On Tuesday night, City & State editor Peter Sterne broke the news that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who is widely seen as a standard-bearer of progressive politics and a potential 2028 presidential contender, pledged at a private New York City Democratic Socialists of America meeting to vote no on any funding for Israel military aid in Congress, including for so-called “defensive” weapons.

Ocasio-Cortez followed up on this publicly, tweeting that “The Israeli government is well able to fund the Iron Dome system” and “I will not support Congress sending more taxpayer dollars and military aid to a government that consistently ignores international law and U.S. law.”

Since October 7th, elected officials have struggled to balance the entrenched bipartisan Washington consensus in support of Israel and the sea change in the Democratic base’s sentiment. Perceptions of Israel have collapsed to an unprecedented degree among U.S. voters as the Israeli government’s crimes in Gaza have piled up; per March polling, only 32 percent of Americans hold positive views of the country. Democratic-leaning voters jumped from 35 percent disapproval of Israel in 2023 to 57 percent disapproval now. With voters increasingly and rapidly alienated from U.S. support for what appears to be a rogue apartheid state, Democrats with national profiles are playing catch-up to their base, who are now making demands that would have been unthinkable as recently as Joe Biden’s election.

Ocasio-Cortez has perhaps been dogged the most by the challenge of “defensive” security assistance to Israel. She was famously photographed crying after voting “present” on a 2021 bill that appropriated $1 billion to Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile defense system; eight progressive Democrats and libertarian Republican Thomas Massie voted against the bill. Ocasio-Cortez was also criticized heavily for her speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, where she said that Kamala Harris was “working tirelessly to secure a cease-fire.”