Massachusetts Representative Jake Auchincloss, one of 103 Democrats who voted to cut off military aid to Israel last month, says the pro-Israel lobby’s decision to strip his fundraising page from its website is a mark of independence, not a liability.
Auchincloss, a Marine veteran representing the district with New England’s largest Jewish population, has spent the weeks since that vote defending it in synagogues across his district. He joined Newsweek’s The 1600 podcast with host Carlo Versano to explain why, and to make the case that criticizing Israel’s current government is not the same thing as abandoning it.
“It was a constructive conversation,” Auchincloss said of the response from constituents. He has since visited five additional temples in his district to talk through the vote directly with the pro-Israel community.
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Criticizing Netanyahu, Not Israel
Auchincloss was one of 103 Democrats, alongside a single Republican, Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, to vote against continued military aid to Israel. AIPAC responded by removing his fundraising link from its website, a move Versano suggested was becoming something of a status symbol in Democratic primaries.
Auchincloss shrugged it off. “I don’t take positions based on outside interests,” he said. “People want to support me because of my positions.”
He compared the pressures of the job to a contact sport. “I play in the NFL in Washington, D.C., as a contact sport,” he said. “You can’t be thin-skinned, and you can’t be looking over your shoulder.”
Auchincloss was careful to separate his vote from any broader retreat from Israel. He described a visceral, generational connection to the country among the Jewish families he represents, many of them children or grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, for whom Israel represents a bulwark against persecution.
“I believe in the Jewish homeland’s right to exist, and I believe it is right to defend itself against terrorists who do seek to exterminate it,” he said.
What he opposes, he said, is the conduct of the war under President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which he said has produced a war that most Israelis themselves believe Iran is winning.
“I’m a veteran of these forever wars,” he said.
“I refuse to support with my voice and vote any measure that might advance yet another third failed forever war in the Middle East.”
He also drew a line between legitimate criticism of Israeli policy and antisemitism, while acknowledging the two can blur.
“When there is sustained double standards, delegitimization and defamation directed at one country out of the hundreds that exist, that does start to brush into where legitimate criticism starts to feel ugly,” he said. “We do need to have that conversation as a Democratic Party.”
Take Back the Steering Wheel
Auchincloss aimed some of his sharpest language directly at Trump, whom he addressed by name in a Fox News appearance played during the interview.
“Mr. Trump, you are the first president in American history to start and lose a war by yourself,” he said in the clip. “You have made America more weak, more alone and less respected.”
He said the strategy was deliberate.
“It is very evident that he is at a moment in this war where he is being introspective about his legacy,” Auchincloss said. “[Trump is] terrified of being compared to Jimmy Carter.”
Auchincloss rejected any settlement that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz to Iranian control or leave the country’s nuclear program unaddressed, calling an earlier, since-vacated agreement negotiated under Trump “the worst foreign policy document that ever a United States diplomat put their pen to.” He said the country will likely emerge from the war worse off than before it began.
“We are going to have to accept the status quo after this war that is worse than before this war,” he said. “That’s the truth.”
Much of the conversation ranged well outside foreign policy. Auchincloss endorsed a Massachusetts ballot measure that would allow small starter homes on lots as small as 5,000 square feet, part of what he called a broader push to make homeownership attainable by age 30. He also renewed his call for closing the so-called buy, borrow, die loophole that lets wealthy families pass on appreciated assets tax-free at death, calling the current system “un-American.”
On the 2026 midterms, Auchincloss said Democrats need to focus on the cost of living rather than impeachment votes against Trump, while still pursuing accountability for what he called the administration’s most egregious cabinet members, naming Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
He declined to rule anyone in or out for 2028, though he said: “I’m not running for president in 2028, absolutely not.”
Jake Auchincloss writes a newsletter on Substack and is running for a fourth term representing Massachusetts’ Fourth Congressional District. His full conversation with Carlo Versano is available on The 1600 podcast.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Sam Wilson.