The Death of the Squad Has Been Greatly Exaggerated
Just a week ago, the media said the Squad faced an “existential threat” from AIPAC. Ilhan Omar’s landslide win should remind us the lobby is only as invincible as it makes us believe it is.

Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib during a news conference on free speech on college campuses, outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on Thursday, May 23, 2024. (Anna Rose Layden / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Last night, Ilhan Omar won her primary election, setting her up for what will almost certainly end up being her fourth term in Congress. Except she didn’t just win. Omar destroyed her challenger, Don Samuels, who was taking his second swing at Omar. Two years ago, he almost beat her — but this time, Samuels was sent packing by a nearly fourteen-point vote margin.
Omar emerged triumphant despite internal polling that, months earlier, had shown a dead-even race, which Samuels claimed “supports what we already know: We can beat Rep. Ilhan Omar.” It turns out he could not.
The outcome isn’t so much a loss for Samuels, a relatively weak and undisciplined candidate, as it is a loss for the pro-Israel lobby. Samuels leaned into criticism of Omar’s opposition to the ongoing US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza during the campaign, denouncing a Minneapolis City Council cease-fire resolution that Omar supported, attacking her for voting against a one-sided pro-Israel resolution in the war’s first month, and accusing her of ignoring “the sensibilities of the Jewish community.” He got the backing of some major pro-Israel donors, a money surge following Squad member Cori Bush’s defeat, and an eleventh-hour assist from a group of wealthy donors, some of them Donald Trump backers, who called themselves “Zionists for Don Samuels.”