A growing number of establishment Democrats are facing backlash from progressives for their escalating attacks on leftist streamer Hasan Piker, with critics accusing the party’s corporatist wing of obsessing over an online influencer while ignoring the economic and foreign policy grievances driving millions of voters away on the eve of the critical midterm elections.

The latest controversy erupted after Piker argued during an online broadcast that Jewish Americans’ public support for Israel could contribute to antisemitism. Piker’s comments drew swift condemnation from prominent Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY), who, without naming Piker, called them “dangerous and antisemitic.”

Other Democrats piled on, prompting rebuke from progressives, who accused the centrists of caring more about an online personality than winning back control of Congress in November.

Former progressive Michigan congressional candidate Kyle Blomquist called it an “absolute mass psychosis event.”

Wild to see establishment Dems fighting a Twitch streamer harder than they're fighting Trump. Putting out statements attacking @hasanthehun while meeting with Jared Kushner. It's so obviously playing into the right's midterm strategy of distracting people from rising costs. pic.twitter.com/vhxHN9pTpB

— Aaron Regunberg (@AaronRegunberg) August 25, 2026

“Too many demotivated Democrats stayed home in 2016 and 2024. We can’t repeat past mistakes,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said on social media.

Khanna implored Democrats to stop calling Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—who is Jewish—an antisemite and “stop wasting time attacking Hasan Piker instead of [President Donald] Trump’s robber-baron corruption.”

“Don’t put Israel hawks out of touch with our voters in charge of our Middle East policy,” he added. “It is time for a reckoning: Are we a party that represents corporate interests and super PACs, or will we represent the American people?”

According to Track AIPAC, pro-Israel Democrats have taken tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions from pro-Israel lobby groups, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s United Democracy Project.

Khanna’s comments came a day after Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the leading Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, announced the appointment of Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) as ranking member of the Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee. Moskowitz, who said earlier this year that he is “to the right” of Vice President JD Vance in his support of Trump’s illegal US-Israeli war of choice on Iran, is one of the strongest supporters of Israel in Congress.

This, at a time when three-quarters of Democratic voters oppose US aid to Israel—up from just 45% three years ago—and after the issue was a factor in former Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to Trump in the 2024 presidential election.

A majority of Democratic voters also believe that Israel’s US-backed war on Gaza is a genocide, a position also held by United Nations experts, around 20 countries that joined South Africa’s ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice, human rights groups, and scholars around the world—including in Israel.

Jasper Nathaniel, a US journalist known for his coverage of Israel’s illegal occupation, settler colonization, and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, posted on X: “The entire bipartisan political establishment has coalesced around a willful misreading of what Hasan Piker said in order to silence criticism of Israel. They’re doing the same thing to Mark Ruffalo in Hollywood. It’s all fucking gaslighting. Don’t give an inch.”

“What Hasan said is completely intuitive. Everyone knows that Israel’s genocide of Palestinians—and the Jewish institutions’ blanket support for it—has created more hostility towards Jews,” he added. “There is no good-faith argument against this.”

Below is a fuller transcript of Piker's remarks. No doubt much that some would disagree with, but there's no call for or justification of violence – the opposite, actually. pic.twitter.com/AZiksRy4VR

— Branko Marcetic (@BMarchetich) August 25, 2026

Jacobin staff writer Branko Marcetic asserted Wednesday that “centrists despise Hasan Piker more than they want to win.”

“It’s an extreme stretch to describe Piker’s remarks as an incitement of or justification for violence and bigotry against Jews,” he continued. “The basic point he’s making—that the tendency by pro-Israel voices to conflate Jewishness with lockstep support for Israel makes Jews less safe—has been made by a number of Jewish voices, including Ezra Klein at The New York Times, David Klion at The Nation, Norman Solomon at The Guardian, union organizer Molly Kraft, and Hannah Arendt nearly 80 years ago.”

The dispute has now ensnared Michigan US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who campaigned alongside Piker during his successful Democratic primary bid. El-Sayed has somewhat distanced himself from Piker’s comments, emphasizing that the campaign represents his own views and condemning antisemitism. It hasn’t placated establishment Democrats.

Some Democrats have implored their party to keep its eyes on the proverbial prize—winning back Congress—instead of engaging in senseless internecine battles.

“Billionaires are draining our resources to develop a technology they want to replace us, millions will lose Medicaid in the new year to pay for tax cuts for the rich, and we’re spending billions on genocidal wars the voters oppose,” said Melat Kiros, the progressive Democratic nominee for Colorado’s 1st Congressional District. “But sure, let’s keep talking about Hasan Piker.”

It’s not just Democratic Socialists of America-type progressives who get it. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) admonished reporters during a Wednesday campaign rally for El-Sayed at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

.@RepDebDingell (D-MI) says Hasan Piker is "not what November is about," and that Republicans are trying to divide Democrats over it: "I'm still trying to figure out is it the reason he exercises and looks buff why he has so many followers?" pic.twitter.com/zZLTCHHbTy

— CSPAN (@cspan) August 26, 2026

“Don’t any reporter ask me again about Hasan Piker,” she said angrily. “It’s not what November is about.”

“Republicans are… trying to divide us,” she continued. “And we’ve got to stop letting them try to divide us.”

Weighing in on corporate Democrats’ attacks on Piker from across the Atlantic, British writer and activist Owen Jones said Wednesday that “the Democratic establishment know they’ve lost their base. These smears are driven by panic.”

“The bottom line about what’s happening here is this: The American people have turned against Israel in revulsion at the genocide and want to stop facilitating its crimes. That opposition is overwhelming among the Democratic rank-and-file,” he continued.

“But the Democratic Party establishment remains invested in the alliance with Israel—and they fear being swept aside by pro-Palestinian left-wing candidates in upcoming primaries,” Jones asserted, adding that centrists “would prefer to lose to the Republicans than win with the left. They would prefer to keep facilitating Israel’s genocide and heinous crimes rather than win.”

“That’s what we are dealing with here,” he added. “And if it means destroying US democracy to defend Israel—that’s a price they’re willing to pay.”

Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to Sanders, expressed a similar sentiment on social media.

“You’ve never seen corporate Democrats fighting as hard and as on message against Trump as they are against Hasan right now,” he said. “It’s insane.”

Scientists and climate action campaigners on Thursday pointed to the collapse of a glacier as a likely cause of disastrous flash flooding in Tibet and Nepal’s Rasuwa district, where emergency workers are searching for more than 1,300 missing people after water and mud poured into the Trishuli River valley, crashing through villages where thousands of people live and sweeping away bridges, homes, and miles of roads.

An initial assessment by geologists and glaciologists found that in satellite imagery taken before the flooding, a glacier was seen about 4,000 feet above the valley where at least 353 people were later killed Wednesday by the rushing waters and mudslide.

The glacier appeared about 2 million square feet smaller after the flooding, while the valley was “strewn with ice and mud” and the nearby river was “swollen beyond its banks, submerging the surrounding vegetation beneath murky brown floodwaters.

The scientists said an “ice avalanche”—a massive chunk of ice that fell off a glacier in the mountainous region and into the valley below, was likely at least partially to blame for the flash flooding, but noted that it was too early to rule out other or additional causes.

The satellite imagery appeared to show that “a glacier in the area basically snapped off in a clean break, allowing it to fall just over a vertical kilometer to the valley bottom,” Daniel Shugar, a geologist at the University of Calgary in Canada, told The New York Times. “The bottom looks like a bomb exploded—it’s just deposits from the broken-up glacier.”

The chunk of ice was likely about 2,000 feet wide, Shugar told the Times, and fell nearly 4,000 feet—a fall that would have “pulverized” the ice into water.

Aakriti Dotel, national network coordinator for the climate action group Nepalese Youth for Climate Action said the floods were “another painful reminder of the growing climate crisis facing Nepal and the Himalayas.”

“As our glaciers melt and extreme weather events become increasingly unpredictable, communities living downstream are bearing the devastating consequences,” said Dotel. “We mourn the lives lost and the livelihoods affected and call for urgent global climate action. There must be stronger support for vulnerable mountain communities, and accountability from those most responsible for the climate crisis.”

The disaster stunned officials in the area, where there had been no rainfall before the floodwaters and mudslide overtook the region.

Intense videos circulating on social media Wednesday showed people attempting to run away as water and mud crashed into villages in the region.

🇳🇵🌊 Nepal flash flood kills at least 95, hundreds missing

➤ A massive flash flood swept away villages in Nepal’s mountainous Rasuwa district near the Tibet border Wednesday, killing at least 95 people and leaving hundreds missing, including 384 tourists and eight South Korean…

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 26, 2026

Tom Fletcher, the United Nations humanitarian chief, said he had mobilized $2 million from the UN Global Emergency Fund “to save lives with emergency medical care, shelter, water.”

The secretary-general of the Nepal Red Cross told CNN that about 20,000 houses have been “swept away” in the region.

“These people do not have anything,” said Rishi Khanal. “To feed them for some time, some days is a very serious thing to us… The shelter problem is there. The drinking water problem is there.”

A truly desperate assessment out of Nepal from the Secretary General of @NepalRedCross: pic.twitter.com/QrJ4vZhmSz

— Becky Anderson (@BeckyCNN) August 26, 2026

A police officer in the village of Syabrubesi told the Times that waves of water crashed into his police station Wednesday morning, right after he got off the phone with a friend who had warned him a flood was headed toward the town.

“One of my senior officers and I were together when the wave struck. I was thrown out, but he was unlucky and was buried or swept away,” he told the newspaper. “I cannot explain how big the waves were. They engulfed several-meters-high buildings in a fraction of seconds… It wasn’t just water. It was a combination of boulders, sand, and thick sludge.”

Seven people were working at the station when the flood hit, and the officer is one of three who have been found alive. He said he was concerned that the other four are among the missing.

Homes, schools, government buildings, and the office of a hydropower project are among the infrastructure destroyed in Syabrubesi.

More than 160 glaciers in Nepal have entirely melted in recent decades, as scientists have warned that continued fossil fuel extraction is heating the planet and causing dangerous extreme weather. The area of the country’s glaciers also shrank by about one-quarter between 1970-2010.

At The Conversation, Levan Tielidze, a research fellow in glacial geomorphology at Monash University, wrote that “it’s too early to say this was the exact cause. But we know that the great ice stores of the Himalayas—known as the world’s ‘third pole’ because it contains the largest amount of snow and ice after the Arctic and Antarctic—are no longer safe.”

Tielidze continued:

What happened in Nepal is likely due to an enormous ice-and-rock landslide sweeping down a mountain pass and gathering up ice, water, rock, trees and dirt.
The landslide was so large it was originally thought to be an earthquake, as the seismic energy registered as a 4.4 magnitude quake on seismographs.
By the time it reached Gyirong Port—a China-Nepal border crossing—the wall of debris resembled a tsunami of dirt. Early estimates suggest the wave may have been 30 meters high.

Rising global temperatures have been linked to previous collapses of glaciers, including in Switzerland last year when the Birch Glacier wiped out nearly an entire town of 300 residents, who had evacuated before the disaster. Eleven mountain climbers were also killed by a glacier collapse in Italy in 2022.

“Every destabilized glacier in a warming Himalaya is a ticking time bomb that can go off unannounced, and when it does, those least responsible for the climate crisis pay with their lives,” said Savio Carvalho, head of campaigns and networks for 350.org. “This moment of grief has a clear message for world leaders: Delay is deadly. Rich countries must finally deliver the finance and protection they owe frontline communities. Without a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, the planet will continue to heat up and lives can be lost in a flash.”