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In the weeks leading up to Tuesdays primary election, voters in two of Texas most populous counties were bombarded with warnings that their safety hinged on voting down two reformist district attorney candidates.

Incumbent Travis County District Attorney Jos Garza was lenient on rape and child sexual assault and put a political bullseye on police officers, his Democratic primary opponent Jeremy Sylestine alleged without evidence. Mailers sent by a dark money group baselessly accused Garza of filling Austins streets with pedophiles [and] killers.

In Harris County, incumbent District Attorney Kim Ogg, who was elected in 2016 on a reformist platform but later veered right and fought against cash bail reform, claimed she was facing a primary challenge from progressive Sean Teare because she did not agree to open the doors of the jail to violent offenders.

Despite the fearmongering, voters in both counties overwhelmingly chose the candidates promising to reform the criminal justice system. Garza and Teare were declared the winners on Tuesday night after early returns showed Garza with 67% of the vote and Teare with 75%.

Anonymous dark money organizations spent untold dollars promoting lies and peddling misinformation to try to scare voters into turning their backs on progress, Garza said in a Tuesday night victory speech. This community didnt take the bait, and Im so grateful to all of you for that.

Although both candidates will face Republican challengers in the November general election, they are running in counties that lean Democrat.

Garza, a former public defender, and labor and immigrant rights attorney, was elected Travis County district attorney in 2020. In an interview with The Appeal, he promised to prosecute police violence, cease prosecution of low-level drug offenses, oppose the construction of a new jail, work to protect immigrants from deportation, rarely seek prison sentences longer than 20 years, and never seek the death penalty.

Garza has made good on some of those promises. He indicted 19 police officers for assault during Black Lives Matter protests, started a restorative justice program, and expanded pretrial diversion programs to avoid conviction and incarceration for certain offenses. He also joined several prosecutors who pledged not to prosecute people for abortions after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.

Unsurprisingly, Republicans and law enforcement groups mobilized to oust Garza. Last year, state Republicans passed a law allowing prosecutors to be removed from office for declining to prosecute certain offenses. All prosecutors exercise discretion in choosing which cases to pursue, but this bill was clearly aimed at removing progressive prosecutors. Shortly after the bill passed, the Republican candidate who lost the 2020 district attorney race to Garza wrote a petition for Garzas removal. Harry, who was living in Florida, recruited Travis County residents to file the petition.

Sylestine, who started his career as a public defender and then spent 15 years in the Travis County district attorneys office, was recruited by a group of wealthy business people who insisted, inaccurately, that crime had risen in Austin under Garza and that his reforms were to blame. In fact, incidents of homicide, rape, robbery and burglary have deceased since Garza took office, according to Austin Police Department data. Sylestines campaign attracted support from Austins police union and a group called Save Austin Now, which pushed to reinstate criminal penalties for being homeless in public.

Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla, which is headquartered in Austin, emailed his employees on Tuesday, encouraging them to vote for a new district attorney who will actually prosecute crimes. Musk, who also owns X (formerly Twitter), urged his 175.4 million followers on the platform to vote for a new DA, in a post that was deleted by Wednesday morning.

The truth is, Republicans tried to infiltrate our primary, Garza said during his Tuesday night speech. How did that work out for them?

Ogg, who lost her primary reelection on Tuesday, made history in 2016 when she became Harris Countys first openly gay top prosecutor and the countys first Democratic DA in decades. In a county known as the execution capital of the U.S., Ogg promised to reduce the use of the death penalty, supported misdemeanor bail reform and diversion programs for low-level marijuana possession cases.

Shortly after Ogg took office, a federal judge ruled that Harris Countys bail system was unconstitutional. Initially, Ogg praised the ruling and the class action lawsuit that brought about the decision. But in 2019, she reversed course, and fought against a proposedsettlement, which would largely end the use of cash bail for misdemeanor offenses.

Around that time, Ogg complained that too many dangerous misdemeanor offenders were avoiding pretrial detention, listing people accused of domestic violence, stalking and driving under the influence.

During her time in office, Oggs rhetoric increasingly aligned with the anti-reform camp. She accused the countys mostly Democratic judges of being too lenient in setting bail amounts.

We are fighting those bonds low, insufficient bonds daily in court, Ogg said in 2022. It has become the new battleground for public safety.

That year, Oggs office filed criminal charges in more than 4,500 cases that judges said lacked probable cause. Meanwhile, 28 people died in custody while awaiting trial in the overcrowded Harris County Jail. More than 40% of Oggs January campaign contributions came from the bail bond industry.

Teare, a former prosecutor in Oggs office, told Bolts, a criminal justice and voting rights publication, last month that Ogg fostered a culture of fear in her office where prosecutors are wary of dismissing weak cases, allowing pretrial release or offering plea deals for lower charges. On his website, Teare states his support for misdemeanor bail reform, linking to a study that found it did not lead to increased crime. Unlike Garza, Teare has not pledged to not seek the death penalty.

In an interview with Texas Monthly, Ogg accused Teare of running a campaign of political tricks backed by Jewish billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros, a common talking point among right-wing conspiracy theorists and anti-Semites. Although a Soros-funded PAC contributed ad buys and polling help to Teare, Soros also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect Ogg in 2016, Texas Monthly noted.

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Progressives Win Two Texas District Attorney Races - Yahoo! Voices

The Progressive House Squad is demanding more from President Joe Biden in Gaza ahead of his third State of the Union address.

Progressive Democrats, who have long expressed outrage over Bidens support for Israel during the War in Gaza, believe that his latest actions arent enough. The administration has taken several major moves to send aid to starving Palestinians in Gaza, including airdropping supplies, and, as will be announced tonight, opening up a port to facilitate further aid. Despite this, progressives want more.

Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Cori Bush (D-MO), and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) all told Axios that Biden must do more to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinians, mainly by stopping Israels assault.

If the port brings in hundreds of trucks a day, thats great, but we need a ceasefire now, Bowman told the outlet. Furthermore, Biden should press for the release of the hostages in the West Bank and Gaza, not just in Gaza, and ensure a pathway to peace for the Palestinians.

Omar put it more bluntly, saying that Biden needs to end the onslaught.

Bush said that Biden must push for a lasting ceasefire, rather than a temporary one, and restore funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agencyfor Palestine Refugees in the Near East.

However, they noted that they arent getting their hopes up for those promises in the State of the Union.

Im hoping to hear all of that, Bowman said, but, I probably wont.

Bush also signaled her wider support for Biden, despite not revealing if she voted for him in her states primary.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Right now my focus is making sure that we save lives now, because if we do the work to save lives now then we protect our democracy in November, she told the outlet.

How we save our democracy is by listening to the voters and the more than 70% of Democrats saying they want a ceasefire, Bush added.

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State of the Union 2024: Progressive 'Squad' turns up heat on Biden with demands ahead of speech - Washington Examiner

In an interview with the New York Post, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) said that the Progressive movement left him, and he doesnt recognize it anymore.

The interview, which was conducted in the dark, ranged from the border crisis to how Fetterman, who once championed himself as a progressive, now doesnt associate with the movement.

Its not so much that I left the title, the title left me, Fetterman said in the interview. Increasingly, [progressives] moved and migrated into some positions that I dont agree with and I really just feel much more comfortable just being a Democrat,

Fetterman, who endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for president in 2016, also hit his colleagues for refusing to acknowledge the border crisis.

He pointed out how the record number of illegal immigrants crossing the border is larger than the population of Pittsburgh, the second-largest city in his home state of Pennsylvania.

There is a crisis, he said. We have a crisis at our border, and it cant be controversial that we should have a secure border.

He called for both parties to come together and solve the border problem and said he believes that President Joe Biden believes that there is an issue at the border.

We have Democratic cities across the nation that have brought this issue to the forefront and they deserve to be supported and I believe ultimately they will be supported from a federal level, Fetterman said.

He also hit some of his fellow Democrats on their lack of support for Israel.

He said he doesnt want to be a part of a group that acts like they dont know what From the River to the Sea means.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

It is a chant used by pro-Palestine supporters that calls for the eradication of Israel.

Its just a lot of moral clarity in the situation because you have a special relationship with Israel, he said. That nation is most reflective of the kinds of open, progressive, liberal policies, and its a strange paradox where the most progressive members of our party seem to not recognize that Israel is a nation that supports those values.

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Fetterman continues his feud with progressive Democrats and says they 'left' him - Washington Examiner

Like many American Jews, we feel alienated from our historical left-wing political home, especially since Hamas vicious terrorist attack on Oct. 7. If more progressives were on the streets rallying for a two-state solution, denouncing terrorism, and advocating for an end to the siege of Gaza by both Egypt and Israel, we would gladly endorse them.

We deeply desire the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel and view it as an essential step in obtaining long term peace in the region. But movements that seem dedicated to Palestinian safety and self-determination to the exclusion of equally valid Jewish needs have no place for us.

Progressive leaders and followers alike have wielded hateful tropes and lines of advocacy against Israel since Oct. 7 many doing so even before Israel had begun its intensive military response. We hope to explain why some of them are so hurtful as the basis for continued dialogue and, ultimately, rapprochement.

Redefining Zionism on behalf of Jews. Zionism is the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination in our historic homeland (Israel), to which we are an indigenous people. Many attempt to sever Zionism from Judaism in a way that denies how inextricably interconnected it is with Jewish history, traditions, peoplehood, ritual, etc.

There is a concerted effort by some progressives to redefine Zionism and antisemitism on behalf of Jews, often while tokenizing fringe Jewish voices to do so. Much of this rhetoric asserts that Zionism is inherently racist, predicated on Jewish supremacy and the oppression of Palestinians.

This notion demonizes the existence of a Jewish majority state at the exclusion of equally condemning other nation states, such as the roughly 50 Muslim and 15 Christian majority countries. An inconsistency of this nature cannot be interpreted as anything other than specifically opposing Jewish self-determination.

Casting progressivism and Zionism in opposition. We fear that the words and deeds of many progressive leaders are making us American Jews feel forced to choose between our progressive values and our dedication to Jewish self-determination, which should not be mutually exclusive.

Progressivism strives to uphold the rights of all people, minorities in particular, and supporting Jewish self-determination (Zionism) does exactly that. Progressives should, therefore, be equally dedicated to protecting both Jewish and Palestinian people.

Claiming Israeli Jews are white European settler-colonialists.This characterization ignores that themajority of Israeli Jews would be identified in the American racial caste system as people of color. It also denies the reality that Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel, not Europe.

Denying the link between Anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Opposing the Israeli government and its policies is not inherently antisemitic, but opposing Israels existence is. One can critique specific leaders and governmental policies without wishing away an entire country. Advocating for the destruction of the country where almost half of world Jewry resides threatens the Jewish community with another genocide.

Accusing Israel of genocide. The assertion that Israel, in an effort to protect itself against terrorism (as outlined in Hamas 1988 charter) is committing genocide the purposeful mass killing of innocent civilians with the intent of destroying that ethnic group as a whole is misleading, Holocaust inversion, and modern blood libel.

Perpetuating factually incorrect, inflammatory information about Israel (where almost half of the Jews on Earth reside), feels to many Jews like the repackaging of age-old antisemitic tropes, such as blaming Jews for instigating world conflicts and asserting that Jews are liars who fabricate atrocities against them to gain power. These notions serve as pretense for anti-Jewish hate and violence.

While we support Palestinians right to safety and self-determination, we cannot support people who call Zionism racism, who claim that Jews in Israel are white settler-colonialists, who believe that this war against Hamas is akin to the genocide that Jews experienced during the Holocaust, and who advocate for the elimination of the only Jewish state, which helps to ensure our ongoing survival.

Intentional or not, many Jews feel that these statements are antisemitic and a threat to the safety of Jews everywhere. Until more progressive leaders can forego harmful tropes about Jews and Israel, we and many progressive Jews like us cannot support them.

We do not intend to walk away from progressive causes, but rather to elevate leaders who are simultaneously pro-Palestine and pro-Israel, who lead with nuance, and who understand that the pursuit of peace and justice cannot be devoid of historical context or create pretense to attack one historically vulnerable group in the name of supporting another.

Brodsky, a cantor, and Stanton, a rabbi, are co-clergy at East End Temple in Manhattan.

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The quandary for progressive Jews - New York Daily News

America First conservatives have never called for a civil war. Those are the words of Karl Marx progressives. I personally want elections that are free of determinative fraud and honor the principle of one legitimate ballot per one legitimate voter.

I favor electing America First Conservatives over Karl Marx progressives. I prefer using the sacred right to vote to form a righteous government. A government that will restore the constitutional republic of the United States to a land of divine promise. This creates a much better Society than any form of Karl Marx tyranny.

We already had our Revolutionary War, our Civil War, our world wars, our Civil Rights Movement. It is not a civil war that America needs, "We the people" are fighting a spiritual war over the heart and soul of our government. One nation under God or one nation under tyranny. No shots have to be fired, but elections have to be free and fair.

Chairman Stowe Foundation of Illinois

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Letter: I favor conservatives over progressives - The Dispatch Argus