U.S. lawmakers and leaders of American Jewish organizations met on Capitol Hill on Sept. 12 to discuss security concerns ahead of the High Holidays.
Even as attacks on Jews remained an acute focus, Congress members and Jewish communal leaders expressed alarm over the recent spate of politically motivated killings around the country, including the shooting death in Utah of Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and the founder of Turning Point USA, on Sept. 10 and the murder of two children at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis in August.
Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) described the rise in antisemitism in America as being “unlike any seen in America in generations.”
“I don’t care what fringe it comes from—this kind of extremism, hate and violence is unacceptable and needs to be condemned,” Hassan said. “We can’t grow accustomed to this. We can’t try to accommodate this. Foreign-policy debates are complicated. Condemning antisemitism is not.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said that in response to these apparently online radicalized extremists, she intends to work with Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to repeal section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, which shields social media companies from liability for content published on their platforms.
“We need to start putting some accountability for these platforms that are making trillions of dollars off of us,” she said. “It is not about censorship. It’s just about having responsibility for the products that you are making money off.”
In recent years, Jewish groups have also repeatedly advocated for increased funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, a federal fund designed to improve physical security measures at synagogues, Jewish day schools and other religious sites.
The Jewish Federations of North America, the Orthodox Union, the Anti-Defamation League, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and other leading Jewish groups have all called for the program’s budget to be increased to $1 billion annually, up from the $274.5 million budgeted for fiscal year 2025.
‘This is a domestic terror crisis’
Nathan Diament, executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, told JNS that Sens. Kristen Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Moore Capito (R-W.V.), all of whom sit on the Senate Appropriations Committee, supported funding the grants during “encouraging” meetings on Wednesday.
“We are hopeful Congress will come together to increase funding for this badly needed bipartisan program,” Diament said.
Eric Fingerhut, president and CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, said the American Jewish community is now allocating approximately $1 billion annually in private philanthropic donations to security and needs additional support from the federal government.
“This is a domestic terror crisis,” he said. “There’s a war of a kind that’s happening domestically, and we need Congress and the administration—they didn’t create the problem, this Congress didn’t create it and this administration didn’t create it—but we need to be on a war footing to respond to the domestic terror threats that our faith communities are experiencing all around the country.”
