Republicans escalate calls for troops on campus

An eruption of campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war has handed Republicans a way to hammer two of their favorite targets: Liberal academia, where pro-Palestinian sentiment has long flourished, and Democratic leaders, who are so far rebuffing calls to roll out the National Guard in response to disruptive demonstrations.

Democratic officials led by the White House on Thursday spurned the politically charged request from House Speaker Mike Johnson to deploy troops to quell the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, turning back the question to governors even as they provided them air cover.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has so far declined to seek federal assistance in the face of the swelling protests, which grew as university officials invited police onto the campus and they made hundreds of arrests.

The intensifying demonstrations have swept across the country, from New York to Texas to California, where administrators at the University of Southern California on Thursday canceled the main commencement ceremony, planned for May 10.

Los Angeles police arrested nearly 100 people protesting on the USC campus late into Wednesday evening, arriving in riot gear to clear an encampment at the center of campus. Former Dodger star Steve Garvey, a U.S. Senate candidate running against Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, urged law enforcement and campus leaders to take swift action against protesters, whom he described as “terrorists.”

“What they’re saying is: They’re pro-Hamas,” Garvey, a Republican, said in a rare news conference. “They’re supporting terrorism.”

Speaking alongside a rabbi and a veteran of the special forces of Israel, Garvey stressed that he believes in free speech and added the caveat that some young protesters don’t really understand the dynamics of the unfolding conflicts in the Middle East.

But he doubled-down on painting campus demonstrators writ large as terrorists: “I believe demonstrations that allow people to build encampments that obstruct the pathway to classes and the opportunity to learn is terrorism,” he said.

In California, a deep blue state where protests have largely unfolded among members of the same party, the protests have roiled politics for months — disrupting and ultimately shutting down a state Democratic Party convention, canceling the Christmas tree lighting at the Capitol in Sacramento and, in recent days, snarling traffic on the famed Golden Gate Bridge.

Police made hundreds of arrests on college campuses in recent days, with the protests cropping up in Pittsburgh and other parts of Texas like San Antonio. In New York, Democratic and Republican lawmakers have come out in support of Jewish students at Columbia University, while also calling on the school’s president, Minouche Shafik, to resign.

Johnson visited the campus Wednesday and was joined by Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) in urging Biden to deploy the Guard to protect the students.

After the visit to the tumult on the Manhattan campus, Hochul accused Johnson of adding to the division and politicizing the issue. “A speaker worth the title should really be trying to heal people and not divide them, so I don’t think it adds to anything,” said the Democratic governor, who also was a former House member.

“It seems to me there’s a lot more responsibilities and crises to be dealt with in Washington,” she added. “I’d encourage the speaker to go back and perhaps take up the migrant bill, the bill to deal with closing the borders, so we can deal with the real crisis that New York has.”

Campus protests in the nation’s capital grew steadily throughout the day, with demonstrators waving Palestinian flags and beating drums.

In a letter Thursday to the campus community at George Washington University in D.C., President Ellen M. Granberg said officials requested assistance from D.C. Metropolitan Police to relocate an “unauthorized protest encampment” on the University Yard.

“The decision to request MPD assistance came after multiple instructions made by GWPD to relocate to an alternative demonstration site on campus went unheeded by encampment participants,” Granberg explained. “Occupying campus grounds, establishing outdoor encampments, and blocking access to buildings create safety concerns and can disrupt learning and study, especially during this critical final exam period.”

Dayna Bowen Matthew, dean of the law school, released a video message saying that law school finals, which were set to be held in a building next to the protest encampment, would be moved to another building because of the noise, the Associated Press reported.

The university will allow students an appropriate place for their protest within the defined limits of free expression at GW, Granberg said.

USC’s main commencement cancellation came a week after officials there called off the address of a pro-Palestinian valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, drawing sharp backlash from across the country as the student sat for round after round of interviews with media outlets.

University leaders said increased security protocols would make it untenable to check in tens of thousands of guests in time for the event next month. Instead, USC students will still have their names called and receive diplomas on stage at events pegged to their academic programs.

The unrest wasn’t confined to one of the state’s most revered — and expensive — private universities. At the University of California, Berkeley, which has been in turmoil for months, protesters entered their fourth day of a sit-in to demand the public university cut ties with Israeli institutions and financially divest from companies that are supporting Israel.

Asked about the demonstration on Thursday at an unrelated event on energy issues, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he has met with Michael V. Drake, president of the public University of California system, as well as the state’s Office of Emergency Services, on the issue.

“We’re very mindful of what’s going on in the campuses and want to maintain people’s rights and protests, at the same time do so peacefully without any hate,” said Newsom, a Democrat. “I just want to avoid a lot of what we’re seeing in other parts of the country.”

After his White House shot down Johnson’s request, Biden qualified his condemnation of antisemitism by criticizing people who don’t also empathize with the Palestinians.

“Hate speech, violent rhetoric, antisemitic remarks and targeting people for who they are is abhorrent,” Robyn Patterson, a White House spokesperson, said Thursday. “Peaceful protests of policies are part of our freedom as Americans and we have said many times that people have the right to disagree and disagree strongly with the war.”

Adam Cancryn, Wes Venteicher, Lara Korte and Blake Jones contributed to this report.