Politics
‘The Interview’: Chuck Schumer on Democrats, Antisemitism and His Shutdown Retreat

There is this big debate about where the line is between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of Israel’s government. Where is that line for you? I’ve criticized the Israeli government, and I’ve criticized Netanyahu, as you know. Criticism of Israel and how it conducted the war is not antisemitic. But it begins to shade over, and it shades over in a bunch of different ways. When you use the word “Zionist” for Jew — you Zionist pig — you mean you Jewish pig. There was an incident on the New York subway and a bunch of people got on, protesters or whatever, and said, “All the Zionists, get off.” When the head of the Brooklyn Museum, who was Jewish, but the Brooklyn Museum had nothing to do with Israel or taking positions on Israel — her house is smeared in red paint. That’s antisemitism. And a lot of the slogans that people use either are or slide into antisemitism. The one that bothers me the most is genocide. Genocide is described as a country or some group tries to wipe out a whole race of people, a whole nationality of people. So if Israel was not provoked and just invaded Gaza and shot at random Palestinians, Gazans, that would be genocide. That’s not what happened. In fact, the opposite happened. And Hamas is much closer to genocidal than Israel. And I told Netanyahu, I said to him what I thought: You gotta reduce the number of casualties and make sure aid gets in and stuff like that. Here is the difficulty: Hamas has a different way of waging warfare, of using innocent Gazans as human shields. They put rockets in hospitals. They put their military supplies in schools. What is a country supposed to do when rockets are being fired from a school? So Israel’s been in a much more difficult position because of what Hamas did. And it’s not that Israel is above criticism. Of course it is not above criticism. But Hamas — I’m sorry, it matters so much to me. I feel so deeply about it. No one blames Hamas. I mean, the news reports every day for a while showed Palestinians being hurt and killed. I see the pictures of a little Palestinian boy without a leg, or one that sticks in my head, there’s a little girl, like 11, 12, crying because her parents were both killed. I ache for that. But on the news, they never mention that Hamas used the Palestinian people as human shields. And so when these protesters come and accuse Israel of genocide, I said, “What about Hamas?” They don’t even want to talk about Hamas.
One final thing. This is very important. Jewish people were subject, at least in my judgment, to the worst genocide ever. I put in the book, on the day they got Kyiv, the Nazis asked 33,000 Jews to line up by a trench, strip naked, and they shot them all dead. Every day Auschwitz killed 20,000 people. My family was killed from a place called Chortkiv in western Ukraine. And this was vicious and horrible. And it is vicious of the opponents to call this genocide. Criticize it? For sure. Say Israel went too far? For sure. And you know what it does? It increases antisemitism, because they’re making Israel and the Jewish people look like monsters, which they are not.
I will say, it’s a word that a U.N. special committee has used. Please. The U.N. has been anti-Israel, antisemitically against Israel. [Daniel Patrick] Moynihan was my idol. He became famous when in 1976 [it was 1975] they tried to pass a resolution, Zionism is racism. To say that the Jewish people should not have a state when every other people should have a state is antisemitism, the old double standard, ipso facto. And the international organizations, I have no faith in them being fair. These same international organizations, when horrible things go on in Darfur or China or wherever, they look the other way.
I’m curious how you think about how protests should be addressed, considering the context of what you just said. The Trump administration just announced it’s pulling $400 million in funding from Columbia University, giving the reason as “relentless violence, intimidation and antisemitic harassment.” I’m wondering what you make of that. Columbia did not do enough. I criticized them. And believe me, I believe in free speech, I believe in the right to protest, as you read in my book. I started my career protesting the Vietnam War. I say to some people, “If I were your age, I’d be protesting something or other.” So I get that, and I love it, and it’s about America. But when it shades over to violence and antisemitism, the colleges had to do something, and a lot of them didn’t do enough. They shrugged their shoulders, looked the other way. Columbia among them. So what did they do? They took away $400 million. I’m trying to find out what they took away. Are they taking away money from cancer research, or Alzheimer’s? What is the $400 million? It could be hurting all students. Students who go there who have nothing to do with the protest, students who might have protested peacefully, or Jewish students who were victims of some of those protests. So I think we have to see. My worry is that this $400 million was just done in typical Trump fashion: indiscriminately, without looking at its effect.
What do you make of what happened last weekend when ICE arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate who is Palestinian, an activist and a green-card holder, who was one of the few participants in last year’s campus protests to identify himself publicly. Apparently Trump has made good on his campaign pledge and is set to deport him because of his participation. I don’t know all the details yet. They’re trying to come out, and there’ll be a court case which will determine it. If he broke the law, he should be deported. If he didn’t break the law and just peacefully protested, he should not be deported. It’s plain and simple.

Politics
Trump Sends Hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador in Face of Judge’s Order

The Trump administration has sent hundreds of Venezuelans accused of being gang members to a prison in El Salvador, pushing the limits of U.S. immigration law by carrying out the deportations seemingly after a federal judge ordered that the flights not proceed.
While the precise timing of the deportations remained unclear, White House officials exulted that they had carried out the transfer to a notorious Central American prison. U.S. courts, however, have just begun to wrestle with the serious legal questions raised by a new executive order that Trump officials hope will help them carry out many more rapid-fire expulsions.
President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador posted a three-minute video on social media on Sunday of men in handcuffs being led off a plane during the night and marched into prison. The video also shows prison officials shaving the prisoners’ heads.
The Trump administration hopes that the unusual prisoner transfer deal — not a swap but an agreement for El Salvador to take suspected gang members — will be the beginning of a larger effort to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to rapidly arrest and deport those it identifies as members of Tren de Aragua without many of the legal processes common in immigration cases.
The Alien Enemies Act allows for summary deportations of people from countries at war with the United States. The law, best known for its role in the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, has been invoked three times in U.S. history — during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II — according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a law and policy organization. American officials familiar with the deal said that the United States would pay El Salvador about $6 million to house the prisoners.
On Saturday, Judge James E. Boasberg of Federal District Court in Washington issued a temporary restraining order blocking the government from deporting any immigrants under the law after President Trump issued an executive order invoking it.
In a hastily scheduled hearing sought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the judge said he did not believe federal law allowed the president’s action, and ordered that any flights that had departed with Venezuelan immigrants under Trump’s executive order return to the United States “however that’s accomplished — whether turning around the plane or not.”
“This is something you need to make sure is complied with immediately,” he said.
A lawyer representing the government, Drew Ensign, told the judge that he did not have many details to share, and that describing operational details would raise “national security issues.”
The precise timing of the flights to El Salvador is important because Judge Boasberg issued his order shortly before 7 p.m. in Washington, but video posted from El Salvador shows the deportees disembarking the plane at night. El Salvador is two time zones behind Washington, which raises questions about whether the Trump administration ignored an explicit court order.
Judge Boasberg’s order to turn flights around came after he told the government earlier on Saturday not to deport five Venezuelan men who were the initial focus of the legal fight. The Trump administration is appealing Judge Boasberg’s order.
On Sunday, Mr. Bukele posted a screenshot on social media about Judge Boasberg’s order and wrote, “Oopsie… Too late.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio later shared Mr. Bukele’s post from his personal account.
Attorney General Pam Bondi criticized the judge on Saturday night in a written statement that said that he had sided with “terrorists over the safety of Americans,” and that his order “disregards well-established authority regarding President Trump’s power, and it puts the public and law enforcement at risk.”
On Sunday, the government of Venezuela denounced the transfer, saying that it flew in the face of U.S. and international laws, adding that the attempt to apply the Alien Enemies Act “constitutes a crime against humanity.”
The statement compared the transfer to “the darkest episodes of human history,” including slavery and Nazi concentration camps. In particular, the government denounced what it called a threat to kidnap minors as young as 14 by labeling them as terrorists, claiming that the minors were “considered criminals simply for being Venezuelan.”
The government of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela has presented an obstacle to the Trump administration as it plans to step up deportations — and to target suspected Tren de Aragua members — because for years it has not regularly accepted deportation flights. In recent weeks, Mr. Maduro has gone back and forth on whether his government will accept flights of Venezuelans deported by the United States.
As a result, the Trump administration has sought alternative destinations for Venezuelans, including the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where it has sent migrants including accused gang members, though it has since removed them from the base.
In an unusual turn, El Salvador has presented Mr. Trump with another alternative.
In early February, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio was visiting El Salvador, Mr. Bukele offered to take in deportees of any nationality, including convicted criminals, and jail them in part of El Salvador’s prison system, for a fee.
Mr. Rubio, who announced Mr. Bukele’s offer at the time, said that the Salvadoran president had agreed to jail “any illegal alien in the United States who is a criminal of any nationality, whether from MS-13 or the Tren de Aragua.”
Officials from both the United States and El Salvador revealed that the deal with the Trump administration also included the transfer of suspected members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13 who were being held in the United States awaiting charges.
“We have sent 2 dangerous top MS-13 leaders plus 21 of its most wanted back to face justice in El Salvador,” Mr. Rubio posted on social media on Sunday. Mr. Rubio added that “over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua” had also been sent to El Salvador, which “has agreed to hold in their very good jails at a fair price.”
The two MS-13 men mentioned by Mr. Rubio were an accused top leader indicted in 2020 on Long Island on federal charges including terrorism and an accused gang member charged in Newark in February with entering the United States illegally.
The first, Cesar Humberto Lopez-Larios, was among 14 of the gang’s highest-ranking leaders who were charged on Long Island in 2020. He was arrested last year in Texas and has since been in U.S. custody awaiting trial.
The second, Cesar Eliseo Sorto-Amaya, was arrested in February on charges that he entered the United States illegally — for the fourth time since 2015. He was wanted on double aggravated homicide charges in El Salvador, where he had been sentenced in absentia to 50 years in prison. The U.S. charges against both men were dismissed on Wednesday, according to court records that were unsealed on Sunday.
The prosecutors in Mr. Lopez-Larios’s case offered the following reasoning in a letter to the judge for seeking the dismissal of the charges against him. “The United States has determined that sensitive and important foreign policy considerations outweigh the government’s interest in pursuing the prosecution of the defendant,” the letter said.
The two men’s transfers have raised concerns among some U.S. law enforcement officials, who fear that those individuals, once out of U.S. custody, could escape or issue orders that may endanger witnesses in both countries, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
Mr. Bukele came to power on promises to crack down on gang violence and MS-13. His success in restoring safety has won him broad support in El Salvador and around Latin America, but critics say that it has come at the cost of human rights.
By imposing a state of emergency, the Salvadoran leader has sidestepped due process and ordered sweeping arrests that have ensnared thousands of people without any affiliation to criminal groups, critics say. Under Mr. Bukele, the prison population has soared and abuses, including torture, have been documented in the system.
Mr. Bukele has promoted his iron-fisted approach by posting dramatic photographs from his country’s prisons that resemble those shared this weekend: They often feature scores of tattooed inmates with shaved heads held in handcuffs and forced into submissive poses.
Tim Balk contributed reporting.
Politics
Longtime Rep. Nita Lowey dead at 87

Former Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., has died at age 87, according to her family.
Lowey, who represented New York in the U.S. House of Representatives for 32 years and was the first woman to chair the House Appropriations Committee, died Saturday after a long battle with metastatic breast cancer, according to a report from the New York Post.
“Nita’s family was central to her life as she was to all of ours,” the longtime lawmaker’s family said in a statement. “We will miss her more than words can say and take great comfort in knowing that she lived a full and purposeful life.”
NITA LOWEY, LONGTIME DEMOCRATIC LAWMAKER AND HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS CHAIRWOMAN, TO RETIRE
Rep. Nita Lowey makes a few remarks at the All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development Launch at Ronald Reagan Building on Nov. 18, 2011, in Washington, D.C. (Paul Morigi/WireImage)
The New York lawmaker was born Nita Sue Menikoff in the Bronx in 1937, later graduating from Bronx High School of Science before going on to receive a degree from Mount Holyoke College in 1959, the Post report noted.
She married attorney Stephen Lowey in 1961, and was first elected to Congress in 1988 to represent New York’s 17th Congressional District.
A longtime ally of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Clinton family, Lowey became chair of the House Appropriations Committee in 2019. She frequently clashed with President Donald Trump during his first term in office in her time as chair, telling Lohud in 2019 that the president was an “embarrassment.”

Rep. Nita Lowey speaks during hearings on President Donald Trump’s first budget on Capitol Hill on March 28, 2017. (Zach Gibson/Getty Images)
DEMOCRATS LASH OUT AT SCHUMER FOR ‘BETRAYAL’ OF SIDING WITH TRUMP
“The president is an embarrassment and as a member of the Congress and as the leader of the Appropriations Committee, we have the responsibility to serve the people,” she said at the time.
Lowey announced her retirement that same year, with House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., telling the New York Post that the longtime lawmaker was a “principled, passionate and powerful public servant.”

Rep. Nita Lowey listens as Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., speaks during a news conference at the Capitol, Jan. 28, 2020. (Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg)
“Over the course of her historic career, Congresswoman Lowey courageously served her constituents and stood up for New Yorkers while shattering multiple glass ceilings along the way,” Jeffries said Sunday, adding that Lowey was a “mentor and friend.”
Lowey is survived by her husband, three children and eight grandchildren.
Politics
Column: There is nothing efficient about Musk and Trump's toxic lack of empathy

I don’t know how Democratic Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly got my phone number, but a text from him landed the other day with a thud.
“Elon Musk came after me again,” said the text. Sure, sure — I knew it was a ploy for cash, but I was intrigued.
Turns out the impetuous billionaire had gratuitously insulted Kelly after the senator had posted a long thread on X about his recent trip to Ukraine.
“What I saw proved to me we can’t give up on the Ukrainian people,” wrote Kelly. “Everyone wants this war to end, but any agreement has to protect Ukraine’s security and can’t be a giveaway to Putin.”
Musk’s reaction: “You are a traitor.”
Let that sink in, to quote Musk himself.
Kelly is an American patriot. He flew 39 combat missions as a U.S. Navy pilot during Operation Desert Storm. Later, as a NASA astronaut, he twice commanded the space shuttle.
Musk, by contrast, left South Africa at age 17 in part to avoid compulsory military service.
His puerile insult brought to mind the infamous remark then-presidential candidate Donald Trump made in 2016 about Republican Sen. John McCain, also of Arizona, a Navy pilot who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
“He’s a war hero ‘cause he was captured,” said Trump, who ducked the Vietnam draft by claiming he had bone spurs. “I like people who weren’t captured.”
I don’t know which billionaire is less suited to wield power in a democracy, Musk or Trump. Neither has a lick of empathy, an indispensable trait in a great leader.
“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy,” Musk told podcaster Joe Rogan last month. “So we’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on.”
Musk recently reposted a meme denigrating Americans who receive federal benefits as “the Parasite Class.” This from someone whose empire, including Tesla and Space X, were built with billions of dollars in government funding, i.e. your tax dollars.
Musk’s frosty attitude toward his fellow humans helps explain why he is able to sleep at night while denying lifesaving food and medicine to people in the many undeveloped countries that used to be helped by the U. S. Agency for International Development, the first of the programs he’s been trying to chain-saw out of existence.
Trump and Musk’s slash-and-burn approach to government, to the economy, to relationships with traditional allies, and the way they have reduced the White House to a Tesla dealership amply demonstrate their lack of concern for the American people. (Have you checked your 401(k) balance lately?)
But more important, their actions show they are not really interested in an efficient government, the putative reason Musk became, essentially, co-president.
It’s hard to keep track of all the lawsuits that have been filed accusing the pair of illegally slashing government agencies and programs. Their method is pure madness.
Take their plan to cut by half the workforce of the Internal Revenue Service. According to Washington Post contributor Natasha Sarin, a Yale Law School professor who served as deputy assistant secretary for economic policy in the Biden administration, IRS layoffs at the scale promised would “very conservatively, lead to a $400-billion increase in uncollected taxes over the next decade. It could easily mean more than $2 trillion in losses.”
On Thursday, federal judges in California and Maryland ruled that thousands of federal workers across 19 agencies had indeed been fired illegally and ordered their reinstatement. Thanks to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a name George Orwell would have been proud to dream up, the country now finds itself mired in a legal morass that could last years.
Anyway, the U.S. Constitution was never designed with efficiency in mind. The founders created a system of checks and balances specifically to prevent concentrating power in the hands of one person. Our supine Republican Congress, in fear of alienating Musk and Trump, has abdicated its role in this critical balance, handing over control of the purse strings to Trump and Musk.
“When you have an efficient government,” President Truman once said, “you have a dictatorship.”
In their fecklessness, Musk and Trump are perfect for each other. They are the political reincarnation of Tom and Daisy Buchanan, the tragically self-absorbed couple in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.”
“They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together,” wrote Fitzgerald, “and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
And oh, what a mess Trump and Musk have made.
The question now is whether Americans will stand up to this terrible twosome and wrench our democracy back from their grasping little hands.
Bluesky: @rabcarian.bsky.social. Threads: @rabcarian
-
News1 week ago
Gene Hackman Lost His Wife and Caregiver, and Spent 7 Days Alone
-
Politics1 week ago
Republicans demand Trump cut American legal association out of nominee process
-
Politics1 week ago
Agriculture secretary cancels $600K grant for study on menstrual cycles in transgender men
-
News1 week ago
States sue Trump administration over mass firings of federal employees
-
News1 week ago
Trump Seeks to Bar Student Loan Relief to Workers Aiding Migrants and Trans Kids
-
Politics1 week ago
Kristi Noem says 2 leakers accused of disclosing ICE operations ID'd: 'Put law enforcement lives in jeopardy'
-
News5 days ago
Grieving Covid Losses, Five Years Later
-
World5 days ago
Ukraine accepts 30-day ceasefire in US talks: What it means for Russia war