Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), the new co-chair of the House Bipartisan Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, said that, though he’s made headlines as a critic of President Donald Trump, he wants to find ways to work with Trump and his GOP colleagues on an issue he believes is of shared concern.

But he also already sees areas of concern where he says the administration’s executive actions are jeopardizing the fight against antisemitism.

Speaking to Jewish Insider in his Capitol Hill office last week, Goldman also laid out his vision and goals for the task force, including better engagement with GOP members, rebuilding alliances with other groups facing hate and a range of legislation he hopes to bring to fruition.

The New York congressman said he’s always been concerned about antisemitism, and that the rise in antisemitism since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel “was really alarming to me and really scary.” He said that, as a Jewish lawmaker with grandparents who escaped the pogroms and who represents a New York City district with a sizable Jewish population, he wanted to use his platform and take a leadership role to “do everything I could to address and combat the issue.”

“It was something that is really near and dear to my heart but also very important for the area that I represent,” Goldman said.

One key goal, he said, will be leaning into the task force’s bipartisan work and increasing involvement from Republican members, as well as pushing back against the use of antisemitism as a partisan tool or political weapon.

“Bipartisan opposition to antisemitism is needed to actually address the problems which exist on both extremes,” Goldman said, “and so that is going to be a priority of ours.”

Goldman got his start in politics as a Democratic attorney in President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial and opposition to Trump has been a major element of his political career. But Goldman said that he wants to set aside partisanship in this role, and that he hopes his GOP colleagues and the Trump administration will do the same.

“I’ve had many conversations with Republican colleagues and there’s generally an understanding that we will disagree on most things, but when we agree, we should try to work in a bipartisan way,” Goldman said, highlighting bipartisan legislation he’s worked on in other areas.

“I’m eager to work with President Trump on this issue [antisemitism], where we are very much aligned,” Goldman continued. “And I think that the president understands that we’re not going to agree on many things, but he would also, I think, support that view, that where we can, we should.”

Yet, a day later, Goldman warned that Trump was undermining the fight against antisemitism, in a statement condemning layoffs at the Department of Education that allegedly included the Office for Civil Rights.

The previous task force chair, Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC), told JI in her final interview before leaving the House last year that she had confidence in his leadership, and that he’d be able to work with both Democrats and Republicans in the role.

“He has many friends on both sides of the aisle,” Manning said. “We have a broad spectrum of Democrats, even among the Jewish members … I have seen Dan talk with people all across the spectrum and he also cares passionately about this issue.”

She said Goldman had attended every task force meeting in the previous Congress — a tall order — and shown “a real passion for this issue” and “a great ability to construct effective arguments,” as well as a unique perspective on the challenges facing the Jewish community, having been in Israel on Oct. 7.

He said he and his Republican counterparts have discussed seeking a briefing for the House task force from Leo Terell, the Department of Justice official heading the administration’s multiagency task force on antisemitism.

He said he’s been “encouraged by a lot of the proactivity on antisemitism” that the administration has shown, including the administration’s decision to launch a task force. 

But he said he’s also concerned that the administration will “overreach and will, with the goal of addressing antisemitism, ultimately cause collateral consequences that could be very damaging for all sorts of parts of our country,” such as undermining the “overall quality of education” at U.S. colleges and universities.

“I very much worry that the government’s effort to combat antisemitism is going to be a collateral consequence of this slash-and-burn effort,” Goldman said, explaining that the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and its work against antisemitism illustrates the importance of federal government agencies.

“We have to be careful about making sure that we are properly targeting the issue and not undermining other aspects of our country that we take such great pride in,” Goldman said.

Asked about the potential impacts of Trump’s push to eliminate the Department of Education entirely, Goldman called the “arbitrary,” “slash-and-burn efforts” that the administration has been pursuing “really counterproductive.”

“I very much worry that the government’s effort to combat antisemitism is going to be a collateral consequence of this slash-and-burn effort,” Goldman continued, explaining that the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and its work against antisemitism illustrates the importance of federal government agencies.

His subsequent statement on the Department of Education layoffs suggested he believed those fears were already coming to pass.

In his interview, Goldman committed to calling out antisemitism on the Democratic side of the aisle, as his predecessors Manning and former Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) did as chairs of the task force.

“In order to work in a bipartisan way, confronting antisemitism needs to be nonpartisan,” Goldman said. “I intend to condemn antisemitism wherever it appears, and what I’m hopeful to achieve through this task force is finding partners in the Republican Party who are also willing to do that.”

The second-term congressman said he also wants to work through the group to build and rebuild relationships with other communities that face discrimination, so that they can fight antisemitism and other forms of hate together. He said that hate and discrimination, focused on the Jewish community now, will not stay limited to any one group, and ultimately pose a threat to democracy. 

He said he’s been “deflated by what I would call the abandonment of our old alliances that have really been instrumental in the Civil Rights Movement and every civil rights issue in the last 75 years.”

“In our time of need, which arose after a horrific event, a genocidal event against Jews, to have so many of those allies either just be quiet or even in some ways support and espouse antisemitism was incredibly disappointing,” Goldman said. 

“It’s important to make it clear that this is very specific, right now, to antisemitism and that when it happens, we should call it out, and we don’t need to also call out other instances of discrimination in the past,” Goldman said. “We also have to recognize that it is a form of hate that should be condemned by everyone, and especially by those who purport to hold progressive values.”

He argued that the Jewish community needs allies from other communities to stand with it in order to effectively combat antisemitism: “I don’t believe that Jews can address this problem on our own. I don’t think we are a big enough group to be able to do it.”

But working with other groups to fight hate together doesn’t mean, Goldman said, engaging in “whatabout-ism” when talking about antisemitism, reflexively condemning other forms of hate in response to incidents of antisemitism.

“It’s important to make it clear that this is very specific, right now, to antisemitism and that when it happens, we should call it out, and we don’t need to also call out other instances of discrimination in the past,” Goldman said. “We also have to recognize that it is a form of hate that should be condemned by everyone, and especially by those who purport to hold progressive values.”

The task force is working on several pieces of legislation to combat antisemitism, Goldman told JI, including increasing both funding for and the powers of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, such as granting it subpoena power, creating new mechanisms to force compliance with civil rights law and other measures to “make sure that universities are taking these investigations more seriously.”

He said that may come in the form of an updated version of the Showing Up for Students Act, a bill he led in the last Congress. Goldman said he’s aiming to attract Republican support for the bill this time, which it did not have previously.

Other legislation may require more funding transparency from universities, nonprofits and foreign entities. 

He said the task force will also work with the White House and the new Department of Justice-led task force to push for Trump to appoint a dedicated antisemitism coordinator.

Goldman urged the administration to work with him and the task force to implement legislation that can stand the test of time and will not be subject to the “whipsaw” of changing presidential administrations.

A major project from Manning and the task force in the previous Congress was the Countering Antisemitism Act, a wide-ranging bill touching on a series of different areas, including requiring the White House to appoint a dedicated antisemitism coordinator. The bill ultimately ran up against opposition from key leaders on both sides of the aisle and in both chambers.

The task force will work through that bill to try to “streamline” it and find specific provisions within it that could pass as standalone legislation, Goldman said.

The New Yorker said the task force will also work with foreign governments to both understand international manifestations of antisemitism as well as learn from best practices in other countries, to potentially guide legislation.

Goldman also said he sees education as an important tool, saying that “a significant problem” in the U.S. is “a lack of understanding and knowledge about the Holocaust and a real lack of understanding as to what antisemitism is.”

“I don’t think our issue right now is figuring out where the line is of antisemitism. I don’t think anyone can have any doubt that much of what we are seeing on university campuses, in the medical field, in publishing, in so many aspects of American society, is antisemitism,” Goldman said. “I don’t want the Jewish community to get lost in this debate about the definition of antisemitism when we all agree that there is rampant antisemitism going on right now under any definition.”

Many college students, he said, may not understand that harassing American Jews over the Israeli government’s policies is “antisemitic under any definition.” 

His efforts, he continued, will focus on educating both colleagues and the general public on the history of antisemitism and giving “some context for why those who seem to espouse it today based on an oppressed/oppressor analogy are entirely missing the context that antisemitism exists in.”

On the issue of defining antisemitism, Goldman said that he supports the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism as a helpful tool, and rejects the notion that it silences all criticism of Israel. But he said he doesn’t believe that a specific definition of antisemitism is the most important issue for the Jewish community in this moment.

“I don’t think our issue right now is figuring out where the line is of antisemitism. I don’t think anyone can have any doubt that much of what we are seeing on university campuses, in the medical field, in publishing, in so many aspects of American society, is antisemitism,” Goldman said. “I don’t want the Jewish community to get lost in this debate about the definition of antisemitism when we all agree that there is rampant antisemitism going on right now under any definition.”