Rep. Mast to Newsmax: GOP Can Do Better Than Bill on Antisemitism

Republicans can do better than symbolic legislation when it comes to antisemitism on college campuses, says Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla.

The House on Wednesday passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act amid unrest on college campuses. The bill requires the Department of Education to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism when enforcing federal anti-discrimination laws.

"Why would we fund the Department of Education that gives billions of dollars to these institutions teaching antisemitic hatred, where it's just this rot that's inside of their board of governors and their boards of admissions and their tenured professors?" Mast told Newsmax's "The Chris Salcedo Show" on Wednesday.

"Why would we fund that? That's resolving to continue these Democratic priorities, and it should have never happened. I totally agree with that, and that has to be the line, and that's the line, I think, if you get a Donald Trump in there to go out there and do it again, but it makes no sense. It's just pure rot in these institutions of liberal indoctrination," he added.

The bill, which had 15 Democrat co-sponsors, passed 320-91.

Seventy Democrats voted against it, including Rep. Jerry Nadler, the longest-serving Jewish House Democrat.

"This bill threatens to chill constitutionally protected speech," Nadler, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said Monday during a panel on the legislation. "Speech that is critical of Israel alone does not constitute unlawful discrimination … the bill sweeps too broadly."

It's unclear when — or if — the bill will be taken up in the Senate.

Mast also suggested Republicans shouldn't continue to fund Democrats' agenda.

"It is a problem," he told Salcedo.

"It would be a problem for me if I voted for funding those agendas. I didn't vote to fund those agendas for those reasons. You have to talk about the identity of the GOP, the identity of the Republican Party. It can't be, We believe in limited government. We believe in adherence to the Constitution. We believe in fiscal conservancy, but ... the Republican Party has to get rid of the 'but' and put a period or an exclamation point at the end of that."

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