New Bipartisan Bill Seeks To Outlaw Criticism of Israel and Jewish Power

Last year’s defeat of the Antisemitism Awareness Act (AAA) by a coalition of progressive Democrats and patriotic Republicans caught the Jewish community off guard.

According to a report by Jewish Insider, Chuck Schumer and his Republican collaborator’s attempt to sneak the AAA into the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act was thwarted when a coalition of nationalist podcasters such as Tucker Carlson and various Palestine sympathetic left-wing groups called attention to its draconian provisions and drew backlash to the bill.

Rather than give up, Jewish groups reeling from the defeat have decided to launch a renewed offensive, this time attacking opposition to their Zionist agenda at its root: freedom of speech, especially on social media.

In May and June, a bipartisan coalition of 15 House Republicans and 14 Democrats formally sponsored the Jewish American Security Act (JASA), a piece of legislation that if passed would constitute one of the most sweeping attacks on the First Amendment in American history. The bill enjoys practically universal backing from Jewish non-profits and Zionist activist groups.

The new law presents four major demands: the appointment of a specialized Anti-Semitism commissar to manage the Department of Education’s campaign combating pro-Palestinian activism on college campuses, a $1 billion dollar cash injection to “secure” Zionist non-profits and Jewish houses of worship, mandatory state monitoring of online social media platforms in order to force them to censor “anti-Semitic” political speech on their platforms, and officially reorienting the mission of the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and National Counterintelligence and Security Center as instruments for targeting critics of Jews and Israel as foreign enemy actors and domestic terrorists.

On the education front, JASA strengthens and makes permanent Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14188 (“Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism”), which emphasizes that Israelis are a protected class above criticism under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Under executive orders signed by Joe Biden and Donald Trump, this interpretation of the law has been used to weaponize access to federal subsidies to American higher learning institutions in order to shut down pro-Palestinian and anti-war activism among students.

In addition to having an “Antisemitism Coordinator” micro-manage this ongoing war on dissent, JASA calls for a “public awareness campaign” that will plaster propaganda posters in “high-traffic public places, such as a cafeteria, gymnasium, or student center, and digital posting on 1 or more high-traffic institution web pages, such as a web page for a student services department” warning students and professors about the consequences of partaking in speech and activism that offends Jews or singles out Israel.

JASA also seeks to bump FEMA’s Nonprofit Security Grant program, which currently provides $300 million dollars meant to be shared among different houses of worship facing security threats (though Jewish groups still eat up the majority of the grants), up to $1 billion in subsidies directed for the exclusive use of Jewish organizations. This specific Jewish set-aside likely violates normative Constitutional provisions preventing government favoritism to a single religion, but this does not seem to be a concern in the legislation.

If passed, JASA would represent a militarization of American-Jewish life, which contrary to claims from Jewish grievance groups, is no more susceptible to bias or violent interference than Christian worship. In 2025, 24 people were killed in homicidal attacks targeting Christians across the nation to practically no media fanfare, including a massacre at a Mormon church in Michigan and a shooting of several Catholic children hearing mass in Minnesota.

Most concerning is JASA’s requirement that online social media companies provide mandatory reports every six months to Congress on anti-Semitic and anti-Israel opinions being shared on their platforms, outline their strategies for content removal and suppression, as well as coordinate with federal law enforcement in real time to combat what the bill’s authors judge as “extremist antisemitic calls.”

A fixation in JASA and much of the Jewish discourse around shutting down debate is the assertion that growing American antipathy to the role of Jews and Israel in Washington is a foreign conspiracy emanating from China, Russia, Qatar, and Iran. A recent State Department report trying to make people take this claim seriously was circulated among the US Congressmen, but not made public, likely to avoid scrutiny of its methodology.

In response to this supposed "foreign interference” seeking to “erode public trust in institutions,” JASA calls for action against “inauthentic amplification on digital platforms, such as bots or campaigns, and any involvement of foreign state and non-state actors.” Under the new law, federal law enforcement and intelligence services will be officially transformed into a secret police force dedicated to combating “Antisemitism” and required to create reports categorizing protected political speech as violence by featuring “(i) an overview of violent extremist ideologies that include antisemitic components; (ii) a review of the extent that actors in the United States have engaged in violent conduct in furtherance of the ideologies described in clause (i); (iii) the origins and online platforming and online activity or presence of antisemitic domestic violent extremist ideologies, groups, and individuals.”

Such a law, if passed, would treat figures as prominent as Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Megyn Kelly, Thomas Massie, Ana Kasparian, Ilhan Omar and Candace Owens, as well as many smaller critics that have arisen in recent years, as terrorists and enemies of the state.

Congressional backing for the Jewish American Security Act remains small for now, but the extent of support it enjoys from the organized Jewish community in conjunction with the outsized role of Jewish billionaires in financing both parties means that it is guaranteed to rapidly gain traction in the near future and become a threat. Let’s call attention to this audacious attack on our civil liberties and make sure JASA is killed in its crib.