A Trump-allied Jewish political coalition has withdrawn its support from four incumbent Republican House members after they voted against a bill to authorize $10 million in federal funding to expand Holocaust education programming and resource dissemination by the Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The bill, which funds spending by the Department or Education, would also expand professional development opportunities for teachers.
Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Jodey Arrington of Texas voted against the bill, the Never Again Education Act, on the grounds that the federal government should not mandate education policy within states. Republican Reps. Tom Rice, also of South Carolina, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky also voted against the legislation. Former Republican and now independent Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan was the only other House member to vote down the bill.
“The bill authorizes $10 million in spending for the Department of Education, a department that I’ve introduced legislation to eliminate [H.R. 899],” Massie told the Jewish News Syndicate. “Furthermore, the bill directs money to develop content for the website of the privately funded Holocaust museum. The surest way to ruin a private website is to let the federal government work on it.”
The legislation, as proposed, distributes the funding to the Holocaust Education Assistance Program Fund, administered by the museum’s governing body. The Department of Education would oversee the program.
The lawmakers cited the funding the museum already receives from the government and federal education funding devoted to history, and the Holocaust in particular.
“The federal government funds the Holocaust Memorial Museum and Holocaust Memorial Council to the tune of over $50 million a year,” Rice said in a statement published by the Jewish News Syndicate. “Since its creation in 1993, the Holocaust Memorial Museum has effectively educated people of all ages while also preserving millions of artifacts and providing teacher fellows in every U.S. state. I could not support adding to our deficit to fund another duplicative federal program.”
In a statement on Wednesday, Norman cited the “federal government and its lack of fiscal restraint” in his decision.
“From our perspective, there comes a time when you have to take votes that go beyond process,” Republican Jewish Coalition Executive Director Matt Brooks told Jewish Insider. “And, I think, especially now with this time of rising anti-Semitism in the U.S. and around the world, the symbolism of this and the importance of the government standing up and showing its support for Holocaust education outweighs any process concerns.”
Brooks has been a strong supporter of the president. He defended him against charges of racism after Trump attacked members of “the Squad” — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan — in a series of tweets and public statements, one of which said the women should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” All four lawmakers are U.S. citizens, while Omar is a naturalized American.
The Republican Jewish Coalition is foremost engaged in bringing Jewish voters, two-thirds of whom identify as Democrats, into the Republican fold. Brooks said in the Jewish Insider interview published on Friday that others in the party likely shared the dissenting lawmakers’ “misgivings or concerns” about the process, “but they did the right thing” and looked past their reservations to stand with the Jewish community.
While saying their opposition to the bill is not necessarily a reflection of their views on anti-Semitism, Brooks said, “It makes it so that we will not be supporting any of those individuals going forward.”
