Jack Reed
D · U.S. Senate, Rhode Island · Tier 2
Tier 2, “Mainstream pro-Israel”
The top Armed Services Democrat (ranking member and former chair), who calls America’s commitment to Israel “ironclad” and has begun voting against the least-consequential arms transfers. He voted to block the July 2025 sale of assault rifles to Israeli police (his first vote to block a weapons sale to Israel) and the April 2026 sale of bulldozers — both tied to West Bank annexation and settler violence — but voted against every resolution to block bombs. In May 2024 he did back Biden’s pause on high-payload bomb deliveries and his “conditions for U.S. weapons transfers moving forward” — rhetorically, with no vote behind it. He is Netanyahu-critical (faulting his conduct of the war amid Palestinian famine) and called the June 2025 Israeli strike on Iran a “reckless escalation.” J Street endorsee. In September 2026 Reed joined Van Hollen as an original cosponsor of S.Res.852, a section 502B(c) request for a State Department report on Israel’s human-rights practices, and voted to discharge it (the motion failed 47–51); in January 2024 he had voted to table Sanders’s similar request, S.Res.504. He also cosponsors Coons’s S.5476 (September 2026), which would sanction foreign persons who have facilitated Israeli settlement construction in the E1 area of the West Bank.
A flat Tier 2. As the top Armed Services Democrat his baseline is support for Israel’s defense — in May 2024 he called America’s commitment to Israel “ironclad” — with no AIPAC distancing. His only arms-block crossovers are two votes — the July 2025 rifle sale (his first such vote) and the April 2026 bulldozer sale — but both are the softest, most defensible transfers to oppose: rifles bound for Ben-Gvir’s police and settler bulldozers tied to West Bank annexation. He voted against the other seven resolutions — five on bombs or bomb guidance kits, plus tank and mortar rounds — so he has never voted to block a sale of bombs, guidance kits or tank and mortar rounds — a long way from a conditioning act like Block the Bombs. Cutting the other way, his own cited statement from May 2024 endorses Biden’s pause on high-payload bombs and his “conditions for U.S. weapons transfers moving forward,” which is support for conditioning, in his own words, that never became a vote. In November 2025 he and Van Hollen led an 11-senator letter pressing Secretary Rubio to adjudicate the “many hundreds” of potential violations of U.S. human rights law by Israeli military units in Gaza found in a State Department inspector general review, and to revise Israel’s separate Leahy Law vetting so that “a uniform process is followed for every country”; in July 2025 he signed Van Hollen’s letter seeking an independent U.S. investigation into the killing of American citizen Saifullah Musallet by settlers in the West Bank. Repeated crossings, but only on the least-consequential transfers, and no distance from AIPAC keep him at 2 rather than 2/3, though the Leahy letter he led goes further, to accountability for Israeli units in Gaza.
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elect26 places 2026 midterm candidates on a six-tier spectrum, from 1 (most pro-Israel) to 6 (most critical of Israel).