Summer Lee
D · U.S. House, PA-12 · Tier 5
Tier 5, “Critical on most positions”
A leading advocate of a full arms embargo on Israel (including commercial sales, not just public aid), Block the Bombs cosponsor, who calls the war a genocide in her own voice: “the Israeli government’s genocide and forced famine in Gaza is collective punishment... the U.S. must withhold weapons.” She is an original cosponsor of the 2025 and 2026 Nakba and right-of-return resolutions (H.Res.409, the first listed of only eight, and H.Res.1289, May 14, 2026), and voted NO on the April 2024 Israel military-aid supplemental (H.R. 8034). In September 2024 she rallied for the Harris–Walz campaign at Carnegie Mellon with Ocasio-Cortez, four months after posting “We’re funding a genocide that the American people rightfully oppose.” She signed letters urging the State Department to affirm U.S. opposition to the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza (January 2024), backing refugee priority status for Gazans with U.S. citizen or permanent-resident relatives (June 2024), demanding answers on the detentions of the student activists Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk and Mohsen Mahdawi (March and April 2025), condemning the Israeli government’s “use of starvation as a weapon of war” and rejecting the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (Tlaib’s 19-signer letter, June 2025) and urging Secretary Rubio to press Israel to allow a surge of aid into Gaza, above all infant formula (August 2025). In August and September 2026 Lee signed Tlaib’s letter demanding the release of 20-year-old US citizen Sama Safi from Israeli military detention, the Dexter–Ruiz letter seeking the release of Gaza pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya from Israeli detention without charge (Sep 8) and the Pocan–Quigley letter on Palestinian medical workers held by Israel without charge (Sep 24). On Oct 6, 2026 she joined García, Ramirez, Tlaib, Omar and Jayapal in a joint statement that called “Israel’s systematic annihilation of medical facilities and healthcare workers” an “intentional policy designed to further occupation, apartheid, and genocide against the Palestinian people” and demanded “an end to U.S. arms transfers to Israel, including the Trump Administration’s latest $2.8 billion sale of bombs.” On Oct 1 she wrote that ICE “abducted Salah Sarsour for speaking out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.” Answering her Republican opponent’s charge of antisemitism in a KDKA-TV interview published Oct 21, 2026, she said: “The majority of Americans have the perspective that Israel has gone way too far in Gaza. Whether you call it genocide or you point out war crimes or you call it tragedy, the majority of Americans take that stance.”
A 5. Cosponsoring Tlaib’s Nakba resolutions three years running (H.Res.1231 in May 2024, then H.Res.409, first listed of only eight, and H.Res.1289 as an original cosponsor) puts her on record for the Palestinian right of return, a position that questions Israel’s legitimacy and reaches toward the Tier 6 end. It sits on a Tier 5 record: “the Israeli government’s genocide” in her own words, and “the U.S. must withhold weapons”; a place, The Intercept reports, among members seeking a total arms embargo, commercial sales included; Block the Bombs and the H.Res.876 genocide resolution; a No on the April 2024 aid package; and one of six votes in July 2025 to cut Israel’s missile-defense funding. What holds her at 5 is that this one position comes with more hedging than any member at 5/6. She rallied for Harris–Walz in September 2024, four months after posting “We’re funding a genocide,” having joined the Uncommitted delegates’ convention sit-in, then called Harris’s Gaza remarks “a step.” She voted for H.Res.888, reaffirming Israel’s right to exist (Nov 2023), and for the Human Shields Act (Apr 2024, passed 419–4), which Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib opposed. She takes no BDS or anti-Zionist position in her own words, where Omar backed BDS by name. Counter-case: 5/6, on three years of right-of-return cosponsorships beside a Tier 5 record.
Open the full card, with votes, money and every source, on elect26 →
elect26 places 2026 midterm candidates on a six-tier spectrum, from 1 (most pro-Israel) to 6 (most critical of Israel).