In an interview last week on 9News, Melat Kiros, who is challenging incumbent US Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CD 1), refused to call last year’s June 1, 2025 deadly terrorist attack in Boulder anti-Semitic.
On June 1, 2025, shortly before the onset of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, the weekly Run For Their Lives group was gathered on the Courthouse Lawn on the Pearl Street Mall when Mohamad Sabry Soliman attacked them with deadly fire.
The group was peacefully demonstrating on behalf of hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza at the time.
Karen Diamond, 82, died of her injuries. Many others were injured, some severely. Soliman traveled from the Colorado Springs area to perpetrate the attack which he had been planning for a year.
The Egyptian national entered the country on a tourist visa in 2022, later for asylum. According to the FBI, he had been planning the attack for a year.
Kiros, who is part of the Democratic Socialists of America and who was raised in Aurora, was asked by Kyle Clark, on his “Next” program, June 22: “Was that firebombing attack on them an act of anti-Semitism?”
Kiros responded that she didn’t know “what was in the heart of the perpetrator.
“All I know is that he went and attacked innocent people because of what they might have believed. And I don’t even know what the people that were at that protest believed, too.”
When asked a second time by Clark if she would describe the attack as anti-Semitic, Kiros said “I don’t know. I don’t know what his intentions were.”
On May 6, after pleading guilty to all charges, which included first-degree murder, Soliman was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and 2,128 years, the maximum available sentence.
In her sentencing, Judge Amy Salomone told the court and Soliman that “you chose to victimize people because of who they are. Thecourt finds that you chose to victimize these people because they were members of the Jewish community . . . your choices were acts of terror, and that they victimized and entire community and that they made everyone in it feel unsafe, and that was your explicit purpose.”
As a guest on the Hasan Piker show in May, Kiros stated that Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2025 massacre was “an inevitable consequence of apartheid.”
When that statement spark deep concern by Colorado Jews and other Colorado citiznes, Deep Singh Badesha, a Denver-based DSA organizer, posted on X that DeGette “takes $$$ from Lockheed Martin, AIPAC and countless other PACs.”
According to AIPAC, DeGette has not accepted any AIPAC funds since 2022.
On June 14, Kiros and the local DSA brought in Hasan Piker for a campaign rally.
Following the rally, at which Piker did not appear, citing security concerns, she joined Piker and Badesha on a livestream. Venue cancellations of the rally were described as “Israel related.”
As of June 10, DeGette, the incumbent, had raised more than $1.4 million, with nearly $460,000 on hand, and Kiros had raised more than $660,000, with nearly $88,500 on hand, according to Federal Election Commission data.
The Cook Political Report, which called the district solidly, plus-29 Democratic, stated that “after nearly three decades in Congress, 68-year-old Rep. Diana DeGette is on the verge of becoming the top Democrat on the power Energy and Commerce Committee.”
“But she’ll first need to ward off a serious challenge from Melat Kiros, who’s nearly four decades her junior and is backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Socialists of America,” it said.
A poll by Data for Progress, a left-wing think tank, suggested earlier this month that Kiros leads by five points.
Piker is expected to come to Denver on June 30, election day, to canvas for Kiros.
JNS contributed to this report.
