The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions postponed votes on a pair of measures designed to combat antisemitism on Wednesday after a tense hearing and the passage of amendments that threaten to kill the measures if brought to a vote.
The Antisemitism Awareness Act would enshrine the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism into law to enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, which bars discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin.
The testy hearing covered objections to the bill ranging from whether a Christian would be barred from saying that Jews killed Jesus, to the acceptability of making contemporary political allusions to Nazi Germany, to the comedy of Jerry Seinfeld and Joan Rivers.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) repeatedly hammered the IHRA definition’s 11 contemporary examples of Jew-hatred, arguing that they were all protected speech under the First Amendment and the Supreme Court’s 1969 ruling in Brandenburg v. Ohio.
“Brandenburg was a Nazi and an antisemite, and he said horrible things,” Paul said. “The First Amendment, the Constitution, the Supreme Court, ruled that you can say terrible things.”
Some of the IHRA definition’s 11 examples of antisemitism, which include Holocaust denial and calling for the killing of Jews, are criminally banned in many countries but are likely protected in the United States by the First Amendment. The IHRA definition notes that criticizing the Israeli government isn’t necessarily antisemitic.
“That’s unique about our country. In Europe, you can’t say anything,” Paul said. “You say something about the Holocaust in Europe, you can go to jail. This is what we’re doing. We’re codifying what Europe did to speech. It’s a terrible idea.”
The bipartisan act has long been supported by Jewish groups, including the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Federations of North America.
It largely replicates an executive order that U.S. President Donald Trump signed in 2019, but the bill has lost the support of some Democrats and Republicans who object to aspects of the IHRA definition.
The committee chairman, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), amended the legislation at the start of Wednesday’s hearing to include stronger language affirming that it would not infringe or diminish the rights to free speech or the free exercise of religion.
He did so after some House Republicans, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), voted against its companion bill in the House in 2024 because they argued that it would limit the ability of Christians to say that Jews killed Jesus.
Paul repeated that charge on Wednesday, while saying he thought that the belief that all Jews were responsible for killing Jesus is antisemitic.
He also submitted into the record the names of 400 Jewish-American comedians, who he said had used stereotypical language about Jews that might fall afoul of the legislation.
“This one’s from Joan Rivers. She says, ‘I’m Jewish. I don’t work out. If God had wanted us to bend over, he would have put diamonds on the floor,’” Paul said.
“That’s obviously very negative, that Jewish people think only of money and stuff, but she’s Jewish, and it’s funny or it’s not funny, and it’s just her right to make a joke,” he said.
The Kentucky senator ultimately voted to help Democrats pass four amendments to the bill, at least two of which could act as poison pills and threaten Republican support.
‘What we are debating today’
The first of those amendments, proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), includes casualty figures from Gaza, which match those supplied by Hamas, in the legislation.
“No person shall be considered antisemitic for using their rights of free speech or protest under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States to oppose Benjamin Netanyau’s led war effort, which has killed more than 50,000 and wounded more than 113,000, 60% of whom are women and children,” the amendment reads.
It goes on to describe “the Israeli government’s devastation of Gaza” and “tens of thousands of children facing malnutrition and starvation.”
Another amendment from Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) implicitly criticizes as unconstitutional the Trump administration’s policy of seeking to deport anti-Israel campus protest leaders.
The administration has alleged that some non-citizen protest leaders, including Mahmoud Khalil, are supporters of Hamas who threaten U.S. national security. Many Democrats argue that they are being deported for protected speech.
“Antisemitism is wrong. Authoritarianism is not the answer,” Markey said. “When a young person writes an op-ed in a student newspaper and gets whisked off the street in New Jersey to a prison in Louisiana with no charges, that is what we are debating today.”
The chairman repeatedly expressed exasperation at the number of amendments and the requests from Paul and the Democrats for more debate, saying that the time limits that he was procedurally forced to work under had been imposed by the Democratic leadership under the so-called two-hour rule.
“If you’re truly interested in having a fulsome debate and not just using this as a way to kill the bill, then I would ask you to call your floor leader and ask not to put the two-hour debate on us,” Cassidy said.
As the ranking member on the committee, Sanders objected to Cassidy’s request for unanimous consent to waive the two-hour limitation.
“I think that speaks volumes,” Cassidy said.
The second bill under consideration on Wednesday, the Protecting Students on Campus Act, does not explicitly mention Jews or antisemitism but aims to bolster the Title VI investigation process at the Department of Education through a public awareness campaign and audits of the department’s civil rights investigations.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and the Democrats passed an amendment to the bill that would also require an audit of the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency, which could likewise undermine Republican support for the legislation’s final passage.
After saying that the votes on both bills would go forward during the meeting, Cassidy called a recess and then announced that the votes would be deferred until at least Thursday.