<\/p>\n
The youth-led Sunrise Movement<\/span> is seizing on the U.S.\u2013Israel war in Iran to boost challengers to sitting Democrats, joining a coalition of progressive groups arguing that lawmakers who take money from defense contractors and AIPAC cannot meaningfully oppose the war.\u00a0<\/p>\n In Denver, Sunrise is endorsing Melat Kiros, an anti-war candidate and attorney who was fired for refusing to take down her post<\/a> on the genocide in Palestine, the group shared exclusively with The Intercept. Kiros is challenging longtime Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cVoters today, they want to see their candidates and their representatives refusing AIPAC money and refusing [military industrial complex] influence,\u201d said Kiros. \u201cThey\u2019re seeing how much it has dragged us into these endless wars, and how much it is dragging our taxpayer dollars into funding this violence as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Kiros is among a growing list of insurgent candidates \u2014 including William Lawrence in Michigan and Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania, also both Sunrise-endorsed<\/a> \u2014 who are taking Democrats to task on their complicity in the endless wars in the Middle East.<\/p>\n Sunrise\u2019s endorsement is part of a broader strategy shift<\/a> in which the activist group, founded in 2017 to fight climate change in particular, pivots to fighting authoritarianism more broadly.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s just no winning on climate unless we address how absolutely broken our political system is,\u201d said Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the Sunrise Movement. Focusing on corporate PAC money and the wars it fuels abroad is an essential part of the organization\u2019s broader mission, she added. \u201cThe path towards winning climate legislation lies towards having a functional democracy, and that includes having a democracy that doesn\u2019t prioritize endless wars abroad over the very real constraints of people right here.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe path towards winning climate legislation lies towards having a functional democracy \u2026 that doesn\u2019t prioritize endless wars abroad over the very real constraints of people right here.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Shiney-Ajay said Sunrise Movement organizers are \u201creally excited\u201d about Kiros, 28, because of her moral clarity. \u201cShe is really clear about standing up for working people,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd she\u2019s very clear about not taking corporate PAC money.\u201d<\/p>\n Historically, foreign policy issues have not been top of mind for Democratic primary voters, said Don Haider-Markel, a political science professor at the University of Kansas. But as the Trump administration wages its unpopular war on Iran, he said, \u201ccandidates that are able to mesh together affordability and war, and opposition to support for Israel, I think, are gonna be the ones that might be able to break through.\u201d<\/p>\n This argument requires nuance, as most Democrats \u2014 at least publicly \u2014 oppose the Trump administration\u2019s war with Iran, often citing affordability as a concern.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThis war is costing at least $1 billion every day,\u201d said DeGette<\/a>, Kiros\u2019 opponent, in a public statement about her support for a War Powers resolution to block the administration\u2019s violence. \u201cThat is billions of dollars that could go towards affordable health care and housing. I refuse to support this war.\u201d<\/p>\n DeGette\u2019s statement \u201crings hollow,\u201d Kiros told The Intercept. \u201cDemocrats like DeGette had the opportunity to cut the military budget by 10 percent <\/a>for that very reason \u2014 especially during Covid, when we needed that money for health care \u2014 and still voted no,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kiros blames the \u201cmilitary\u2013industrial complex\u201d and actors like AIPAC for pushing lawmakers to support defense contractor spending and wars that line their pockets.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are corporations that are actively profiting from the war,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I think it also has to do with the impact and the influence that we have seen from AIPAC and from Israel.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Kiros has criticized DeGette for receiving over $5 million from corporate PACs<\/a>. The incumbent\u2019s top contributor is the law and lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, which is founded and chaired by former AIPAC vice president and board member Norman Brownstein<\/a>, according to OpenSecrets. \u201cAt the end of the day, the people who get you into office are the ones you are going to be accountable to,\u201d said Kiros.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nicole Shea Niebler, a Sunrise Movement organizer in Denver, recently confronted DeGette at a meet and greet for declining to support Block The Bombs, a bill that would limit offensive weapons transfers to Israel<\/a>. Niebler said voters are right to be worried about candidates who take money from the groups pushing for war with Iran.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re not willing to say no, what else are you willing to do that is not in the interest of your constituents?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Niebler sees her organization\u2019s broader shift toward supporting anti-war candidates like Kiros as a moment of \u201cclarity\u201d for the organization, calling the U.S. military \u201cthe true number one danger to our environment.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n