Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) has made a motion to subpoena Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, over the inclusion of Turning Point USA and the slogan “America First” in the ADL’s now-deleted “Glossary of Extremism and Hate.”
Luna, who serves on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said she wanted to subpoena Greenblatt “for stifling free speech by listing the phrase America First as hate speech and Turning Point USA as a hate group.”
“Bring them in and make them testify before the American people!” Luna wrote.
Tyler Bowyer, chief operating officer of Turning Point USA, stated that the organization has been “under direct assault” by the ADL and other groups because of the “impact being made converting young people away from the left.”
The ADL removed the entire glossary in September after backlash from conservatives, stating that it “saw a number of entries intentionally misrepresented and misused,” but that it is ultimately always looking for ways to “do things better.”
Rabbi Pesach Wolicki, executive director of Israel365 Action and friend of Turning Point USA’s late founder Charlie Kirk, told JNS that the ADL’s labeling was “absurdly wrong” and “harms Jewish interests.”
“TPUSA was listed in their glossary of problematic organizations, but CAIR was not. The Muslim Brotherhood was not,” Wolicki said. “Do you understand how absurd this is?”
“At every turn, this secular left Jewish progressive establishment is fighting the efforts to return America to its Judeo-Christian biblical values,” Wolicki told JNS.
Wolicki added that the America First movement is trying to restore “everything that makes America great, and everything that has made America a great place for Jews,” calling the United States “the greatest place that Jews have ever lived in our 2,000 years of exile.”
He told JNS that at a time when the movement was dealing with “a vocal minority” who are “anti-Jewish and are anti-Israel,” the ADL poured “fuel on the fire.”
