Rep. Jerry Nadler opposed the House antisemitism bill. Here's why.
Rep. Jerry Nadler, who has represented a big piece of Manhattan since 1992, is one of the longest-serving Jewish members of the House.
He’s also a Columbia University alum — he was on campus in 1968 when police cleared Hamilton Hall of anti-Vietnam war protesters.
He is a close observer of the Middle East and the politics of Israel in the U.S. And he’s the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, where he’s long seen himself as a champion of civil liberties.
All of this background helped put Nadler at the center of a swirl of events this week as pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia were ejected from Hamilton Hall, as President Joe Biden made his first public remarks about campus protests, as a cease-fire deal between Hamas and Israel seemed tantalizingly close and as the House passed, by an overwhelming majority of 320 to 91, the Antisemitism Awareness Act — a bill against which Nadler led the opposition.
On this week’s episode of Playbook Deep Dive, host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza talks with Nadler about all of this, plus Trump’s interview in Time Magazine, the potential for disruption at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, the vote Nadler most regrets in his long career and the nature of truth.
