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You're in Washington, where I am Joe is not Today that we heard President Biden speak from the Roosevelt Room of the White House before he went on to an event at North Carolina or in North Carolina today addressing what we're seeing on college campuses and saying, in part, Joe, there should be no place on any campus, no place in America for anti semitism, and goes on to say,
no hate place for hate speech. And it was kind of these ideas of hate speech and the definition of anti semitism that was in question yesterday in the House of Representatives where they passed a bill that would get to that definition and how the Department of Education specifically should be dealing with it.
That's right, seeking to widen that definition in this case. The vote was three twenty to ninety one, Kayley, so there was overwhelming support, but a lot of progressive Democrats, more than expected, voted against this measure on concerns that it was encroaching potentially on First Amendment rights. But you're
correct here. This would the idea would be essentially to set the bar for where one could pull funding federal funding from a university here based on some of the language and the signage that we have seen, some of it very ugly and definitely anti semitic, depending on the protest that we're looking at here, and we've been spending some time talking about this this hour. Want to bring in Congressman Brian's style. The Republican from Wisconsin joins us
live from Capitol Hill, having voted for this measure. It's good to see you, Congressman. How would you answer critics of this bill who say that it does encroach on First Amendment rights.
There's always a balance between individual's First Amendment rights in areas of speech that cross the line. What we want to do is make sure that we're empowering the Department of Education to put a backbone into university presidents to end the ugly rise of anti semitism that we see on campuses. We've seen protests that have breached from First Amendment rights clearly into violations of law. We've seen that in my home state Wisconsin. We've seen it in campuses
across the country. Every student has a right to feel safe on their campus, in particular Jewish students, and at a period of time where we've seen the ugly rise of anti Semitism, I think it's important to send the message that we're standing with the men and women, in particular of the Jewish faith who are under threat across the country.
Well, Congressman, certainly we heard a message from President Biden earlier today when he spoke from the White House. He will speak again next Tuesday on Capitol Hill about anti Semitism. What more would you like to see the President do domestically, knowing that in large part these protests were ignited by something that is happening abroad geopolitics, rather than domestic politics, what exactly is the resolution in your mind here?
Part of this is standing strong with the men and women of law enforcement who are trying to maintain public safety on college campuses across the country. Where you have protests that correctly use the first Amendment that's allowed, but where those protests turn into illegal activities breaching the law. Threats, violence, etc. That's playing out on a regular basis on campuses across
the country right now. I think it's important to make a strong statement that we stand with the men and women of law enforcement to be able to come in and re establish public safety on our college campuses immediately. If college campuses like Columbia or in my home state and Madison, Wisconsin had done that sooner, we would have been better served.
Is this that the congressman we're told the Senate has no plans to even act on this legislation. Is this essentially a messaging bill from the House.
Well, I have a lot of concerns with the inaction of the United States Senate number one, as they haven't acted on the House's pass border security measure, and so Chuck Schumer and the Democrats and the Senate continue to stonewall lots of good legislation. I'd love to see the Senate take a lot more up or down votes because I think we can get a lot more done on behalf of the American people.
Well, there are still some things that the Senate is working on, sir, if not actually Hr two, which I think we all knew upon passage when it passed with no single Democratic vote in the House, was never probably going to make it through the Senate. But they are working on the FAA reauthorization up against a deadline of May tenth. There's questions around what amendments could look like
and exactly the timeline here. But we also know some things may not be included in that FAA bill, which could be a vehicle for other things to get through Congress, including stable coin and safe banking legislation, which I know you pay attention to as a member of the Financial Services Committee. If it doesn't get attached to this piece of legislation, congressman, is it going to get done in this Congress.
I always rather see things passes single issue vehicles. That's not always the case of how things get done in Washington. At the end of the day, I think we would be well served to pass both of those pieces of legislation, in particular to crypto side. I can't tell you how many INDI visuals that I know in the innovation space as it relates to crypto that are interested in a
US based legal framework. If we were successful in passing the House Committee passed legislation, we would have an opportunity to bring a lot of that development work here onshore into the United States. This is a huge opportunity for the future of finance.
How about a legal framework for cannabis companies, Congressman, that seems to be the same conversation we keep hearing. Is it stable coin and safe banking attached potentially to this FAA bill? Would you be comfortable with both of those hitching a ride?
The Safe Banking Act, I think is less actually in the policy of marijuana, which I'm not a big fan of, but I think it's saying we don't want the social policy inside bank regulation. We see that time and again from both the left and the right, where we see individuals trying to place social policy on bank regulators. Bank regulators should be focused in on the risk that's existing in particular to depositors, and so that vehicle, though, might
need to find a ride. I'd rather have single issue votes. Congress in Washington would be far better served if we had more up or down vote on single issue bills. Unfortunately, that's not how this place works. So if we can figure out a way to get that across the line, at the end of the day, I'd be supportive.
Of it well.
Speaking of the workings of the place, sir, it has been difficult to get anything across the line. Many rule votes, just procedural votes have gone down in this Congress. It's been very difficult for your Speaker, Mike Johnson. And next week, if your colleague Marjorie Taylor Green is to be believed, she will be forcing a motion to vacate, which Democrats have said that they will vote to table. How weekend, How weakend will Johnson be if Democrats step in to help him on this.
Speaker Johnson's done an admirable job and incredibly difficult circumstances. I think it would be a mistake to have that bill brought forward. If it does, I hopefully we are able to table that quickly. It's really functions is a distraction, a distraction to the biggest issues of the day. We should be far more focused on working to bring inflation down and secure the US Mexico border rather than focusing in on the internal politics. But as you say, it's
a narrowly divided Congress. Things are difficult here. But hopefully we can dispense with this quickly.
I know you want to support the speaker and you will support the Speaker if this comes to the floor, Congressman, But do you worry about the impression that it will give your conference if it requires Democrats to save Mike Johnson, Does that weaken him in the long term?
I don't think it does. I think what people are going to look at as the record, we've actually done a lot of work here in the House of Representatives, despite a lot of the rhetoric questioning whether or not we would be able to get bills done. Not only did we navigate through the debt ceiling now about a year ago, but under the leadership of Speaker Johnson, we actually reduce spending year over year for non defense, non veteran spending. That's a huge step in the right direction.
Hasn't been done in Washington in over a year. So again, I think there's a long wreck of what Speaker Johnson has done very well, and I think at the end of the day, if this is ultimately brought forward, it'll be dispensed with quickly.
While we talk about the leader of your chamber, sir, i'd like to ask you about the de facto leader of your party overall. Because Donald Trump was in your home state of Wisconsin yesterday. He actually gave an interview to one of your local outlets, the Milwaukee Journal Centennial, in which he was asked whether or not he would accept the results of the election in November. His answer, sir, was, if everything's honest, I'd gladly accept the results. If it's not,
you have to fight for the right of the country. Congressman, would you tell your constituents in Wisconsin that they have any reason to believe that our election will not be honest.
I think we got a great opportunity, not only in Wisconsin but across the country to have a safe and secure election. I've been working on election integrity legislation here in the House that I think could actually garner bipartisan support and move us forward. There's opportunity to change the law, in particular as it relates to foreign funds that continue to find their way into US electoral politics. I think
there's opportunities to move us forward. Broadly speaking, we have a strong election system, and in particular, making sure that people take advantage of voting is good for our democracy. The more people that vote, the better off we are. And encouraging people to come out and vote legally is going to be essential this fall.
Well, Congressman, it's not lost on us that the new chair of the Wisconsin Republican Party actually worked for your campaign, so your insights are meaningful there. Donald Trump has said a couple of things about elections in the past couple of days. He also held an interview where he talked about election integrity and then posted on truth Social about mail in voting. And this really got our attention because he has been encouraging Republicans not to use mail in options.
He writes, absentee voting, early voting, and election day voting are all good options. Republicans must make a plan, register and vote. Does that mean, Congressman, assuming that you agree here, and I'm pretty sure you do, that, we are not going to see people filming, for instance, dropboxes when people go to vote this November.
I think we've got a great opportunity here to encourage everyone to come out and vote, and in particular for Republicans to use all legal tools to make sure that
we're getting the vote out. Low propensity voters are disproportionately likely to favor President Trump, and so at the end of the day, encouraging people to take advantage of every opportunity to vote favors the president favors Republicans, and we need to make sure that we're driving that message home that it is safe, that it is legal to vote by mail in a state like Wisconsin. We should encourage everyone to participate in the upcoming fall election.
All right, Congressman Brian Style, the Republican from Wisconsin, joining us live from Capitol Hill today on Blueberg Television and Radio. Thank you so much for your time, sir, We appreciate it. As always, we want to continue this conversation now and get some reaction with Lincoln Mitchell. He's a political analyst and teaches in the Department of Political Science and the
School of in National and Public Affairs at Columbia University. So, Lincoln, we just ended our conversation with the congressman there on this question of election integrity, which of course Donald Trump has called into a question many many times before. Do we have any real reason to believe that whatever the result of the election in November is that it will be accepted?
You know, that's a fascinating question, because I think people when they hear that question say, you know, is the Trump line about election fraud? Have any validity, and the answer to that is no, it doesn't. However, there are important ways in which our elections here in the United States do not meet international standards onto which the United States has signed as an agreement for free and fair elections.
I'll give you a couple of examples that in many states there are different obstacles for different people from voting right. It is just flat up more difficult if you are in an African American county in Georgia than in a democratic than a white county. That partisan elected officials make election decisions. One of the member Brad Rafinsberger, who refused to be intimidated by Donald Trump. But it is notable
that these are partisan election officials. It's a Republican election officials who's much more vulnerable than say, somebody from a nonpartisan commission. My concern about election fraud, the potential for real election fraud here in the United States, is in the form of voter suppression, which Trump has succeeded in getting us to stop talking about. So my sense at that I'm balanced. American elections are good. They're among the very best in the world. The kind of fraud that
Trump is talking about basically doesn't happen. But if we want to make our democracy stronger, we should create barriers make it easier for people to vote. I was fascinated by your interview with Congressman Styles. First of all, I thought he's a very smart guy who made some very good points, and I frankly appreciate his concern for Jewish students at the University of Wisconsin. My son is graduating from there for two weeks and he is a Jewish
student there. So we have been talking about this. But the barriers to vote in Madison and Milwaukee are very substantial. Bring down those barriers and then encourage everybody to vote.
Well, we've been talking a lot about election integrity here in the role that Congress might play in it as well. Lincoln, I don't know where your head is on this flip to mail in voting from Donald Trump, But could that mean the beginning is at a crack here, the beginning of some reconciliation with the way our elections work.
I mean, you know the crack will be when Donald Trump is no longer at the center of this. Because I suspect people like Congressman Styles, people like I don't know even even Mitch McConnell, like, they know the elections are pretty good, and they kind of just go along with this because of Trump. If Trump were to stop talking about election fraud, stop seeing elections, there's a for Trump. As I said before, there's only two outcomes. I win or it's fraudulent, and we have to move past that
because that's nonsense. And I think any Republican who was not just just deeply in the trunk cult knows that.
All right, Lincoln, Kaylee, we have a lot more to talk about from Washington and New York, including the campus protests and the anti Semitism bill that passed yesterday. We talked to Brian Style about that. A lot of progressive Democrats are not too happy about where this is going.
And it's unclear whether or not that bill will base a vote in the Senate, what real difference therefore a House past bill might make, But of course it has great political weight potentially, as we're seeing the pressure growing on President Biden to address this issue, as evidenced by the fact that he addressed it from the White House the Roosevelt Room earlier today. So we'll have more with our Political panel on that next On Bloomberg TV and Radio.
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Great to be here at World Headquarters in New York, Kylee, I'm across the desk from Charlie Pellot. It's a rare treat and welcome to our listeners and viewers on Bloomberg Radio and TV. The news really was coming from Washington this morning, Kayley, as the President chose to speak kind of a late scheduled deal here, and it really speaks to the pressure that he's been facing to get in front of and address the pro Palestinian protests that we've
been seeing on college campuses around the country. The epicenter right here in New York on Columbia University.
Absolutely, although you can see this evidenced all across the country. Here in Washington, it's at GW not too far from the White House on the West Coast. We all saw what happened at the wee hours of this morning at UCLA, and that is why perhaps you finally saw the President addressing this issue from the Roosevelt Room, in part in prepared remarks in which he said things like there's a right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos.
And he also answered a few questions. Take a listen, and the protest forced you to be consider the policies from arch to the region. Oh, do you think the National Guard should intervene? A no on both counts. Let's go back now to Lincoln Mitchell, a political analyst who also teaches at Columbia University in the Department of Political
Science in the School of International and Public Affairs. So, Lincoln, we heard the President saying no to the National Guard, but perhaps more telling also saying no. This has not made him rethink his policy toward Israel. Not the protest, perhaps not what we're seeing in Gaza either. Is the only way that the President can get him out of this very difficult political situation domestically, to start talking differently about that policy, to maybe consider changing.
It to a substantial extent. He has already changed his policy on Israel. If you go back to November December of lat year, October he was completely embracing a net N Yahu, the right wing government in Israel, and completely uncritical. And Chuck Schumer made a speech in March on the Florida the United States Senate, and since then we saw Biden beginning to put a lot more pressure on Israel. Frankly,
pressure that should have been there all along. So Biden is has to get brokeer some kind of by the administration, has to broker some kind of a ceasefire agreement here. It's going to be extremely difficult. But we should also note that ever since October seventh, the cost of not supporting Israel politically and again I assume listeners will have a range of opinions on this from a human or a moral perspective, but politically would have been a terrible mistake.
So walking away from Israel for Biden, first of all, I think it's something he just cares deeply about on a personal level. But it also means walking away from a second term. And he is smart enough and has been around long enough to know that is true the protest, which is not to say the protests don't have a lot of support. They do, and that's the dilemma. He may be walking away from a second term anyway because of the protests. But I think the protests are not
going to move him. Events on the ground will.
He may be walking away from a second term just because of the protest Lincoln.
I'm I'm deeply afraid of that, and I'm going to tell you the scenario that in my one of my WhatsApp groups, which is of which I am one of several Jewish educa Jews who are in the higher education business are talking about, which is this, here's our nightmare scenario in my community. The Muslim American vote either doesn't turn out or votes for you know, Cornell West or
probably Cornell West. Similarly, with younger votes, younger voters who are more radical, the events on college campuses push more voters who are wavering back to Trump because they're concerned about security and stability, which of course Trump is an agent defensability. We can talk about that later. And then what happens is Trump wins and who gets blamed in
that scenario the Jews. That's the scenario I'm most afraid of, because this rise of anti Semitism on the left but also on the right is very real and this could get even uglater.
Well and Lincoln. I was reading one of your recent posts on substack, where you talk about how a movement that really started anti war in Gaza has started to morph more toward anti Israel, Antizioni anti Semitic, as we've seen in recent days. Congress is attempting to address that. They passed a bill just last night, massive bipartisan margin on the using a specific, broader definition of anti Semitism,
especially in the Department of Education. There was a lot of concern though about how that could potentially run into conflict with First Amendment rights to free speech. How do you think about that?
I'm really troubled by this, im. I don't believe you can legislate away anti semitism. If we could have, we would have maybe, And I'll tell you what something very specifically that troubles me. As recently as I believe today, Tom Cotton has tweeted about sorrows backed judges. That is anti semitism. That is suggesting that a shady Jewish billionaire, which is how they portrayed him, is behind some movement. This dovetails with anti Semitic tropes that have been around
for millennium, and this bill doesn't cover that. The thing about anti Semitism is that it's extremely complicated, and both parties have a problem with it, and neither party is looking sufficiently within their own party, and we saw that in the hearings, and we saw that with this bill. I thought Jerry Nadler's speech was very important. Jerry Nadler is the longest serving Jewish member of Congress but has a very strong record on Israel issues and on Jewish issues.
I know very few Jews who are enthusiastic about this bill, unless they're already on the right. So the anti Semitism is real, We're going to have to either figure something out to do about it, or the lived experience of Jewish Americans will change dramatically in the coming years. But
I don't think this bill does that. What this bill does is it allows for those on the left, and I'm including people in the Free Palestine movement, to simply think of anti Semitism as some kind of a right wing talking point rather than something real, so that they don't examine their own activities. Because let me tell you, I've talked to a lot of these students. Many of them are wrestling with this. Many of them aren't processing how this is as anti semitism Semitic always, but they're
open to hearing it, and this gets their backup. So I don't think this helps. I think this may help someone get re elected. This may help somebody get more support among right wing Jews. It doesn't help the Jews.
You mentioned Jerry Nadler. He had quite a statement after the anti semitism bill passed the House as a deeply omitted Zionists, urging colleagues to reject the bill. He characterized it Lincoln is misguided, threatening to chill constitutionally protected speech. Nadler's actually co sponsored other bills that were aimed against anti semitism. Should this have been a different piece of legislation?
Yes, I mean the First Amendment issues here are real. And what Nadler you know, unlike a lot of these people now there's Jewish And I would submit that if an African American person stood up and spoke about racism on the floor of the United States Representatives, many white people might think, Hm, he has perspective that we should listen to. And I think that's true here with Nadler. What he sees is not just that this is a
First Amendment problem. But the perception that Jews are aligning with the right wing to stop limit First Amendment rights is very dangerous, and it's very dangerous for Jewish people. And I think Nadler gets that because that's the perspective he's coming from. And I'm not saying that all of these right all of these Republicans have voted for this bill, are antisemitic. I'm not saying that. I think Tom Cotton, for example, has dabbled way too much in anti Semitic code.
I think Donald Trump has used anti Semitic imagery throughout his campaigns. I think he has surrounded himself known anti Semites. And I've never heard a word of this about this from Mike Johnson or Mike Lawler or Elsie Stephanic. And I'm saying this, and I will also say I have many gentile friends on the left who have told me over and over how confident they are that there's no anti Semitism in what's going on in college campuses, and
that is not true at all. So this is not making a partisan point here except to say that both parties need to look inward if they want to solve this problem. And not make it a way just to deepen the partisan divide at the expense of Jewish Americans.
I'm really glad you could join us today. Lincoln Mitchell political analysts and again teaches in the Department of Political Science, School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He speaks to this issue firsthand, and it's great to have you back. Lincoln. Thank you for joining us. We'd like to keep this conversation going as we bring in Laura Davison, of course covers our political coverage, leads our political coverage, i should say, in Washington, and is with us now
in our Washington bureau, Laura. The stakes here are certainly high for Joe Biden. Lincoln just outlined a scenario in which he could lose the election on this campus protest issue alone. Does the campaign have that same worry?
The campaign publicly is not expressing worry. They said, look, you know, voters are focused on the economy, but privately, there is more worry that you know that this is becoming a much bigger issue. This has been all over the news now for you know, going on two weeks and sort of with the the backlash you know of the police clearing these encampments and some of these things.
There is more sympathy on the side of the protesters here. However, in the remarks we saw from the President today, he said he went out these unscheduled came and said, look, students have a right to protest if it's peaceful. When it veers into vandalism, into going into buildings, into you know, hate speech, things like antisemitic remarks, that's where it's a problem.
So that really tells you where the campaign is. They think, Look that the majority of the American people are behind you know, sort of law and order and not having you know, protests are rough across college campuses.
So that's what he's trying to do to address the domestic situation. In the meantime, members of his administration, like Secretary of State Antony Blincoln, have been in the Middle East this week, still trying to effort a ceasefire, albeit a temporary one, between Israel and Hamas is the ceasefire really the only thing that Biden can do to solve not just problems abroad, but these problems here at home, and that's not entirely in his control.
It isn't but a ceasefire. You know, we heard it from from Blincoln earlier this week. When asked you what if this doesn't come together, he just said it just has to. So that's where you really see the administration is pinning all their hopes and dreams on this. And I think there's also a realization too that you know, school is about to be let out for the summer.
You know, if there's a ceasefire, that this issue really calms down, students go home for the summer and then it's not as much of a problem, you know, when they're back in the fall. You know, if this were happening, you know what's been happening the past two weeks in October, it would be a much bigger problem for the administration and for Biden's reelection. Right now, they're betting that this will be, you know, a memory of the distant past,
you know, in a couple months. All right, Bloomberg Politics Editor Laura Davison, thank you so much, and Joe, as we talk about the summer months, does call to mind. We have conventions coming up, including a Democratic convention in Chicago, and a lot of people have been mentioning nineteen sixty eight in the same sentence as convention. Lateley, it's something to consider.
Well, it's something to consider, and you better believe that those planning security for both conventions are well aware of that conversation. And we'll be talking a lot more about the preparations getting closer. We'll have more ahead on Bloomberg.
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We now bring you to the Senate. This is a conversation, Kaylie, that we've been looking forward to. Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois joins us as we see motion here on this bill to reauthorize the FAA. As a matter of fact, it cleared its first Senate procedural hurdle just yesterday, and Senator I want to welcome you back to Bloomberg. Will this work get done before expiration?
Yes, it will. I'm very excited. We're going to have the vote on them and the motion to proceed today and then we'll vote on some amendments and final passage by the end of next week, which will be just in time for the May tenth deadline.
So Senator, just to be clear, you don't expect that you will need some kind of short term reauthorization to allow that amendment process to play out.
No, I don't expect it. This is a very bypart of bill, and I know there's some amendments, but even the amendments are not too egregious. We have some that are you know, that are going to be highly contested, but I think they'll move along fairly quickly. But this is a really good bill we work very hard on in a bipartisan by camera way, and it is truly needed for the safety of our aviation system.
Well, speak to our listeners and viewers about that, Senator, because I just want people to understand what it is you're reauthorizing and what the risks would be to not meet that deadline. Because people are waking up every day to wild stories about airlines, about close calls on tarmacx wheels falling off, planes, going off runways. To what extent could this help to shore up safety in our aviation system?
Well, significantly, we increase by seven foot the funding available for training pilots, mechanics, maintenance workers and air traffic controllers. And in fact, for the first time in well over a decade, we are funding the FAA to uh failed their Air Traffic Controller Academy, so every seat that's available is going to be filled. We have a shortage of air traffic controllers right now, and that's part of the
problem as well. And then also we are funding the FAA to an extent that it can actually hire new people to provide those safety inspections of those manufacturers to make sure that they are living up to the highest standards.
And so what has been happening over the years is that the FAA funding has been held steady or has been falling over time when you compare it to inflation, and we've lost a lot of experienced people, both with the buyouts wanted by the airlines during COVID and also retirements. Even within the FAA, we can hire replacements, and now we're getting to a place where we're hitting the reset button.
We're going to fund the training programs are both on the commercial side but also the governmental side, to make sure that we have the best trained people to help keep our aviation system safe.
All right, Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, the Democrat, thank you so much for being with us. I wish we had more time with you today on Bloomberg Television and radio, but we sincerely appreciate you joining us, and just for our DC listeners and viewers. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia Joe tweeting DCA already extremely overcrowded. He will fight tooth and nail to cram more to stop cramming more flights onto the runway, but that's included in this bill.
All I know is my rafters are shaken.
Kaylie s.
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