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.
new video loaded: Reflecting Pool Turns Green, Paint Peels After Renovation
transcript
transcript
Reflecting Pool Turns Green, Paint Peels After Renovation
Algae blooms have hit the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which underwent a $14.2 million repair project. Blue paint appeared to be chipping from the bottom.
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“The reflecting pool is greener than I have ever seen it before due to algae.” “I was expecting to see blue, but green is O.K.” “Honestly, I don’t think you can fight mother nature.”
By Julie Yoon, Jackeline Luna and Alisa Shodiyev Kaff
June 19, 2026
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House GOP Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain, R-Mich., rebuked a school board in Richmond, Michigan, after some of its members tried to remove a conservative colleague for missing meetings while on military deployment to the Middle East.
Ray Stier, who received an American flag and a copy of the Congressional Record from McClain on Thursday as a commendation of his work, had been on deployment, attending board meetings remotely, but eventually lost virtual access.
That’s when the board called for his removal, citing a “disservice” caused by his absence.
“One of the board members’ family was taking to social media and putting out misinformation about myself and my wife and things that were not factually accurate and then ultimately calling for my resignation and prompting others to reach out to the district to call for my recall,” Stier recounted.
PARENTS SAY THEY’RE RUNNING FOR LOCAL SCHOOL BOARDS TO FIGHT ‘POISONOUS’ CRITICAL RACE THEORY
House GOP Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain, R-Mich., left, pictured alongside Ray Stier, a school board member in Richmond, Michigan. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images; office of Lisa McClain)
The moment is just the most recent clash between Republicans and school boards over policies that, in their view, are gatekeeping schools against diversity of thought and accountability.
“I think education is extremely important and vital,” McClain told Fox News Digital.
“And educators and administrators need to teach children how to think, not what to think. It’s about time that administrators begin to get held accountable for their actions. Good actions and bad actions.”
McClain’s meeting with Stier comes on the heels of a congressional hearing last week where she grilled a superintendent from Virginia over student privacy policy, probing if those policies were being unevenly applied to favor transgender students.
VIRGINIA SCHOOL DISTRICT SLAPPED WITH COMPLAINT ALLEGING NEW CLAIMS IN VIRAL TRANS LOCKER ROOM FIGHT
Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., leaves a House Republican Conference meeting at the Capitol Hill Club on Feb. 28, 2023. (Tom Williams/ CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)
“The victims got a 10-day suspension and the biological female that did the filming got a one-day suspension,” McClain said, referring to an incident at Stone Bridge High School in Loudoun County where students had been reprimanded for filming in a locker room.
“How does that make sense?”
In Stier’s case, McClain questioned whether the board had targeted Stier on account of just his deployment overseas. Stierhad clashed with the board after learning that some of the district’s bathroom policies would have allowed fourth-grade students to use the same bathroom as transgender eighth-grade boys.
“Prior to him filling the seat, the seat was open for two months,” McClain observed. So that logical argument doesn’t exactly make sense to me; it doesn’t really hold a lot of water.”
MICHIGAN PARENT WANTS TRUMP TO ACT AFTER DAUGHTER SHARES LOCKER ROOM WITH TRANS-ATHLETE
House GOP Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain, R-Mich., left, pictured alongside Richmond, Michigan school board member Ray Stier right. (Office of Lisa McClain)
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For his own part, Stier believes his case will refocus attention on the importance of the school board and its membership.
“My goal is to continue being an advocate for the community. One of the good things that I think came out of this was that it got so much attention that some of the community members who were unaware of the dynamics that were not being brought to light,” Stier said.
California’s political watchdog commission on Thursday finalized a $31,500 fine against Gov. Gavin Newsom, alleging that the Democratic leader failed to report three dozen behested payments totaling $5.5 million mostly to support wildfire recovery by the deadline under state law.
The Political Reform Act requires elected officials to disclose payments of $5,000 or more that they solicit or direct others to give to a charitable, legislative or governmental purpose within 30 days.
The California Fair Political Practices Commission said 34 of the violations were for failing to report on time that Newsom and his staff directed outreach from companies and foundations that wanted to help after the Los Angeles wildfires to the California Fire Foundation. The nonprofit was started in 1987 by the California Professional Firefighters to support the families of fallen firefighters and communities impacted by fire.
The donations include $1 million from the Chuck Lorre Foundation and $500,000 apiece from Lockheed Martin, the Anthem Blue Cross Foundation and BlackRock, among others gifts.
The governor also failed in 2024 to report on time two behested payments, totaling $100,000 from the Schmidt Family Foundation and Schwab Charitable Funds to the Institute for Local Government, a nonprofit within the League of California Cities.
The commission said the governor reported all of the payments “prior to public discovery” or contact from its enforcement division, which it considered a mitigating factor. Newsom also signed the stipulation and agreed to the fine.
Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for Newsom’s office, said the issue involved late paperwork at a time when the governor’s staff was focused on emergency response and supporting survivors. She also underscored the fact that the reports were filed before he was contact by the FPPC.
Gallegos said the fine is unrelated to an alleged investigation into the governor and his wife by the Department of Justice, which Newsom announced this week.
Newsom alleged Monday that Trump is using the government as a political weapon to target him and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Newsom announced the investigation after he learned that the FBI and Internal Revenue Service asked his associates questions about nonprofits and businesses related to the couple.
The governor’s office characterized the investigation as a fishing expedition. The Trump administration declined to comment.
A source familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly, said two federal probes have been going on for about a year, and that they originated not from Washington, D.C., but from conversations between whistleblowers and federal prosecutors based in Sacramento. The probes are linked to Newsom’s former chief-of-staff, Dana Williamson, and Siebel Newsom’s taxes, the source said.
The FPPC violations mark the second time Newsom has reported payments late, which increased his penalty for the new infractions. The commission fined Newsom in 2024 for failing to timely report 18 payments totaling $14.4 million.
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