John,

This month, we launched a coalition of 20+ progressive groups united to demand the Democratic Party reject AIPAC, but you might be wondering, who is AIPAC anyway?

If you already know the deal about AIPAC and want to fuel our work to stop their dangerous influence in Washington, chip in here.

Otherwise, here’s an explainer on AIPAC and why we’re taking them on:

AIPAC stands for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobby group founded in the 1950s to build bipartisan support for Israel in Congress.

For most of AIPAC’s existence, it didn’t get involved in elections. They didn’t need to. But following the groundbreaking elections of AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley, Congress for the first time had members willing to speak out for Palestinian human rights. The Democratic base began to shift on the issue, recognizing Israel’s apartheid rule over Palestinians.

As a result, in 2021 AIPAC formed its own PAC and Super PAC known as United Democracy Project (UDP) that waded into Democratic primaries, spending millions against progressive, pro-peace candidates like Summer Lee and Ilhan Omar.

Let’s be clear: AIPAC’s campaign spending is a sign of weakness. Unconditional support for Israel’s far-right government has been significantly weakened, particularly among Democratic voters. AIPAC’s tactic of last resort is to threaten to spend millions of dollars to silence anyone who may speak out for Palestinian human rights.

That’s why it’s so important that we have the Squad’s back. We can’t let AIPAC’s fear tactics work. Chip in now to help us reject AIPAC and re-elect the Squad in 2024.

So where does AIPAC’s funding come from? While they claim to be bipartisan, AIPAC is fueled by massive donations from millionaires and billionaires, including right-wing megadonors who’ve donated to Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Nikki Haley. The same people trying to re-elect Trump are bankrolling AIPAC’s primaries against the Squad.

AIPAC’s dark money influence is widespread: last cycle, only 33 out of 535 members of Congress did not receive money from the group's network. Who AIPAC targets, however, is a narrow group of candidates and elected officials. AIPAC’s Super PAC exclusively spends against Democrats in primaries — particularly young, Black and brown progressive champions like the Squad. In fact, more than 85% of the money UDP (AIPAC’s Super PAC) has spent has been against candidates of color.

Not only that, but AIPAC has ardently endorsed and contributed to 109 Republican insurrectionists who denied the 2020 election results, as well as more than 200 anti-abortion Republican extremists. They recently congratulated retiring Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on a job well done for his decades of work stonewalling progress, stacking the SCOTUS with Republicans, and pushing a far-right agenda.

All in all, AIPAC is a right-wing organization, and it’s our job to build a movement to expose their right-wing agenda to all voters so that they are rejected by the Democratic Party, following the same path as other lobby groups like the NRA.

That fight starts now. AIPAC and its affiliates are going all-out to try and take down the Squad and any other Democrat who expresses support for a ceasefire and peace in Gaza. Last year, they announced plans to spend an unprecedented $100 million in this year’s elections. They’ve already run attack ads against Jamaal Bowman, Summer Lee, and Cori Bush while hand-picking their primary opponents.

Enough is enough. It is time for the Democratic Party as a whole to do what’s right and stand up against AIPAC’s threat to our democracy.

We’re fighting back against AIPAC’s attacks on the Squad while pushing for ALL Democratic candidates to reject their dark money once and for all: will you pitch in $5 or whatever you can to support our Reject AIPAC campaign?

Contribute $5

We’ve defeated AIPAC and its millions of dollars of right-wing megadonor money before — now more than ever, we need to do it again, and we need to put an end to their interference in our Democratic elections.

In solidarity,

Justice Democrats