Democrats' massive Israel shift

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Good morning, I'm Jake Sherman,

and I'm Max Cohen.

And welcome to the Daily Punch,

brought to you by PunchPull News.

It is Thursday, April 16th, 2026.

Let's get into the mix here,

or you're watching to the headlines of the day.

Number one, a record number of Senate Democrats vote

against Israel.

Number two, a FISA update.

And number three, quarter, one,

fundraiser.

Good morning.

Good morning, I'm Jake Sherman.

And I'm Max Cohen.

And welcome to the Daily Punch,

brought to you by PunchPull News.

It is Thursday, April 16th, 2026.

Let's get into the mix here.

Quarter, one, fundraising numbers.

Let's get into it, Max.

There's been a slow kind of burning evolution.

I don't even know if an evolution can burn, Max.

But let's just say canned for the moment.

This has been going on for a while,

in which Senate Democrats, House Democrats

have been slowly turning against Israel,

or at least against the Benjamin Netanyahu government

in Israel.

Last night, 40 Senate Democrats,

40.

That is a lot of Senate Democrats voted to block.

U.S. weapons sale to Israel.

This is, as Andrew writes,

the latest sign of the party's growing rift

with Netanyahu's government.

Over its continued military campaigns in the region,

this was Bernie Sanders' provision.

It got an unprecedented level of Democratic support.

Even though Chuck Schumer strongly pro-Israel,

but anti- Netanyahu, he voted against both.

I think one of these was against dumb bombs.

One of them was against caterpillars, bulldozers,

which are used in Israel, especially,

I mean, use both in the West Bank and in Gaza.

The previous resolution by Sanders to block arms sales

to Israel came last July,

and got support from just 27 Senate Democrats.

In April 2025, a similar resolution got 15.

This isn't going anywhere specifically,

not in the Republican House, at least.

What do you think, Max?

You've written about this.

You've written about the evolution of the Democratic party

on these issues.

What do you say?

I think you've summed it up really well.

This is the evolution.

This is where the political tides are turning.

The era of bipartisan support for Israel is ending.

Yes.

You can argue it's already over.

40 out of 47, Jake Senate Democrats.

That is a really large non-law.

I mean, Schumer is on basically an island here.

It's like him, Federman, Coons, Cortez Masto,

Rosen, Blumenthal, Jill Brand.

I know I'm missing maybe one or two,

but I mean, seven in the caucuses

to vote against the other 40.

That's not good math for pro-Israel Democrats.

And as a lot of the Democrats said in their statements,

these are some of the more modern ones, like Kelly or Slocke

and et cetera, like I support Israel.

I can't give them more arms in the middle of Nenyaah,

who's wars, et cetera.

And this has become a very political thing.

And anyone who knows they're going to run for president,

basically in the Senate Democratic caucus,

saw the writing on the wall and said,

I can't support this because they're going to be killed by the base.

And the base is very anti-Israel.

And I think that is what we're seeing

play out in primaries.

We're going to see play out in the 2020 presidential primary

because what Nenyaah, who his actions,

have really made this a wedge issue for Democrats.

And, you know, you have to go back.

I mean, there will be, at some point,

a lot written dissecting this period in American history

in the US-Israel relationship.

It's not fair, and it wouldn't be accurate for us

to say right now what was the cause here,

what sparked this.

But this goes back to the Iran deal during the Obama administration

in which Netanyahu, I mean, goes back,

there's a million different places this goes back to,

but one of the huge aggravating issues

or the original aggravating issues was when Benjamin Netanyahu

came at the invitation of John Boehner to speak to Congress

and to lobby the Congress against the Iran deal.

That was a big part of the rift among Democrats when it came to Netanyahu.

I mean, it's, and it also involves his policy in the West Bank.

It involves obviously the war in Gaza.

But, you know, AOC who has been generally supportive,

and I'm using AOC as a prominent example, Max.

There's many more, but AOC said I believe last week

or the week before that she would no longer vote for the Iron Dome,

which is the Missile Defense Technology, which protects Israel

from missiles from the region,

which has saved untold numbers of lives,

and has been a joint project, at least in the funding sphere,

between the Israelis and the United States.

The United States has funded this for years and years and years.

You know, and it's easy, it's easy to blame Netanyahu.

And I think, you know, even some Republicans will privately say

that Netanyahu does have some blame.

But the party's turn against Israel is noteworthy.

And especially with Chuck Schumer, who has,

but by the way, Chuck Schumer, who took to the Senate floor not long ago

and said Netanyahu in a very controversial address among Jewish voters

said that Netanyahu should no longer be the prime minister of Israel

and should give way to somebody else.

So the politics here, Max, are incredibly, incredibly interesting

and something that we will continue to pay attention to,

because listen, this is playing a big role

in democratic primaries across the country.

It is, this is not an issue that's just confined to Washington

or whatever, like this is a major issue among the democratic base

in the democratic base that just is.

Last thing I'll say here quickly is, this is where the democratic voters are going.

You look at polling of younger Democrats

and support for Israel is a minority position.

So in some ways, this is congressional Democrats catching up

to where public opinion is among their voters.

And to be fair, this is also happening among young Republicans

who are also growing skeptical of Israel.

So I think you look at the US Israel relationship,

it's going through a seismic shift, and Capitol is going to be where these things are playing out,

but honestly playing out on a delay based on where public opinion polling is.

When we get back after the break, it's about FISA.

Stay tuned.

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Congress opposed the Durban Marshall Credit Card mandates.

Number two story this morning, Max FISA, the FISA flop.

Let's just talk about where we are for a second,

which is the House Republican Conference,

the House Republican leadership planned a vote yesterday on FISA.

A vote on the rule.

They said they wanted to do the rule and the bill.

By the end of the day, they had canceled both.

They are trying to get a deal with hard-line Republicans on warrant requirements.

This is something that the hard-line conservatives were clamoring about for a very, very long time.

This is nothing new.

And they're trying to get a deal between the White House and hard-line conservatives

in exchange for that deal.

Potentially, we don't know that this will come to fruition, but potentially,

it would include a trade for three years of FISA instead of 18 months.

That would be a big win for the administration.

But basically what they're trying to do right now is they're trying to take this Clay Higgins resolution.

Clay Higgins Republican of Louisiana, who often wears three-piece suits,

which is just a side note, Max.

Three-piece suits are, they are what they are.

I'm not a fashion connoisseur, but I just wanted to mention this.

I do not wear three-piece suits, but this warrant requirement that he has,

which is the basis for negotiations, effectively says if you're going to search 702 data,

the warrantless wire-tap data, to find out information about American citizens

that you believe to have foreign connections, you need to have a warrant.

I don't think that's what it's going to end up as.

But what they're basically trying to do is talk to the administration about what they can stomach,

what they can deal with.

And they want to be able to use this program as they've used it in the past,

but the hard line right is going to want to have some sort of warrant requirement.

And part of this is that they need a rule.

They need a rule to get this thing on the floor.

They don't want to do it on suspension.

There isn't the level of democratic support needed to do it on suspension,

so they're having to negotiate with Higgins and others.

Now we could have seen this.

We saw this from a mile away.

The leadership in the White House have been pushing a clean Pfizer for 18 months.

For a long time now, I don't know why they were pushing that.

These problems existed for a long time.

They've existed for years.

Remember, Max, back in 2024, when they last renewed this,

Mike Johnson abandoned efforts to do a five year Pfizer renewal

because hard line conservatives said, hey, listen, Trump will be in the White House.

So want to do reforms to Pfizer.

He doesn't want to do reforms to Pfizer.

He wants a clean one.

So they were, they were wrong on that one.

This has just been a mess, Max.

What do you think?

It's just a playdeals advocate.

I mean, we also write in this item that we believe this will get past this week.

I do.

I do.

I mean, I'm trying not to be too skeptical of Johnson here.

He tends to get his way out of these situations.

And listen, Johnson's in the gang of eight.

He understands, and they've said publicly, various people.

I don't know if Johnson has said this, but some massive amount of data

that's in the presidential daily brief and that Johnson and the other congressional leaders

get in their intelligence briefings comes from 5702.

Yeah.

Like no one argues that this is not an effective program.

They just argue that it's going to be used.

But the, the retort to that from some is okay.

Yeah, it's been abused.

Perhaps, but we have all these reforms that we've already gotten into law.

There's no need to put more reforms in place.

So I don't know, Max.

I don't know.

I'll say, as you mentioned, in terms of the math for suspension, definitely not there.

I was talking to House Democrats a lot this week.

And a common line I heard is, why would we give cash, Patel's FBI more power to surveil

that there's just such little trust and Trump administration and Trump administration officials.

Even for this critical national security program, House Democrats are by and large

not willing to give them leeway here.

Yeah.

But that's a big change because there's been a lot of Democrats who have voted for this in the past.

Number three story.

Morning, Max.

You're going to take the lead on this because House and Senate dams have posted massive Q1

numbers.

Massive.

James Telleriko, 27 million, John Osso, 14 million, Sherrod Brown, 10 million, Roy Cooper,

8.8 million, Mary Peltola, in Alaska, 8.7 million.

Dams are beaten the hell out of Republicans on the fundraising front.

And that's not even to mention the House landscape where 11 Democratic challengers raised

over $1 million in the House.

And they're House.

Crazy.

It's not incumbent Democrat.

Crazy.

Yeah.

I mean, the enthusiasm is on a Democratic side.

And the money for individual candidates on is on a Democratic side.

Those are good news for Democrats.

But we got to also note, this isn't a full picture, right?

Super PACs are really good for Republicans.

Huge Republican mega donors are giving lots of money.

I saw like Miriam Adelson gave $40 million last quarter just herself.

So I think it's useful to look at these Democratic numbers and say, hey, Democratic candidates

are doing really well fundraising.

That's not to say Republicans won't have money to push back.

I would say money matters, especially individual candidate money, because they could buy ads

at lower rates.

So that's why they matter.

But Super PACs are just are where it's at right now.

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