Dissent Is Growing: Boycott Netanyahu Calls Pick Up in Congress

A growing number of Democrats are vowing to boycott Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress next month, due to Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza.

In March, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer made a speech criticizing Netanyahu’s conduct of the war and calling for new elections in Israel. Only a short time later, though, Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries joined Republican Speaker Mike Johnson’s invitation to Netanyahu to address Congress.

The decision has led to a serious blowback from the rest of the party, even from Democrats who haven’t been vocal critics of Israel’s war, which has killed over 37,000 people, including at least 15,000 children. On Friday, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN that it was “wrong” to invite Netanyahu and that she would “absolutely not” have invited him if she were still leading the chamber.

Other Democrats echoed Pelosi.

“I won’t attend and turn my back towards him,” Representative Hank Johnson said. “So I’m just gonna stay away.”

“I’m not planning on attending, and/or I’ll be participating in whatever events there are to express that we want this war to end and we want both him and Hamas to agree to a cease-fire,” said Representative Greg Casar.

Opposition is even coming from Jewish members of Congress, such as Representative Jan Schakowsky.

“The role that the prime minister is playing is very negative, and I don’t want to be there,” Schakowsky said. 

It’s not the first time Democrats have taken issue with Netanyahu speaking before Congress. In 2015, Netanyahu spoke before Congress in an attempt to sink then-President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, drawing the ire of many Democrats. At least 50 House members and eight senators chose to boycott that speech.

“He imported a little bit of controversy the last time he was here,” Representative Stephen F. Lynch said. “I thought it was disrespectful to the president, so I’m inclined not to attend.”

Increased opposition to Netanyahu’s appearance is also coming from progressives, many of whom have already called for a cease-fire.

“I’ve spoken to several members in the House and the Senate, actually, who had gone to the last speech, the last time he was here, even though they had a lot of misgivings about it, and have been clear that they’re not planning to go this time,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal, head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who won’t be attending.

As the war draws on with more and more Palestinian civilians being killed, House and Senate leadership need to realize that inviting a prime minister accused of war crimes is not the answer, but ending weapons shipments to Israel to force an immediate cease-fire is. 

Panelists at The New Republic’s Right to Read celebration in Miami Saturday evening seemed united in their diagnosis of the state of intellectual freedom in the United States: Censorship of books in schools across the country is exceedingly unpopular but nonetheless represents a grave threat to free expression.

“There are so many more of us,” said New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult. “We just have to be a little bit louder.”

The celebration, held in the cradle of the latest wave of American censorship, lifted up the voices of activists, writers, and educators, whom AFT secretary treasurer Fedrick Ingram called “first responders” and the “vanguard” of the fight against book bans.

“Public school teachers and librarians saved my life,” said 1619 Project author Nikole Hannah-Jones.

If teachers are the vanguard of the movement challenging these prohibitions, writers like Picoult and celebrated Florida-based novelist Lauren Groff, along with panelists Jacqueline Woodson, George M. Johnson, and Ellen Hopkins, represent a powerful rear guard against the sanitization of historical education in schools. As TNR’s Alex Shephard pointed out while interviewing Picoult, book bans are about nothing less than the question of American identity itself.

The author Ashley Hope Perez reminded the audience that the real problem isn’t discussing our country’s ugly past but rather that past itself. “The thing that we should be upset about is not people talking about painful histories and ugly aspects of our past; it should be that we allowed those things to happen, that those were the experiences of generations of young people,” Perez said.

And Picoult, against the conservative canard that interrogating the country’s darkest moments “divides” us, highlighted books’ unifying capability. “Books have always bridged gaps between people,” she insisted. “Book bans are meant to create them.”

The threat of what PEN American Florida director Katie Blankenship called “educational gag orders,” designed to clamp down on books discussing race, gender, and sexuality in classrooms, extends beyond the classroom.

Groff, explaining her decision to open a bookstore selling banned books in Florida, was more emphatic: “In the places where people burn books, they will one day burn people.” Indeed, the bans are of a piece with a broad right-wing agenda that seeks to restrict civil liberties across the board.

Ingram identified book bans as part of a wider war on public schooling and low-income families. Groff connected them to the rollback of reproductive rights in red states since the Dobbs decision. “People in Florida do not have control over our own autonomy in Florida right now,” she said. “This is happening under the cloak of a lot of the book banning stuff.”

Book bans, like abortion bans and the gutting of the social service net, are unpopular, the repressive last gasps of a minority that has given up on persuasion. According to Picoult, 11 people are responsible for more than half of the country’s book bans. (In Martin County, Florida, a single disgruntled parent was behind the banning of 92 books, 20 of which were written by Picoult.)

But a nascent parental rights movement that enjoys the backing of red-state governors threatens the freedoms of millions of Americans unequipped to engage it. Ingram captured it, and the strategy to oppose book bans, succinctly: “It’s about power.”

During an appearance on Real Time With Bill Maher, Senator John Fetterman credited his near-fatal stroke with making him a conservative darling, describing it as “freeing.”

“There’s a line from the first Batman, Joker, he’s like, ‘I’ve already been dead once already. It’s very liberating,’” Fetterman told Maher on Friday. “That’s not reckless, that’s just freeing. It’s just freeing in a way. And I just think after beating all of that, I just really want to be able to say the things that I have to really believe in and not be afraid of if there’s any kind of blowback.”

Following the October 7 Hamas attack, Fetterman broke from the progressives who got him elected to saber-rattle for Israel’s brutal attacks on Gaza. His stance has largely been antagonistic, trolling protesters rallying for a cease-fire by waving an Israel flag over them, laughing at military veterans getting arrested protesting for a cease-fire, and castigating the United States for abstaining from a cease-fire resolution instead of voting against it. He has described student encampment protests as “pup tents for Hamas” and spread debunked propaganda denigrating pro-Palestine demonstrations in Philadelphia.

Since adopting an aggressively pro-Israel stance, Fetterman has also backed harsher border policies—a curious stance given that he used to point to his wife’s undocumented status as a child to tout his progressive bona fides.

Fetterman frames his seismic shift as stances he’s always had, which his brain damage simply allowed him the freedom to embrace—despite constantly describing himself as a progressive through the years, seeking endorsement from the Democratic Socialists of America, and himself endorsing progressive candidates for office.

While progressives who campaigned hard for Fetterman feel betrayed by his shift, conservatives have celebrated Fetterman’s self-described brain damage–induced embrace of right-wing positions—itself a clear signal he’s garnering the wrong audience.

“It’s heartwarming to see regular people using their brain,” said one account on X (formerly Twitter) in response to a white nationalist disinformation account boosting Fetterman’s interview with Maher.

“If only there was some way we could repeat this experiment with other elected officials,” replied another user in response to a Fox News post about how Fetterman’s brain damage “freed” him.

Pop singer Chappell Roan, whose star has quickly ascended over the last five months, announced that she recently turned down an invitation to perform for the president of the United States during the annual New York’s Governor’s Ball music festival.

“In response to the White House, who asked me to perform for Pride,” Roan said. “We want liberty, justice, and freedom for all. When you do that, that’s when I’ll come.”

The rebuffed request was confirmed by Roan’s representatives to Variety. Later in her performance, Chappell Roan, the stage persona of 26-year-old Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, continued to explain why she’d turned down the offer.

“I am in drag of the biggest queen of all,” announced the singer, who appeared dressed as the Statue of Liberty, which stood a little over a mile away  across the New York harbor. “But in case you had forgotten what’s etched on my pretty little toes: ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.’

“That means freedom and trans rights. That means freedom and women’s rights. It especially means freedom for all people in oppressed—” she paused, placing her hand over her mouth, appearing to tear up. “It especially means freedom for all oppressed people in occupied territories,” which many in the audience understood to be a reference to Israel’s deadly military campaign in Gaza and ongoing occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 

The crowd erupted into cheers, and the singer quickly pivoted to her performance. “Thank you,” she shouted. “We’re gonna do ‘Hot to Go’!”

Over the weekend, Israel Defense Forces killed 274 people in Nuseirat as part of an extraction effort that saved four hostages, while reportedly killing three others. More than 37,000 people in Gaza were killed in the last eight months.

Donald Trump appears to have an unconventional idea about how to handle the Russia-Ukraine conflict—and his allies don’t seem to have a good explanation for it.

When pressed for details on Sunday, Trump vice presidential hopeful Senator Tom Cotton explained to Fox News that Trump would likely allow Russia to claim parts of Ukraine.

“There are reports that what President Trump plans to do to end that conflict is to potentially push Ukraine to give up Crimea, parts of Donbas,” host Shannon Bream said. “If that is the plan, do you agree with that strategy? And would that be rewarding [Vladimir] Putin in order to wrap this thing up in the way that he intended to start it—and take some of that territory? Is that just giving him what he wanted?”

Such a plan would effectively reverse President Joe Biden’s policy and lose any wins that Ukraine has had in its year-and-a-half war against its superpower neighbor. But despite the plan’s shocking intentions, Cotton still didn’t deny its details.

“President Trump and his campaign have said that any reports of plans like that are not authorized, and they’re not coming from the president himself,” Cotton said. “Furthermore, President Trump has said that he strongly supports Ukraine’s strength and survival. He had a strong relationship when he was in office with President Zelenskiy.”

Cotton seemed to conveniently forget that Trump’s relationship with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy consisted mainly of withholding military aid to try to get the Eastern European nation to dig up dirt on Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Trump was impeached (the first time) for his demand.

Trump’s new whole plan is awfully similar to an idea previously pitched by biotech investor Vivek Ramaswamy. In August, the former GOP presidential candidate told CNN that the only way to break up the Russia-China alliance would be to give the Slavic nation what it wants. But even then, the plan was pitched on the false premise that the U.S. has any say in how a foreign nation divvied up its land.

During a meeting with the Ukrainian leader on Friday, Biden actually apologized for the delayed aid package, blaming its late arrival on some contentious conservative members of Congress—and possibly on Cotton, who was one of 29 Republicans to vote against the $95.3 billion foreign aid package in February. But the Arkansas lawmaker couldn’t square that when asked about it by Bream.

“Well, Shannon, he should only be pointing the finger at himself,” Cotton said of Biden. “For more than two years, Joe Biden pussyfooted around and didn’t give Ukraine the weapons it needed to defend itself.”