By Halie Soifer in Washington, D.C
This week, the Trump administration announced it was bringing back public executions by firing squad and plans to livestream it, joining only Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Saudi Arabia in allowing executions in the public square.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is giddy about the barbaric spectacle he’s orchestrating, which is hardly surprising given the Trump administration’s embrace of brutality and state-sanctioned violence in the name of justice, with ICE agents killing both immigrants and American citizens in our streets.
Now the world will be forced to watch the U.S. military execute a criminal in its ranks for the first time since WWII, and the first time ever in the public domain. I am deeply fearful my children will see the execution online and associate it with the actions of the U.S. military. It’s one more challenge to add to my growing list of “parenting in the age of Trump.”
Also this week, President Trump twice suggested that Iran should “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego. These two cities are home to more than five million Americans, including many of our loved ones and hundreds of thousands of U.S. service members, including the 5,000 who returned yesterday on the USS Abraham Lincoln after a 322-day deployment to the Middle East.
The president encouraging an adversary to attack and effectively eliminate two U.S. cities – which he described as “a small price to pay” – is purely and utterly depraved. Yet again, another one to add to the list, as I ask myself how to hide these horrific comments from my children.
Developments like these, along with ICE deportations to countries most Americans and the deportees themselves have never heard of, underscore the sheer cruelty of the White House’s dystopian policies, for which all Republicans in Congress are complicit. And it doesn’t stop there. Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” will result in the largest loss of health care coverage for Americans in U.S. history; it has already caused 2.3 million children to lose health insurance, with another 3 million projected to lose coverage.
The biggest cuts to Medicare and Medicaid don’t fully kick in until after the midterms, by design, so Republicans wouldn’t be held accountable for depriving 14 million people of their healthcare. This is another example of the depravity driving Trump’s agenda, with complete Republican acquiescence – remember 100% of them voted for that bill – and they should all be held accountable at the ballot box.
Much has been said this election cycle about problematic candidates on both sides of the aisle, but the truth is that the Democrats running in the midterms represent the strongest set of midterm candidates in recent history. The overwhelming majority of the Democratic candidates running for federal office in 2026 are well positioned to pick up votes from Independent and moderate voters feeling buyer’s remorse and regretting their vote in 2024, which, according to recent polling, represents one in five Americans who voted for Donald Trump. These are the very people who will determine the outcome of this election.
Candidates positioned to flip red Senate seats to blue, such as Gov. Roy Cooper (NC), Sherrod Brown (OH), Mary Peltola (AK), Josh Turek (IA), James Talarico (TX), and Adam Hamilton (KS), are all overperforming not just because of Trump’s plummeting approval ratings, but also because they’re strong mainstream candidates who understand their states, whom we’re proud to support. The overwhelming majority of Democrats on the ballot stand with Jewish Americans on the key issues of importance to our community, including cost-of-living and affordability, the future of democracy, combating antisemitism and hate, and supporting Israel’s security.
For the House too, there are incredible Democratic candidates well positioned to pick up support among voters in the middle who can prove decisive. Candidates such as Cait Conley (NY-17), Rebecca Bennett (NJ-07), Dr. Amish Shah (AZ-01), Paige Cognetti (PA-08), Bob Brooks (PA-7), Bob Harvie (PA-01), Elaine Luria (VA-02), Christina Hines (MI-10), Brian Poindexter (OH-07) – just to name a few – are all well positioned to flip House seats from red to blue, which is why the Cook Political Report just moved 18 more House races in Democrats’ favor.
Donald Trump and Republicans want us to believe that Democrats running this cycle are all extreme left socialists because painting his opponents with a broad brush helps Trump avoid having to defend his record of depravity. In reality, there are only 10-15 Democratic Socialist of America (DSA)-endorsed or other far-left Democrats on the ballot – none of whom are endorsed by JDCA – representing at most four percent of the 468 Democratic candidates running for federal office.
The more mainstream candidates who win, the less influence this small handful of extreme voices will have within a Democratic majority, hopefully led by future Speaker of the House Hakeem Jeffries. This past week, as we marked three years since the horrific loss of life on October 7, we were grateful to Leader Jeffries and many other Democrats for giving voice to our collective pain on a solemn day of remembrance.
Every election cycle, a few extreme candidates capture the national attention, obscuring the vast majority of Democrats who are committed to solving problems for their constituents. JDCA is engaged in the hard work of supporting the vast majority of Democrats who will fight for the issues Jewish voters care about, and we don’t take our direction from the national headlines.
Importantly, here’s what’s also true: every Republican running for Congress this cycle would be a vote for Donald Trump’s extreme agenda of chaos and corruption. We can have real debates about the future of the Democratic Party without losing sight of the grave threat posed by the Republican Party under Trump.
At JDCA, we are focused on electing the 171 Democrats we’ve endorsed who share our values. They lead on the priorities that have long made the Democratic Party the home of Jewish voters, and we know the path to Democrats winning majorities in the House and Senate runs through them because many are positioned to flip red seats to blue. We also know that a vote for any Republican in 2026 is a vote for Donald Trump because 100% of Republicans running in the midterms are complicit with his agenda. Those who split from Trump have been pushed out or walked away, and those remaining have no choice but to fully embrace his extremism.
The only firing we need to do in 2026 is firing Republicans from office – peacefully, at the ballot box – because they should be held accountable for supporting and allowing the depravity of Donald Trump.
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Halie Soifer is the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America