GOP Primary Voters Remain Deeply Supportive of Israel, Poll Finds
Plus, Iowa’s self-described ‘common-sense moderate Democrat’ Josh Turek voted to protect race-based DEI programs in schools
Anti-Israel radicals are ascendant in the Democratic Party. Not so in the GOP, where primary voters remain deeply supportive of the Jewish state, a new Free Beacon poll finds.
The poll, which was conducted by Echelon Insights in early June and surveyed more than 1,100 likely GOP primary voters across the country, found that likely Republican primary voters prefer a candidate who supports a strong U.S.-Israel relationship by a margin of 57 percentage points. They also prefer a candidate who explicitly denounces antisemitism by 52 points, I write in a piece summarizing the poll’s findings. Candidates who describe Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a war criminal, take steps to isolate Israel economically, and vote against congressional resolutions denouncing antisemitism are less popular. Respondents say they are less likely to back such candidates by margins of 25 points, 43 points, and 43 points, respectively.
The poll also found that Republican voters were supportive of the war in Iran by a whopping 59-point margin. But they remain focused on the economy and immigration: Asked to identify the biggest issue facing the country today, the cost of living, immigration, and jobs and the economy topped the list at 31 percent, 13 percent, and 12 percent, respectively.
The state of the GOP is a striking contrast to the anti-Israel sentiment that seems to be overtaking the Democratic Party. An April 2026 Pew Research poll found that 8 in 10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents have an unfavorable view of Israel, while just 4 percent of Muslims view Israel in a positive light. That poll came months before socialist candidates, united by their opposition to Israel and America, won Democratic primaries in New York and Colorado and met with little protest from Democratic leaders.
READ MORE: GOP Primary Voters Remain Deeply Supportive of Israel, Poll Finds
In March 2022, the Iowa City School District’s “Department of Equity” trained teachers to “challenge” their “bias and privilege” in courses like “Ethnomathematics: The Study of Math as a Cultural Activity.” Two years later, Iowa’s Josh Turek, who describes himself as a “common-sense moderate Democrat” running for Senate in a red state, voted to protect such initiatives in the state’s universities and K-12 schools, the Free Beacon’s Collin Anderson and Peter Hasson report.
Turek “voted against a trio of anti-DEI bills between April 2024 and May 2025, including two that became law.” One of the bills prohibited public universities from hiring DEI officers. A second barred state funding for DEI offices and initiatives at both the college and K-12 levels. And a third would have prohibited colleges and universities from requiring students to take any “diversity, equity, inclusion, and critical race theory related course” to graduate.
“The bills prompted Iowa’s public universities to scale back race-based initiatives,” write Anderson and Hasson. “The University of Northern Iowa amended its 2023-28 Strategic Plan to remove portions calling to ‘increase diversity’ among faculty and students and increase graduation and retention rates among ‘traditionally marginalized students’ … The updated version called to increase those ‘success rates’ among ‘all students.’” The bills also took a sledgehammer to DEI trainings like those in Iowa City, whose former director of equity left the state to join Minneapolis Public Schools.
“Turek’s votes appear at odds with his ‘moderate’ image. Turek describes himself as a ‘prairie populist’ and ‘common-sense’ lawmaker who can appeal to ‘Iowans of all political stripes.’ But two of Turek’s votes defending DEI came after President Donald Trump placed opposition to such ‘woke’ initiatives at the center of his campaign, which carried Iowa by 13 points.”
Virginia man Ronnie Reel was facing life in prison after he told police that he sexually abused an 11-year-old boy. A mishap from Soros-backed prosecutor Steve Descano landed him a cushy plea deal—and now, under a new Virginia law, Reel could be eligible to permanently conceal the offense from public view, our Jessica Schwalb reports.
Former Democratic governor Ralph Northam signed the so-called clean slate law in 2021, and it went into effect on Wednesday. It automatically seals the records of some misdemeanor crimes like disorderly conduct if the offender isn’t convicted of another offense after seven years. Ex-convicts can also ask the court to seal more serious misdemeanors and felonies after a decade. Once the records are sealed, landlords, employers, and others conducting background checks no longer have access to them.
Reel’s case is an example of how the law, combined with the soft-on-crime approach of prosecutors like Descano, has the potential to benefit heinous criminals. There was more than enough evidence to convict Reel of aggravated sexual battery against a minor in 2022. But Descano missed a deadline to turn in a recording in which Reel copped to the crime, prompting a judge to bar it from trial. As a result, Reel received a deal that allowed him to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and was not required to register as a sex offender. If he is not convicted of another crime by September 2029, he will be eligible to apply to conceal his conviction from his record.
Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund policy director Sean Kennedy argued that the law “keeps the public in the dark about the failings of courts and prosecutors to prevent dangerous offenders from re-victimizing the community.” “If an offender … received an inadequate sentence, the judges and the prosecutors get to erase that from the record,” he said. “If they commit some new and horrible crime, the media and the public will be none the wiser that the criminal justice system abetted that criminal’s future offenses.”
Elsewhere:
And then there were two: Michigan state lawmaker Mallory McMorrow is ending her Senate campaign, the Detroit News scooped, a move that turns the contentious Democratic primary into a two-way race between the left-wing insurgent Abdul El-Sayed and congresswoman Haley Stevens. El-Sayed, who told staffers he wanted to avoid making a public statement about the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei because “there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad” about his death, is the polling favorite.
We hope you had a wonderful Fourth of July weekend celebrating America’s 250th anniversary. Paul Pelosi did not. The husband of former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) reportedly crashed into a parked car in Napa County, Calif., before fleeing the scene. The local sheriff’s office said it was referring the case to prosecutors. Paul Pelosi will be familiar with the process, since he pleaded guilty to driving under the influence and crashing his car in 2022.
Arizona senator Ruben Gallego is facing a Justice Department investigation for suspected campaign finance violations after the Democrat and longtime Eric Swalwell wingman spent loads of campaign cash on lavish family trips, including to Disneyland. But he doesn’t appear to be changing his ways: Gallego is set to headline an upcoming Disneyland donor retreat for California congressman Lou Correa, and his campaign did not provide a straight answer when Politico asked whether he plans to bring his family and charge his campaign.
Gallego has argued that his use of campaign funds as a personal piggybank is normal and legal. Other congressional Democrats are undermining his defense. Fellow Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva, for example, told Politico that she’s using her own money to attend Correa’s retreat alongside her husband and children. “No campaign funds will be used,” her spokesman said.
The New York Times published a piece over the weekend lamenting that, under President Donald Trump, “federal agencies are abandoning discrimination cases.” Its top example is a black man who sued the federal government after the convenience store chain Sheetz fired him over a felony drug conviction that came up during a criminal background check, only to see the Trump administration drop his case. The Times conceded that the conviction—rather than his race—prompted the firing, describing the case as one in which “companies are scrutinized not for intentional discrimination, but for having policies that have an unintentional ‘disparate impact’ on minority applicants.”
Check out our full Monday lineup below.
GOP Primary Voters Remain Deeply Supportive of Israel, Poll Finds
However Jewish voters still expected to massively support the party that despises them. Black voters still discussing options....
I certainly deeply support Israel