Rudy Yakym
R · U.S. House, IN-2 · Tier 1
Tier 1, “Firmly pro-Israel”
Indiana Republican who has led on campus antisemitism and Israel: he wrote the PROTECT Jewish Students and Faculty Act (Feb 2024; reintroduced Jan 2025 with Democrat Hillary Scholten), which makes colleges adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism to keep federal student-aid eligibility, led a July 2025 resolution with Josh Gottheimer condemning “Globalize the Intifada,” and pressed 110 campus diversity offices (Nov 2023) and more than 130 colleges over “anti-Israel encampments” (Sep 2024). In an October 2024 op-ed he called describing Israel's war as genocide “an ignorant, flagrant, and inflammatory misuse of a term that should be reserved for Auschwitz and Dachau,” dismissed critics as “useful idiots,” and backed Israel's right to “avenge the barbarity of Oct. 7 by eliminating the Hamas terrorist threat”; he called the ICC warrant requests “baseless” (May 2024). He voted for every tracked Israel measure — the Israel-only supplementals and the April 2024 package, the censure of Rashida Tlaib, H.Res.894, the May 2024 bill to force the paused bomb shipment, both ICC-sanctions bills (Jun 2024, Jan 2025), the June 2024 amendment barring use of Gaza Health Ministry casualty figures and the September 2026 college anti-boycott bill — and against the 2025 Greene and 2026 Massie cuts. In January 2024 he signed the Smith–Manning letter, whose signers “thoroughly reject” South Africa’s “charge of genocide” against Israel.
A 1. He authored the IHRA funding-condition bill and the “Globalize the Intifada” resolution, and ran his own letter campaigns against campus protest — sustained leadership, not just votes — while rejecting the genocide charge as a misuse fit only for Auschwitz and Dachau. No statement of concern for Gaza's civilians during the genocide was found; his ceasefire statement (Oct 2025) did not mention Gaza.
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elect26 places 2026 midterm candidates on a six-tier spectrum, from 1 (most pro-Israel) to 6 (most critical of Israel).