The response… Attorney General Pam Bondi was on the scene coordinating with police, the FBI, and by phone with President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said he was “outraged” over the killings and directed that security be tightened at Israeli embassies and consulates worldwide.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, writing on social media, called the attack “a brazen act of cowardly, antisemitic violence. Make no mistake: we will track down those responsible and bring them to justice.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in U.S. history, said “this sickening shooting seems to be another horrific instance of antisemitism which as we know is all too rampant in our society.”
Read more responses ►
Zooming out… The shooting is the latest fatal attack on a Jewish institution. The deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history occurred in 2018, when a gunman killed 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. The following year saw three more fatal attacks on a synagogue in California, a rabbi’s house in New York and a kosher supermarket in New Jersey.
Since then, and including over the last 19 months since the start of the war in Gaza, Jewish institutions have bolstered their security. The Capital Jewish Museum, which opened in 2023, had just gotten a security grant from Washington, D.C., this week.
Opinion | How anti-Israel rhetoric led to the killing of two Jews in Washington, D.C.: Rodriguez wasn’t just a lone actor — he was steeped in a movement that blurs the line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, and is “poisoned by violence and hatred,” writes our senior columnist, Rob Eshman. He adds: “The street and campus protesters and the social media warriors think nothing of claiming Israel has no right to exist — a specious idea whose logical extension is that, therefore, no Israeli has the right to exist.” Read his essay ►
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