Cori Bush under pressure as pro-Israel funding tips House race: ‘I have to do a lot more to win’

Challenger Wesley Bell switched party lines to vie for Bush's Missouri seat and has reaped millions from normally Republican-supporting donors

Cori Bush was knocking on doors along Arsenal street in southern St Louis where voters were not shy of asking hard questions of Missouri's first Black female member of Congress. But none of them raised the one issue that looms over her re-election race like a spectre.

Bush might have been expected to cruise to victory in Tuesday's Democratic primary for Missouri's first congressional district in St Louis as she did two years ago. But her path to re-election veered into rough territory after she characterised Israel's assault on Gaza, following the 7 October Hamas attack, as a collective punishment" of Palestinians and called for a ceasefire.