At the May 8 hearing of the House Education and Workforce Subcommittee, Republicans accused the leaders of liberal school districts in New York City, Berkeley and Montgomery County, Md. of failing to discipline antisemitic administrators, teachers and students.
David Banks, New York City’s schools chancellor, pushed back at House members’ zeal for “gotcha moments.” Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.) added that if her Republican colleagues were really concerned about antisemitism, they would have condemned President Donald Trump’s assertion that there were “very fine people on both sides” when white supremacists shouted “Jews will not replace us” in 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. After asking whether any Republican member now had “the courage to stand up against that,” Bonamici paused, and then said, “Let the record show that no one spoke up.”
Bonamici is right. Republicans’ partisan weaponization of antisemitism has not diminished their toleration of anti-Jewish dog whistlers in their own ranks.
In November 2022, Trump, who once declared himself “the least antisemitic person you’ve ever seen in your entire life,” had dinner in Mar-a-Lago with Nazi-sympathizing rapper Kanye West (known as Ye) and Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist and Holocaust denier who has praised Hitler, called for a “holy war against Jews” and advocated putting “a crucifix in every home, in every room in every school, and every government office to signal Christ’s rule over our country.”
Although a few Republican officeholders denounced the former president,........