Of the many bad pieces of legislation being discussed in Washington at the moment, there are two particularly pungent anti-BDS bills presently winding their way through Congress — H.R. 246 and S.R. 120. If a Congressional freak-out about the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement feels familiar, it’s because the Senate already passed a bill targeting BDS in early February before it stalled out in the House. But rather than concede defeat, pro-Israel advocates and their Congressional allies have opted for what Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, has correctly identified as a “tactical shift,” a canny softening of language designed to get more Democratic buy-in.

The initial bill, S.R. 1, that advanced through the Senate included provisions encouraging states to pass laws prohibiting government contractors from engaging in political boycotts of the State of Israel or Israeli-controlled territory; at least twenty-four states, according to Friedman, have already put variants of such laws into effect. Even though the Supreme Court unanimously decided that boycotts qualify as protected political speech in 1982, a slim majority of Democrats (including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer) voted in support of the measure. House Democrats, on the other hand, seemed more wary of putting such a bill on Donald Trump’s desk. But after just a few weeks, the circumstances have changed.

Before, the Democratic leadership and more hard-line pro-Israel Democrats might have been content to let S.R. 1 die a quiet death in the House, a failed Republican scheme to divide and shame the Democrats amidst the Trump-induced government shutdown. But after the flimsy allegations of antisemitism against BDS-supporting Rep. Ilhan Omar blew up, fifty-seven Democrats and fifty-two Republicans between the Senate and the House have found a way to resuscitate the effort by co-sponsoring the two new bills. Thanks to the eager participation of these key Democrats, the new anti-BDS bills have removed the poison pill boycott language, instead simply offering a broad condemnation of BDS and its supporters, which reads like a not-so-subtle smear of certain members of the Democratic caucus.