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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. The last 24 hours have been very tense and potentially consequential in Congress. They've been stuck on a bill for new aid to Israel and Ukraine because Republicans insist on including new US border control measures and Democrats are resisting them. Aid to Israel right at this moment is also being questioned because of the way they're fighting the war in Gaza with so many civilian deaths.

We'll hear a clip of Chuck Schumer and his role as Senate Majority Leader on tying US aid or I should say on tying Israel and Ukraine aid to US southern border policies. We'll hear that clip of Senate Majority Leader Schumer in a minute.

The leader of the House meanwhile, Speaker Mike Johnson, says he will release some January 6th Capitol riot footage with the faces of the participants blurred so they don't get charged with crimes. That as you might imagine, is getting pushed back as, "Wait, this is coming from the party of law and order?" A House hearing on anti-Semitism that included the presidents of several major universities is drawing gasps in many places for multiple presidents' refusal to say calling for genocide against Jews violates campus speech policies. We'll play one of those exchanges.

There's more to that we probably won't get to, at, as I said, what seems like a very tense and consequential time on Capitol Hill right now with so much going on. Joining us with some details is Jake Sherman, co-founder of the DC politics news site, Punchbowl News and co-host of the Daily Punch podcast from Punchbowl News. He's also co-author of the book The Hill to Die On: The Battle for Congress and the Future of Trump's America. Jake, thanks for coming on today. Welcome back to WNYC.

Jake Sherman: Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with tying border policies to the Israel and Ukraine aid bill. Here's Senate Majority Leader Schumer on that, a few things he said, edited down for time.

Chuck Schumer: The holdup on the security supplemental has not been over Ukraine or Israel or the Indo-Pacific but over Republican decision to inject hard right immigration measures into the debate. Democrats agree. Immigration should be debated and addressed, but if Republicans want to raise the issue of immigration right now, the onus is on them to present us with bipartisan ideas.

Brian Lehrer: Jake, what's the issue? What border policies is Schumer criticizing there as hard right?

Jake Sherman: Well, he's criticizing the House Republican bill H.R.2., which is a very hard right proposal that the House of Representatives passed in May of this year, which Speaker Mike Johnson who's, again, new at the job and largely unpracticed at legislating, he's demanding as a price, as he put it behind closed doors yesterday, for Ukraine aid. Now, this is not going to fly. We oftentimes say, adding a difficult issue to another difficult issue doesn't make the two issues less difficult, in fact, it makes it more difficult.

I, at this point, based on our reporting up here, do not think or, at least, I'm skeptical that Ukraine aid is going to pass. Now, Chuck Schumer could put on the floor, the Democratic- and he has, the Democratic Ukraine package with Israel and Taiwan, and it's not going to go anywhere. The Senate Republicans are going to vote it down. Schumer is right. If Republicans do want to inject this into the debate, it is largely incumbent upon them to do so.

Brian Lehrer: This isn't just a MAGA Republican thing, though. I see Mitt Romney, among others, is insisting on this linkage to border policies.

Jake Sherman: Yes, they are. They are linking these two policies because they believe that this is a pressure valve. It's a good point in time to enact border policies, but it does have widespread support. The idea of border policy with Ukraine has widespread support.

Now, the particulars don't have widespread support at least at this point. The House of Representatives is not going to settle- the Republican conference is not going to settle for a half-measure. They're not going to settle for a watered-down immigration policy or something that just does, in their view, half of the job. They want the whole cake so to speak, and they're not going to settle for anything less.

Brian Lehrer: This may be too far from your beat covering Congress, but one of the stories of local interest here that we're going to be talking about later in the show is that New York City Mayor Eric Adams is going to Washington tomorrow to plead again for more federal aid to help the city settle the hundred thousand plus asylum seekers who have come in the last one year plus.

From what I hear when I interview members of Congress from the New York delegation, mostly Democratic members, is that Republicans won't go along with that kind of aid, and the Biden administration can't just issue an executive order designating a lot more money for New York City. I'm just curious, and again, I realized this may not be a question that you're asking or that other congressional reporters are asking the House Republicans, Senate Republicans, if they consider immigration a federal issue. That's exactly Eric Adams's argument for why the federal government should be footing most of this tab.

Jake Sherman: Yes, they do. For better or worse, this is squarely on my beat because what Republicans say is that federal laws are broken, and we shouldn't put a bandaid on individual cities' issues, while the underlying cause, the root cause of this, is a patchwork of federal laws that are no longer keeping up with the times, that are no longer working for anybody, basically. They don't want to just backfill individual cities that have migrant issues without fixing the underlying cause.

I would assume, Mr. Adams's trip here is not going to be terribly fruitful. I think it's going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to convince congressional Republicans who obviously control the House of Representatives to shuffle a bunch of money to New York to deal with an issue that they believe has a root cause in ancient or ill-advised or just simply not working federal policies.

Brian Lehrer: Democratic policies, they would probably say, right?

Jake Sherman: They would say, yes. They will say, by the way, that the problem has gotten worse under President Biden, and I think, by the numbers it has, and the President won't do anything about it, which is not completely true. He won't do anything that Republicans want.

Brian Lehrer: How will they resolve this? It sounds like most members of both parties feel like Ukraine and Israel aid is fairly urgent, but it's stuck over the border issue. Any tea leaves to read here as to how and when this will get resolved?

Jake Sherman: Yes, we have to take this piece by piece. The Ukraine issue is an issue unto itself in that Republicans not only want border policy, but they also want the administration to lay out a more fulsome strategy for Ukraine, how the Ukrainians are going to win the war, and to make the case why the Federal Government, why the American government, needs to be sending tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine every couple of months. That's what Republicans say.

Now, $14 billion for Israel has widespread support. Mike Johnson, in one of his first acts as Speaker, tried to tie cuts to the IRS to the Israel aid bill, which has gone nowhere and will go nowhere in the Democratic Senate. If Chuck Schumer were to put Israel aid bill on the floor, without any corresponding cuts, it would probably pass the Senate, it would put immense pressure on the House to take it up immediately and pass it before the end of the year. We haven't seen Schumer express interest in doing that so far.

Brian Lehrer: Well, just as you said, some Republicans want to attach conditions to a Ukraine aid bill. Some Democrats want to attach conditions, now, it appears, to Israel aid bill-

Jake Sherman: That's right.

Brian Lehrer: - because of the civilians in Gaza getting killed at the rate that they're getting killed. Bernie Sanders brought it up as an issue in the Senate this week. This would be an action on what the Biden administration itself is now saying about that war, but at a funding conditions level. I want to play a clip of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, speaking over the weekend, as an example of how the administration appears to be shifting on this.

Lloyd Austin: I learned a thing or two about urban warfare from my time fighting in Iraq and leading the campaign to defeat ISIS. Like Hamas, ISIS was deeply embedded in urban areas. The international coalition against ISIS worked hard to protect civilians and create humanitarian corridors, even during the toughest battles. The lesson is not that you can win in urban warfare by protecting civilians. The lesson is that you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians.

You see, in this kind of a fight, the center of gravity is the civilian population, and if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat.

Brian Lehrer: Defense Secretary Austin this week and considering his position speaking, no doubt, for the president. Jake, one more clip on this before you tell me if this is a voting issue or just a talking issue. This is Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut on CNN's State of the Union, the weekend before last, as they were getting ready to come back from Thanksgiving break.

Chris Murphy: We regularly condition our aid to allies based upon compliance with US law and international law. I think it's very consistent with the ways in which we have dispensed aid, especially during wartime, to allies for us to talk about making sure that the aid we give Ukraine or the aid we give Israel is used in accordance with human rights laws. That'll be a conversation we'll all be engaged in when we get back to Washington on Monday.

Brian Lehrer: Jake, is there a new debate in Congress over conditions on aid to Israel regarding civilians in Gaza, or are people just saying things?

Jake Sherman: It's probably a little bit of both, and the devil will be in the details here. It depends what kind of conditions people try to put on the aid. Now, the House of Representatives, again controlled by Republicans, would put almost no conditions on the aid to Israel, and that would be the prevailing position in the House joined by the way, by a number of House Democrats. A large amount of House Democrats would like no conditions on the aid.

The movement in the Senate, at the moment, especially among Democrats, is to put some modicum of condition on the aid, so it's probably a voting issue and a talking issue. It is a voting issue right now because there are those- I don't think Chris Murphy is among them, but Bernie Sanders, as you mentioned before, probably will not vote. He said he will not vote to send $14 billion to Israel without conditions. It's going to be something that the leadership Chuck Schumer's going to have to deal with in order to try to keep his caucus unified.

Brian Lehrer: What do you think Murphy was referring to, if he's not on the same page as Bernie Sanders on this, in making the point on CNN last week, and I'm quoting from that clip, "We regularly condition our aid to allies based on compliance with US law and international law, and that will be a conversation we will all be engaged in when we get back to Washington on Monday," referring to last Monday? Can you do a little Chris Murphy reporting on that?

Jake Sherman: Yes. Listen, there's levels of condition. There are more stringent conditions, which is what Bernie Sanders will insist on, and then Chris Murphy, who is a very practiced hand when it comes to foreign policy. There is boilerplate language, and I don't mean that in a derisive way or minimizing it, but there is boilerplate language that Israel will have to comply with international laws and US standards and US laws that they could put in the bill, that wouldn't, in Republican's views, tie Israel's hands, but would at least give Democrats and supporters of putting condition on the aid something to point to in the legislation.

Brian Lehrer: Jake Sherman with us, co-founder of the DC news site, Punchbowl News. Let's go on to the anti-Semitism hearing in the House yesterday. This was in the Education and Workforce Committee. I gather it was a five-hour hearing, but here's one of the clips that's getting the most attention. Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik pressed the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania on the question of whether calling for genocide against Jews violates campus speech policy or bullying policy. This went pretty much the same in all three cases. Here's part of the exchange with Harvard President Claudine Gay, who reportedly got the worst of it.

Elise Stefanik: At Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no?

Claudine Gay: It can be depending on the context.

Elise Stefanik: What's the context?

Claudine Gay: Targeted at an individual.

Elise Stefanik: It's targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals. Do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them? Do you understand that dehumanization is part of anti-Semitism? I will ask you one more time. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no?

Claudine Gay: Anti-Semitic rhetoric when it crosses into conduct--

Elise Stefanik: Is it anti-Semitic rhetoric--

Claudine Gay: Anti-Semitic rhetoric when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation, that is actionable conduct, and we do take action.

Brian Lehrer: The president of Harvard, Claudine Gay with Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of Upstate New York. Jake, I see that you tweeted, I think with some astonishment, about that exchange. What distinction were President Gay and the other college presidents trying to make?

Jake Sherman: Brian, I actually don't know the answer to that. I wish I had a better idea of what the answer was to that. Personally, this is taking my reporter hat off and putting my Jewish American hat on, which I guess doesn't ever come off. I can't imagine that calling for the genocide of the Jewish people would not run afoul of bullying or hate standards at any university.

I think I would have to imagine, if you take the most charitable view, which I'm not sure I could do here, but the most charitable view would be that it runs afoul of First Amendment protections of speech, but I don't quite understand where they're going with this, and it's astonishing to me.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you want to comment or ask a question about any of these stories, dramatic developments on multiple fronts, as we've been saying in Congress in the last 24 hours, our lines are open, 212-433-WNYC, the anti-Semitism hearing and the response by the college presidents to that particular question, the aid to Israel and aid to Ukraine debate and those things being tied to southern border policies. We'll get to Speaker Mike Johnson planning to release January 6th Capitol riot footage with faces blurred out, so people don't get charged with crimes, or anything else relevant for Jake Sherman on his beat covering Congress. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text.

I guess there's at least a single standard issue with respect to the president's answers on calling for genocide against Jews that I don't know if the committee members raised this way, because most of the debate about speech on campus in recent years has been about whether they cracked down too much on speech that's considered racist, or misogynist, or homophobic as speech being a form of violence. Did the president's defender explain what's consistent or inconsistent there?

Jake Sherman: If they did, I missed it. This has obviously been a huge issue on college campuses for a long time, and universities have, to a large degree, stepped up and said when speech is hateful, it runs a towel of bullying or harassment or a number of other standards, but in this case, they don't appear to be doing that. One university president, I can't remember right exactly who it was, but said, "If the speech turns into action, it would be actionable under their standards."

I'm not entirely sure what kind of action we're talking about here. We're talking about genocide, so I would hope that if the speech turned into action, it would be actionable or run afoul of the rules. Let's put it this way, the Republicans were not the only ones who were astonished. Reporters, Republicans, and Democrats were all astonished by these answers.

Brian Lehrer: To take a 360 view of this, did any Democrats say, "What about Islamophobia on campus?" It's been a dangerous environment for Muslim students for a long time, and that continues now. Something like anti-Semitism is very real and the expressions of it since October 7th are horrifying, but it's also a rough time for Muslim students who appear to non-Muslims to be Muslim students on campus, and that should be part of the conversation too?

Jake Sherman: Yes, they did. They absolutely did, and by the way, that's a legitimate issue. I would argue that hate speech against any race, creed, religion is harassment. People should be made to feel safe on college campuses across the country. I think there's no doubt about that.

Brian Lehrer: On it turning into action as to when it would violate campus behavior codes, I think we heard that in that clip from the Harvard president, and I believe the Penn president in another clip I heard, basically used the same terminology about when it would move into action. Yes, you're raising the question, "Well, what does that mean if you can advocate genocide against Jews that that's okay? Only if you start killing Jews on campus does it actually violate that tenet?" People are calling in on this and the other things. Here is Saul in Staten Island. You're on WNYC. Hi, Saul.

Saul: Hi. Good morning. How are you? Actually, it was Dr. McGill from Penn who said that unless there's actually action taking part, taking, otherwise it's not hate speech. That's what, to me, is the scariest thing. I have an older sister who's in an Ivy League college, and to me is terrifying to me to know that the protections given to most other minorities where it would be taken as a guarantee that just basic hate speech is raised up as a big issue, is not given to me or her as a Jew.

I would invite Dr. McGill or any other person who's listening to you right now to walk through a college campus not with a Zionist symbol, just with a skullcap, see what happens and the rhetoric that will be directed towards you, and tell me if you feel safe. Also what defines action? If a teacher runs and hides in a bathroom in a high school or in an office, is that action? Does she feel threatened? Is that considered hate speech? [unintelligible 00:21:08] to be actually beaten up for that to be hate speech? It's a terrifying rhetoric.

I would say the same thing towards Islamophobic rhetoric too. I think the exact same protection should be given to Muslim students as the Jewish students. The ease at which these professors- just their fear in saying the words, "Yes, genocide against Jews is hate speech," they were terrified of saying those words. I don't think there's a single person in their country who would actually agree with that, any sane person. I don't know what they were afraid of. That's what's scary.

Brian Lehrer: Saul, thank you very much. Well, were they afraid of violating the law, I know you can't speak for them, but the law in some way, by saying that certain kinds of speech that isn't a threat against an individual is somehow not okay on campus?

Jake Sherman: I think, to be honest with you, Brian, they're worried about violating the spirit or the letter of the First Amendment, which gives us, as we all know, wide birth to speech of almost any kind. They said the context is important. I just simply don't think that a university which governs itself could, by the way, this is what's getting missed in this, set standards on its own for its own student body, where they're voluntarily in their own faculty. They have the ability to say that "This kind of speech is not acceptable at our private university."

Brian Lehrer: To be fair to the university presidents, they certainly said that that kind of speech is abhorrent to them personally, and said that they are doing a lot to crack down on anti-Semitism on campus. That particular question, obviously, is drawing gasps, as I said earlier, and beyond gasp, outrage in a lot of quarters.

I was looking at Harvard Crimson, so that's the student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, an article there from 2019 just by way of pre-October 7th comparison. This is an article about an admittee to Harvard who is going to be an incoming freshman. They rescinded the offer. Here's a little bit of that. "Harvard College rescinded its offer of admission to Parkland Florida school shooting survivor and gun rights activist Kyle Kashuv earlier this month for racist comments he made in high school, according to an announcement he made on Twitter on Monday." Of course, it goes into great detail on that, and nuances of that and back and forth.

I just brought that as an example of speech drawing university action, even in that case speech that was in the past, by somebody who, granted, wasn't yet a member of the student body, but he had been admitted.

Jake Sherman: I'll do something I rarely do, which is give my view on this situation as a human being. I am a First Amendment absolutist as a reporter. I think a lot of reporters are. You can say effectively whatever you want, but private institutions can set their own standards for what they find acceptable and what they don't. They are free, as you just cited, to admit and to deny and to stand for what they believe in or not on any issue.

I think that's at the heart of this about this, which is, do you as an institution stand for this stuff, whether it's Islamophobia, homophobia, anti-Semitism? We've seen universities take these stances before. This is not foreign to universities. This is something we see all the time, but on this issue, it seems a little bit out of whack with positions they've taken in the past.

Brian Lehrer: A text message from a listener who writes, "My cousin attends Cornell, and a similar thing happened in 2020 with her Black friends who were being threatened to be lynched. The Cornell administration never publicly addressed it and privately told them there was nothing they could do unless there was physical violence." If that telling is accurate, then there is at least a consistent policy. Here's some pushback on this. Fuwad in Darien, Connecticut, a Harvard graduate. Fuwad, thank you so much for calling in. You're on WNYC.

Fuwad: Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. Listen, I think there's two different issues that I'm seeing here. The first is a First Amendment right. I agree with your speaker who said, they may have been a little bit coy about this point. It's a real question about when does free speech- when is it actionable? When do you have to bar it, and when do you allow for free expression?

Now, the idea of genocide against Jews is an abhorrent idea. My experience talking to my daughter who's on campus at Harvard is nobody says that sort of thing. If they do, they are completely ostracized and shunned because the students there, even if they're advocates of Palestinian rights, and even if they abhor what's going on in Gaza, certainly do not express the view of genocide towards Jews. They may be pro-Palestinian, and they may be anti what the IDF is doing, but there's very, very little, if any, expression of genocidal views against Jews.

My problem with this dialogue is that it's conflating the issue of legitimate critique of the IDF and Israeli policy in Gaza with the view of anti-Semitism. The two are not, but the same. I would just caution about conflating those two ideas.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Jake Sherman: Can I just respond to that for a second?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, Jake, go ahead. Of course.

Jake Sherman: I agree with everything that Fuwad said here. I don't disagree with much of what he said at all. There's no question from a political standpoint that Stefanik is trying to make the point that- is trying to take the extreme and say, "Is this acceptable?" There isn't a ton of evidence that people are running around Harvard or MIT or any school saying, "We should conduct a genocide against Jews." People aren't saying that, and I take his point on that 100%.

We're not talking here about criticism of the Israeli government's campaign in Gaza. We are talking about we're talking about a discreet question, which is, if someone were to call for genocide against Jews, is that acceptable? Does that run afoul of the rules of your university? We're not talking about criticism of Israel here at all, in any way. That wasn't even part of the discussion.

Brian Lehrer: One more pushback on the seriousness of this consistent with what something that Fuwad said in his call, and Fuwad, thank you very much as a Harvard grad, is, whether it's a strawman because nobody's actually doing this. Here's a text that just came in, says, "As a professor at Penn, I wish the reporter had asked the basic question of whether anyone has actually called for genocide against Jews on campus."

I realize you're not an education reporter, you're not covering Penn, you're covering Congress. This person who says they're a professor at Penn goes on to say, "That has not happened on my campus. You're talking about a made-up Republican claim instead of talking about the outrageous accusations that Representative Wilson made against colleagues of mine, calling one a member of a terrorist group, which she is, of course, not, and accusing others of supporting terrorism, which, of course, they do not. Those accusations put their actual lives at risk."

Just reading these pushback calls, because while that clip certainly sounded outrageous on its face, there are other people who are hearing it differently.

Jake Sherman: Yes, I totally get that. There's no question, again, that she is making the extreme case. By the way, it's not unusual for Congress to talk about hypotheticals. They are there to examine higher education. Let's be real here for a second. Republicans have a longstanding campaign, especially Stefanik, against higher education, which they see is reflexively, liberal and silencing conservative voids, et cetera. There's no question that they had it out for these university presidents. On that note, it's not unusual for them to entertain hypotheticals in hearings like this.

Brian Lehrer: We're not going to solve the Middle East in this conversation, as I often say at the end of conversations about the Middle East, but there is that and multiple reactions to it. I do want to go on in our last couple of minutes to House Speaker Mike Johnson saying that he was going to release some January 6th riot footage and blur the faces of the people involved. Are you reporting on this? What's he doing, and why?

Jake Sherman: Yes, we are. I was there yesterday when he said this. Speaker Mike Johnson is releasing the totality of the January 6th footage, aside from some sensitive security issues to, in his view, give a more fulsome view of the January 6th riots. Now, let me just say this. I was here on January 6th in the Capitol where I'm currently sitting. I don't think the narrative, as Mike Johnson has said, is wrong around January 6th. It was what everyone thought it was, which was an insurrection against the government.

Now, all that said, Johnson said, straight up, that he's blurring the faces so the Department of Justice doesn't charge these individuals which is a pretty stunning statement. I was very surprised by that. Now, his staff later said that the Justice Department has access to the raw footage, so there's no way for him to stop DOJ from charging these people, but it is a good insight into Johnson's view that this day, January 6th, was not what most people thought it was.

Brian Lehrer: How would he defend blurring the faces of people who may be seen committing actual crimes?

Jake Sherman: I don't know. It's an indefensible position. Now there are privacy concerns. I think that's fine, but this, Brian, is a public building, the Capitol. This is not like you're showing nest footage from someone's home. This is a public building where a group of people tried to stop the counting of the electoral ballots in 2021. I'm not sure what the defensible position is here, to be honest with you.

Brian Lehrer: I wonder, now that you've probably, as a reporter there, gotten to know Mike Johnson a little bit more and what he stands for now that he's been elevated to Speaker of the House. One of the things that a lot of Democrats are concerned about is a scenario where there's another Biden-Trump election, another Trump-anybody election, something similar happens, Trump loses but claims that he won and tries to press every political button, every judicial button that he can to try to reverse the outcome.

Ultimately on January 6th, 2021, Congress refused to go along. How much more likely does it become, potentially, just by the fact that Mike Johnson is speaker in the house, if something like that happens at the beginning of 2025?

Jake Sherman: It's a good question, and this is the thing that a lot of people are talking about, which is, will Congress stand up to Donald Trump in 2025 or whenever the case is? I think that's an unknowable, but listen, there's no question that Mike Johnson and Congressional Republicans have been unflinchingly supportive of Donald Trump and unwilling to stand up to some of his impulses in the past. I can't imagine that's going to change in any way, shape, or form.

Brian Lehrer: Jake Sherman, co-founder of the DC politics news site, Punchbowl News and co-host of the Daily Punch podcast from Punchbowl News. He's also co-author of the book, The Hill to Die On: The Battle for Congress and the Future of Trump's America. Jake, we appreciate it a lot. Thanks.

Jake Sherman: Thank you very much.

 

 

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