Richard Neal
D · U.S. House, MA-1 · Tier 2/3
Tier 2/3, between “Mainstream pro-Israel” and “Pro-Israel, critical”
Ways and Means ranking member with a mainstream pro-Israel record — Yea on the April 2024 aid package (H.R.8034), H.Res.894 and the Antisemitism Awareness Act, No on the 2025 Greene missile-defense cut — who voted Aye on the July 2026 Massie amendment to strip Israel’s $3.3 billion in military financing. Explaining that vote, he pledged to defend Israel’s “right to exist as a secure Jewish state” and keep funding Iron Dome, then added: “We also have a responsibility to ensure that governments receiving our aid meet the standard our values and laws require,” calling for “delivering urgently needed humanitarian aid to the innocent children and families caught in the violence” (Jul 2026). He voted against H.R.8369, both ICC-sanctions bills, the casualty-figures amendment and the September 2026 anti-boycott bill, and for the June 4, 2026 Lebanon war-powers resolution that most Democrats opposed. On October 7, 2023 he said “Israel has a right to defend itself and its people”; he signed the February 2025 Casten–Sherman letter opposing Trump’s call to permanently relocate Gaza’s civilian population, the March 2025 letter demanding answers on the arrest and detention of Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk and, with most House Democrats, the September 2025 letter opposing West Bank annexation; MassLive reported in September 2025 that his office had written to the White House asking that food aid be allowed to reach Gaza.
A 2/3. The Massie Aye is a single step toward limiting weapons — a vote to strip all of Israel’s foreign military financing from the bill — and he paired it with conditioning language about governments meeting “the standard our values and laws require,” which takes him off a flat 2. What keeps him short of a clean 3 is the frame around that vote: in the same statement he affirmed Israel as “a secure Jewish state,” pledged continued Iron Dome funding and “our resolve to eradicate Hamas’s reign of terror”; he voted for the April 2024 aid package, has no Block the Bombs or Ceasefire Compliance Act cosponsorship and his ceasefire calls stay bilateral or diplomatic (a “negotiated ceasefire that would be bilateral” in April 2024, the February 2025 letter’s plea to “uphold the ceasefire agreement” then in place, and H.Res.473’s “durable end to the conflict in Gaza,” cosponsored in September 2025), and his humanitarian lines come alongside that defense language. Counter-case: a flat 2 if the Massie Aye is read as a one-off message vote with no follow-through, or a flat 3 if his Nays on both ICC-sanctions bills and the anti-boycott bill and his Lebanon war-powers Yea are read as a consistent pattern of daylight.
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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).