Democrats Pull Away From AIPAC, Reflecting a Broader Shift

Democrats Pull Away From AIPAC, Reflecting a Broader Shift

 

A quiet retreat by Democrats from the pre-eminent pro-Israel lobbying group is the latest evidence of a realignment underway in Congress on Israel.

 

Annie Karni

By Annie Karni

Reporting from Washington

 

Oct. 2, 2025

 

For 17 years, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, has been taking polite meetings with J Street, the center-left lobbying group that promotes a two-state solution in the Middle East.

 

But in all those years of relationship building, Mr. Jeffries never sought the group’s endorsement. He was more closely associated with AIPAC, the hard-line pro-Israel lobbying organization that has long supported him financially, and has in the past discouraged lawmakers it backs from aligning themselves formally with a group that holds a different stance on Israel.

 

That changed last month, when Mr. Jeffries for the first time was open to and accepted J Street’s official support. It was a coup for J Street, which is highly critical of the current Israeli government and seeking to establish itself as the mainstream voice about Israel on Capitol Hill.

 

J Street’s endorsement of Mr. Jeffries attracted little attention on Capitol Hill, where the group already backs well over half of Democratic members of Congress and the rest of the House Democratic leadership team.

 

Mr. Jeffries is so closely associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that the radio host Charlamagne Tha God recently mocked him as “AIPAC Shakur.” So the fact that he would take such a step is a symbol of a broader sea change occurring in Congress when it comes to Israel and the clout of what has for decades been the most powerful pro-Israel group in American politics.

 

(Mr. Jeffries, in a statement, said that “Charlatan the Fraud has no idea what he’s talking about, as music industry luminaries like Birdman, Beanie Sigel, Fredro Starr and NBA YoungBoy have repeatedly made clear.”)

 

With American support for the Israeli government’s management of the conflict in Gaza undergoing a seismic reversal, and Democratic voters’ support for the Jewish state dropping off steeply, AIPAC is becoming an increasingly toxic brand for some Democrats on Capitol Hill.

 

It is the latest evidence of a realignment underway in Congress on Israel, as Democratic lawmakers turn away from a decades-old bipartisan consensus on Capitol Hill around offering unconditional support for the Jewish state.

 

Some Democrats who once counted AIPAC among their top donors have in recent weeks refused to take the group’s donations. Its annual trip to Israel, a formative experience for many lawmakers that once drew a majority of first-term members, has seen a drop-off in Democratic attendance. And a majority of the Senate Democratic Caucus has voted in recent months for legislation opposed by AIPAC to cut off weapons sales to Israel.

 

AIPAC has long been a force on Capitol Hill, able to spend seemingly whatever it took to defeat lawmakers it viewed as hostile to Israel. Last year, for instance, the group spent more than $23 million to defeat former Representatives Cori Bush of Missouri and Jamaal Bowman of New York, two progressives who vocally opposed unconditional U.S. aid to Israel.

 

AIPAC also poured more than $1 million into a Democratic primary in Oregon, boosting Representative Maxine E. Dexter in her race against Susheela Jayapal, a former county commissioner and the sister of Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the former chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

 

When Ms. Dexter won, AIPAC crowed about the victory, noting Ms. Dexter’s “anti-Israel opponent” had been endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, and by J Street.

 

But public sentiment on the war on Gaza has shifted in the two years since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel. And while Democrats increasingly sympathize with the Palestinians in the conflict, AIPAC has remained unflinchingly loyal to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. The group has framed his military offensive in Gaza as a “just and moral” war against Hamas, which it says bears exclusive blame for the suffering of civilians there.

 

And Democrats are less willing to align themselves with that position.

 

Three Democratic members of Congress who had previously relied on AIPAC as a top campaign contributor have said over the past few weeks that they would no longer accept donations from the group: Representatives Morgan McGarvey of Kentucky, Deborah K. Ross of North Carolina, and Valerie P. Foushee of North Carolina.

 

Ms. Dexter, who relied on AIPAC’s financial support to win her primary last year, recently said the United States “must halt the transfer of offensive weapons to Israel and ensure immediate, sufficient and sustained humanitarian aid into Gaza.” She is also a co-sponsor of the Block the Bombs Act, which seeks to restrict the sale of specific weapons to Israel until the country meets certain human rights conditions.

 

Ms. Dexter is not on AIPAC’s list of candidates it has endorsed this cycle. A spokeswoman for Ms. Dexter did not respond to a request for comment.

 

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, said the shifts reflected a disconnect between current views of Israel and AIPAC’s stance.

 

“We are at a tipping point given what has happened over the last two years in Gaza, and the fact that AIPAC still maintains that all we can do is support the government of Israel — they’ve run into a wall,” Mr. Ben-Ami said in an interview.

 

A spokesman for AIPAC, Marshall Wittmann, said that “the overwhelming majority” of Democrats continue to understand that being pro-Israel “is both good politics and good policy.”

 

But dwindling Democratic attendance at AIPAC’s summer trip to Israel, which has long been a rite of passage for new members of Congress in both parties and a powerful recruiting tool for the organization, illustrates the trend.

 

The trip, hosted by the group’s educational arm, helps AIPAC shape the views of members of Congress on Israel, with some still defending Israel’s conduct of the war despite the considerable evidence that Israeli strikes are regularly killing and injuring civilians and that aid cutoffs have led to widespread hunger.

 

“What we found is that contrary to world opinion, Israel has been doing everything it possibly can to ensure that there’s minimal damage to civilians who are not part of Hamas’s army,” Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland and long an unofficial leader of the junket, said in a video he recorded for AIPAC during the trip in August.

 

In the past, a majority of the first-term Democratic House members would attend. In 2023, for instance, 24 House Democrats, including Mr. Jeffries, traveled with AIPAC to Israel. That year, there were 34 first-term Democrats.

 

This year, just 11 out of the 33 first-term House Democrats attended. Mr. Jeffries, who regularly made the annual trip, did not go this year. Another seven Democratic members had committed to the trip in August to the point where AIPAC purchased and booked their flights to Israel, according to ethics disclosures, but they ultimately pulled out. And some of the new members who did go received backlash in their districts for participating in an AIPAC-aligned trip.

 

The pivot underway among Democrats in Congress reflects a broader shift in public opinion. A recent poll from The New York Times and Siena University found that American support for Israel is crumbling, with voters voicing negative views of the Israeli government’s management of the conflict.

 

The trend has been quietly brewing for some time at the Capitol.

 

In July, 27 senators in the Democratic caucus — more than half the group — voted with Mr. Sanders in favor of a resolution to block the sale of assault rifles to Israel. A slightly smaller group voted for a measure that would have blocked the sale of some bombs to Israel.

 

That number would most likely be higher today. Senator Elissa Slotkin, Democrat of Michigan, missed the votes but said later that she, too, would have supported the measures. At least one other mainstream Democrat has said he would consider doing so as well.

 

“If there is no change in direction from the Israeli administration, for the first time I would seriously consider that,” Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, told Axios at an event at the U.N. General Assembly last week.

 

Mr. Wittmann, the AIPAC spokesman, said that a majority of Democrats “understand that Israel is fighting a just and moral war against Hamas terrorism.” He declined to comment on Mr. Coons.

 

Mr. Wittmann also pointed to a recent House vote in which lawmakers voted overwhelmingly, 422 to 6, to reject an attempt to cut $500 million in defense assistance to Israel as a sign that most American lawmakers were still closely aligned with AIPAC. And he noted that last year, 95 percent of AIPAC-endorsed Democrats won their races.

 

Still, even though it failed spectacularly, the proposal to cut defense assistance to Israel also reflected a shift underway on the right, with some anti-interventionist Republicans questioning how supportive the United States should be. It was offered by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a hard-right Republican from Georgia, who has referred to the situation in Gaza as a “genocide.”

 

AIPAC is now weighing whether to get involved in a bid to defeat her in her re-election race next year.

 

Ms. Greene represents a key faction of President Trump’s base that is showing signs of disillusionment with him on a variety of issues, including Israel.

 

In a recent appearance on Megyn Kelly’s podcast, Ms. Greene and Ms. Kelly discussed the pressure they have both received from AIPAC to attend one of the group’s junkets to Israel, with Ms. Greene saying the trip was AIPAC’s way of appealing to lawmakers early to ensure that they would fall in line later.

 

“They want to pull you in because they want to pull you on their side,” Ms. Greene said.

 

Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times.