One resolution from Republicans highlights immigration issues; a bipartisan resolution links the attack to a growing series of violent antisemitic incidents

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U.S. Capitol Building on January 18, 2025 in Washington, DC.
The House of Representatives is set to vote next week on two resolutions condemning antisemitism and the terrorist attack on a hostage march in Boulder, Colo.
One resolution from Republicans, focused on Boulder, highlights immigration issues and denounces the slogan “Free Palestine,” while the other, which is bipartisan, links Sunday’s Colorado attack to a series of other recent violent antisemitic attacks.
The first of the two resolutions is already attracting criticism from some Democrats. Led by Reps. Gabe Evans (R-CO), Jeff Crank (R-CO) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO), it includes a line that describes “Free Palestine” — a slogan shouted by both Mohamed Sabry Soliman, the Boulder attacker, and Elias Rodriguez, who killed two Israeli Embassy employees at the Capital Jewish Museum, during or shortly after their crimes — as “an antisemitic slogan that calls for the destruction of the state of Israel and the Jewish people.”
Evans’ resolution also notes that Soliman, an Egyptian national, violated U.S. immigration restrictions and states that the case “highlights the need to aggressively vet aliens who apply for visas to determine whether they endorse, espouse, promote, or support antisemitic terrorism or engage in other antisemitic or anti-American activity” and “demonstrates the dangers of not removing from the country aliens who fail to comply with the terms of their visas.”
It criticizes Colorado’s sanctuary state policies, stating that Colorado “hinders immigration enforcement” activities and prohibits law enforcement officials from providing information to federal immigration officials.
It also “affirms that free and open communication between State and local law enforcement and their federal counterparts remains the bedrock of public safety and is necessary in preventing terrorist attacks” and “expresses gratitude” to Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel and other law enforcement.
Given Democratic opposition to many of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, those provisions could prove controversial, and some on the left are also likely to oppose labeling “Free Palestine” as antisemitic.
In statements about the legislation, the sponsors lambast Colorado’s sanctuary state policies, the Biden administration, Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and state lawmakers for their approach to immigration issues.
The resolution goes on to condemn Soliman and his “antisemitic terrorist attack on peaceful demonstrators supporting the release of the hostages” and prays for the victims of the attack.
The second resolution, led by Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), has 53 bipartisan cosponsors, and condemns “the rise in ideologically motivated attacks on Jewish individuals in the United States,” including the Boulder attack, and expresses the House’s “commitment to combating antisemitism and politically motivated violence.”
The resolution describes the Colorado attack, as well as the D.C. shooting and the arson targeting Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence on the first night of Passover, as part of a “disturbing pattern of targeted aggression” and “politically and religiously motivated violence directed at Jewish individuals and institutions.”
It states that the three attacks “share a common pattern of targeting Jewish individuals or symbols of Jewish life and civic engagement” and calls antisemitism “fundamentally incompatible with the values of the United States,” saying it must be “condemned unequivocally.”
The Van Drew resolution calls on law enforcement to thoroughly investigate and prosecute the incident and on leaders to “speak out against antisemitism and politically motivated violence in all forms.”
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), a co-chair of the House Jewish caucus and a prominent progressive Jewish voice in the chamber, condemned Republicans for calling up the Evans-led resolution and urged colleagues not to support it.
“I am deeply disappointed in the Republican majority’s decision to put a blatantly partisan antisemitism resolution on the floor next week — especially since there is a bipartisan resolution that appropriately speaks to the horrible tragedy in Boulder that is already scheduled to come to the floor,” Nadler said in a statement to Jewish Insider.
“Once again, Republicans are using Jewish safety and the rise of antisemitism in America for their own partisan gain and to perpetuate their bigoted immigration propaganda,” Nadler continued. “As a community full of families who fled to America in search of a better life, American Jews will not fall for this cynical tactic, and I urge my colleagues not to take the bait.”
The two resolutions are the latest in a series of resolutions on antisemitism introduced by House members in the weeks since the Washington attack, some of which point to the increasingly fractured and politicized discourse about the issue.
Following the D.C. attack, 73 House Republicans led by Rep. Addison McDowell (R-NC) introduced a resolution condemning the attack and antisemitism, which noted that “the murderer is a far-left activist and has been affiliated with the Party for Socialism and Liberation.” It also called for “the enforcement of existing laws that punish hate crimes, protect religious freedom, and ensure justice for victims of antisemitic violence and discrimination.”
Following the Boulder attack, another Republican-only resolution led by Reps. Randy Fine (R-FL) and August Pfluger (R-TX), co-sponsored by 23 other House Republicans, also noted that Soliman overstayed his visa, said he “should never have been permitted to remain in the country as long as he was” and called for Congress to “take immediate action to secure the border and deport migrants who overstay their visas.”
Separately, six members of Colorado’s House delegation — all but Evans and Boebert — introduced a bipartisan resolution condemning the attack and expressing support for the survivors, as well as calling for additional federal resources to counter antisemitism and hate crimes and protect targeted communities.

Screenshot/X
A man is arrested after throwing a Molotov cocktail at pro-Israel demonstrators in Boulder, CO on June 1, 2025.
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on the aftermath of the terrorist attack last weekend at a hostage march in Boulder, Colo., and cover a resurgent push for the U.S. to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization following reports that the Boulder attacker had expressed support for the group. We also talk to students and faculty at Harvard to check in on the school’s recent approach to antisemitism and its clashes with the Trump administration, and report on President Donald Trump‘s recommendation not to increase the funding level of the Nonprofit Security Grant Program. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Rep. Randy Fine, Santa Ono and Jake Sullivan.
What We’re Watching
- The White House is holding a briefing for Jewish community leaders this afternoon.
- The House Education and the Workforce Committee is holding a hearing today with Education Secretary Linda McMahon on the department’s policies and priorities.
- Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) is speaking at the Hudson Institute this afternoon about the future of American foreign policy in the Middle East.
- The Congressional Israel Allies Foundation is hosting a belated Jerusalem Day celebration today on Capitol Hill. MK Gila Gamliel, Israel’s minister of innovation, science and technology, will address the gathering.
- In New York City, WNBC, Politico and Telemundo are hosting a mayoral primary debate at 7 p.m. tonight for nine of the candidates vying for the Democratic nomination later this month.
- Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar is traveling to Germany today, where he’ll meet with his German counterpart, Johann Wadephul, and other senior officials, as well as Jewish communal leaders, in Berlin.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’s mELISSA WEISS
The holiday of Shavuot is one of prayer and celebration, marked by all-night learning, indulging in cheesecake and communal events.
But across the U.S., this Shavuot was marked with a fear and unease that has become abnormally normal in recent months, following the Passover arson at the home of Gov. Josh Shapiro and the murders of two Israeli Embassy employees outside the Capital Jewish Museum last month, and deepened further by the horrific attack in Boulder, Colo., on Sunday in which an Egyptian national threw homemade Molotov cocktails at marchers calling for the release of the remaining 58 hostages being held in Gaza. Twelve people, including a Holocaust survivor, were injured.
The reverberations from the attack are already being felt in Washington, where legislators are reviving a bill to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. More below.
Two days before the attack, we reported on the Trump administration’s full FY 2026 budget request for Congress — which did not recommend an increase in funding to the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, instead holding it at its current level of $274.5 million. Fewer than half of the requests — which are submitted by organizations at elevated risk of being targeted in a terrorist attack — were fulfilled in 2024.
The attack in Boulder is likely to garner additional calls from the Jewish community for increased funding for the program. In the wake of last month’s deadly attack at the Capital Jewish Museum, a coalition of leading Jewish groups called for the federal government to increase NSGP spending to $1 billion. “The rising level of anti-Jewish incitement, which inevitably leads to violent acts … requires governmental action commensurate with the level of danger,” the organizations said.
In the wake of Sunday’s attack, many legislators condemned the attacks, most denouncing the antisemitic nature of the firebombing. But three Squad members — Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Summer Lee (D-PA) — condemned the attacks without mentioning Israel or antisemitism. President Donald Trump, in his response, did not mention Israel or antisemitism either, choosing instead to rail against former President Joe “Biden’s ridiculous Open Border Policy, which has hurt our Country so badly.”
The identities of the victims of the attack and the perpetrators’ declared motivations are political inconveniences to legislators and activists on both sides of the political spectrum — and their decision to erase both perhaps reverberates the loudest.
Other lawmakers focused their comments on the shooter’s immigration status. Mohamed Sabry Soliman had come to the U.S. in 2022 and received a work visa, which expired earlier this year. That the attack was perpetrated by an individual who had been approved for a visa by the Biden administration and remained illegally under the Trump administration is expected to produce more calls for stricter immigration policies. Last night, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that Soliman’s wife and five children had been apprehended by immigration officials and faced potential deportation.
But while politicians debate the best approaches — from designating terror groups to calling for immigration crackdowns — Jewish communities remain on edge, feeling unsafe and unheard.
Perhaps nothing underscores Jewish communal concerns at this moment better than an op-ed published in The New York Times on Tuesday by National Council for Jewish Women CEO Sheila Katz.
“When antisemitism emerges within progressive spaces, cloaked in the language of justice, too often it is met with silence and discomfort, creating echo chambers where dangerous ideas are amplified rather than confronted,” Katz wrote. In response to sounding the alarm about antisemitism in left-wing circles, she said, “we have been gaslit, ignored and told that our fear is overblown, our outrage unjustified. Among many groups that have fought to secure and reclaim civil rights, voting rights and reproductive rights, we have seen antisemitism dismissed as not bad enough to matter, our grief met with cynicism, our safety treated as optional.”
Some Americans waking up to their morning news on Tuesday saw “Jews Are Afraid Right Now” as the Times headline accompanying Katz’s piece. But for the first several hours it was posted, the op-ed had a different headline: “American Jews Are Paying for the War in Gaza” — an approach to both the Israel-Hamas war and antisemitism in America that plays into the dual-loyalty tropes that American Jews have fought long before the Oct. 7 attacks.
The Times quietly changed the op-ed’s headline to the milquetoast “Jews Are Afraid Right Now” — which, while correct, missed Katz’s core point: “At rallies and on campuses, in coalition rooms and online spaces, slogans sometimes directly drawn from Hamas’s terrorist manifesto have been chanted and painted on placards, and shouted from stages and in the streets. ‘Globalize the intifada.’ ‘By any means necessary.’ ‘From the river to the sea.’ ‘Zionists out.’ These are not simply words; they can be interpreted as calls for violence.”
The Boulder attacker told investigators he wanted “to kill all Zionist people” — not dissimilar from comments made by the Capital Jewish Museum shooter, who declared, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza,” after gunning down Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. The arsonist who set the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion on fire said he committed the crime because of what Shapiro, one of the most prominent Jewish politicians in the country, “wants to do to the Palestinian people.”
From academia to activism to journalism, there is a reticence in left-wing circles to acknowledge that inciting language around the Israel-Hamas war can have a dangerous impact.
A year and a half ago, Ivy League administrators were pressed on whether “From the river to the sea” was a genocidal chant. The response, given by the since-ousted presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, was that “it depends on the context.”
In this case, the context is the firebombing of elderly Jews calling for the release of hostages in Gaza. Last month, the context was the gunning down of a young couple outside a Jewish organization’s event focused on humanitarian aid in Gaza. In April, the context was the arson of the residence of a Jewish governor on the first night of Passover.
The recent attacks in Harrisburg, Washington and now Boulder are not surprising. They are what happens when ideology-driven activism trumps ethical journalism, when antisemitism becomes a political football and when the boundaries between free speech and calls for violence blur — creating a dangerous and deadly reality for American Jews.
temperature check
Jews at Harvard are still worried about antisemitism — and about Trump’s response to it

As Israeli students departed from Harvard University last month to begin summer break, the usual sense of relief and excitement at having completed another academic year was replaced by fear and uncertainty for many. Amid the Trump administration’s battle with Harvard — which recently escalated to stripping the university of its ability to enroll foreign students entirely — among international students exchanging goodbyes, “See you in the fall” was replaced with “I hope to see you in the fall.” Jewish students and faculty who conduct biomedical research at Harvard also face grim prospects, after Trump revoked billions of dollars in federal funds to the university. At the same time, many Jewish students on campus expressed relief that the antisemitism and anti-Israel activism that was all too common in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks had declined significantly in the previous school year, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen and Gabby Deutch report.
Trump effect: Changes on campus were implemented at the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year, when Joe Biden was still president, said Harvard Law professor Jesse Fried, noting that Harvard’s progress in addressing antisemitism and students’ anti-Israel bias was not only a result of pressure from President Donald Trump. But once Trump came into office and began threatening Harvard — and then implementing policies that directly targeted the Ivy League university — change happened more quickly, Fried observed. “Harvard is moving very quickly and aggressively to eliminate certain sources of anti-Israel bias on campus,” Fried said. “If the Trump administration were not breathing down their neck, I believe progress would have been much slower.”
Elsewhere: A federal judge dismissed a discrimination lawsuit filed against the University of Pennsylvania by two Jewish students, saying that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that the university had taken action that “could be interpreted as antisemitic with the intention of causing harm to the plaintiffs.”