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WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) today joined Charles Payne on Fox News to discuss the disturbing antisemitic incidents taking place on college campuses across the country. Earlier today, Thune joined Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and 25 of his Senate Republican colleagues in calling on the Biden administration to restore order and protect Jewish students on these campuses.
On the antisemitic incidents on college campuses:
“What's happening on these college campuses obviously has been fomenting for a long time. This is decades in the making, but these are violations of federal law.
“You can't have this kind of rioting and violent acts against, or harassment or discrimination against, Jewish groups on these campuses. You can't have school officials who aren't protecting these students.
“Those are all violations of federal law, and, you know, the universities don't seem able or capable of addressing this, and so we're asking the Biden administration and the Department of Education to take action and the Justice Department to take action. And one thing they could do, the Department of Education could do very quickly, is you know, take away funds from schools that aren't following the law.”
On the need for federal action:
“I give Tom Cotton a lot of credit for initiating this, because clearly something had to be done.
“These universities, as I said, are incapable of addressing what is a crisis on their campuses and something that continues to just escalate and get further and further out of control. The universities need to be allowing the NYPD in there, the National Guard, just getting control of these campuses.
“And if you've got people there who are violating laws, they ought to be charged that way. And if you've got students who are here, foreigners who are here on visas, those visas ought to be taken away and they ought to be deported.
“I mean, there just isn't any room for this kind of behavior. The stuff that we're looking at in this country today looks like 1930s Germany, and there just absolutely is no excuse for it. It needs to be addressed. The administration needs to take those steps to address it.”