 A couple of weeks ago, progressive members of Congress directly called out APAC after enduring years of abuse and attacks from this right-wing interest group. Now in response, APAC has vowed to crush all of them for daring to speak up and defend themselves. Now, if you missed it, I put up a lengthy video about this on November 2nd, which I'll link to down below, where I detail progressive criticisms of APAC but primarily they call attention to the group's support for far-right insurrectionist Republicans, repeated attacks on women of color in Congress, and also incitements of hate and violence against Muslim Congresswomen like Ilhan Omar by running ads with their face next to Hamas Rockets, which of course inspired death threats predictably afterwards. Now I just want to give you one example of the kind of Islamophobic ads that they run to defame Muslim members of Congress. So on June 7th of 2021, Ilhan Omar tweeted this, �We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity. We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan and the Taliban. I asked Secretary Blinken where people are supposed to go for justice.� Now that is not a controversial statement. It's normal if you're a sane person. All she's doing is literally condemning human rights abuses, regardless of who perpetrates them. Be it governments or terrorist groups, it's all bad. And she'd literally condemn Hamas in that tweet. But do you want to know how APAC responded to that? Well, they ran this ad implying that she was a terrorist sympathizer, which reads, �Stand with America. Stand against terrorists. For Ilhan Omar, there is no difference between America and the Taliban, between Israel and Hamas, between democracies and terrorists.� And in response, she predictably received multiple death threats. Days later, she wrote, �Every time I speak out on human rights, I am inundated with death threats. Here is one we just got. Now I'm not going to play the audio of this disgusting hate speech for you or read it, but you can see what it says. They're using racial slurs against her, calling Muslims terrorists. Now her senior advisor also points out that the rhetoric that APAC uses in these ads is similar to the language used in the death threats that she receives, which suggests that APAC is inspiring these threats against her life. So after putting up with this bullshit and abuse for years, they finally fought back. And because they dare to defend themselves against APAC, and more importantly, speak up on behalf of civilians in Gaza being indiscriminately murdered by Israel, well, APAC is now vowing to destroy them. As Alexander Samman of Slate explains, �One of the biggest, bitterest and most expensive political battles of the 2024 election cycle has emerged.� The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, one of the most powerful, best-funded influence operations in Washington, is planning to go all out to knock the famed squad, the small group of highly visible and popular progressive legislators of color, most of them women, out of office. APAC wants to make the statement this cycle � that no one is safe from their wrath, that if you speak out, you can be targeted no matter how popular or how many cycles of incumbent you are� said Conor Farrell, president of the Progressive Fundraising Group left rising in a phone call. It's extremely audacious. Close watchers now expect APAC to spend at least $100 million in Democratic primaries largely trained on eliminating incumbent squad members from their seats. It's likely that even more money will be spent by affiliated super PACs, including the Democratic majority for Israel PAC and the mainstream Democrats PAC too. These PACs have already launched six-figure ad buys against Bowman, Lee, and Tlaib a year away from the election, an exorbitant, hardly strategic commitment largely meant to prove that money will not be in short supply. Meanwhile, small-dollar fundraising numbers are weighed down across the board, making it even more difficult for those progressives to fund the defense. So let's just pause right there. That number is huge. I mean, it's unfathomable almost. They are pledging to spend more than $100 million on just a couple of races specifically to knock out these progressives. And they're spending specifically in primaries. And in doing so, they are drastically increasing their chances of success because they know that they're not going to be able to defeat incumbent Democrats in these deep blue districts. The next best thing is to run a right-wing pro-Israel Democrat in the primaries. And unfortunately, that could work. So even though Ilhan Omar crushed her Republican opponent back in the 2022 general election, she barely eke out a win in the primary and was just two points ahead of her opponent. Now part of the reason why it was so close is likely due to outside spending on behalf of her opponent, Don Samuels. Now according to Open Secrets, there was more than $600,000 in outside spending against Ilhan Omar in this race. And now her opponent from 2022 has recently announced that he will be running against her again. And this time, he is getting smart. He's soliciting donations from the Israel lobby by, you guessed it, criticizing her comments about Israel. And with APAC now supercharging his campaign, he could actually pull off a victory. But Ilhan Omar is not the only progressive who's vulnerable because Slade continues, already Bush, Bowman, Lee and Omar have drawn primary opponents for their safe blue seeds for the 2024 cycle thanks to strenuous recruiting efforts from APAC, which has already begun making expensive incendiary ad buys against those members according to reporting in the Associated Press, the Intercept and Jewish Insider. Bush is facing St. Louis prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell, who was running for Senate until late October. Bowman is facing 70-year-old Westchester County Executive George Latimer. Lee is facing perennial candidate Bavini Patel. Omar is facing a rematch with Minneapolis City Council member Don Samuels, former Illinois congressional candidate Sarah Gad, and military vet Tim Peterson. Jewish Insider has reported that APAC is still feverishly recruiting for a challenger for Tlaib as well, and is reportedly still looking for primary challengers for Presley and Ocasio-Cortez. So if they're not already being primaried, they're going to be. And APAC is going to make sure of that and also make sure that their opponents are well-funded. Now, when you look at the primary opponents to these progressives, they are absolutely despicable, spineless people. Wesley Bell, for example, who's primarying Cory Bush, this is somebody who dropped out of a campaign against a Republican, Josh Hawley, to go after Cory Bush. Now, what was one of the first things that he did in choosing to drop out and end primary Bush? He decided to solicit donations from the Israel lobby by criticizing Bush's stance towards Israel. As you know, she's one of the leaders calling for a ceasefire, and he's criticizing her comments on Israel. We know what he's doing. He's trying to draw in money from groups like APAC because that makes it easier. Why run against a Republican like Josh Hawley when you can just run against the progressive in Congress who's not going to get that APAC money and automatically give you an advantage? This is what they're doing. Now, to be clear, I'm not against primary challenges in theory. In fact, I think that political primary strength in democracy and they should happen, but they need to be organic and they need to be grassroots primaries. When a primary is forced by a well-funded special interest group that lobbies on behalf of a foreign government, that to me is not democracy. That's a completely different thing. That is the opposite of democracy. That is forcing progressives like Cory Bush and Rashida Tlaib who raised money exclusively from small-dollar grassroots donors to go up against political behemoths who have millions and millions of dollars to spend virtually unlimited money to defeat them. And no special interest group spending money in elections is something that's good, but it feels like this in particular is foreign interference to me. When you have a lobby that represents the interests of a foreign government that we don't pay taxes to influencing these elections, influencing our democracy, that to me is foreign interference. Now, thankfully, the leader of the House Democrats, Hakeem Jeffries, has taken a really strong stance in the past against foreign interference in American elections. So in 2017, he released this statement urging the Trump administration to come clean about its ties to the Russian government, writing, 17 different intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia interfered with our election to help Donald Trump win the presidency. It now appears possible that Jeff Sessions, the nation's top law enforcement officer, may have been involved with this insidious foreign interference campaign. The House of Representatives is the institution closest to the people by constitutional design. As such, the House must protect the integrity of our democracy. But that's not the only time he called out foreign interference. He actually accused Trump of abusing power by soliciting foreign interference from Russia. And he called Trump an illegitimate and fake president specifically because of Russian interference that helped him get elected. So Hakeem Jeffries has been clear and consistent when it comes to pushing back against foreign interference in American elections. And since he's now become the leader of the Democratic Party, I am sure that he's going to use his power and influence to fight back against attacks on his own members by this interest group that lobbies exclusively at the behest of a foreign government. Right? Well, actually, no, he's not doing that. Slate continues. So far, House Democratic leadership has been quiet about all of this. Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, who took more money from the Israel Lobby in 2022 than any other group and has featured prominently on the lobbying group's website alongside House Republican leadership, hasn't tried to dissuade the primarying of these progressive Democratic incumbents. He could easily publicly disavow such spending and make it clear to candidates that accepting such support is against caucus policy. In 2019, House Democrats made an official policy to blacklist any Democratic consultant or political group who aided a progressive challenger against a sitting Democratic incumbent ahead of the 2020 elections. But so far, Jeffries has only managed to say outside groups are going to do what outside groups are going to do. I think House Democrats are going to continue to support each other. It's strange, sitting quietly by while a Republican funded outside group lays waste to a popular group of incumbents would invite a host of disastrous risks and would crucially jeopardize Jeffries own campaign to retake the House. He certainly can't be House Majority Leader if APAC knocks Democrats out of their races, and it will try. In 2022, APAC spent millions on a conservative Democrat to oppose Summer Lee in her 2022 primary race. After failing to knock her out, the group continued to spend against her in the general election, helping her Republican opponent and nearly costing Democrats the seat. So let me get this straight. Hakeem Jeffries is willing to make an exception for foreign interference when it comes to Israel since their lobby is funding him and literally jeopardize the Democratic Party's chances of retaking the House in 2024 all to appease this right-wing interest group. Am I getting this right? I mean, this is supposed to be the Democratic Party leader, but he's effectively controlled opposition at this point. And that's not an unreasonable accusation since he was holding hands and singing kumbaya with Christo fascist Republican Speaker Mike Johnson at Tuesday's pro-Israel rally. I mean, does he represent Republicans or does he represent Democrats? More importantly, does he represent Israel or does he represent America? Because to remain quiet as they announced their intent to knock members of his own party out of office, that makes him complicit, especially since he's the leader. He's like a boxer who's paid to lose the match. It's it's fucking outrageous. But it's not surprising because if you've been following along, Hakeem Jeffries has a history of hostility towards the left, as Sharon Zhang pointed out in this article for Truthout. He even told the Atlantic, there'd never be a moment where I bend the knee to the hard left democratic socialism. So if he has a history of hating leftists as much as Republicans hate leftists, is it really that absurd to think that he'd prefer one of his largest donors replace members of the squad with more conservative Democrats or more compliant or even a Republican? I mean, I personally don't think it is, especially considering the fact that they're already proving to be a thorn in the side of corporate stuages and Israel sick of fans like him. For example, at the pro-Israel rally where he chomped it up with Republicans, anti-Semitic pastor John Hagee was also there. This is somebody who blamed Jewish people for the Holocaust. And Summer Lee drew attention to this on Twitter, writing, I'm deeply concerned that members of both parties shared a stage yesterday with noted anti-Semitic bigot John Hagee. This must be condemned. So ask yourself this question. Don't you think it makes sense that he'd prefer to not have progressives like this in Congress who inconveniently point stuff like this out or call for a ceasefire? Of course. So he wants APEC to do what they're doing. That's why he's being quiet. It's a choice, right? So we're in the situation where the squad's bravery could actually cost them re-election. And I don't think that APEC is going to be able to take out all of them. But even if they're able to take out one or two of them, I think that that's awful because the goal is to grow the number of progressives in Congress, not lose more of them. So we've got to do two things. First and foremost, we've got to stand in solidarity with members of the squad and donate to them if we're able to. And second of all, we need to shame Hakim Jeffries into doing his fucking job and defending his party. That is what you are supposed to do as leader of the Democratic Party. You are supposed to defend members of your party. So if he's going to refuse to acquiesce, then maybe he's the one who should get a primary challenger. You know, it would be difficult to defeat him because he's the leader. He has lots of money. You don't become the leader without being a good fundraiser. But it's happened before. Remember Joe Crowley, who was supposed to be in Hakim Jeffries position right now, was knocked out by AOC in Democratic primary back in 2018. So if he's going to functionally do the bidding of Republicans and take money from right wing organizations that support Republicans, then he needs to be exposed for the GOP plant that he is. And he definitely needs to be primaried.