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Attorney Melat Kiros lost her job in 2023 after she wrote a post on Medium criticizing law firms, including her own, for opposing pro-Palestine protests and “chilling future lawyers’ employment prospects for criticism of the Israeli government’s actions and its legitimacy.” Now, she’s running for Congress to replace a nearly three-decade incumbent in Denver and calling to end U.S. military aid to Israel.
The progressive outfit Justice Democrats announced Thursday it was endorsing Kiros, who first launched her campaign in July. She’s the sixth candidate the group is backing in the upcoming midterm primaries, as Justice Democrats recharts its course after pro-Israel groups last cycle helped oust two of its star recruits, Reps. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., and Cori Bush, D-Mo.
In an interview with The Intercept, Kiros, who is 28, said watching Bowman and Bush lose their races and President Donald Trump take back the White House fueled despair among people her age. “But ultimately there are things that we can do, common-sense policies that we can pass — like Medicare for All, housing first, universal child care — that we just need people in Congress that actually represent us and not their wealthy donors to fight for,” she said.
“They wish they could speak up too, but … they couldn’t afford to lose their health insurance.”
Kiros has also been motivated by what she described as a “coercive market” that has chilled speech against genocide in Gaza. She decided to write the post that ultimately led to her firing after her experience protesting another genocide in her hometown of Tigray, Ethiopia. After she lost her job, she took on policy work in a Ph.D. program, which eventually motivated her to run for Congress.
“I got messages from hundreds of attorneys afterwards saying that they wish they could speak up too, but that they couldn’t afford to lose their job, that they couldn’t afford to lose their health insurance,” Kiros said. She doesn’t think there’s true freedom of expression exists “when you can’t speak out on basic human rights without it risking your job.”
In Congress, Kiros hopes to take on the issue of big money in politics — not just how it shapes policy, but how it has chilled speech on matters of human rights.
In her campaign against Rep. Diana DeGette, who was elected the year before she was born, Kiros is arguing the incumbent has grown more disconnected from her constituents over her 28 years in Congress — and embodies the Democratic Party’s failures to deliver in the face of a right-wing assault on civil liberties and the corporate and elite capture of bipartisan politics.
“DeGette is a symptom of a political system that rewards complacency, not courage,” Justice Democrats wrote in its endorsement of Kiros. The group has focused its 2026 strategy on challenging incumbents it says are beholden to corporate donors and trying to build a bench in Congress to fight authoritarianism, corporate super PACs, and billionaire-funded lobbying groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
DeGette did not respond to requests for comment before publication.
DeGette’s campaign, meanwhile, is highlighting what she describes as her experience fighting to protect the environment and expand access to health care. As a longtime incumbent, she has a clear fundraising advantage: DeGette has raised just under half a million dollars this year, more than three times the $125,000 Kiros has raised so far.
Kiros said most of her campaign funds have come from more than 2,300 individual donors, most of them small-dollar, with an average donation of $47, though the campaign’s latest FEC filings only reflect about 300 individual donors. (FEC records do not always include contributions from donors who have given under $200.)
In addition to Kiros, five other Democratic candidates are currently slated to challenge DeGette, including veteran Wanda James, a member of the University of Colorado Board of Regents.
Speaking to The Intercept, Kiros criticized DeGette for taking more than $5 million throughout her career from corporate PACs. Justice Democrats has also denounced her for taking money from lobbies for the pharmaceutical, fossil fuel, and defense industries. According to OpenSecrets, DeGette’s top career contributor is the law and lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, founded and chaired by attorney and former AIPAC Vice President and board member Norman Brownstein.
After taking crushing losses in two high-profile races in which AIPAC spent heavily last cycle, Justice Democrats has endorsed five other candidates so far this cycle, challenging incumbents in five states. That includes Bush in her comeback run for her old seat in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District, state Rep. Justin Pearson in Tennessee’s 9th District, Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York’s 13th District, Angela Gonzales Torres in California’s 34th District, and state Rep. Donavan McKinney in Michigan’s 13th District. The group is “on track” to endorse at least 10 new candidates by January, according to its spokesperson, Usamah Andrabi.
The strategy is a shift from 2024, when Justice Democrats only endorsed its incumbents after making its name backing new insurgent candidates.
“We started this cycle with clear eyes about our intentions to fight back and win against AIPAC, crypto, and every other corporate lobby by challenging as many entrenched corporate incumbents and electing real, working-class champions to lead this party forward,” Andrabi said.
Growing disapproval of both the Democratic Party and Trump has proven how much Democratic voters want to use the primary system to change a party they see as bought by billionaires, Andrabi said.
“The momentum of the Democratic Party’s base is on our side and lobbies like AIPAC are losing sway over voters as their spending, influence, and right-wing network is exposed,” he said. “We’re not holding back this cycle and the establishment feels it.”
Fueling that disillusionment is the United States’ role in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which Kiros has made a focus of her campaign. She’s calling for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel and an Israeli arms embargo, and has called DeGette out of step with the district for not signing onto a bill pushing for the latter.
DeGette has a mixed record on Israel. She has described herself as a longtime supporter of Israel, taken some money from pro-Israel groups throughout her career, and met with members of AIPAC in her district.
In the weeks after the October 7, 2023 attacks, DeGette voted with 193 other Democrats against a Republican bill — which former President Joe Biden had threatened to veto — to provide aid to Israel, saying it ignored humanitarian needs in Gaza. She voted with the bulk of her party for other pro-Israel bills after October 7, including a hawkish bill affirming Israel’s right to self-defense with no mention of Palestinian civilians. DeGette did not co-sponsor an alternative resolution introduced by then-Rep. Bush and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., which called for an immediate ceasefire and humanitarian aid to Gaza. This year, DeGette co-sponsored bills to prevent violence in the West Bank and restore funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.
”It’s not enough that you vote the right way,” said Kiros. “This idea that any Democrat will do — it’s not enough anymore.”
