Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it would seek the death penalty in the case of Elias Rodriguez. On May 21, 2025, Rodriguez is alleged to have opened fire outside the Capital Jewish Museum, killing Israeli embassy staffers Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, apparently without knowledge of their place of employment and attacking them as random attendees of an AJC ACCESS Young Diplomats Reception organized by the American Jewish Committee. ACCESS is a leadership development program for young Jewish professionals in which, per their website, “participants play an active role in AJC’s vital work to combat antisemitism and strengthen Israel’s standing in the world — while building meaningful leadership skills along the way.” Apparently, the attack was, like Anders Breivik’s 2011 attack on the summer camp at Utøya in Norway, an effort to weaken the next generation of the alleged perpetrator’s political enemies.

Unsurprisingly, given the popularity among lefties of cheering assassinations, some people supported the double homicide. The hard left pro-Palestine group Unity of Fields (formerly the US branch of Palestine Action) issued a statement calling the murders “a legitimate act of resistance” and “fully justified.” The DSA’s Liberation Caucus quote-tweeted the statement, adding, “Excellent statement that we are proud to add our name to. Free Elias Rodriguez and all political prisoners.”

For those unfamiliar, DSA has a number of internal caucuses (read: cliques) of varying sizes and ideological stripes. Some of these are associated with outside groups or publications; some are large, and some are fringe. DSA’s Liberation Caucus is actually Maoists. The DSA is a big tent.

When the larger DSA balked, condemning the murders, the Liberation Caucus agreed that their position was within the DSA but did not represent the organization. Obviously, that made everything all right. Not only did the DSA take no action against the Liberation Caucus for cheering people being murdered in the street, but its governing National Political Committee (yes, righty meme traffickers: their governing body is in fact called the NPC) voted against removing a member of that caucus who fiercely advocates such murders from its security committee, a situation Stu Peterson wrote up admirably in City Journal. Nothing happened to the caucus, either, but while members can be expelled and chapters closed, there’s no actual mention of caucuses in the DSA bylaws, so short of expelling all their members, it’s hard to deal with them.

Which raises the question: if championing murder isn’t enough, what do you have to do to get removed from the DSA, anyway?

You can (in theory) be a Zionist. In August 2025, the DSA passed a resolution to become “a fighting anti-zionist organization.” In theory, this meant that, to give specific examples listed in the resolution, saying “Israel has a right to defend itself” or writing op-eds against Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions would be grounds for expulsion from the DSA. In practice, it’s functioning as a chilling effect for however many Zionists there still are in DSA and perhaps a deterrent to too many mainstream liberals coming in; nobody’s gotten the bum’s rush for it yet.

You can be insufficiently anti-Zionist. In 2021, Jamaal Bowman let his membership lapse after DSA committees called for his expulsion for voting for additional funding for Israel’s Iron Dome. In 2023, the Detroit DSA and Congressman Shri Thanedar disagreed over whether he had resigned from his local chapter or been expelled following his turnaround on Israel (an enlightenment that followed a pro-Israel PAC spending over $4 million against him).

You can work for the wrong sort of union. Danny Fetonte was a lifelong union organizer and a member of the DSA’s National Political Committee. What he neglected to mention when he ran for office was that he had worked for a police union. In 2017, this caused a social(ist) media firestorm and an effort to remove him from office. The NPC’s vote did not meet the necessary threshold for expulsion. Fetonte was censured. Amusingly, for those who remember the soundbites of red-baiting Congressional hearings, the NPC’s statement about the affair went on to note that Fetonte “is not, and never has been, a police officer.” Fetonte died of cancer in 2022.

You can endorse a sitting governor. In 2023, Massachusetts state representative Mike Connolly left the Boston DSA ahead of a vote on expulsion on grounds that included endorsing officials (including the governor) who were opponents of the DSA’s brand of socialism. (Connolly pointed out there was no issue with this at the time he did it.)

Formally, though, whether National or Local, the governing body — the National Political Committee at the national level, the Steering Committee at the local level — needs a two-thirds majority to expel someone. Criteria for expulsion in the national DSA bylaws list “substantial disagreement with the principles or policies of the organization” or consistent “undemocratic, disruptive behavior.” Local chapters may be more specific; DSA-LA, for example, notes in its bylaws that a lengthy misconduct policy may also decide who gets the boot, and both DSA-LA and DSA-East Bay contain language specifically stating that members can be expelled from their chapters for entryism for the benefit of another organization — that is, joining the DSA as part of another group in a subversive effort to gain power; you know, the thing that hard lefties like the DSA do to everyone else, everywhere, and all the time. In March of 2024, DSA-LA informed one member of the Just Break Already caucus that he was being expelled for entryism; in January 2025, Just Break Already stated that a colleague had been expelled from DSA-East Bay. It is unclear whether the same individual was involved in both cases. The irony is that the modern DSA is the product of entryism. It just goes to show you: when some people reach the top, the first thing they do is pull the ladder up after them.

No entryism. No undemocratic, disruptive behavior. No substantial disagreement with the principles or policies of the organization.

Cheering and advocating murder, on the other hand, is apparently not “substantial disagreement with the principles or policies of the organization.” Which is important to know for those not in the DSA.

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David Hines has a background in forensic science and international human rights, has written for the Federalist and the American Conservative, and loves books. Possibly even yours.

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