Track AIPAC’s Methodology Is Just Vibes
Critics of Israel are lumped together with its strongest allies if ‘Track AIPAC’ doesn’t like them enough.
Red light districts
Lately, you may have noticed red and green graphic cards from an organization called Track AIPAC1 making the rounds on social media. As is often the case with viral political content online, the cards do not make much sense. The problems should be obvious to anyone with a cursory understanding of how to read campaign finance data.
You might expect an organization called “Track AIPAC” to have a laser focus on, well, following and publicizing the activities and political donations of the pro-Israel lobbying organization. But Democratic candidates who have been red-carded by the group aren’t always recipients of AIPAC money. Some have gotten money from other “pro-Israel” organizations or lobbyists. Some have voting records or have made decisions about sponsoring (or not sponsoring) bills that have earned Track AIPAC’s ire. And some appear to have caught Track AIPAC’s heat on account of vibes alone.2
In Maryland, for instance, Track AIPAC backs Chris Van Hollen while shaming his fellow Senate Democrat Angela Alsobrooks. In the description below Alsobrooks on her Track AIPAC profile, the organization notes the contributions she’s received from J Street, a left-leaning Zionist group, but it doesn’t do this for Van Hollen, even though his are much more extensive. (This FEC page will show you all the individual J Street contributions each candidate has received this cycle.)
The group’s misleading and confusing graphics have become hot commodities on the left. In one instance, Track AIPAC disavowed a green graphic someone had mocked up for an Ohio gubernatorial candidate to resemble one of theirs. After making clear that the graphic was a counterfeit, the group explained that AIPAC does not give to state and local candidates. Presumably, then, Track AIPAC wouldn’t either support or oppose state and local candidates. Well, see what your presuming got you: The group gave Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey a red graphic and endorsed his challenger during the leadup to last fall’s election. Frey’s graphic did not even mention any donations. It just said, “This candidate is pro-Israel.”
Track AIPAC has also changed its scoring system without explanation. In 2024, the group hit Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) with one of its signature red cards. A year later, Khanna tagged Track AIPAC in a post on X where he made clear he does not take money from AIPAC. He now appears on a list of lawmakers on the Track AIPAC website without the ominous red filter, but with the line the group appears to apply to every lawmaker about whom it is ambivalent rather than hostile: “We encourage this representative to continue improving their legislative record on Israel-Palestine issues.”
In some cases, candidates who have gotten red cards from the group were AIPAC targets in previous election cycles. Red-carded Rep. Dave Min (D-Calif.), for example, won his race despite AIPAC spending $4.5 million on attack ads to make his constituents aware of his DUI arrest.
The ex cathedra judgements from Track AIPAC about which candidates are free of pro-Israeli influence and which are not seem even more questionable when you examine the group’s stated methodology.
In a recent detailed explanation of changes to its formula, Track AIPAC indicated that its goals are a bit broader than, well, just tracking AIPAC. Here is how the group characterizes two of its basic directional commitments:
2. While we selected the name Track AIPAC as a public education tool, we have always tracked and reported on the entire pro-Israel lobby.
3. We track the lobby money wherever it goes, regardless of party identity or any personal feelings about a given lawmaker or candidate.
Scroll a bit more, and you will find the group admitting the “key ingredient” of the color-card recipe has virtually nothing to do with AIPAC itself. Instead, the most important consideration is the policy preferences of the candidate in question versus those of the individuals who run Track AIPAC.
The finance record alone is not enough to land a member of Congress (or a candidate) with a red graphic. Our scorecards represent a nexus of lobby spending and the candidate’s policy record.
Red graphics are assigned when we evaluate a candidate’s policy as pro-Israel based on their voting record (if one exists), any published policy positions, any public statements, and any credible reporting verifying that the candidate is seeking AIPAC’s support—often by circulating secret position papers favorable to Israel.
If a candidate is identified as being pro-Israel based on these public records, and campaign finance data is not yet available, we will assign a “WARNING!” label to their graphic.
The group then acknowledges that its judgments are largely sourced from the Congressional Democrat Palestine Tracker, which assigns letter grades to lawmakers based on a public spreadsheet maintained by volunteers with the Democratic Socialists of America.
But even here, Track AIPAC appears to be thumbing the scales. Have a look at three lawmakers with middling scores in the DSA-maintained spreadsheet. At 72 percent, Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.) has a higher “total Palestine score” than both Reps. Maxwell Frost of Florida (68 percent) and Vermont’s Becca Balint (66 percent). All three receive a grade of “C” on the “Congress Scorecard” that Track AIPAC cites as informing its judgments. But while Dexter gets a red badge from the group, Frost and Balint not only get green ones; they have each received a Track AIPAC endorsement.
And while Balint has received money from J Street, Track AIPAC doesn’t list the organization as a Balint donor even though J Street shows up in the citations for dozens of her red-carded colleagues. On the Track AIPAC landing page containing blurbs for every member of Congress, the group simply claims Balint “rejects AIPAC and champions a foreign policy based on human rights and international law.”
If this all sounds confusing, don’t worry: Track AIPAC gets it. At the bottom of the methodology page, they have added this note: “Recent feedback on our methods has made it clear to us that our graphics do not fully represent the data points that go into the process—especially the legislative and public policy record.”
“While we have always published receipts justifying the policy record when posting our red and green graphics, that context gets lost quickly when the graphics are reposted in other contexts later,” the note continues. “Our forthcoming graphic design will clearly incorporate specific policy points that factor into our analysis.”
Track AIPAC did not respond to a request for comment on its methodology and coming changes. Perhaps the group will adopt a broader spectrum of color coding to make clear just how badly a candidate has fared with its occult calculus.
Snake eyes
As I noted in my newsletter detailing Polymarket’s dud of a pop-up bar in Washington earlier this month, the big prediction-market companies are engaged in a major marketing and influence campaign to ensure they will not be scrutinized, regulated, or banned outright. Their efforts include spending more and more on lobbying elected officials and regulators, and working to sway public opinion through advertising, events, and social media.
Notwithstanding all that, their fears of the party ending early could be coming true. Since early March, lawmakers in both the House and Senate have introduced six separate bills to prohibit prediction market uses in various forms:
The STOP Corrupt Bets Act, which would ban prediction-market gambling in a number of areas, including on government activity.
The BETS OFF Act, which would ban wagers on government activity and other markets that can be easily manipulated.
The End Prediction Market Corruption Act, to ban the president, vice president, members of Congress, and other high-level federal officials from insider trading on prediction markets.
The Event Contract Enforcement Act, to strengthen the regulatory power of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) over prediction markets and forcing the commission to ban contracts on things like terrorism or assassinations.
The PREDICT Act, which would ban members of Congress and federal officials from insider trading on prediction markets.
The Prediction Markets Are Gambling Act, which would ban CFTC-registered entities from listing prediction contracts that resemble gambling activities.
Perhaps in response to this flurry of bills that would proscribe aspects of its business, Kalshi, one of the prediction-market companies under scrutiny for its high volume of suspiciously timed trades on U.S. foreign policy decisions, has added yet another component to its frantic PR operation. On Monday, the company blanketed Washington, D.C. with advertisements that make much of its self-chosen rules.
Kalshi’s PR operation is unlikely to satisfy Congress, though. While both chambers are often ineffective and uninterested in passing any kind of regulation for emerging technologies, lawmakers are quickly growing impatient with the prediction markets, perhaps in part because they have become such an obvious vector of corruption. Even the more libertarian-leaning lawmakers are considering Congress’s options for regulating them.
“I think there should be rules against that,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told me when I asked about whether lawmakers and federal officials should be allowed to continue gambling on prediction markets. “But I’m not sure where the rules originate—if they need to be a law—some of the things are regulated by personnel regulations and they ought to be.”
“It definitely needs to be looked at,” Paul added.
It’s rare to find such broad bipartisan interest in regulating a single industry. And Republicans would normally balk at addressing a problem if addressing it could be viewed as a direct attack on the president or his family. But so far that narrative hasn’t developed, despite some initial concerns that it might.
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Man of the steeple
Vice President JD Vance announced that he is releasing another book in June. The former hillbilly elegist’s forthcoming conversion memoir is titled Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith.
The cover of the book, which will be published by Harper, the flagship imprint of HarperCollins, is decorated with a striking pastoral photo of a very Appalachia-coded countryside church. However, while Vance’s way back to faith led him to embrace Catholicism specifically, the church on his book is not a Catholic one. The building in the cover photo is Mount Zion Church in Elk Creek, Virginia—a United Methodist house of worship.
Mount Zion is undeniably photogenic, which is why it’s also a popular stock image. It’s previously been used to illustrate a satirical Babylon Bee article about how “evangelical churchgoers in the Raleigh area have begun to notice that there is a sorry excuse for a church in town that only has one service.”
Vance’s choice of photo struck me as odd, given that the vice president has been outspoken about his Catholic faith. And according to the book’s description on Amazon, Communion is pretty explicitly about Vance’s journey on the road to Rome:
Communion is a spiritual exploration of what it means to be a Christian in all the seasons of life JD Vance has experienced—as a child, a young man, a husband, a father, and a leader.
Picking up in some ways where Hillbilly Elegy left off, Communion recounts how Vance’s pursuit of material privileges ultimately led him into a secular wilderness.
Communion reveals how Vance regained his faith and discusses his conversion to Catholicism, how his faith guides his work in public life, and how it shapes his thoughts about the future.
A spokesperson for Vance told me to reach out to the publisher instead of inquiring with the VP’s team. A spokesperson for HarperCollins did not respond to a request for comment.
Since Trump and Vance assumed control of the federal government in January 2025, the White House has often found itself at odds with the Catholic Church. Vance has also not publicly attended Mass as frequently as he said he used to before becoming vice president.
Both Pope Leo XIV and Cardinal Robert McElroy, the archbishop of Washington, have criticized the Trump administration, sometimes directly.
In September, McElroy called the administration’s mass deportation policy “a comprehensive governmental assault,” adding, “this campaign relies on fear and terror at its core, for the government knows that it cannot succeed in its efforts except by bringing new dimensions of fear and terror to our nation’s history and life.”
And in an apparent response to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly praying for “overwhelming violence” against Iran, Pope Leo said during Palm Sunday Mass, “[God] does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: Your hands are full of blood.’”
Respect
A little anecdote to close out today’s long edition: On June 16, 2015, when Donald Trump first announced he would be running for president, I was the first reporter in the building to check in at the press table.3 The second outlet to show up that day was TMZ.
Fast forward to Anno Domini 2026, and I like to think that The Bulwark and TMZ are equally aggressive in our reporting on the president. And I do have to hand it to TMZ: Amid the ongoing partial government shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, the celeb gossip outlet has been working overtime to find embarrassing photos of elected officials lounging on the job.
Violet Jira writes at NOTUS:
Over the past few months, TMZ staff has questioned lawmakers on things ranging from Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show to what it’s like to work on the Hill. For the most part, lawmakers told NOTUS they don’t mind a celebrity-centric outlet covering the halls of Congress.
Recently, the outlet has devoted particular attention to how members of Congress are behaving during the funding lapse at the Department of Homeland Security. TMZ requested tips on Thursday about sightings of lawmakers who left D.C. without reaching a funding deal, leaving many DHS employees to miss paychecks for at least two more weeks.
If you read this morning’s Morning Shots newsletter, you’ll remember Andrew Egger’s wry recap of Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) bubble wand–wielding vacation at Disney World—a story TMZ brought to everyone’s attention.
Read the whole piece at NOTUS.
Track AIPAC states on its website, “Green graphics on their own are not endorsements. They are simply scorecards representing Israel lobby influence.” The group endorses candidates, too, using the color blue.
Track AIPAC’s graphics have also inspired parodies, such as the “STOP GWU” page on X. The account makes Track AIPAC–style graphics to shame politicians and candidates for having attended George Washington University, which is something of a Capitol Hill feeder school.
This was the result of a combination of an early train ride to New York and an eagerness to write about a funny happening on the campaign trail. (It turned into a bit more than that.) How time flies.
If using a stock image of a Methodist church for the cover of his Catholic biography isn't peak JD Vance...I don't know what is.
Thanks for this post. I figured this out about Track AIPAC when I saw someone claim that AIPAC had spent as much money as Elon Musk getting Trump elected. It sounded just completely wrong. It turned out they were counting the Adelsons as "AIPAC."
AIPAC ranks relatively low among national lobbying groups in terms of spending. I am not a defender of or apologizer for the Israeli government, but it starts to reek of "all powerful Jewish puppetmaster" trope