‘Taking On AIPAC Again,’ Cori Bush Launches Campaign to Win Back House Seat
“I’m running again because St. Louis deserves leadership that doesn’t wait for permission, doesn’t answer to wealthy donors, and doesn’t hide when things get tough.”
Then-Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-Mo.) speaks to voters on August 6, 2024 in St Louis.
(Photo by Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images)
Brett Wilkins
Oct 03, 2025
COMMON DREAMS
Former Democratic Congresswoman Cori Bush is running again in Missouri to reclaim the US House seat from which she was ousted last year amid a tsunami of campaign spending against her and other progressives by the Israel lobby.
“St. Louis deserves a leader who is built different. That’s why I’m running to represent Missouri’s 1st District in Congress,” Bush announced Friday on social media. “We need a fighter who will lower costs, protect our communities, and make life fairer. I’ll be that fighter.”
“I ran for Congress to change things for regular people,” Bush says in her first 2026 campaign ad. “I’m running again because St. Louis deserves leadership that doesn’t wait for permission, doesn’t answer to wealthy donors, and doesn’t hide when things get tough.”
Bush—a two-term member of the so-called “Squad” of progressive House lawmakers—was defeated in her district’s August 2024 Democratic primary by current Rep. Wesley Bell (D-Mo.), a former county prosecutor.
Nearly two-thirds of Bell’s campaign funding came from one source: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s independent expenditures arm and conduit for dark money, the United Democracy Project, which allocated more than $100 million toward defeating candidates AIPAC deemed insufficiently supportive of Israel.
Image by @TrackAIPAC/X
UDP also spent heavily last year to defeat then-Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and to help thwart the Democratic congressional candidacy of Susheela Jayapal in Oregon and former Republican Congressman John Hostettler’s comeback bid in Indiana.
AIPAC’s largesse was stoked by Bush’s steadfast advocacy for Palestine and staunch opposition to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. It was Bush who, just over a week into Israel’s genocidal retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7 attack, introduced the first House ceasefire resolution.
Bush was also one of the first lawmakers to call Israel’s annihilation and starvation of Gaza a genocide—as countless observers have since done, including numerous members of Congress, national governments and leaders, jurists, Holocaust scholars, and United Nations experts.
However, it was championing the needs and values of her overwhelmingly working-class community that propelled Bush—who rose to prominence during the Ferguson, Missouri protests against the police killing of unarmed Black man Michael Brown—to her 2020 Democratic primary victory over an opponent whose family had held the 1st Congressional District seat for half a century.
For example, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Bush led a five-day sit-in outside Congress, where she slept rough with other Squad members and persuaded the Biden administration to extend a temporary eviction moratorium. She also secured hundreds of millions of dollars in economic recovery funds via the American Rescue Plan signed by former President Joe Biden in 2021.
While Bell dismissed Bush’s comeback bid by contending that “the headlines and controversies of the past aren’t what we need,” progressives cheered her reentry into the political arena.
The political action group Our Revolution quickly endorsed Bush, as it had previously done.
UDP also spent heavily last year to defeat then-Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and to help thwart the Democratic congressional candidacy of Susheela Jayapal in Oregon and former Republican Congressman John Hostettler’s comeback bid in Indiana.
AIPAC’s largesse was stoked by Bush’s steadfast advocacy for Palestine and staunch opposition to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. It was Bush who, just over a week into Israel’s genocidal retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7 attack, introduced the first House ceasefire resolution.
Bush was also one of the first lawmakers to call Israel’s annihilation and starvation of Gaza a genocide—as countless observers have since done, including numerous members of Congress, national governments and leaders, jurists, Holocaust scholars, and United Nations experts.
However, it was championing the needs and values of her overwhelmingly working-class community that propelled Bush—who rose to prominence during the Ferguson, Missouri protests against the police killing of unarmed Black man Michael Brown—to her 2020 Democratic primary victory over an opponent whose family had held the 1st Congressional District seat for half a century.
For example, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Bush led a five-day sit-in outside Congress, where she slept rough with other Squad members and persuaded the Biden administration to extend a temporary eviction moratorium. She also secured hundreds of millions of dollars in economic recovery funds via the American Rescue Plan signed by former President Joe Biden in 2021.
While Bell dismissed Bush’s comeback bid by contending that “the headlines and controversies of the past aren’t what we need,” progressives cheered her reentry into the political arena.
The political action group Our Revolution quickly endorsed Bush, as it had previously done.
“Cori Bush embodies the values of our movement—she is a nurse, a pastor, and an activist who rose up from Ferguson to fight for working families in Congress,” Our Revolution executive director Joseph Geevarghese said in a statement. “She has been a fearless advocate for Medicare for All, student debt cancellation, housing rights, climate justice, and an end to US military support of Israel.”
“That’s why oligarchs and dark money super PACs spent millions to buy this seat and silence her voice,” he added. “But they cannot silence the people she represents, and Our Revolution is proud to stand with her as she takes back the people’s seat in Missouri’s 1st.”
“That’s why oligarchs and dark money super PACs spent millions to buy this seat and silence her voice,” he added. “But they cannot silence the people she represents, and Our Revolution is proud to stand with her as she takes back the people’s seat in Missouri’s 1st.”
Israel’s Supporters Are Using Islamophobia to Distract From Genocide; Don’t Fall For It
Every American should recognize these increasingly unhinged attacks for what they are: Cynical attempts to protect Israel from criticism by frightening the American public.
Every American should recognize these increasingly unhinged attacks for what they are: Cynical attempts to protect Israel from criticism by frightening the American public.
U.S. Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) speaks with the media on April 1, 2025 in Ormond Beach, Florida.
(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Edward Ahmed Mitchell
Oct 04, 2025
Common Dreams
Sharia law is taking over America, from Dearborn to New York City. So is the Muslim Brotherhood. And they are doing so with help from the communist left.
These claims should sound familiar to anyone who has kept track of the rhetoric coming from the Israeli government’s supporters over the past few months. From politicians like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) to keyboard warriors like Laura Loomer and Eyal Yakoby, some of Israel’s biggest cheerleaders keep finding new ways to manufacture hysteria about Islam and Muslims.
Sharia law is taking over America, from Dearborn to New York City. So is the Muslim Brotherhood. And they are doing so with help from the communist left.
These claims should sound familiar to anyone who has kept track of the rhetoric coming from the Israeli government’s supporters over the past few months. From politicians like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) to keyboard warriors like Laura Loomer and Eyal Yakoby, some of Israel’s biggest cheerleaders keep finding new ways to manufacture hysteria about Islam and Muslims.
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What’s behind this sudden and seemingly coordinated attempt to resurrect conspiracy theories about Muslims that were debunked years ago?
It’s certainly not because anyone truly believes that 6 million Americans are trying to somehow impose Islamic law on 300 million Americans. The real reason is simple: Gaza.
The real threat to our nation is not Muslims in Dearborn or Dallas—it’s corrupt politicians who put Israel first, waste taxpayer dollars on genocide, and try to distract Americans with lies and fear.
DropSite News recently revealed that the Israeli Foreign Ministry is conducting a global survey of the United States and European nations to gauge Western attitudes towards Israel.
The preliminary results show widespread opposition to the Israeli government because of its genocide in Gaza. But the results also show that support for Israel rebounded by 20 points when the pollster stoked fears of “Radical Islam” and “Jihadism.”
Cue the sudden surge in anti-Muslim rhetoric across the pro-Israel ecosphere.
To be clear, this strategy is nothing new.
For years, pro-Israel foundations played a major role in funding anti-Muslim hate groups like ACT for America, the Middle East Forum, and the Investigative Project on Terrorism, all of which are also led by anti-Palestinian extremists.
These groups and their funders have long feared the American Muslim community’s growing population, increased political activism, and consistent support for Palestinian human rights.
Because a thriving and politically impactful American Muslim community might one day reorient US foreign policy on Israel in a more just direction, American Muslims had to be smeared and silenced.
History is now repeating itself amid the Gaza genocide.
Texas Gov. Abbott just responded to manufactured controversy about a Muslim-led real estate project by signing a law that supposedly “bans sharia” (it doesn’t) and Rep. Fine has introduced a bill to ban sharia across the country (it won’t). Their political stunts replicate an unconstitutional attempt to ban sharia that swept through red states in the early 2010s.
Although anti-sharia hysteria eventually fizzled out, its proponents never gave up their other goal: painting American Muslims and their institutions as puppets of foreign boogeymen.
Israel’s supporters in Congress have spent years pushing to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group so that the government can then use that designation to launch witch hunts into American Muslim groups falsely accused of being tied to the Egyptian organization.
The first bill that attempted to do so was introduced in 2014 by pro-Israel hawk former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) with the backing of Frank Gaffney, who is also the founder of pro-Israel (and anti-Muslim) Center for Security Policy. The bill failed. The same fate befell other versions of the legislation pushed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who reintroduced his latest “modernized” bill in 2025.
In recent weeks, Laura Loomer has been using her apparent influence over the Trump administration to demand that the State Department unilaterally designate the Brotherhood as a terrorist group.
So has Eyal Yakoby, an Israeli-American college student who has become one of the Gaza genocide’s most prolific defenders on social media. Between September 21 and 29, Yakoby has posted “Ban the Muslim Brotherhood!” at least 12 different times.
Nearly every other post in Yakoby’s Twitter feed also hypes the supposed global threat of Muslims, from Dearborn to the United Kingdom to Nigeria. Yakoby even earned a community note for falsely blaming seasonal wildfires in Syria on Muslims “lighting Christian villages” on fire.
Another prominent pro-Israel figure pushing such hysteria is Amy Mekelburg, who has manufactured several controversies about the imaginary threat of sharia law taking over Texas, of all places.
Another odd talking point Israel’s supporters have pushed in recent months is the claim that American conservatives critical of Israel, like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, have been bribed by—you guessed it—Muslims.
Every American should recognize these increasingly unhinged attacks for what they are: Cynical attempts to protect Israel from criticism by frightening the American public, keeping political conservatives in line, and silencing American Muslims.
The real threat to our nation is not Muslims in Dearborn or Dallas—it’s corrupt politicians who put Israel first, waste taxpayer dollars on genocide, and try to distract Americans with lies and fear.
They’ve done it before, and now they’re doing it again. No one should fall for it this time.
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Edward Ahmed Mitchell
Edward Ahmed Mitchell is a civil rights attorney who serves as the national deputy executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States.
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