GOP senators Hawley and Cotton call for 'National Guard' deployment against student protestors

23 April 2024

In New York City, Columbia University canceled in-person classes on Monday, April 22 following the arrests of more than 100 people during demonstrations against the Israeli government's military policies in Gaza. Many of the demonstrators were also critical of President Joe Biden, who has urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "slow things down" in Gaza but continues to favor military aid to Israel.

But Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) is blaming Democrats for the demonstrations at Columbia, and like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), he is calling for Biden to send in the National Guard.

In an April 22 post on X, formerly Twitter, Cotton wrote, "The radical anti-Israel protestors have always been part of the Democratic Party's base. Now Joe Biden is using them as an excuse to undermine Israel and appease Iran."

In a separate April 22 tweet, the Arkansas Republican wrote, "The nascent pogroms at Columbia have to stop TODAY, before our Jewish brethren sit for Passover Seder tonight. If Eric Adams won't send the NYPD and Kathy Hochul won't send the National Guard, Joe Biden has a duty to take charge and break up these mobs."

Biden, however, has aggressively supported a bipartisan foreign aid bill that was passed in the U.S. House of Representatives and includes aid for Israel along with Ukraine and Taiwan. Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, interviewed by the New York Times, said of the bill, "This was a historic win for President Biden and for America's global leadership."

Hawley, on X, tweeted, "Eisenhower sent the 101st to Little Rock. It's time for Biden to call out the National Guard at our universities to protect Jewish Americans."

In an official statement on April 21, Biden called out the "alarming surge in antisemitism" in the United States.

Biden said, "Silence is complicity. Even in recent days, we've seen harassment and calls for violence against Jews. This blatant antisemitism is reprehensible and dangerous — and it has absolutely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country."

Politico's Kierra Frazier notes that Cotton's "calls for sending the National Guard" to Columbia University are "reminiscent of" an op-ed he wrote for the New York Times in early June 2020. Cotton, Frazier recalls, called for using the U.S. military against protesters following the the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Frazier explains, "The 2020 opinion piece sparked an immediate backlash from readers and employees at the newspaper and led to the resignation of James Bennet, the Times' editorial page editor, and a lengthy editor's note atop the piece stating that it 'fell short of our standards and should not have been published.'"

Cotton has also drawn criticism for an April 15 tweet in which he encouraged "people who get stuck behind the pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic" to "take matters into your own hands."

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