In her two terms in Congress, Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC) has risen to become the chair of the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism and vice ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, roles that have put her at the center of work over the past year responding to spiking antisemitism in the United States and the global fallout from the Oct. 7 attack.

Speaking to Jewish Insider in December as she prepared to cast some of her final votes in the House, Manning described this work as critical, especially working with the families of hostages being held in Gaza and “working to support the American Jewish community as it has been totally traumatized, not just by what happened in Israel, but by the explosion of antisemitism across the country and around the world.”

Manning said that the past decade has significantly changed the way American Jews perceive their place in American society.

“I think if you had asked most Jews 10 years ago [if] were we safe in America, they would have laughed,” Manning said. “They would have said, ‘Of course, we’re safe in America. Jews are woven into every facet of American life. And not only has America been good for the Jews, but the Jews have been good for America.’”

She said that has changed “little by little” since President-elect Donald Trump’s first election.

“We’ve seen the normalization of antisemitism, and it has become acceptable to say things about Jews, stereotypes, negative things about Jews that were unacceptable for the prior several decades,” Manning said. “And then, of course, with Oct. 7, we’ve seen the explosion of antisemitism.”

She said that the COVID-19 pandemic and great replacement theory, which ties immigration to a sinister (often Jewish-directed) plot to undermine the country, had helped to accelerate antisemitism on the right, while the Oct. 7 attack led to an “explosion of antisemitism on the left.”

Now, she said, Jews in the United States are “very concerned” about their safety and “uneasy about what the future is going to bring.”

She said that her conversations have led her to believe that the Jewish community needs to come together and work on building new strategies to combat antisemitism. Manning said she doesn’t know yet what those strategies should include, but that the Jewish community needs to speak with one voice.

“Right now, we’ve got all kinds of different groups working as hard as they can to address antisemitism in their own different ways,” Manning said. “I’ve had a variety of conversations with people who say, ‘Perhaps we need to be rowing in the same direction.’”

From her time in Congress, Manning said she’s “particularly proud” of the Countering Antisemitism Act, a sweeping bill to address various aspects of the way the federal government tackles the issue that she led in the House, even though it never came to a vote in either chamber.

“Hopefully it will get passed at some point, because it’s got really important components that will help our government combat antisemitism,” Manning said. “I’m very proud that we introduced that. I do regret that we weren’t able to get that to the House floor or to the Senate floor. It’s a shame, because it’s so widely supported.”

She highlighted the pressure that she and other lawmakers from the House and Senate antisemitism task forces had placed on the Biden administration — prior to Oct. 7 — to convene an interagency antisemitism task force and assemble a national strategy to combat antisemitism. The Countering Antisemitism Act, she explained, is designed to put that strategy’s recommendations into law.

Manning said that, in addition to the 34 Republicans and 33 Democrats already sponsoring the bill, 50 Democrats are on a waiting list for a Republican partner to become co-sponsors. She said she hopes that the bill will eventually be passed, and that she expects Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), who will be taking her place at the head of the antisemitism task force, will take the lead on it in the next Congress.

The far-reaching bill was placed under the jurisdiction of five separate committees, making it a difficult lift to bring it to the House floor. Manning told JI that Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the outgoing chair of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, of which Manning is a member, had outright refused to consider the bill because it adds a new position at the White House to be coordinator for antisemitism efforts.

“I was disappointed in that. She has been very effective in holding hearings to call out the antisemitism on the college campuses, but I think we need to do more than just bring in witnesses,” Manning said. “She has prided herself on how many college presidents have lost their jobs. I think that there’s more work to be done than just calling people in for hearings. I think having a focus in the government at the highest levels would help us address these issues more in a more effective way.”

A Foxx spokesperson responded that the bill fell primarily under the Judiciary Committee’s jurisdiction, including the provision adding a new position at the White House. The spokesperson emphasized that Foxx and the committee staff had worked with Manning on several occasions, including to incorporate legislation by Manning on studying Holocaust education into a bill, of which Manning was the lead Democratic sponsor, that passed the Education and Workforce Committee.

The spokesperson also argued that provisions of the Countering Antisemitism Act pertaining to the departments of Health and Human Services and Education were unnecessary, and noted that Foxx had cosponsored the Antisemitism Awareness Act and led a bill to bar funding for colleges and universities that boycott or divest from Israel. 

She added that she’s hopeful that the bipartisan task force will continue to be able to find ways to work across the aisle on antisemitism issues in the new administration and a Republican trifecta.

In spite of an unprecedented number of lawmakers voting in the past year in the House and Senate against U.S. aid to Israel, Manning insisted that support for Israel remains strong among House Democrats.

“There is strong support on the Foreign Affairs Committee,” Manning said. “There is strong support among so many of the members that I work with.”

She suggested that the fall of the Assad regime in Syria may lead some colleagues to “reassess the value of what Israel has been doing.”

“They degraded Iran’s military ability and they did so in a manner that was so effective that I think that was one of the reasons that the rebels in Syria reengaged and were so successful — because Iran was no longer there to prop up Assad,” Manning said. “Hezbollah wasn’t there to prop up Assad.”

At the same time, she acknowledged the ongoing suffering in Gaza — which she blamed on Hamas’ refusal to surrender and return the hostages — and said that the war in Gaza must be resolved.

She also highlighted President Joe Biden’s support for Israel in the wake of Oct. 7, including visiting Israel in the days after the attack, dispatching U.S. carrier groups to the region and deploying U.S. personnel to shoot down drones and rockets headed toward Israel, for the first time ever.

She added, though, that she didn’t agree with all of Biden’s decisions, including withholding some weapons shipments and pressuring Israel not to invade Rafah, an operation she said had ultimately proved effective.

Manning said she’s also been proud of the work she’s been able to do for her district; the opportunity to meet and learn about more people in the district in the Greensboro, N.C. area; the staff she’s worked with and experience she’s gained on the Hill; the friends she’s made on both sides of the aisle; her work on contraception rights, reproductive rights and other related issues; and her work on other education and workforce issues.

One other issue she said she wishes could be resolved is gerrymandering, which forced her out of her seat in Congress. The North Carolina Legislature redrew the state’s maps to carve up Manning’s and other North Carolina Democrats’ congressional districts and make them favor Republicans to a prohibitive degree, and Manning ultimately declined to run again, knowing it would likely be a losing proposition.

“It’s terribly unfair to the people of Guilford County. It’s unfair to the people of North Carolina that their votes don’t count and their voices won’t be heard,” Manning said, adding that it’s “particularly noteworthy” that the state’s congressional delegation will shift dramatically to the right even as Democrats won several statewide positions and broke the GOP supermajority in the state Legislature.

“It’s undemocratic what they have done,” Manning said. “If I had lost my job because I wasn’t doing it well, because I wasn’t an effective member of Congress, shame on me. But that’s not why I lost my job. I lost my job because Republicans were greedy for power.”

Democrats had held high hopes that they might be able to flip North Carolina at the presidential level in the 2024 presidential election, but ended up losing the state and every other key swing state in November. 

Manning said there’s a “longer discussion” to be had about why Democrats lost, but said that the party needs to carefully examine what did and did not work for them in the election, and why their work on economic issues did not reach or connect with voters.

“But I also think that we need to make sure that we’re appealing to the broadest possible number of voters,” Manning said. “And I don’t think our message always addresses the needs of a real broad number of voters.”

Manning said she doesn’t know yet what’s next for her after her term in Congress ends, other than helping her daughter welcome a new baby and taking a vacation. She said she’ll then take time to consider “how I can have the most impact going forward on the issues that I‘ve been working on in Congress and that I continue to care about so deeply.”