WASHINGTON—Some Senate Democrats voiced concerns this week about damage to free speech due to a new law that would define antisemitism. However, several Democrats co-sponsored the bill with most Republicans.
“I worry that this bill is unconstitutional and will move us far along the authoritarian direction that the Trump administration is taking us,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at Wednesday’s hearing in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
The bill would require the Department of Education to use the “ working definition ” of antisemitism, drafted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in 2016. Currently, the Department of Education has been using the same definition but has not been legally required to do so. This bill would change that.
Supporters of the bill argued that adding the definition would be an opportunity for the United States to show “that we are with those students that have been harassed, to reassure parents and their children as much as we can that they will be safe from discrimination, harassment, and even physical abuse,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), chair of the HELP committee.
Critics, however, argued the bill would crack down on free speech for students critical of Israel. They described the bill as part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to weaponize antisemitism, following protests at universities in the last few years.
The definition, which is considered “non-legally binding” by its creators, starts with: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.” It also includes 11 contemporary examples of what they say could be considered antisemitic. That list includes “making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective” and “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”
During the hearing, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) argued that the bill protects free speech but punishes harmful actions that follow speech. But Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) rejected that as violating the First Amendment right to free speech.
“Every example of antisemitism in that list is about words, not action. You can’t regulate speech,” Paul said. “The First Amendment is not about protecting good speech. In Brandenburg v. Ohio, Brandenburg was a Nazi and an antisemitic who said horrible things. The Supreme Court ruled that you can say terrible things.”
In an open letter to Congress, 10 pro-Israel organizations expressed concern about the potential passage of the Antisemitism Awareness Act.
“Voting in favor of this legislation in this current political climate would represent an endorsement of the Trump administration’s escalating efforts to weaponize antisemitism as a pretext for undermining civil rights, deporting political dissidents, and attacking the fundamental pillars of our democracy, making the Jewish community and others less safe,” the groups wrote.
“I think the bill is very restrictive, but the fundamental problem is that no one could tell you what it means,” said Douglas Laycock, an emeritus law professor at the University of Virginia and an expert on religious liberty and the First Amendment. “The ‘certain perception of Jews’ that the definition talks about is not described and not defined. If I gave you the text of a speech I was about to give, no one could tell me if I’m violating the law. ‘Unconstitutionally vague’ is also one of the problems here.”
In a statement posted on their website in February, after House Republicans reintroduced the bill in their branch, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement that “the Antisemitism Awareness Act reinforces federal policy and ensures the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism remains the standard for addressing antisemitic discrimination in education. I urge Congress to act now and pass this vital, bipartisan bill.”
Kenneth Stern, director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate at Bard College and one of the lead authors of the definition, spoke in front of the House Judiciary Committee last September. He said that while the working definition had examples related to Israel because there was “a correlation between such expressions and level of antisemitism,” it was never intended to “target or chill speech in a college campus.”
Wednesday’s Senate hearing ended without a vote on the bill, but the committee adjourned and will resume its work on the bill in the future. An Anti-Defamation League spokesperson said to the Jewish Insider that they are “committed to pursuing every possible avenue to advance this important bill and will continue working with our bipartisan partners in Congress to see it signed into law.”
Leonardo Pini is a graduate student at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, specializing in politics, policy, and foreign affairs. Born and raised in Italy, he worked professionally for the local edition of Italy’s national outlet “la Repubblica”, covering crime news. He also freelanced for “L’Espresso” magazine on foreign affairs and social issues. He produced two podcasts for RAI Radio, an Italian state radio, on asylum patients and assisted suicide. During his time at Medill, he was a fellow at Capitol News Illinois reporting on Illinois’ legislation.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.