Democrats and Republicans took to their respective podiums Wednesday on Capitol Hill with different messages in response to Tuesday night’s inflection point in campus anti-war protests when more than 100 protesters were arrested at Columbia University and a violent confrontation ensued between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian supporters at UCLA.
The escalation in campus protests comes as the Democratic party is trying to balance its more moderate, pro-Israel flank with a growing coalition signaling support for conditioning military aid to Israel.
Senate Republican leadership thrashed out against President Joe Biden and university administrators, calling the protests vile, disturbing, un-American and reprehensible.
Donald Trump called the protestors "raging lunatics and Hamas sympathizers" at a Wisconsin rally on Wednesday and encouraged universities to "remove the encampments immediately, vanquish the radicals and take back our campuses for all of the normal students who want a safe place from which to learn."
Universities may lose federal funding
Swinging from the get-go, Republicans devoted the entirety of their news conference to bashing Biden and the “violent, anti-Jewish and pro-Hamas mobs.”
“We have Jewish students on campus hearing the kind of threats their great-grandparents heard in Nazi Germany. Yet the Biden administration and Democrats refuse to act,” Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Barrasso said.
“Joe Biden and national Democrats try to downplay this un-American activity. It’s dangerous and it’s wrong.”Biden would rather waffle than act, he added, accusing the president of “bowing down to pro-Hamas protesters” because of the upcoming election.
“He knows he needs their votes and that is absolutely wrong,” Barrasso said. “What he ought to be doing is applying the law, returning order to campuses and getting students back into the classroom.”Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) said college and university presidents have made the choice not to stand with their Jewish students and Jewish faculty.Universities who fail to protect Jewish students from harassment and discrimination should lose their federal funding and administrators should lose their jobs, Republicans argued.Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said he’s taking a look at how to condition federal funding based on how universities handle their campuses.“We’re serious about this and looking at what we can do legislatively,” McConnell said.Meanwhile, across Capitol Hill, both House and Senate Democratic leadership broached the protests more cautiously in their respective briefings.When asked if schools should lose federal funding, House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said he hadn’t taken a look at any specific proposal and would have to engage in conversation about the best way for universities to respond.Jeffries acknowledged the rise in antisemitism that he said existed in the US prior to October 7 and nodded to the Biden administration’s work on combating antisemitism.Jeffries reiterated his position on the conflict, saying Israel is fighting a war of necessity and Hamas must be decisively defeated. He added everything possible must be done to free the hostages.He also said the first amendment, peaceful protest and nonviolent civil disobedience are important parts of the “fabric of America.”“But we shouldn’t see any protest ever veer into threatening the safety and security of others. Or to antisemitism, racism, xenophobia or islamophobia or anything that is inconsistent with the fact that America is a gorgeous mosaic of different people, races, religions and ethnicities,” Jeffries said.
He praised the NYPD calling them thorough and professional, saying they should be commended for bringing a degree of calm to a tense situation at Columbia University and City College of New YorkSenate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democratic leaders used their Wednesday press conference to highlight various pieces of legislation and the success of the Biden economy.Schumer did not bring up the protests until asked by a reporter, to which the New York senator declined to provide comment on Tuesday night’s escalations. He repeated previous comments disavowing protesters for smashing windows and taking over Hamilton Hall.