Washington Free Beacon

At least 14 people were injured Thursday in central Israel after a Palestinian terrorist rammed his vehicle into pedestrians and stabbed 2 police officers, local authorities confirmed.

The terrorist, a 50-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank, critically wounded a 17-year-old girl and left two people in serious condition, the Jerusalem Post reported. At least three others suffered moderate injuries. The attacker “ran over several people at a bus station, then proceeded to stab others with a screwdriver and crashed into a police vehicle,” Israeli police said.

He was later shot dead by police, according to the Times of Israel.

Victims “were near a bus stop at the Pardes Hanna Junction, in the westbound lane, when the vehicle hit them,” a paramedic told the Post. “When we arrived, they were lying in the back area. We immediately began providing medical treatment, including stopping bleeding and bandaging wounds.”

The attack comes just days after three buses exploded just south of Tel Aviv in what authorities called a “suspected terror attack.” The explosions resulted in no casualties and were caused by makeshift bombs with timers that likely originated from the West Bank. One unexploded bomb has a note that reads “Revenge from Tulkarem,” referring to an Israeli counterterrorism operation in the West Bank.

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It’s been a lousy week for the White House Correspondents’ Association. President Donald Trump cut the organization off at the knees when he announced on Tuesday that the White House, not the WHCA, would select the members of the presidential press pool, the rotating group of reporters and photographers who cover the president in places like the Oval Office and Air Force One where space is tight. Cue the hysterics.

The White House has always had the discretion to grant or deny reporters access to White House grounds and, once on those grounds, over which reporters are called on in press briefings. It stands to reason that the White House has the right to decide which outlets get access to tight space that the White House itself is providing.

But taking control of the press pool, the WHCA says, is an assault on the First Amendment. “In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps,” the organization’s president Eugene Daniels said Tuesday, shortly after announcing his departure from Politico for MSNBC. “For generations, the working journalists elected to lead the White House Correspondents’ Association board have consistently expanded the WHCA’s membership and its pool rotations to facilitate the inclusion of new and emerging outlets.”

Would that it were true! And, if it were … we might even join the fight!

Alas, in the real world, participation in the presidential press pool is hardly an equal-opportunity affair. The White House Correspondents’ Association restricts participation to outlets that hold a congressional press pass.

For many outlets, those are doled out by another journalistic cartel known as the Periodical Press Gallery, which requires news outlets to demonstrate they are supported “chiefly by advertising or by subscription.” That gallery is controlled by an executive committee composed of reporters from Politico, The Hill, and Punchbowl News, among others.

Not a single one of our colleagues in the mainstream media has raised hackles over this assault on our First Amendment rights—one that has for over a decade been in their power to rectify.

House Speaker Mike Johnson would be wise to follow in the White House’s footsteps and exercise his constitutional prerogative to take control of the congressional press gallery, too. The result would be a press corps on Capitol Hill and the White House that is freer and more inclusive—not less.

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An overwhelming majority of Americans support Israel’s right to defend itself, according to a poll released Thursday.

The poll, conducted by the Israel on Campus Coalition in partnership with Schoen Cooperman Research, reveals a resounding endorsement of Israel’s position among Americans. Of the 1,000 U.S. adults surveyed, 81 percent affirmed Israel’s right to defend itself—an 11 percent increase compared to a poll the two groups conducted last month.

Thursday’s survey also identified an even sharper increase: 82 percent of Americans believe a final ceasefire agreement in the Gaza conflict should remove Hamas from power, up from 57 percent last month.

“These findings demonstrate unwavering public support for Israel and deep concern about the alarming rise of antisemitism, especially on college campuses,” said Israel on Campus Coalition CEO Jacob Baime.

While solidarity with Israel remains robust, the poll also highlighted the sharp increase in anti-Semitism present in America’s colleges and universities. Since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Israeli civilians, reports of anti-Semitism in higher education skyrocketed.

Among the 400 college students surveyed, 75 percent said they experienced, witnessed, or heard about anti-Semitic incidents on their campus, while 76 percent said they viewed it as a serious problem.

Those findings were similar among the 250 Jewish college students polled. Of them, 74 percent see anti-Semitism as a serious problem on their campus, with 81 percent having either experienced it personally (30 percent), witnessed it firsthand (29 percent), or heard about anti-Semitic incidents (22 percent).

The anti-Israel protests and Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions petitions that have spread on college campuses since the Oct. 7 attack have resonated with Jewish students. Nearly 90 percent worry that those activities are fueling hate crimes and violence against Jewish students.

President Donald Trump pledged to target campus anti-Semitism during his 2024 election campaign and has started to make good on that promise. Universities have already taken measures in response.

Just one week into his term, Trump signed an executive order announcing that the federal government would “combat anti-Semitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.”

Trump’s Department of Education, meanwhile, opened investigations into “widespread antisemitic harassment” at Columbia University and four other schools in the wake of Oct. 7 and scrapped $15 million in federal grants for diversity programs at three other universities. The Department of Justice launched a task force “to root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and college campuses.”

Still, the Israel-Hamas war looms large for college students, ranking as their second-most important issue (27 percent), trailing only costs and inflation (43 percent). For Jewish students, it’s the top priority (40 percent). Ninety-one percent of college students say the conflict is important to them personally.

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When Joe Biden’s USAID wasn’t bankrolling terror-tied organizations in the Middle East, it was spending billions on left-wing priorities like “environmental justice” and “LGBTQI+ Inclusive Development.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio used the Trump administration’s 90-day pause on foreign aid to review “all foreign assistance programs to ensure they are efficient and consistent with U.S. foreign policy.” You’ll never believe what happened next.

An internal department memo obtained by our Adam Kredo indicates that, of more than 9,100 grants reviewed—worth an estimated $15.9 billion—4,100 of those grants worth approximately $4.4 billion are now slated for elimination.

The proposed cuts were more pronounced at USAID, where Trump administration officials moved to slash 5,800 grants valued at $54 billion, marking a 92 percent reduction in USAID’s multi-year grant spending, according to the memo.

“The ‘exhaustive’ review,” writes Kredo, “reflects the monumental changes underway at USAID under Trump.” Some of them, to be sure, are the subject of ongoing court battles. Rubio picked up a win on that front Wednesday night, when the Supreme Court temporarily blocked an order that would have compelled the administration to make nearly $2 billion in taxpayer-funded foreign aid payments.

As Rubio moves forward, he’s pledging to “reform the way the United States delivers foreign assistance” following “decades of institutional drift.” His memo identifies three principles in doing so:

“Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, must be justified with the answer to three simple questions: Does it make America safe? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?”

READ MORE: State Department Completes Foreign Funding Review, Identifying 15,000 Grants Worth $60 Billion for Elimination

At the Washington Post, billionaire owner and Free Beacon Man of the Year Jeff Bezos is making moves.

On Wednesday, Bezos sent a memo to staff outlining a new vision for the Post‘s opinion section centered on two sturdy pillars: “personal liberties and free markets.” The section will cover other topics, wrote Bezos, but “viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.” In other words, get in line or get out.

Post opinion editor David Shipley chose the latter option, declining to “lead this new chapter” after “careful consideration,” Bezos announced. Others are likely to follow suit, if their reactions are any indication.

Economics reporter Jeff Stein, for example, “slammed Bezos’s pro-freedom remarks as a ‘massive encroachment’ on the opinion section” even as he “acknowledged that Bezos has never interfered with his reporting,” the Free Beacon‘s Andrew Stiles writes. “Philip Bump, one of several openly Democratic columnists at the Post, had a more succinct reaction. ‘What the actual fuck,’ he wrote on Bluesky, the social media app for obnoxious liberals.”

“Karen Attiah, the Post columnist who was recently confronted at a book event in Washington, D.C., over her sympathy for Hamas terrorists, had this to say about working for a boss who wants to promote freedom and other American values: ‘Deep breaths.’ Attiah, who defended the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack as a justified attempt at ‘decolonization,’ was particularly outraged after Bezos barred the editorial board from endorsing Harris, calling it an ‘absolute stab in the back’ and an ‘insult to those of us who have literally put our careers and lives on the line, to call out threats to human rights and democracy.'” Attiah didn’t resign then. If she does now, we’ll have no choice but to make Lord Bezos a Man of the Year all over again.

READ MORE: Journalists Outraged After WaPo Owner Endorses Freedom

Speaking of obnoxious journalists, CNN’s Jake Tapper announced his new book on Wednesday. It isn’t a self-help guide on how to survive a sworn deposition in the midst of a defamation lawsuit. Instead, it’s on “President Biden’s decline, its cover-up, and his disastrous choice to run again.”

Tapper’s co-author is Alex Thompson, the Axios reporter who emerged as perhaps the only mainstream journalist willing to pursue stories on Old Joe’s dementia-addled brain before Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer gave their media allies the green light to pile on. Tapper handled things differently, running cover for Biden’s frequent gaffes by blaming them on the octogenarian’s childhood stutter.

In one now-infamous exchange, Tapper lambasted Lara Trump for daring to make the claim that Biden was displaying a “cognitive decline.”

“How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they see you make a comment like that?” he said in a 2020 interview. “I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose somebody’s cognitive decline.”

Biden spent the following years wandering aimlessly around stages and confusing world leaders, but Tapper stood firm. When Biden, for example, used his 2022 State of the Union address to argue that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin would “never gain the hearts and souls of the Iranian people,” Tapper described the performance as “solid” given Biden’s speaking “challenges.” Years later, in March 2024, Tapper said Biden “embraces his stutter, talking about it, while Trump mocks it, exaggerates it, belittles it.”

Biden himself said the opposite in 2019, telling Axios, “Look, the mistakes I make are mistakes. And some people think I still stutter. I don’t think of myself that way.”

Watch the Tapper lowlight reel here.

Away from the Beacon:

• Gavin Newsom launched a new podcast on Wednesday, pledging to tackle “all your big questions.” Dave Portnoy quickly posed one we’re hoping Newsom addresses: “Why did you throw a party for yourself at the French Laundry with no masks on in the middle of Covid when California had just about the strictest COVID regs in the country and thousands of small businesses were going outta business because of said policies?”
• Monica Lewinsky went on Call Her Daddy, the podcast best known for interviewing Kamala Harris on a makeshift set that reportedly cost the veep’s campaign $100,000. “The best way to handle a situation like that,” Lewinsky said of Slick Willy, “would have been to probably say it was nobody’s business, and to resign.”

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After President Donald Trump’s electoral victory in November, the Democratic National Committee launched a rapid response social media account, “FactPost,”  to “combat online misinformation.” On Wednesday, the account published fabricated audio—known as a “deepfake”—of Donald Trump Jr. calling on the United States to arm Russia in its war against Ukraine.

FactPost posted audio on Twitter of Trump Jr. ostensibly speaking about the Ukraine-Russia war on his podcast, Triggered. In the clip, the computer-generated Trump Jr. says he “honestly can’t imagine anyone in their right mind picking Ukraine as an ally.”

“Honestly, the U.S. should have been sending weapons to Russia,” the fake first son says.

It is unclear who created the deepfake. Two accounts with large followings—Visegrad24 and Polymarket—posted it earlier Wednesday. FactPost and groups like Republicans Against Trump posted it later in the day, citing it as evidence that the administration favors Russia in the war against Ukraine. Some social media users quickly called the audio into question, noting that the Triggered podcast website did not have the episode featured in the viral tweets.

FactPost and others deleted their posts after a representative for Trump Jr. said the clip is “100% fake AI generated audio.”

It comes as Democrats accuse Republicans of spreading disinformation on social media. The DNC’s website touts its support for legislation to fight AI-generated disinformation and deepfakes, video, or audio that has been edited for malicious purposes. The DNC launched FactPost last month to “try to combat online misinformation and respond to Trump administration actions by pushing out memes, videos and graphics.”

“The Republican disinformation machine is powerful, but we believe a stronger weapon is giving people the facts about how Trump and his administration are screwing over the American people,” DNC chief mobilization officer Shelby Cole said after the FactPost launch last month.

According to the DNC, many of the FactPost staffers worked on the Kamala Harris campaign’s rapid response account, KamalaHQ. That account caused several headaches for the ill-fated campaign.

In August, KamalaHQ published never-before-seen video of Tim Walz calling for gun control. In the video, Walz claimed he carried weapons “in war.” But, as the Washington Free Beacon reported, Walz never served in a war zone. Numerous other examples soon emerged of Walz embellishing his military record.

The DNC did not respond to a request for comment.

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A mob of Columbia University and Barnard College students violently stormed a campus building Wednesday afternoon in protest of the expulsion of two Barnard students.

Video footage of the storming of a Barnard campus building, Milbank Hall, shows droves of keffiyeh-clad student radicals shoving their way into a building entrance, physically clashing with at least two outnumbered Barnard security guards. Once inside, the agitators chanted “free Palestine” and “intifada, revolution.”

The expulsions, announced Sunday by Columbia University Apartheid Divest—the Ivy League’s most notorious anti-Semitic student group—stemmed from a January incident in which four student radicals stormed an Israeli history class and targeted Jewish students with anti-Semitic flyers that glorified Hamas, showed a trampled Star of David, and advocated violence. Columbia promptly suspended at least one student protester involved.

One flyer passed out to Jewish students stated, “THE ENEMY WILL NOT SEE TOMORROW,” using an upside-down triangle—a symbol that Hamas uses to denote Israeli targets—to spell “TOMORROW.” The flyer depicted a truck full of Hamas terrorists brandishing RPGs and machine guns.

Another flyer, with the caption “CRUSH ZIONISM,” depicted the Star of David underneath a boot. A third encouraged students to “BURN ZIONISM TO THE GROUND.”

In response, Columbia posted a security guard outside at least one Jewish studies course on Wednesday. The university announced that it “mobilized the Public Safety team to prevent future incidents, including identifying and directing additional resources to classes at increased risk for disruption.”

CUAD and Columbia’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter were involved in Wednesday’s storming.

A week after the pro-Hamas agitators descended on the Israeli history class, anti-Israel student radicals at Columbia dumped cement into a campus building’s sewage system, deploying tactics they studied months earlier at an event hosted by an anti-Israel student group.

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Jake Tapper repeatedly blamed Joe Biden’s frequent gaffes and delayed speech on the former president’s childhood stutter. Now the CNN anchor is coming out with a book arguing that the “cover-up” of Biden’s decline led to President Donald Trump’s 2024 election.

“President Biden embraces his stutter, talking about it, while Trump mocks it, exaggerates it, belittles it,” Tapper said in March 2024.

In his upcoming book with CNN contributor and Axios reporter Alex Thompson, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, And His Disastrous Decision to Run Again, Tapper concluded that Biden’s declining mental state and fragility was, in fact, concealed from the public. The pair wrote that Biden’s disastrous June 2024 debate was “not an anomaly” but “the natural result of an eighty-one-year-old man whose faculties had been diminishing for years.”

That’s a far cry from Tapper’s previous comments defending, sometimes even praising Biden. After Lara Trump in 2020 said Biden was clearly displaying a “cognitive decline,” Tapper accused her of “mocking his stutter.” Trump denied knowing that Biden had a stutter.

“How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they see you make a comment like that?” Tapper asked Lara Trump in a 2020 interview. “I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose somebody’s cognitive decline.”

Meanwhile, following Biden’s 2022 State of the Union address, where he mistakenly invoked Iranians when speaking about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Tapper still lauded the 46th president.

“Considering his speaking talents and challenges, it was a fairly solid performance,” Tapper said.

In 2019, Biden denied that his childhood stutter was not to blame for his verbal stumbles. Yet his frequent, if not increasing, gaffes throughout his presidential term often led to speculation about his mental acuity. After a disastrous debate performance during the 2024 election, the issue became unavoidable.

Penguin Press, the book’s publisher, stated that readers will learn that Biden’s conduct during his reelection campaign was “shockingly narcissistic, self-delusional, and reckless.”

“Toni Morrison once said, ‘If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it,’” Jake Tapper said in a statement. “That’s what inspired this book: we wanted to know more about what we all just lived through. More than 200 interviews later, Alex and I have a much better idea. And soon you all will too.”

The book is slated to be released on May 20.

Tapper was recently a central figure in a defamation trial against CNN. Navy Veteran Zachary Young accused Tapper and the left-wing network of falsely portraying him as an “illegal profiteer” who operated in a “black market” while evacuating Afghans during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal. During Tapper’s deposition ahead of the January trial, the anchor said CNN shouldn’t have apologized for the segment.

CNN was ultimately ordered to pay Young $5 million in economic and emotional damages as well as an undisclosed amount in punitive damages.

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Many journalists and other liberal activists freaked out on Wednesday after Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and compassionate steward of the failing Washington Post, expressed his support for “personal liberties” and “free markets.” The billionaire’s remarks came in a bland memo to Post staff announcing changes to the paper’s opinion section, as well as the departure of opinion editor David Shipley, who evidently did not share Bezos’s view that freedom is good.

Full disclosure: Both Bezos (2024) and Shipley (2023) are winners of the coveted Washington Free Beacon Man of the Year award.

“We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others,” Bezos wrote. “I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else.”

Bezos went on to say that Shipley was given the opportunity to “lead this new chapter” at the Post opinion section, but the editor declined after “careful consideration.” Shipley had already challenged Bezos over the owner’s decision to withhold a presidential endorsement (of Kamala Harris, obviously) during the 2024 election. He told Post employees at the time that the decision, which prompted a number of resignations, was a threat to the paper’s reputation as an “independent journalistic organization.”

Just as they did when Bezos declined to let his editorial board publish a meaningless endorsement of Kamala Harris that would have changed precisely zero minds, journalists at the Post and beyond were outraged in response to the memo endorsing personal and economic freedom. Shipley held an “emotional” meeting on Wednesday with staff who were “shocked and stunned,” according to the New York Times.

Jeff Stein, an economics reporter at the Post, slammed Bezos’s pro-freedom remarks as a “massive encroachment” on the opinion section that made clear “dissenting views” on the benefits of freedom “will not be published or tolerated there.” Stein acknowledged that Bezos has never interfered with his reporting. Philip Bump, one of several openly Democratic columnists at the Post, had a more succinct reaction. “What the actual fuck,” he wrote on Bluesky, the social media app for obnoxious liberals.

Related: Want To Exchange Ideas With Annoying Liberals Like Yourself? Here’s How To Delete Your X Account and Join Bluesky.

Kara Swisher, the liberal tech journalist who is trying to buy the Post from Bezos, agreed that Bump had asked “the right question.” Writing on Bluesky, obviously, Swisher went on to denounce Bezos as an “utterly shameless” “adult toddler” who had “killed … the First Amendment and basic humanity in a vomitous spew of nonsense.”

Mehdi Hasan, the former MSNBC host whose show was canceled due to low ratings and anti-Semitism, argued that Bezos’s support for personal and economic freedom was an attack on “progressive opinions.” Edward Luce, a columnist for the Financial Times, slammed Bezos for his lack of “dignity.” Amanda Katz, who resigned from the Post opinion section in December, was also very upset with the decision to promote freedom. “RIP, WaPo,” she wrote on Bluesky. “An absolute abandonment of the principles of accountability of the powerful, justice, democracy, human rights, and accurate information that previously animated the section in favor of a white male billionaire’s self-interested agenda.”

Karen Attiah, the Post columnist who was recently confronted at a book event in Washington, D.C., over her sympathy for Hamas terrorists, has yet to weight in on the matter, but she presumably isn’t too happy about to have a boss who wants to promote freedom and other American values. Attiah, who defended the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack as justified attempt at “decolonization,” was particularly outraged after Bezos barred the editorial board from endorsing Harris, calling it an “absolute stab in the back” and an “insult to those of us who have literally put our careers and lives on the line, to call out threats to human rights and democracy.”

Jennifer Rubin, the annoying former Post columnist who allegedly resigned in January to start a “pro-democracy” website, was predictably livid. “Truly saddened by an oligarch with vested interest in sucking up to the Musk-Trump presidency destroying a great American newspaper,” she wrote on Bluesky. “Aside from the moral outrage what a stupid business move.”

Crucial context: Bezos Babe Lauren Sanchez Pops in Suffragette White at Trump Inaguration

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The Biden administration ditched the first Trump administration’s U.S. Agency for International Development vetting reforms—and went on to send “vast sums of U.S. money” to Middle Eastern countries that ended up in the hands of terrorists, a former senior USAID official told Congress on Wednesday.

Max Primorac, USAID’s former acting chief operating officer, said he pushed for a stronger vetting process for grants going to countries linked to terrorism under the first Trump administration. The Biden administration ditched those processes, he said.

“I approved strong vetting policies for humanitarian assistance in countries swarming with terrorists. That, too, was ignored by the Biden administration,” Primorac, now a Heritage Foundation senior research fellow, said during a Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency hearing on foreign aid. He added that “vast sums of U.S. money have been diverted to fund terrorists in Gaza, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan” and that “NGOs have been hit with heavy fines for violating our anti-terrorism financing laws.”

The hearing comes as the Trump administration takes steps to dismantle USAID. In recent weeks, the administration has slashed thousands of agency employees and instituted a 90-day spending freeze, which is the subject of an ongoing court battle.

Primorac and other foreign aid experts testified that sweeping oversight and transparency problems at USAID have led to foreign funding recipients diverting U.S. taxpayer dollars to support terrorists, overseas left-wing activism, and foreign adversaries.

Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum, said his group has “identified over $122 million which has ended up supporting radical organizations, or even directly bankrolling organizations which are considered to be terrorists by the U.S. government.”

He testified, for example, that USAID gave a $125,000 grant to the Islamic Relief Agency, “an entity linked to al Qaeda, even after a whistleblower raised red flags.” He said another organization, Helping Hand for Relief and Development, received a $78,000 grant “despite openly working with the terrorists who orchestrated the 2008 Mumbai massacre in India.”

USAID money also went to Jammal Trust Bank in Lebanon, which the U.S. Department of the Treasury later designated as a sponsor of the terrorist group Hezbollah. In another example, the agency funded the Gazan charity Bayader and Unlimited Friends Association, whose officials have called for the region to be “cleansed” of the “impurity of the Jews,” and which maintains close relations with Hamas leadership, according to Roman.

He said federal workers who approved such grants should be liable for criminal charges under anti-terrorism financing laws.

“This is a threat to American national security and potentially criminal, and this committee should take action to ensure that the Department of Justice acts on it, and does everything in Congress’s power to not just investigate but refer criminal actions to the proper authorities,” said Roman.

Beyond the terror-tied groups, billions in USAID grants have gone to “miscellaneous awardees” whose names aren’t publicly disclosed, Roman said, making it “impossible for Congress, the media, or the public, to track who’s really getting the funds.”

Democrats objected to the USAID cuts, saying they punish federal workers and contribute to a humanitarian crisis.

“Millions of people are at risk of dying of starvation in areas of the world where Democrats and Republicans have already agreed and committed to feeding them with American-grown food,” said Rep. Greg Casar (D., Texas.). “Musk is dangerous. He’s incompetent, he’s chaotic, and he’s killing programs that we rely on,” added Rep. Robert Garcia (D., Calif.). “He’s causing real harm to federal workers.”

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The Department of Justice will take aggressive action against rising anti-Semitism on college campuses throughout the United States, Harmeet Dhillon said Wednesday at her confirmation hearing for assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.

“We’ve seen anti-Semitism sweep the nation, and it is very problematic that many people of the Jewish faith are barred by professors and fellow students from access to the classroom,” Dhillon told Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Dhillon, whom President Donald Trump nominated in December and praised as “a tireless defender of our Constitutional Rights,” said Wednesday that she views religious discrimination, including anti-Semitism, “as an appropriate target for the Civil Rights Division.”

Anti-Semitic incidents have surged on college campuses since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, with Jewish students facing harassment, intimidation, and exclusion from academic spaces. Anti-Israel protests have often escalated into verbal and physical altercations, and universities have faced accusations of violating Title VI, which prohibits discrimination at federally funded institutions.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) followed up Grassley’s questions by asking Dhillon whether she would “commit to vigorously enforcing …  Title VI violations related to anti-Semitism, to make sure that we root out this scourge on America’s campuses.”

“Absolutely, senator, I would certainly commit to that,” Dhillon replied.

The Trump nominee also told Sen. Katie Britt (R., Ala.) that it is “crucial” for the DOJ to combat all forms of discrimination, warning that inaction constitutes “a blow not just to those individual students, but to the entire community when they see campus administrators refuse to protect them.”

Dhillon’s nomination is poised to advance to the full Senate for final confirmation. While a date has not been set, the Republican majority in the Senate makes her confirmation likely.

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