it, and because why should ​we suffer the slings from lunatics like an El-Sayed when they don’t need it? It’s a bad, it’s a bad talking ​point,” he said.

Trump and Netanyahu at the White House on April 7, 2025 (White House photo)

Trump stressed that Israel could still buy weapons from the US and that he will “help Israel” if it needs. As things stand, even if the US cut off the $3.8 billion it provides Israel annually, the Israeli military would still be extremely reliant on US military support since it uses so much US-made military equipment, and the US provides significant intelligence support and political backing.

The US has also spent billions on defending Israel from missile attacks during the wars with Iran, and has reportedly deployed an additional Patriot missile defense system to Israel to prepare for the next potential escalation.

The purpose of the Netanyahu-backed plan to further merge the US and Israeli militaries is to remove public-facing military aid to reduce criticism of the US-Israel relationship and to make whatever aid and support Israel receives from the US under the new arrangement much less transparent. Netanyahu has previously described it as a shift in “the framework for US-Israel defense cooperation from aid to partnership,” though so far he hasn’t confirmed that he and Trump agreed to end the aid by 2027.

A provision to begin moving the plan forward has been included in the House version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, known as Section 219, which, according to a report from the Quincy Institute, seeks to “accelerate the US–Israel defense technology partnership, including technology sharing, coproduction of weapons systems, and bilateral research and development across multiple domains of warfare, including biotechnology, autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, cyberwarfare, and more.”

Section 2019 would also “direct the secretary of defense to designate an executive agent, or EA, to expand integration of the US and Israeli defense industrial sectors.”

Ben Freeman of the Quincy Institute said on X in response to Trump’s statement that if the integration moves forward, Israel could “end up getting WAY more than $4B from US taxpayers” and that the funds would “just be buried in the DoD budget.”

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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

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After Republican election debacle, Democrats pledge “bipartisan common ground” with Trump

 Andre Damon, WSWS, 6 Nov

 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York, center, speaks as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, left, Vice Chair Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-California, right, listen during a news conference, Thursday, May 21, 2026, on Capitol Hill, in Washington. [AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib]

Following the massive repudiation of US President Donald Trump in the 2026 midterm elections, the Democratic Party has launched a campaign to rescue the Trump administration.

As is universally acknowledged in the media, the 2026 midterm election was the greatest electoral repudiation of a sitting president in over half a century, and one of the largest in American history. The shift against Trump ran through every region of the country and every section of the population, and it was sharpest among rural voters, young men and workers whom Trump had claimed as his base.

The vote was a rejection not only of Trump but of the entire agenda of his administration. It expressed mass opposition to the growth of social inequality, war, the assault on immigrants and attacks on democratic rights.

Yet the Democrats came out immediately offering bipartisanship.

Hakeem Jeffries, who is expected to become speaker of the House in January, declared that Democrats are “ready, willing and able to find bipartisan common ground” and that “the American people don’t want us to get even.” He added that not a single member of his caucus had raised impeachment with him.

Barack Obama declared that Americans “want a politics that brings people together rather than divides them.” The same line was repeated in various forms by newly elected Democrats: a call to “restore a sense of decency and bipartisanship in Washington,” (Kansas Senator-elect Adam Hamilton); the assurance that “come January, we will be forced to work together,” (Iowa Governor-elect Rob Sand); a disavowal of any interest “in moving Minnesota to the left or the right,” (Minnesota Governor-elect Amy Klobuchar).

James Talarico, elected to the Senate from Texas, said he had not been elected “for retribution.” On immigration, the policy of mass roundups, detention camps and deportations, he said one should “give the president credit where credit is due.”

This response demonstrates the fraudulent character of the elections and the imperviousness of the ruling elite to the will of the population. The Democrats are not acting as an opposition party that has defeated the government. They do not need Republican support. They will hold substantial majorities in both the House and the Senate. Why, then, are they talking about bipartisanship at all?

They treat the losing party as if it had won, and a hated president as a suitor whose favor they seek. It is as if Abraham Lincoln, reelected in November 1864 on a program of prosecuting the war to victory and abolishing slavery, had responded by offering “common ground” to the Confederacy.

What do the Democrats really want? They are looking for a quid pro quo, above all on the war against Russia. The Democrats are a party of the military-intelligence apparatus, with a substantial component drawn directly from the CIA and other intelligence agencies, and their sharpest attacks on Trump over the past year have been over what they see as his insufficient aggression toward Moscow. With control of both houses of Congress, the Democrats will use their position to press for a more aggressive war.

Beyond this, the ruling class needs the two parties to work together on a whole series of issues, beginning with the economic crisis. The election took place amid extreme financial turbulence, with Wall Street dependent on an enormous speculative bubble in artificial intelligence stocks. On Thursday, the Nasdaq fell 5.5 percent and entered a correction, and the Dow fell 1,833 points, as investors, in the words of Reuters, “reassessed implications for the AI data center buildout from the Democrats’ sweeping wins.”

With the national debt above $40 trillion, fueled by war and the endless bailout of the rich, the ruling class is demanding an assault on social programs. Such cuts require the cover of bipartisan agreement, and the Democrats are preparing to provide it.

Then there is the war against Iran, which remains live. Amid far-reaching plans by Trump to carry out an attack, the Democrats have not called for an end to the war. They want to ensure that the election does not derail the drive of American imperialism to dominate the globe, and the Middle East in particular.

Socialism AI

by the WSWSSocialismAI.com

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Above all, the Democrats are hostile to anything that would encourage a movement from below and further destabilize a state apparatus whose authority is already badly eroded. The Democrats’ task is to contain opposition to the Trump administration before it becomes a movement against the oligarchy that controls both parties.

In all of this, the Democrats are drawing inspiration from none other than Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member and Democratic mayor of New York, who has played the leading role in forging a political alliance with Trump, having met with him three times in the past year.

Asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday for his “advice for Democrats on working with the president,” Mamdani replied, “I think you can,” calling on Democrats to adopt a policy of “looking for a place of shared purpose” with Trump. Mamdani continued: “I think there’s always an opportunity. And you always have to make the ask … I will still call the president if there’s something else that can help New Yorkers.”

The statement was explicitly offered, and received, as a model for the Democratic Party. Claire McCaskill, the former Democratic senator from Missouri, said of Mamdani’s approach, “And that’s what we’ve got to do as Democrats now.”

All of this explodes the claim promoted by the DSA that the elections, including the victories of its own candidates, would push the Democratic Party to the left. Far from pulling the Democrats to the left, the DSA is playing a leading role in the accommodation with Trump.

The “shared purpose” Mamdani invokes is the defense of the capitalist system and the interests of the financial oligarchy. He is reprising the language of Obama, who, the day after Trump’s first election in 2016, called the contest “an intramural scrimmage” and declared, “We’re actually all on one team.” That team is the financial oligarchy, and its opponent is the working class.

Tuesday’s vote recorded the opposition of millions of working people to war, oligarchy and dictatorship. This opposition will not stop with the election. It will come increasingly into conflict with the Democrats and their “progressive” and DSA auxiliaries, whose role is to channel it back behind the party of Wall Street.

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