#haley stevens

Washington, DC — Following the introduction of the No Getting Rich in Congress Act, Michigan Congresswoman Haley Stevens released a new video detailing the bill’s strong accountability measures to restore public trust, including a ban on Congressional stock trading.

Watch the video here.

Key Excerpts:

Too many people are getting rich in Congress. That has to stop. I’ve been in Congress for eight years. I’m not a millionaire, I don’t trade stocks.

Today I’m introducing a new bill to ban corruption, insider trading, and yes—getting rich while in Congress. Here’s what it does:

It bans stock trading by Members of Congress and their families.

It bans lobbying for foreign adversaries after you leave Congress.

It bans Members of Congress and their spouses from serving on corporate boards while they’re in office.

So no more getting rich in Congress. Our leaders should be focused on serving their communities, not their stock portfolios.

Oliver Willis at Daily Kos:

Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens of Michigan announced Thursday that she plans to introduce articles of impeachment against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., citing his unscientific medical practices as a threat to public health. “RFK Jr. is making our country less safe and making healthcare less affordable and accessible for Michiganders. His contempt for science, the constant spreading of conspiracy theories, and his complete disregard for the thousands of research hours spent by America’s top doctors and experts is unprecedented, reckless, and dangerous,” she said in a statement. Stevens added that she believes that Kennedy has violated his oath of office and that she intends to “lead the charge to remove him.” Similar to that of the president, articles of impeachment must pass the House, followed by a Senate trial. If convicted in the Senate, an official can then be removed from office. Stevens has accused Kennedy of dereliction of duty, citing cuts to vital research, promotion of medical falsehoods and conspiracies, lying about his views during his confirmation hearing, and failing to administer the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which are under his control.

by Jessica Costescu

His upset victory comes in the wake of the Washington Free Beacon’s revelation that Makled had reposted messages calling slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah a "martyr" and referred to him by the honorific "Sayed," which translates to "Master." Makled likewise shared a post saying Nasrallah’s security chief, Abu Ali Khalil, "was martyred in an 'Israeli' strike in Tehran," adding, "May His Ascension rise High." On the day Israel began its operation against the Islamic Republic last June, he shared a post from @IRIran_Military, a regime fan account, that called for Iran to "show no laxity in sacred war against the enemy."

Service Employees International Union rescinded its endorsement of Makled after the Free Beacon reported on those posts.

The Michigan Democrats’ convention showcased the party’s adversarial position toward Israel. Left-wing Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who has made his fervent opposition to the Jewish state a cornerstone of his campaign, delivered a speech that was enthusiastically received by attendees. Pro-Israel U.S. Senate candidate Haley Stevens and a Democratic Party official who nominated Acker were both loudly booed by the crowd.

Makled highlighted the contrast and told the Michigan Daily, "I think this room is a litmus test of what we can expect come November, if the campaigns are staying strong and moving forward."

Acker called the level of antisemitism in the Michigan Democratic Party "extensive."

One other Stevens statement:

I am deeply concerned by the persistent and growing effort to demonize Israel, the world's only Jewish state and a close American ally, on the international stage. Whether through the chronic bias displayed by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) or accusations put out by groups like Amnesty International, I stand opposed to efforts to unjustifiably brand Israel as an "apartheid state," and I will always work to mitigate the threat of delegitimization against our closest friends in the Middle East. Since its inception in 2006, the UNHRC has created 33 Commissions of Inquiry, out of which nine have dealt with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There have been no UNHRC commissions of inquiry into Iranian or Chinese human rights violations. Israeli Arabs are represented in the Israeli Knesset, Supreme Court, Governing Coalition, and Defense Forces, in short. Instead of holding the world’s only Jewish state to a double standard, we should investigate why its adversaries are so keen on finding new methods to undercut its legitimacy as a vibrant, multi-ethnic democracy. This disastrous characterization of Israel will not serve to end the conflict and suffering in the region but will rather serve to incite violence and hatred toward the world's largest hub of Jewish life amid a time of overwhelming concern for the international Jewish community. I support good faith efforts to address the underlying causes of recurrent tensions and instability in the region in pursuit of peace, but I fervently condemn this campaign to vilify our close American ally with these displays of hateful discrimination.”

This is mainstream American Zionist and Jewish opinion. But I cannot find a single J-Street statement opposing the UN Commission of Inquiry.They issued no condemnation of the antisemitic statements of its member  Miloon Kothari that the "Jewish lobby" controls social media.

J-Street's opposition to Stevens proves that they are not pro-Israel at all.

Moreover, I cannot find a single statement from Andy Levin decrying those who call Israel an "apartheid state." His silence is tacit support. J-Street says it is against that specific term - but they fully support the anti-Israel reports from HRW and Amnesty that make that accusation.

There is a further hypocrisy from J-Street in their letter. They pretend to be upset that AIPAC is turning Israel into a wedge issue - yet that is J-Street's entire purpose, to divide the American Jewish community and to promote the ideas and candidates whose opinions are anathema to most American Jews.

And their self-righteous posturing that billionaire money corrupts democracy is even more hypocritical.  J-Street was formed with the early support (within six months of its founding) of billionaire George Soros, a fact that they tried to hide.

Last night, Rep. Haley Stevens soundly defeated fellow incumbent Rep. Andy Levin in a D-on-D Michigan primary matchup. The race drew significant attention in the Jewish community because of the gobs of money AIPAC spent seeking to oust Levin and support Stevens. Levin earned AIPAC's ire because he is a vigorous proponent of America taking more robust steps to protect a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine -- including steps which entail places checks on Israeli government policies which place that solution in jeopardy. While I endorsed Levin, I want to be clear that I harbor no ill-will towards Haley Stevens, whom I also like and have zero qualms supporting in the 2022 general.

In any event, as the primary season nears its conclusion, it is fair to say that AIPAC's initial foray into direct candidate advocacy has been relatively successful. So far, it has notched ten victories against two defeats in the Democratic primaries it has substantially invested in. To be fair, that figure is a bit misleading, as in many of the races AIPAC either was backing a candidate who already came in as a favorite, or were in relatively low-salience open-seat races where AIPAC's firehose of cash swamped the field. For example, Stevens entered the race against Levin as the substantial favorite -- more of her old turf than Levin's was placed in the new district they both ran in, and she is generally regarded as a better and more natural campaigner than Levin. Indeed, my hot take was that Stevens probably would've bested Levin even without AIPAC's giant cash infusion. But certainly, AIPAC probably is relatively happy with its performance thus far.

What AIPAC bought with its investment into the Stevens campaign was the ability to write a narrative. It's hoping the political message taken from Stevens' victory includes lessons like "pro-Israel is good politics" or "supporting conditioning aid on Israel is a sucker's bet in Democratic politics." Needless to say, AIPAC's critics are hard at work resisting these narratives and trying to spin out others of their own ("AIPAC is a vector for letting GOP billionaires take over Democratic politics"). Meanwhile, as in nearly all races of this sort, the national attention on the race (centered on Israel/Palestine) almost certainly had relatively little impact on the local considerations that drive votes one way or another. At the end of the day, Stevens won her old turf, Levin won his old turf, but the new portions of the districts, formerly represented by Rep. Brenda Lawrence, went to Stevens -- who had Lawrence's endorsement. The actual lessons may not be much more complicated than that.

I want to do my best to separate wheat from chaff here. There are lessons to be drawn from AIPAC's victories this primary season. Though not every ecstatic claim of AIPAC supporters can be borne out, they have proven some lessons true.

At the most basic level, AIPAC's argument is that its primary victories show that Democratic voters support its version of "pro-Israel" politics. Yet this, I will suggest, remains unproven. As much as it has spent on these races, AIPAC has been notorious for virtually never speaking about Israel or Israel-policy in its advertisements or promotions of its preferred candidates. This suggests that it doesn't think that issue is necessarily a winner for them.

However, it does seem true that running against AIPAC's policies is not a winning strategy in most Democratic primaries. This is, perhaps, another "Twitter is not real-life" lesson -- the excitement and enthusiasm one sees online for a candidate who "stands up to the Israel Lobby" is not reflected in on-the-ground political performance. While it's unclear that voters affirmatively value AIPAC-style "pro-Israel" politics, it's quite evident that they don't find even Levin-style two-stateism to be a major political motivator. Similarly, it seems pretty clear that -- as of right now at least -- AIPAC has not faced any substantial backlash from Democratic voters for backing insurrectionist Republicans. A Democratic candidate who is viewed as "the pro-life candidate" is toxic in a 2022 Democratic primary. A Democratic candidate who is viewed as "the AIPAC candidate" isn't. This might change over time -- I suspect there is quite a bit of festering ill-will towards AIPAC amongst many Democratic Party actors that is waiting for an opportunity to burst forth -- but right now, AIPAC's position is secure.

It's also worth noting, in the context of right-wing Jews crowing about Levin's defeat to Stevens, that AIPAC's success does seem to decisively falsify the alarmist and opportunist narrative that the Democratic Party is being "taken over" by anti-Israel forces, that such positions are the new normal or mainstream in Democratic political life, and so on. To be clear, I find it repulsive to argue that Andy Levin in any way represents an "anti-Israel" position. But the point is one cannot simultaneously promote all of AIPAC's successes in Democratic primaries while also saying that the true soul of the Democratic Party is irreducibly hostile to Israel.

I also do think it's fair to say that AIPAC has reestablished some of its perhaps decayed deterrent effect. Democrats know that if they get on AIPAC's bad side, it can and will dump vast sums of money into ousting them from office. And by the same token, if they play ball with AIPAC they can access those same sums for themselves. That's a powerful inducement.

That said, the question of how AIPAC's interventions will affect political decision-making by prospective Democratic politicians on Israel is more complicated than might appear at first blush. I do think that, on average, a lesson that will be learned by many mainstream Democrats is "don't get on AIPAC's bad side", and to that end will result in more Democrats taking up AIPAC-friendly positions. Those positions include nominal support for a two-state solution -- AIPAC does that too -- so long as that support doesn't take the form of ever asking for any pressure on Israel or demands that America use its leverage to pushback against Israeli decisions that are destructive to the possibility of eventually establishing a Palestinian state. However, I also think that AIPAC has also paradoxically opened space for at least some Democrats to be more radical on the issue -- for example, in endorsing one-statism* -- because they'll internalize the lesson that more "moderate" approaches like Levin's robust two-stateism don't offer any political advantage.

Let's simplify potential Democratic Israel positions into three categories: (1) AIPAC-style status quo (represented by someone like Stevens), (2) The Andy Levin or J Street style two-stateism , or (3) Rashida Tlaib style one-stateism. Of course, some politicians have very strong feelings on this question and will choose based on those deeply-felt sentiments. However, my core model assumes that most politicians don't have hard-and-fast policy preferences on most issues. Rather, on most issues beyond the rarefied few they care deeply about, they will choose the political path-of-least-resistance amongst the set of choices which meet their basic criteria of moral tolerability, even if a different choice might be closer to their ideal ideological preference. So if we imagine a politician who really doesn't care one way or another about Israel/Palestine -- they are at least not repelled by any of the three forms of Israel positions above -- they won't adopt the position they "believe in" the most, they'll pick the position that is politically easiest and least likely to generate controversy or backlash. AIPAC's victories have strongly suggested that, in many contexts, that would be position #1 -- even in Democratic primaries. And to that extent, AIPAC probably will succeed in moving the Democratic needle towards its preferences.

However, we can also imagine a different sort of potential progressive candidate, one who does not find AIPAC-style status quo advocacy to be morally tolerable. For this candidate, the two viable choices for their Israel/Palestine positions are categories #2 and #3. Historically, many would have picked door #2, again, because it's the path of political least resistance. Indeed, if such a candidate a few years ago had asked me for advice -- had said that they had serious concerns about Israel's behavior and they simply couldn't endorse a position of total and unconditional support -- I'd have told them that, so long as they supported two states and opposed BDS, they'd probably be okay. They wouldn't necessarily be endeared to AIPAC or other like actors, but they wouldn't be seen as beyond the pale either. But endorse BDS, or oppose Israel's existence outright, and the full sound and fury would fall onto them.

But now AIPAC may have changed the calculus. By going scorched earth on Levin, it sends the message that it views categories #2 and #3 as equally destructive. Suddenly, door #2 is not a political "path of least resistance" compared to door #3. And if they're both going to bring AIPAC's full fury down upon the candidate, well, at that point you might as well choose based on your ideological preference. Some of these candidates, will sincerely prefer robust two-stateism over one-stateism (that characterizes me, for instance), so their behavior shouldn't change. But some will no doubt prefer one-stateism, and lacking any political rationale for tacking towards the center, they won't do it anymore.

I worry that this might be the lesson people draw from the Donna Edwards/Glenn Ivey race -- another where AIPAC dumped massive sums of money into the contest. Again, all politics is local and Ivey's victory likely reflects factors that overwhelmingly have nothing to do with AIPAC or Israel. But if one looks at Edwards' trajectory entering this race, and in particular how she tried to heal old suspicions held by Maryland's Jewish voters, it seems hard to argue that she is now (if she ever was) some sort of anti-Israel firebreather. She was never going to be AIPAC's poster girl, but she made a concerted effort to pinch towards the center and assuage Jewish concerns about her record. The result was less than nothing -- AIPAC spends eight figures on sinking her career. To be clear: I have no reason to think that Edwards' moves were anything other than sincere, or that she secretly harbors one-state sympathies. Nonetheless, there absolutely will be other politicians in Edwards' position who may decide "why bother?" There's no sense going through all this effort to listen and grow and build bridges and try and find common ground if they're going to go scorched earth regardless.

In short: there is likely a set of candidates who (a) find both one-stateism and robust two-stateism tolerable, (b) marginally prefer one-stateism over robust two-stateism, (c) would nonetheless back robust two-stateism if that was the path of political least resistance. If robust two-stateism no longer offers any political advantage, they're likely to begin promoting one-stateism. To be clear, these candidates are still likely to lose. AIPAC's hammer puts them at a decided disadvantage. But their logic will be "I'm likely to lose either way, so I might as well swing for the fences." Indeed, there's not just a moral but an instrumental logic here. Consider two strategies: One will have you lose by 10 points in 10/10 races. The second will have you lose by 30 points in 9/10 races, and win by 2 points in the tenth. The rational political actor should choose the second strategy, even if it is objectively less popular (a point I've made regarding the future of BDS in Democratic Party politics)!

Paradoxically, AIPAC may encourage some number of Democratic candidates in the more liberal tranche of the party to start supporting a one-state solution who otherwise would not have done so. And the odds are some of them will end up prevailing in their races (if only because of idiosyncratic local factors). There's a real chance that an upshot of AIPAC's intervention will be to strengthen the political power of the one-state caucus -- not because of some political backlash, but based on how it has altered the political calculus amongst more progressive-minded actors. In many ways, it is J Street that is more of a loser than AIPAC is a winner, and I expect J Street's influence to bleed out not just towards AIPAC, but also towards more radical and uncompromising anti-Israel actors and the far-left. For someone with my politics, that is perhaps the most depressing lesson of all.

So to sum up, here are the lessons I think can be validly drawn from AIPAC's performance this election cycle:

(1) While it isn't demonstrated that Democratic voters support AIPAC's brand of "pro-Israel" policies, it does seem clear that they aren't especially moved or motivated by major alternatives. The political energy behind any alternative to what AIPAC pushes -- whether it's Levin's robust two-state Zionism or explicit non- or anti-Zionist positions -- is vastly exaggerated and isn't translating to on-the-ground political power.

(2) AIPAC, and its affiliates, are not toxic brands in Democratic primaries.

(3) The Democratic Party, including its base, are not "anti-Israel" or sympathetic to "anti-Israel" positions in any meaningful respect.

(4) AIPAC has restored some "deterrent effect" against Democrats who might consider crossing them, at least in circumstances where the Democrat has other political vulnerabilities that can be leveraged (such as after redistricting). Likewise, AIPAC has credibly indicated it can and will substantially invest to support Democrats whom it feels favorable towards.

(5) The average Democratic politician who is not substantially invested in Israel/Palestine as an issue will likely move their position marginally closer to AIPAC's as "political path of least resistance".

(6) Left-wing Democrats who are sympathetic to one-stateism or other more radical anti-Israel positions, but who had been hewing to more J Street style stances because they thought they'd be more politically palatable, may reassess the utility of relative moderation and become more open in their anti-Israel declarations.

* Not the apartheid one-statism where Israel controls the entire territory and Palestinians are perpetual second-class citizens -- AIPAC is clearly fine with that.

I just love how both Haley and Ashley have descriptors that are things like

"respected, advocate, and leader"

while Misha is just....

Roque Planas at The Guardian:

Mallory McMorrow, a Michigan Democrat, has dropped out of a contentious US Senate primary campaign, setting up a straight fight between the party’s progressive and establishment wings – represented by Abdul El-Sayed, a former public health official, and Haley Stevens, a congresswoman. McMorrow’s retreat marks the end of a center-left bid to hold the seat being vacated this year by the Democrat Gary Peters. The three-way primary contest was a close one earlier in the campaign, but polls indicated that McMorrow’s support had plunged in recent weeks, as El-Sayed raced past her and Stevens to emerge as the frontrunner for the party’s nomination. “I may be suspending this campaign, but I am not leaving the fight,” McMorrow said in a video statement announcing her decision to drop out. “When regular people get in the fight, things can change,” she added.

With McMorrow’s exit, the August Democratic primary now evolves into what is becoming a familiar pattern of an establishment candidate facing an opponent from the left. El-Sayed, a supporter of Medicare for all who would be the first Muslim US senator, has drawn high-profile backing from leaders of the American left, including the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who endorsed him last week.

Stevens, a moderate Democrat, has the support of Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, and Super Pacs have spent more than $16m on her campaign, including pro-Israel groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) outraged by El-Sayed’s refusal to say that nation has a right to exist as a Jewish state. “Israel exists,” he told CNN last week. “The question is whether or not we want a politics where our money is sent over to Israel to do genocide and apartheid, instead of investing in our own kids.”

Schumer and other leaders of the Democratic establishment are betting that Stevens would have a better chance of staving off Republican Mike Rogers’s attempt in the November general election, despite the fact that Democratic voters have chosen leftwing challengers over incumbent lawmakers in a string of recent primaries, from New York to Colorado.

McMorrow first attracted national attention in 2022, with a viral speech denouncing Republican attempts to characterize her as a “groomer” for publicly defending LGBTQ+ rights. Her US Senate seat campaign had attracted support from prominent Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Chris Murphy of Connecticut.

But McMorrow’s political star fell in tandem with her public criticism of El-Sayed for campaigning in April with Hasan Piker, an influential leftwing streamer who has been accused of antisemitism for comments about Jews and once said that America “deserved” the September 11 attacks, a comment he later apologized for and cast as a bad joke. McMorrow told Jewish Insider in March, when Piker campaigned with El-Sayed, that the popular streamer was “somebody who says extremely offensive things in order to generate clicks and views”, likening him to Nick Fuentes, the prominent white nationalist. That criticism appeared to fall flat, with McMorrow dropping in public polls from roughly even with El-Sayed and Stevens in early April to a distant third in May and registering in single digits in four polls in June.

Kevin Robillard at HuffPost:

WASHINGTON – Abdul El-Sayed is very confident he can beat Republican Mike Rogers and win Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat in November. “He generally has the charisma of a doorknob,” El-Sayed told HuffPost in a 45-minute interview last week. “He carries all the MAGA baggage, but he also has the aesthetic of the guy at a country club who sneers at you from his Lincoln. He’s not really hard to beat.” “By the time I’m done with him, his golf buddies down in Florida are going to be calling him the names I call him,” he continued, referencing Rogers’ time living in the Sunshine State following his departure from Congress in 2015. “I hope that 20 years from now, he still thinks of me.”

But his bravado is still not shared by the party establishment in D.C. or in Michigan, who fear his progressive positions ― he’s a longtime ally of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and backs Medicare-for-All, abolishing ICE and cutting off aid to Israel ― could cost the party support from moderate voters and ultimately hand the state’s Senate seat, which has been in Democratic hands since 1978, over to Rogers and the GOP. Party leaders, however, don’t seem to be making much headway with their assertions that establishment-oriented Rep. Haley Stevens is actually the most electable pick for the Aug. 4 primary: El-Sayed has led the last seven publicly released polls of the race.

In the past, worries about electability have sunk many progressive candidacies before they could even begin. Before this cycle, the last time a progressive candidate defeated the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s pick in a primary was 2010. Although Democratic voters are still hardwired to care far more about electability than their GOP counterparts, both progressive and moderate party strategists say primary voters no longer trust the party leaders’ judgment on who can win — not after establishment candidates lost to President Donald Trump in 2016, narrowly beat him in 2020 and lost again in 2024. “The last people who have any right to lecture us about electability are the establishment who lost to Donald Trump twice,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said while campaigning for El-Sayed last month. “If you were part of those campaigns, please sit down or exit stage left.”

The stakes for the race are high: Democrats’ relatively narrow path to winning the Senate essentially evaporates if Rogers wins in Michigan. A primary victory for El-Sayed, a Rhodes Scholar and former leader of Detroit’s public health department, would mean the party is counting on left-wing candidates to win in both Michigan and Maine in November. Failing to do so would dramatically undercut the progressive movement, which has gained momentum throughout this primary season. If the Democratic establishment can’t make the case El-Sayed would be a general election loser, they hope GOP interference can do it for them. The National Republican Senatorial Committee recently began running digital ads that attack El-Sayed in ways designed to make him sound more appealing to Democratic primary voters.

[...]

El-Sayed said his campaign would balance trying to win over voters who backed Trump and turning out Democratic voters who might otherwise stay at home, rather than copy past progressive efforts, which have narrowly focused on driving up turnout. He argues voters are ready for a campaign focused on how the proliferation of money in politics is “rigging the system against us.”

[...] Indeed, many parts of the Democratic establishment agree the old model of an electable candidate no longer applies, even if they aren’t quite sold on the full-fledged progressivism of a candidate like El-Sayed. “It’s not a binary choice between overcautious, under-imaginative old guard types on the one hand, and folks who seem to think that any society could exist without law enforcement and borders on the other,” said Andrew Bates, who was a spokesperson for Biden’s 2020 campaign. “The people who win majority-making races create their own big tent that’s both true to themselves and fits their community; they don’t force themselves into a prepackaged box.”