Follow us on social

Jamie Raskin Pramila Jayapal

Democrats to admin: Use your tools to get aid into Gaza now

House Dems joined their Senate counterparts urging the release of all Israeli hostages, too

Analysis | QiOSK

On Wednesday, Democratic Reps. Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Jamie Raskin (Md.), Bill Keating (Mass), Valerie Foushee (N.C.), and Becca Balint (Vt.) introduced a resolution urging the Trump administration to use all possible diplomatic tools to ensure that aid reaches Gaza. The resolution also called for the release of Israeli hostages.

As of Wednesday, the resolution had 92 co-sponsors, all Democrats, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In her press release, Jayapal stated, “Innocent civilian lives — children and babies — can be saved by ensuring that much-needed aid gets to Gazans. … This humanitarian crisis is man-made and can be solved by allowing aid trucks to enter Gaza.”

The resolution is the House companion to an identical Senate resolution introduced last month by Sen.Peter Welch (D-Vt.). That resolution was supported by all 45 Senate Democrats except Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.). The unity of Senate Democrats on getting aid into Gaza reflects American public opinion, although the party has been slow to align with Americans’ views. Over a year ago, 75 percent of Democrats already opposed Israel’s military actions in Gaza. As of April, Pew reported that a majority of Democrats no longer hold a favorable view of Israel.

This dynamic is not limited to Democrats: a recent poll from Data for Progress showed that 76 percent of all U.S. voters (including a 49 percent plurality of Republicans) support a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. Fifty-one percent, including 41 percent of Republicans polled, said they want President Trump to demand a ceasefire as opposed to backing Israel’s new military operation to seize control of the territory.

The House and Senate measures are unlikely to get a vote. Instead they are symbolic, intended to send a message and to unite Democratic support behind getting aid into Gaza. Welch’s bill succeeded in uniting Senate Democrats, and Jayapal’s bill has already attracted additional supporters.

A few Republicans have also expressed concerns about Israel’s conduct. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has condemned it most clearly, posting on X on May 29 that: “Nothing can justify the number of civilian casualties (tens of thousands of women and children) inflicted by Israel in Gaza in the last two years. We should end all U.S. military aid to Israel now.”

Massie’s stance goes beyond what many Democrats have been willing to call for, although his position does reflect the views of the majority of Americans. A recent poll found that 49 percent of Republicans want Trump to rein in Israel, including by withholding security assistance in order to end the bombings, in contrast to 29 percent who oppose that position.

The House resolution comes at a critical time. For over three months, Israel has prevented almost all food, water, and fuel from entering Gaza. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a new entity established by Israel and staffed by American mercenaries, has been responsible for the deaths of dozens of Palestinians since it launched operations in late May. As of Wednesday, the GHF had shut down its four distribution sites after the IDF killed dozens of Palestinians who had tried to receive aid during three separate incidents.

Traditional aid groups like the World Food Program and UNRWA have repeatedly condemned the GHF’s militarization of aid, as well as its general ineptitude and apparent disinterest in preventing famine; the head of UNRWA said that the GHF instead reflects a “distraction from atrocities.” As of early May, the World Health Organization reported that 57 children had already died of malnutrition; the blockade has largely remained in place since then.

The Trump administration has yet to apply significant pressure to Netanyahu to insist that aid be allowed into Gaza. Yet images of starving babies, and now children reportedly coming under fire while trying to obtain food, continue to stream out of Gaza. Given where American public opinion is heading on Israel’s starvation of Palestinians, more members of Congress may decide that voting in favor of getting aid into Gaza is hardly a controversial position.


Top image credit: Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, speaks as Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington, left, listens during a House Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 12, 2019. Andrew Harrer/Pool via REUTERS
Analysis | QiOSK
Erik Prince Blackwater
Top Image Credit: Erik Prince arrives New York Young Republican Club Gala at The Yale Club of New York City in Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S., November 7, 2019. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon

Erik Prince brings his mercenaries to Haiti. What could go wrong?

Military Industrial Complex

Haiti could be Erik Prince’s deadliest gambit yet for business and a ticket back into the good graces of the Washington military industrial complex.

Prince's Blackwater — now called Constellis in its latest incarnation — reigned during the Global War on Terror, but left a legacy of disastrous mishaps, most infamously the 2007 Nisour massacre in Iraq, where Blackwater mercenaries killed 17 civilians. This, plus his willingness in recent years to work for foreign governments in conflicts and for law enforcement across the globe, have made Prince one of the world’s most controversial entrepreneurs.

keep readingShow less
ABBAS ARAGHCHI
Top image credit: May 23, 2025, Rome, Italy: Iranian Foreign Minister ABBAS ARAGHCHI (L) speaks with his Omani counterpart, SAYYID BADR ALBUSAIDI (R), at the Omani Embassy in Rome, during the fifth round of negotiations between Iran and the U.S. (Credit Image: © Iranian Foreign Ministry via ZUMA Press Wire VIA REUTERS)

What exactly is 'shared uranium enrichment' anyway?

Middle East

In a sign of hope for diplomacy over war, the U.S. and Iran began engaging in serious, high level negotiations over Iran’s civilian nuclear program in April for the first time since President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal seven years ago.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has fully empowered his team to negotiate, with one firm limitation: they cannot negotiate “the full dismantling of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.” So bold is Khamenei’s red line on not negotiating away the right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes that he has made it clear to past negotiators that “if Iran is to abandon its right to enrich, it will either have to happen after my death, or I will have to resign from leadership.”

keep readingShow less
David McGuinty Canada
Top photo credit: May 28, 2025, Ottawa, On, CAN: Minister of National Defence David McGuinty makes an address at the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries annual defence industry trade show CANSEC, in Ottawa, on Wednesday, May 28, 2025. (Credit Image: © Justin Tang/The Canadian Press via ZUMA Press)

Canada hosts pre-NATO rearmament affirmation confab

North America

At CANSEC, North America’s largest arms trade show last week, former NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson invoked the spirit of Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 speech: “Only by preparing for war will we be able to protect peace.”

Robertson described an era that saw the formation of independent post-Soviet states in Eastern Europe and the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 with Russia’s first President Boris Yeltsin that thawed relations after the Cold War and formalized an agreement of collaboration.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.