Facing a heated primary against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) accused his right-wing challenger on Thursday of associating with antisemitic and anti-Israel voices within the MAGA movement. 

Cornyn told Jewish Insider in a wide-ranging interview that Texas Republican voters should view Paxton’s associations with figures such as former Trump advisor Steve Bannon as “alarming” — while urging Republicans to call out antisemitic and anti-Israel voices within the party, along the lines of his outspoken Texas GOP colleague Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

“There’s this interesting, and troubling, tendency of some folks who claim the MAGA mantle to associate with antisemites like Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens and Steve Bannon. I know Ken Paxton regularly goes on Bannon’s ‘War Room’ podcast, and it’s something that should be alarming to Texas voters. People like that I don’t think are what I would call conservatives,” Cornyn said. 

“Once they “get their foot in the door, they have a way of corrupting the whole party and the whole movement,” he continued. “I just think allowing somebody like Ken Paxton inside the tent will end up being the destruction of the Republican Party.”

Paxton has been a guest on Bannon’s “War Room” podcast on numerous occasions in recent years, even as Bannon has made a number of controversial comments, most notably labeling popular Jewish conservative podcast host Ben Shapiro as a “cancer” on the party after he spoke out against Tucker Carlson and Owens’ antisemitism at a Turning Point USA conference last year.

Bannon has also ramped up attacks on Israel, calling the Jewish state a “protectorate” of the United States — while speaking out against President Donald Trump’s decision last year to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. 

A spokesperson for Paxton defended the Texas attorney general’s record on Israel and fighting antisemitism in a statement to JI. 

“AG Paxton has been a fierce friend of Israel,” the spokesperson said. “After spending $70 million and still being double digits behind in the polls, Sen. Cornyn has nothing else left but to throw random attacks at the wall and see if they stick. AG Paxton has a STRONG and unquestionable record standing against antisemitism.”

Cornyn is facing a tough reelection battle against Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX), both of whom are running to his right in next month’s Republican primary.

The senator, a fixture in Texas politics for nearly four decades who served at the top levels of Senate leadership, argued that his primary contest would help determine what it means to be an electable Republican at a time when the party’s principles and values are being debated internally. 

“A lot of it [the GOP primary election] is going to boil down to a question of character. I think character still matters and the attorney general doesn’t believe it matters at all,” Cornyn said. “I just can’t in good conscience turn over this job representing 32 million people and a state that I love and a party that I helped build over my career, I can’t turn it over to a corrupt and unprincipled individual like the attorney general.”

Cornyn warned that the GOP is at risk of being overrun by extremists if prominent conservatives continue to align themselves with fringe figures who espouse antisemitic views, drawing a comparison to his assessment of the current ideological trajectory of the Democratic Party. 

“It starts out with the old saying: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. A lot of these folks were opposed to a lot of the worst excesses of the Democratic Party and the leftists. They began to corrode that movement with things like antisemitism and graft and greed. I think that’s how credibility of the opposition was eroded, by failing to call out people like that,” Cornyn said. 

“To maintain the integrity of conservatives, that’s why it’s so important to call out and to cut out some of these cancers that I think ultimately would result in the failure of the conservative movement,” he continued. “Because people could point to the corruption that was allowed to develop and thus undermine the credibility and integrity of the whole movement.”

Cornyn praised Cruz for “being one of the first to stand up and call out some of the fringe characters,” and criticized Republicans who associate themselves with far-right figures. 

“I’ve tried to do my part, initially through an editorial in the Dallas Morning News. I know this is a cancer, because antisemitism is just another way of dehumanizing people, and then using that behavior to justify in some people’s minds acts of violence,” the GOP senator said. “Obviously, the history of the Jewish people, dating back to the Holocaust, has been one of opponents trying to dehumanize them and make them seem to be something less than equal in terms of their dignity and their right to exist.”

Asked whether Trump would back him before the March primary, Cornyn told JI that he did not expect an endorsement, adding that he was dealing with “a lot of misinformation and lies.”

“I’ve been supportive of the president and his policies. Unfortunately, you always have to contend with a lot of misinformation and lies in modern elections,” Cornyn explained. “He [Trump] said he considers all three of us [GOP candidates] to be friends. If your base is divided among three people, choosing one out of those three people and disappointing the supporters of the other two, I can understand [that being] not something he would want to necessarily embrace unless he felt like it’s worth the cost.”

Cornyn argued that he would be the strongest general election candidate between himself, Paxton and Hunt, whereas Paxton would “ultimately provide the Democrats the best opportunity they’ve had since 1994 to turn Texas blue.”

“President Trump desperately wants to maintain the majority in the House, and we’ve got five new congressional seats in Texas,” he said. “If I’m the nominee, I will provide some help to those downballot races since I’ll be at the top of the ballot. I won by 10 [points] in 2020. If Paxton is the nominee, he’ll either lose or win by the skin of his teeth.”

Asked about Texas state Rep. James Talarico and Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), the Democrats in the race, Cornyn suggested he would enjoy running against either in a general election.

“They should be running for Senate in California because they are totally out of step with where I think Texans are,” he said. 

Cornyn added that he would not underestimate Crockett.

“I wouldn’t count out Jasmine. Jasmine is smart, but I think she’s not running as good a campaign as Talarico,” Cornyn said. “Talarico is raising a lot of money, and he definitely has a better organization than Jasmine does.”

A senior Heritage Foundation staffer has been hired by Advancing American Freedom, joining more than 20 other former Heritage employees who have departed the conservative think tank for AAF over criticism of President Kevin Roberts’ refusal to disavow Tucker Carlson for platforming neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes and Roberts’ handling of the broader fallout.

Andrew Hale, who joined Heritage in 2023, served as the Jay Van Andel senior policy analyst in trade policy at the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies. He began at AAF, former Vice President Mike Pence’s policy shop, on Tuesday as a fellow specializing in economics, trade policy and international relations. Prior to his time at Heritage, Hale, a dual U.S. and U.K. citizen, worked for both nations’ governments. 

“I can roll with policy changes, but what I can’t roll with is a tolerance or an overlooking of antisemitism or any form of bigotry,” Hale told Jewish Insider in an interview. “I’ve worked for Democrats, Republicans, Labour and Conservative in the U.K., on both sides of the Atlantic. I can roll with policy changes. This is not about that. For me, I feel obligated because I have the freedom to do so and the means to do so. I’m calling out a problem that exists at Heritage and exists in the conservative movement, and we need to exorcize it in a way that the Left has not done well.”

“As someone who used to work for the late holocaust [sic] survivor and human rights advocate Congressman Tom Lantos, I have zero tolerance for any form of bigotry, and I believe most of my fellow Americans feel the same,” he added in a subsequent written statement. “As a student of history, I believe antisemitism has recently been normalized in some quarters on the right and we are right back in the 1930s – and everyone should be aware of where that led.”

Hale cited Roberts’ unwillingness to take down a video posted to Heritage’s social media accounts in late October lashing out at Carlson’s critics, as well as what Hale described as retaliation against those who spoke out against antisemitism at an all-staff meeting in November amid controversy over the video, as reasons for his departure from the think tank.

At the staff meeting, Hale said, “I bit my tongue and I watched others stand up and challenge, and I witnessed those people suffer dearly for that.”

“It was just like they were persona non grata after that,” he added, “And then we had people go around the building saying afterwards that any sort of dissent of any kind will not be tolerated. Those people suffered retaliation. Then we were all threatened and warned never to do that.”

“Afterwards, we were warned not to do that. And if we had a problem and there was a disagreement, we should leave,” he continued. “That offending video that caused all this a couple months ago is still up, and the offending individual hasn’t taken it down. … I just don’t know how that video remains up when it has caused so much damage.”

Hale says he believes the organization “went absolutely off the rails very quickly” following the death of Heritage founder Edwin Feulner last July. He cited the elevation of Ryan Neuhaus to the role of chief of staff, a role Neuhaus has since stepped aside from as a result of the controversy surrounding Roberts’ original video defending Carlson, for which Neuhaus wrote the script. Hale also pointed to Mario Enzler’s appointment as a senior adviser to the president and chief advancement officer despite the fact that Enzler resigned as dean of the business school at the University of St. Thomas, in Houston, Texas, in 2022, amid allegations he had faked several degrees; and Scott Yenor’s appointment as director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies despite his well-documented antifeminist record.

Hale noted that he put forward numerous candidates for roles throughout the organization who were rejected because “they didn’t pass vetting, but Mario Enzler passed freaking vetting. As did Scott Yenor. How is that defensible?”

“How did they [Neuhaus, Enzler and Yenor] pass vetting?” he asked. “Who’s allowing this to get through the system? Is it being pushed through? Is there patronage? Is there unfair influence? These are questions that need to be asked.”

He also said that, as a Christian himself, he took issue with the way young Heritage staffers quoted scripture in policy meetings without backing up their proposed arguments otherwise. 

“I’m deeply concerned when we have someone very young, I’m talking about people sometimes in their early 20s, pushing policy and being just like the woke left or woke right, where basically, if you don’t agree with them, you’re evil and they’ll try to cancel you,” Hale told JI. “Someone walking into meetings, be it policy meetings or staff meetings, and quoting scripture at people in a very hostile way, like almost weaponizing scripture.”

“To come into a room in a very mean spirited fashion, yelling Bible verses, I think that’s weaponizing faith and holy scriptures in a sacred text in a very unhealthy way and an offensive way,” he added. “It’s not conducive to interfaith dialog and harmony.” 

Hale argued that there was a difference between how Feulner and Roberts allowed their respective faiths to influence their roles leading Heritage.

“I never knew what Ed Feulner’s religion was. I discovered what it was when he had his funeral at a Roman Catholic Church. I’m also a practicing Christian. I’m Anglican, and my faith is very important to me, but I don’t wear it on my sleeve,” Hale said. “When Ed Feulner was there, he really was about conservatism and he was very philosophical. I know his faith did inform his policies and how he conducted himself, but I find that when there are problems at Heritage and some other organizations, they’re glossed over by simply people quoting a Bible verse or talking about how God told them to do this.”

Hale said he wasn’t concerned about facing career or political repercussions for leaving Heritage for an organization led by Pence, instead asserting that his former employer had lost its influence in D.C. policy circles. 

Asked why he chose to join AAF specifically, Hale said, “They seem to have a much more secure footing. I was very clear when I talked to them that I had no tolerance for this sort of bigotry and they assured me that they didn’t either. I just feel that the atmosphere was just not toxic at all, it was actually all goodness and light, so I’m happy to land there. It’s a great team of people. The fact of the matter is that so many good people whom I knew and worked well with at the Heritage Foundation had left.”

Richard Stern, a vice president at AAF who left Heritage late last month, said in a statement that he was “overjoyed that we were able to persuade Andrew Hale to join our team. He is literally a physical embodiment of the transatlantic relationship with vast economic and foreign policy service in government and business sectors. What is the Heritage Foundation’s loss will now be AAF and the Conservative movement’s gain.”

AAF, founded by Pence in 2021 to advocate for classical conservative principles as President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement cemented its hold on parts of the Republican Party, has hired more than 20 people from Heritage since the controversy began with Roberts’ Oct. 30 video. AAF President Tim Chapman told JI in late December that he expects to continue poaching unhappy Heritage staffers, and revealed at the time that the think tank had nearly completed a $15 million fundraising campaign that they began the month before.

Reached for comment, a Heritage spokesperson told JI,““Heritage is proud to be a leader in the fight against antisemitism and has been for years. Under Dr. Roberts’ leadership, our organization has led more campaigns not just to fight, but to defeat antisemitism than at any other time in Heritage’s history. We have built a world-class team dedicated to our unchanged mission and our leadership is strong and decisive. We are committed to delivering, not for yesterday’s fights, but for tomorrow’s victories. We are united, disciplined, and ready. Onward and upward.”

When Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts posted a controversial video in October defending Tucker Carlson and his interview with neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes, Ben Shapiro quickly became one of the most prominent conservative voices criticizing the venerable conservative think tank.

Shapiro furthered that criticism in a fiery speech on Wednesday at the Heritage Foundation’s Washington headquarters, where he called on the institution to draw lines against Carlson and ensure that the right-wing podcaster is not considered to be part of the conservative movement. 

“I want to begin by acknowledging the elephant in the room. The conservative movement is in flux. It’s in flux because of the systemic failure by conservative leaders to do what any good leaders must do: define and maintain the foundations of that movement,” said Shapiro, who had previously called out Heritage in a November episode of his podcast. “This is our job.”

Shapiro, who has supported President Donald Trump’s efforts to cut down on immigration, used immigration enforcement as an analogy for how the conservative movement should define the acceptable boundaries of debate.

“No country can exist without borders and no conservative movement can exist without principles it will defend against those who degrade them, even from within,” Shapiro argued. “The Heritage Foundation has always been the institution defining the contours of conservatism. If the Heritage Foundation wishes to retain its status as a leading thought institution in the conservative movement, it must act as ideological border control. It must continue to draw the contours of legitimate, real conservatism. This is what the institution exists to do.”

Shapiro, who has been affiliated with Heritage for years, described the think tank as “perhaps America’s leading institution in helping to define and shape the contours of conservatism.” But what followed was a word of warning, cautioning Heritage that continuing to align with people like Carlson will ruin the conservative movement.

“If, as the Heritage Foundation proclaims, our goal ought to be to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom and traditional American values and a strong national defense,” Shapiro stated, “then we must stand up against those who would pervert and twist the conservative movement into a movement without principles, or worse, a movement that promotes the very opposite of the principles that conservatives hold dear.”

Over the next 20 minutes, Shapiro laid out exactly why believes Carlson and his conspiratorial worldview run counter to the ideals of American conservatism: Carlson called on America to ally with Russia; Carlson “has unending critiques of the free market, mirroring Marxist thinkers”; Carlson “promotes a conspiracy theory by which the American people have lost total control of their lives and thus have no real ability to shape policy”; Carlson has spoken of Iran with admiration and treated Qatar “as America’s foremost ally in the Middle East”; and he has hosted “America’s foremost Hitler apologist,” Nick Fuentes. 

“The term ‘American conservatism’ has a meaning. That meaning is embodied in the Heritage Foundation’s mission statement,” said Shapiro. “Those who oppose those principles definitionally oppose American conservatism. That is just definitional. Such people are not ideological allies. They are not part of the rich debate that is constantly ongoing between various strands of conservatism. They are opponents, and they ought to be treated that way.”

Welcoming those opponents as if they are part of legitimate debate over conservative ideas does a disservice to the political cause, Shapiro argued.

“Which brings us,” he added, “to Tucker Carlson, who has become, by any honest assessment, an opponent of conservatism, an outsider masquerading as an insider and destroying the character of the conservative movement in the process.”

At the end of his speech, Shapiro talked about what he described as “the promise of conservatism and the promise made by the Heritage Foundation,” that Americans should consider themselves lucky to be in this country and that they have agency to chart their own destiny. 

“That promise only exists if conservatives do our job to draw lines, to create borders, to protect our principles, to defend those principles, to conserve,” he said.

Afterward, Roberts joined Shapiro onstage for a moderated conversation. He did not address the content of Shapiro’s speech, or anything he said about Carlson.

“You and I agree far more than we disagree on things, and the disagreement is truly friendly,” said Roberts, who has been navigating internal dissent and staff defections following his video defending Carlson. 

Later, before the conversation wrapped up, Roberts said to Shapiro: “Count on Heritage to fight with you.”

Amid the fallout from the Heritage Foundation’s embrace of Tucker Carlson after his controversial interview with neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, Daniel Flesch — a senior policy analyst at the conservative think tank — has emerged as a critical voice raising the alarm on right-wing antisemitism from within the institution. 

On Monday, at a Hanukkah party steps from the White House, Flesch, who is Jewish, received the Young Maccabee Award from Young Jewish Conservatives, a political group founded in 2011 as a political home for Jewish conservatives in Washington. In a brief speech, Flesch warned of the dangers of growing antisemitism on the American right, and urged fellow conservatives to do more to take a stand against it. Otherwise, Flesch said gravely, the survival of America is at stake. 

“The last couple of years, really for longer than that, the threat of antisemitism has largely been the domain of the left,” Flesch said. “Now, in some ways, the call is coming from inside the house.”

Flesch led the drafting of Heritage’s Project Esther report, a plan released in 2024 outlining ways to counter pro-Hamas antisemitism on the left. He also served as Heritage’s point person for the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, a coalition of conservative groups that were involved in writing the Project Esther report. 

After Heritage President Kevin Roberts posted a video defending Carlson and his choice to host Fuentes, the task force disaffiliated from Heritage. Flesch remains both a Heritage staff member and a task force member, but he warned at a staff meeting days after the video was released, “We are bleeding trust, reputation, perhaps donors.” 

“Right now, the issue we’re facing is a threat to the West. We see it on the left. Now we’re seeing it to the right. And those like Tucker Carlson and others present the greatest threat, I think, on the right,” Flesch said on Monday. “They are anti-conservatives in the conservative movement, seeking to destroy our movements, and in so doing, destroy the future of the United States.” 

Roberts has apologized for the video, in which he called Carlson a “close friend” and said he would not give in to calls to “cancel” Fuentes. But he has not distanced himself from Carlson. 

“Israel will be fine. The question is, will we be fine here?” said Flesch. “If you have the left captured, you’ll have the right captured. What is there? Jews, obviously, we’re always left in the middle, we’ve got the State of Israel. Thank God, Israel will be strong. But this is a moment to say hineni [“here I am”] for each and every one of us.”

The neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes has drawn a sizable online following that has fueled debate over his influence in the Republican Party as it grapples with how to address mounting antisemitism within its ranks, particularly among younger conservatives.

But a new report suggests that his rise may in part be artificially driven by a cluster of anonymous social media accounts largely based in foreign countries, and raises questions about the organic popularity of Fuentes’ movement in the United States as he seeks to grow his political reach to shape the coming midterm elections. 

The report, published on Monday by the Network Contagion Research Institute, a nonprofit watchdog group affiliated with Rutgers University, analyzed a recent sample of Fuentes’ posts on X and found that engagement within the first 30 minutes not only far exceeded his “legitimate reach” but also “routinely” outperformed accounts commanding significantly larger followings, including Elon Musk, who owns the platform.

For the 20 Fuentes posts examined by NCRI in that opening time window, just over 60% of initial amplification came from the same repeat accounts, pointing to a pattern of “behavior highly suggestive of coordination or automation,” the report states.

Nearly all those users were “fully anonymous,” with no real name, location or other identifying markers, according to NCRI, and a majority were “openly” or “functionally single-purpose” accounts dedicated to promoting Fuentes’ extremist positions, which have included Holocaust denial and admiration for Adolf Hitler.

Meanwhile, the report also found, roughly half of the accounts that promoted three of Fuentes’ most viral posts before the assassination of Charlie Kirk — whose death in September left a major vacuum in the conservative youth movement that Fuentes has been seeking to fill — originated from foreign users that were “heavily concentrated” in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Malaysia and Indonesia, the sites of known content-engagement farms. 

“There is no organic explanation for this pattern,” the report notes, calling such activity “consistent with outsourced engagement infrastructure. These geographies describe the same low-cost amplification clusters and engagement farms that foreign actors often use to manufacture virality, distort platform metrics and manipulate recommendation systems.” 

The report argues that such alleged “manufactured engagement” artificially helped elevate Fuentes as a subject of heightened mainstream media interest in the wake of Kirk’s assassination, in addition to a friendly interview with Tucker Carlson weeks later, allowing “him to appear active, relevant and in position when a replacement narrative became available inside the broader MAGA ecosystem.”

Fuentes’ “manipulated reach is not accidental,” the report states, citing hundreds of instances from his show in which he has issued “real-time commands” to share his posts on social media — directives that the NCRI says run afoul of X’s content moderation policies prohibiting “orchestrated amplification.”

“Taken together,” the report concludes, “the evidence points to a deliberate, foreign-influenced campaign — relying on anonymous and possibly automated accounts — to artificially inflate Nick Fuentes’s reach, gaming the platform’s algorithm in a systematic effort to elevate his influence far beyond what genuine grassroots support could achieve.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and nearly all Senate Democrats are set to introduce a resolution on Monday condemning neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson for hosting Fuentes on his show. 

The legislation also highlights that Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts defended Carlson and Fuentes and notes that the Trump administration nominated an official who expressed affinity for the Nazis, referring to Paul Ingrassia.

The resolution comes weeks after Carlson’s friendly sit-down with Fuentes prompted a reckoning in the conservative movement over antisemitism on the far right and its normalization in certain circles. Schumer reportedly sought Republican backing for the resolution, but no Republicans have signed on at this point.

The resolution outlines Fuentes’ long history of overt antisemitic activity, as well as the series of antisemitic comments that Fuentes repeated on Carlson’s podcast. It highlights Carlson’s failure to “push back on or reject the claims made by Fuentes” and that Carlson “at times even validat[ed] his framing.” It also notes that Carlson was a keynote speaker at the 2024 Republican National Convention.

The legislation states that the Senate “strongly rejects the views of and platforming of Nick Fuentes” and “condemns the effort by Tucker Carlson to platform and mainstream Nick Fuentes.”

The resolution also specifically highlights that Roberts posted a video defending Carlson and attacking those criticizing him — accusing Roberts of employing “antisemitic dog whistles” — as well as for refusing to take down the video even as he as apologized for portions of it.

It calls on “all elected officials, thought leaders and community leaders to reject and condemn white supremacy and antisemitism whenever and wherever they occur.”

And it highlights that President Donald Trump nominated Paul Ingrassia — who said in an unearthed group chat that he has a “Nazi streak in me from time to time” — for an administration post and has since named him to a different role in the administration after his nomination was withdrawn. The resolution does not specifically name Ingrassia.

The resolution is being sponsored by every Senate Democrat.

The legislation has been supported by a series of Democratic-affiliated and progressive-minded Jewish groups, including Democratic Majority for Israel, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Jewish Democratic Council of America, Jewish Women International, the Union for Reform Judaism, Hadassah and the National Council of Jewish Women.

“The platforming of individuals who promote hateful, antisemitic, and white supremacist rhetoric is dangerous and entirely at odds with American values,” JWI CEO Meredith Jacobs said in a statement. She said that Congress “must forcefully condemn any attempt to mainstream antisemitism” and other hatred and “the fact that such condemnation is not universal underscores the very real and present danger that these ideologies are gaining ground in our society.”

JCPA CEO Amy Spitalnick said that antisemitic and white supremacist extremism “threatens every single one of our communities and the core of our democracy – yet we’ve seen political leaders continue to embrace and platform this deadly hate and those who peddle it, like Nick Fuentes” and urged all senators to support the resolution.

DMFI urged the Senate to “send a powerful message that there is no place for these hateful ideologies in our society by passing this measure.”

Halie Soifer, the CEO of JDCA, condemned Republicans for not signing onto the resolution.

“This issue should not be partisan, yet not one Republican has joined this resolution, and the President of the United States has refused to condemn Fuentes, Tucker Carlson’s platforming of Fuentes, and the hate they’ve espoused,” Soifer said in a statement. “We’re deeply concerned about Republicans placing politics above efforts like this one to combat white nationalism, antisemitism, and hate, and strongly encourage them to join this effort.”

UPDATE: This article was updated to reflect that the legislation’s findings highlight Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts’s defense of Carlson and Fuentes but the resolution does not specifically condemn him.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced on Thursday that he will introduce a resolution condemning neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes and his white supremacist views after President Donald Trump declined to condemn Fuentes or Tucker Carlson’s platforming of him. 

Schumer announced the move while criticizing Trump’s comments from over the weekend, in which the president noted that Carlson has “said good things about me over the years” and defended his decision to host Fuentes on his show. 

After calling Trump’s remarks “disgusting, Schumer warned that antisemitism in the U.S. has “reached a dangerous tipping point. Jewish Americans are facing threats, harassment and violence at levels we have not seen in generations.”

“For Donald Trump to continue to excuse and protect the spread of Nick Fuentes’ ideology, confirms what many of us have long said: white supremacy and antisemitism are taking deep roots, unfortunately, within the Republican Party,” Schumer said from the Senate floor on Thursday.

“Just as we saw from the leaked texts from Young Republicans, just as we saw from text messages of administration officials, the Nick Fuentes saga on the right reveals that antisemitism and white supremacy have been growing with disturbing currency within the right wing,” he continued. “I know this is not true of everyone on the Republican side, especially not for many Republicans in this chamber.”

Schumer said that his resolution will be focused on “rejecting Nick Fuentes and his white supremacist views, condemning Carlson’s platforming of hate, and condemning antisemitism and white supremacy wherever and whenever it occurs.” He added that he plans to lobby senators on both sides of the aisle to consider supporting the resolution.

“I hope my Republican colleagues will join me in this effort and co-sponsor this resolution. Calling out antisemitism should not be a partisan issue,” Schumer said. “When we refuse to condemn antisemitism, we stay silent and fail to reject antisemitic rhetoric, when we normalize hateful figures spewing disgusting antisemitism, that is when antisemitism spreads throughout society like a poisonous wildfire.”

“Americans don’t want to see that happen, so my resolution will give every single senator a chance to make an important stand against hatred,” he continued. “The country must see us unite and fight this awful form of bigotry.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) called on his Republican colleagues to speak out against Tucker Carlson, arguing in a fiery Friday morning speech that they need to rise above their fear of alienating the popular conservative podcaster to denounce his platforming of antisemitism.

“It’s easy right now to denounce Nick Fuentes. That’s kind of safe. Are you willing to say Tucker’s name?” Cruz said in a speech at the Washington National Lawyers Convention of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group. 

“Now I can tell you, my colleagues, almost to a person, think what is happening is horrifying. But a great many of them are frightened, because he has one hell of a big megaphone.”

Cruz’s speech escalates a feud within the Republican Party about antisemitism on the party’s rightward fringes, after Carlson, the former Fox News host, held a friendly interview with Fuentes, a neo-Nazi agitator and commentator.

Following Carlson’s interview with Fuentes, Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, released a video defending Carlson from attacks by the “globalist class” and standing by his right to interview Fuentes. Since then, the influential conservative think tank has been navigating internal dissension and public blowback — with Roberts apologizing for the video but so far refusing to take it down. 

Speaking to a room of lawyers, Cruz emphasized his support for the First Amendment and made the case that calling out Carlson is not akin to “canceling” him. 

“My complaint about Tucker having Nick Fuentes on was not that he platformed him. That’s a choice you can make or not. But the last I checked, Tucker actually knows how to cross examine someone,” said Cruz, who had his own heated discussion with Carlson on his podcast in June. “If you want to cross examine and challenge him, that’s fine. But he didn’t. He fawningly gazed at him.”

Fuentes and Carlson, Cruz continued, “have a right to say what they are saying. But every one of us has an obligation to stand up and say it is wrong.”

At the start of his speech, Cruz outlined the rise of antisemitism on the American left, arguing that “there is a real and cognizable pro-Hamas wing of the Democrat Party.” But, he added, antisemitism does not end there.

“When that happened on the left, those of us on the right were quite comfortable standing up and denouncing it. In some ways, that’s easy. But now it’s happening on the right,” said Cruz. “In the last six months, I’ve seen more antisemitism on the right than I have at any time in my life. It is growing. It is metastasizing.”

Cruz invoked Ronald Reagan’s famous 1964 speech, “A Time for Choosing,” as he implored conservatives to speak strongly and loudly against antisemitism. 

“I believe now, today, is a time for choosing as well. I think it is a time for every elected official, I think it is a time for every editorialist, I think it is a time for every lawyer, for every student, to decide, where do you stand?” said Cruz. “We will stand for liberty. We will stand for the Constitution. We will stand for the Bill of Rights, but we will also stand for truth, and we will call out lies where they occur, and we will call out hatred when they occur. And the best antidote to lies is truth. The best solution to darkness is light.”

He walked off the stage to a standing ovation.

An antisemitism task force affiliated with the Heritage Foundation announced on Thursday that it would cut ties with the conservative institution, as the prominent think tank has come under fire for its defense of Tucker Carlson after the firebrand podcaster hosted neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes for a friendly interview. 

The co-chairs of the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism announced in a Thursday email, viewed by Jewish Insider, that they will continue their work “outside the Heritage Foundation for a season.” 

A member of the task force told JI that its members had not ruled out working with Heritage again if the organization improves. “We hope that one day we’ll be able to collaborate with Heritage again,” said the member, who requested anonymity to talk about confidential discussions.

The task force was formed following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and was instrumental in the drafting of Project Esther, Heritage’s signature counter-antisemitism framework released last year in response to the Biden administration’s national strategy to combat antisemitism. 

The Project Esther report made no mention of antisemitism on the political right. In their Thursday email, the co-chairs of the task force said they can no longer ignore it.

“The NTFCA will also now expand our work to fight the rising scourge of antisemitism on the Right, beyond our previous work combating the pro-Hamas movement on the Left,” wrote the co-chairs, announcing that they will co-host a conference on “Exposing & Countering Extremism and Antisemitism on the Right” on Nov. 18 in Washington, in partnership with the Conference of Christian Presidents for Israel. 

The task force’s leaders are Mario Bramnick, a Florida pastor and president of the Latino Coalition for Israel; Victoria Coates, vice president of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation; Ellie Cohanim, who served as deputy antisemitism special envoy in the first Trump administration; and Luke Moon, a pastor and executive director of the Philos Project. 

The Heritage Foundation has been awash in controversy since its president, Kevin Roberts, released a video last week defending Carlson as the conservative commentator faced criticism for his interview with Fuentes. 

In a staff meeting on Wednesday, Roberts apologized for the video, which remains on X. He acknowledged the video did not go far enough in making clear that although he is opposed to “canceling” anyone, including Carlson, he is not thereby “endorsing everything they’ve said.”

Still, he has resisted requests to remove the video, according to a source familiar with the deliberations. Deleting the video was one of the recommendations made earlier in the week by the task force members.

The four task force co-chairs pledged to continue the work they had started with the support of the Heritage Foundation, which played a major role in the task force’s launch and operations, according to the task force member. The organization gave the task force access to meeting rooms, publishing resources and research assistance, as well as paid administrative and policy staff members. The task force co-chairs did not say where the group would go next. 

“The future of the Conservative movement will include a broad coalition of people that love America and all she stands for,” the co-chairs wrote. “We cannot allow the Conservative movement to be corrupted and destroyed by those consumed with attacking America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and values, thereby distracting us all from the real challenges facing our nation.” 

This story was updated at 6:31 p.m.

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts apologized in a staff meeting on Wednesday for  his video last week defending Tucker Carlson and refusing to “cancel” neo-Nazi leader Nick Fuentes, saying that the video was the result of internal failures of communication and consultation that left too few people involved in its production.

Roberts and other Heritage leaders also repeatedly made reference to a plan under development for how Heritage will approach its relationship with Carlson going forward, amid strong pressure from numerous staff members to forcefully disavow the right-wing podcast host  and his activities, but provided little clarity about what that approach will entail and sidestepped the full-throated denunciation of Carlson that several Heritage staffers sought.

In opening remarks, Roberts said ultimate responsibility for the video lay with him, but that Heritage’s former chief of staff, Ryan Neuhaus, who recently resigned, was responsible for writing the script. Roberts also criticized Neuhaus for retweeting a post saying that those upset by Roberts’ video should resign.

Roberts said that he himself was willing to resign but that he also felt a “moral obligation” to stay on to clean up the “mess” he created.

Roberts said that the video was the result of a “short circuited” process which violated Heritage’s “one voice” policy, adding that he wrongly believed the script had been approved by others in Heritage’s leadership, but that he should have personally checked in with colleagues.

“Some of the substance, maybe most of the substantive points, are things that I and I think we believe, but there are a couple of pain points that I want to address specifically,” Roberts said. 

He said that the intention of the video was to address public and private pressure on Heritage to disavow Carlson as well as to denounce the antisemitic and otherwise “grotesque” stances maintained by Fuentes, the latter of which he addressed in a separate post following backlash to his video. 

But Roberts also largely pleaded ignorance about both Carlson and Fuentes’ views and content in the staff meeting. Roberts’ video remains on his X profile.

“About ‘no cancelation,’ is there a limiting principle to that? I should have said that there was, especially in light of Tucker hosting not just Fuentes, but a handful of other people,” Roberts said. “You can say you’re not going to participate in canceling someone — a personal friend, an institutional friend — while also being clear you’re not endorsing everything they’ve said. You’re not endorsing softball interviews. You’re not endorsing putting people on shows. And I should have made that clear.”

At the same time, Roberts also indicated that he had engaged privately with Carlson about objectionable content on his show in the past, including Carlson’s hosting of Holocaust revisionist Daryl Cooper.

Roberts repeatedly alluded to plans in development to clarify the relationship between Heritage and Carlson, and said that a variety of senior Heritage staff will be involved in developing those plans. He said he does not approve of much of Carlson’s recent activity, but generally withheld direct rebuke.

“I made the mistake of conflating too much the personal friendship I have with Tucker — although I want to be really clear, I don’t think that everything, or maybe even most, of what he does now is helpful or good — but conflating that with, particularly the word ‘always,’ as the institution,” Roberts said. “Even the institution can say, ‘Tucker will be a friend,’ but that’s different than saying that you endorse everything your friend does.”

Addressing revelations that Heritage had a paid partnership with Carlson, Roberts noted that the partnership ended this summer, and that Heritage had similar arrangements with various other media figures including Fox News commentator Mark Levin, who has spoken out against Carlson’s antisemitism.

Roberts said that his approach in the video and going forward was and will be driven, in some capacity, by a desire to appeal to and “drive a wedge” between Fuentes and followers of his who might be persuadable or do not share Fuentes’ bigotry.

“Fuentes … has an audience of several million people. At least some of that audience might be open to be converted. My video didn’t do that, although the intention was to open that idea — not to endorse what Fuentes was saying, but quite the opposite, to appeal to them,” Robert said. “There’s a segment of that audience who might be with us, and they really are not Nazis and antisemites, then maybe we can eventually bring them into the fold.”

Roberts offered an apology for the specific terminology he used in describing Carlson’s critics as a “venomous coalition,” saying he did not intend to invoke antisemitic tropes. 

A staffer later pressed him on his description of Carlson’s critics as a “globalist class and their mouthpieces,” which the staffer said also seemed to be an antisemitic trope. Roberts apologized for those comments as well, and said his use of “globalist” was meant differently.

“I misread the situation and the advice that I got,” Roberts said. “I took the advice. I didn’t stop. I own that. [It] was bad, and I should have been better in that moment.”

During a Q&A with Heritage staff, Roberts faced frustration and disappointment from a series of Heritage staffers, some of whom said they had lost confidence in his leadership and argued that both the initial video and his subsequent response and belated apology had been insufficient and wrongheaded. Many said that Heritage needed to make a clear and unequivocal statement disavowing Carlson in order to move forward.

“Only after it became clear that Ryan falling on his sword would be insufficient to quell the outrage, both inside and outside of this building, did we finally see you manage the courage to utter the words, ‘I made a mistake,’” Amy Swearer, a senior legal fellow at Heritage, said. “It took you four days to say that, and even then, the mistake was couched largely in terms of, ‘Well, I’m sorry you guys just didn’t really understand the words that were coming out of my mouth, and maybe I should have spoken better, but also maybe try to listen better.’ With all due respect, Dr. Roberts, we all understood what you said in the video and in the ensuing response.”

Swearer also charged that Roberts has continued to avoid going after Carlson directly.

“We watched you seem perfectly willing to attack all of our friends and allies on the right, but say nothing about the guy who just said he dislikes nothing more than Christian Zionists,” she continued. “We watched this sort of incoherent defense for days of, ‘Well, we can’t participate in cancel culture, and anyone who attacks Tucker is participating in cancel culture, but also we’re going to attack the people who are participating in that cancel culture, and that’s not cancel culture.’”

Several staffers said that the video and the fallout from it had severely damaged Heritage’s reputation and partnerships with other institutions, that serious work would be needed throughout the organization to repair that damage and that Heritage had thus far failed to articulate any such plan or clearly disavow Carlson after nearly a week.

“It has been six days, almost a week, where we as an organization have been unable to utter the words … ‘Tucker’s an antisemite and we as Heritage do not want to associate with him,’” Daniel Flesch, a senior policy analyst at Heritage involved in its Middle East and antisemitism work, said. “We still do not have a statement about that. … We are bleeding trust, reputation, perhaps donors, who knows what else — support.”

“If the Heritage Foundation and you do not dump Tucker Carlson publicly, we are not going to repair that damage,” Hans von Spakovsky, a senior fellow at Heritage, said, adding that it would be unworkable to make a public distinction between Carlson being a personal friend of Roberts versus being a friend of Heritage as an institution.

While the majority of those who raised questions during the meeting were deeply critical of Carlson, a pair of staffers stood out as taking a different stance 

One, describing herself as a member of Gen Z, said that she and many young staffers agreed with Roberts’ video. She also claimed that charges of antisemitism against Carlson were driven by his opposition to foreign intervention.

“Gen Z has an increased unfavorable view of Israel, and it’s not because millions of Americans are antisemitic,” the staffer said. “It’s because we are Catholic and Orthodox and believe that Christian Zionism is a modern heresy. We believe it does go against church doctrine and the teachings of the early church fathers to use Christianity as a defense for a secular nation.”

Roberts responded that Heritage must be “agnostic” on theological questions of Christian Zionism. 

Derek Morgan, Heritage’s executive vice president, added that Heritage’s institutional position is that, “Israel has been a great ally of the United States” and that, “When it’s in the American interest to support the nation of Israel, we will do so.”

Another staffer, Evan Myers, raised particular concern about a request from the Heritage-aligned National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, that young Heritage staffers be offered the opportunity to attend Shabbat dinners as a space for education.

Myers said that doing so would violate his and others’ religious beliefs and that he was concerned that attendance at such events would be used as a “litmus test.” He further suggested that those involved in the task force would leak to the media the names of those who declined to participate.

Victoria Coates, vice president of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at Heritage and a board member of the task force, said she took offense with Myers’ characterization of the request.

“This was a recommendation … That was an open offer from the task force. It was made in generosity of spirit and in the hopes of increased dialogue on this issue,” Coates said. “And Evan, I’m deeply sorry that you could not see that as a generous offer, but rather a personal attack on you. It was not.”

Roberts expressed frustration that communications between himself and members of the antisemitism task force had been shared with the press.

“It’s hard for me and for this institution to consider recommendations when we can’t do that privately,” Roberts said. “I just want to let you know as we move forward on a detailed plan … it’s got to be under the terms that we get to have the conversations privately.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) criticized Tucker Carlson’s platforming of neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes, adding his voice to the growing list of Republicans who have publicly admonished the former Fox host for mainstreaming the avowed antisemite. 

The House speaker made the comments on Tuesday when asked in the Capitol if Carlson should still have a place in the conservative movement given his embrace of antisemitic figures like Fuentes. Johnson criticized what he described as Fuentes’ “anti-Christian” and “antisemitic” views and said conservatives have an obligation to call out antisemitism “wherever it is.”

“Look, I heard a compilation of some of the worst things that Nick Fuentes has said. It’s absolutely outrageous,” Johnson told National Review’s Audrey Fahlberg. “Some of the things he’s said are just blatantly antisemitic, racist and anti-American. Anti-Christian, for that matter. I think we have to call out antisemitism wherever it is.” 

“Whether it’s Tucker or anybody else, I don’t think we should be giving a platform to that kind of speech. He has a First Amendment right, but we shouldn’t ever amplify it. That’s my view,” Johnson added.

Asked later Tuesday if Carlson’s views and voice belong in the conservative movement, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) did not directly reject Carlson but said that the party should have no space for antisemitism.

“Well, there are lots of voices, obviously, out there, but I don’t think there ought to be any — there just should be no room at all whatsoever for antisemitism or other forms of discrimination. That’s certainly not what our party is about,” Thune said. 

“Our party is a party that welcomes all comers,” he added. “We want to stand up for and on behalf of the American people who work hard every day to make a living and just want a government that works for them, hopefully at the lowest possible cost and in a way that enables them to go about their lives and provide for them and their families.”

Less than a day after an antisemitism task force aligned with the Heritage Foundation pledged to stand by the embattled conservative organization, the group’s co-chairs are now demanding concrete reforms from Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts — and warning that they may cut off ties with Heritage if their requests are not met. 

In a Tuesday afternoon email to members of the conservative National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, which was viewed by Jewish Insider, the task force co-chairs shared the text of an email they sent to Roberts earlier in the day. They asked Roberts to remove the controversial video he posted to X last week defending firebrand commentator Tucker Carlson, in which Roberts alleged that Carlson’s critics are part of a “venomous coalition” and that “their attempt to cancel him will fail.” 

“Many of us on the NTFCA are among those who believed you called us part of a ‘venomous coalition’ and implicitly questioned our loyalty to the United States. It makes collaboration with Heritage difficult for our members,” wrote the co-chairs. Roberts’ video came after Carlson faced criticism for hosting neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes on his podcast.

The email to Roberts, which the co-chairs said was drafted in collaboration with other task force members, contained five other “recommendations.” 

They asked for an apology “to those Christians and Jews who are steadfast members of the conservative movement and believe that Israel has a special role to play both biblically and politically,” and for a condemnation of Carlson’s antisemitic content. In Roberts’ video last week, he said “conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government,” even under pressure “from the globalist class.” 

The task force co-chairs also requested that Heritage host a conference about understanding the boundaries of the conservative movement and discussing “how best to keep unity without needing to include the worst among us.” They asked Heritage to hire a visiting fellow “who shares mainstream conservative views on Israel, Jews and Christian Zionists” to win over young people. Lastly, they said they would like to host Shabbat dinners with Heritage’s interns and junior staff members to educate them about Judaism.

The task force’s leaders are Mario Bramnick, a Florida pastor and president of the Latino Coalition for Israel; Victoria Coates, vice president of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation; Ellie Cohanim, who served as deputy antisemitism special envoy in the first Trump administration; and Luke Moon, a pastor and executive director of the Philos Project. 

The task force co-chairs said in the email that if an agreement is not reached soon, their relationship with Heritage “will be irrevocably harmed.” 

“If the terms aren’t met, we will take the NTFCA elsewhere,” Moon told JI on Tuesday. The task force’s members played a major role in the drafting of Project Esther, an antisemitism plan published by the Heritage Foundation last year. 

A spokesperson for the Heritage Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Several organizations have already pulled out of the task force to protest Heritage following the release of Roberts’ video last week, including the Zionist Organization of America, Young Jewish Conservatives, the Coalition for Jewish Values and Combat Antisemitism Movement. 

In a Monday night speech, Roberts said Heritage “will never, ever, ever stop fighting against antisemitism in all its forms.” He offered an apology to his “Jewish friends” without addressing the controversy over Carlson directly.

When Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts responded to the latest controversy roiling the Republican Party — podcaster Tucker Carlson’s friendly interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes — it was a touch ironic that Roberts’ chosen venue to defend Carlson was on the social media platform X, where Roberts posted a video on Thursday calling Carlson a “close friend.”

That’s because X is the only mainstream social media site where Fuentes is still allowed to have an account, after being banned on Meta’s platforms and on YouTube for a long history of hateful rhetoric targeting Jews, women, Black people and many other minority groups. The far-right conspiracy theorist was once banned from X, too, but owner Elon Musk allowed Fuentes back onto the platform last year. 

“He will be reinstated, provided he does not violate the law, and let him be crushed by the comments and Community Notes,” Musk posted on X in May 2024. “It is better to have anti whatever out in the open to be rebutted than grow simmering in the darkness.”

Now, Fuentes has more than a million followers on the platform and a wider reach than ever before. His interview with Carlson, where he said a “big challenge” to unifying the country is “organized Jewry,” has more than 17 million views on X and 5 million views on YouTube. 

Their interview — and the fact that Heritage, one of the most venerable conservative institutions in the country, is defending Carlson — has sparked a reckoning in the Republican Party about a growing strain of antisemitism on the right. It has also reignited a debate about “cancel culture” and social media, and whether platforms like X have a responsibility to police the content that appears there.

Many conservatives, even those who have sharply condemned Carlson for hosting Fuentes, believe banning people because of their beliefs, no matter how hateful, is wrong. 

“I believe that Nick Fuentes is odious and despicable, but I’ve never called for his cancellation, and in fact, I’ve called for his restoration to those services, despite the fact that I think he’s odious and despicable,” Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro said on Monday in a podcast. “The issue here isn’t that Tucker Carlson had Nick Fuentes on his show last week. He has every right to do that, of course. The issue here is that Tucker Carlson decided to normalize and fluff Nick Fuentes, and that the Heritage Foundation then decided to robustly defend that performance.”

(Roberts pledged to stand against antisemitism and offered an apology to his “Jewish friends” in a Monday night speech.)

Tal Fortgang, a legal policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute think tank, argued that banning Fuentes in the first place gave him the oxygen he craved — which increased exponentially when Musk then publicly allowed him to return to the platform after reversing the content moderation policies of X’s prior management, when he purchased the company in 2022.

“These underground counter-cultural movements thrive on being policed. They see that internally as a sign that they’re winning,” Fortgang told Jewish Insider. “What does empower people like Fuentes is saying, ‘Only certain people are going to be allowed to post on X. We’re going to have ill-defined content moderation policies, and we thought he was forbidden, but turns out, he’s permitted.’ That sends a message that he is within the window of acceptable discourse.” 

Fuentes is still banned on other social media sites, even as other popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube have rolled back some of their own content moderation policies this year. 

“They’re doing less than they used to do, but they’re still doing more than X,” Yfat Barak-Cheney, director of international affairs and director of technology and human rights at the World Jewish Congress, said of the other major social media platforms. X is “absolutely” the mainstream social media site where antisemitism is most visible and most tolerated, she said. A September report from the Jewish Council for Public Affairs found that antisemitism is “thriving in plain sight” on X. 

“Research has definitely shown that since the takeover [by Musk], between a change in the consequences or the sanctions on hateful speech, the reduction of the size of the teams working on this and the general atmosphere on the platform, we’ve definitely seen a lot more right-wing extremism and antisemitism, and also from the left,” Barak-Cheny told JI. “It’s just a platform that’s easier to work on without being sanctioned.” 

X’s policies still prohibit abuse and hateful content, particularly when targeting users directly. But enforcement of those policies is at best inconsistent and at worst near-nonexistent. (A spokesperson for X did not respond to a request for comment.)

“We are concerned about the spread of antisemitism and extremism, on social media platforms, including X, where antisemites and extremists are operating largely unchecked,” a spokesperson for the Anti-Defamation League said. “We continue to urge these platforms to invest in their trust and safety teams and engage in meaningful content moderation to ensure Jewish and all users are safe.”

Some Fuentes critics tried to walk a fine line between expressing concern about his reinstatement and reiterating their opposition to censorship.

“Musk went too far in opening up his venue,” said David Bernstein, founder of the North American Values Institute, which fights left-wing antisemitism. “Those who have tried to regulate speech have gone too far in the opposite direction.”

Karen Paikin Barall, chief policy officer at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a nonprofit legal center, suggested that allowing Fuentes back on X may have been a mistake, though she did not call for his removal.

“Free speech must never be hindered. It’s one of the core principles on which our nation was founded. But platforms like Discord, Steam, Twitch, Reddit, Meta, X and TikTok need to enforce their own rules consistently, without double standards when it comes to Jews,” Barall told JI, before adding: “Allowing someone like Nick Fuentes back on a major platform raises real concerns about consistency and accountability.”

If Fuentes were once again removed from X, it might give those who oppose his hate-filled ideology some relief. But one Jewish official at a different technology company, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to press, cautioned that it is Fuentes’ interlocutor Carlson — who has given a platform to prominent right-wing antisemites over the past year — who offers a warning for what happens when institutional guardrails are removed.

“Everyone who thought Tucker was a problem when he was at Fox and saw him trending in this direction saw some comfort in the fact that he was going to be off Fox News. And what did that do? It liberated him,” said the tech company staffer. “It didn’t, like, de-platform him. There’s no such thing as de-platforming anymore. You can’t do it, not really. They’ll find a way.”

American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Danielle Pletka wrote in a blog post on Monday that “silence is complicity” as she called for fellow conservatives to call out Roberts’ actions at Heritage, and to condemn Carlson and Fuentes. But she told JI that the answer is not kicking Fuentes off X again.

“Censorship is not the right tool. It really isn’t. And censorship doesn’t make bad people go away. To the contrary, it makes them go underground,” Pletka said. “I’d rather know who these people are.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) warned on Monday against the mainstreaming of antisemitic figures within the conservative movement in response to Tucker Carlson’s platforming of neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes.

Hawley, an ally of the national conservative movement who has advocated for the Trump administration to take an aggressive approach to combating campus antisemitism, made the comments while speaking to Jewish Insider about the controversy surrounding Fuentes’ appearance on Carlson’s podcast late last week. 

“I just think on the substance of what he says, I mean, it’s antisemitic. Let’s just call it for what it is, let’s not sugarcoat it,” Hawley said of Fuentes. 

“That’s not who we are as Republicans, as conservatives. Listen, this is America. He can have whatever views he wants. But the question for us as conservatives is: Are those views going to define who we are? And I think we need to say, ‘No, they’re not. No. Just no, no, no,’” he continued. “We need to be really clear, and I say that not only as a conservative, but also as a Christian. There is no place for antisemitic hatred, tropes, any of that stuff. I just think we’ve gotta say that stuff.”

The Missouri senator drew a parallel between the antisemitism seen at universities across the country since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel and Fuentes’ views. 

“Do we really want to be part of what we’ve seen happen on college campuses, for instance, in this country in the last two or three years? Conservatives have been decrying that,” Hawley said. “Are we now to believe that, oh, actually, we have no problem with that? And that all of the things they were saying about Jews and Jewish Americans, that was fine? That’s not my view. I wasn’t fine with it then, I’m not fine with it now.”

“I thought it was morally repulsive then, I think it’s morally repulsive now. I’m not going to change my opinion on that. I want to be really clear: that’s above all a moral issue,” he added. 

Hawley was not the only Republican senator to voice their objections to a GOP embrace of Fuentes or the avowed antisemite’s appearance on Carlson’s program.

The fallout now involves the Heritage Foundation, the result of its president, Kevin Roberts, coming to Carlson’s defense in a video last Thursday that called out the “venomous coalition attacking” Carlson and warned that “their attempt to cancel him will fail.” Roberts has since clarified that he and Heritage do not support Fuentes’ antisemitic views, though he refused to disavow him, and is facing growing calls to walk back his comments. 

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), the co-chair of the Senate antisemitism task force, told JI that he was “a little surprised that Heritage jumped out in support of [Carlson] and Nick Fuentes to say, ‘Hey, we want them in our camp’ after the statements that were made.”

“Heritage could have just sat back and not said anything, but instead, they chose to jump out on their side,” Lankford continued. “I don’t get that.”

He, like Hawley and other Republican lawmakers, warned that the right faces a similar crisis of antisemitism as is roiling the left if conservatives do not proactively confront and shun antisemites in their midst.

“The left has seen an implosion of their party based on antisemitism rising in their party. I don’t want to see the same thing on the right,” Lankford said. “To say the least, I want to make it very, very clear we are not the party of antisemitism. We’re not the party that believes Hitler was a good guy and that Winston Churchill was the bad guy. We’re not the party that blames media issues on the Jews and all these weird tropes that are out there. That’s not who we are, that’s not what we stand for, nor what we should stand for.”

He said that he does not understand the impulse to “allow it to be a big tent and allow antisemitism in our party. If there are [antisemites] that are there, we should call it out and say that’s wrong.”

“What I’ve tried to be very clear on is [that] the ‘New Right’ is now quoting an old wrong. It’s wrong,” Lankford continued.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) offered a similar message.

“The Democrat Party — we already have a party that’s for antisemitism [and] is against Israel,” Scott told JI. “The Republican Party [is going to] stand for Israel and we’re going to stand against antisemitism. I don’t think there’s any question.”

Rabbi Yaakov Menken, the executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, told JI that Roberts’ message “was the most tone-deaf comment, in both its content and its timing, that I’ve ever heard from a major Washington organization on any political side.” 

Menken resigned from Heritage’s Project Esther, the group’s antisemitism initiative, last week in response to Roberts’ video message defending Carlson. Along with Menken and CJV, several other groups have also publicly disaffiliated from Heritage’s antisemitism task force, including the National Jewish Advocacy Center, the Zionist Organization of America and Young Jewish Conservatives.

LAS VEGAS — Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) called Tucker Carlson “the most dangerous antisemite in America” in remarks on Saturday at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership conference, in what was an unusually direct rebuke of the far-right commentator who is facing backlash over his recent friendly interview with the neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes.

“He has chosen to take on the mantle of leader of a modern day Hitler Youth,” Fine, a freshman congressman from Florida who is one of four Jewish Republicans in the House, said of Carlson. “To broadcast and feature those who celebrate the Nazis, those who call for the extermination of Israel, to defend Hamas, to even criticize President Trump for stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions.”

Fine’s remarks came as the RJC now reckons with rising antisemitism within the Republican Party in the wake of the Fuentes interview last week, where Carlson, in a podcast conversation that ran for more than two hours, failed to challenge his guest’s praise for Adolf Hitler and Holocaust denial, among other antisemitic views. 

Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank, has also drawn criticism for standing by Carlson in the days after the interview, even as he has condemned Fuentes.

But while many speakers at the RJC summit have alluded to anti-Jewish prejudice on the right, few have explicitly mentioned Carlson or the Heritage Foundation in their own remarks, instead focusing largely on left-wing antisemitism.

“I can stand up here all day and take shots at the left,” Fine said in a ballroom at the Venetian Resort, standing in front of a long line of younger attendees who lined up before him with red posters declaring “Tucker is not MAGA,” a line he used in his speech.

“But I’m here for the kids down here, because it’s easy to talk about antisemitism on the left,” Fine continued. “I want to talk about the dark force rising on our side. Multiple speakers have talked about the rise of antisemitism on the right. But it is not enough to speak in platitudes or generalities about the fight. We must call evil by its name.”

The congressman said that Carlson’s “fall from grace has been one of the most extraordinary implosions in political history, and the rapidity of it has created real challenges for us all, because our friends don’t have our shared experience.”

“I can deal with this with my colleagues in the House,” he said. “See, they remember the Tucker of five years ago. They don’t live with antisemitism every day. They don’t think about it the way that we do, and it’s jarring for them to try to understand: How did this person become who he is today? But the challenge is, he’s inspired a movement of hate in our midst, and I’m not done calling people out.”

In his speech, Fine also said that he “was supposed to do an event with” the Heritage Foundation next week but had since changed his mind. “They don’t know what I’m about to tell you,” he told the crowd. “Right now we’re canceling it.”

“They have no future in my office, and I will be calling on all of my colleagues on the Republican side to do the same,” he said. “If those who support Tucker Carlson want to see a venomous coalition,” he said, referring to language from Roberts’ recent defense of Carlson, “all they need to do is go look in the mirror.”

In addition to Carlson and the Heritage Foundation, Fine turned his sights on two of his GOP colleagues, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), both outspoken critics of Israel who have faced accusations of using antisemitic rhetoric.

“Some days, I marvel at their stupidity, other days, at their evil,” he said. “It makes my stomach crawl that I have to sit in the same room with them.”

“Now we have to choose: Will we ignore these embarrassments to our party?” he asked in his concluding remarks. “When we pretend they don’t matter or that they don’t exist, we make the same mistakes that Democrats made so many years ago.” 

“Today in this room and at this time, we speak with one loud and convincing truth,” Fine said to cheers from the audience. “We will not let our party fall to this darkness.”

LAS VEGAS — Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) spoke out against Tucker Carlson for giving a friendly platform to Nick Fuentes, the neo-Nazi influencer, on his podcast this week, calling it “a wake-up call” for the Republican Party as it grapples with rising antisemitism within its ranks.

“How many times does he have to play footsie with this antisemitic view of the Jewish people and Israel until you figure out that’s what he believes?” Graham said of Carlson in an interview with Jewish Insider on Friday on the sidelines of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership summit at the Venetian Resort. 

Graham said that “antisemitism has been with us, and it’ll always be with us, and the goal is to limit it, fight back and contain it.”

“I am confident that if anybody in the Republican world ran for office as a member of Congress, for the Senate or any major elected office and spouted this garbage, it would get creamed,” Graham told JI. “This is a niche market. It won’t sell to a wider audience.”

Carlson, a frequent critic of Graham, has faced backlash this week for failing to challenge Fuentes’ antisemitic views, including praising Adolf Hitler and engaging in Holocaust denialism. During the interview, Fuentes railed against “organized Jewry” while Carlson expressed his disdain for Christian Zionists including Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, saying he had been seized by a “brain virus.”

“To suggest that evangelical Christians are confused or got it wrong says more about the critic than it does evangelical Christians,” Graham countered. “The guy that’s doing the talking is a raving antisemite white nationalist, and if you want to hook your wagon to that, you’ll have a very short journey in the Republican Party.”

Graham said that Carlson and Fuentes “did us all a favor by being so brazen. It’s kind of a wake-up call.”

Even as Carlson, a close ally of Vice President JD Vance, remains influential in the GOP, Graham argued that “being anti-Israel in the modern Republican Party is a death sentence to political viability.”

“We’re not gonna put up with that crap. We’re not that kind of party,” he said.

The South Carolina senator also joined other senators in raising concerns about the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, who has faced widespread criticism for defending Carlson’s interview and for soft-pedaling Fuentes views in a video he posted to social media on Thursday. “That’s the decision made, and we’ll see how well it plays in the marketplace,” Graham, who is facing a primary challenge next year from a former Heritage Foundation staffer, reiterated. 

Amid the criticism Friday, Roberts posted a follow-up statement on X where he condemned Fuentes’ “vicious antisemitic ideology, his Holocaust denial, and his relentless conspiracy theories that echo the darkest chapters of history” but made no further comment about Carlson.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who spoke at the RJC summit on Thursday night, and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have spoken out against right-wing antisemitism after Carlson’s Fuentes interview.

Vance also drew scrutiny this week from conservative Jewish critics after he spoke at a campus Turning Point USA event and avoided  forcefully confronting students who had asked him questions about Israel that used antisemitic tropes, such as suggesting Jewish control of U.S. politics and claiming that Jews oppress Christians.

Graham said he believed that the students were “espousing stereotypes about the Jewish people and the Jewish state,” which he called “pretty unnerving.”

“I think JD handled it well,” he said, but added: “I wish he would have been more direct.”

“I would have been real direct and said, ‘Let me tell you, if you think our relationship with Israel is less than beneficial, you’re ignorant. Israel’s fighting our fight,” he said. “My goal is to keep the threats over there so they don’t come here,” he added. “My goal is not to fight alone, to have other people fighting with us. And you can’t have a better partner in the fight than Israel.”

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts doubled down on the influential conservative group’s support for Tucker Carlson, who has been leaning into increasingly explicit antisemitism and opposition to Israel on his podcast, and expressed unwillingness to “cancel” neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes.

Roberts’ comments come after a friendly Carlson interview with Fuentes, in which Carlson described Christian Zionists as infected by a “brain virus.” Carlson said he dislikes Christian Zionists “more than anybody. Because it’s Christian heresy, and I’m offended by that as a Christian,” pointing to conservatives including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who has repeatedly sparred with Carlson over Israel and antisemitism, and Ambassador Mike Huckabee. On Wednesday, reports arose that Heritage had scrubbed references to Carlson from one of its donation pages.

Roberts, in a video posted on X on Thursday amid online discussion of Heritage’s relationship with Carlson, said he refused to cancel Carlson or Fuentes and that the group would “always” defend Carlson from the “pressure” of the “globalist class.”

“When it serves the interest of the United States to cooperate with Israel and other allies, we should do so with partnerships on security, intelligence and technology. But when it doesn’t, conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington,” Roberts said. “The Heritage Foundation didn’t become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians, and we won’t start doing that now.”

He said the group would “always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda. That includes Tucker Carlson, who remains — and as I have said before — always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.”

Roberts rejected those criticizing Carlson as a “venomous coalition” and said that “their attempt to cancel him will fail.” 

He added that it is the responsibility of Heritage to attack the left, not to criticize those on the right. “I disagree with and even abhor things that Nick Fuentes says, but canceling him is not the answer either,” Roberts continued.

Roberts, whose group assembled the Project Esther plan to combat antisemitism — focused on anti-Israel left-wing groups — also said in the video, “I want to be clear about one thing, Christians can critique the State of Israel without being antisemitic. And of course antisemitism should be condemned.”

Roberts quoted a statement by Vice President JD Vance at a Turning Point USA event on Wednesday: “What I am not OK with is any country coming before the interest of American citizens. And it is important for all of us, assuming we are American citizens, to put the interest of our own country first. That’s where our allegiance lies, and that’s where it will stay.”

Roberts’ comments come amid an uproar from pro-Israel conservatives about Vance’s response to an antisemitic question he faced from a member of the audience at that event.

The questioner declared that Judaism does “not agree with [our religion] but also openly supports the [persecution] of ours,” to enthusiastic applause from the crowd.

Vance said in his response, “When people say that Israel is somehow manipulating or controlling the president of the United States — they’re not controlling this president of the United States, which is one of the reasons why we’ve been able to have some of the success that we’ve had in the Middle East.”

He said that the Gaza peace deal was only possible because President Donald Trump was “actually… willing to apply leverage to the State of Israel.”

The vice president also said that ensuring Christian access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is an “obvious area of common interest” and that he is “fine” with working with Israel on the issue. “What I am not OK with is any country coming before the interests of American citizens,” he continued.

Vance did not address or condemn the questioner’s accusations that Jews are attempting to persecute Christians.

Fuentes has been celebrating the recent developments, posting on X, “The Groypers have taken over. We run this” in response to questions posed to Vance at the TPUSA event.

Responding to Roberts, Fuentes said, “I don’t know what exactly you ‘abhor’ about my views, but we can all agree that free speech, Christ, and America First should be the pillars of our movement. Thank you for your courage in standing up for open discourse and defending Tucker against the Israel First Woke Right.”

Donald Trump Jr. is set to headline a Trump campaign fundraiser on Friday in Nashville, Tenn., that will feature Candace Owens, the far-right pundit who has frequently advanced antisemitic commentary.

Owens, a fervent supporter of former President Donald Trump, has in recent months amplified the ancient blood libel against Jews, downplayed the Holocaust and defended Nick Fuentes, a prominent white nationalist, among other incendiary remarks.

In March, the 34-year-old conspiracy theorist parted ways with Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire — where she had served as a weekday host — amid mounting tensions over her increasingly antisemitic rhetoric and fierce criticism of Israel in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks.

Trump Jr.’s scheduled appearance with Owens on Friday appears to underscore the influence he is now exerting on his father’s campaign — as Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, have played a less prominent role with the former president’s campaign after previously serving as top advisers in his administration.

The former president’s eldest son also played a key part in persuading Trump to choose Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) as his running mate, in an effort to anoint an ideologically aligned successor. 

Despite her extreme commentary, Owens has continued to find a place in Trump’s GOP, which elevated several speakers who have espoused antisemitic rhetoric during the Republican National Convention last week in Milwaukee.

In addition to Owens, the event on Friday will include David Bailey, the CEO of Bitcoin Inc., and Camryn Kinsey, a former Trump administration official who will moderate a panel discussion on the future of cryptocurrency and other topics.

The July 26 fundraiser, according to an online flier, is sponsored by the Trump campaign as well as a digital token called MAGAA — or Make America Great Again, Again — which describes itself as “the only crypto token that generates money to push conservative messaging and pro-Trump adverts.” It will be held on Friday evening at 7:30 p.m. on the rooftop lounge of the Westin Nashville.

The event, with tickets running as high as $5,000, will coincide with the annual Bitcoin Conference that kicks off in Nashville on Thursday, and where Trump is expected to give remarks. The former president is reportedly holding a separate, high-dollar campaign fundraiser on Saturday.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.