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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Im Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzlez.

Its 2024. As we move into this election year, we look now at how the powerful lobby group AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is set to spend more than $100 million against progressive congressmembers critical of Israeli human rights violations in Palestine. The goal is to remove members of The Squad from Congress this year, including Congressmembers Cori Bush, Ilhan Omar, Jamaal Bowman, Summer Lee and the only Palestinian American member of Congress, Rashida Tlaib. This comes as a Data for Progress poll found two-thirds of U.S. voters support a ceasefire in Gaza, including 80% of Democrats.

For more, were joined by Ryan Grim, D.C. bureau chief of The Intercept. His book is just out. Its titled The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution.

Ryan, why dont you lay out your revelations in this book? And perhaps you can start with AOC and what happened when she was elected. I want to play for you a clip. You write in your book about how a representative of AIPAC approached Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs team with an offer of $100,000 in July of 2018 to, quote, start the conversation about her views on Israel. This is the then-candidate Ocasio-Cortez being interviewed on PBS in 2018, before she was reportedly contacted by AIPAC.

MARGARET HOOVER: You, in the campaign, made one tweet, or made one statement, that referred to a killing by Israeli soldiers of civilians in Gaza and called it a massacre, which became a little bit controversial. But I havent seen anywhere: What is your position on Israel?

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Well, I believe absolutely in Israels right to exist. I am a proponent of a two-state solution. And for me, its not this is not a referendum, I think, on the state of Israel. For me, the lens through which I saw this incident, as an activist, as an organizer, if 60 people were killed in Ferguson, Missouri, if 60 people were killed in the South Bronx, unarmed, if 60 people were killed in Puerto Rico I just looked at that incident more through through just, as an incident. And to me, it would just be completely unacceptable if that happened on our shores.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018, before she was first elected, one of the four members of whats known as The Squad, which is also the title of your book, Ryan Grim. Can you take it from there, what you reveal in this book?

RYAN GRIM: Yeah. So, and later in that interview, the interviewer, Hoover, really starts to parse a lot of her words. You know, You said the word 'occupation.' You said the word 'Palestine.' What do you mean by this? And you can see her growing even more kind of visibly kind of uncomfortable about where the conversation is heading. And she finally just taps out at the end and says, Look, Im not a geopolitical expert on this issue. This wasnt something that we talked about at my dinner table, you know, among Puerto Rican families in the Bronx. And she just moves on from there, and actually stops doing interviews for a little while after that, after she had been kind of, from the time of her win in June until then, just kind of dominating and getting bigger and bigger interview requests, you know, eventually even doing like late-night shows.

So, then, like you said, a week later, her team gets a call from somebody who says theyre with AIPAC and that they saw the interview and that theyre willing to help, you know, educate her on the issue, start the conversation. And to start that conversation, theyve already gotten commitments of up to $100,000 and that there would be a lot more money where that came from.

Now, she didnt even consider the offer. She had plenty of campaign cash coming in, wasnt even about the campaign cash. But it did open a window for her team and for her about what Congress is like for so many rank-and-file members of Congress who didnt have her profile at that point, because now not only are you being offered $100,000 just to start, and theres a lot more where that came from, it comes with an implicit threat and I think thats what you want to get into later if you dont take the money, that money will still be spent, but it will be spent against you instead.

JUAN GONZLEZ: And, Ryan, could you talk about and you do so in the book AIPACs role in purging the Democratic Party of any potential candidates or officeholders who dont toe the line when it comes to Israel?

RYAN GRIM: So, the same month that the Squad was sworn in to office that included Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, it was January 2019 the super PAC Democratic Majority for Israel was stood up with this splashy New York Times profile. It was kind of it was affiliated with AIPAC. It was founded by Mark Mellman, who is an AIPAC adviser, who had led AIPACs effort to undo Barack Obamas Iran deal. Hes also or, he was at the time a consultant to Yair Lapid, who, as you know, is the head of the Yesh Atid party, eventually actually became, while he was Mellmans client, prime minister of Israel, so hes wearing multiple hats. So, he founds this super PAC, DMFI, which then kind of does AIPACs work in the 2020 and 2020 in the 2020 cycle.

And theye built, basically, explicitly to stop the expansion of this faction within the Democratic Party that feels willing to criticize Israel. In May 2021, the last time there was a major war on Gaza, the Squad and a number of other House Democrats went to the House floor denouncing Israels attack on Gaza, and that was sort of an alarm bell for AIPAC. And so, AIPAC itself then, after that, launched its own super PAC, after DMFI had spent millions itself, and in that cycle, the 2021-'22 cycle, spent more than $30 million. Now they're looking to spend significantly more this cycle.

JUAN GONZLEZ: And you also say that the rise of the Squad and the rise of the counterrevolutionary forces has been simultaneous. Could you elaborate on that? Because, obviously, Donald Trump never tires of criticizing the Squad as if they are in charge of the Democratic Party.

RYAN GRIM: Yeah, it was really remarkable to go back and kind of rereport this story, the arc of kind of starting with, say, the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2015-16 up through today, to see just how central this question of Israel-Palestine has been to the kind of pushback and the reaction to the rise of the Squad the entire time.

You know, the Democrats, in 2018, if you remember, they ran against they ran against Trump. They ran against his wall, his xenophobia, his Muslim ban. And much of the first six months of the Democratic majority in 2019 was spent with Democrats sometimes joined by Trump, sometimes not coming after Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib for various transgressions in tweets or speeches or otherwise. And it really kind of dictated and determined what the entire kind of progressive wing was doing.

And so, oftentimes youll have the organization Justice Democrats or members of the Squad say, you know, Why are you spending so much time focusing on Israel-Palestine? And the answer would be: Theyre not. Its actually its actually the reaction. Theyre kind of forced to. And so, the amount of spending that was done against them, and that continues to be done against them, kind of forged them into a cohesive political formation that might not actually have existed otherwise.

But so, in the 2022 cycle, like you said, thats when they spent millions against not just Nina Turner, the most high-profile example that they kept out of Congress, but also across the country going after progressives who were critical of Israel, but also were progressive, because, you know, the same kind of hedge fund, private equity executives, baseball team owners that are funding AIPAC and DMFI also have the same kind of interests as any major business owner would. So, the same agenda, you know, that is that forms kind of the Squads criticism of Israel, also their support of a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, you know, closing tax loopholes for the wealthy so its kind of a bonus that you kind of can align your class interests with this fight against Palestinian rights.

AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can talk more, Ryan Grim, about this election year, about the $100 million, whos involved with that, about the targeting of the Squad, the Squad-plus you know, more people who are allied with the Squad have been elected since then and also the role of Mark Penn and Burson-Marsteller?

RYAN GRIM: Right. So, 2022 was the first time in its history that AIPAC did its own super PAC. Previously, it had given directly to campaigns, or its members had given directly to campaigns, and DMFI had done a super PAC kind of affiliated with AIPAC but not straight from them. 2022 was the first time they did that, and they came through with, like I said, more than $30 million, in some races, you know, spending more than $5 million. They spent millions against Summer Lee in the Pittsburgh race in the last month of the campaign, but there was enough kind of pushback from an organized group of progressive super PACs and also small donors that she was able to just barely that she was able to just barely hang on.

And so, in 2022, they really tried to kind of constrain the growth of the Squad and Squad-aligned factions within the party. This cycle, theyre realy trying to shrink them. Like you said, theres been reporting that, you know, there have been offers of $20 million to two different candidates to try to run against Rashida Tlaib. Theyve successfully recruited candidates to run against Jamaal Bowman. Cori Bush has a challenge. Ilhan Omar has a challenge. So now theyre coming kind of directly at them.

Now, Mark Penn and Nancy Jacobson are also kind of main characters in this book, as well, along with Mark Penns protg, Josh Gottheimer, whos a congressman from North Jersey whos sort of like the chief antagonist of the Squad. And they have raised tens of millions of dollars over the years for this organization No Labels, also from hedge fund executives, you know, private equity folks, football team owners, Home Depot CEOs, that kind of crowd. They try to present themselves as this kind of nonaligned, centrist organization. Nancy Jacobson has said, you know, AIPAC is one of her one of the organizations that she works most closely with. And, of course, famously, now theyre trying to recruit a Joe Manchin-type figure to run as a, quote-unquote, independent in the presidential campaign, which presumably would be to the benefit of Trump.

JUAN GONZLEZ: You mentioned Josh Gottheimer, the congressman from New Jersey. Could you talk about his history before he got into Congress?

RYAN GRIM: Yeah. It is an interesting history, because not only does he have this kind of standard kind of pro-Israel activism, but he worked with Mark Penn for many years, and Mark Penn did a lot of his business with Saudi Arabia. And that gets to kind of a creation of a political alliance in Washington that didnt get a lot of publicity over the years, which is kind of the teaming up of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Those two countries still dont even recognize Israel, but in Washington, the three of them were spending enormously, basically to counter Iran, and to counter Iran, they and also, of course, to push back on kind of any climate agenda that might get in the way of where their fossil fuel interests lay, and that often meant targeting kind of the left flank of the Democratic Party.

And so, Josh Gottheimer kind of became the kind of lead antagonist against particularly Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, you know, just repeatedly pushing for censure resolutions, going on cable news regularly to denounce his colleagues and encouraging other Democrats to then also denounce them, teaming up with Hakeem Jeffries to do a kind of a super PAC that was aimed at kind of going after them and going after kind of Squad-aligned candidates, as well. So, thats really the kind of nexus of this civil war thats going on inside the House Democrats.

AMY GOODMAN: We have about two minutes to go, Ryan, and Im wondering if you can talk about what most shocked you in the research for your book, The Squad.

RYAN GRIM: I think it was the sheer amount of money that was involved and just how dominant it had been, because we can say the numbers over and over again $30 million, $40 million, $100 million but what doesnt quite come through is how that influences not just the races where money is spent, but also where its not spent.

And so, I heard of so many different conversations that would be held among consultants in campaigns that were worried that AIPAC or DMFI was going to start spending millions of dollars in their race. And they would meet, theyd have a conference call, and theyd figure out, OK, how do we stave this off? And so, this is without AIPAC even spending a dime. And they would say, Well, lets you know, the easiest thing we can do is, lets just post 'I stand with Israel.' And some candidates would just do that. And then, others would reach out to DMFI John Fetterman, his campaign did this; others did it, as well and say, What do we need to do? Like, what kind of policy positions do we need to publicly have so that youre going to stay out of this race? Not that youre going to fund us, but that youre not going to fund our opponents? And that, really, to a shocking degree, constrained what Democratic candidates were willing to say when it came to criticizing Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Ryan Grim, we want to thank you so much for being with us, D.C. bureau chief for The Intercept. Ryans new book is called The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution. And well also link to your articles at The Intercept, as you continue to cover this issue.

For those who didnt get to see Democracy Now! on January 1st, you can go to democracynow.org and see the Belmarsh Tribunal, excerpts of it, looking at the case of Julian Assange, whose final appeal goes before a London court on February 20th and 21st.

Democracy Now! produced with Rene Feltz, Mike Burke, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, Mara Taracena. Im Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzlez, for the first edition of Democracy Now!

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AIPAC vs. The Squad: Pro-Israel Group to Spend $100M to Target Progressives in 2024 - Democracy Now!

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I get it, many of you are baffled and depressed as we enter the presidential election year. Nationally, democracy feels threatened and traditional barometers of political popularity no longer seem to apply.

Despite a laudable post-pandemic record and a rebounding economy, polls suggest President Joe Biden is deeply unpopular. Many in the media echo Republican talking points that blame Biden for problems he cannot influence.

Why? Perhaps we underestimate how the pandemic has diminished our nations collective capacity for optimism and confidence.

In fishing for causes, an obvious contributor is often overlooked: the pandemic itself, opined David Wallace-Wells in the New York Times recently. It not only killed more than a million Americans but also threw much of daily life and economic activity and public confidence into profound disarray for several years, scarring a lot of people and their perceptions of the country, its capacities and its future.

At year-end, though, lets focus on happier tidings inside Wisconsin.

This past year-plus has been the most hopeful period in state politics for democracy and for Democrats small d and capital D both in more than a decade.

Results havent been this favorable since before those dark days in 2010 when Scott Walker and Ron Johnson rode a national Republican wave to victory as governor and U.S. senator, respectively.

Republicans that year also won majorities in both chambers of the Legislature. Worse, that election coincided with the 2010 U.S. Census, which dictated an update to political districts.

The GOP worked in secret and passed the nations most gerrymandered, anti-democratic political maps. As you know too well, Republicans have maintained voter-proof majorities in the Legislature ever since.

But 2023 brought welcome change on multiple fronts.

The good news began with the November 2022 elections. For four years, Republicans had tried to undercut the authority and belittle the record of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, reflexively refusing any compromise.

But Evers won in what was, by Wisconsin standards, a landslide. His three-point victory was triple the razor-thin margin of his 2018 defeat of Walker. Voters embraced Evers as the authentic, center-left leader he had always been.

Equally noteworthy was that Republicans narrowly failed to attain super-majorities in the state Assembly. That outcome, combined with a GOP super-majority in the state Senate, would have allowed the party to consistently override Evers. Republicans won 64 of the Assemblys 99 seats, two short of the two-thirds needed.

The truly stunning vote, though, came months later, when Janet Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County circuit court judge, won election to the Wisconsin Supreme Court by an astonishing 11 percentage points, flipping the court to a 4-3 progressive majority.

Huge turnout by younger voters, especially in Dane County, sent GOP strategists back to the drawing boards to try to figure out how to suppress future youth turnout. Appealing on issues wont work. The suppression of reproductive rights and the racist culture wars that are at the core of the modern GOP are overwhelmingly unpopular with young voters.

The Protasiewicz triumph was made more gratifying when, in its aftermath, desperate Republicans tried and failed to drum up support to impeach the new justice because she had stated the obvious while campaigning that the states current political maps are rigged.

Their whining was laughable given the conservative courts longstanding subservience to legislative Republicans. The state Democratic Party mounted a well-financed campaign of ads and door-knocking against the idea of impeachment. Democratic efforts also succeeded in getting the state and national media to focus on Republican efforts to subvert the election outcome.

It worked. Republicans backed down.

Republicans didnt come to their senses about democracy, Democratic state party chair Ben Wikler told the Washington Post at the time. But they realized they didnt have cover.

While the court race got the big headlines, spring elections also brought more good news: progressive victories in mayoral races in Racine and Green Bay. Both mayors are former Democratic state representatives.

On the governing front, Evers again served as an effective bulwark against the statehouse extremism that prevailed during the Walker years. With a boost from federal infrastructure funding, Evers focused on rebuilding roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects throughout the state. He also fought for more financial support for local governments and schools.

Republicans tried to pass regressive state income tax cuts, assuming they could bully Evers. He wouldnt dare veto lowering taxes, would he?

Well, yes, he would. He also won the war of words that followed.

When I interviewed Evers in July, he asked me rhetorically: Do I allow the 11 wealthiest people in the state to get an average of a $1.8 million tax cut or do I veto it?

The state still has a big budget surplus and Evers has said he would support a tax-cut plan focused on the middle class, but that does not seem to interest Republicans, who are always beholden to their donor class, whatever their populist rhetoric.

Other favorable budget news was a shared-revenue deal that increased the amount of state tax money that flows to local municipalities. Milwaukee also gained the much-needed authority to levy a local sales tax, prompting Milwaukee-area columnist Dan Shafer to write, For the first time in a generation, Milwaukee is not making cuts, and is beginning to turn the dial in the other direction and invest in its future.

Then there were the revelations around the 2020 fake electors plot. Kenneth Chesebro, the pro-Trump lawyer who helped concoct a strategy to get Republican toadies to cast fake electoral votes in several states Donald Trump lost, is cooperating with Wisconsin investigators after pleading guilty to conspiracy in Georgia. That may suggest an investigation by Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, though Kaul has made no announcement.

Finally, and as a marvelous pre-Christmas crescendo last week, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled, 4-3, that the states current legislative district maps are unconstitutional and that new maps must be drawn before the 2024 elections.

Evers said of the ruling, At long last, the gerrymandered maps Wisconsinites have endured for years might soon be history.

The GOP has said it will try an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but interpretation of state constitutions is the province of state courts and any claim that Protasiewicz should have recused herself appears far-fetched.

Undeniably, 2024 will bring political angst. But someday, political scientists and historians might cite 2023 as the year when Wisconsin again allowed voters not politicians to decide who represents them.

And, just maybe, it will be marked as the year when the politics of resentment began to truly recede.

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Opinion | For Wisconsin progressives, 2023 was a very good year - The Capital Times

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Abundance Agenda Shifts Left-Wing Politics, Faces Progressive Opposition in 2024

As the 2024 U.S presidential race heats up, a significant ideological shift is unfolding within the left-wing political sphere. This change has birthed the abundance agenda, a movement that champions the economic interests of the middle and working classes. Advocates of this agenda call for reduced regulations and minimal government interference that often puts small businesses and consumers at a disadvantage. This resurgence of a liberal view that endorses free markets as a means to elevate living standards for working Americans is not an entirely novel concept.

The philosophy has roots in the deregulation efforts of President Jimmy Carter, Senator Edward Kennedy, and Ralph Nader, among others. It also echoes the neoliberalism of the Clinton Administration. Interestingly, the abundance agenda shares certain similarities with libertarian values, particularly as some conservatives appear to step away from dogmatic free-market principles.

This unusual alignment of ideologies has sparked discussions about a possible alliance between abundance progressives and libertarians. Such a coalition could potentially reshape the political landscape, offering a fresh perspective on economic policies that veer away from the entrenched views of both the left and right sides of the aisle.

Despite its potential, the abundance agenda faces formidable opposition from prominent progressive figures like Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and FTC Chair Lina Khan. Particularly, Khan, known for her critical stance against big techs market power, represents a newer progressive trend that favors a more interventionist antitrust policy over the consumer welfare standard, which has been the dominant approach since the 1980s.

The abundance agendas journey ahead is fraught with challenges and uncertainties. However, it offers a plausible challenge to Khanonomics and could pave the way for political realignments, leading to the formation of two major coalitions with contrasting economic visions. The full impact of these ideological shifts may become more apparent by 2028, when the fear of Donald Trump no longer holds as much sway over the Democratic Party, mirroring an internal debate within the Republican Party over the principles of limited government.

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Abundance Progressives: A New Ideological Shift - BNN Breaking

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Progressives need to get real about Trump, democracy and the Supreme Court  The Hill

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Progressives need to get real about Trump, democracy and the Supreme Court - The Hill

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John Fetterman was always going to be trouble. Hes 6ft 8in, bald and tattooed. As one admiring magazine article put it, like a Hells Angel with a Harvard degree. The Democratic senator from Pennsylvania elected in the mid-terms of 2022 survived a stroke during the campaign and a recent hospitalisation for depression. He speaks his mind, which has led him into a dark and dangerous place: the mental and physical state of the Democratic Party.

The senator, a former supporter of the left-wing presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, used to style himself a Democrat and a progressive but has dropped the progressive label. In a pre-Christmas interview with The New York Times that caused some considerable upset on the left, Fetterman said he

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Democrats get ready to ditch the progressives - The Times

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