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

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‘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.

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Politics

White House Attacks Amazon Over Idea of Showing Tariffs’ Cost

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White House Attacks Amazon Over Idea of Showing Tariffs’ Cost

There’s a fresh spat brewing between the White House and Amazon.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, on Tuesday accused the online retail giant of being “hostile and political,” citing a report — disputed by Amazon — from Punchbowl News saying that the company would start displaying the exact cost of tariff-related price increases alongside its products.

Displaying the import fees would have made clear to American consumers that they are shouldering the cost of President Trump’s tariff policies rather than China, as he and his top officials have often claimed would be the case.

An Amazon spokesman said the company had considered a similar idea on part of its site, Amazon Haul, which competes with Temu, a Chinese retailer. Temu primarily ships directly to consumers and has begun displaying “import charges” to reflect the end of a customs loophole that had exempted low-priced items from tariffs.

“Teams discuss ideas all the time,” the spokesman, Ty Rogers, said in a statement. He said it was never under consideration for the main Amazon site, adding: “This was never approved and is not going to happen.”

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Standing beside Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a briefing at the White House on Tuesday morning, Ms. Leavitt tore into the retailer. She said that she had just been on the phone with the president about the report, and she asked why Amazon hadn’t done such a thing when prices increased during the Biden administration because of inflation.

Ms. Leavitt said it was “not a surprise” coming from Amazon, as she held up a copy of a 2021 article from Reuters with the headline, “Amazon partnered with China propaganda arm.”

Mr. Trump’s aggressive tariffs on Chinese goods have touched off an escalating trade war, even as his administration has backed off its broader global levies amid what it said were negotiations with dozens of nations on new trade deals.

Ms. Leavitt’s attack on Amazon was all the more noteworthy because the company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, has lately gone to great lengths to curry favor with this White House. Amazon donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural fund, securing seats for Mr. Bezos and his bride-to-be in the Capitol Rotunda for the inauguration.

In December, Mr. Bezos explained his Trump-ward turn while speaking at The New York Times DealBook conference. “What I’ve seen so far is he is calmer than he was the first time,” Mr. Bezos said of Mr. Trump, “more confident, more settled.”

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He added, “I’m very hopeful. He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation.”

Ms. Leavitt was asked whether the White House still considered Mr. Bezos to be a Trump supporter, given the latest report.

“Look, I will not speak to the president’s relationships with Jeff Bezos,” Ms. Leavitt said, “but I will tell you that this is certainly a hostile and political action by Amazon.”

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Eric Adams unfazed by ruling against his plan to combat migrant crime: ‘All part of the process’

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Eric Adams unfazed by ruling against his plan to combat migrant crime: ‘All part of the process’

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, one of the only major Democrats in the nation who has been willing to cooperate with the Trump administration’s crackdown on migrant crime, appears unfazed by the latest ruling against his efforts to allow ICE agents into Rikers Island detention facilities.

When asked by Fox News Digital what his response to this ruling was, Adams simply laughed and said it is “all part of the process.”

Adams, who is running for re-election as an Independent, is facing heavy criticism from Democrats across the country for cooperating with the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. In one of the latest developments, he has been sued by the Democrat-controlled New York City Council over an executive order issued by his office to allow ICE agents to access Rikers Island Prison to conduct immigration checks and interviews.

In the suit, the City Council accuses Adams of engaging in an illegal “quid pro quo” with the Trump administration and prioritizing his own political goals over the city’s “prized sanctuary laws.”

TRUMP’S BORDER CZAR TELLS ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS THEY ‘CANNOT HIDE FROM ICE’ AMID MASS DEPORTATION AGENDA

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New York City Mayor Eric Adams, one of the only major Democrats in the nation who has been willing to cooperate with the Trump administration’s crackdown on migrant crime, appears unfazed by the latest ruling against his efforts to allow ICE agents into Rikers Island Prison. (Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The suit called the executive order “the poisoned fruit of Mayor Adams’s deal with the Trump Administration.”

Last week, New York Judge Mary Rosado ruled to bar the city from “taking any steps toward negotiating, signing, or implementing any Memorandum of Understanding with the federal government” for the time being.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE IMMIGRATION COVERAGE

ICE previously had a presence at Rikers, but the agency was banned from the jail complex in 2014 under New York City’s sanctuary laws limiting cooperation with immigration enforcement.

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This remained the case until this month when New York City First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro signed an executive order allowing federal immigration authorities to operate an office on Rikers Island.

DEMOCRAT CITY COUNCIL SUES MAYOR FOR ALLOWING ICE INTO MAJOR AMERICAN PRISON

Rikers Island seen from air

The Rikers Island jail complex stands with the Manhattan skyline in the background on June 20, 2014 in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

The order states that the safety of New Yorkers has been jeopardized by violent transnational gangs like MS-13 and Tren de Aragua – gangs designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the Trump administration – and there is a critical need for federal law enforcement to share “real-time” intelligence with the city’s corrections department and police.

The order allows federal law enforcement agencies to share intelligence with the corrections department and the NYPD about criminal gang activity among individuals both inside and outside of custody.

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It does not give ICE permission to carry out civil immigration enforcement and arrest people simply for being undocumented.

The order was issued the week after federal charges against Adams were dismissed. He had been accused of using his position as mayor to receive luxury travel and illegal campaign contributions from Turkish foreign nationals.

Adams insisted the case was politically motivated and was pursued in retaliation for his criticism of President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.

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Edison told the government that Calderon was an ‘executive.’ Now it claims she wasn’t. 

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Edison told the government that Calderon was an ‘executive.’ Now it claims she wasn’t. 

Southern California Edison has repeatedly insisted that its former government affairs manager, state Assemblywoman Lisa Calderon (D-Whittier), was never an executive with the company.

But that’s not what Edison told the federal government.

Calderon is sponsoring legislation favored by Edison that would slash the credits that many homeowners receive for generating electricity with rooftop solar panels.

Edison has objected to The Times’ identifying Calderon as a former executive for the utility, claiming on its website that the news organization is “choosing sensationalism over facts.”

But in its official reports to the Federal Election Commission, the political action committee for Edison International — the utility’s parent company — listed Calderon’s occupation as an executive in more than a dozen filings made before she left the company in 2020 to run for office.

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An example of the reports that Edison International’s political action committee filed with the Federal Election Commission.

All the filings were signed by the PAC’s treasurer saying that “to the best of my knowledge and belief” the information “is true, correct and complete.”

Asked to explain the contradiction, Edison spokeswoman Kathleen Dunleavy said that the company was referring in its filings with the commission to a broad class of individuals that met requirements for executive as defined by the commission, but not by Edison itself.

Edison uses the term to “designate someone in a high position of authority,” she said, such as “an employee director, vice president or similar title.” Because Edison didn’t consider Calderon an executive, she said, others shouldn’t either.

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Calderon told The Times earlier that she was a senior advisor of government affairs at Edison International. In other biographies, she is described as government affairs director. On Monday, she said her official title was government affairs manager.

For years, she managed the parent company’s political action committee.

In a statement, Calderon said she had not filled out the political action committee’s reports. Instead they were prepared and filed by the company’s law firm, she said.

“Due to her professional responsibilities, she was categorized as an executive for FEC filing purposes,” her office said. “That does not mean that she was an executive at Edison.”

For years, Lisa Calderon managed Edison International's Political Action Committee

For years, Lisa Calderon managed Edison International’s Political Action Committee

(EIPAC — 2019 Annual Report)

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Calderon’s AB 942 would sharply reduce the financial credits that the owners of rooftop panels receive when they send unused power to the grid.

The bill applies to those who installed the panels before April 15, 2023. It would limit the current program’s benefits to 10 years — half of the 20-year period that the state had told the rooftop owners they would receive. The bill also would cancel the solar contracts if the homes were sold. It wouldn’t apply to customers served by municipal electric utilities.

Edison and the state’s other big for-profit utilities have long fought to reduce the energy credits aimed at getting Californians to invest in rooftop solar panels. The popularity of the systems has cut into electricity sales.

Calderon, Edison and other supporters of the bill point to an analysis by the California Public Utility Commission’s Public Advocates Office that found the energy credits given to the rooftop owners were increasing the electric bills of those who don’t have solar panels.

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The bill’s first hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.

Edison has been under scrutiny since Jan. 7, when videos captured the devastating Eaton wildfire igniting under one of its transmission towers. The wildfire killed 18 people and destroyed thousands of homes, businesses and other structures in Altadena.

Edison says it is cooperating with investigators working to determine the cause of the inferno.

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