DHS Sec. Mayorkas fires back at Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) after tense exchange about a pro-Palestine employee.

Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, interrupted Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing, furious that a DHS employee had posted “Free PALESTINE” online, demanding to know why she had not been fired. As Mayorkas tried to respond, Hawley kept asking “Has she been fired?” and “Why has she not been fired?” for a total of thirteen times.

Hawley finally called Mayorkas “despicable” and his behavior “atrocious,” implying that antisemitism and a permissive relationship with terrorism were rife in Mayorkas’ department.

Mayorkas, equally mad, was given a minute to respond and said wryly “I’m not sure I’ll limit it to 60 seconds.” He went on: “Senator Hawley takes a adversarial approach to me in this question and perhaps he doesn’t know my own background. Perhaps he does not know that I am the child of a Holocaust survivor. Perhaps he does not know that my mother lost almost all her family at the hands of the Nazis. And so I find his adversarial tone to be entirely misplaced. I find it to be disrespectful of me and my heritage and I do not expect an apology, but I did want to say what I just articulated.”

Hawley asked to respond and was denied.