Authored by John Cody via Remix News,

Germany’s governing coalition may be increasingly on shaky ground after the astounding string of election losses of the Free Democrats (FDP), the smallest partner in the country’s three-party coalition. Now, there are voices within the FDP calling on federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner, who is also chairman of the party, to abandon the left-liberal coalition after the poor outcome in Bavaria and Hesse over the weekend.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, right, and German Finance Minister Christian Lindner in the German Bundestag. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

After the results came in, FDP MP Frank Schäffler told Bild newspaper that the ruling “traffic light” government has a “millstone around our neck” that is dragging the FDP “further and further into the abyss.” He demanded that the coalition agreement between the FDP and the other two parties be renegotiated or scrapped. Thuringian state leader, FDP’s Thomas Kemmerich, called the Greens an “overreaching party” that could not be relied upon to build any kind of stable government.

Lindner himself issued a stark warning that “the traffic light as a whole has lost legitimacy. Nobody can be satisfied with the federal government’s approval ratings. Improvements are necessary.”

German Finance Minister Christian Lindner delivers his speech during the first day of the budget 2024 debate at the Bundestag in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

In addition, FDP Federal Vice President Wolfgang Kubicki also called for a “course correction” of the coalition in the federal government after the elections, while FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai appeared on the ARD state-run channel, where he stated, “We have to find solutions in the coalition on the economy and the mega-issue of migration.” To do this, he said the FDP will sit down with the other parties and analyze “what common understanding we have or whether we have one at all.” His comments revealed his doubts about whether such a “common understanding” can actually be found.

Even before the election, Djir-Sarai described the FDP’s Green coalition partner as a “security risk for the country” over the raging migration crisis encouraged by the ruling government. The harsh words were seen as potentially both a warning, but also an attempt by the FDP to gain voters back. Regardless, many within the FDP are wondering why the party continues to govern with the Greens if it presents a “security risk.”

Germans want a change of government

There have been ongoing disputes within the three-party governing coalition of the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens, and the FDP since nearly the beginning, but those disputes have only sharpened as discontent grows. While all three parties suffered serious losses following regional elections in Bavaria and Hesse, which saw the Alternative for Germany (AfD) outperform, the FDP in particular suffered, failing to even reach the 5-percent minimum threshold to enter parliament in Bavaria and just making it with 5 percent in Hesse.

Nevertheless, the public’s souring mood toward the ruling government may be one of the few factors keeping FDP from abandoning its coalition partners, as any snap election could see the party removed entirely from government. As German media outlet NTV reports, “If the FDP were to let the traffic light collapse prematurely out of fear of its own collapse, the coalition parties’ chances of being re-elected would be extremely poor. According to current surveys, the CDU is a full 10 percentage points ahead of the SPD, and the AfD is now almost twice as strong as the Free Democrats. The internal stability of the FDP has become a survival factor for the traffic light.”

A poll released yesterday by Bild newspapers shows that Germans want new elections and to cast out the left-liberal government, with immigration named as the top motivating issue.

String of losses adds up for the FDP

Bavaria and Hesse are hardly the only debacles facing the FDP since it joined the coalition, as the 2022 election cycle saw the party experience one loss after another. Last year, the FDP did not score high enough to reach the state parliament in Saarland and was also kicked out of the ruling government following elections in both Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia. The party has also failed to secure entry in the state parliaments of Berlin and Lower Saxony.

Lindner has ruled out leaving the coalition, saying about the election over the weekend: “All three coalition partners have lost. And that’s why our job now is to critically examine our government work.” Nevertheless, there may come a breaking point for Lindner, especially as pressure grows on him within the ranks of his own party.

The issue of migration has become especially contentious. As Remix News has previously reported, the FDP has in principle no problem with mass immigration and is seeking to swamp the country with 500,000 migrants a year in order to provide business with cheap labor. However, the FDP has tried to stake out a stance on illegal immigration as the mood against immigration dramatically sours across Germany, a position increasingly complicated by the radical pro-migration sentiment of the FDP’s coalition partners.

Green Party leader Ricarda Lang has, for example, put forward a range of policies that will only encourage more illegal immigration, including sending more money to municipalities to pay for migrants and granting work permits to migrants from the first day they arrive in Germany. She also enthusiastically backs the EU’s new Migration Pact in order to relocate migrants across Europe, a policy vehemently rejected by Hungary and Poland.

The FDP’s status as the weak link in the ruling government is not going away anytime soon. Further losses could initiate a serious crisis for the party, and in turn, also the ruling federal government.

By Ye Xie and Amy Li, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategists

The sovereign wealth fund’s investment in the big banks shows that Beijing is committed to putting a floor under the stock market.

The purchase is limited in size, but the signaling effect could be more important. Unfortunately, the signaling effect works only if investors believe that the National Team has deep pockets to keep buying the dip. The reality is that the cash pile at Central Huijin Investment Ltd. is dwindling fast.  

Chinese equity markets responded positively to the news that Huijin bought about $65 million of shares in the four largest Chinese banks, and pledged to increase holdings over the next six months.

It fits the historical pattern where intervention by the state fund tended to support the market in the short term, as this column noted yesterday. But history also shows these actions alone won’t be able to sustain the market over time.

The sovereign wealth fund could be formidable if it has unlimited fire power. That’s not the case, though. Huijin has been burning through its cash over the past two years. Cash and cash equivalents have declined to 30 billion yuan ($4.1 billion) as of June, from a peak of 301 billion in 2021.

The cash has been used to pay dividends and interest to the fund’s shareholders — i.e. the government. Presumably, it was to help fund the cash-pinched government as the economy slowed.

Ultimately, to rejuvenate the market, the economy and corporate earnings growth need to pick up. And there’s not much the National Team can do to help with that.

Recent attacks on Israel by Hamas have placed the Gaza Strip firmly in the spotlight of the global news cycle.

While conflict in that part of the world is thoroughly covered in headlines and news stories, more basic facts about Gaza receive less attention.

With this infographic, Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley fills in some of those gaps, including demographics, infrastructure, and more.

Below, we outline three key facts to know about the Gaza Strip and the people who live there:

1. Gaza is Young and Increasingly Crowded

Gaza has a high fertility rate (3.9), and as a result, nearly half of the people living there are children. Much of this rapidly growing population lives in crowded cities and camps that are some of the most densely populated areas in the world.

The majority of people in the Gaza Strip are officially considered refugees by the UN. Over many decades, refugee camps have become permanent settlements, blending with the surrounding urban areas. Upwards of 80% of the population relies on international aid for basic services and sustenance.

In terms of religion, Gaza is very uniform. 99% of the population are Sunni Muslims. This is similar to Egypt and other North African nations.

2. The Territory is Tightly Controlled

Israel has enforced a land, air, and sea blockade since 2007, when Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip and Israel’s Security Cabinet labeled region a “hostile entity”. The land border of Gaza Strip is heavily fortified consisting of double-wired fencing and concrete barriers. These borders follow the “Green Line”, a demarcation set after the end of the Arab–Israeli War. There is also a 100-300 meter buffer zone inside the territory’s border where access is restricted.

There are two border crossings—one into Egypt in the south and one into Israel in the north—that a limited number of civilians can cross. Over the years, border crossings on the east side of the territory have been closed down. There is an additional large scale crossing on the bottom corner of the territory that serves as a checkpoint for goods entering from Egypt.

The region’s airspace is controlled by Israel. Even its electro-magnetic space is restricted, meaning many Palestinians rely on 2G and 3G.

3. Infrastructure is Patchy

Multiple years of conflict and underinvestment have left infrastructure in shambles in much of the Gaza Strip.

For example, there is a just single diesel power plant servicing the entire region. Power lines run into Gaza from neighboring Israel, but even in non-conflict periods, the region runs a large electricity deficit.

Gaza accesses fresh water via the Coastal Aquifer—an underground water supply that is dwindling due to over-extraction—and from desalination plants. International aid efforts are improving the situation, but infrastructure remains damaged by neglect and intermittent air strikes.

Water treatment infrastructure has slowly been improving due to foreign aid, and less raw sewage is now entering the Mediterranean Sea. This clean-up effort has helped create more recreation opportunities along the territory’s beaches.

By Bre Bradham, Bloomberg markets live reporter and analyst

When US banks kick off the third-quarter earnings season Friday, it will mark the first in a long line of hurdles the group needs to clear in order to assuage investor fears.

Bank stocks are hovering near the lowest level of the year, a mark hit in May following First Republic Bank’s collapse. The KBW Bank Index has tumbled 24% this year, a sharp underperformance to the S&P 500 Index’s 13% gain. Five of the largest US banks, excluding JPMorgan Chase & Co., have combined to lose about $100 billion in market capitalization this year.

“Investors in the bank space just have about a half-dozen issues that are out there that need to get resolved to their better satisfaction,” Piper Sandler analyst R. Scott Siefers said.

Among the challenges are new regulatory proposals that would impose higher capital requirements on banks, unrealized losses in their securities’ portfolios and rising bad loan write-offs. The demise of three banks in the S&P 500 earlier this year is also still fresh in investors’ minds.

The sector fell 1% on Thursday, underperforming the broader market as yields climbed.

“Investors are sort of looking at things and saying, the spring was an actual crisis with three large bank failures. The summer was downward estimates revisions due to interest rates and funding pressures, and now you’re telling me we’re on the cusp of a potential credit cycle,” Siefers said. “The industry is in sort of a show-me phase right now.”

The weakness in recent weeks has been driven in part by concerns over unrealized losses due to rising bond yields. With the Federal Reserve’s path of interest-rate hikes remaining uncertain and instances of bank charge-offs due to borrower distress emerging, investors will likely remain bolted to the sidelines.

“Third-quarter is not likely to flip a switch from good to bad, but it is likely to affirm an upward progression of loan losses from what’s been unusually favorable levels,” Wells Fargo analyst Mike Mayo said about credit.

For Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analyst Christopher McGratty, it’s going to take time to get more constructive on bank stocks. The market can’t account for credit weakness until it can get a sense of just how deep it will run.

“There’s a high degree of unpredictability,” said McGratty. His firm has a market-weight stance on the sector.

Meanwhile, banks’ net interest income results will be in focus amid the higher deposit costs, as firms continue to compete for business amid the tumult sparked by the collapses of regional lenders like Silicon Valley Bank in March. JPMorgan, one of the first firms scheduled to report third-quarter results on Friday, is expected to be an NII outlier among its biggest peers because of its acquisition of First Republic.

Shares of the nation’s biggest bank gained more than 8% this year, adding $30 billion in market capitalization. That’s made JPMorgan roughly twice as big as the second-largest US bank by market value, Bank of America Corp.

Analysts expect guidance to reflect relative stability, following downward revisions from many banks over the summer.

Of course, the uncertainties could be resolved in a favorable way to banks. The Fed could engineer a soft landing, rate cuts could alleviate deposit costs and final versions of regulatory proposals may be tempered.

Given that the sector’s trading at such cheap valuations, some analysts have argued for investors to take a stock-picking approach. Others warn the group has become woefully undervalued and poised for a bounce. Earnings season will bring “micro” factors to “center stage” and banks could outperform, according to Citi analysts.

“Large-cap banks appear materially oversold,” UBS analyst Erika Najarian wrote in a note recently. “Once again, stocks are reflecting what we think are unwarranted existential concerns, rather than the fundamental issues.”

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (Emphasis ours),

Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a recent interview that Democrats want to “ruin” American cities.

During an interview with actor Rob Lowe on his podcast, the former bodybuilder and “Terminator” star responded to a statement that the Republican Party wants “strong military, low taxes, less government, [and] more personal freedoms.”

Mr. Schwarzenegger, 76, chimed in by adding “strong law enforcement.”

When he was asked by Mr. Lowe what it means to be a Democrat, he responded: “Ruin your cities. That’s what the Democrats would say. We are about ruining the cities. We want to [expletive] up every city in America. That seems to be the theme right now.”

“Why is that?” Mr. Lowe asked.

“I have no idea,” he replied.

Although Mr. Schwarzenegger served as California governor as a Republican between 2003 and 2011, he became increasingly critical of GOP policies during former President Donald Trump’s tenure and also made a number of controversial statements during the COVID-19 pandemic. Notably, he criticized people for not wearing masks or getting COVID-19 vaccines, drawing pushback from conservative media and via social media.

“There is a virus here. It kills people. And the only way we prevent it is to get vaccinated, to wear masks, to do social distancing, washing your hands all the time, and not just to think about, ‘Well, my freedom is being disturbed here,'” he said in 2021, drawing condemnation. “No. Screw your freedom. With freedom comes obligations and responsibilities.”

Despite the comments, in a September interview with the New York Times, the former California governor insisted that believes he still has a home in the Republican Party.

“There is a home for me in the Republican Party. In the state of California, the Republican Party has done a horrible job to represent the people,” he claimed. “When you’re in the Legislature, you’re not supposed to represent only your district; you’re also supposed to represent the state and move the state forward and work with everyone in order to make life better.”

He then claimed that the “majority of Californians … want to get rid of fossil fuels,” which Republicans do not support. He did not cite evidence for his assertion.

But in a recent “View” appearance, he stated that the current U.S. immigration system is “set up to commit a crime,” while appearing to suggest that more work visas should be issued. He also cited concerns about drug cartels and terrorism for better border security.

“You have to really have comprehensive immigration reform, and you have to look at this immigration problem in a comprehensive way. You can, first of all, I believe very strongly in having a border that no one can get through. That’s number one for me,” he stated on “The View” earlier this year.

He added: “Number two, what is important is that we have visas available for people that want to work in the United States, so they don’t have to work illegally. It is bogus, we need the workers here,” he said, responding to co-host Ana Navarro.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

One unexpected blowback from the medieval Hamas’s barbaric murdering of hundreds of Israeli civilians is the revelation of current global amorality.

More than 20 Harvard university identity politics groups pledged their support to the Hamas murderers—to the utter silence for days of Harvard President Claudine Gay.

Americans knew higher education practiced racist admission policies. It has long promoted racially segregated dorms and graduations. And de facto it has destroyed the First Amendment.

But the overt support for Hamas killers by the diversity, equity, and inclusion crowd on a lot of campuses exposes to Americans the real moral and intellectual rot in higher education.

Democratic Socialist members of the new woke Democrat Party openly expressed ecstatic support for Hamas’s bloodwork.

Their biggest fears were not dead fellow Americans or hostages, or some 1,000 butchered Jewish civilians. Instead they were fearful that righteous Israeli retaliation might destroy the Hamas death machine.

Palestinians for years fooled naïfs in Europe and the Obama and Biden administrations into sending billions of dollars into Gaza.

These monies were channeled to tunnel into Israel, to obtain a huge rocket arsenal, and to craft plans to wipe out Jews.

The Biden administration has blood on its hands.

As soon as Biden took power, he resumed massive subsidies to radical Palestinians, canceled by the prior Trump administration.

He ignored warnings from his own state Department that such fungible moneys would soon fuel Hamas terrorism.

His administration dropped sanctions against Iran, ensuring that Tehran would enjoy a multi-billion-dollar windfall to be distributed to Israel’s existential enemies—another fact well known to the Biden administration.

If the Biden administration had announced overtly that it was rabidly anti-Israel, it would be hard to imagine anything it could have done differently from its present nihilist behavior.

Biden and company quickly restarted the defunct Iran appeasement deal—a leftover from the anti-Israeli Obama administration. No surprise, they appointed radical pro-Iranian activist Robert Malley to head the negotiations.

Malley allegedly has leaked American classified documents to Iranian officials and is under investigation by the FBI. He did his best to place pro-Iranian, anti-American activists into the high echelons of the U.S. government.

Biden was intent on forcing South Korea to release to Iran $6 billion in sanctioned frozen money.

That expectation of cash ensured Iran would be reimbursed for its present terrorist arming spree.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken shamefully tweeted that Israel should settle for an immediate ceasefire. No wonder he soon withdrew his unhinged posting.

That idiocy would be the moral equivalent of an American ally in December1941 urging the U.S. to seek negotiations with imperial Japan after its surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor—to avoid a “cycle of violence.”

The Biden team has drained strategic arms stockpiles in Israel, designed to help the Jewish state in extremis.

It recklessly abandoned a multibillion-dollar arms trove in Kabul, some of which reportedly made its way from Taliban killers to the Hamas murderers.

Once the mass murdering started, the amoral clarity of our “allies” was stunning.

NATO partner Turkey openly sided with the killers. It —along with Blinken—called for a cease fire—at the moment the Hamas death squads had finished, and Israel was ready to hold Hamas to account.

Qatar, where the U.S. Central Command is based, proved little more than a Hamas front.

It offers sanctuary to the architects of Hamas killing. And Qatar ensures a safe financial pipeline to Hamas from Iran and the radical Arab world.

Some of the most vehement current supporters of the Hamas death squads were immigrants to America from the Middle East.

Oddly, they apparently had fled just such illiberal Middle East regimes to reach a tolerant, democratic, and secure United States.

Yet they now endorse the Hamas butchering of Jewish civilians. Its savagery is aimed at executing, raping, and beheading Jews, and then mutilating their bodies.

Hamas apparently hopes to shock the Israeli government into voluntarily committing suicide—in line with the ancient Hamas agenda to destroy the Jewish state.

In a strange way, this reign of death has become a touchstone, an acid test of sorts that has revealed the utter amorality of enemies abroad and quite dangerous people at home.

It is past time that Americans deal with the medieval world that was revealed this week rather than keep dreaming in the fantasy world of our government.

Americans need to stop illegal immigration and restore their southern border, while ceasing all immigration from unhinged, hostile nations.

The military must return to its deterrent role and fire its woke commissariat.

Our leaders must accept that in the last three years of the Biden administration, serial American appeasement abroad, disunity at home, and social chaos have encouraged an entire host of enemies —China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Middle East illiberal regimes, and former friends like Turkey and Qatar.

And our enemies dream of doing to us what we just saw in Israel.

Over the last decade, Apple’s research and development (R&D) spending has jumped from about $3 billion to over $26 billion.

The world’s largest company, like other tech giants, is investing heavily in R&D on the heels of AI disruption and the rapid speed of innovation. As these technologies become more pervasive in our daily lives, so too has investment in R&D across major companies.

As Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld shows in the following graphic, using data from Trendline, the scale of spending at the 10 biggest companies listed on the Nasdaq is significant…

R&D Investment by the 10 Biggest Nasdaq Firms

In 2022, the 10 largest Nasdaq companies by market cap spent roughly $222 billion on R&D—a figure that has risen considerably in recent years.

*Trailing 12 months, ending December 31, 2022. Nvidia and Broadcom data is as of January 29, 2023.

Amazon invested over $73 billion in R&D last year, more than double the levels seen at Meta or Apple. R&D spending increased 30% over the year for the retail heavyweight, as it invested in technology infrastructure that underlies everything from software to autonomous vehicles.

Facebook parent Meta spent almost a third of its annual revenues on R&D in 2022, the highest proportion across the 10 largest Nasdaq companies. The majority of these investments were through its research arm, Reality Labs, which is focused on building a metaverse. However, the company has since pivoted away from its work on the metaverse due to a lackluster response—instead focusing on generative AI.

Chipmaker Nvidia, which has seen its market capitalization skyrocket in 2023, spent over $7 billion on R&D across generative AI, deep learning, robotics, and a number of other research areas. Between 2021 and 2022, investments in R&D grew by 34%.

Fastest Rising R&D Spenders, Globally

Beyond big tech names in the Nasdaq, many companies are accelerating their investment in R&D as the complexity of technology increases.

The table below shows the top 10 companies globally with the highest increase in R&D spend, based on analysis by fDi Intelligence.

China’s largest electric vehicle maker, BYD, increased R&D investment by 133%, the most across companies analyzed. Among its primary research areas is the “Blade Battery”, which is a prismatic battery designed to hold as much as 50% more energy than comparable models.

Two chipmakers, AMD and TSMC also made the list, while three healthcare companies Moderna, Novo Nordisk, and Vertex Pharmaceuticals made significant R&D investments.

The Future of Innovation Spending

Even as many big tech names saw their stock prices fall in 2022, many dramatically increased their R&D investment.

This came as tech firms laid off thousands of employees. Together, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google’s parent company Alphabet laid of 40,000 employees as of early 2023.

Despite challenging environments, the focus on R&D is evident. Large companies can apply innovation across numerous areas of their business, improve efficiencies, with the goal of making the most out of research dollars spent.

At the same time, the complexity of technology is accelerating, requiring companies to spend more to keep with the pace of innovation. This involves investment in engineers, research facilities, along with the cost of running more advanced technological infrastructure.

Between 2000 and 2020, global R&D spending increased more than threefold to $2.4 trillion, a trend that shows minimal signs of slowing.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

The Harvard Crimson on Thursday reported that 79 percent of grades given to Harvard students in 2020-21 were in the A range.

That is an increase of 20 percent over the last decade.

It leaves the question of not how difficult it is to flunk out of Harvard but how difficult it is not to excel. Faculty have apparently solved any equity issues by making everyone a top student.

The problem was raised in the movie “The Incredibles,” when the villainous character “Syndrome” reveals a plan to make everyone a superhero.

Syndrome’s motive is hardly altruistic: He hated superheroes and “with everyone super, no one will be.”

In 2010, 60 percent of Harvard students were given grades in the A range and that was viewed at the time as rather scandalous.

Now, to not get an A, is apparently a shocker.

Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh and Dean of Harvard College Rakesh Khurana reportedly presented the data at the first meeting this year of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Claybaugh admitted that the “report establishes we have a problem — or rather, we have two: the intertwined problems of grade inflation and compression.”

She noted that the effort to secure better teaching evaluations may be driving the upward shift.

She also noted that it obviously “complicates selection processes for prizes, fellowships, or induction into Phi Beta Kappa, which rely heavily on students’ grade point averages.”

In other words, to paraphrase Syndrome: “With everyone an A student, no one will be.”

Yet, the suggestions on how to deal with the problem were even more bizarre. Romance languages and literatures Professor Annabel Kim suggested the “abolition of grading” and the institution of “narrative-based” evaluations.It is not clear how employers would be informed of the narrative-based performance of students in school.

On this trajectory, Harvard will be at 100 percent ‘A’s in year 2033. It may seem the perfect grading system for a trophy generation. However, my students have long objected that they never wanted the trophies.  It is not their generational problem, it is ours. We resolved the struggle over tough decisions by not making them.

What is interesting is that Harvard is creating an effective three-grade system where the curve runs from A+ to A-.

The new report seems to vindicate William F. Buckley, Jr. when he declared “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”

House Democrats had a tense closed-door caucus meeting on Wednesday, after one lawmaker accused another of saying a “shit thing” about Muslims.

The kerfuffle erupted after Rep. Susan Wild (D-PA) described a virtual vigil she attended in the wake of this weekend’s Hamas attack, Politico reports. Wild explained that she didn’t want any religious community to feel ostracized, and noted that Muslim leaders weren’t present at the event to condemn the attack, when Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) – a prominent Jewish Democrat and Israel hawk, loudly interjected.

Accounts differ, however, on whether Gottheimer was referring to Muslims or made an ill-timed remark in an unrelated conversation, with some attendees overhearing him saying “because they’re all guilty” and others saying he stated “because they should feel guilty.” A spokesperson for Gottheimer strongly denied that he was talking about Muslims.

“Congressman Gottheimer never said anything about Muslims in today’s caucus meeting, a community he cares deeply about. Congressman Gottheimer said that the members of Congress who have not yet condemned Hamas terrorists should feel guilty,” said his spokesperson Chris D’Aloia.

“Joshua!” one Democratic lawmaker shouted out in response to his remarks.

Gottheimer insisted later that his comments were taken out of context, and made as part of a separate conversation about condemning Hamas. He has notably complained in recent days that there’s been insufficient criticism of Hamas for the attack.

Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX), a first term progressive lawmaker, then confronted Gottheimer – with Cesar telling Gottheimer that his remarks were a “shit thing to say,” and were “shameful,” after the two argued back and forth, according to six witnesses.

Amid the spat, Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and other progressive lawmakers were spotted leaving the party meeting together.

The dustup shined a bright light on the longtime fracture within the Democratic Party over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s a divide that the party had largely skirted following the bloody surprise terrorist attack this weekend — but one that threatens to roil Democrats further as the war in the Middle East progresses in the weeks ahead. -Politico

Gottheimer’s spokesman then peddled in unconfirmed reports that Hamas beheaded babies. 

“Congressman Gottheimer is furious and deeply disappointed with Members of Congress who have yet to condemn Hamas terrorists for brutally murdering, raping, burning alive, kidnapping, torturing, and beheading innocent babies, children, women, men, and grandparents — including Americans,” said D’Aloia, adding “Congressman Gottheimer said that those members who have not condemned Hamas terrorists should indeed feel guilty. Of course, Congressman Gottheimer doesn’t blame innocent Palestinian civilians — he blames the terrorists.”

The White House has been casting a ‘very public shadow’ of support for Israel – with President Biden on Tuesday forcefully denouncing Hamas’ attack as “pure, unadulterated evil,” and pledging that the United States “has Israel’s back.”

While a handful of progressive lawmakers have publicly pushed for a cease-fire, de-escalation and even stripping government support from Israel, most Democrats in Congress have largely stayed behind the president as he sidestepped those calls.

Biden also has urged lawmakers in both parties to provide emergency funding for Israel and condemned Hamas for the killing of more than 1,000 Israelis and the kidnapping of hundreds more.

Several progressive and more establishment-minded Democrats said that party unity has been palpable so far due in part to the gruesome nature of the attacks on Israel that took place. -Politico

“It was so grotesque that it ended up uniting people even if they have different views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With the exception of a few of the [Democratic Socialists of America] chapters, you really haven’t seen any difference of opinion when it comes to this,” one House Democrat told the outlet.

“There are a couple of people, a handful of people, who are not part of the present, unanimous posture of progressives and Democrats,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of liberal Jewish advocacy group J Street. “That’s where we are today in the immediate aftermath of this attack. I’m not going to say that’s where things will be in a week, two weeks, three weeks, but that’s where we are today.”

DSA Defection

Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) declared in a Wednesday statement that the Democratic Socialists of America’s “inability to look at what has happened as terrorism is very upsetting and shocking,” and that he would be leaving the DSA over their stance on Israel.

I renounce my membership in the DSA pic.twitter.com/rtpxStKW2Q

— Congressman Shri Thanedar (@RepShriThanedar) October 11, 2023