In the two months following the unprecedented axing of $400 million in federal funding to Columbia in March 2025, the federal enforcement apparatus—empowered by President Donald Trump’s administration—moved to expand its purview over areas of civil society, kicking off landmark antisemitism investigations into three universities: Columbia, Harvard University, and Brown University.
As Columbia and its peers grappled with the investigations and encroachment on internal university affairs, lower-level federal attorneys pulled into the investigations were caught in the middle of the standoff. They raised concerns to Trump officials about the novel legal strategy of tying Title VI antisemitism violations to federal funding for those universities and utilizing said funding as a bargaining chip in multimillion dollar settlement negotiations with universities.
This clash would come to a head at a May 2, 2025, meeting, where those attorneys and officials from the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services met to discuss the next steps in the sweeping investigations.
There, Daniel Shieh, associate deputy director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights, laid out the administration’s road map.
“Shieh explained that the initial plan was for Harvard to be the first example, but when negotiations broke down, officials tried to make...
White House border czar Tom Homan fired back on Sunday's "State of the Union" after Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., accused U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") of targeting parents at sch...