Reps. Summer Lee and Ilhan Omar tried to paint a moderate Democratic colleague as a warmonger on social media, but they targeted the wrong man, and their own votes on the very aid package they criticized came back to undermine the entire effort.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a centrist New Jersey Democrat, posted a broadside against the Democratic Socialists of America on X earlier this week, calling the group a threat to his party's mainstream. The next day, Lee fired back, and walked straight into a factual error that handed Gottheimer exactly the ammunition he needed.
Lee, a Pennsylvania Democrat, accused Gottheimer of being among those who "sign bombs and vote to drop them." The problem: she appeared to confuse Gottheimer with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a different Jewish Democrat named Josh who signed an artillery shell bound for Ukraine during a 2024 visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Gottheimer never signed any munition. Fox News Digital reported on the exchange and the mistaken identity at its center.
Gottheimer's response was blunt. He replied to Lee on X:
"You know that's the other Jewish guy named Josh, right?"
The reply drew attention not just to the factual mix-up but to the uncomfortable optics of two progressive members apparently treating Jewish colleagues as interchangeable.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota Democrat and longtime member of the progressive "Squad," jumped into the thread to back Lee. Omar wrote that Shapiro had signed "the bombs you voted to be dropped," directing the accusation at Gottheimer. Neither Lee nor Omar identified a specific vote to support the charge.
Gottheimer did not let the claim stand. He responded to Omar directly:
"Ilhan, you know who else voted for it?"
Alongside the post, Gottheimer shared a screenshot of the official House roll call for H.R. 8035, the $60.8 billion Ukraine aid package the House passed in April 2024. The roll call showed that both Lee and Omar had voted for the very bill that funded the weapons they were now attacking Gottheimer over. Gottheimer himself had also voted for the package, but the point was sharp: Lee and Omar were condemning a vote they had cast themselves.
Omar, who has faced scrutiny over her financial disclosures and other controversies, did not appear to address the contradiction publicly.
The social media clash landed against a backdrop of real legislative conflict within the Democratic caucus over Israel. Fox News reported that the previous week, the House voted on an amendment sponsored by Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, that would have barred funds in the underlying spending bill from going to Israel and cut $3.3 billion from the foreign military financing account.
The amendment failed. But 103 House Democrats voted for it, including Lee and Omar. Gottheimer voted against it. That vote drew a clean line between the party's moderate pro-Israel wing and its progressive, anti-Israel faction.
Gottheimer has been vocal about that divide. In a New York Times opinion piece published in May, he argued that Democrats apply a double standard when it comes to antisemitism. His Monday post on X made the same case in plainer terms.
The exchange began when Gottheimer posted his critique of the Democratic Socialists of America, a group that has gained influence among the party's left flank in recent election cycles. His post laid out the argument in two parts:
"The DSA are not Democrats. They're socialists, who want to hijack the Democratic Party."
He followed up:
"The Democrats have a big tent. That's our strength. We embrace a range of ideas, but there's no room for anti-American bomb-throwers who oppose our ideas, values, & leaders."
Lee's response the next day reframed the debate around military aid, accusing Gottheimer of complicity in the weapons pipeline. But by confusing him with Shapiro, she turned a policy attack into a factual blunder, and gave Gottheimer an opening to shift the spotlight onto her own record.
Omar, who has a long history of controversial public statements, compounded the problem by doubling down without checking the underlying vote record. Fox News Digital reached out to the offices of all three members for comment but did not hear back before publication.
The core contradiction is straightforward. Lee and Omar both voted in April 2024 to send $60.8 billion in military aid to Ukraine. That aid funded the artillery shells and other weapons that eventually made their way to the front lines, including the shell Shapiro signed during Zelenskyy's Pennsylvania visit, which Fox News Digital reported on in September 2024.
When Gottheimer criticized the DSA's growing role in the Democratic Party, Lee and Omar chose to attack him as a pro-war figure. But the House roll call showed they had cast the same vote. Neither identified a specific vote that separated their position from Gottheimer's. The only relevant vote that did separate them, the failed Massie amendment to cut Israel aid, was one where Lee and Omar broke with the majority, not Gottheimer.
Omar has drawn fire on other fronts as well. A DOJ probe into her background and questions about her campaign spending have kept her in the national spotlight for reasons beyond policy disagreements.
The fact that Lee confused Gottheimer with Shapiro, two Jewish Democrats who share a first name but hold different offices in different states, added an element that went beyond ordinary political sloppiness. Gottheimer represents New Jersey in the House. Shapiro is the governor of Pennsylvania. Their roles, records, and public profiles are distinct.
Gottheimer's pointed reply, "You know that's the other Jewish guy named Josh, right?", made the subtext explicit. Whether the mix-up was careless or something worse, it reinforced the argument Gottheimer had been making: that parts of the progressive left treat Jewish public officials as a monolith rather than as individuals with separate records and responsibilities.
That argument carries weight at a moment when the Democratic caucus is visibly fractured over Israel. One hundred three Democrats voted to strip billions in Israel aid just days before Lee and Omar launched their social media broadside. Gottheimer voted to keep that funding intact. The policy disagreement is real. But the personal attack misfired because the accusers could not keep their targets straight, and could not account for their own votes.
When your best attack on a colleague relies on confusing him with someone else and ignoring your own voting record, the problem is not the colleague, it is the argument.