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Coffee Break: AIPAC Wins in Kentucky, Loses in Pennsylvania

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Ed Gallrein, the AIPAC-backed candidate in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional district defeated Thomas Massie in the GOP Primary but Chris Rapp beat two AIPAC-supported candidates to take the Democratic nomination in Pennsylvania’s 3rd district.

But it might be all for naught as Trump has been awarded a $1.8 billion political slush fund and seems to have bad intentions to manipulate the mid-terms.

Kentucky Results

Per the NY Times, Ed Gallrein won the Republican primary in KY-4 with 57,822 votes or 54.9%. Massie lost with 47,539 votes or 45.1% of the vote.

That’s 105,361 total votes. For comparison 41,569 were cast in the Democratic primary which saw Melissa Claire Strange win the nomination.

For comparison Trump won 67% of the district’s vote in the 2024 Presidential election.

AIPAC and their allies invested big in Gallrein’s win:

Eliminating Massie is a big step towards AIPAC’s goal buying of 100% bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress:

As for which voters chose Gallrein over Massie, polling made that clear:

Taking Credit/Assigning Blame

And for those who want to call out “anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists”, let’s here from neo-con zionist John Podhoretz:

Or from AIPAC itself (via MTG):

What Next for Massie?

Massie is blocked from running in the general election as an independent or third party candidate by Kentucky’s Sore Loser law, but CNN has some speculation about his future:

As Massie becomes the latest Republican added to Trump’s growing list of revenge and retribution, his concession speech Tuesday night here in Kentucky sounded like anything but. He delivered a forward-looking message to supporters, who seemed more energized than crestfallen.

“What started out as an election turned into a movement,” Massie said. “We stirred up something. There is a yearning in this country for someone who will vote for principles over party.”

The message of optimism – and defiance – sets the stage for the next chapter of Massie’s political life. His congressional term ends in January. His loyal fans made clear they have bigger things in mind.

As someone in the crowd shouted, “Massie for president!” his supporters erupted in booming applause. For his part, Massie smiled and laughed on stage and kept delivering a speech that was interrupted again and again with loud chants of “2028!”

Time will tell if Massie re-emerges on the political stage, but there was another primary last night where AIPAC did NOT win. Let’s go to Pennsylvania.

Rabb Beats Two AIPAC-Backed Rivals in Philly

I should have covered this race Monday when I previewed Massie-Gallrein, as it was also on the front lines of AIPAC’s efforts to impose total control over the U.S. House.

First the results:

The Philadelphia Inquirer has the basics:

State Rep. Chris Rabb, a democratic socialist who has repeatedly challenged Philadelphia’s political establishment, has won the tightly contested 3rd Congressional District primary — a striking victory for the city’s left-leaning coalition after a combative and rare open contest.

…

In the bluest district in the country, the result sets Rabb on an almost guaranteed path to succeeding U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans, who is retiring after a decade in the seat. Rabb’s election would mark a significant shift from half of Philadelphia voters being represented by a more mainstream Democratic voice to one in the most left-wing faction of Congress.

City & State PA has more:

Given the district makeup, which includes Center City and parts of North and West Philadelphia, the Democratic primary field initially included as many as a dozen candidates. The field narrowed throughout the last few months, with three front-runners leading the way as the May primary election approached: Dr. Ala Stanford, state Sen. Sharif Street and state Rep. Chris Rabb. The fourth remaining candidate is a political newcomer, Shaun Griffith, a tax attorney who previously worked for the state government before opening his own firm in Roxborough.

Street had the name recognition and party connections to fuel a successful campaign from the jump, but has faced stiff competition for the deep blue seat. Rabb sought the progressive crowd and pitched himself as an anti-establishment candidate, while Stanford – who entered the race with a medical background, no legislative experience and the endorsement of Evans – balanced her message as being both a new kind of representative and an experienced public health professional with support from the incumbent.

Aside from the issues at home, the ongoing conflict in Gaza became a flashpoint during the campaign – another instance where Rabb seemed to set himself apart from the more moderate orators in Stanford and Street. Stanford, whose campaign was also accused of accepting funds from pro-Israel groups, had her response to the Israel-Palestine conflict become an albatross among progressive voters who attended community forums.

Philly Voice has a little more:

The costly campaign, estimated at $9.84 million by financial data platform Quiver Quantitative, has been a reflection of the political fault lines between the centrist arm of the Democratic Party, represented by Street and Stanford, and its progressive wing championed by Rabb.

Rabb was first elected to the Pennsylvania legislature in 2016 and has served five terms in the 200th District, which spans Mount Airy and Cedarbrook in Northwest Philadelphia. The former business professor and union organizer at Temple University authored the 2010 book “Invisible Capital,” examining the barriers that societal inequality imposes on entrepreneurship.

In his campaign, Rabb identified as a Democratic Socialist and anti-establishment candidate poised to build on the electoral success of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other progressives. He’s been an outspoken critic of Democrats, including Street and Stanford, who recoil from using the word genocide to describe Israel’s military operation in Gaza.

Rabb’s platform calls for Medicare for All, the Green New Deal and legalizing cannabis for adults. He also wants to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement and end funding to Israel.

And here’s Rabb speaking for himself:

Are the Dems Showing Signs of Breaking Free?

Chris Sosa on Substack argues that last night’s results show a GOP that is eliminating dissent and a Democratic party that is moving towards freedom from foreign control:

As the GOP continues to consolidate into something between a personal party of the sitting president and a purchasable entity by major super PACs, a populist revolt continues in the Democratic Party.
…
Rabb’s win is yet another example of how the pro-Israel consensus on the Democratic side has collapsed amid the Gaza genocide and is unlikely to rebound. However, the sentiment that animates this collapse is rooted in broader value shifts: a growing sense of global community among Democratic voters, who have become more ardently anti-war across the board, more concerned about global human rights and more aware of how systems of power impact their own daily lives.

As the Democratic result demonstrates organic realignment among the party’s own base, the Republican result demonstrates personal fealty to the president’s cult of personality without a clear path toward long-term success under a democratic system.

The president himself is remarkably unpopular, Democrats are favored in the generic ballot for this midterm cycle (despite gerrymandering), and it seems increasingly clear that the Republican Party’s plan for continued success is directly tied to eroding the democratic system further and further to ensure disapproval cannot interrupt its own rule.

And about that…

Does Trump Have a Non-Electoral Victory Map for the Mid-Terms?

Let’s start with Bloomberg’s coverage of Trump’s new $1.8 billion slush fund:

President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service has ended under the shadow of corruption: In exchange for dropping the case over leaked tax returns, the government will set aside money for Trump’s allies, all under his ultimate control and without independent oversight.

The $1.776 billion fund — an apparent nod to the nation’s founding — seems more about advancing political narratives than achieving justice. In fact, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche refused to rule out payouts to individuals who attacked Capitol Police officers on Jan. 6, 2021. Blanche also added an outright gift to Trump and his sons: releasing them from any claims that could be brought against them by the IRS forever. It’s a legally questionable move, since it’s unrelated to Trump’s claims in the lawsuit.

The original lawsuit, brought by the president and his sons, sought an astonishing $10 billion in damages for alleged violations of the Internal Revenue Code and the Privacy Act after an IRS employee shared Trump’s tax returns with the media in 2019. To resolve the conflict, the Justice Department announced Monday that it would establish the so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund to offer financial relief to other individuals, who were not parties to the suit but purportedly targeted with legal action on ideological grounds.

“The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” Blanche said.

Trump and his sons can now cast themselves as benefactors who magnanimously declined to accept any money themselves for the benefit of would-be victims of the DOJ’s alleged weaponization. For good measure, the agreement also requires the IRS to issue an apology to the Trumps. But the money serves two obvious purposes, despite the administration’s lofty claims: creating a false narrative that the Biden administration engaged in “lawfare” and paying off the president’s political henchmen alleged to have suffered from it.

And as for what might be done with this slush fund, Brian Beutler outlines how Trump may plan to put a thumb on the scales of the mid-term elections:

  • Trump’s first major official act in term two was to pardon all January 6 rioters, whether they were under indictment, on trial, convicted, or roaming free.
  • Then on Monday, with the complicity of the Justice and Treasury Departments, Trump stole almost $1.8 billion from taxpayers to create a slush fund nominally designed to pay off pardoned January 6 insurrectionists—but which Trump will control entirely, without oversight.
  • Trump ordered Republicans across the country to rig their House maps mid-Census.
  • When Democrats responded by redrawing their own maps just as aggressively, Republican judges on the U.S. Supreme Court, plus the Supreme Courts of Texas, Virginia, and (soon, it seems) Florida stepped into the fray, allowing Republican gerrymanders to take effect, while throwing out Democratic counter gerrymanders.
  • Trump’s Justice Department has sued the Washington, DC, bar for having the temerity to consider disciplinary action against Jeffrey Clark, a participant in the 2020 coup attempt.
  • Trump threatened to harm the state of Colorado by illegal means, unless its governor, Jared Polis, sprung the 2020 insurrectionist Tina Peters from prison. (Polis complied.)
  • Trump issued an executive order claiming power over mail ballots—specifically, the order requires the Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security to create an unverified list of eligible voters, and prohibits the Post Office from sending mail ballots to anyone not on the list.
  • A DOJ lawyer told a federal judge that the government has taken no concrete steps to implement this executive order, but he appears to have lied: According to NOTUS, officials from the White House, DHS, DOJ, and the Postal Service—including a notorious election denier named Heather Honey—have met regularly in recent weeks to discuss implementing the order and defending it in court.

Most liberals believe the nightmare scenario involves federal jackboots surrounding swing-district polling places and scaring off enough nonwhite citizens to flip results. And there is surely some risk there. If control of the House comes down to, say, 10 races, and Trump thinks he can tamper with two or three by sending ICE agents in droves to Long Island and Pennsylvania, why wouldn’t he give it a shot?

Oh boy.

Stay safe, y’all.

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26 comments

  1. EVO

    There’s a parasite insect that burrows into a much bigger insect, like a cockroach, and grows inside the brain. In a few days the cockroach loses its self-will and literally becomes a zombie controlled by the parasite.

    This is a perfect analogy for what is happening with Israel and United States. A small parasite nation has gained complete control of a much bigger nation.

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  2. Henry Moon Pie

    Television must have been close to unwatchable in that Kentucky district. Nothing but political attack ads for weeks, I’ll bet.

    I think voters need to adopt a new strategy, with the help of an honest non-profit monitoring organization. The non-profit is needed to keep track of negative ads run in a race and publicize it to the relevant voters. Then the voters need to vote FOR the candidate against whom the most attack ads were run. With the way AIPAC and Zionist billionaires are hiding their activities, that may be the only way to avoid voting for Israel.

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    1. Yalt

      I’m across the river but share the same local TV stations and cable network; we couldn’t watch a basketball game without seeing “Massie votes with AOC and Ilhan against Israel” half a dozen times. Although the ad always closed with Trump’s endorsement so I guess it wasn’t a pure attack ad.

      Yes, it was hard to watcch. But I guess my main point is that Gallrein explicitly tied his wagon to Israel and Trump, and won. Nothing hidden about it.

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  3. Carolinian

    Or alternately the rejection of Trump and the Goppers is so overwhelming that no shenanigans will matter. I pick that one.

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  4. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

    I didn’t want to put this in the main post, but there’s lots of conspiraversy going on around this race too.

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  5. St Jacques

    What is needed is a campaign led by Jews, particularly scholars, against modern zionism. The more people understand the history of zionism and the Jewish opposition to zionism from the beginning, the more diffficult it will be for the Israel lobby to call it anti-semitism wjithout it backfiring. Already there are a lot of people beginning to understand this. What is needed now is a big, co-ordinated push in the mainstream public sphere. People must understand the difference between Judaism and zionism, the latter which ironically shares much of its originating ideology in 19th century European ethno-nationalist philosophy and faced widespread opposition from rabbis and traditionalists in its early years.

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    1. upstater

      I got on Jewish Voice for Peace Mailing list after visiting a student encampment at Syracuse University in 2024. They appear to have a very active pro Palestine, Antiwar PAC. They’ve held large demonstrations in NYC. I confess for not donating.

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    2. Victor Sciamarelli

      You make a valid point. However, it’s my understanding that AIPAC political adds never mention Israel. It’s likely most voters are not aware of the extent the Israel lobby is at work behind the scenes during a campaign focused on one issue; which candidate is better for Israel.
      Moreover, Massie was no renegade. Breaking points reported he voted with Trump 90% of the time. Massie crossed Trump’s red line by voting to release the Epstein files and of course his comments against the Gaza genocide was an AIPAC red line.
      We either get money out of politics or make the Israel lobby register as foreign agents or both.

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  6. Yalt

    For what it’s worth…

    Mail-in voters tend to be elderly.
    Gallrein voters tended to be elderly.
    Non-Jewish Israel supporters tend to be elderly.

    (Oops, that was supposed to be a reply to Nat’s post with the @RyanMatta tweets.)

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  7. Tom Stone

    Trump continues to act as though he is immortal while his health, both mental and physical, continues to decline.
    I would be surprised if Trump finishes his term, a stroke seems one LEGO video away.
    Succession is problematic when the “Leader’s” political power is a cult of personality as it is with Trump, Vance doesn’t have the chops, he can succeed Trump legally and plop his ass on the Throne but his support amounts to Thiel and the tech Bro’s.
    When Jesus calls the Donald to heaven there’s no political successor and the resulting factional fight will be one heck of a show.
    Like Toilet Paper USA writ large…

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    1. Henry Moon Pie

      I don’t know, Tom. Don’t you think it’s possible that Donald’s God will assume him directly into heaven, bypassing that whole “dust to dust” thing? Enoch (Genesis 5) and Elijah (2 Kings 2) got the VIP treatment, and Mary too, if you can trust Pope Pius XII’s infallibility. After all, what did Enoch do beyond living 365 years and be joggin’ buds with YHWH? And Elijah? He merely cowed those priests of Ba’al. Isn’t the new Cyrus worthy of the golden chariot treatment?

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  8. upstater

    “Boomers win again”

    I hate this mentality. Retired people have more time to vote and young people are busy or abstain. Oldsters get overly excited and watch old people’s TV. Many of this demographic look at tv all day, every day. What message are the Ellisons pumping out 24/7? These pundits forget the politcal engagement of young people in the 60s and 70s (today’sboomers) which was VERY high and overwhelming leftist. It was systematically destroyed in later decades by apathy and lack of results. remember SANE/FREEZE or opposition to Iraq in 2003? Now big tech feeds minds of young and old. 60s activism is dead.

    Ultimately this is a class and not a generational issue.

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    1. Patrick Lynch

      I agree, it’s a class and not a generational issue. I wish people could see through the media constructs that have labelled us certain ways even if our real lives bear no resemblance to the stereotypes and never did. But those constructs have been very effective at keeping the generations at each other’s throats.

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      1. Henry Moon Pie

        There’s such a thing as generational consciousness, just as there is class consciousness, and dramatic events and experiences can spark that consciousness. I just watched a documentary series on Youtube about the Laurel Canyon community, and several of the musicians spoke about how Woodstock–its size and its peacefulness in the face of very adverse weather and infrastructure issues–was a moment of generational pride and solidarity. One of those musicians, Joni Mitchell, who was not present but watched it intently in media coverage just as my 16 year-old self did, expressed it in her song, “Woodstock:”

        By the time we got to Woodstock
        We were half-a-million strong.

        That’s how I felt. I threw it in the face of my parents as proof my generation’s ways of long hair, rock music and loud dissent were not evil as claimed by the Establishment.

        Of course, Altamont soon followed, though the history of that has long left me wondering if the CIA helped along the stupidity of the Stones, who chose the Angels for security.

        The Boomers who voted against Massie in Kentucky, probably got no closer to Woodstock than I did in Missouri, but even some of them might have caught that feeling of solidarity for a moment. But many who might have experienced that emotion long ago became Pretenders and drifted so far away from whom they were that they would probably regard their young selves as dirty hippies should they encounter themselves now. There’s been a disruption in their personal development so severe that they are completely alienated from who they were.

        I want to know what became of the changes
        We waited for love to bring.
        Were they only the fitful dreams
        Of some greater awakening?
        I’ve been aware of the time going by.
        They say in the end, it’s the wink of an eye.
        And when the morning light comes streaming in,
        You’ll get up and do it again.
        Amen.

        Jackson Browne, “The Pretender”

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  9. Patrick Lynch

    I live in Kentucky in the next district over from Massie’s. I really thought he’d win this one. I have no doubt some sort of skullduggery was involved in this race. Too much money involved.

    As an aside, I was gratified in my district to see that Charles Booker defeated Amy McGrath on the Democratic side. From what I’d seen of her campaign she never seems to learn anything from past well deserved defeats.

    Sabby Sabs’ video today saw Massie’s defeat as an eye opening moment for Republicans as it was for her in 2016 when Bernie lost to Hillary. She suggested that they should exit their party as Independents going forward. Whether or not Massie runs for president, I wouldn’t try to predict. I can imagine the machine that went after him in this race would probably go full nuclear were Massie were to go for the White House.
    https://youtu.be/TP2RHnKjzOI?si=28QbPOs906tbaD_W

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  10. The Rev Kev

    A small note on the difference in the after speeches by Massie and Gillrein. Massie’s supporters in support were chanting “2028” while Gillrein’s supporters were chanting “U-S-A!, U-S-A!”. And of course Hegseth turned up when Defense Secretaries are not suppose to get involved in State politics. But then again, Hegseth is actually the War Secretary or as some people put it, the Secretary for War Crimes.

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    1. Patrick Lynch

      Massie in his speech also noted that the Secretary of War Crimes was supposed to have started back the war the day before but had not because Hegseth was in Kentucky, not DC.

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  11. hk

    Chris Sosa on Substack argues that last night’s results show a GOP that is eliminating dissent and a Democratic party that is moving towards freedom from foreign control

    Some years ago, it was exactly the opposite: the Obama Gang, the Clinton Cabal, and the Collective Biden were busily purging dissent within the Dem Party without serious resistance while there were interesting dissenting voices emerging among the Republicans–like Massie and MTG. What’s different today? The Dems are out of power while the Reps are in power. Power does not merely corrupt: power and corruption are one and the same thing. When the Dems get back to power, no doubt these dissenters will be joining the “mainstream” or get purged themselves.

    Needless to say, I am not too optimistic.

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  13. thoughtfulperson

    The generational breakdown in the massie race was interesting. The turnout was about 1/3 among 65+ who favored the aipac candidate. Massie had strong support esp amongst the young (18-44) but even among 45 to 64 had 53%. Seems like higher turnout among younger voters could have made a difference. Maybe in Nov…

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    1. PVDSteve

      While there’s plenty of justifiable disdain for the 55,000 people who made that choice, that’s 55,000 people in a district with a population of 750,000+. In nearly every election in the US the majority of people don’t vote because they know at the end of the day it doesn’t make much difference in their lives. Massie was obviously better than Galrein but he still voted repeatedly for policies harmful to the majority in his district. So it’s not that most Americans approve of the ruling class, we know that’s not true from all sorts of polling. It’s that most people have (rightly) given up on the electoral system to help them, and those that DO vote (especially in GOP primaries) are largely folks whose brains are so fried from propaganda that they’ll vote for whatever the scary ads on TV tell them to.

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  15. St Jacques

    ZIONIST money! People need to be LOUD and clear about that. Calling it “Jewish” money implies the broader Jewish community, and that is a lie. And as has been widely noted, there are in fact many more Christian zionists than Jewish zionists, and they are a big part of the problem.

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  16. Deb Schultz

    Re the boomer voters. I’m a boomer who frequently listens to CSPAN as I drive to pick up my granddaughter for nursery school. The callers are weighted toward us elderly, people who have the time to call and wait on the line to speak. Often the callers sound a bit hungover or otherwise overly-medicated. I don’t listen long or often enough to know how accurate my impression is but it does seem like most of these callers feel very sure of their viewpoints even while almost NEVER referencing anything but their own life experiences as some sort of proof of the general decline of the country. I get a strong feeling that many of them are lonely, a bit bitter about the conditions they find themselves in. But none of that really explains why so many are so happy to hate. And boy, do they hate the imaginary Democrats and Republicans they carry around in their minds.

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  17. Eclair

    I am too old to be a ‘boomer,’ and am more radical and leftist than most of my friends and neighbors, and even my own children (who are definitely in the liberal Dem classification.)

    I live, after decades in the Los Angeles area and Denver, near a western NY rustbelt city, the tip of Appalachia, and my rural town borders on northwestern Pennsylvania, where Trump banners hang on barns and on the sides of rusting abandoned 18-wheelers.

    My neighbors are almost all working class, conservative Republican; farmers, hunters, truckers, workers at the local Cummins engine facility. Plus Amish families. And we get along just fine. We need each other.

    (The few dentists and lawyers and Democratic Party functionaries in the town keep to themselves. Talk about the class divide!)

    Reply ↓

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