View Email in Browser     Visit RJCHQ.org     Donate     Unsubscribe

This Week:

• Jewish Democrats Must Fight the DSA, Not Tolerate It
• Horseshoe Funding: El-Sayed and Bilzerian Share Donors

• Treasury Launches 'Operation Economic Outcast' Against Iran

• RJC in the News

• Short Takes
• Week's Best Tweets
• Upcoming Events

STARTING THIS SUNDAY!

Join us in Las Vegas with these CONFIRMED guests!

RJC National Chairman Senator Norm Coleman talked about this amazing upcoming event on the Sid Rosenberg radio show in NYC. Click here to listen.

Limited Tickets Still Available -

Click HERE to Register Today!

Jewish Democrats Must Fight the DSA, Not Tolerate It

In 2020, Joel Rubin joined the Bernie Sanders's campaign as Jewish outreach director, thinking he would "fix" the perception that Sanders was becoming anti-Israel. As he writes at The Free Press this week, he found instead that Sanders was and is "pushing the party to absorb the most radical fringe voices in its midst, who will actively fuel antisemitism in the halls of Congress and in society as a whole." Rubin worries about the future of the Democratic Party.

Jonathan Tobin, editor-in-chief of JNS, tells Jewish Democrats like Rubin: You must do more than describe the radical takeover of the Democrat Party as a problem. You must fight it - because this is about more than the Democratic Party's future.

The Democrats' lurch to the left in recent years was made obvious by the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), turning what was once a likely possibility into a fact.

Pro-Israel Democrats still exist, and some hold high office in Washington and in many states. Nevertheless, polls of voter opinions, congressional votes and the outcome of most primary elections held in the last year make it clear that they have become a minority in their party.

If the DSA isn't stopped in its tracks and sent back to the fever swamps of the far left, where it belongs, the problem won't just be that Jewish Democrats will be politically homeless. The consequences of allowing a faction that is inherently antisemitic, as well as opposed to the basic principles of American liberty that guarantee the safety of American citizens, will go far beyond the grim prospects for some Jewish politicians or the problems this will cause for the U.S.-Israel alliance.

… The only rational alternative is for liberal Jewish Democrats to make it clear that their hostility for Trump and the GOP notwithstanding, they will not vote for DSA-affiliated and other Israel-bashing candidates nominated by their party. What's more, they need to support opponents to the movement, provided that they are both pro-Israel and determined to root out antisemitism in their own ranks.

… If they refuse to do that, they will not only be revealing that partisan loyalty is their most important value. They will also be effectively dooming themselves to political irrelevance. And they will be enabling a faction dedicated to stripping Jews of protections and trashing constitutional liberty to get closer to the levers of power than at any point in U.S. history.

Horseshoe Funding: El-Sayed and Bilzerian Share Donors

Horseshoe theory says that the most radical parts of the political spectrum don't sit on opposite ends of a line from left to right, but near to each other at the ends of a horseshoe. The common ground that bends them close includes a deep hatred of Israel and Jews.

The Washington Free Beacon has discovered that the funding of two radical campaigns demonstrates this connection between the worst of the right and the worst of the left.

Dan Bilzerian, the neo-Nazi who lost in the Florida congressional primary election to Jewish Republican Rep. Randy Fine, and Abdul El-Sayed, the radical far-left Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan, have donors in common:

More than a dozen donors to the Hitler-praising, neo-Nazi congressional campaign of Dan Bilzerian have also contributed to Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed—in many cases spreading thousands of dollars between the two candidates, the Washington Free Beacon found.

Bilzerian, a far-right social media influencer with a trust fund, and El-Sayed, a far-left epidemiologist, have no policy overlap except strong opposition to AIPAC and Israel, but their donors include a man who has equated Zionism to Nazism and a Texas subprime auto loan entrepreneur who also threw his weight behind Israel-bashing Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie.

The overlapping donor list suggests that El-Sayed's virulently anti-Israel rhetoric appeals to the kind of Muslim-American donors who also buy into Bilzerian's hateful Jew-baiting and offensive trolling.

Treasury Launches 'Operation Economic Outcast' Against Iran

The Jewish Insider reports:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on Monday that the Trump administration is launching "Operation Economic Outcast" against Iran, outlining a targeted effort aimed at severing Tehran's global economic ties in order to "collapse every last option" for Tehran.

"Today, we are launching Operation Economic Outcast … Treasury has mapped every node, every facilitator, and every network that Iran has used to smuggle oil and evade sanctions," Bessent said at a press conference at the Treasury Department. "Beginning today, the actions of Treasury and other agencies will tighten the noose and block every potential source of revenue that funds the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and the evil Iranian regime. We are enforcing a zero leakage approach."

The directive targets five economic sectors: digital assets, technology, gold, aviation and shipping. At Bessent's direction, the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control on Monday designated over 60 entities, individuals and vessels worldwide "that enable the Iranian regime to procure illicit nuclear and missile technology, conduct cyber operations and generate oil revenue."

Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, writes that Operation Outcast is a recipe for success against Iran: 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday launched what he called Operation Economic Outcast — a global campaign to shut down every last source of financial oxygen feeding a fractured rump regime in Tehran that's already circling the economic drain.

Combined with the US military's growing success in covertly moving oil out of the Strait of Hormuz, President [Donald] Trump will edge one step closer to checkmate against Iran's Revolutionary Guard when he gives the green light to drop the hammer on nations that ignore America's final warning.

The United States can't force other countries to join a bombing run. It can't compel foreign navies to patrol the Persian Gulf. But it can change economic behavior through the threat and imposition of US secondary sanctions — on private banks, brokers and exchanges, airport authorities and aviation service providers, shippers and insurers, and even state-owned enterprises and government instrumentalities.

…It takes courage for a president to authorize this kind of total financial warfare. But that's exactly what appears to be happening with a Treasury Secretary empowered to do whatever it takes to bring down Iran's financial house of cards.

…The three steps needed to crush the IRGC remain the same today as they were nearly four months ago: enforce the blockade alongside total economic warfare; use the U.S. military to get more oil out of Hormuz; and employ American energy dominance to eliminate the IRGC's leverage forever. President Trump is following this formula to great effect.

RJC in the News

Fox News: Bill Maher blasts Democratic Party, says it is fine with religion 'as long as that faith isn't Jewish' -- Sam Markstein, Republican Jewish Coalition spokesperson, told Fox News Digital, 'It's a rare occasion when we agree with Bill Maher, but he's right'

Comedian Bill Maher took aim at what he portrayed as the Democratic Party's double standard on religion Friday, quipping that a candidate's public faith is welcome "as long as that faith isn't Jewish."

…When reached for comment Saturday, Sam Markstein, Republican Jewish Coalition national political director and spokesman, agreed with Maher and spoke of the GOP as the only party still willing to accommodate Jewish people who are proud of their identity and support of Israel.

"It's a rare occasion when we agree with Bill Maher, but he's right: there is only one party where American Jews can be proudly Jewish and loudly pro-Israel, and it's the Republican Party," he told Fox News Digital.

"Democrats prove it again and again — from Kamala Harris passing over Josh Shapiro in 2024 to the rise of communist elected officials who traffic in antisemitism in halls of power across the country," he continued.

"The Democratic Party is being remade by its radicalized base, and party leadership continues to fecklessly whistle past the political graveyard as American Jews flee."

Fox News: Hasan Piker calls Hamas 'far more moderate,' dismisses terror group's brutal rule in Gaza

Far-left Twitch streamer Hasan Piker called Hamas "far more moderate" than at its inception during a Channel 4 News UK "TrumpWorld" interview Wednesday as co-host Matt Frei confronted him over his past praise of the terrorist group.

Piker's comment drew condemnation Friday from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) over his growing influence among progressive Democrats.

…Republican Jewish Coalition National Political Director Sam Markstein also rejected Piker's characterization.

"There is nothing 'moderate' about Hamas, and there is nothing defensible about Hasan Piker," Markstein said in a statement Friday to Fox News Digital.

Markstein pointed to Piker's previous statements that he would vote for Hamas over Israel and that the terrorist group was "a thousand times better than" the Jewish state. He also pointed to Piker's appearances with Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed.

"Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and a growing list of progressive Democrats are proud to campaign at his side. Every Democrat who has embraced Piker owes us a straight answer: 'Do you stand with his apologetics for a brutal terrorist organization, yes or no?'" he said.

"His rising influence inside the Democratic Party is a flashing red warning to Jewish voters about exactly where that party is headed, and it isn't with us."

National Review: The Midterms Will Test the Power of the MAGA Defectors

"President [Donald] Trump has been clear: they are not part of the MAGA movement anymore," Sam Markstein, political director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, told National Review of [Tucker] Carlson and his friends. People in Trump's orbit who spoke to Politico similarly minimized their impact.

Short Takes

Roman: Tehran's War on American Morale

Gregg Roman of the Middle East Forum examines how the Iranian regime used a handful of acknowledged problems with the USS Lincoln's extended and difficult deployment in the Middle East to create a false but widely read international news story. He calls this deception "a military operation aimed at the one American system Tehran can actually reach: the will of the force, and the families behind it… The Islamic Republic's morale operation runs on a layered architecture that any student of Soviet active measures would recognize, updated for the algorithm."

Trump Administration sanctions groups that support terrorism

Fox News reports that the US State Department has put a global terrorism designation on an international technology collective that provided services to terrorist groups and far-left violent Antifa cells in the United States and across the world.

The Jewish Insider reports that the Treasury Department has sanctioned several far-left organizations, including the UK-based Palestine Action and the Masar Badil group, which is linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The sanctions cut these terrorist-supporting groups off from the global financial system and prohibit American citizens and foreign financial institutions from conducting transactions with them.

Fox News: Fentanyl deaths plunge 22% as Trump White House touts crackdown on deadly drug crisis

Fentanyl-linked deaths plunged 22% in a single year as the Trump White House credits its border crackdown, campaign against drug cartels and arrests of convicted fentanyl traffickers for helping drive down the deadly toll. Synthetic opioid deaths, which include fentanyl, fell from 48,913 in 2024 to 38,084 in 2025, according to CDC figures cited by the White House — a decline of more than 10,000 deaths. Total drug overdose deaths fell 14% during the same period, from 81,313 to 69,973.

Tweets

Events