Month: August 2025

The U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday that George Washington University was in violation of federal civil rights laws by “acting deliberately indifferent” to instances of anti-Semitism on campus.

In a letter from Assistant Attorney General Civil Rights Division Harmeet K. Dhillon to GWU President Ellen M. Granberg, the DOJ stated that the department had finished its probe of the allegations against the university and found that GWU’s response to incidents of anti-Semitic discrimination and harassment of Jewish and Israeli students that “despite actual notice of the abuses occurring on its campus, GWU was deliberately indifferent to the complaints it received, the misconduct that occurred, and the harms that were suffered by its students and faculty, in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 .. The antisemitic, hate-based misconduct by GWU students directed at Jewish GWU students, faculty, and employees was, in a word, shocking. The behavior was demonstrably abhorrent, immoral, and, most importantly, illegal.”

The allegations stem from an encampment that students created in GWU’s University Yard, in the middle of campus: “The purpose of the agitators’ efforts was to frighten, intimidate, and deny Jewish, Israeli, and American-Israeli students free and unfettered access to GWU’s educational environment. This is the definition of hostility and a ‘hostile environment.’ [DOJ’s] investigation found numerous incidents of Jewish students being harassed, abused, intimidated and assaulted by protesters. To be clear, Jewish students were afraid to attend class, to be observed, or, worse, to be ‘caught’ and perhaps physically beaten on GWU’s campus.”  The letter offered “the opportunity to resolve this matter through a voluntary resolution agreement.”

The letter refers to campus protests in April and May 2024, where students staged pro-Palestinian protests at universities across the country, including rallies and encampments; however, some Jewish students experienced alleged anti-Semitism on several university campuses.

GWU spokesperson Shannon McClendon said in a statement: “GW condemns antisemitism, which has absolutely no place on our campuses or in a civil and humane society. Moreover, our actions clearly demonstrate our commitment to addressing antisemitic actions and promoting an inclusive campus environment by upholding a safe, respectful, and accountable environment. “

GWU is one of dozens of American universities that have been targeted by the Trump administration with civil rights and constitutional investigations in connection to protests over Israel’s war in Gaza. Trump has been cracking down on institutions of higher learning over a slew of allegations, from not protecting Jewish students to illegally enforcing diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

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E.J. Antoni, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), has proposed pausing the release of monthly employment reports in favor of more reliable quarterly updates.

In an interview with Fox News Digital on Monday (ahead of his nomination) that was published Tuesday, Antoni argued that the BLS’s current approach to tracking U.S. job numbers is flawed and often misleading, and suggested it be replaced with “more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data.”  Antoni said: “How on earth are businesses supposed to plan — or how is the Fed supposed to conduct monetary policy — when they don’t know how many jobs are being added or lost in our economy? It’s a serious problem that needs to be fixed immediately. Until it is corrected, the BLS should suspend issuing the monthly job reports but keep publishing the more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data.”

Antoni – currently the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation – believes the monthly reports should be replaced temporarily with quarterly reports that offer greater accuracy. This change, he said, should remain in place until the BLS overhauls its data collection methods to produce dependable monthly figures: “From Wall Street investors to policymakers in Washington, key decisions hinge on these numbers,” Antoni noted. “If people lose confidence in the data, the consequences can ripple across the economy.”

Trump announced Antoni’s nomination just days after firing former BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer on August 1. That decision came after the agency reported that 73,000 jobs were created in July—less than half the 147,000 initially reported for June. Trump accused McEntarfer of deliberately inflating job reports before the upcoming November 5 election to benefit the Biden administration. According to Trump, later adjustments erased a total of 818,000 jobs from the record. McEntarfer had been nominated to the BLS post by President Joe Biden in July 2023 and was confirmed by the Senate in January 2024.

Trump praised Antoni, writing Monday on Truth Social: “I am pleased to announce that I am nominating Highly Respected Economist, Dr. E.J. Antoni, as the next Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Our Economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE. I know E.J. Antoni will do an incredible job in this new role. Congratulations E.J.!”

Asked whether the BLS would continue to release monthly jobs reports, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “I believe that is the plan and that’s the hope, and that these monthly reports will be data that the American people can trust. We need to restore new leadership that we trust” at the BLS, adding that “we need to look at the means and the methods of how the United States is acquiring this very important data. The goal, of course, is to provide honest and good data for the American people to make very important economic decisions on.”

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President Donald Trump announced Monday that the federal government will take over law enforcement in Washington and deploy National Guard troops in the nation’s capital, in order to combat what he says is “rampant violent crime;” despite data showing crime has actually declined in the city in recent years.

Surrounded by Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, U. S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro, FBI Director Kash Patel and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Trump announced in a press conference that the administration intends to crack down on violent crime, and was declaring a public safety emergency in order to put the Washington police department under federal control.

The President signed an executive order declaring crime an emergency in Washington and stated he would be invoking section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act. He said the D.C. National Guard will deploy to fight crime, and he said he may deploy units from other states if needed.  The President added that AG Bondi will be taking command of the Metropolitan Police Department, and DEA Administrator Terry Cole will be interim federal commissioner of the force.

Trump said during the press conference: “We’re here for a very serious purpose. Very serious, very. Something’s out of control. But we’re going to put it in control very quickly, like we did in the southern border. I’m announcing a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse. This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we’re going to take our capital back … Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people, and we’re not going to let it happen anymore … In addition, I’m deploying the National Guard to help reestablish law, order and public safety in D.C., and they’re going to be allowed to do their job properly,”  adding later that about 800 guardsmen would be called up.

Hegseth said the National Guard was formally mobilized Monday and would be “flowing into the streets of Washington in the coming week.” In an accompanying executive order, Mr. Trump wrote that the deployment “shall remain in effect until I determine that conditions of law and order have been restored in the District of Columbia.”

Metro police data released this month said violent crime rates have continued to fall in 2025, with violent crime down 26% year-over-year. Homicide rates have dropped 12%, sex abuse by 49%, assault with a dangerous weapon by 20% and robbery by 28%.  However, Trump said that the administration was examining a person who claimed he was asked to falsify data: “And we had a recent indication, and there was a story about a man who just left. He quit because he was asked to do phony numbers on crime, and we’re going to look into that. I think Pam [Bondi] is going to be looking into that, but he was asked by the city, I guess we don’t want to show the real numbers. Let me do numbers so it looks like it’s going down, not going down, and under Biden, it was a disaster, and nobody did anything about it. We’re going to do things about it like you wouldn’t believe.”

Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser called Trump’s directive “unsettling and unprecedented” but said the city would cooperate with the administration to the extent that the law allows. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland said he plans to introduce a bill to undo Trump’s order, calling it “a textbook authoritarian maneuver.”

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