Democrats worked hard three years ago to keep Pennsylvania state Supreme Court Judge David Wecht in office. They have worked even harder to alienate him ever since.
In a statement last night, Wecht announced that he would cease to identify as a Democrat. Graham Platner turned out to be one Totenkopf over the line, but Wecht’s disillusionment with his former party goes well beyond the Left’s ‘good Nazi.’ Far from being anomalous, Wecht argued that their embrace of “Jew-hatred” has made it a mainstream attribute in the Democrat Party:
Justice David Wecht of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court announced Monday that he has dropped his Democratic Party registration and is now unaffiliated, citing concerns over growing tolerance of antisemitism within the party. …
Wecht was part of a trio of justices, alongside Christine Donohue and Kevin Dougherty, involved in the highly contentious 2023 retention race that saw Republicans attempting to unseat them.
All three justices, who ran as Democrats, were reelected to serve another 10 years on the bench.
The GOP did indeed try to beat Wecht and the other two Democrats in that cycle, which was seen as a test of partisan strength after the narrow 2020 election. Republicans also wanted revenge for the court’s rulings in the post-election challenges, which put an end to Donald Trump’s attempts to reverse the results from the Keystone State. In the end, though, that 2023 result didn’t actually offer any predictive value in the 2024 presidential election, as Kamala Harris went on to lose the state to Trump by more than 120,000 votes.
Wecht doesn’t sugar-coat his exit either. Rather than offer a soft approach with an ambiguous reference to ‘shiffing values’ as a reason, Wecht accuses his former party of deliberately embracing “Jew-hatred” and mainstreaming it:
“In 1998, my wife and I were married at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Congregation, on whose Board of Trustees I served. Twenty years later, in the very same sanctuary where our wedding occurred, the worst massacre of Jews in American history was perpetrated. That terror came from the right. Jew-hatred has always festered on the fringe of that sector.
“In the years that have followed, that same hatred has grown on the left. Increasingly, it has moved from the fringe to the mainstream. It is the duty of all good people to fight this virus, and to do so before it is too late . …
“From 1998 to 2001, years that preceded my judicial career, I served as Vice-Chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. In the quarter century that has passed since then, the Democratic Party has changed. Nazi tattoos, jihadist chants, intimidation and attacks at synagogues, and other hateful anti-Jewish invective and actions are minimized, ignored, and even coddled. Acquiescence to Jew-hatred is now disturbingly common among activists, leaders and even many elected officials in the Democratic Party.
“I can no longer abide this. So, I won’t. I am no longer registered within any political party.
Note that Wecht dispenses with the softer term of “anti-Semitism” and opts for the more direct term of “Jew-hatred.” When the party starts embracing candidates who carried the Totenkopf for eighteen-plus years, and starts insisting that people ‘contextualize’ it, they have moved well beyond sneering and discrimination. The party is embracing candidates and officials who speak in terms of annihilation and offer insane blood libels to voters. That’s active hatred, not just discrimination.
It’s not just Platner, either. In New York City, Zohram Mamdani’s election – as a Democrat, endorsed by party leadership – has amplified Jew-hatred to the point where Hamasniks are terrorizing Jewish school children in the streets:
🚨 HAPPENING NOW IN BROOKLYN:
Insane footage of pro-Hamas rioters marching through an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood toward a synagogue while assaulting Jewish kids.
This is what Mamdani wants to see.
He could stop this at any time. https://t.co/RcrTPeA8h6 pic.twitter.com/0wCXoKfsGA
— Yehuda Teitelbaum (@chalavyishmael) May 12, 2026
NYC councilwoman Vickie Paladino (Queens) issued a horrified statement that points out the obvious. Mamdani’s election has sent a signal from Democrats that it’s open season on Jews:
Make no mistake — this is exactly what Mamdani was elected to facilitate. It had nothing to do with free busses or public services or the ‘working class’ or anything else lied about during his campaign.
It was always about a revolutionary vanguard led by the Islamist-Marxist alliance to bring chaos to their political enemies in naked power plays that are meant to clearly announce who’s now in charge here.
When they say ‘every issue is Palestine’ this is what they mean. When they say ‘globalize the intifada’ this is what they mean.
This is it. This is what New York now has to look forward to. And it’s going to get much worse. For Jews, for homeowners, for businesses, for executives and banks and restaurants and everyone who isn’t part of their radical nexus. Nobody is safe. Everyone will be targeted. And they will continue to escalate, likely until they start killing people. All as the mayor looks on and smiles.
Indeed. Paladino wants the city of New York to investigate the money behind these organized pogroms. We should demand that the federal government open an investigation into it as well, since NYC has Title VI obligations to protect students from discrimination, not to mention the potential nexus(es) to a terror network in Hamas.
Wecht goes on to warn that a refusal to correct this will inevitably result in decline and disaster for the nation:
“In Pennsylvania, and in the United States of America, we enjoy robust rights and liberties, bequeathed to us by our great Founders. These freedoms have helped to make this the greatest civilization that the world has ever seen. There have been other great civilizations in the past, and almost all of them have deteriorated and declined when Jew-hatred grew and metastasized.
Indeed. And one has to wonder whether this will finally be enough for Jewish voters to abandon the party that increasingly wants to kill them. It’s hardly just the Obama Bros attempting to sell Platner by asking everyone to put his SS death-camp tattoo in some sort of ‘perspective.’ The draw of tikkun olam to activist and liberal politics is undeniable, but at a certain point, survival matters more.
Perhaps David Wecht’s and Alan Dershowitz’s journey will lead the rest of the Jewish voters out of the Democrat Party. Let’s hope the GOP can maintain its own soul and hygiene to give them a welcome and safe space.
Addendum: Salena Zito knows the players well here, and offers some advice to observers.
When you ask the question, why would Pennsylvania state Supreme Court judge David Wecht make the decision to leave the Democratic Party for independence–I’d begin looking for the answers in the parents and grandparents who formed who he is. https://t.co/KqGKy6gZ69
— ZitoSalena (@ZitoSalena) May 12, 2026
Editor’s Note: The Democrat Party has never been less popular as voters reject its globalist agenda.
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