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'Let the Public See Where Democrats Really Stand': Full DNC Floor Vote Demanded on Gaza
"We are demanding a roll-call vote so that every DNC member is accountable for where they stand in this historic moment."
Aug 27, 2025
Those hoping that Democratic Party leaders have finally learned some lessons in the political thrashing they received in last year's elections are not yet done fighting for a resolution they argue would put the party back on the right side of moral history and also improve its prospects going forward against an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party led by President Donald Trump.
A day following a failed vote in the resolutions committee, members of the Democratic National Committee and grassroots groups demanding the DNC to take a stronger stand against US complicity with Israel's genocide in Gaza are not giving up—pushing now for a full floor vote to take place Wednesday on a resolution which calls for an immediate ceasefire, an arms embargo, and suspension of military aid to Israel.
"The DNC membership has the power to stand up and let the public see where Democrats really stand," said Allison Minnerly, the 26-year-old DNC member from Florida who introduced Resolution 18 before the resolutions committee, in a statement Tuesday night after the measure was rejected earlier in the day with a voice vote at the party's summer gathering in Minneapolis.
"A roll-call vote is the minimum standard of transparency in a democracy," said Minnerly in her statement, backed by allies within the DNC ranks as well as outside groups.
"A roll-call vote is the minimum standard of transparency in a democracy." —Allison Minnerly
Following the committee vote rejecting Resolution 18, chair of the College Democrats, Sunjay Muralitharan, bemoaned the defeat, including that no chance was offered for friendly amendments. "This move isn't just unjust, it's politically ineffective," he said. "Support for Israel's actions is in the single digits within our party's base. Deeply disappointed in this decision."
DNC chairman Ken Martin, who had introduced a competing resolution, Resolution 3, later took the unusual step of withdrawing his milqetoast proposal on Gaza after it passed the committee. In its place, he called for the creation of a task force to further discuss the issue.
"There's divide in our party on this issue," Martin said as he withdrew his resolution in favor of further discussion. "We have to find a path forward as a party, and we have to stay unified."
Minnerly and her coalition, however, say the issue is too important—and the conditions in Gaza, where a famine has been designated by the world's leading authority on such matters, too horrific—for the full membership of the Democratic Party leadership not to weigh in publicly and on the record.
As the daily massacres and starvation continue in Gaza, the coalition says there is no better moment for all DNC voting members to put themselves on the record.
"Resolution 18 represents the voices of not only young Democrats but all Democrats who believe that Palestinian lives matter too," said Zayed Kadir, chair of the High School Democrats. "It's time for the DNC to stand on principle and stop shying away from the conversation—the moment is now."
As such, in a statement released overnight, the coalition—which includes the American Muslim Democratic Caucus National, Roots Action, Florida Young Democrats, leaders of the High School and College Democrats, and many individual members—is calling for every member of the DNC to:
- Publicly pledge to support a roll-call vote on Resolution 18 from the floor;
- Reject voice votes that hide accountability;
- Stand with Democratic voters, the majority of whom oppose blank-check military aid toward an ongoing genocide.
The coalition began circulating a petition Tuesday night calling on members to tell "the DNC that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza needs urgent attention by sending a letter asking them to bring Resolution 18 back into the conversation and support it tomorrow (Wednesday)."
Aftab Siddiqui, representing the American Muslim Democratic Caucus National, suggested that taking up the resolution by the full DNC at the meeting would begin to show the party is learning from its past mistakes and start forging a new direction.
"Resolution 18 represents exactly the kind of principled politics that wins elections," Siddiqui said. "While Democrats lost ground in 2024 by wavering on core values, New York City's mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, proved that moral courage on Gaza builds winning coalitions. The DNC must learn this lesson."
Ahead of and during Wednesday's plenary session, the coalition said it will publish "a transparency scorecard" to track which DNC members commit to demanding the roll-call vote. Those who do not, the group said, will be noted as opposing transparency.
Polling has shown that Democratic voters strongly favor the demands outlined in Resolution 18, a fact the coalition says the DNC must acknowledge if it wants to represent the people it claims to represent truly.
Nadia Ahmad, a delegate from Florida, said Democrats "cannot claim to stand for justice and human rights while blocking a resolution that calls for an arms embargo and humanitarian aid to Gaza."
The fight before the DNC, she added, "is about whether our party has the moral courage to listen to its members and the American people. We are demanding a roll-call vote so that every DNC member is accountable for where they stand in this historic moment.”
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Will Democrats Finally Change Their Stance on Gaza?
Party leaders continue to show how out of step they are with the opinions of the overwhelming majority of their voters.
Aug 25, 2025
Even though the bottom has fallen out of Democrats’ support for Israel, some in the party still can’t bring themselves to recognize this reality.
While support for Israeli policies has been in decline for more than a decade, the war on Gaza has resulted in a dramatic sea change in opinion. In a recent Gallup poll, only 8% of Democrats said they approve of Israel’s military actions in Gaza. When another recent poll conducted by Quinnipiac asked Americans whether their sympathies were more with Israelis or Palestinians, only 12% of Democrats said Israel while 60% said their sympathies were more with the Palestinians. And when The Economist magazine asked voters how they feel about a range of issues related to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, the results among those who say they are Democrats or lean toward Democrats were staggering:
- When asked whether Israel was justified in attacking Gaza in response to the threat from Hamas, only 13% said it was justified, with 67% saying it was not.
- When asked about military aid to Israel, 61% of voters who say they are Democrats or lean toward voting for Democrats responded that they either want to reduce or eliminate such aid, while only 25% said they favor either increasing or maintaining the current level of military aid to Israel.
- Sixty-eight percent (68%) said they agree that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, only 8% disagreed.
- Seventy-two percent (72%) said they agree it was right to call for a Palestinian state, with only 5% opposing.
(It’s important to note that with regard to each of the above questions, either majorities or strong pluralities of all respondents were in favor of cutting military aid to Israel, were opposed to Israel’s actions in Gaza, supported recognition of Palestinian statehood, etc.)
This change in the opinion of Democrats toward Israel and its policies has translated into congressional action. Last month, 27 of the 47 Democrats in the US Senate voted to block sending US military equipment to Israel. And a companion bill in the House of Representatives calling for withholding US offensive weapons to Israel now has 35 Democratic co-sponsors. Additionally, a number of Democratic State Party conventions have passed similar resolutions as did the national Young Democrats of America.
Given these developments, it should not have been surprising that a newly elected member of the Democratic National Committee would introduce a “Gaza Resolution” calling on the national party to support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, a suspension of military aid to Israel, and a call to members of Congress to recognize Palestine as a nation state. The resolution concludes by urging the party to:
“affirm its commitment to international law, human rights for all people, an immediate … delivery of … humanitarian-focused, life-saving food and medical care in Gaza, and the pursuit a just and lasting peace for all in the region.”
What’s also unsurprising is how pro-Israel groups and some Democratic leaders have responded. For example, the group calling itself the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI)—which may need to change its name to the Democratic Minority for Israel—issued a strongly worded statement saying that they were:
"deeply troubled by the introduction of a flawed, irresponsible resolution at a Democratic National Committee meeting that will further sow division within our Party and do nothing to help bring an end to the Israel-Hamas war nor end the suffering on both sides.”
With polls showing that by margins of 10-to-1 or more Democrats support the positions taken in the Gaza Resolution, it is patently false to suggest that the resolution will “sow division.” In fact, it’s more accurate to say that defeating the resolution will create division. And when it comes to sowing division, it’s DMFI that in the last two elections teamed up with other pro-Israel PACs to spend tens of millions of dollars to defeat Democratic members of Congress whom they deemed as insufficiently pro-Israel.
It’s disappointing that party leaders, in an effort to defeat the Gaza Resolution, have introduced a resolution of their own as a “substitute.” While their alternative focuses heavily on humanitarian aid, most of its prescriptive language would have been seen as somewhat constructive and even positive five years ago. But in the face of Israel’s massive destruction of Palestinian homes, hospitals, universities, places of worship, and infrastructure in Gaza, the “substitute” is no substitute at all. It ignores Israel’s responsibility for (and the US culpability in) the ongoing genocide. And, of equal importance, it is out of step with the opinions of the overwhelming majority of Democratic voters.
It’s not clear how this will play out when the party meets this week to discuss and vote on resolutions. There is an effort being made to bring the two sides together. But the young Democratic supporters of the Gaza Resolution, while open to some modification of their effort, are determined that the issue of Gaza be debated. They are right to do so.
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Will the DNC End Their Complicity in Israeli Genocide or Double Down?
As apologists for Israel, Democratic leaders in Congress and at the DNC are doing major damage to the party's prospects for next year’s midterm elections or defeating the Republican ticket in 2028.
Aug 25, 2025
This week will go down in history as a time when the governing body of the Democratic Party had a chance to oppose the U.S. government’s arming of Israel. But with the first Democratic National Committee meeting in seven months getting underway on Monday, the DNC’s leadership is determined to derail a resolution calling for “an arms embargo and suspension of military aid to Israel.”
Maneuvering to sidetrack that resolution, DNC Chair Ken Martin and all five vice chairs are sponsoring a counter-resolution that does little more than repeat the kind of hollow rhetoric that President Biden and Vice President Harris offered about Israel and Gaza last year.
Martin and the vice chairs “have aimed to blunt the power of the resolution on Gaza by introducing their own, watered-down resolution that stops far short of calling for an end to arms shipments to Israel,” my RootsAction colleague Sam Rosenthal points out. It’s an approach that helped to defeat the Democratic ticket last year, as polling clearly shows. Recycling it now is even more oblivious to the roar of public opinion.
But the half-dozen top DNC officers are eager to scuttle the arms-embargo resolution as fast as possible without having to vote on it themselves. If the Resolutions Committee rejects the resolution on Tuesday, as appears likely, it won’t get to the entire 448-member DNC for a vote.
That seems to explain the response from DNC Vice Chair Shasti Conrad a few days ago, when I asked whether she would cosponsor the arms-embargo resolution. “I haven’t decided,” she replied. “Will probably see how the [resolutions] committee votes and the discussion, and will make a real-time decision.” Waiting to “see how the committee votes” is a way to stall until the resolution is no longer on the table.
A different but no less evasive response came from the most powerful DNC vice chair, Jane Kleeb, who is also the president of the ASDC association of state party chairs (“the only national party organization focused exclusively on the current and future needs of State Democratic Parties”). When I asked Kleeb whether she supported, opposed or was neutral about the arms-embargo resolution, she would only say: “I've sponsored a resolution on Gaza with other officers. I hope everyone comes to the table with agreed upon joint language.”
Martin and his allies have already tried—and failed–to drastically weaken the arms-embargo resolution. Its sponsor is a new DNC member, Allison Minnerly, a 26-year-old youth organizer in Central Florida. On her way to Minneapolis for the meeting, Minnerly told me that—while she wasn’t closed to the possibility of accepting amendments to her resolution—it must “keep the core message.”
The resolution’s core message—“an arms embargo and suspension of military aid to Israel”—is exactly what has provoked such strong opposition from the DNC leadership. In sharp contrast, the counter-resolution from party leaders doesn’t even slightly criticize Israel for its methodical large-scale killing of Palestinian people, now in its 23rd horrendous month.
Just days ago, the Guardian reported that “figures from a classified Israeli military intelligence database indicate five out of six Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza have been civilians, an extreme rate of slaughter rarely matched in recent decades of warfare.”
The official estimate of the carnage in Gaza—60,000 direct deaths, including 18,500 children—is very likely a significant undercount. Meanwhile, by providing upwards of 69 percent of Israel’s arms imports, the United States has been making it all possible.
Chair Martin and three of the DNC vice chairs—Pennsylvania state representative Malcolm Kenyatta, attorney Reyna Walters-Morgan in North Carolina, and Nevada-based labor advocate Artie Blanco—did not respond to repeated requests for comment on whether or not they support the arms-embargo resolution.
Along with backing from all the vice chairs, Martin’s resolution got some outside help in the drafting process. “This resolution was crafted with the input of Democratic Majority for Israel, a group whose super PAC worked to oust former Representatives Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush,” The Nation reports. Naturally, DMFI has put out a press release denouncing the arms-embargo resolution.
More than ever, on the subject of Israel and Palestinian people, it’s DNC leadership versus a huge majority of Democrats nationwide. One poll after another this year has found that—in the words of a headline over a Brookings analysis this month—“support for Israel continues to deteriorate, especially among Democrats and young people.”
A Gallup poll in July found that only 8 percent of Democrats said they approved of Israel’s military action in Gaza. That poll lines up with the conclusions from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other (including Israeli) human rights organizations that have reported Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Minnerly’s resolution for suspending military aid has gained notable support from young Democratic leaders.
Midway through last week, the president of the official College Democrats of America organization (who is also a DNC member), Sunjay Muralitharan, tweeted: “As the National President of @CollegeDems I'm proud to co-sponsor the DNC Resolution calling for an arms embargo and explicit recognition of a Palestinian State. Young Americans have made their voices clear. A modern Democratic Party must stand against global injustice.”
On Friday, the leader of the official group High School Democrats of America put out a similar statement. “As National Chair of @hsdems, I represent American youth in the Democratic Party,” Zayed Kadir tweeted. “That’s why I’m proud to co-sponsor a DNC Resolution demanding an Arms Embargo and recognition of Palestine. The youth voice is clear. Our party must stand against injustice—at home and abroad.”
The top of the DNC power structure has exerted pressure on Minnerly to dilute or withdraw her resolution, but she has refused to be intimidated. When we spoke over the weekend, her tone was measured, emphatic, and resolute. And in response to follow-up questions about her approach to organizing, she emphasized that “we don't wait for change: we create it. It isn't easy, but it's worth fighting for policies and ideals that represent you.”
Minnerly added: “The reality is that not many folks know that resolutions can relate to policy. This experience has taught me—and many watching from the sidelines—that even within the party structure there is the ability to work towards the future we want as Democrats.”
But the counter-resolution from DNC leaders shows that they are continuing to drift into a sealed-off political galaxy, very far from where Democrats actually are now in the United States. Consider the responses this month when the Economist/YouGov Poll asked Democrats this question: “Do you think that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinian civilians?” Here are the results: Yes, 65 percent. No, 8 percent. “Not sure,” 27 percent.
Those numbers show that, on the subject of Israel and Gaza, the DNC’s officers are guilty of political malpractice—and actively complicit with what most Democrats in the nation see as genocide.
At the same time, to put it mildly, the party can hardly afford to further alienate its base.
The New York Times has just published an in-depth analysis of voter registration data, with stunning conclusions: “The Democratic Party is hemorrhaging voters long before they even go to the polls. Of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one between the 2020 and 2024 elections—and often by a lot. That four-year swing toward the Republicans adds up to 4.5 million voters, a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from.”
The possibility that the Democratic Party will actually climb out of the “deep political hole” is especially remote because its leaders —not only DNC Chair Martin but also Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries—are functioning as if navigating politics in some bygone era. As apologists for Israel, they’re doing major damage to Democratic prospects for next year’s midterm elections or defeating the Republican ticket in 2028.
Meanwhile, Israel continues with mass killing and genocide made possible by the US government.
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