Commentary Culture Investigations

The wounds of Biden-era weaponization still ache. Many patriots still live with financial ruin, reputational damage, and cancellation campaigns stemming from the Biden-era Department of Justice. President Trump’s Department of Justice could do much more to make things right. It hasn’t.Millions happily voted for Trump because he promised to de-weaponize government and restore election integrity. That mandate remains unfulfilled. He risks losing some of his strongest supporters, who may disengage on the country’s biggest fights — or sit out the midterms entirely — because they fear the cycle will repeat. We’re heading into another pivotal election season on a tilted field, without even fielding a full team.Not everyone inside the Justice Department agrees with the president’s decision to issue these pardons — and that disagreement is showing up as deliberate drift.Nothing illustrates this failure more clearly than the case of the 2020 contingent electors. To this day, some continue to face charges for assembling slates of electors contingent on ongoing fraud investigations or litigation in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. Preparing contingent slates for congressional consideration has long existed in American politics. The attempt by the Biden administration and allied prosecutors to treat a bipartisan practice dating back more than a century as criminal conduct represents weaponization at its purest.In November, I wrote about the president’s historic pardons for individuals charged in state court for offenses tied to the 2020 election. A presidential pardon touching state proceedings is unusual, but the reasoning was straightforward: Conduct tied to a federal election implicated constitutionally protected activity, and the state prosecutions functioned as a cat’s paw for a broader, coordinated campaign. President Trump made the right call — legally, prudentially, and politically. “Leave no MAGA behind” should apply most of all to the people who took the greatest risks and paid the steepest price.What happened next — or, more to the point, what didn’t — turned “unusual” into “bizarre.”After the president issued the pardons late on a Sunday night in November 2025, the Department of Justice went silent. Outside of comments from pardon attorney Ed Martin, the department has said virtually nothing. When reporters asked for comment, the department even referred Axios back to the White House. In Washington, that translates to “not our problem.”It should be their problem.RELATED: Trump’s pardons expose the left’s vast lawfare machine BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty ImagesSilence is bad enough. Inaction is worse. The government should be moving aggressively to shut down the remaining state proceedings and use the pardons as a lever to defeat prosecutions that collide with federal authority and constitutional protections. We know that approach can work because it already did: Shortly after the pardons, Georgia dropped its charges against President Trump, explicitly citing the complications the pardons created.The more uncomfortable truth is that not everyone inside the Justice Department agrees with the president’s decision to issue these pardons — and that disagreement is showing up as deliberate drift.We’ve seen the same dynamic elsewhere: President Trump declares Biden’s autopen commutations null and void, yet the government continues releasing violent felons under those questionable pardons. Lawyers can disagree. They cannot refuse to execute the president’s lawful directives.If the Justice Department can’t deliver even basic follow-through on the low-hanging fruit, it becomes hard to believe it will ever deliver the more challenging outcomes. Over a year into the Trump administration, we should be talking about real accountability for weaponized actors and real relief for the people they targeted.The accountability train needs to get back on track. The first step is simple: The Department of Justice should do what the president publicly ordered it to do.

A Jewish legal advocacy group is accusing the University of California, Berkeley’s law school dean of violating the terms of a just-announced settlement that resolved a lawsuit challenging student group bylaws that barred speakers based on their Jewish, Israeli, or Zionist identities.
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law announced Thursday that Berkeley agreed to settle the lawsuit, which the group filed in November 2023 alongside the center’s Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education organization, whose members include Berkeley Law professors and Berkeley students. They accused the school of allowing student organizations to pass bylaws that banned speakers who supported Israel or Zionism.
The settlement, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, states that the law school’s registered student groups cannot “include prohibitions on speakers” in their bylaws and constitutions, nor can they “limit officers, board members, or speakers based on a category that is protected under federal or state law.” Berkeley agreed to implement mandatory faculty training on anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli discrimination and publish a statement on its website noting that “bans on Zionists have historically been used by some individuals and institutions as a pretext for excluding Jews.”
Shortly after the settlement’s announcement, Berkeley law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky told the law school student body in an email obtained by the Free Beacon that the bylaws must change, but restrictive speaker policies could remain.
“Under the settlement, student organizations may continue to have policies as to who they will invite as speakers, including on the basis of viewpoint,” Chemerinsky wrote. “However, under the settlement, the Bylaws of the student organization cannot state a policy of restricting who may speak at the organization’s events.”
“Simply put, student organizations may continue to have the same policies that they have adopted restricting who they will invite to speak, but these policies cannot be contained within their Bylaws,” he added.

 
Paul Eckles, who led the Brandeis Center’s legal team, disputed Chemerinsky’s claim.
“It’s really inconsistent with both the plain language of the agreement, especially read in context, as well as just the entire tenor and intent of the agreement, and the fact that he would put out that email literally moments after the agreement was entered is very disappointing,” Eckles told the Free Beacon. “The whole purpose of the agreement is to make clear that anti-Zionism can be and is often used as a pretext for discrimination. And when it is done so, it violates the law, it violates UC Berkeley policy.”
“Putting out a statement that the organizations that had anti-Zionism policies could essentially continue what they were doing is just plainly wrong and inconsistent with the agreement,” Eckles added. “Dean Chemerinsky’s email is wrong, and we will be addressing the issue with the university.”
The dean’s email comes as colleges and universities across the country, under pressure from the Trump administration, make efforts to crack down on campus anti-Semitism. Berkeley has taken a more permissive approach: The school recently said it would allow its Students for Justice in Palestine chapter to sport a logo on its website featuring an inverted red triangle—a symbol Hamas uses to denote Israeli targets—and wouldn’t force the group to stop promoting violence against Israel.
Berkeley Law spokesman Alex Shapiro said Chemerinsky’s email “simply conveys the aspects that affect the Law School.”
Berkeley law professor Steve Davidoff Solomon, who advises the anti-Semitism task force within the Department of Justice, called for Chemerinsky’s termination. The school’s chapter of Law Students for Justice in Palestine “regularly harass me and other Jewish students and faculty,” he told the Free Beacon. “I personally need extra security at the law school, and Erwin’s response to a settlement is to send an email encouraging the students to continue doing the same thing. He should be fired. This is outrageous.”
The Brandeis Center filed its lawsuit in response to nine student organizations amending their bylaws to prohibit Israel and Zionism supporters from speaking at their events. More than 20 organizations, including academic journals and clinical programs, eventually adopted similar bans. Berkeley, according to the Brandeis Center, excused the bans as “viewpoint discrimination.” But Chemerinsky signed a letter condemning the student groups’ bylaws as “wrong” and “antithetical to free speech and our community values.” He acknowledged that they would exclude 90 percent of Jewish law students—and himself.
Chemerinsky has faced criticism over seemingly dubious legal claims before. In June 2023, he was caught on tape describing how Berkeley gets around California’s ban on affirmative action in faculty hiring, joking with students that “if ever I’m deposed, I’m going to deny I said this to you.” A month later, during a legal conference he moderated, Chemerinsky brainstormed with University of Michigan general counsel Timothy Lynch ways to circumvent the Supreme Court’s ban on race-based admissions.
The post ‘Plainly Wrong’: Berkeley Law Dean Accused of Violating Settlement Agreement Over ‘Anti-Zionist’ Student Group Bylaws appeared first on .

Columbia-Barnard Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), a recognized student group, says it is working “to plan actions and liaise with Columbia University Apartheid Divest [CUAD],” the student organization that wished “death to America” after President Donald Trump initiated military operations against Iran last month and that organized the anti-Israel encampment that fomented chaos on campus in 2024. That appears to violate the Ivy League school’s “zero tolerance” policy toward CUAD—and its recent claim that no recognized groups are affiliated with it.
Columbia touted that policy in a March 1 statement, saying that “last year the University took the step of requiring all recognized student groups, including those who had previously affiliated with ‘CUAD’ … to acknowledge and comply with the University’s Zero Tolerance policy in order to retain their official recognition.”
“All currently recognized student groups have no affiliation with the group that calls itself ‘CUAD,'” Columbia said. “The University stands by its Zero Tolerance policy.” The statement came after CUAD posted “Death to America” in Persian in the wake of President Donald Trump’s opening salvo of strikes on Iran.
YDSA’s official Columbia webpage, however, includes a link to an interest form that says the group coordinates with other banned “leftist groups”—Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)—to “plan actions and liaise with Columbia University Apartheid Divest.” The form says it’s for the 2024-2025 school year, but YDSA included a link to it in an August 19 Instagram post.
The YDSA form and subsequent post undercut Columbia’s claim that no recognized student groups are affiliated with CUAD—and could land YDSA in hot water with the Ivy League school.
A Columbia spokesman said the university is “investigating reports that this student group violated our policy” and reiterated that recognized student groups must comply with its zero tolerance policy.
“Violations of the Zero Tolerance [policy] may result in derecognition, loss of funding or access to University resources, or other consequences consistent with University policies,” he said.
Any banned groups YDSA works with, including CUAD, SJP, and JVP, can reap the benefits of YDSA’s status as a recognized student group, such as access to campus spaces and funding. Columbia suspended its SJP and JVP chapters in November 2023 “after the two groups repeatedly violated University policies related to holding campus events.” Although they weren’t named in the zero tolerance policy, Columbia has prohibited recognized student groups from working with them and has canceled campus events that included their involvement.
YDSA has long collaborated with CUAD online. On July 22, it co-published an Instagram post alongside the account “columbia4palestine,” which CUAD has used to share footage of its illegal demonstrations after Meta banned a previous account bearing the group’s name. The post condemned Columbia for suspending some 80 students arrested in a May library storming organized by CUAD and noted that a “full press release” on the matter could be found in its bio—the link, which was still available as of Friday afternoon, points to an official CUAD statement.

Other banned student groups have indicated that they work with YDSA to get around Columbia’s disciplinary actions.
A leader for the Columbia chapter of the left-wing Students for a Democratic Society said it collaborates with YDSA “because they get funding from Columbia workspaces.” The group has tied itself to illegal actions alongside CUAD, including its posters appearing alongside red inverted triangles—a symbol Hamas uses to denote Israeli targets—painted in a campus bathroom and promoting a protest outside a historic Manhattan synagogue, at which a mob threw bottles and sticks at Holocaust survivors.
YDSA has been allied with CUAD and the anti-Israel groups long before Columbia issued its zero tolerance policy. It participated in the illegal anti-Israel encampment in April 2024 and encouraged its supporters to send Venmo donations to CUAD soon after it formed.
In recent months, YDSA has hosted anti-ICE trainings and organizing efforts aimed at “building socialism at Columbia.” It also campaigned for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, a DSA member who defended the phrase “globalize the intifada.”
Neither YDSA nor any of the unrecognized student groups responded to requests for comment.
The post Columbia’s Socialist Students Vow To ‘Liaise’ With ‘Death to America’ Group, Contradicting School’s ‘Zero Tolerance’ Policy appeared first on .

By requiring proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in federal elections, the SAVE America Act reinforces a basic principle — that the right to vote in American elections is reserved solely and specifically for American citizens.President Trump is right to prioritize the passage of this critical legislation, which is currently being debated in the U.S. Senate after earlier passing the House.Indiana’s photo ID law treats everyone equally, without regard to race, color, or ethnicity. So does the SAVE America Act.And nothing about this proposal should be controversial.The nonsensical resistance to the SAVE America Act reminds me of similar opposition we faced in Indiana when — in 2005 — our legislature became the first in the nation to pass a law requiring that voters show photo IDs before casting ballots.As Indiana’s secretary of state at the time, I championed the legislation from its inception. Once it passed, I was responsible for implementing it. And finally, I helped defend Indiana’s photo ID law over the course of four lawsuits — including one that wound up at the U.S. Supreme Court, where we prevailed in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board.My question to the foes of the SAVE America Act is the same one I posed to opponents of our photo ID law 20 years ago. Namely: What don’t you like about secure, trustworthy elections?The photo ID law treats everyone equally, without regard to race, color, or ethnicity.So does the SAVE America Act.The photo ID law simply makes sure that voters are who they say they are.The SAVE America Act simply makes sure that voters are U.S. citizens.Few factors are more essential to the survival of American democracy than popular confidence among the people in the fairness of elections and the veracity of their outcomes.The left claims to revere democracy. Leftists remind us of their deep affection for government of, by, and for the people every time they baselessly claim that we conservatives are out to destroy it based on our supposedly unquenchable jonesing for dictatorial authoritarian rule.If the leftists love democracy as much as they say they do, then why aren’t they the loudest and most enthusiastic supporters of safeguards like photo ID requirements or the SAVE America Act?RELATED: The SAVE Act is the hill voters will die on Nathan Posner/Anadolu/Getty ImagesInstead, they despise these common-sense measures.To explain away their recalcitrance toward protecting the integrity of elections, critics say rules such as requiring photo IDs or proof of citizenship tend to disenfranchise certain voters — especially minority voters.If they truly believe that certain demographic groups lack the necessary intelligence or resourcefulness to produce photo IDs or proof of citizenship — such as birth certificates or passports — then quite possibly they are racist to their core. And that’s reprehensible.If they know better than that but are just plucking such concepts out of the air to rhetorically justify their stance, then they are disingenuous.The charade should stop.The Senate needs to pass the SAVE America Act now.It’s a recipe for stronger election integrity, better standardization of rules nationwide, increased public confidence in elections, and better accountability for election officials.“The people are demanding it,” President Trump recently said at a House GOP event. They’re right.

The hypocrisy of the left in this country, and the lengths to which their enablers in the leftist media will go to push a narrative would be laughable, if it weren’t so potentially dangerous, and that was on display Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. Host Dana Bash was interviewing House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and had him weigh in on a Truth Social post by President Trump, where he called the Democrat party, “America’s greatest enemy.” Jeffries’ response was outrageous.

Bash saved the question for the end of the segment. 

BASH: I want to ask you before I let you go, about something the President just put on Truth Social this morning. He said, now, with the death of Iran, the greatest enemy America has is the radical left, highly incompetent Democratic party. Your response?

JEFFRIES: Donald Trump should keep his reckless mouth shut, before he gets somebody killed. 

BASH: Hakeem Jeffries, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it.

But it was Jeffries himself, who minutes earlier, in the very same interview, described President Trump, Republicans, and especially ICE Agents as the enemy, without ever uttering the word, in response to being asked about Trump’s plan to deploy ICE at airports to help TSA  Agents during the government shutdown. After Tom Homan discussed how ICE agents would pitch in, Bash merely asked Jeffries: “What’s your response to what Tom Homan revealed here?”

JEFFRIES: There are three things that have been true since Donald Trump and Republicans came back into power last January. Life is more expensive. Life is more chaotic, and life is more extreme. The last thing that the American people need are for untrained ICE Agents to be deployed at airports all across the country, potentially to brutalize or in some instances, kill them. We’ve already seen how ICE conducts itself. 

Pretty outrageous. Enough to motivate acts of violence? Maybe, who knows. But it’s at least as provocative as what Trump had posted, which was apparently lost on Bash. And I presume that Bash had no idea what Jeffries said back in January of 2025, about a Federal Funding freeze related to DEI programs. “We are going to fight it legislatively, we are going to fight it in the courts, and we are going to fight it in the streets.” I guess she didn’t know that in September of 2017, Jeffries called Trump a “racial arsonist.” There have been two assassination attempts on Trump since then. Bash must have forgotten about those. And of course, it’s not just Jeffries.

In December of 2023, then President Joe Biden called Trump and Republicans an existential threat to America. The Democrats have routinely suggested Trump is a threat to democracy.

On March 20, 2018, Biden was speaking at an anti-sexual harassment event at  the University of Miami and said of Trump, “If we were in high school I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.”

And in October 2016  then V.P. Biden said,  “I wish we were in high school, I could take him behind the gym. That’s what I wish.”

On June 22, 2019, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), appeared on NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers and said of Trump, ” And my testosterone sometime, makes me wanna feel like punching him.” 

On March 4, 2020, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the leading Democrat in the Senate, spoke at a rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court, focused on a Louisiana abortion rights case. He used the opportunity to issue this message, or threat, to two conservative Justices, “I want to tell you Gorsuch, I want to tell you Kavanaugh, you have unleashed the whirlwind, and you will pay the price…You won’t know what hit you, if you go forward with these awful decisions.” Two years later, in June of 2022, a man attempted to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh at his home.

In June of 2008, while running for President, Barack Obama was speaking at a fundraiser in Philadelphia about the campaign ahead against John McCain, and reportedly said, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”

More recently, Dr. Cornel West, appearing on CNN’s NewsNight With Abby Phillip earlier this month, called President Trump “a gangster.” Days after the start of the Iran war, Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), one of the six Democrats to make a video encouraging military service members to disobey unlawful orders, called Trump a ‘five- time draft dodger” on CNN’s The Source With Kaitlan Collins, and CNN’s Bakari Sellers called V.P. Vance “an A-hole” on a February edition of CNN’s NewsNight.

There are so many more examples of the violent and vulgar rhetoric coming from the mouths of the left. Dana Bash should watch her own network. 

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass currently leads in her reelection race despite having an over 50 percent disapproval rating among likely voters.
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