Rep. Rashida Tlaib is heading to Fort Lauderdale to boost socialist challengers running against two Jewish Democratic incumbents, a move Florida's lone Jewish Republican congressman calls a deliberate targeting campaign.
Tlaib, the Michigan Democrat and first Palestinian American woman elected to Congress, plans to appear at a rally called "Chomp the Oligarchy" in Fort Lauderdale this Friday, hosted by the progressive groups Gen Z For Change and the Florida Youth Justice Coalition. The event backs three congressional candidates, two of them socialists seeking to unseat Reps. Jared Moskowitz and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, both Jewish Democrats representing South Florida districts. A flier promoting the rally circulated on Instagram, though the specific account that posted it has not been identified.
Rep. Randy Fine, a Republican who is Florida's only Jewish member of Congress, told Fox News Digital that Tlaib's choice of targets is no accident:
"I think that it's no coincidence that she's coming to target two of the remaining Jewish Democrats."
Fine went further, calling Tlaib "a vocal supporter of Hamas" and warning that the far left is making Jewish Americans feel unsafe. Neither Moskowitz's nor Wasserman Schultz's campaigns responded to requests for comment on Tlaib's planned appearance. Tlaib's campaign also declined to respond to Fine's remarks.
Tlaib's Fort Lauderdale appearance is not an isolated act. Candidates linked to the Democratic Socialists of America have already defeated establishment House Democrats in New York, Colorado, and Michigan this election cycle. In Michigan, socialist politician Abdul El-Sayed beat establishment-backed Rep. Haley Stevens for the party's Senate nomination, a race where Tlaib campaigned alongside El-Sayed.
That pattern of insurgent primary victories has rattled the Democratic establishment. In New York, DSA-backed candidates swept key Democratic primaries, prompting sharp criticism from figures like state Attorney General Letitia James.
The challengers Tlaib is backing in Florida follow the same playbook. The Washington Examiner identified the two socialist candidates as Oliver Larkin, who is challenging Moskowitz, and Elijah Manley, who is running against Wasserman Schultz. Both races pit left-wing outsiders against incumbents who have clashed publicly with Tlaib over Israel and antisemitism.
Fine framed the broader trend in blunt terms:
"I think the Democratic Party is lost, and I think it's dangerous. I don't know that it's lost and dangerous in Fort Lauderdale or Florida, but nationally, the kinds of people that the Democrats are nominating, these are people who do not love America. They hate it. They are here to destroy it, and no one embodies that better than Rashida Tlaib."
Both targeted seats sit in recently redrawn districts, adding a layer of political volatility. Moskowitz currently represents Florida's 23rd Congressional District but is running for re-election in the newly configured 25th District, which was redrawn to give Republicans a stronger position in the general election. That shift could make a bruising primary even more consequential, a weakened Democratic nominee would face tougher odds in November.
Wasserman Schultz's situation carries its own complications. She is running in the newly redrawn 20th Congressional District, described as a majority-Black district that leans heavily Democratic. Her entry into that seat has already sparked backlash from Black leaders who see it as displacing historically Black representation. A linked headline on Fox News Digital's page referenced House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declining to back Wasserman Schultz amid that revolt.
The internal friction over Wasserman Schultz's district mirrors a broader pattern of establishment Democrats fighting rearguard actions against challengers from their own left flank.
Fine's accusation that Tlaib is deliberately targeting Jewish colleagues draws force from her own record. Tlaib has faced bipartisan criticism in Congress for her comments on Israel and Jewish people. In 2023, the House censured her for statements about the Gaza conflict and for not immediately condemning the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. After the censure, Tlaib posted the phrase "from the river to the sea" on social media, a slogan that critics call a demand for Israel's elimination.
Tlaib has denied that the phrase carries that meaning. She has said it is "an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate." Wasserman Schultz, one of the incumbents Tlaib now seeks to unseat, rejected that framing directly at the time, stating that the phrase "means eradicating Israel and Jews. Period. Dressing it up in a new PR ploy won't change that."
Tlaib has denied accusations of antisemitism more broadly. She and other Democrats have previously accused Fine of anti-Muslim racism, though the specific context of those accusations is not detailed in available reporting.
The clash between Tlaib and Wasserman Schultz over that slogan now serves as the backdrop for a primary fight in which Tlaib is actively working to end Wasserman Schultz's career in Congress. Whatever Tlaib's stated intentions, the optics are difficult to separate from the history.
Fine told Fox News Digital that Tlaib's rally would not play well in South Florida, though he acknowledged the question of how Democratic primary voters respond is a separate matter:
"It won't be well received in Florida. How it's received in a Democratic primary, look, the Democrats are lost. But I'm going to hope that Florida Democrats are smarter than national Democrats because the Jew hatred side of the Democratic Party is not good for America."
That warning reflects a real tension inside the Democratic coalition. The party's progressive wing, driven by DSA-aligned activists and figures like Tlaib, has shown it can win primaries by running to the left of incumbents, even incumbents with decades of party loyalty. The question is whether the establishment wing has the will or the tools to stop it.
So far, the track record is not encouraging for Democratic leadership. Veteran strategist James Carville has urged the party to bar DSA-backed primary winners from the House Democratic caucus entirely, a sign of how far the internal divisions have advanced.
Tlaib, for her part, has emerged as what Fox News Digital described as "a power player on the far left" this election cycle, campaigning with DSA candidates across the country. Her Fort Lauderdale appearance fits a clear pattern: identify vulnerable establishment Democrats, back their socialist challengers, and let the primary electorate do the rest.
The fact that intraparty fractures keep deepening across multiple states suggests this is not a passing phase. It is a strategy, and the Democratic establishment has yet to find an answer for it.
Fine's charge, that Tlaib is singling out Jewish Democrats, may be contested. But the pattern speaks for itself: a congresswoman censured for her rhetoric on Israel, now flying to South Florida to help socialists take down two of the party's most prominent Jewish members. Voters in those districts will decide whether that is coincidence or something else entirely.
When a party cannot protect its own incumbents from colleagues who want them gone, the problem is not one rally in Fort Lauderdale. The problem is who runs the party, and right now, the far left is not asking permission.