Calling on Elected Officials and Civil Society Leaders to Counter Antisemitism and Educate the Public on the Contributions of the Jewish American Community

Floor Speech

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Mr. RASKIN. Wasserman Schultz).

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland for yielding and for his stalwart and unyielding support for the Jewish community, for his leadership as a member of the Jewish community, and for his decades of work to support Jewish community values.

I rise in strong support of my resolution, H. Res. 352, to recognize Jewish American Heritage Month and highlight the enduring contributions of Jewish Americans to our country.

I proudly sponsored this bill when I was a freshman Member of Congress, and it was the first piece of legislation that I passed as a freshman 20 years ago. I thank my co-leads, Representative Troy Carter, Congresswoman Miller-Meeks, and Congressman Fitzpatrick, for joining me in co-leading this resolution. It is a resolution that highlights the enduring contributions of Jewish Americans to our country.

Every May, we come together to celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month, also known as JAHM, and the generations of Jewish Americans who are integral parts of the rich mosaic of people and the heritages that make up these great United States.

While we joyfully celebrate this month, it is the second JAHM that we commemorate under the shadow of Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel. This was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

Since that fateful day, the United States has witnessed a historic rise in anti-Semitism, which was already explosive prior to October 7, with an absolute explosion of online hate.

In 2024, the ADL tracked 9,354 anti-Semitic incidents across America. That marked a 344 percent increase over the past 5 years, and it was the highest number on record since these instances of hate were first tracked in 1979.

It is so disheartening that every year a new record is set of anti- Jewish incidents, but it also demonstrates that we have a lot of work to do together.

According to the American Jewish Committee, in 2024, one-third of American Jews had been the personal target of anti-Semitism over the past year, and sadly, one-third of Jewish college students felt uncomfortable or unsafe on campus due to their Jewish identity.

While we must take steps to protect Jewish students on college campuses, we cannot allow anti-Semitism to be used as a vehicle to take away the rights of others. Make no mistake, anti-Semitism is a canary in the coal mine. Attacks on Jewish students in any school setting are unacceptable, and there should be serious consequences.

By investing in policies that protect Jewish students, like fully funding the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights to fund investigations and hold colleges and universities--and, quite frankly, schools across the country and secondary schools--tolerating anti- Semitism accountable, we can support all students' ability to live and study in places that value and respect their heritage.

While there is no simple solution to end this extremist hate, we all can take steps to end this violence.

In the Biden administration's national strategy to counter anti- Semitism, the U.S.' first-ever blueprint, it called on all aspects of society to commemorate JAHM and use it as a tool to fight hate. That is because we need Jews and non-Jews alike to learn about all the remarkable Jewish Americans who served in government or the military, or who won Nobel prizes, for example, and how Jewish Americans lead universities and make lifesaving medical discoveries that we all count on today.

However, the significant contributions Jewish Americans have made and continue to make toward America's success are not widely known, so today's resolution highlights Jewish American inventors who created services and products that all Americans rely on each and every day.

For instance, Mr. Speaker, Irving Naxon invented the slow cooker. He took inspiration from Jewish cooking traditions in Europe to allow Jewish communities to have fresh and hot meals on Shabbat.

Sylvan Goldman invented the shopping cart, transforming the ease with which people are able to shop for their families.

When Hedy Lamarr, the famous and accomplished actress, was not acting in films, she invented the concept of frequency hopping, which opened the door to a wide range of wireless communications technologies, including WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth.

There are a whole lot of gamers who would love that Ralph Baer invented the Brown Box, a prototype for the first multiplayer, multiprogram video game system.

These are just a few of the innovative contributions that American Jews brought to all of our lives. As Jews, we have a longstanding commitment to tikkun olam, a commitment to repair the world. We take great pride regarding the impact we have made on so many generations of Americans.

As we celebrate the 20th year of Jewish American Heritage Month, we have made progress toward the goals of JAHM to educate Americans by celebrating Jewish contributions, which promotes understanding and reduces bigotry.

Mr. Speaker, I thank everyone on both sides of the aisle for helping shine a light on this important moment in time, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this resolution.

I thank the gentlewoman for her eloquence and lucidity in those remarks and for sponsoring this legislation.

I speak very strongly in favor of Ms. Wasserman Schultz's resolution, which recognizes Jewish American Heritage Month and the important contributions that Jewish Americans have made to our country, and I thank her for her continuing leadership within Congress and also within the American Jewish community.

The resolution calls on elected officials, faith leaders, and civil society leaders to condemn and counter all acts of anti-Semitism.

I also want to salute Mr. Schmidt, the distinguished Member from Kansas, for his powerful endorsement of this idea.

The resolution also goes on to urge the House to take ``all possible steps to ensure the safety, security, and dignity of American Jews in all aspects of their lives.'' We are called upon to condemn anti- Semitism and to ensure the safety of the Jewish community, along with everyone else. The appeal is appropriate and timely.

We have to do everything in our power to counter the poison of anti- Semitism, racism, and other forms of bigotry, which are really the gateway to destruction of liberal democracy in our country.

That obligation means fighting anti-Semitism, even when, perhaps especially when, it is expressed and endorsed by officials of the United States Government.

Last week, President Trump finally withdrew the nomination of Ed Martin to serve as the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Mr. Martin's confirmation in the Senate faced many insuperable obstacles. It was doomed.

First of all, he had no prosecutorial experience and no administrative experience running a prosecutor's office.

Secondly, he had shown an extraordinary devotion to the extremists who participated in the violent insurrection against the Capitol and against Congress on January 6, 2021. He represented many of them as a defense lawyer, but he championed the cause of a great number more in not just legal but in political and civil contexts.

He also failed to disclose that he had appeared more than 150 times on Russian state propaganda networks, like Russia Today and Sputnik, when he was nominated to be the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. These are networks that were forced to register as foreign agents of Vladimir Putin's government.

The truth is that his nomination was doomed, regardless. I would say that all of these disqualifications by themselves pale in comparison to Mr. Martin's long and troubling relationship with a Hitler-loving neo- Nazi named Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, who was sentenced to 4 years in prison for breaching the Capitol during the January 6 attack.

Hale-Cusanelli is an outspoken anti-Semite who proudly wears a Hitler mustache, advocates killing the disabled at birth, and told coworkers that Hitler should have finished the job. At his sentencing, a Trump- appointed Federal judge warned him that his actions and statements make everyone, including Jewish people, less safe in our country.

How did Ed Martin, President Trump's pick for one of the most important jobs in the American criminal justice system, react to all the extraordinary statements and the lawless actions of Mr. Hale- Cusanelli? He invited him to go on his podcast multiple times to spout his fascist propaganda. He presented him with an award before a big audience. He praised him as an extraordinary man and an extraordinary leader.

By attending President Trump's inauguration with his good friend, he continued to promote him in establishment political circles, and he headlined a fundraiser together with Mr. Hale-Cusanelli in Florida last year.

By pretending not to know that he was a vicious anti-Semite, even after he clearly had evidence that he was, Mr. Martin continued to legitimize and validate the views of this man.

Mr. Martin's weak protests that he didn't know anything about what his views really were were debunked not only by National Public Radio but by the record of Martin's involvement with other extremists.

For example, Mr. Martin has also praised Jack Posobiec, an anti- Semitic conspiracy theorist with links to the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and several other white nationalist organizations.

Mr. Martin frequently praises Mr. Posobiec online and calls his anti- Semitic insights valuable and incredible. Mr. Martin's own views are saturated with deranged analogies that dilute the meaning of Nazism and Fascism.

In one episode about the 2024 election, he compared President Joe Biden to Adolf Hitler, which either means that Biden committed genocide or that Hitler was just a regular old politician. In another episode about the election, he repeated the defamatory lie that Jewish people who vote for Democrats are somehow less Jewish than those who vote for Donald Trump.

How did President Trump treat this disturbed individual after his nomination just collapsed across the hallway in the U.S. Senate in the face of this mountain of evidence of his extremism? It was not by cutting him loose, as he should have, but by appointing him to serve in a senior role in the Department of Justice that does not require confirmation by the U.S. Senate.

President Trump named him to be the U.S. pardon attorney, and he named him to be director of a task force on the weaponization of government. This was a perfect assignment, perhaps, for a man who writes vituperative threat letters to Democrats when he hears them say things that he doesn't like.

Mr. Speaker, it makes me wonder why President Trump would put up with this and would insist upon placing him in a position of such critical importance in the Department of Justice. President Trump saw very fine people on both sides of the anti-Semitic riot that took place in Charlottesville. We know that he had Nicholas Fuentes to his house, another neo-Nazi Holocaust revisionist.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that this is a matter of fundamental importance, that both Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate demand that Ed Martin not have a role in the U.S. Government, given his close association with all of these extremists and his very damning statements in the past, not to mention the fact that he had more than 150 appearances on Russian propaganda state networks.

We should be rejecting anti-Semitism wherever it appears: on the left, on the right, or in the center. It doesn't matter what you call yourself. If you align with hatred against any group, you are a danger to American constitutional democracy, and we should not allow it to gain a foothold in the Government of the United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, let us adhere to the spirit of President George Washington, who said in his famous letter in 1790 to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, that ``the Government of the United States . . . gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.''

If these words are to mean something in our day in the 21st century, we must insist that men like Ed Martin and his anti-Semitic associates and friends have no place representing the people of the United States in our government.

We must pay more than lipservice to the idea of fighting anti- Semitism. We must fight anti-Semitism when we see it in the Government of the United States itself and even amongst our friends.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this resolution. Let's put the words and the spirit of this resolution into practice.

Mr. Speaker, I have not had the good fortune to meet our new colleague from Florida, and I will be sure to come over to introduce myself right after. I am glad the gentleman is in support of the resolution.

The very first sentence of it says: ``The House of Representatives calls on elected officials,'' which presumably includes us, ``faith leaders, and civil society leaders to condemn and counter all acts of anti-Semitism.''

If a discussion of anti-Semitism and the contributions of Jewish Americans is not an appropriate time to talk about anti-Semitism in the government, I wonder what is.

I would be very happy to pursue with my new colleague the subject of Ed Martin. I don't know exactly where he stands on Ed Martin, whether he opposed the President's withdrawal of his nomination after it came out about his close association with a neo-Nazi.

The story behind it, if the gentleman is really interested in it, is National Public Radio confronted him with all the evidence of Hale- Cusanelli's Nazi statements, including: ``Hitler should have finished the job.''

Hale-Cusanelli was also associated with statements like he was right about disabled people and when babies are born disabled, they should be put to death immediately, and so on.

They presented him with a complete litany of it, and Ed Martin's response to it was that National Public Radio is a propaganda network paid for by the government, and he had nothing of substance to say about his good friend's, this ``extraordinary leader,'' anti-Semitic remarks.

It seems that for some people, there is never an opportunity to actually repudiate and denounce anti-Semitism when it actually appears. When it came out that he did know about it, they were forced to withdraw the nomination.

Mr. Speaker, imagine everyone's surprise when Donald Trump decided to then make him the United States pardon attorney overseeing a large office of people considering pardon applications from across the country.

Is that someone that I think can be trusted to deal fairly in terms of minority groups, such as Jewish Americans, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans? I don't think so.

I am sorry the gentleman doesn't think it is appropriate to talk about anti-Semitism when we see it. We just have an honest difference of opinion about that, but if the gentleman is interested in pursuing it some other time, I would love to discuss it with him.

I think my colleague will come to find that we use the floor of the House of Representatives to talk about a lot of things going on. My Republican colleague might be able to stick narrowly to one particular topic. Good for him if that is what he would like to do, but we like to talk about all of our legislation in context here.

This is a matter that is actually called for directly in the very first sentence of the resolution that we are all about to approve.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the distinguished Representative from Florida, for being such a great leader in opposing not just anti-Semitism but all forms of racism, bigotry, and anti- Semitism. One could say it was the original form of racism. It goes back millennia, and it mutates and appears in different guises and different forms and at different periods in history.

Mr. Speaker, anti-Semitism and racism are the gateway to destruction of liberal democracy, so we need to recognize the extraordinary accomplishments of Jewish Americans, along with the extraordinary accomplishments of members of other groups, and to fight and resist bigotry of all forms, as George Washington talked about.

Mr. Speaker, let us continue to fight for an America that is going to be open to the contributions of everybody, and I appreciate Ms. Wasserman Schultz' ability to bring before us again the Jewish American Heritage Month resolution. I am delighted to support it, and I urge all Members of the body to vote for it.

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