Hawley and Cotton urge Biden to send National Guard to Gaza protests at colleges

Republican Senators Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Tom Cotton (Ark.) called on President Biden on Monday to send the National Guard to colleges, especially Columbia University in New York City, where pro-Palestinian demonstrators have staged protests and other disruptive activities to draw public attention to the war.

“Eisenhower sent the 101st to Little Rock. It’s time for Biden to call up the National Guard at our universities to protect American Jews,” Hawley posted on social platform.

He was referring to former President Eisenhower’s decision to call the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 to ensure the safety of nine African-American students enrolled at Central High School.

Then-Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus (D) ordered the Arkansas National Guard to surround the school to prevent the nine students from integrating the school following the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. considers “separate but equal” segregation to be unconstitutional.

Cotton called on the Biden administration to “disband” pro-Palestinian groups on the Columbia campus if New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) is unable to take control of the situation by deploying the New York National Guard.

“The nascent pogroms in Columbia must stop TODAY, before our Jewish brothers sit down for the Passover Seder tonight. If Eric Adams doesn’t send the NYPD and Kathy Hochul doesn’t send the National Guard, Joe Biden has a duty to take command and put an end to these mobs,” Cotton said. posted in X.

Cotton’s call for the National Guard or federal troops to intervene on Columbia’s campus is reminiscent of his call for then-President Trump to “send in the troops” to quell the protests that spread across the country following the 2020 murder of George Floyd. .

Cotton, in a New York Times op-ed, suggested invoking the Insurrection Act to restore order, warning: “These rioters, if not subdued, will not only destroy the livelihoods of law-abiding citizens, but will also take more innocent lives.”

“Under these circumstances, the Insurrection Act authorizes the president to employ the military ‘or any other means’ in ‘cases of insurrection or obstruction of the laws,’” Cotton argued at the time.

Columbia, where growing protests have drawn national attention, announced Monday that it would hold classes remotely to calm the tense situation on campus.

Students protesting the war in Gaza, including Jewish students, set up camp on Columbia’s central lawn and demanded that the university divest from companies that are profiting from the war.

Columbia President Minouche Shafik last week asked the New York City Police Department to dismantle the camp, resulting in more than 100 arrests, and the university also suspended some students, but these actions did little to quell the protests. .

The demonstrations have spread to other universities, including Yale in Connecticut, where police arrested more than 45 protesters on Monday.