OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
4:13 PM – Monday, July 20, 2026
Melat Kiros, the newly minted Democrat nominee for Colorado’s 1st Congressional District, is facing intense scrutiny over her radical foreign policy vision.
Following the primary upset against 15-term incumbent Denver Democrat Representative Diana DeGette on June 30th, the 29-year-old attorney and self-described Democratic socialist has doubled down on an anti-imperialist platform that seeks to build a “new world order” by elevating and empowering the global south.
The “Global South” is a term used to describe countries that are characterized as developing, less developed, or emerging, primarily located in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Oceania.
In the primary election last month, Kiros pulled off a major upset in Colorado’s 1st Congressional District, winning the Democrat nomination with roughly 53% of the vote to DeGette’s 40%. Since the Denver-based district is heavily blue, Kiros is expected to win the general election this November.
Kiros, who was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, has argued that international stability and “true equity” cannot be achieved in the U.S. under the current Western-centric geopolitical framework.
Instead, she says she envisions a fundamentally restructured global system fueled by electing leaders from, and representing the interests of, developing nations — the “Third World” — to “challenge historical hierarchies and reshape global governance.”
“I think it’s particularly important not just for our community… But communities of the global south, period,” she said earlier this month at the event Wa’Ela Tigray 2026. “There’s a certain reckoning that we are going to have to have with the global world order as it exists today, and the way that it fundamentally will have to shift going forward.”
“The responsibility that we have as Americans, the recognition that is going to be required of us—of the exploitative and extractive nature that we play on the global scale and the global stage — is only going to be challenged if we are represented by people who understand that on a fundamental level. And that means getting more immigrants into office. That means getting more people who have heritage in the global south into office.”
This expansive international agenda builds directly upon the aggressive far-left platform that fueled her grassroots campaign in Denver.
Nationally, Kiros has aligned closely with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and prominent progressive figures like Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), championing domestic policies such as Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and the total abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
However, her foreign policy declarations have drawn the sharpest lines of division. Critics, including Colorado Republicans and even some moderate Democrats, have seized upon her talking points regarding a “new world order” — as well as her calls to halt all American military aid, including defensive systems, to Israel.
Conversely, Kiros’s supporters view her rhetoric as an edgy but refreshing departure from “status-quo” American foreign policy, labeling it as a humanitarian effort to dismantle systemic global exploitation.
Her campaign argues that prioritizing the voices of poorer developing nations is a logical extension of her domestic fight against corporate monopolies and wealth inequality. As she campaigns heavily in the deep-blue Denver district ahead of the November general election, where she remains the heavy favorite to win, Kiros’s polarizing positions have prompted independent challenges, such as a late-stage bid by local physician Shimon Blau.
Despite the growing pushback from conservatives, moderate factions and business groups, Kiros maintains that her victory proves voters are ready to reject incrementalism in favor of “sweeping systemic change,” both at home and on the world stage.
While Kiros’ other domestic policies, such as abolishing ICE and passing “Medicare for All,” have generated typical partisan debate, her statements specifically regarding foreign policy, Israel and anti-U.S. violence have generated the highest degree of nationwide controversy and criticism from both Republicans and moderate Democrats.
Refusing to Label Local Firebombing “Antisemitic”
During a June 2026 local news interview, Kiros was asked about a firebombing last year in Boulder, Colorado, that targeted an outdoor vigil for Israeli hostages held in Gaza. The attack resulted in the death of an 82-year-old woman, Karen Diamond, and left over a dozen injured.
When pressed on whether the attack was motivated by antisemitism, Kiros said, “I don’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. I don’t even know what the people that were at that protest believed, too.”
After being asked to clarify if she thought it was an antisemitic incident, she added, “I don’t know. I don’t know what his intentions were,” despite federal law enforcement affidavits noting that the suspect had openly voiced anti-Zionist intent.
Referring to Anti-U.S. Violence as “Inevitable”
In that same televised interview, Kiros also triggered backlash for how she contextualized foreign policy blowback and anti-American military actions.
When discussing U.S. intervention in the Middle East, she argued that major attacks against the U.S., like 9/11, were “…inevitable for the United States in that we destabilized a lot of the Middle East, that forced people to believe that an act of violence was the only response.”
Arguing That Calling for Israel’s Destruction Isn’t Antisemitic
Kiros’s political career began taking off after she was fired from a prominent law firm for writing a viral public essay about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the post, she criticized law firms for cracking down on anti-Israel student protesters.
She argued against the legal sector’s broad definitions of hate speech, stating that “Calling for the elimination of Israel does not automatically qualify as antisemitism.”
Kiros added that this kind of rhetoric “often stems from anti-Zionists calling for a single, secular bi-national state” where Palestinians and Israelis share equal rights, rather than systemic hatred of Jewish people.
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