Coffee Break: Democrats Tangle Themselves on ICE and Israel

American Democrats continue to entangle themselves in issues involving ICE and Israel where their base has moved far to their left.

Unlike the Republicans, who are openly debating the influence of Israel over their politics, Democrats are trying to have it both ways on the issues of ICE and Israel.

Political Moves in a Post-Democratic Republic?

I should also note that these political maneuvers are taking place in a context of unprecedented presidential power when the U.S. Congress has virtually abdicated their powers of war-making and taxation and the POTUS openly muses about whether or not elections should be held in 2026 and 2028.

But as it is not yet clear to what extent the Trump regime will maintain its hold on power, and no jack-booted thugs have burst into my home and confiscated my laptop (yet), we can still talk about opposition politics like it’s 1999.

We’ll start with the putative 2028 front-runner for the Democratic Presidential nomination and his self-inflicted struggles on the topics of ICE and Israel.

Gavin Newsom Had a Big 2025

The California Governor had a strong 2025, taking advantage of opportunities to position himself as the resistor-in-chief. As Joshua A. Cohen wrote for his Ettingermentum Newsletter in which he named Newsom the #1 Political Winner of 2025 praising the “points he put on the board when hardly anyone else could even make it to the basket”:

The stage really was set for any liberal with any ambition to try to make an early mark, and no small number of them tried. Yet the only one of them to see any truly meaningful success so far is California’s 40th governor, who has pulled off one of the largest early polling jumps in the history of modern presidential primaries.
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Ever since the Biden administration went down in flames, liberals have been desperate for anything resembling a leader, and Newsom has slotted himself quite nicely into that role. What makes his success in this so truly remarkable is it is not because he was the first or only Democrat in the country that recognized that liberals wanted their leaders to staunchly oppose Trump. Countless Democratic politicians had recognized that from day one; Newsom was actually quite late to the party in that regard. But while liberal voters have been thoroughly unresponsive to Tim Walz calling Elon Musk a dipshit or even J.B. Pritzker daring Trump to arrest him, they’ve given rapt attention to Newsom’s acts of resistance against the administration.
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What makes Newsom’s surge stand out—and what could make it truly relevant in the long haul—is that it came primarily as a result of tangible wins against Trump. Countless Democrats, including him, may have spent the past year talking about how much they hate Trump, but he’s been the only one to land a real, undeniable blow on him since the inauguration by means of Prop 50. That’s real, it stands out, and it appears as if it’s something that liberal voters are highly privileging.

Cohen’s referring to California’s mid-decade Congressional redistricting (which was in response to Republian Texas doing it first) which could give Democrats as many as five additional seats in the next Congress, unless the Supreme Court overturns the bill Newsom signed, that is.

Having successfully positioned himself as the Democrat’s national champion, Newsom naturally decided to feature rabidly pro-Israel Republican influencer Ben Shapiro on his podcast to discuss ICE and Israel.

Gavin Newsom Agrees With Ben Shapiro

The interview was very revealing.

For example, we learned that Governor Newsom does not agree with his Press Office about whether or not ICE’s invasion of Minnesota and killing of Renee Good constitutes terrorism:

FWIW – Your namesake just disavowed you guys… pic.twitter.com/yldXB0i6Wn

— @amuse (@amuse) January 16, 2026

Ben Shapiro: Your press office tweeted out that it was state sponsored terrorism, which I mean, Governor, I do have to ask you about that. That that that sort of thing makes our politics worse. Yeah. I mean, it does. I mean, our our our ICE officers obviously are not terrorists. A tragic situation is not state sponsored terrorism.

Gavin Newsom: Yeah, I think that’s fair.

Shapiro: Wouldn’t best policy be to cooperate with ICE in the vast majority of cases? So instead of ICE going to, as you say, hospitals and churches to pick people up, they’d be going to jail houses to pick…

Newsom: That’s exactly what they do in California. And we have over 10,000 that I’ve cooperated with since I’ve been governor of California. We work very directly with ICE as it relates to CDCR, state prison. California has cooperated with more ICE transfers probably than any other state in the country.

I vetoed multiple pieces of legislation that have come from my legislature to stop the ability for the state of California to do that.

So when it comes to the issues of violent criminals, when it comes to felons, people that are being released from the largest state system in the United States of America, California cooperates with ICE.

Newsom did attempt to drop Kamala Harris in the grease for going too far left on ICE, but his staff had to clean up after him, per Axios:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom this week hosted conservative Ben Shapiro on his podcast and falsely claimed that Harris supported abolishing ICE during the 2024 campaign.

“​​I remember being on [MSNOW’s] Chris Hayes hours later saying, ‘I think that’s a mistake,'” Newsom recalled.

Newsom’s office clarified his comment later, saying he was referring to a 2018 interview in which Harris called on the government to “critically reexamine” ICE and “think about starting from scratch.”

Newsom is floundering on ICE because he is still thinking in terms of 2020 and the centrist Dem belief that out of control woke rhetoric cost Harris the 2024 election.

Alt-Media Tries to Smarten Up Centrist Dems

Joshua A. Cohen has another installment of his newsletter called “This Isn’t 2020” in which he attempts to wise Newsom, and other centrist Dems, up about ICE and how to respond:

…the hardline opposition to ICE we are seeing could be the start of a durable, popular, and desperately needed movement capable of accomplishing things in a way that the “abolish” and “defund” movements never were at any point.

Because of this, we are now witnessing a defining revealing moment for the Democratic Party’s center.

…their reaction to the murder of Renee Good is simply above and beyond every idiotic choice they’ve made so far, and that’s saying quite a lot. The obsession with past feuds, the self-flagellation, the rigidity, the everything: it is all reaching its apex in a coordinated media push so historically illiterate and out-of-touch that it has almost no comparison.
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The sudden surge in rage against ICE is simply not a case of self-identified radicals waging war against the perceived foundations of civil society in a conscious move away from optics-focused electoralism. To the contrary, it’s a case where the public at large has dragged even Bernie-wing public officials to the left by becoming more radical than they are in response to events.
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After steadily creeping up to all-time highs over the course of 2025, the proposal has now found outright plurality support in at least one poll, something that makes it far more popular than the past three Democratic presidential nominees, both of the party’s Congressional leaders, and the party itself as an organization.
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(ICE) doesn’t have strong bonds with any community. It’s run by a historically unpopular president, not locally-known municipal politicians. It doesn’t provide any public services by wasting your money to harass construction workers and creating short-form social media content for the hyper-engaged MAGA base. Opposing the organization isn’t genuinely radical in the way that calls to defund or abolish the police actually were. It’s a basic conclusion anyone opposed to Trump will come to as long as he uses them as a personal secret police.

But Wait, Newsom’s Terrible on Gaza Too

ICE wasn’t the only issue Shapiro got Newsom tangled up in. They also talked about the genocide in Gaza, and agreed it didn’t happen:

Ben Shapiro: It seems to be have become a sort of de rigueur requirement for Democrats who are running for office to now suggest, for example, (congressional candidate)Scott Weiner just did this, that Israel committed a genocide in Gaza.
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Israel did not commit a genocide in Gaza. There is no standard by which Israel committed a genocide in Gaza just on a factual level. Just a legal and factual level. What is your opinion of this?

Gavin Newsom: My opinion is I understand the tendency for people to make that..to assert that on the basis of the images and the proportionality as it relates genocide. No, no. And by the way, I agree with you

Shapiro: Proportionality doesn’t mean that if you kill my child and I then kill seven criminals that I’ve been disproportionate.

Newsom: I’m not disagreeing with you, but I think the but I understand that tendency on the basis of trying to reconcile the proportionate nature of how the war was ultimately conducted.

Shapiro: I have a question. Why do you feel the need to create a permission structure for that sort of stuff? I mean meaning it’s not true. Why not just say it’s not true?

Newsom: I don’t know the definition. I don’t know the legal threshold. That’s not my opinion. So I don’t I don’t share that opinion as it relates to genocide. I do not I do not agree with that notion that that…

Shapiro: You do understand that if you accuse Israel of committing a genocide, that now puts Israel in the position of it should be a pariah state, because states that commit genocide should be pariah states. So granting legitimacy to that position inherently…

Newsom: I’m not granting legitimacy. I’m just saying the the devastation in Gaza at the human level. You’ve got four kids.

Shapiro: Of course, it’s terrible.

Newsom: No, but I think it’s also important to absorb that a little bit more just as it was sick, and we were clear in our condemnation, these people like me, as it relates to what Hamas did in that act of barbarism and terrorism.

Shapiro: Yeah. Terrorism and wartime collateral damage, of course. And if we refuse to acknowledge that reality, then we end up collateral damage.

Newsom: I have stronger opinions. It wasn’t just collateral.

Shapiro: Really, you think that Israel is targeting civilians?

Newsom: I think some of the double tapping issues. I have a I have a lot of issues with how (Israeli Prime Minister) Bibi (Netanyahu) ultimately conduct the war. I personally do.

And I have a lot of issues that are also painted on the basis of the conversation I had (with Netanyahu) a few weeks later after October 7th, the way he talked about the Palestinians. I kept talking about Hamas. He kept talking about the Palestinians. I kept coming back to Hamas and then ultimately how the war was conducted. Not saying it was a genocide. I’m not.

Newsom might not be able to make a coherent statement regarding Gaza, but he did make it clear that Palestinians have no friend in Gavin.

Ryan Grim of Drop Site News called Newsom’s performance “pathetic” saying “If Gavin Newsom can get pushed around like this by a pipsqueak like Ben Shapiro he most definitely is to weak to be president.”

The Podcaster Tries to Explain to the MSM

David Remnick of The New Yorker interviewed Jennifer Welch, co-host of the “I’ve Had It” podcast (1.5 million subscribers), and the topics of Newsom and Gaza came up:

David Remnick: How’s Gavin Newsom looking to you?
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Jennifer Welch: I like his fight. I like how he relentlessly trolls Trump. I think, with the base, he’s gonna have the same problems that Clinton and Kamala did. Granted he is a white male, and historically they seem to do better in the electorate than women.
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I think that’s gonna be what’s the most shocking for the Democratic establishment candidates is how much the base has moved away from corporate Dems.
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What a lot of people in the Democratic base have issues with Palestine. If (a candidate) can call what is happening a genocide, if he can call Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal, he would be a credible messenger.

Remnick: Those are litmus tests for you?

Welch: I hate the word litmus tests, but I’m realistic in the sense that I believe that we have to call what we’re seeing realistically. You cannot gaslight people about it.

It’s not just the California governor who is tangled up in issues of ICE and Israel, either.

Kamala Harris’ Anti-Semitic VP Vetting?

The New York Times loves nothing more than featuring Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro in articles and opinion pieces with headlines like “Mamdani Isn’t the Future of the Democrats. This Guy Is,” “How the Firebombing of His Home Changed Josh Shapiro,” and “Josh Shapiro Starts a New Chapter, Attacking the ‘Toxicity in D.C.’.”

So it should come as no surprise that the NYT was primed to post about Shapiro’s new memoir and its allegations against Kamala Harris and her vice-presidential vetting process.

Shapiro had previously characterized Harris’ account of the Vice-Presidential selection process as “blatant lies” so the NYT was primed to chronicle a juicy intra-Democratic conflict:

(Governor Josh Shapiro) offered his most detailed accounting to date of the vice-presidential search process in his new memoir…

In short: He suggests that it was far uglier than is commonly known.
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Mr. Shapiro, who is Jewish, details a contentious vetting process in which Ms. Harris’s team focused intensely on his views on Israel — so much so that at one point, he wrote, he was asked if he had ever been an agent of the Israeli government.

“Had I been a double agent for Israel?” wrote Mr. Shapiro, describing his incredulous response to a last-minute question from the vetting team. He responded that the question was offensive, he wrote, and was told, “Well, we have to ask.”

“Have you ever communicated with an undercover agent of Israel?” the questioner, Dana Remus, a former White House counsel, continued, according to Mr. Shapiro, who recounted, “If they were undercover, I responded, how the hell would I know?”

The Atlantic has more:

…the governor also devotes several pages to providing his side of the story from the 2024 search for a vice-presidential candidate, after Harris wrote a detailed account of the traditionally secretive process, which included a less-than-warm meeting with Shapiro.

Their sit-down on August 4, 2024, took place shortly after Shapiro got off the phone with Remus, telling her that he had no way of knowing if he had ever communicated with an undercover Israeli agent.

Harris wrote that before they met at the Naval Observatory, Shapiro asked staff there about how many bedrooms the compound had and whether the Smithsonian might loan him art to decorate the place. The unmistakable implication was that the governor, seen by some Democrats as an ambitious operator with his eye on the presidency, was already measuring the drapes before being selected for the No. 2 role. Shapiro, not surprisingly, offers a different take, writing that his brief discussion with staff from the residence was only “small talk” that had been “analyzed, misrepresented, and picked apart by members of the vice president’s team.”

After Harris and Shapiro sat down, in a dining room that had been cleared of most furniture other than two chairs and a table, there was little in the way of small talk or pleasantries. Each described the conversation as blunt, lacking the traditional warmth of two people trying to determine if a four-year partnership would work. Their discussion was especially tense when Harris asked Shapiro if he would apologize for some of his comments about protesters at the University of Pennsylvania who had built encampments to decry Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and, in some cases, intimidated Jewish students.

Shapiro wrote that he “flatly” told Harris that he would not. It was one of several times he claims that he had to stand his ground after Harris’s team brought up issues on which he had taken a different stance from hers and asked if he would be willing to apologize or otherwise make a public about-face.
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“It nagged at me that their questions weren’t really about substance,” he wrote. “Rather, they were questioning my ideology, my approach, my world view.”

I wonder if the Harris campaign’s concerns had anything to do with Shapiro’s record as a volunteer for the IDF or past statements about the Middle East:

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro wrote in his college newspaper in 1993 that peace “will never come” to the Middle East and expressed skepticism about the viability of a two-state solution, describing Palestinians as “too battle-minded” to coexist with Israel.

In the opinion article, titled “Peace not possible,” Shapiro, then a 20-year-old student at the University of Rochester, argued that a negotiated accord between Israeli and Palestinian leaders would not end conflict in the region, writing: “Using history as precedent, peace between Arabs and Israelis is virtually impossible and will never come.”

He described the Arab world as fractious, and wrote that the then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was in danger of being assassinated “by his fellow belligerent Arabs.”

“Palestinians will not coexist peacefully,” Shapiro wrote. “They do not have the capabilities to establish their own homeland and make it successful even with the aid of Israel and the United States. They are too battle-minded to be able to establish a peaceful homeland of their own.”

I’m also guessing that Shapiro was unaware that he was not the only VP prospect to get the “are you a foreign agent question,” from CNN:

Josh Shapiro wasn’t the only finalist to be Kamala Harris’ running mate who was asked if he had ever been an agent of a foreign government, four sources familiar with the matter told CNN on Monday. Tim Walz was, too.

The Minnesota governor — whom Harris ultimately picked — was asked by her vetting team if he had ever been an agent of China, prompted by aides’ review of the multiple trips Walz took to China before running for office.
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“The crux of vetting is asking uncomfortable and even farfetched questions, especially ones that could be raised by your opponents. ‘Have you ever had an affair?’ ‘Have you ever embezzled state funds?’ ‘Have you ever been an agent for another country?’ The point isn’t that you believe any of it to be true,” said a person close to Remus. “It’s that the subject needs to be on record with definitive answers.”

Shapiro may have Israel issues that separate him from the Democratic base, but he’s somewhat better on ICE, telling MSNOW:

Josh Shapiro: I think this administration has not shown a desire for reform but rather just a desire to rip apart communities, to make people less safe, to try and isolate certain people in this country based on the accent that they have, demanding that people show papers who are American citizens.

That is not how we do things in this country. So I think the Trump administration has shown a desire to be hateful as opposed to being hopeful, hopeful in the sense of being able to create a pathway to some real reform. And their divisiveness is making all of us less safe.

For Shapiro to get back on the national scene as a presidential candidate in 2028, he’ll need to win re-election as Pennsylvania governor this year.

His GOP opponent, State Treasurer Stacy Garrity seems to be running on a platform of “Josh Shapiro sucks.”

She’s got plenty to work with.

Time will tell if Pennsylvania voters solve the national Democrats’ Josh Shapiro problem, but getting in sync with their base voters on ICE and Israel will be much harder.