Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who chairs the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, is threatening to subpoena Harvard for documents related to its handling of antisemitism on its campus.

Foxx and the committee had requested documents from Harvard as part of the committee’s investigation into antisemitism on campuses, but said the documents the university produced were incomplete and nonresponsive to the request. Foxx on Wednesday gave Harvard’s leadership a week to provide further documents or face a subpoena.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), a senior Democratic member of the House Appropriations Committee, said Wednesday that lawmakers might seek to pressure Qatar and other U.S. partners through the government funding process to seek the release of hostages held in Gaza.

“We have very specific things that can specifically — country by country — begin to ratchet up the pressure,” Wasserman Schultz said. “These are countries that all have an interest in remaining a friend of the United States.”

A Jewish freshman at Columbia University who donned a shirt with an Israeli flag on it during a pro-Israel demonstration on Friday is on edge after he said he was shoved, pinned against a wall and, when he fled, told by a pro-Palestinian protester to “keep f—ing running,” Jewish Insider has learned.

Noah Lederman, a philosophy and pre-law major, was heading back to his dorm from a pro-Israel demonstration to prepare for Shabbat when he was “physically assaulted by a masked individual right outside of the Northwest Corner Building on Broadway and 120th Street,” he told JI. 

Marking its first independent expenditure of the 2024 election cycle, the super PAC affiliated with AIPAC is targeting a California state senator, Dave Min, who is one of the top Democratic candidates in an increasingly nasty House race for an open swing seat in Orange County.

On Tuesday, United Democracy Project, a leading pro-Israel super PAC, kicked off a $600,000 TV ad buy hitting Min for a DUI arrest last May, Patrick Dorton, a spokesperson for the group, confirmed to Jewish Insider.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee voted 30-19 on Tuesday to advance a bill immediately and permanently cutting off all U.S. aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in response to allegations that some of its employees were involved in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, in addition to long-running issues that have plagued the Palestinian aid agency.

Democratic Reps. Kathy Manning (D-NC), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) and Brad Schneider (D-IL) voted in favor of the bill, although Manning and Schneider had expressed concerns about the legislation.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said on Tuesday that calls for genocide are “not tolerable” but stopped short of saying whether the phrase “from the river, to the sea, Palestine will be free” should be considered antisemitic by university administrators.

“If there are students who are feeling that statements by students are being referred to genocide, or they’re feeling unsafe on campus, it is a responsibility of a university leader to get involved,” Cardona told reporters at a Tuesday briefing. “This is an opportunity for leadership to bring people together to talk about it and to set clear lines on how you communicate while not making students feel threatened or unsafe on campus.”

The House failed on Tuesday evening to pass a stand-alone Israel aid bill amid opposition from many Democrats and a handful of Republicans. Meanwhile, senators declared their bipartisan compromise legislation on the border — which Republicans had said was necessary to advance foreign aid — to be dead.

The demise of both the House and the Senate’s bills will force Congress back to the drawing board to piece together a new plan to advance aid to Israel, potentially seeking to advance a smaller package including funding for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. The House’s rejection of the unconditioned Israel funding measure is rare, but the debate over Israel funding is entangled in debates over Ukraine and immigration policy.

The House bill, which required support from two-thirds of the House, ultimately failed by a vote of 250-180. Forty-six Democrats, mostly stalwart pro-Israel lawmakers, voted for the bill, and 14 Republicans on the far right voted against it.

Ahead of a House vote on Tuesday on impeaching Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, a key House Republican faces accusations that he invoked antisemitic tropes targeting the Jewish cabinet secretary.

Politico reported that House Homeland Security Committee Chair Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) — whose committee led the impeachment effort — said during a Republican Conference meeting on Monday that, “This reptile [Mayorkas] has no balls to resign,” citing two lawmakers who heard the comments.