THE BUZZ: Hundreds of cease-fire activists shut down the Assembly floor session on Wednesday, interrupting what some had hoped would be a copacetic start to the new year and highlighting a schism among Democrats that is likely to fester well into 2024. The protest, which flooded the Assembly gallery and rotunda for hours, again exposed rifts within the Democratic coalition between progressive cease-fire supporters, some of them Jewish, and the Jewish Democratic lawmakers who warned that the consequences of the protests would be far more severe than a disrupted floor session. Lawmakers on Wednesday said they fear that antisemitic rhetoric will foment violence and lamented their abandonment by former allies, including “Capitol advocates and labor unions.” Jews, they said, now feel targeted by both ends of the political spectrum. Amid the protests, Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, co-chair of the Legislative Jewish Caucus, told reporters many Jews feel trapped between a hostile extreme right and an antagonistic far left. He argued that the white supremacists “marching in Charlottesville, saying ‘Jews will not replace us’,” are finding common cause with “people on the far left, because we are somehow the epitome of white privilege.” As protestors’ cries and chants echoed in the rotunda outside the chamber, state Sen. Scott Wiener, the caucus’ co-chair, warned on the Senate floor about a “poisonous and hostile environment for Jewish students” at both K -12 schools and colleges, which the caucus plans to address legislatively in what could become a contentious schools fight. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office briefed lawmakers on Tuesday about proliferating bomb threats. This was not the first time calls for cease-fire have derailed California politics. Protestors overwhelmed security at the California Democratic Party convention in Sacramento last fall, and Newsom was forced to move his Capitol annual holiday tree lighting to a virtual format amid security concerns brought on by protests in December. Even Sen. Laphonza Butler was upstaged by calls for cease-fire at a recent forum in Washington. The Senate and Assembly will reconvene briefly this morning before lawmakers return to Sacramento next week to begin their work in earnest, but if the events of the last several months are any indication, this likely won’t be the last disruption. GOOD MORNING. It's Thursday. Thanks for waking up with Playbook. Now you can text us at 916-562-0685 — save it as “CA Playbook” in your contacts now. Or drop us a line at lkorte@politico.com and dgardiner@politico.com, or on X — @DustinGardiner and @Lara_Korte WHERE’S GAVIN? Nothing official announced.
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