Pennsylvania’s governor with obvious 2028 presidential ambitions, Josh Shapiro, recently posted on the X platform that he is suing the Trump administration “to stop their unconstitutional attempt to change the rules and restrict mail-in voting.”
He then blathered on about “free, fair, safe, and secure elections” in his defense of a system that guarantees elections that are anything but free, fair, safe, and secure. To which conservative pundit and radio host Mark Levin responded, “You’re an idiot. You’re not going to be president. Your party hates you.”
You’re an idiot. You’re not going to be president. Your party hates you. https://t.co/jyk8SRikBm
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) August 26, 2026
While Levin nailed it, some finer points need to be made as to why Shapiro can never be president. Spoiler alert: It’s because his party does indeed hate him.
Shapiro is well understood to be a practicing, observant, conservative Jew. He keeps kosher. When he was sworn into office as Pennsylvania’s governor, he did so by placing his hand on a Hebrew Bible that came from the scene of the murderous attack on Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018.
The Jewish news site, Forward, reported that when Shapiro campaigned for governor, “he proudly embraced his Judaism during the campaign.”
As a sitting governor, Shapiro became the target of an arson attack when Cody Balmer, who would later plead guilty to the crime, lit the fire that destroyed a portion of the governor’s mansion while Shapiro and his family were inside. The attack came in the early morning hours of Sunday, April 13, 2025, not long after the Shapiro family held a Passover seder.
According to the Associated Press, Balmer had “scaled an iron security fence in the middle of the night, eluded police and used beer bottles filled with gasoline to ignite the occupied Pennsylvania governor’s mansion.” He was charged with 22 counts of arson, aggravated arson, burglary, aggravated assault, 21 counts of reckless endangerment, loitering, and yes, terrorism. He now faces 25 to 50 years behind bars.
Police reports and a call from Balmer to 911 indicate that his motive for the crimes was his problem with the governor’s stance on Israel’s war in Gaza and “plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people.” The timing of the crime only reinforced this.
Shapiro has not backed off of his support for his culture, his faith, and the Israeli state. Like Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Shapiro has been consistently pro-Israel. He has been anti-Hamas. Though as a loyal Democrat, Shapiro has also been for a two-state solution, and he’s taken his shots at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
He called Netanyahu “one of the worst leaders of all time,” and he blamed the Netanyahu administration, at least in part, for conditions leading up to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel and innocent Israelis.
This is a balancing act for the practicing Jewish Democrat politician who badly wants his party’s nomination for the presidency in 2028. He won’t turn his back on his faith, but he’s consistently looking for an avenue where he can align himself with a party he knows to be increasingly and more fundamentally antisemitic.
Coming up short
His approach thus far, though ineffective, has been to try to differentiate between Israel and its leadership, and to the extent possible, to de-emphasize something that until now he has showcased – his Jewish faith.
It hasn’t been working. In Shapiro’s own memoir, Where We Keep the Light, he wrote that when Kamala Harris was vetting him as a possible running mate in 2024, her team asked him if he had ever been “an agent of the Israeli government.” They asked him if he had ever spoken with an undercover Israeli agent.
Shapiro characterized the line of questioning as offensive and speculated that they focused on this because he was “the only Jewish guy in the running.” Still, ever the good Democrat soldier, he has consistently said on record that antisemitism was not why he got passed over for Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.
Jewishness aside, Shapiro has shown a willingness to be whatever the powers on the left want him to be if that’s what it takes to get the nod for 2028. It’s now pretty obvious that on the Democrat side in the race for president, elections are mere formalities. Shapiro knows that to become the nominee, the most important votes he gets will come from a cabal in the shadows that has the money and controls the agenda.
Selfies with Soros
This would explain why it’s not difficult to find photos of Shapiro cozying up to George Soros’s heir-apparent son Alex in that now famous New York penthouse apartment. That’s where Soros the younger has made a habit of taking photos with every mover and shaker in Democrat politics – trophies for his wall. This implied message is, “Look, these are the pols I own.”
In May, George Soros reported that he donated $30 million to fight antisemitism, but the New York Post and other news organizations reported that the leftist puppet-master is as much to blame as anyone for the recent surge in hate against Jews around the world. In making the announcement that the Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF) would dole out the money, Alex Soros said that, as a Jew, his father has been battling antisemitism his whole life.
The Post quoted New York State Assemblyman Kalman Yeger (D-Brooklyn), who said, “The Soros family claiming they will fight antisemitism is like the arsonist showing up with an empty fire extinguisher.”
OSF has funded Palestinian and pro-Palestinian groups for many years. Among those groups receiving OSF grants are Al-Haq, Al-Haq Europe, and Al Mezan. Both Al-Haq and Al Mezan are alleged to have ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which, along with Hamas, is a designated terrorist organization.
Soros’s Tides Center is a major funder for several leftist protest groups in the U.S., which have almost universally proclaimed their support for Hamas under the guise of being “pro-Palestine.” In the process, through their own messaging, they often tend to be unapologetically antisemitic.
Choosing to protest and celebrate on the anniversary of Oct. 7, and chanting things like, “From the river to the sea,” their “pro-Palestine” cover story often fails to hide their antisemitic foundations.
The ‘Hamas wing’ is in charge now
The unofficially dubbed “Hamas wing” of the Democrat Party is growing in size and influence. One of the party’s rising stars and new standard-bearers is Muslim New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who seems to speak more often about foreign affairs than about things everyday New Yorkers care about.
On the matter of the Israeli state, Mamdani won’t support the existence of Israel. In June, he told ABC’s Jonathan Karl, “I believe that any state that privileges one religion over the other is one that I can’t tell you I support, whether it be Israel or Saudi Arabia or anywhere else.”
On the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Mamdani dehumanized the group as “monsters,” saying, “AIPAC, for whom the only thing more frightening than democracy being allowed to run its course is an end to genocide and Netanyahu’s wars.”
Mamdani is hardly alone in the Democrat Party. Another potential presidential contender for 2028, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has been a consistently vocal critic of AIPAC and Israel. So has Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Ca.), Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), and Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.). While some of these politicians may have taken AIPAC money in the past, Politico reports that as the political winds have shifted in the Democrat party, the pols aren’t just distancing themselves from the Israeli cause; they’re running from it.
It should be noted that AIPAC tends only to donate to federal races, but that hasn’t stopped governors like Shapiro, Gavin Newsom (D-Ca.), and Andy Beshear (D-Ky.) from going public with their own proclamations that they have not and will not take AIPAC donations.
When they tell you who they are, believe them
The underlying message through all of this is that it’s not politically helpful to be seen as a Jew or pro-Israel in the Democrat Party. The rising stars are anti-Israel, and not coincidentally, a few are Muslims.
In the House, there are incumbents: Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) Lateefah Simon (D-Ca.). New Muslim nominees for House races include Adam Hamawy (D-N.J.) and Aisha Wahab (D-Ca.).
In the Senate, the Democrats are hinging their hopes for a majority on Abdul El-Sayed to help the party hold onto a seat it hasn’t lost to a Republican since 1994. While El-Sayed won’t come right out and chant, “From the river to the sea,” at least not yet, he will signal what he feels he must to his base. We’ve covered El-Sayed extensively, and we will continue to do so, given the critical nature of the Michigan Senate race.
Related: A Desperate El-Sayed Campaign Is Now Tapping the Old Soviet Propaganda Playbook
Like Mamdani, he refuses to say whether Israel has a right to exist. When a man rammed a truck into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich., El-Sayed said all of the perfunctory things in terms of condemning antisemitism, but then he undermined all of that by saying, “Hurt people do hurt people,” seemingly finding some excuse for the attack.
❌WHOA❌
Michigan Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed on the Hezbollah inspired terrorist attack on Temple Israel:
“I think it’s just critical for us to understand that hurt people do hurt people…”
WTH pic.twitter.com/vy4VQFyRES
— Ashley (@AshSavesUSA) April 8, 2026
Regardless of how the Democrats do in the midterms this Fall, the trend lines are clear. The Democrat Party is moving fast and hard away from Israel-aligned candidates and toward anti-Israel ones. In the process, they are shifting their support to candidates who are increasingly suspected of being antisemitic.
As you know from following PJ Media, the lightning rod for all of this has been the hugely popular, antisemitic, leftist live streamer Hasan Piker, who has practically taken up residence in the El-Sayed campaign. Democrats with any ambitions during primary season courted him for his support and endorsement.
Piker famously said that “America deserved 9/11.” While it’s not hard to find profane, guttural comments about the Jews from Piker, on the issue of support for an Israeli state, he said, “Any kind of f*****g Zionist tendency should be treated in the same way as being a f*****g rabid neo-Nazi… You shouldn’t even let someone be the f*****g local dog catcher if they’ve ever exhibited any sort of positive feelings about the state of Israel.”
Now that primary season is behind them and Piker helped them appeal to their radical base, Democrats are now refashioning their message for the general election. In the course of this, they are only now, cynically, distancing themselves from Piker. But it’s too late for that. Piker has only been saying what today’s Democrat Party and its power brokers think.
In such a party, Josh Shapiro is being left behind at the moment in his life when he thought he really had a shot. But don’t expect him to give up. The one group he’s hoping has his back and gives him a fighting chance for his party’s nomination in 2028 is the electorate.
Imagine that. A Democrat having faith in the democratic process. Sounds kind of quaint these days, doesn’t it?
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