May, 23 2024, 02:30pm EDT
Jewish Voice for Peace Students Respond to Congressional Hearing on Campus Antisemitism
Today the House Committee on Education and the Workforce held a hearing with the presidents of Northwestern University, Rutgers University, and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) titled “Calling for Accountability: Stopping Antisemitic College Chaos.” This hearing, the fourth of its kind, serves to distract the American public from the Israeli military’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, where every single university is destroyed. Over the past months, thousands of Jewish students have joined their peers on college campuses in calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. In speaking out against the Israeli military’s brutal violence, which has claimed the lives of over 35,000 Palestinians, these students are upholding the most sacred Jewish commandment, pikuach nefesh, the commandment to save lives.
“I joined the protests calling out Northwestern’s complicity in the Israeli military’s destruction of Gaza because as the descendant of people who fled genocide I understand that never again must mean never again for anyone. Despite attacks from counter protests and condemnation from Congress, I will keep calling for an end to genocide. It is what Jewish tradition requires of me.” - Paz Baum, Jewish Voice for Peace at Northwestern University, class of 2025.
"I am a Jewish student at UCLA who proudly participated in the protest calling on our university to divest from genocide. I felt completely safe in the encampment until we were attacked by pro-genocide counterprotesters and the police. These hearings are designed to stoke divisions so that we forget who is actually unsafe–the students of Gaza where every university has been destroyed. " - Benjamin Kersten, Member of JVP at UCLA, fifth year PHD student studying Jewish Art History.
“This hearing has nothing to do with keeping Jewish students on campus safe, and is solely designed as part of a broader campaign to silence anti-war activism and dissent on college campuses. MAGA Republicans are merging attempts to censor students and faculty speaking out for Palestinian rights with a broader culture war campaign against DEI, critical race theory, LGBTQ rights, and more.” - Beth Miller, Political Director of JVP Action
“It is offensive and dangerous that right-wing Republicans are putting on a show hearing under the pretense of protecting Jewish safety when in fact the only thing they are protecting are the profits of weapons companies and ongoing U.S. complicity in Israeli war crimes. Congress is using these hearings to distract from the very point of the principled anti-genocide student movement: the US and Israeli governments continue this genocide despite mass opposition.” -Stefanie Fox, Executive Director Jewish Voice for Peace
For almost eight months, the Israeli military has waged a genocidal campaign in Gaza leading to the deaths of more than 35,000 Palestinians including 13,000 children. The Israeli military has bombed the entirety of Gaza, damaged all universities in Gaza, displaced millions, and catalyzed mass starvation. The United States government gives more than $3.8 billion to the Israeli military every year and approved an additional $14 billion in military funding last February. Polls consistently show that the vast majority of American voters want the Israeli military’s destruction of Gaza to stop, yet most elected officials have failed to call for a ceasefire.
Jewish Voice for Peace is a national, grassroots organization inspired by Jewish tradition to work for a just and lasting peace according to principles of human rights, equality, and international law for all the people of Israel and Palestine. JVP has over 200,000 online supporters, over 70 chapters, a youth wing, a Rabbinic Council, an Artist Council, an Academic Advisory Council, and an Advisory Board made up of leading U.S. intellectuals and artists.
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'Republicans Created This Crisis on Purpose': Federal Data Shows ACA Enrollment Plunging
"This coverage collapse was a choice that Congress made. As a result, millions more will end up uninsured, living sicker, dying younger, and being one emergency away from financial ruin."
Jun 29, 2026
The Trump administration quietly released data last week showing a sharp decline in the number of Americans enrolled in health insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchanges, a widely predicted outcome caused by congressional Republicans' refusal to extend subsidies that helped people buy coverage.
The new data, published Friday on the Department of Health and Human Services' website, shows that 19.2 million people were enrolled in ACA marketplace plans as of February—a decline of more than 5 million since the start of President Donald Trump's second term.
Last year, Republicans repeatedly blocked Democratic efforts to enact a temporary extension of the enhanced ACA tax credits, whose expiration at the start of 2026 led insurers to jack up premiums, pricing many out of coverage entirely. In focus groups, some Americans facing premium spikes said they would be forced to cut back on groceries or ration their medications to afford coverage.
“This dramatic decrease of millions of Americans losing health insurance is the result of deliberate decisions by the president and congressional leaders—it is what we feared but expected, given the end of the enhanced tax credit and other policies that make it harder to get on and stay on coverage," said Anthony Wright, executive director of the advocacy group Families USA. "As a result, millions more will end up uninsured, living sicker, dying younger, and being one emergency away from financial ruin."
Wright dismissed the Trump administration's attempt to explain away the coverage losses by claiming the numbers show a decline in "phantom" enrollment and fraud, calling that narrative "an insult to every person who became uninsured or underinsured."
"These results are real for the millions who faced premiums doubling, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for coverage. The resulting price spikes and coverage losses are real for all who buy coverage as individuals, including gig workers, small business owners, young adults, seniors not quite of Medicare age, and many others," said Wright. "The consequences are now undeniable: millions dropped from the rolls, and yet another year of double-digit premium increases."
The lapse of enhanced ACA subsidies—which were established in 2021 during the Biden administration—alongside the roughly $900 billion in Medicaid cuts included in the Republican budget package that Trump signed into law last summer amounts to what analysts, advocates, and Democratic lawmakers say is the largest assault on federal healthcare programs in US history.
"We weren’t being hysterical. We knew this would happen," said Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) in response to the new enrollment figures. "When Republicans passed the Big Ugly Bill and cut funding for healthcare, they literally signed away millions of Americans’ ability to afford health insurance. And now it’s happening."
According to the Congressional Budget Office, around 16 million people across the US could lose health coverage by 2034 due to the Trump-GOP law, and millions of children have lost coverage since last year.
“Trump and Republicans are engineering the most devastating assault on healthcare in history, and today’s numbers prove it," Leslie Dach, chair of the advocacy group Protect Our Care, said on Friday. "They ripped away the tax credits that helped millions afford coverage, gutted funding to help people enroll, and sabotaged the ACA at every turn. They knew exactly what would happen, they chose to do it anyway, and it’s going to get worse."
“Among the three million who have lost coverage are parents skipping cancer screenings, patients rationing insulin, and families who are now one medical emergency away from financial ruin," said Dach. "Republicans created this crisis on purpose, and while Americans pay for it with their health and their lives, billionaires are cashing their tax cut checks."
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'We Should Go to Court': Khanna Says Latest US Bombings of Iran a 'Blatant Violation' by Trump
"Trump must stop this war now—or we will take him to court to compel him to do so."
Jun 28, 2026
Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna on Sunday reiterated his position that new bombings of Iran by the US military over the weekend are a direct violation of a War Powers Resolution passed by Congress earlier this month and said legal action was in the works to challenge the president's ability to carry on with the unprovoked war he first launched alongside Israel in February.
"These strikes are a blatant violation of the War Powers Resolution that we passed," Khanna said in a social media post Saturday after Trump acknowledged strikes on numerous Iranian targets. "Trump must stop this war now—or we will take him to court to compel him to do so."
In a Saturday statement on his Truth Social platform, Trump said the US had "struck Iranian missile and drone storage locations, and coastal radar sites, for violating the Cease Fire Agreement, AGAIN!"
"It is very possible that they will never learn!" the president exclaimed. "There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started. If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!"
The latest direct exchange of hostilities—that began with US bombings of Iranian targets Friday and included Iran targeting US allies in Bahrain and Kuwait on Sunday—come over lingering disagreements about how vessels will or will not pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
"Congress passed the first War Powers Resolution in history, legally compeling an end to war on Iran," the anti-war group Just Foreign Policy said following Friday's strikes. "This means Trump's strikes today are an unprecedented Constitutional violation **Trump must be taken to court** to honor the American people's demand that we exit this war — NOW."
Iran Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that “interference in [the Strait], any attempt to establish new or separate arrangements from those currently being carried out by the Islamic Republic of Iran, will only lead to further complications, delay the reopening of the strait of Hormuz, and increase the level of tension.”
Araghchi called for a regional agreement to settle the issue of passage through the Strait, but indicated the US should have no role in determining the outcome of the settlement. On Saturday, the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) said that the US—"whose very nature is characterized by breaking commitments and violating agreements"—was guilty of firing on coastal targets but that such attacks would not deter the Iranian military from exerting control over the Strait.
"Henceforth," said the IRGC, "vessels found to be in violation will be dealt with more firmly than before."
On June 23, a 50-48 vote in the Senate saw a war powers resolution pass the upper chamber after the House also passed a similar resolution on June 3 to bring an end to the war started by the US and Israel on February 28. But as Khanna explained Sunday, speaking with journalist David Sirota, these votes have not been enough to curb the president's actions.
🚨NEW: Congress just passed resolutions to block Trump from continuing the Iran War. The resolutions carry the force of law under the text of the 1973 War Powers Act. Now, @RoKhanna tells me he is working to organize lawmakers to bring an historic court case to enforce the law. pic.twitter.com/IBH7dbKcxG
— David Sirota (@davidsirota) June 28, 2026
Asked by Sirota what he would be doing to compel Trump to adhere to the congressional opposition to Trump's ongoing aggression against Iran, Khanna said, "we should go to court."
Noting that former Republican Congressman Tom Campbell, back in 1999, had taken former President Bill Clinton to court for violating a War Powers Resolution during the US-backed NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Khanna said he is preparing to follow a similar course.
"This is something that we should try to enforce," Khanna said. "And I'm working with my colleagues to see how we can get a group to take this case to the courts."
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“It’s time to turn the heat on the fossil fuel giants that caused this heatwave but are doing nothing to cover the costs."
Jun 28, 2026
The head of the World Health Organization on Sunday said the deadly heat wave now boiling across Europe—which French authorities say caused more than 1,000 deaths last week alone—is the predicted and horrifying result that climate scientists and human rights advocates have been warning about for decades.
In a social post Sunday, WHO secretary-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, "Driven by climate change and global warming, the phenomenon of the 'once-in-a-generation' heatwave is now occurring nearly annual. We were warned."
Citing over 1,300 excess deaths across Europe in the last week—as temperatures broke records in nation after nation—Tedros added that "heat stress is often called the 'silent killer'—and European homes, workplaces and schools were not built for these temperatures."
"Europe is the fastest-warming continent on Earth, heating at twice the global average," he said. "Right now 150 million people are living under extreme heat, hundreds have died, schools are shut, grids are buckling."
According to the Associated Press:
Germany marked a new record for the third day in a row with 41.7 degrees Celsius (107 degrees Fahrenheit) in Neißemünde, near the border with Poland. The Czech Republic also experienced its hottest day ever with 41.1 C (106.4 F).
A new study from the World Weather Attribution, a Europe-based collaboration of scientists, reported Friday that the record-breaking heat and humidity in Europe this past week would not have been possible without climate change.
The rapid study found that the heat would have been virtually impossible just five decades ago, and is 200 times more likely today than it would have been 20 years ago.
On Sunday, authorities in France said over 1,000 excess deaths attributable to the heat were recorded last week, with at least 100 or more over the previous 24 hours.
The threat of extreme heat related to the climate crisis is not only in Europe.
In 2024, a peer-reviewed study in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that heat-related deaths in the United States rose 117% between 1999 and 2023.
Last year, a joint analysis by The Guardian and Pro Publica estimated that the industry-friendly policies of US President Donald Trump could result in the otherwise preventable deaths of 1.3 million people worldwide over the next 80 years, most of them among poor people in nations that did very little to cause the planetary crisis driven by the consumption of fossil fuels.
In a comment last week, as the deadly heatwave made international headlines, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was among those who pointed his finger directly at Trump for his vicious policies related to energy and climate.
"There is a record-breaking heat wave in Europe and hundreds are dying," said Sanders. "There is drought all across America and farmers are going out of business. Yet, Trump thinks climate change is a 'hoax' and cuts funding for sustainable energy. Insane. He is threatening the very future of our planet."
On Friday, the climate group 350.org said the polluting companies, namely those in the coal, oil, and gas industry, should be made to pay for the deaths and damage they have caused and continue to cause.
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“Forcing fossil fuel companies to cut emissions and pay their fair share is the only effective lasting response," she added. "Half-measures won’t cool this crisis, only a faster shift to renewables can."
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