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Suppressed DNC Autopsy Found Biden Admin’s Support for Gaza Genocide Cost Harris Votes
One progressive advocacy group said the Democratic National Committee's 2024 postmortem "should be made public so Democrats can learn from past errors and win future elections."
Feb 23, 2026
Democratic National Committee officials who crafted the party's postmortem on its loss to President Donald Trump in the 2024 election reportedly determined that the Biden administration's support for Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza cost Kamala Harris votes, contributing to her defeat.
Axios reported Sunday that Democratic officials conducting the autopsy, which DNC leaders have decided to keep under wraps, "believed the issue harmed the party's standing with some voters."
"DNC aides putting together the report on Harris' loss to Donald Trump had a closed-door conversation with a pro-Palestinian group about the Israel-Gaza conflict," Axios noted. "Activists from the IMEU Policy Project told the DNC that the Biden-Harris administration's support for Israel was a factor in the party's losses because it drained support from some young people and progressives."
RootsAction, a progressive advocacy group that conducted its own analysis of Democrats' 2024 loss, said in a statement that the DNC's refusal to publicize its findings "undermines the goal of defeating Trumpism." RootsAction's autopsy, authored by journalist Christopher D. Cook, found "ample evidence that Harris lost many voters, especially young voters, Arab-Americans, and critical support in Michigan and elsewhere, due to the campaign’s failure to shift or even signal a potential shift in policy on Israel and Palestine."
The DNC's official autopsy, said RootsAction, "should be made public so Democrats can learn from past errors and win future elections."
Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), wrote on social media that "the only reason to keep this report secret is to avoid offending conservative donors."
"The committee determined that releasing it would spark a media frenzy and retrospective finger-pointing that could divide the party."
Polling released by the IMEU Policy Project last year found that nearly 30% of voters who cast ballots for former President Joe Biden in 2020 but did not vote for Harris four years later said ending Israel's assault on Gaza was the top issue impacting their decision.
The organization said the findings demonstrated what "few in the Democratic Party have been willing to admit: Vice President Harris lost votes because of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza."
The New Republic's Greg Sargent reported in December that the DNC completed its autopsy "after extensive data analysis and hundreds of interviews in all 50 states."
"But according to a DNC official," Sargent wrote, "the committee determined that releasing it would spark a media frenzy and retrospective finger-pointing that could divide the party and distract from its winning streak in recent elections."
After her loss to Trump, Harris admitted during an event promoting her memoir that the Biden administration "should've done more" to protect Palestinian civilians from the Netanyahu government's devastating assault.
"We had more levers, in terms of leverage, that we did not use," said Harris.
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Ex-Presidents, What More Do You Need to See Before Calling for Trump's Impeachment?
Just what are you waiting for? What are your escapist excuses?
Jan 10, 2026
The staggering cowardliness by four ex-presidents vis-à-vis Tyrant Trump’s wrecking of America cannot escape history’s verdict. However, there is still an opportunity for vigorous redemption by George W. Bush—whose life-saving AIDS Medicine Program in Africa was shut down by President Donald Trump—Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, if they have any self-respect for their patriotic duty.
As of now, these former presidents are living lives of luxury and personal pursuits. They are at the apex of the "contented classes" (see my column “Trump and the Contented Classes”, November 14, 2025) who have chosen to be bystanders to Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation, and the doling out of Trump’s corporatist welfare giveaways.
Imagine, if you will, what would happen if these four wealthy politicians, who still have most of their voters liking them, decided to band together and take on Trump full throttle. Privately, they believe and want Trump to be impeached (for the third time in the House) and convicted in the Senate. This time, on many impeachable actions that Trump himself boasts about, claiming, “With Article II, I can do whatever I want as President.”
Right off, they can upend the public discourse that Trump dominates daily with phony personal accusations, stunningly unrebutted by the feeble Democratic Party leaders. This counterattack with vivid, accurate words will further increase the majority of people who want Trump “Fired.” Just from their own observations of Trump’s vicious, cruel destruction of large parts of our government and civil service, which benefits and protects the populace, should jolt the former presidents into action.
Send these four politicians, who are friendly with one another, petitions, letters, emails, satiric cartoons, or whatever communications that might redeem them from the further condemnation of history.
Next, the bipartisan Band of Four can raise tens of millions of dollars instantly to form “Save Our Republic” advocacy groups in every congressional district. The heat on both parties in Congress would immediately rise to make them start the Impeachment Drive. Congressional Republicans’ fear of losing big in the 2026 elections, as their polls are plummeting, will motivate some to support impeachment. Congressional Republicans abandoned President Richard Nixon in 1974, forcing his resignation with Impeachment on his political horizon.
Events can move very fast. First, Trump is the most powerful contributor to his own Impeachment. Day after day, this illegal closer of long-established social safety nets and services is alienating tens of millions of frightened and angry Americans.
Daily, Trump is breaking his many campaign promises. His exaggerated predictions are wrong. Remember his frequent promise to stop “these endless wars,” his assurance that he would not impair government health insurance programs (tell that to the millions soon to lose, due to Trump, their Medicaid coverage), his promise of lifting people into prosperity (he opposes any increase in the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour) and he has signed GOP legislation to strip tens of millions of Americans from the SNAP food support and take away the Obama subsidies for Obamacare. Many Trump voters are among the vast number of people experiencing his treachery, where they live and raise their families, will lose out here. The catalytic opportunities of these four ex-presidents and their skilled operating teams are endless.
Further, this Band of Presidents, discovering their patriotic duty, will recharge the Democratic Party leaders or lead to the immediate replacement of those who simply do not want or know how to throw back the English language against this Bully-in-Chief, this abuser of women, this stunning racist, this chronic liar about serious matters, this inciter of violence including violence against members of Congress, this invader of cities with increasingly violent, law breaking storm-troopers turning a former Border Patrol force into a vast recruitment program for police state operators.
Trump uses the word “Impeachment” frequently against judges who rule against him, and even mentions it in relation to it being applied to him. Tragically, Democratic Party leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have made talk of Impeachment a taboo, arguing the time is not yet ripe. How many more abuses of power do they need to galvanize the Democrats in the House and Senate against the most blatantly impeachable president by far in American history? He keeps adding to his list—recently, he has become a Pirate and killer on the High Seas, an unconstitutional war maker on Iran and Venezuela, openly threatening to illegally seize the Panama Canal, Greenland, and the overthrow of the Cuban government.
Constitutional scholar Obama can ask dozens of constitutional law professors the question: “Would any of the 56 delegates who signed our US Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the 39 drafters who signed our US Constitution in 1787, being told about Monarch King Donald Trump, oppose his immediate Impeachment and Removal—the only tool left he doesn’t control?” Not one, would be their studied response.
Trump, a serial draft dodger, pushes through another $150 billion to the Pentagon above what the generals requested while starving well-being programs of nutrition for our children and elderly, and cutting services, by staff reductions, for American veterans, and strip-mining our preparedness for climate violence and likely pandemics.
He promised law and order during the election and then betrayed it right after his inauguration, pardoning 1,500 convicted, imprisoned criminals, 600 of them violent, emptying their prison cells and calling them “patriots” for what they did to Congress on January 6, 2021.
MR. EX-PRESIDENTS, JUST WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? WHAT ARE YOUR ESCAPIST EXCUSES? Call your friends who are ranking members of the GOP-controlled Committees of Congress and tell them to hold prompt SHADOW HEARINGS to educate the public through witnesses about the TRUMP DUMP, impeachable, illegal, and unconstitutional government. The media would welcome the opportunity to cover such hearings. Congressman Jamie Raskin thought this was “a good idea” before being admonished by his frightened Democratic leaders to bide his time and remain silent.
As more of Trump’s iron boots drop on people’s livelihoods, their freedoms, their worry for their children and grandchildren, their antipathy to more aggressive wars against non-threatening countries, and their demands at town meetings and mass marches for action against Trump’s self-enriching despotism, the disgraceful, craven cowardliness of our former presidential leaders will intensify. Unless they wake up to the challenge. With the mainstream media attacked regularly and being sued by Trump’s coercive, illegal extortion, the action by the Band of Four will bolster press freedom, press coverage, and their own redemption.
Send these four politicians, who are friendly with one another, petitions, letters, emails, satiric cartoons, or whatever communications that might redeem them from the further condemnation of history.
Rest assured, with Trump in the disgraced White House, THINGS ARE ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE, MUCH WORSE! For that is the predictable behavior from the past year and from his dangerously unstable, arrogant, vengeful, and egomaniacal personality.
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'Devastating': Amnesty Rips Hegseth Memo Reversing Limits on Landmines
“Antipersonnel landmines are inherently indiscriminate weapons that take a disproportionate toll on civilian lives, oftentimes long after conflicts end," said the group's director for Europe and Central Asia.
Dec 23, 2025
In a move decried by human rights organizations, the Trump administration has scrapped a Biden-era prohibition on the use of antipersonnel landmines, which killed thousands of noncombatants last year.
The Washington Post reported on Friday that US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sent a memo on December 2 reversing the policy, saying the use of such mines would provide the US military with a “force multiplier” against enemies during “one of the most dangerous security environments in its history.”
“Antipersonnel landmines are inherently indiscriminate weapons that take a disproportionate toll on civilian lives, oftentimes long after conflicts end," explained Ben Linden, Amnesty International USA's advocacy director for Europe and Central Asia, in a statement on Tuesday.
According to a report published earlier this month by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Committee to Ban Landmines (ICBL), antipersonnel landmines and other explosive remnants of war killed at least 1,945 people and injured another 4,325 in 2024—the highest yearly casualty figure since 2020 and a 9% increase from the previous year.
Ninety percent of those casualties were civilians, and 46% of those civilians were children.
More than 160 countries have signed an international treaty, written in 1997, banning the use of antipersonnel landmines, defined as mines “designed to be exploded by the presence, proximity or contact of a person and that will incapacitate, injure or kill one or more persons” in war.
The US military has not used antipersonnel mines widely since the Persian Gulf War over three decades ago. However, it is one of the few countries that has not signed the treaty, known as the Ottawa Convention, and until earlier this year was the only NATO member not to participate.
In June 2022—just months after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine—then-President Joe Biden announced the US would begin to follow many provisions of the convention, outlawing the use of antipersonnel mines in war zones with the exception of the Korean Peninsula. It was a return to a policy instituted under former President Barack Obama, before it was rolled back during the first Trump administration.
The Biden White House cited the mines' "disproportionate impact on civilians, including children," and drew a contrast with Russia, which it said was using the mines "irresponsibly" in civilian areas.
But Biden would reverse the policy just two years later, opting in 2024 to greenlight their provision to Ukraine, which was forbidden from acquiring or using the mines under the treaty.
The ICBL, a leading donor to global mine clearance, condemned the move, noting that "Ukraine already faces years of demining due to Russian landmine use."
In his memo, Hegseth has delivered another blow to global demining efforts. According to the Post:
He outlines five objectives for the new policy—including lifting geographic limits on the use of landmines, which would allow for their use globally, and giving combatant commanders the authority to use the explosives. It would also limit the destruction of landmines in the US inventory only to those that are “inoperable or unsafe."
The decision comes as other state actors are rapidly abandoning their obligations under the landmine treaty. Last week, Poland announced that after withdrawing from the convention, it plans to start producing antipersonnel mines again, deploying them to the eastern border, and possibly exporting them to Ukraine.
According to the ICBL report, Cambodia, Iran, Myanmar, and North Korea have all been alleged to have used mines within the last year. Meanwhile, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, and Lithuania are also in the process of withdrawing from the Ottawa Treaty, while Ukraine is trying to “suspend the operation” of the convention during its war with Russia.
Hegseth's memo also states that President Donald Trump has rescinded the US Humanitarian Mine Program, a long-running government initiative that helps partner nations find and destroy unexploded landmines.
According to the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, the research arm of the Campaign to Ban Landmines, the US was the largest global donor to mine-clearing actions around the world in 2024. According to the State Department, it has provided more than $5 billion in assistance to more than 125 countries and areas since 1993.
Some of the money for the program has already been revoked through the Trump administration's slashing of funds for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) at the beginning of his term. The administration ordered mine-clearing nonprofits funded by the agency to cease operations "effective immediately."
According to a report earlier this month from the Century Foundation, the State Department "terminated or let expire" nearly 100 security assistance programs, which included demining programs, as part of its "foreign aid review" in January.
Hegseth's memo states that despite the end of the program, the US will remain "a global leader in unexploded ordnance clearing assistance and in conventional weapons destruction." It provides no details on how the new policy would allow for this.
Linden at Amnesty International called Hegseth's reversal of the landmine policy a "devastating decision."
"Not only will this policy change put more civilians at increased risk of harm, but it will undermine global efforts to eliminate the use of these dangerous weapons," Linden said. “This landmine policy reversal would make the United States and its partners less safe by eroding the prohibition against the use of these indiscriminate weapons on the battlefield."
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