WASHINGTON — A swastika was found carved in an elevator at the State Department, the agency said Tuesday.

The swastika has been removed, and the incident is being investigated, Jalina Porter, a spokeswoman for the State Department, said at a news conference.

Porter said Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is Jewish, shared a message with all employees about the incident.

This is a “painful reminder anti-Semitism isn’t a relic of the past,” Porter said. “It’s still a force that we’re dealing with the world, and unfortunately we’re dealing with it close to home. And we will continue to condemn it.”

Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. and the U.N., Gilad Erdan, said the incident was antisemitic vandalism and urged unity in a fight against antisemitism of any kind.

President Joe Biden signed a law this year addressing anti-Asian hate crimes, which have increased during the Covid-19 pandemic, but legislation addressing antisemitic crimes has yet to pass. Several bills about the issue have been introduced.

Teaganne Finn

Teaganne Finn is a political reporter for NBC News.

Andrea Mitchell contributed.

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said Tuesday that a Covid vaccine requirement for all federal employees is under consideration.

“That’s under consideration right now, but if you’re not vaccinated, you’re not nearly as smart as I thought you were,” he said, offering no additional detail.

This comes on the heels of new recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on indoor mask use in areas with high transmission rates after new data suggested fully vaccinated individuals are not just contracting Covid-19, but could also potentially infect others.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky also said the CDC is recommending that all children wear masks when they return to classrooms in the new school year.

This is a breaking news story, please check back for updates.

The Justice Department announced Tuesday that it had seized a rare, ancient tablet that was sold to Hobby Lobby through an auction house under false pretenses.

A federal court in Brooklyn, New York, ordered the forfeiture of a rare cuneiform tablet bearing a portion of the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” a historic poem with roots in ancient Mesopotamia. The cuneiform tablet is roughly 3,600 years old and originated in an area that’s now part of Iraq. It’s believed to be one of the earliest pieces of storytelling poetry.

The federal court argued that the tablet was brought into the U.S. illegally and therefore the Museum of the Bible, established by the owners of the Hobby Lobby stores, cannot get back the ancient clay tablet. After the first Gulf War in 1991, thousands of objects were looted, including many cuneiform tablets, from archeological sites in Iraq, prosecutors explained.

In 2013, prosecutors said, an American antiquities dealer bought the tablet, covered with dirt and unreadable, from the family of a London coin dealer. The tablet measures approximately 6 inches by 5 inches and is written in the Akkadian language, prosecutors said. The U.S. dealer, prosecutors said, then sold the tablet with a letter of false provenance, stating the tablet had been inside a box of miscellaneous ancient bronze fragments purchased in an auction in 1981.

The false letter describing its erroneous origins then traveled with the tablet as it was sold several times in different countries, officials said. A later owner provided the false letter to an auction house in London. It was resold several times again before Hobby Lobby bought it in a private sale in 2014. Federal agents seized it from the store’s museum in 2019, and it’s been held by the Department of Homeland Security since.

“This forfeiture represents an important milestone on the path to returning this rare and ancient masterpiece of world literature to its country of origin,” said Jacquelyn Kasulis, the acting U.S. attorney in Brooklyn. “This office is committed to combating the black-market sale of cultural property and the smuggling of looted artifacts.”