Subcommittee Ranking Member Crockett’s Opening Statement at Subcommittee Hearing on Trump’s Weakening of the U.S.’s Ability to Combat Antisemitism
Washington, D.C. (June 24, 2025)—Today, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Oversight, delivered opening remarks at a subcommittee hearing on how Republicans are weaponizing antisemitism for political gain while defunding the very agencies charged with fighting hate crimes and domestic extremism.
Below are Ranking Member Crockett’s remarks, as prepared for delivery, at today’s hearing.
WATCH Subcommittee Ranking Member Crockett’s opening statement.
Ranking Member Jasmine Crockett
Subcommittee on Oversight
Hearing on “Rising Threat: America’s Battle Against Antisemitic Terror
June 24, 2025
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to begin by clearly stating to everyone here today and to everyone listening in on this hearing—religious hate has no place in this country.
The rise in religious hate we’re seeing today needs to end. Full stop.
This hate is being directed at our neighbors, our community, and even Members of Congress.
The violence and death threats that people are experiencing—including some of my colleagues here today—because of their faith—or their presumed faith—is unconscionable and needs to stop.
You’re allowed to be different.
You’re allowed to have your own faith.
You’re allowed to disagree—but what we won’t allow is using these differences to justify threats and violence against people different than you.
Everyone, including Congress and the President, needs to do all we can to reject religious hate and violence in all forms.
But to do that, then my colleagues need to be honest about what’s allowed this behavior to flourish.
That means confronting the fact that Donald Trump has played a significant role in emboldening this behavior by repeatedly legitimizing extremists who’ve continue to spread and promote antisemitism and religious hate.
Growing up, we were told we need to lead by example, lead others in a way that you see the world or how you think it should be.
For me, I lead by example by acknowledging what’s right and wrong. By standing up for marginalized communities. By calling out and combatting hate and finding the humanity in everyone and everything.
But how does the man currently occupying in the Oval Office chose to lead by example within the context of antisemitism?
It’s Trump inviting an extremist like Nick Fuentes—a known, white supremacist and Holocaust denier—to Mar-A-Lago to dine alongside him in front of the press.
It’s holding a press conference to say that there “were some very fine people on both sides” after the deadly 2017 Charlottesville rally—a rally where white supremacists flocked to the city and held torches and Nazi flags chanting “YOU WILL NOT REPLACE US!”
It’s Trump refusing to condemn the January 6th insurrectionists who carried Nazi Flags into these very halls of Congress.
It’s Trump pardoning all of them.
It’s Trump recruiting Elon Musk—a man who gave Nazi-like salutes on an inaugural stage, and who told Germany two days before Holocaust Remembrance Day that “There is too much focus on past guilt.”
It’s allowing Musk and others to continue enabling religious hate groups to post hate and threats online.
It’s redirecting attorneys at the Department of Justice’s Office of Civil Rights—the primary office for enforcing discrimination laws, including religious discrimination—away from their work and placing them to work on immigration cases.
It’s Trump rescinding $35 million in hate crime prevention and response grants, including defunding a faith-based nonprofit leading efforts to combat antisemitism in South Carolina.
It’s Trump having his Department of State ban the term “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism” from classification and the style-guide at the State Department.
That is how Trump is supposedly leading by example here.
Now, you’d think that an administration wanting to take this seriously would place highly qualified individuals in agency roles tasked with combating religious terrorist hate, threats, and violence.
And yet, Trump hasn’t even cleared that low hurdle.
Take for example Thomas Fugate. The guy Trump currently has in charge of the Department of Homeland Securities’ Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships—a division tasked with working with state and local governments and other stakeholders to prevent terrorism, including religious terrorism—is just 22 years old with no experience in government, antiterrorism, or really anything.
The person Fugate took over for had over two decades of national security experience.
But now, under Trump, we now have immature, incompetent, infantile people who’ve barely even lived for two decades in charge of this important work.
It’s ridiculous, it’s shameful, and it’s dangerous.
Allowing religious hate to thrive in one corner allows it to spread everywhere, across all corners, all denominations, and all faiths.
As Members of Congress, we cannot allow another synagogue—or for that matter, another church or mosque or home—risk being attacked or shot at by Nazis or extremists simply because elected officials don’t have the courage and leadership to condemn them before they act.
Trump’s disgusting refusal to cut ties from Nazi supporters and sympathizers has given violent extremists both a figurative and literal get out of jail free card.
It’s signaling that these hateful beliefs and actions will be tolerated so long as they pledge their loyalty to Trump.
We owe it to every American to condemn this behavior and fight back by confront this intolerance with courage and leading from the heart.