"Squad" member Rep. Summer Lee tried to hit a fellow Democrat over a bomb-signing incident, but attacked the wrong man, and the colleague who jumped in to help her walked straight into her own voting record.
The exchange started July 21 on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, after Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, one of the most outspoken Democratic critics of the Democratic Socialists of America, posted a broadside against the party's left flank. The 51-year-old congressman, who has served since 2017, praised progressive pundit Van Jones for warning about the socialist left's rise and declared there is "no room for anti-American bomb-throwers who oppose our ideas, values, & leaders."
Lee, a Pennsylvania Democrat and self-identified "Squad" member, fired back. She posted on X:
"What about Dems who sign bombs and vote to drop them?"
The problem: Lee was referring to an incident in which Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, not Gottheimer, autographed an artillery shell meant for Ukraine during a September 2024 visit to Scranton by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. She had confused two Jewish Democrats who share the first name Josh.
Gottheimer's reply was swift and dry:
"You know that's the other Jewish guy named Josh, right?"
Rather than let the moment pass, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota decided to pile on. She posted later that same day, directing her fire at Gottheimer:
"He signed the bombs you voted to be dropped. Hope this helps!"
It did not help. Omar's post earned a community note on X, the platform's crowd-sourced fact-check feature, flagging the claim. And the next morning, July 22, Gottheimer delivered the final blow. He posted a screenshot of Omar's own congressional voting record confirming that she had voted to approve $60.8 billion in aid for Ukraine in April 2024.
His caption:
"Ilhan, you know who else voted for it? You."
So Omar attacked Gottheimer for supporting the very same Ukraine aid package she herself voted for. The screenshot left no room for ambiguity. Omar, who has faced a DOJ investigation into immigration fraud allegations, offered no public correction or follow-up that appeared in the exchange.
Lee, for her part, did not publicly acknowledge that she had confused Gottheimer with Shapiro. No correction appeared in the thread. The original post, accusing the wrong man of signing a bomb, remained up.
The carelessness is worth pausing on. Lee did not simply get a policy detail wrong. She accused a specific sitting congressman of an act he did not commit, confused him with a governor from her own state, and the only thing the two men share, besides party affiliation, is a first name and a faith. Whether the mix-up was sloppy or something worse, it is the kind of error a member of Congress should not make in a public forum, and certainly should correct once it is pointed out.
Omar's intervention made the episode worse, not better. Instead of flagging Lee's factual error, she doubled down on the wrong target and added a claim that collapsed the moment anyone checked her own voting record. The congresswoman, who has also faced allegations tied to the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scandal, managed to turn a teammate's blunder into a two-person credibility problem.
The exchange did not happen in a vacuum. It came days after 103 House Democrats voted to strip Israel of $3.3 billion in U.S. aid through an amendment to the annual defense bill introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie, a libertarian-leaning Republican from Kentucky. Gottheimer's original post criticizing the DSA and the party's far-left wing was a direct response to that vote and the broader ideological drift it represents.
That context makes Lee's and Omar's stumbles more than a social-media gaffe. The "Squad" wing of the Democratic Party has built its brand on moral clarity, on being the faction willing to call out what others won't. When two of its members cannot even identify the correct target of their criticism, and one of them condemns a policy she voted for, the brand takes a hit that no community note can fix.
Omar, who has faced a formal House resolution seeking her expulsion over fraud allegations, is no stranger to controversy. But this episode was self-inflicted in the most basic way: she walked into a fight she did not need to join, armed with a claim her own record disproved.
Gottheimer, meanwhile, has positioned himself as one of the few Democrats willing to confront the party's progressive wing head-on. His two-word correction to Lee, "the other Jewish guy named Josh", and his one-line rebuttal to Omar did more damage than a press conference could have. He let the receipts speak.
The broader fight within the Democratic Party over Israel, Ukraine aid, and the influence of the DSA shows no signs of cooling. The Minnesota GOP's escalating subpoena fight over Omar and the growing number of Democrats willing to vote against Israel aid suggest the fault lines are deepening, not closing.
Lee and Omar set out to expose a colleague's record and ended up exposing their own. When the fact-checkers you need most are your own opponents, the argument is already lost.
