Rahm Emanuel has joined growing calls for the United States to end subsidies tied to its military sales to Israel, arguing that Israel should purchase weapons on the same terms as other U.S. allies.

“The days of taxpayers subsidizing Israel militarily, that’s over,” Emanuel said during an appearance on Bill Maher’s HBO Max show “Real Time.” “No more financial aid.”

Emanuel is the Jewish former mayor of Chicago who is seen as a likely 2028 Democratic presidential candidate. His comments come months after he said that […] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government bore responsibility for the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza last summer.

Now, as support for Israel hits a record low among Democrats and party leaders increasingly move away from the United States’ longstanding backing of the country, calls to end U.S. military aid to Israel are gaining traction.

Last week, all but seven Senate Democrats voted to block the sales of certain weapons to Israel, marking a doubling in the number of lawmakers backing similar resolutions in just two years.

Emanuel, whose father was born in Jerusalem and who volunteered as a civilian with the Israeli army during the Gulf War in the 1990s, told Maher that Israel should be able to fund its own military — and implied that it might not meet the United States’ standards for being able to purchase U.S.-made weapons.

“Israel is a very wealthy nation. There should be no more taxpayer support for what they want to do and they get the same deal that any one of our allies do,” Emanuel said. “They have to abide by the laws of the United States if they’re going to buy X weapons, and that’s how it should be constructed.”

In January, Netanyahu said for the first time that he wanted to “taper off” U.S. military aid to Israel over the next decade until it reaches zero. His pledge was quickly met with support from South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who said at the time, “We need not wait 10 years.”

Speaking of the joint U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, Emanuel said the move amounted to a “violation of a rule Israel’s had for 78 years,” arguing that Israel had long sought to avoid pulling the United States into conflicts with its neighbors.

“The United States should never spill any blood for the state of Israel’s security,” Emanuel said. “What happened here going into Iran with the United States and Israel fighting together, which has never happened in 78 years, is a major change in policy for the State of Israel, which comes with political risk, and now they’re seeing it.”

Rosa María Carranza, like over 100,000 other workers, has been paying part of her wages into Medicare and Social Security over many years. Records show she made contributions totaling tens of thousands of dollars. Now, thanks to the current regime, she and many more like her will be “disenrolled” from these programs. That’s a polite term for “kicked off” and it hides the truth that peoples’ payments into these systems are intended to be returned to them in their times of need.

In plain language, the BBB is stealing millions of dollars from people who can least afford it, while depriving them of health care and retirement possibilities.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

Reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle reviewed records of each of the 48 deaths that have happened in ICE custody since Trump returned to office. This is the highest rate of death under ICE supervision, ever. Even more tragic and infuriating, these deaths were mostly preventable. Doctors who reviewed the files said that many of the deaths were due to inexcusable delays, missed diagnoses, care workers ignoring emergencies, or workers waiting too long to provide care.

When asked for comment, CoreCivic, GEO Group, and DHS all claimed that detainees receive high standards of medical care. Every single expert consulted by the Chronicle disagrees with that assessment. The Chronicle points out that standards of questionable care by ICE and DHS precede the current administration. This is true, because cruel deterrence policies stretch back decades. The cruelty is, and has long been, the point.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

We are sad to learn that Nurul Amin Shah died by homicide. Shah was a visually impaired Rohingya refugee from Myanmar who had come to the U.S. to escape the near-genocidal persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar.

New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, opened an investigation into Shah’s death in March. The Erie county district attorney’s office requested the autopsy as part of its parallel investigation. While such investigations cannot return Shah to his wife and children, strongly enforced accountability may help prevent recurrence of this kind of tragedy.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

Individual states are uniquely able to pass legislation reigning in the unconstitutional terror perpetrated by the federal Department of Homeland Security. States like California and Washington have passed legislation either banning the wearing of masks by federal agents (except in cases of medical necessity) or, in the case of the Washington law, allowing anyone detained by a masked agent to sue for damages.

Responding to the duress created by the Trump administration requires our collective creativity. These laws demonstrate legal agility and have, so far, met with success when challenged in court.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

On March 14th, the Choctaw Nation Council passed a bill to approve the purchase of a 1.2 million square foot facility that was formerly owned by the retail company BigLots. The facility is located very close to the Choctaw Nation headquarters and the city of Durant, which is located on tribal lands.

Officials became concerned because they heard local sheriffs were in talks with DHS officials to purchase the facility and turn it into an ICE detention center. “Choctaw Nation council members sounded the alarm that the facility is ‘unacceptably close to the nation’s governmental headquarters and community-serving facilities, including childcare and elderly services.’”

Both the city and Choctaw Nation headquarters decided to work quickly to pass an ordinance affirming that they did not want the warehouse to be turned into an ICE facility. After growing concern that this would not be enough, the Council approved the purchase of the facility so ICE can’t have it.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

In January, the nation’s largest nurse’s union issued a statement demanding that Congress abolish ICE. Hours later, ICE agents killed nurse Alex Pretti, executing him in cold blood. This moment galvanized nurses and other hospital workers in Minnesota and across the nation. As patient advocates, nurses were already being put in horrifying, impossible positions. Now, both union organizing and person-to-person organizing have strengthened hospital workers’ resolve to defend their patients and shield them from terror in their most vulnerable moments.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

Ambassador to France Joshua Zarka held a meeting on Wednesday with far-right French leader Marine Le Pen, marking the latest instance in a recent trend of Israeli outreach to Europe’s nationalist right.

The meeting, which was not publicly announced by either leader, was confirmed by the Israeli embassy to the French outlet Le Parisien. It was unclear what the pair discussed.

The meeting between Zarka and Le Pen, who is the former president of France’s far-right National Rally party, comes over a year since Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced that the country would lift its longstanding boycott of far-right parties in Sweden, France and Spain.

Israel continues not to engage with far-right parties in Germany, and Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli, who has invited leaders of parties with a history of antisemitism to conferences he has organized in Israel, has cited the Alternative for Germany party as an example of one that had not adequately shed its antisemitic roots.

National Rally was founded as the National Front in 1972 by Le Pen’s father, Jean Marie le Pen, who frequently espoused racist and antisemitic rhetoric and was convicted of Holocaust denial in 1987.

The party has since tried to distance itself from its antisemitic history, with its current leader, Jordan Bardella, visiting Jerusalem last March for the country’s International Conference on Combating Antisemitism, where he delivered the keynote speech.

Diplomatic relations between Israel and France have soured in recent years, with French President Emmanuel Macron voicing public criticism of Israel’s conduct during the war in Gaza and formally recognizing Palestinian statehood at the United Nations General Assembly in September.

Last May, Le Pen shot back at Macron after he said during a television appearance that “what Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is doing today is unacceptable” and “a disgrace.”

“I find this statement unworthy of the President of the French Republic,” Le Pen responded. “He keeps increasing his criticism of Israel, perhaps because he is incapable of providing a solution to facilitate the fight against Islamist fundamentalism.”

While Le Pen has long voiced her support for Israel, last week she threw her support behind Macron’s proposal to include Lebanon in a regional ceasefire, which Israel has previously opposed.

“It is our country’s duty to protect Lebanon, its people, and its sovereignty,” wrote Le Pen in a post on X (formerly known as Twitter). “This country is once again a collateral victim of the tensions in the region, suffering massive bombings on its capital. I support France’s proposal to include Lebanon in the framework of the regional ceasefire.”

Israeli leaders have pushed back on Macron’s requests and refused to allow the country to be involved in direct talks between Israel and Lebanon, which was formerly a French mandate.

“We’d like to keep the French as far away as possible from pretty much everything, but particularly when it comes to peace negotiations,” Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, told reporters earlier this week following ceasefire talks between Israel and Lebanon on Tuesday.

On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced that Israel and Lebanon had agreed to a 10-day ceasefire.

Le Pen has also been critical of the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, telling Le Parisien last month that Trump “clearly did not fully appreciate the impact of his intervention.”

Le Pen is currently awaiting a July court ruling that will determine whether she can run in France’s presidential election next year, following her conviction last year for misusing European Parliament funds for political purposes.

Six in 10 Americans say they have a very or somewhat unfavorable view of Israel, up 20 points since 2022, according to a new Pew Research Center survey released this week.

About half of them say they have a “very unfavorable” view of Israel, a proportion that has tripled in the last four years.

The survey of 3,500 U.S. adults conducted late last month, weeks into the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, offers the latest signal that anti-Israel sentiment is surging among Americans. Multiple previous polls have shown that Americans newly sympathize more often with the Palestinians over the Israelis.

The poll results come as politicians on both sides of the aisle are pushing for Israel to receive less or no U.S. aid, and as the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC has become a punching bag especially among Democrats.

The latest poll replicated the partisan divide widely detected in polling, with about 80% of Democrats saying they have an unfavorable view of Israel, compared to 40% of Republicans. Nearly half of Democrats under age 50 said they have a “very unfavorable” view of Israel.

While Republicans continue to hold an overall favorable view of Israel, they are split on their assessment of its leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the Pew survey, which had a margin of error of 1.9 percentage points. As many have little or no confidence in him as have a lot or some confidence — though among Republicans under 50, only 30% said they had any confidence in him.

The poll is the second released this week to detect opposition to the Israeli government among Jewish Americans specifically. The Pew survey found that 56% of U.S. Jews have little or no confidence in Netanyahu when it comes to world affairs. A smaller survey by the Jewish Electorate Institute found that 63% of respondents described themselves as both “pro-Israel” and critical of Israeli government policies.

Jewish groups were among those criticizing President Donald Trump and accusing him of using genocidal rhetoric on Tuesday after Trump posted online that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” wrote Trump in a post on Truth Social. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?”

The president’s comments came hours before his 8 p.m. deadline for Iran on Tuesday to reach a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and were met by swift condemnation by a group of Senate Democrats, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

“We speak today with one voice and one purpose: to condemn President Trump’s threat to extinguish an entire civilization,” Schumer wrote in a joint statement. “This is not strength. Intentionally destroying the power, water or basic infrastructure upon which tens of millions of civilians depend to punish the very civilians who suffer at the hands of the Iranian regime would constitute a war crime, a betrayal of the values this nation was founded on and a moral failure.”

The American Jewish Committee wrote in a post on X (formerly known as Twitter) that while it “shares the objectives” of Trump’s war with Iran, it was “alarmed” by the president’s social media posts, adding that the Iranian people “deserve a future defined by dignity, opportunity, and greater integration with the global community.”

Less than two hours before the 8 p.m. deadline, Trump announced that he had agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran proposed by Pakistan, writing in a post on Truth Social, “This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE!”

“We received a 10 point proposal from Iran, and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate,” Trump wrote. “Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two week period will allow the Agreement to be finalized and consummated.”

Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, condemned the president’s remarks, saying in a statement that there were “simply no words to describe the danger of a U.S. president openly threatening to erase an entire civilization.” She alluded to Jews’ history of facing genocidal leaders in her comments.

“Make no mistake: the president’s threats are deeply reprehensible to us as Jews and as Americans, and must be condemned by all leaders – regardless of their stance on the war with Iran,” Spitalnick said. “We know what it means when leaders call for communities and populations to be wiped out.”

Spitalnick was not the only Jewish leader to weigh in. Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of the liberal pro-Israel lobby J Street, said in a statement that the group was “appalled by President Trump’s heinous remarks.”

“This language — a threat to carry out war crimes — is a searing violation of Jewish and American values, certainly will not lead to the de-escalation [that] we desperately need and is a terrifying example of the senseless violence that has characterized Trump’s leadership,” Ben-Ami said, calling on Congress and the Cabinet to “do everything in their power to restrain and remove him.”

Other progressive Jewish groups and leaders accused Trump of promoting genocide, including Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, which wrote in a post on Instagram, “This is not strength. This is not safety. This is a call for genocide.”

Timothy Snyder, a historian of the Holocaust, also leveled the accusation against the president in a Substack post published on Tuesday titled “The president speaks genocide.”

“To bomb a bridge or a dam or a power plant or a desalinization facility, very likely a war crime in any event, could very well have a different legal significance, a genocidal one, if it takes place after the expression of genocidal intent by the commander and head of state,” Snyder wrote.

For some Jews, the president’s looming deadline for Iran carried added significance as it came during the final days of Passover — and as Iran continued to barrage Israel with missiles.

“Tonight, I pray that the Pharaohs who insist on our demise recognize the harm that they may bring on themselves,” Rabbi Arie Hasit, associate dean of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in Israel, wrote on Facebook. “That they recognize that Iran can put aside its insistence that Israel must be destroyed and that they can make the necessary steps to end this war.”

“And I pray that if they are overcome by Pharaoh, that no leader try to play the part of G-d,” Hasit continued. “That in the name of my future, we do not wipe out any civilization. That we understand that even the worst of enemies does not justify the use of the fiercest of our power.”

More than half of U.S. Jews disapprove of the U.S. war against Iran, according to a new poll by a nonpartisan polling firm.

At the same time, an Israeli survey of “connected” American Jews found a slight decrease in support for the joint U.S.-Israeli operation against Iran since its start a month ago.

The new poll found that 55% of American Jews oppose the U.S. military action against Iran, compared to just 32% who support it. The poll found a sharp partisan divide, in line with polling of Americans in general, with Republicans more supportive than Democrats.

A quarter of respondents said they were “torn because while Iran is a threat to peace, this is not the way to handle it.”

The survey was conducted online in mid-March by the Mellman Group, led until his death last year by Jewish Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, and included 800 registered Jewish voters.

The poll found that a large majority of U.S. Jews believe [that] President Donald Trump should have sought congressional approval for the war — including nearly a third of those who support it. And about four in 10 said [that] they opposed the war because it lacked “clear provocation and clear objectives.”

The survey also found that more than half of U.S. Jews say [that] they are concerned that conducting the war jointly with Israel will “be a long-term problem prompting concerns about the role of Israel and American Jews in U.S. foreign policy.”

The results add complexity to the picture of American Jewish sentiment about the war. A poll released last week found that 61% of Americans overall oppose the war, suggesting that American Jews may be slightly more supportive overall — especially when considering that American Jews tend to vote Democratic.

Still, the new poll suggests that American Jews as a whole are less supportive than the “connected” American Jews surveyed regularly by Israel’s Jewish People Policy Institute. About two-thirds of that panel supported the war when surveyed during its first week, according to JPPI. Last week, that number was down to 62%, according to its latest results published on Sunday.

JPPI’s first survey of U.S. Jewish sentiment during the war drew criticism because it reflected the sentiments of a relatively narrow slice of American Jews. The institute says [that] its polls reflect the sentiments of “connected” Jews because its panel, drawn from people with ties to American Jewish groups, includes fewer intermarried Jews, more Jews who are affiliated with denominations, more Orthodox Jews and more Jews who have lived in Israel than demographic data would suggest is representative of U.S Jewry overall.

The Mellman Group’s executive vice president, Michael Bloomfield, said in a statement that his poll’s results underscore the complexity of American Jewish sentiment about the war.

“American Jews are not monolithic. There can be difference, and in this case strongly held on both sides, with a middle group torn between mixed feelings,” he said in a statement. “In today’s political environment, partisanship is a very strong driver of views. That is true across the country across demographics, including American Jews.”