I took an early train into Washington, D.C. on July 24. As I stepped out of Union Station, I found myself in the company of hundreds of police officers, armed men with heavy brows and assault rifles. Around me, protesters with Palestinian flags and keffiyehs oriented themselves in the heat, all arriving from out of town.

The presence of the police — some of whom were bussed in from New York, 240 miles to the north — was for the benefit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was set to speak to Congress that day. The capital pulsed with the threat of violence.

I walked southwest to Pennsylvania Avenue toward the National Gallery of Art, where demonstrators had begun to gather. Several large tour buses had pulled in, each carrying more protesters. A large stage had been erected at one intersection and people walked around as speakers remonstrated from the podium.

Many wore red t-shirts, representing the “red line” that President Joe Biden claimed to have set for Netanyahu and the Israeli army in Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip. At various points the crowd erupted in chants: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and “Netanyahu, you can’t hide — we charge you with genocide.”

The previous day had seen seven major U.S. labor unions call for an end to the war on Gaza, which many experts now agree constitutes a genocide. The unions represent seven million Americans and are stalwarts of Democratic Party politics, with critical mobilizing power ahead of the November elections.  They issued a public letter to Biden insisting that “immediately cutting U.S. military aid to the Israeli government is necessary to bring about a peaceful resolution to this conflict.”

That same day, Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist organization, staged a mass protest in the rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building, where many Congressional representatives maintain their offices. The protesters there also wore red shirts, many of them proclaiming, “Not in my Name.”

Pro-Palestinian protesters in Washington demonstrate against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his speech to the U.S. Congress, July 24, 2024. (Kerem Gencer)

These coordinated mobilizations represent a stark break from the logic that underpins the Democratic Party’s support for Israel. The various groups that comprise the Shut It Down coalition, which organized the demonstration in Washington, have never aligned with the Israel lobby that the Democrats, like the Republicans, have embraced for decades. In fact, the coalition’s success in turning out huge numbers of people on the streets magnifies the perception that the grip of the lobby, and its ability to marginalize dissenting voices, is breaking. 

Brandon Mancilla, Regional Director and member of the United Auto Workers’ International Executive Board, said to me, “The fate of our country is in the balance and voters have made it very clear that a majority of Americans support an end to the war,” noting that 83 percent of Democrats back a ceasefire.

“We’re here also because we have great concern for the future and workers rights in our country and that’s intimately tied to the fate of the Palestinian people and the continuation of this war,” he said. “If we’re serious about protecting democracy and the labor movement, we can’t have the return of Donald Trump. In order to do that, we need to have a different course on Gaza.”

Pro-Palestinian protesters in Washington demonstrate against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his speech to the U.S. Congress, July 24, 2024. (Arie Leib Abrams/Flash90)

Israel’s Guardian

The Democratic Party has been slow to acknowledge the chasm between the views of the overwhelming majority of its base and its leadership’s unwavering support for an apartheid state. But change is in the air.

Many took note in March, for example, when Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer explicitly called for a new government in Israel on the Senate floor. For liberal Zionists like Schumer, the genocide in Gaza is a source of alarm primarily because of its impact on Israel’s international reputation — but that has not undermined his commitment to the Israeli state project.

Schumer once described himself in the following way: “My name … comes from the [Hebrew] word ‘shomer,’ which means ‘guardian.’ My ancestors were guardians of the ghetto wall in Chortkov and I believe [God], actually, gave [my] name as one of my roles that is very important in the United States Senate, to be a shomer for Israel, and I will continue to be that with every bone in my body.”

Senator Chuck Schumer speaks to the 2018 AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington DC, March 5, 2018. (Courtesy of AIPAC)

Memorably, he also sought to undermine the Barack Obama administration’s efforts to engineer a nuclear deal with Iran. Schumer’s break with Netanyahu was thus consistent with his longstanding efforts to put Israel first — ahead of any single Israeli leader, and even ahead of his own party and president.

The Senate majority leader’s denunciation was notable for another reason: it was further evidence that the “bipartisan consensus” on Israel —  the hegemonic view among American politicians that Israel is democratic, enlightened, strategically vital, and not an apartheid state — was breaking.

Netanyahu’s speech to Congress was, in part, a result of these developments in American domestic politics. Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the house, sought to exploit the apparent breach in the bipartisan consensus by inviting the prime minister, a widely acknowledged war criminal, to speak. Yet perhaps to Johnson’s surprise, the invitation was supported by both Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House.

Johnson may have mistaken mild disagreements between liberal Zionists like Schumer and Netanyahu, for actual disagreements on substance. While Schumer and Netanyahu may diverge on whether road signs in Israel should carry both Hebrew and Arabic lettering, they do not fundamentally disagree that Israel must remain a “Jewish state” by working zealously to secure and maintain superior rights for Jewish citizens.

Pro-Palestinian protesters in Washington demonstrate against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his speech to the U.S. Congress, July 24, 2024. (Arie Leib Abrams/Flash90)

Nor do they disagree on America’s essential commitment to protecting Israel in every forum. Schumer explained his support for Netanyahu’s invitation by saying that “America’s relationship with Israel is ironclad and transcends one person or prime minister.” In a sense, they represent the poles on the narrow spectrum of opinion among members of the Israel lobby, represented institutionally by center-right JStreet and far right AIPAC in America.

Jeffries’ support, meanwhile, likely springs in great part from the fact that he cannot afford to alienate the Israel lobby; he undoubtedly took note of AIPAC’s success in unseating Jamaal Bowman, a congressman Jeffries personally endorsed.

Smash-mouth politics

Jeffries is in many ways a lagging indicator of the Israel lobby’s power in America. But there is reason to believe an opening is developing, one that may herald generational change.

Schumer, Biden, and other politicians of their generation represent the tail end of a vanguard in Washington. Today, there appears to be less uncritical support for Israel among elected public officials and their voters. Among Democrats, there is growing outrage at AIPAC’s funneling of money to Republicans in competitive primaries, which is driving the perception that the organization is fundamentally a Republican organ. More than 100 Democrats — half of the party’s representation in Congress — boycotted Netanyahu’s speech, compared to 50 abstentions in 2015, when he last issued a bipartisan address.

Pro-Palestinian protesters in Washington demonstrate against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his speech to the U.S. Congress, July 24, 2024. (Arie Leib Abrams/Flash90)

As Chris Habiby, the National Government Affairs and Advocacy Director for the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) said to me on Wednesday in Washington, “We’re putting together a comprehensive list of who attended and who didn’t to identify allies.” The goal, he said, is “to identify and expand our coalition of allies,” including people who may support an embargo on U.S. arms shipments to the Israeli army, and to “empower Arab American [and other] voters to organize and use their voices to have a real impact on elections,” and consequently, on policy.

Amid the genocide in Gaza, the fragmentation of the Israel lobby’s power has only accelerated. The campus protests which spread across the United States this past spring highlight a generational change which may lead, in time, to a bottom-up change in policy. As Stephen Walt, co-author of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, said to me, “Israel has lost the war for uncritical acceptance, especially among people under 40. The battle for the moral high ground has been lost. What’s left is power politics — the naked political power of groups like AIPAC.”

The “smash-mouth politics” which was showcased with Netanyahu’s appearance in Washington is also drawing the ire of some on the American right, too. Thomas Massie, a Republican in the House of Representatives, spoke openly and derisively with the conservative media commentator Tucker Carlson about the “AIPAC babysitters” who attend his fellow Republicans.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the AIPAC Conference in Washington, D.C. on March 6, 2018 (Haim Zach/GPO)

But it is on the left that the change is most visible. Columns in The New Republic and the New York Times have voiced opposition to Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as Kamala Harris’s possible vice presidential pick, primarily because of his record comparing anti-war students for Palestine to the Ku Klux Klan. As one opinion writer at the New York Times put it bluntly, “by not putting Shapiro on the ticket, Harris avoids splits in the party over the war in Gaza.”

‘This is where the people are’

By noon of July 24, the protesters in Washington had succeeded in shutting down six intersections in the capital. They soon began marching toward the Capitol building, where the police used pepper spray against them. I had ducked into a nearby building to watch a livestream of Netanyahu’s speech, which ran alongside clips from the march: a policewoman wielding a baton, and a protester burning an effigy of Netanyahu.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein addresses protesters in Washington, July 24, 2024. (Kerem Gencer)

Before I left Washington, however, I spoke with Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for President. I asked her why she was participating in the demonstration. “I’m here because the genocide has to stop,” she said. “This is where the power is. This is where the people are.”

“I’m also here because I’m a Jew,” she added. “I was raised just after the Holocaust, in a Jewish community, attending a Jewish synagogue where we were coming to terms with a genocide. And coming to terms with a genocide had everything to do with not allowing it to ever happen again.”

Her views were strongly resonant all around me. Many of the young people who are turned off by the Democratic establishment have witnessed the Gaza genocide in real time on their phones or computer screens. They watched videos of Palestinian children beheaded by Israeli bombs, or of far-right Israelis rioting in support of alleged rapists in the army, and they understandably recoil.

And while they may not be able to stop the destruction of Palestinians in Gaza today, they are tomorrow’s voters. And horror is not easily forgotten.

Patrick Corbin, coming off his worst start of the season, is set to take the mound for the Washington Nationals against the San Francisco Giants on Monday.

The 35-year-old left-hander gave up 13 hits and 10 earned runs in 3.0 innings versus the Arizona Diamondbacks on July 30, tanking his stats in the process. He had previously posted back-to-back quality starts coming out of the All-Star break, only to wipe out that progress shortly after.

Now, Corbin enters Monday’s contest 2-11 on the season with a 5.88 ERA, 1.529 WHIP, 6.6 strikeouts per nine innings and a -1.1 WAR. His ERA, which hasn’t dipped below 5.26 at all this year, ranks dead last among qualified MLB pitchers.

Corbin also boasts an Adjusted Earned Run Average of 67, which unfortunately is not uncharted territory for the veteran southpaw. His ERA+ in 2021 was 70 and his ERA+ in 2022 was 62, with 100 representing league average.

According to Underdog Fantasy’s Justin Havens, Corbin is currently one of three pitchers in the modern era to record multiple seasons with an ERA+ of 70 or lower and at least 120.0 innings pitched. Jim Deshaies and Vic Frazier are the other two, each doing so twice.

Should Corbin finish 2024 under that 70 ERA+ threshold, he would become the first pitcher in MLB history to post three such campaigns.

Corbin was a two-time All-Star with the Arizona Diamondbacks between 2012 and 2018, and he even earned NL Cy Young votes in his first year with the Nationals in 2019. When he won the World Series in Washington that fall, Corbin was 70-61 with a 3.80 ERA, 1.267 WHIP and 16.9 WAR for his career.

Since the start of 2020, however, Corbin is 29-68 with a 5.67 ERA, 1.543 WHIP and -2.5 WAR. He has led the NL in losses three times, earned runs allowed three times, hits allowed twice and home runs allowed once, with his 127 starts ranking fourth in all of MLB in that span.

Corbin has a chance to improve his ERA+ against the Giants on Monday, but recent history suggests he won’t.

Of the 13 batters on the Giants’ active roster, eight have faced Corbin before. All eight of those players own a batting average of at least .333 against Corbin, with six of them boasting a career OPS over 1.100 in the head-to-head matchup.

First pitch from Nationals Park is scheduled for 6:45 p.m. ET.

Continue to follow our FanNation on SI coverage on social media by liking us on Facebook and by following us on Twitter @FastballFN.

You can also follow Sam Connon on Twitter @SamConnon.

In its own telling, Science Moms is a “nonpartisan group of scientists” working to fight climate change. Science Moms is spending $2.5 million on a new advertising campaign about “unnatural disasters” in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, and other swing states until Sept. 30 in the lead-up to the November elections.

“If you knew this was your last, best chance to protect all the places you love, what would you do?” says a narrator in the ad, which is called “Climate change is taking the places we love.”

But while Science Moms appears to position itself as apolitical and grassroots, it actually shares a connection to Arabella Advisors, a consulting firm that doubles as the largest Democratic-aligned dark money network in the United States. Science Moms is not a stand-alone entity. Rather, it’s an initiative of the Potential Energy Coalition, a former project of an Arabella-managed dark money group called the Windward Fund, tax records show. The Windward Fund, which finances the Potential Energy Coalition, is bankrolled by the likes of George Soros, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and other billionaires.

The relationship between the Windward Fund in Washington, D.C., and Science Moms illustrates how complex tax laws serve to obscure where nonprofit organizations often derive their assets. Arabella has long argued that it merely provides administrative, human resources, and accounting services to independently run groups, though its billion-dollar network is, in many ways, unique due to its scope and sprawling usage of fiscal sponsorship. This legal arrangement allows Arabella-linked projects to shield their backers from the IRS, which does not require sponsored projects to submit separate financial disclosures.

Arabella-managed entities, including the Windward Fund, were recently accused by the Right of illegally enriching the consultancy’s founder, Eric Kessler. The Washington, D.C., attorney general’s office closed an investigation into Arabella this year — to the ire of conservatives who say its network violated federal rules in appearing to, in some cases, exert control over other groups.

The Potential Energy Coalition spun off from the Windward Fund in October 2020, according to documents on file with the IRS.

In 2022, the Windward Fund granted over $13 million to the PEC, which received a $4.5 million grant from the left-wing dark money group in the preceding tax year. But earmarked grants aren’t the only connection between the Windward Fund and the PEC, which is based in New York City and calls itself “an innovative, fast-growing startup that brings the very best marketing talent in the world to bear on the climate challenge.”

The Windward Fund has disclosed on its tax forms that it paid $950,000 to the PEC in 2021 as an “independent contractor,” and a million dollars in 2020 under this same category. And the PEC, on its own financial disclosures, said in 2020 that its board chairman and secretary were “employed by the Windward Fund,” adding, “their salaries are paid by and reported” by the Windward Fund on its separate tax forms.

The Windward Fund declined to respond to sets of questions about these grants and payments, insisting it does not have an active relationship with the PEC or its Science Moms project. The Capital Research Center found in an April report that some of the largest donors to the Windward Fund from 2019 to 2022 were the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, which funds abortion-rights causes, the Tides Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Soros’s Foundation to Promote Open Society gave a million dollars to the Windward Fund in 2022 for its Amplify Rural Voices project. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave $6 million to the Windward Fund in 2023 for “public awareness and analysis” as well as “agricultural development,” grant records show. Another grantee, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, steered $7 million in 2022 and 2023 to Windward Fund projects.

“Windward Fund is a fiscal sponsor to a number of organizations, not a funder, which means we provide administrative support including payroll and HR to new nonprofit projects, many of which later become fully independent organizations,” a spokesperson for the Windward Fund told the Washington Examiner.

To Hayden Ludwig, a researcher often credited with unearthing key information about Arabella Advisors and its offshoots, the consultancy is adept at “keeping the public in the dark” about its influence.

“People need to understand this kind of ugly deception campaign is the norm on the professional Left,” said Ludwig, research director for Restoration of America, a conservative advocacy group. “This is how the Swamp works.”

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Alec Sears, a Republican political strategist who works in the digital ad space, agreed.

“Any group with ties to Arabella Advisors is no grassroots organization,” Sears said. “Dark money ad buys in swing states are a strategy designed purely to drive the political agenda of the billionaires behind Arabella and its funds.”