WASHINGTON — The gallery filled and protesters chanted, but the House Homeland Security Committee hearing entitled “Worldwide Threats to the Homeland” did not start on Wednesday after scheduling conflicts with the witnesses.
The hearing, which would be the second on the same topic hosted by this committee, was slated to focus on issues related to the southern border, while also touching on threats from Russia and the Middle East.
Instead, protesters arrived early and staged a mock hearing, sitting in the committee members’ chairs and agreeing to resolutions ending U.S. support and involvement in the Israel-Hamas war. One protester acted as a pretend chairwoman, declaring a resolution to end all U.S. aid to Israel as “unanimously agreed” to.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas was slated to testify at the hearing. Mayorkas’s tenure at DHS has been marred by partisan accusations of dereliction of duty surrounding the influx of crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border, which led to a successful impeachment by House Republicans with a near-party line vote in January.
FBI Director Christopher Wray, appointed by former President Donald Trump, and Brett Holmgren, acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, were also scheduled to testify.
Instead, demonstrators homed in on the Israel-Hamas war before the hearing was scheduled to begin, with many arriving more than an hour early. Some wore matching keffiyeh, a traditional cotton headdress worn in parts of the Middle East, and shirts adorned with the names and photos of children killed in Gaza.
Multiple people in the group, the majority of which were women, wore pink-colored keffiyeh, a reference to their membership in the anti-war non-profit Code Pink: Women for Peace.
“Bombs and weapons and guns do not keep us safe,” the protesters chanted before the hearing. “We keep us safe, the community keeps us safe, stop arming Israel.”
Protester Ann Wright said they have been focused on this issue for over a year, staging events across Washington and in both chambers of Congress.
Recently, some senators have proposed a measure to appease these protesters’ demands. Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, announced he would call for a floor vote on the “Joint Resolutions of Disapproval,” a piece of legislation pushed by progressives to end weapons shipments to the State of Israel. The measure is unlikely to pass, as members from both sides of the aisle have spoken against it.
But some protesters seek more than just the cut-off of U.S. weapons.
“I’m from Hawaii, but I’ll be here until we have a ceasefire,” Wright said. “I’ve been opposing U.S. international action for 21 years, and I’m not stopping anytime soon.”
At the mock hearing, the group held up signs on printer paper reading, “Israel: A threat to national security.”
Upon learning of the hearing’s postponement, the group planned where they would protest for the remainder of the day, splitting their time between the House and Senate chambers before returning tomorrow for the Senate Homeland Security committee hearing.
