{"id":190874,"date":"2026-05-13T04:52:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T04:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/190874\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T04:52:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T04:52:20","slug":"pennsylvania-supreme-court-justice-leaves-democratic-party-over-antisemitism-concerns-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/190874\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice leaves Democratic Party over antisemitism concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">A Pennsylvania state Supreme Court justice said Monday he is leaving the Democratic Party over what he sees as a rise in antisemitism from mainstream party figures.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Justice David Wecht, who was elected to the court as a Democrat in 2015, said in a statement he is switching his party affiliation to independent due to an &#8220;acquiescence to Jew-hatred\u201d becoming \u201cdisturbingly common among activists, leaders and even many elected officials in the Democratic Party.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cI can no longer abide this. So, I won\u2019t,\u201d Wecht said. \u201cI am no longer registered within any political party.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">In his statement, Wecht said he\u2019s long felt antisemitism was most potent on the fringes of the right \u2014 especially after the 2018 shooting at Pittsburgh\u2019s Tree of Life synagogue, where Wecht was married and is a former board member. But he said that since 2018, \u201cthat same hatred has grown on the left.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cIncreasingly, it has moved from the fringe to the mainstream. It is the duty of all good people to fight this virus, and to do so before it is too late,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Wecht made a pointed jab at Maine Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner, the favorite to win the party\u2019s primary after former Gov. Janet Mills dropped out of the race.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">In October, Platner revealed he\u2019d gotten a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/10\/21\/graham-platner-tattoo-nazi-00617686\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"elm:link;elmt:article_link;slk:tattoo of a widely recognized Nazi symbol;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;tattoo of a widely recognized Nazi symbol&quot;}\" class=\"link \">tattoo of a widely recognized Nazi symbol<\/a> while serving in the U.S. military in Croatia. Platner denied having knowledge of the symbol\u2019s Nazi heritage, and had it covered days after publicly acknowledging the tattoo.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cIn the quarter century that has passed since then, the Democratic Party has changed,\u201d Wecht said. \u201cNazi tattoos, jihadist chants, intimidation and attacks at synagogues, and other hateful anti-Jewish invective and actions are minimized, ignored, and even coddled.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Wecht\u2019s party change will have minimal impact on the balance of power in the state\u2019s Supreme Court. After losing Wecht, four Democratic justices occupy the seven-seat bench.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Wecht won a 10-year retention election last November.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Pennsylvania Democratic Party did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Pennsylvania state Supreme Court justice said Monday he is leaving the Democratic Party over what he sees&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[16062,5026,6375,85048,82481,28,30,29,5018],"class_list":["post-190874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-antisemitism","tag-david-wecht","tag-democratic-party","tag-mainstream-party-figures","tag-party-affiliation","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}