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House passes funding for Israel conditioned on IRS cuts, leaving almost no chance of the bill advancing
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The U.S. House of Representatives approved $14 billion in emergency assistance for Israel but tied it to a cut in funding to the Internal Revenue Service, an unprecedented setting of conditions on aid to Israel that is expected to doom the bill.
The bill passed 226-196 on Thursday with all but two Republicans voting for it and all but 12 Democrats voting against. The bill would deliver assistance amid the war Israel is fighting against Hamas in Gaza, following the terror group’s Oct. 7 invasion of Israel. Among other provisions, about $5 billion goes to missile defense systems and another $4.5 billion goes to offensive systems.
President Joe Biden gave an Oval Office address last month calling for aid to Israel, but has vowed to veto the bill approved Thursday because he opposes tying it to the spending cuts.
But he won’t even see the bill: Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Jewish New York Democrat who is the Senate’s majority leader, said he would not even consider the bill once it landed on his desk. Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, suggested that he backed that approach.
The funding bill comes as Congress is considering and passing a series of resolutions supporting Israel. The latest to pass overwhelmingly, also Thursday, was a non-binding resolution condemning antisemitism on campuses in the wake of Hamas’ war against Israel. It passed 396-23, and “Condemns the support of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations at institutions of higher education, which may lead to the creation of a hostile environment for Jewish students, faculty and staff.”
The move was all the more remarkable for coming from Republicans. In recent years, calls for conditioning aid to Israel had largely come from progressive Democrats, who wanted to make the funding dependent on Israel’s policies vis a vis the West Bank, Gaza and its treatment of Palestinians.
Five Jewish Democrats who voted for Thursday’s bill — Florida’s Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Lois Frankel and Jared Moskowitz; Ohio’s Greg Landsman; and New Jersey’s Josh Gottheimer — said later in interviews and statements that the need to assist Israel at a time of urgent need overrode their anger with Johnson for tying the measure to IRS cuts. Wasserman Schultz and Landsman reportedly left the floor after the vote weeping, according to Semafor.
“While I do not support the speaker’s approach to this legislation, we must ensure that Israel has the resources to defeat Hamas and other terrorists, and get every hostage home, including all Americans,” Gottheimer said. “The symbol to the world of voting no would have done more damage.”
Wasserman Schultz, in her floor speech Thursday, said attaching the aid to cuts in IRS funding opened a can of worms.
“This House should send a clean bill to the Senate,” said Wasserman Schultz, who reportedly teared up at a closed door meeting ahead of the vote where she made a last-ditch appeal to Republicans for a bill stripped of conditions. “Instead, Speaker Johnson is willingly jeopardizing Israel’s security by making support for Israeli assistance contingent on issues totally unrelated to its security.”
She said Republicans had gone back on years of pledges to pro-Israel groups never to condition aid. “I’ve heard their promises over the years to never condition aid to Israel,” she said. “You know, you’ve looked pro-Israel leaders in the eye and promised that you would never do that. Think about it.”
Johnson has said that attaching the bill to IRS defunding is a matter of fiscal responsibility. “We want to protect and help and assist our friend Israel but we have to keep our own house in order as well,” he said in a press conference ahead of the vote. “While we take care of obligations, we have to do it in a responsible manner.”
Pro-Israel insiders said ahead of the vote that they dreaded its advance for two reasons: It has now created a precedent for some progressive Democrats who have sought for years to condition aid, and it gives the impression that assisting Israel exacts a price from Americans domestically — a narrative that the pro-Israel lobby has long combatted, noting that foreign aid is a tiny part of government spending.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which takes pains to avoid any hint of partisanship, tiptoed around the vote, faintly praising it while indicating that the group would work with Schumer to pass the bill Biden wants, without conditions.
“We strongly support the president’s emergency funding request for Israel & appreciate the House’s approval of a bill that fully funds that request,” it said in a tweet. “We’ll work to build broad bipartisan support as the package moves through the legislative process to ensure prompt final approval.”
By presenting the bill as he did, Johnson also sought to separate assistance for Israel from spending for Ukraine and for protecting U.S. allies in the Far East from China’s aggression. McConnell, speaking on the Senate floor ahead of the House vote, rejected that approach. Biden’s package includes funding for all three of those areas, as well as for humanitarian assistance for the Palestinians. The veteran Republican chided, without naming them, his partisans in the House for leaning into isolationism.
“We have a direct interest in a stable and peaceful Middle East, and we have a responsibility to stand with Israel, our closest ally in the region, and to impose real costs on those who seek to harm U.S. personnel,” McConnell said. “We have a direct interest in preserving free commerce and deterring aggression in the Indo-Pacific. And we have a responsibility to future generations of Americans to win this century’s longterm strategy competition with communist China. And we have a direct interest in stability and security in Europe.”
The comments outlined what is becoming a gulf of difference between there party’s aging establishment and a younger generation of hardline right Republicans, led by Johnson, who are turning inward.
Schumer said he would not consider the House bill, and would fashion one in the Senate that would reflect Biden’s broader requests of assistance for Ukraine and defense spending in the Far East.
“What a joke,” he said in his floor speech Thursday, calling the bill “stunningly unserious.”
Rep. Brad Schneider, an Illinois Democrat and one of the 18 Jewish Democrats who voted against the bill, said he was ready to advance the Senate bill once it came back to the House.
“The Senate will pass a robust, bipartisan aid package,” he said in a statement. “I will lead the charge to pass that package in the House as soon as humanly possible.”
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The Palestinian Authority Continues to Cozy Up to China, Urges End to US Role in World Affairs
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is greeted by Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang during a July 2017 visit to Beijing. Photo: Reuters/Mark Schiefelbein
The Palestinian Authority (PA) continues to strategically align itself counter to American interests in the greater geopolitical arena.
Earlier this month, Mahmoud Abbas again rejected Taiwan’s independence as he “emphasized that the State of Palestine will continue to stand by its friend, the Peoples Republic of China, and to support the One China policy and the protection of China’s national interests” [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 27, 2025].
As opposed to the Western countries that fund the PA, Abbas has consistently stood firmly with China’s dream of conquering Taiwan, as he said last year:
The Palestinian Presidency underlined the significance of preserving China’s territorial integrity, including the status of Taiwan … [and] voiced its firm support for China’s right to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity, endorsing the reunification of the entire land of China, which includes Taiwan.
[WAFA, official PA news agency, English edition, Jan. 13, 2024]
In a letter in January 2023, Abbas Zaki, a senior official in the PA’s ruling Fatah party, also wrote:
I express the stable and well-rooted position of Fatah in its support for the People’s Republic of China against Taiwan, which we consider an integral part of the united Chinese lands.
[Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki, Facebook page, January 8, 2023]
On a greater level, the PA has frequently stressed the idea of a strategic partnership both between China and the PA and China and the Muslim world.
Abbas’ senior advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash says the PA wants to see the end of US world leadership, with the US being pushed aside for a “new multipolar world order” made up of “the Islamic world, Russia and China” to “realize justice.”
The official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida recently reported that Abbas also “praised the firm ties between the two states and the depth of the historical and continuous connection between Palestine and China, which has reached a level of strategic relations.”
This follows Al-Hayat‘s report in January 2025 following a meeting between Mahmoud Abbas and the Chinese envoy to the Middle East, when it wrote the following:
President Mahmoud Abbas … expressed his appreciation for China’s positions that support the Palestinian rights in the international forums — which expresses the depth of the historical ties between the two countries and the two friendly peoples. He also expressed his great appreciation for [Chinese] President Xi Jinping and his positions that are committed to tightening the friendly relations, which have strengthened thanks to strategic ties between Palestine and China.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 19, 2025]
In October 2024, the official PA news agency, WAFA, also reported about Abbas’ meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying the meeting “emphasized the significance of the strategic partnership between the state of Palestine and its friend, the People’s Republic of China (PRC)” [WAFA, official PA news agency, Oct. 23, 2024].
Similar statements have also been made by other senior PA officials, such as Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh, who said in November 2024:
China needs to continue to strengthen its strategic ties with the Arab states and move on to a stage in which it will take action to reshape the international system.
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 28, 2024]
The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), where a version of this article first appeared.
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Georgetown University Postpones Passover BDS Vote Following Outcry
In Washington, DC, on March 23, 2025, a group of Georgetown University students and community leaders protest. Photo: Andrew Thomas via Reuters Connect.
Georgetown University’s student government has rescheduled an anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) referendum that it initially scheduled to take place during the Passover holiday following outcry from Jewish students, who argued the original timing effectively disenfranchised them by depriving them of a chance to express opposition to the measure at the ballot box.
As previously reported, the Georgetown University Student Association’s (GUSA) senators voted via secret ballot for a resolution to hold the referendum — which will ask students to decide whether they “support … divesting from companies arming Israel and ending university partnerships with Israeli institutions” — on April 14-16. The move outraged Jewish students, as well as GUSA senators who deplored the body’s passing the measure by allegedly illicit means.
“This referendum, cloaked in the language of human rights, represents not only a troubling overstep into Georgetown’s academic and fiduciary independence but also a campaign rooted in the discriminatory logic of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement,” said a letter the university’s chapter of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) sent to university president Robert Groves. “The passage of this measure would not occur in isolation. It would embolden future efforts to marginalize Jewish and Israeli students, deepen campus polarization, and risk fueling the disturbing rise in antisemitism seen at other institutions. Universities that have permitted such one-sided campaigns are now facing not only fractured communities and repetitional harm but growing federal scrutiny — including potential impacts to public funding.”
GUSA said on Monday that it moved the referendum date, issuing a statement which acknowledged concerns raised by SSI, as well as Chabad Georgetown, Georgetown Israel Alliance, and the Jewish Student Association.
“We made this decision after hearing concerns about the placement of the election during a religious holiday,” the governing body said in a statement posted on Instagram. “Although the election has been rescheduled, formal campaigners may continue to campaign for the referendum until the end of the campaigning period. Individuals may continue to register as formal campaigners until the end of the campaigning period.”
The referendum must still be contested for other reasons, SSI told The Algemeiner on Tuesday.
“We commend the decision to move the vote past Passover but are still intent on combating the procedural irregularities surrounding the referendum,” the group said, referring to the fact that the resolution only passed because GUSA senators, the campus newspaper reported, “voted to break rules” which require referenda to be evaluated by the Policy and Advocacy Committee (PAC), a period of deliberation which establishes their merit, or lack thereof, for consideration by the senate.
Georgetown is one of 60 colleges and universities being investigated by the federal government due to being deemed by the Trump administration as soft on antisemitism and excessively “woke.” Such inquiries have led to the scorching of several billion dollars’ worth of federal contracts and grants awarded to America’s most prestigious institutions of higher education.
On Monday, the administration impounded more than $2 billion in federal funding previously awarded to Harvard University over the institution’s refusal to agree to a wishlist of reforms that Republican lawmakers have long argued will make higher education more meritocratic and less welcoming to anti-Zionists and far-left extremists.
In March, it canceled $400 million in federal contracts and grants for Columbia University, a measure that secured the school’s acceding to a slew of demands the administration put forth as preconditions for restoring the money. Princeton University saw $210 million of its federal grants and funding suspended too, prompting its president, Christopher Eisgruber to say the institution is “committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination.” Brown University’s federal funding is also reportedly at risk due to its alleged failing to mount a satisfactory response to the campus antisemitism crisis, as well as its alignment with the DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] movement.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Trump Envoy Witkoff, in Apparent Reversal, Calls on Iran to ‘Stop, Eliminate’ Nuclear Program
US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy-designate Steve Witkoff gives a speech at the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena on the inauguration day of Trump’s second presidential term, in Washington, DC, Jan. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
US President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East on Tuesday called on Iran to “stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program,” apparently toughening his position against Tehran less than 24 hours after suggesting the Islamic Republic would be allowed to maintain its nuclear program in a limited capacity.
“A deal with Iran will only be completed if it is a Trump deal,” Steve Witkoff posted on the social media platform X/Twitter. “Any final arrangement must set a framework for peace, stability, and prosperity in the Middle East — meaning that Iran must stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program. It is imperative for the world that we create a tough, fair deal that will endure, and that is what President Trump has asked me to do.”
Witkoff’s statement appeared to be a complete reversal from comments he made to Fox News during an interview on Monday night, in which he indicated that the White House would allow Iran to enrich uranium to a 3.67 percent threshold, allowing Tehran to create a “civil nuclear program.”
“Iran does not need to enrich past 3.67 percent. In some circumstances, they’re at 60 percent; in other circumstances, 20 percent. That cannot be,” Witkoff said. “You do not need to run — as they claim — a civil nuclear program where you’re enriching past 3.67 percent.”
Negotiations between the US and Iran regarding a potential deal over the latter’s nuclear program began this past weekend in Oman. Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi each led their respective delegations in the discussions, which were facilitated indirectly via mediators. The White House touted the deliberations as “positive and constructive” and confirmed a second round of deliberations set for Saturday.
During Monday’s interview, Witkoff confirmed that the next round of negotiations will center on “verification on the enrichment program and then ultimately verification on weaponization.”
“That includes missiles — the type of missiles that they have stockpiled there. And it includes the trigger for a bomb,” Witkoff said.
Critics pointed out that Witkoff’s proposal seemed to resemble the 2015 deal struck between the US under the Obama administration, Iran, and other world powers which also aimed to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon by prohibiting the regime from enriching uranium past 3.67 percent. The first Trump administration scrapped the deal in 2018, arguing that the agreement would allow Iran to clandestinely pursue a nuclear weapon, and reimposed harsh sanctions on the regime.
Iran has claimed that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes rather than building weapons. However, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reported in December that Iran had greatly accelerated uranium enrichment to close to the 90 percent weapons-grade level at its Fordow site dug into a mountain. The UK, France, and Germany said in a joint statement that there is no “credible civilian justification” for Iran’s recent nuclear activity, arguing it “gives Iran the capability to rapidly produce sufficient fissile material for multiple nuclear weapons.”
Israel has been among the most vocal proponents of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arguing that that the US should pursue a “Libyan option” to eliminate the possibility of Tehran acquiring a nuclear weapon by overseeing the destruction of Iran’s nuclear installations and the dismantling of equipment.
“That could be done diplomatically, in a full way, the way it was done in Libya. I think that would be a good thing,” Netanyahu told reporters during a meeting at the White House last week. “But whatever happens, we have to make sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons.”
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