Americana

How Washington is responding to the campus Israel protests

THE SCENE

The first thing Rep. Ilhan Omar did on the University of Minnesota campus this week: Thank Gaza ceasefire protesters for their bravery. The next thing: Ask why people in her world were so obsessed with these protests.

“I have to tell you, it’s been incredibly painful, for the last five days,” Omar told students on Tuesday. “While there is a discovery of a mass grave of more than 200 Palestinians in Khan Younis… our media, our elected politicians, our president, every single leader, is spending their time and energy talking about the protests.”

Elected Democrats, who embraced social justice and civil rights protests throughout Donald Trump’s presidency, are treading more cautiously around the student movement to end Israel’s war in Gaza.

The protests, and even the crackdowns ordered by university presidents and Republican governors, have divided their party, with two members of Congress coming to campus to support activists and far more speaking out to denounce individual antisemitic statements by some protesters. The demonstrations have unified Republicans, many of whom were calling for crackdowns, expulsions, and the shutting down of anti-Israel groups during the first, brief wave of protests six months ago.

“Omar’s pro-Hamas rhetoric solidifies the Democrat party as the pro-terrorist party,” said House GOP Whip Tom Emmer after the congresswoman’s first campus stop. She joined the encampment at Columbia on Thursday, shortly after Speaker Mike Johnson came to condemn it.

THE VIEW FROM SOME DEMOCRATS

Two weeks in, the Biden campaign and Democratic leaders are treating the protests like short-term events that are being inflated by their enemies to hurt their party. One big point of agreement, between them and Omar: Every day they discuss this, it would be better to discuss something else.

“It’s in Putin’s interest for ‘What’s His Name’ to win, and therefore I see some encouragement on the part of the Russians of some of what’s going on,” House Speaker emeritus Nancy Pelosi told the Irish news station RTE, during a trip to the country this week. “I trust the sincerity of many of the demonstrators. It’s spontaneous, it’s organic, it’s real. But some of it, I think, has a Russian tinge to it.”

In the same interview, Pelosi called for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resign. The White House has dodged that topic and other micro-questions about the protests, like whether the National Guard should disperse them and whether college presidents should resign. The president himself denounced “antisemitism” at protests, as well as anyone who didn’t get “what’s going on with the Palestinians,” while leaving other questions to his press shop.

“The President put out a statement, as you know — I’ve mentioned this a couple times this week, when he talked about Passover, as Jewish Americans were celebrating Passover,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters in an Air Force One gaggle yesterday. “And he said that antisemitism basically is wrong and that we should call out.”

THE VIEW FROM OTHER DEMOCRATS

The clearest Democratic endorsements of the protests have come after police crackdowns — sweeps of student camps by city and campus police, and calls by Republicans for governors to mobilize the National Guard.

On Thursday, Texas Rep. Greg Casar became just the second Democrat to join protesters, spurred by the arrest of 57 students and supporters after Austin police cleared a camp at the University of Texas.

“No matter what Greg Abbott says, our movement is rooted in love,” Casar told protesters, celebrating that they lived in “the largest city in this country where your entire Democratic delegation voted ‘no’” on further aid to Israel this month.

“There are millions more lives at stake,” he added. “and your continued organizing is the only way we can stop being complicit in this killing and instead get to saving our shared humanity.”

Progressives, who opposed new Israel aid without conditions, are trying to elevate the protesters’ most popular demands over the antisemitic comments made by some people at or around the camps. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders did that on Thursday, after Netanyahu released an English-language video about the “antisemitic mobs” on campuses. This, said Sanders, was a diversion from a PR war that Netanyahu was losing.

“Mr. Netanyahu, antisemitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to many millions of people,” said Sanders. “But, please, do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government.”

THE VIEW FROM REPUBLICANS

The only real disagreement between Republicans this week is over who deserves blame for the protests — which they uniformly call antisemitic. Before the tents went up, they’d passed a resolution classifying anti-Zionism as antisemitism; Emmer was one of many Republicans classifying any anti-Israel protest as objectively pro-Hamas, and objectively pro-terrorism. Their new debate was whether the campus actions were an outgrowth of the academy’s postmodern slide, or whether foreign donors were exploiting them to divide America.

“Don’t be surprised, if you look really deep into who’s funding [this], that the CCP is involved — that the Chinese Communist Party is involved,” Florida Rep. Carlos Gimenez told Fox News on Thursday.

As Gimenez gave that interview, Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee were asking the IRS whether it was doing anything to probe organizations that “receive foreign funding from America’s adversaries.” At least one China-based philanthropist, Neville Roy Singham, had been donating to Code Pink and The People’s Forum; it was important know, they wrote, whether the IRS has “a definition of antisemitism in place within the agency that it considers when evaluating the claimed exempt purpose of a tax-exempt organization.”

Trump, who’s said little about the war since it started, has spoken on the protests only to blame President Joe Biden for letting antisemitism flourish. “Charlottesville was a little peanut,” he told reporters in New York on Thursday, arguing that the scenes on campuses were worse than the 2017 Unite the Right rally where a white supremacist killed a left-wing protester. “And the hate wasn’t the kind of hate that you have here.”

DAVID’S VIEW

The White House’s studious non-response to developments on campus has been denounced on the left; the president could defend protesters’ free speech or decry the use of police to stop it, and he hasn’t. That’s a contrast with how Biden campaigned four years ago, when Trump’s support for crackdowns on protests led to weeks-long standoffs between activists and members of the National Guard.

“I promise you, as president, I’ll never put you in the middle of politics, or personal vendettas,” Biden told the National Guard Association in August 2020. “I’ll never use the military as a prop or as a private militia to violate rights of fellow citizens.”

Republicans know this. When they call for Biden to endorse police crackdowns on campus, they know he won’t, and they know that doing so would shatter his coalition — elected Democrats squabbling about Israel, and Democratic voters who increasingly want to stop aiding Israel. In CBS News/YouGov polling this month, just 32% of Democrats favored additional funding for the country’s war against Hamas, a 15-point drop since it started six months ago.

And Republicans have allies that they lacked in 2020. Long before Mike Johnson walked onto Columbia’s campus, Canary Mission, a pro-Israel group that identifies and profiles anti-Israel activists, had been building dossiers on Israel critics in the faculty. What usually happens in these situations – the intermingling of elected officials and protesters outside the electoral system – is that the electeds will be asked to answer for the most alienating comments and events in the protests. That’s well underway.

NOTABLE

• In Jewish Insider, Marc Rod reports on legislation from New York Reps. Ritchie Torres and Mike Lawler that would “condition federal funding for universities as part of a push for more stringent federal oversight and monitoring of campus antisemitism.”
• In Forever Wars, Spencer Ackerman looks at how protesting students are getting labeled as “the handmaidens of terrorists, and treated as such.”

Pennsylvania. Pro-Israel groups steered clear of Rep. Summer Lee’s Tuesday primary, but the Democrat called her 21-point win a rebuke of their agenda.

“There were a lot of people who were convinced we couldn’t be pro-peace and win in this district,” Lee said at her victory party in Pittsburgh. On X, she wrote that “opposing genocide is good politics and good policy” — a re-write of a Democratic Majority for Israel motto, that the PAC’s priorities are “good politics and good policy.”

Lee kept DMFI and AIPAC out of her race, but not Moderate PAC, funded by Jeff Yass, Pennsylvania’s richest man and an emerging Democratic bogeyman. It spent more than $800,000 on the race, while outside groups did little to meddle in Tuesday’s other races.

One result was an upset in the Democratic primary for state treasurer: former House candidate Erin McClelland beat a party-endorsed state legislator after breaking with him and GOP Treasurer Stacy Garrity by saying she wouldn’t make the state invest in more Israel bonds. In the 1st Congressional District, moderate GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick beat conservative challenger Mark Houck by 23 points, after the congressman and allied PACs outspent him by a 15-1 margin. (Two years earlier, Fitzpatrick beat a different conservative challenger by 31 points.)

Trump won the GOP presidential primary easily, with more than 790,000 votes. But Nikki Haley won nearly 158,000 votes, despite suspending her campaign before any ballots were sent to voters; she did best, winning nearly a third of the vote, in Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County and in the suburban “collar counties” around Philadelphia, places where Trump has underperformed in general elections. More than 60,000 Democrats wrote in an alternative to Biden, who won more than 943,000 votes statewide. Still, that beat the stated goal of Gaza ceasefire activists, who’d hoped to win more than 44,000 votes, bigger than the margin that Trump won the state by in 2016. (He lost it by more than 80,000 votes in 2020.)

Michigan. Rep. Rashida Tlaib won’t face a serious primary challenge this year; only one Democrat, veteran and failed state senate Ryan Foster, filed to run against her by the Tuesday deadline. There were no major surprises when the filing period ended, setting up a rematch between Detroit Rep. Shri Thanedar and challenger Adam Hollier, and two busy primaries to replace Rep. Elissa Slotkin in her swing seat.

Maine. The Democratic leader of the state House said that she’d consider changing how Maine awards electoral votes, if Nebraska Republicans change their process in a special session. Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen has endorsed a plan to reward all five electoral votes to the statewide winner, preventing what happened in 2020 — a Biden victory, and electoral vote, in the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District. If Nebraska made that change, House Majority Leader Maureen Terry said in a statement, her state would be “compelled to act.” Donald Trump carried Maine’s 2nd Congressional District in 2016 and 2020.

Top Democrats pressed for Rahm Emanuel to lead Biden campaign

At the low point of Biden’s polling this winter, top New York Democratic donors pushed to bring the legendary Democratic politico Rahm Emanuel back from his posting in Japan to run the re-election campaign. Semafor’s Ben Smith, Liz Hoffman, and Morgan Chalfant have the goods: Two prominent Democratic sources said that they’d been involved in discussions aimed at bringing the combative and connected Emanuel — a former top Clinton aide, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman, Chicago Mayor, and member of a legendary set of brothers — in to energize what they saw as an isolated and somnolent Biden inner circle that seemed to be hiding the president from public view.

The donor-led push — like most efforts to influence Biden’s tight inner circle — was received coolly in Wilmington and Tokyo. And the donors’ anxiety subsided in January when Biden began his reelection campaign in earnest with a feisty State of the Union address, which reassured his party.

Emanuel dismissed the effort as “not real” in a text message to Semafor. When asked about it, Biden campaign spokesman T.J. Ducklo replied: “We don’t comment on fan fiction.”

Mike Speedy for Congress, “Surrendered.” Last year, Indianapolis businessman Jefferson Shreve ran for mayor as a “moderate Republican” and lost. That positioning is coming back to haunt him in the GOP primary to replace retiring Rep. Greg Pence in a safely Republican seat. “Shreve won’t even vote for the GOP nominee, President Donald J. Trump,” warns this spot for Speedy, a conservative state legislator seeking the same seat. He, by contrast, will help Trump “deport illegals.”

Johnny O for Congress, “Johnny Ooo.” Every politician whose name carries too many syllables or consonants to be familiar makes a joke about it. Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski has embraced the nickname “Johnny O,” and this spot makes him a human personification of Orioles fandom, walking in on jersey-wearing supporters whose drawn-out “oooooh” is all about him. He’s out-raised other Democrats in the primary for the safe 2nd Congressional District, and the ad doesn’t get into their differences, just that he supports gun control and abortion rights.

Crane for Congress, “I Trust Mike.” Donald Trump’s knack for endorsing Republican primary winners hasn’t always carried over to Georgia. He instantly backed former White House political director Brian Jack when he announced for the state’s deep red 3rd Congressional District. That didn’t clear the field, and contractor Mike Crane, who’s lost two previous races here, reintroduces himself as an anti-politician with the experience to finish a border wall. (His short state senate career isn’t mentioned.) Voters testify that Crane will “close the border, fight the Mexican cartels, and deport criminals.”

Have the recent bipartisan votes in Congress changed the electorate’s bad mood? Slightly: Since February, Monmouth has found Biden’s approval rating ticking up to the highest level since last summer, with an electorate that’s more happy than not with new foreign aid spending. Self-identified liberals backed the package by a 36-point margin, and self-identified moderates backed it by a 22-point margin. The opposition to the aid, like opposition to the president, is concentrated among Republicans. Just 30% of them support the new aid, and just 27% of conservatives support it.

Trump and Biden are tied in this poll’s ballot test, but a majority of voters worry that Trump has done something illegal. Even 55% of white voters without college degrees, the electorate that’s been most supportive of Trump in every race, say that the campaign finance abuse he’s charged with in New York is “serious.” So do a third of Republicans. Trump is competitive because so many voters have processed his scandals and don’t consider them disqualifying.

White House. Conservative Supreme Court justices sounded open to the Trump legal team’s argument that presidents can’t be prosecuted for actions taken while serving. That made Republicans more optimistic that Jack Smith’s Trump prosecution wouldn’t come to trial before the election; the justices, reviewing the D.C. Circuit’s ruling against presidential immunity, could delay action for months by sending the issue to a lower court for further scrutiny.

President Biden sat for a Friday interview with Howard Stern, who’d tried to book Democratic presidential candidates on his Sirius XM show for years; a sought-after Hillary Clinton interview only came after she lost the 2016 election. The result was a mix of fish stories about Biden’s life and career, including a curious anecdote about him getting “salacious pictures” from women in the 1970s and handing them to the Secret Service, along with some news; he was open to debating Donald Trump at some point. “I don’t know when, but I’m happy to debate him,” Biden told Stern.

House. New Jersey Rep. Donald Payne died on Wednesday morning, twelve years and one month after his father died while holding the same office. (Payne easily won a special election to replace him, and never faced a serious challenge in the Newark-based seat.) No other Democrat filed to challenge him in the June 4 primary, which assures that Payne will win it; after the results are certified, local Democrats will meet at a convention to determine his successor. It’s up to Gov. Phil Murphy to set a special election — a primary that will be held between 10 and 11 weeks after he announces it, and a general election for the deep blue district after that. Friday, as they mourned Payne, no Democrat had entered the race to replace him.

On Monday, the president celebrated his environmental record to commemorate Earth Day; as he left the podium, he condemned both “antisemitic protests” and people who “don’t see what’s going on with the Palestinians.” On Tuesday, tens of thousands of Pennsylvania Democrats voted for a Biden alternative in their presidential primary. All of this was very relevant to Jill Stein, the 2012 and 2016 Green Party nominee for president, who is running again this year; Cornel West, who briefly sought the nomination with her help, acrimoniously bolted to run as an independent.

Stein talked with Americana recently about why she thinks Biden’s decisions have given her a great opportunity. She went to Columbia yesterday, to declare her solidarity with the Gaza encampment.

Americana: What’s the opportunity you see for a third party candidate who says that Israel’s carrying out a “genocide?” President Biden isn’t doing it, RFK Jr. isn’t doing it; certainly Donald Trump isn’t doing it.

Jill Stein: Most of the American public wants an immediate ceasefire and a negotiated solution. Every day, we are seeing more evidence of genocide in bloody images across our various screens. So, the American people are being extremely mobilized right now. People who are normally very faithful Democrats are saying that this has crossed the red line for them. Genocide is not okay. This is a game changer.

I think all bets are off on what will happen. We’re seeing the Abandon Biden movement really take off, not only among Arab Americans; we saw 1,000 African American ministers the other day expressed real interest in that policy. We’re also seeing it in the polls.

Americana: So how does this change the political landscape for you? Are there particular places you focus on now where you expect this to resonate most?

Jill Stein: This dramatically increases interest in the campaign. We are meeting all the time with communities who feel like they have been thrown under the bus. That’s Arab Americans, in particular. But it’s also students who feel like they are being blacklisted now, and censored. Their student groups are literally shut down and told they can’t say certain things. It’s outrageous. It absolutely is. And they’re being blacklisted from their future employment and careers. This is McCarthyism and political repression. This is not what a democracy looks like. There’s a very wide range of demographics right now that are champing at the bit for an alternative.

Americana: I covered your 2016 campaign, when there was plenty of voter anger about the major party nominees. How does the environment you’re seeing now compare to what you saw in that cycle?

Jill Stein: People really feel like these are zombie candidates from two zombie political parties that have completely lost touch. Even in 2012, we saw a lot of resonance for our agenda, which has basically been adopted by the progressive Democrats. It was Ralph Nader who launched Medicare-for-All as a national issue in the 2000 election. In 2012, we put student debt abolition and free public higher education on the agenda, and a green New Deal, as well as reparations. We launched all of those as national issues. And the media landscape is so different now. It’s not nearly as monopolized among young people.

Americana: Do you see any substantive difference between a second Trump term or a second Biden term? One answer I get from Democrats is: Look at how they handled climate. Look at who Trump put in charge of the EPA, and compare that with who Biden put in charge. Look at the Inflation Reduction Act, and look at how Trump wants to repeal it.

Jill Stein: The IRA is an extremely compromised bill. We describe it as a fossil fuels first bill, because the IRA requires, before a penny is spent, developing any major renewable energy project, you have to first auction off 60 acres of offshore space and you have to auction off a million acres of onshore public lands. You have to first devastate the climate and the offshore environment. This is a deadly law.

So, forget all this praise for the inflation Reduction Act. It really relies on you being uninformed, and not really paying attention. The Biden administration has given the thumbs up to 22 new liquid natural gas export facilities. Some of them may have been built before Biden, but on his watch there were at least 12 new ones that came online. The Sierra Club recently put out a report on what this means: These 22 new LNG facilities amounted to 440 new coal plants. This is the most devastating move against the climate that I have ever heard of. This suggests that Trump is actually a closet climate activist by comparison.

Americana: Another argument you hear from Democrats — and heard in 2016 — was that the Supreme Court was at stake. Obviously, because Trump won that race, he was able to appoint a 6-3 conservative majority, and it’s not clear who might go in the next four years. So how relevant is that issue now?

Jill Stein: I must admit, I’m not seeing that raised as an issue. I guess that suggests that the hot air has gone out of that balloon. To me, it’s always been a bogus argument, because the Supreme Court in and of itself is not the sole solution to our problems. It can’t single-handedly outweigh nuclear war, or climate catastrophe, or the status of our democracy, or crushing economic inequality. We’re just not in a one issue world. Add to that — and there’s been a lot of discussion about this — that there were plenty of opportunities for the Democrats to have codified Roe v. Wade. They didn’t.

It is a really bad sign that so much decision-making defaults to the Supreme Court, because we do not have otherwise a functioning democracy — especially a functioning Congress. So, I just want to challenge the Supreme Court as the ultimate issue. The focus on the Supreme Court is a reflection of what poor health our democracy is in, as a whole. We create a better democracy by engaging in it, not by allowing ourselves to be effectively silenced with a so-called “lesser evil” vote. And if one was trying to figure out the lesser evil right now, it’s a much harder thing to do when it’s the Democrats who are leading the charge on genocide.

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