A longtime Democrat congressman says that Abdul El-Sayed’s Democrat primary victory for Michigan proves that the Left has “normalized” hate “in plain sight,” adding that this is “scary” for all Americans.

In an op-ed for the Free Press, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., wrote that his party is “being hijacked by socialists” and is “overrun by antisemitism.”

Throughout the Michigan primary campaign, El-Sayed refused to condemn the death of Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei because it could “upset” some of his voters. He also justified a Hezbollah-inspired terrorist attack against Temple Israel Synagogue and Pre-School in Michigan.

El-Sayed also appeared alongside leftist influencer Hasan Piker, who, Gottheimer wrote, previously “praised Hamas, referred to Orthodox Jews as ‘inbred,’ and blamed America for 9/11.”

El-Sayed disavowed Piker’s 9/11 comments over the weekend.

Gottheimer accused El-Sayed of choosing to campaign on controversial issues such as Israel, rather than “focusing on lower costs for families,” which he claimed comes as a warning that does not only apply the Jewish community.

“This shouldn’t scare only the Jews—these sentiments are anti-American,” he wrote.

A recent survey found that 60% of young Americans side with Hamas, a designated terrorist organization responsible for the murders, rapes, and kidnappings of more than 1,000 people in one day, over Israel.

In the op-ed, the congressman used the example of the June 30 congressional primary victory by Melat Kiros, a Colorado socialist, to prove that El-Sayed’s successful campaign is not a one-time occurrence.

During her campaign, Kiros refused to say that last year’s arson attack on Jewish protesters in Boulder, which injured a Holocaust survivor, was antisemitic.

Gottheimer also accused these same Democrat candidates of ignoring the misogynistic and antisemitic culture that’s “pervasive in most Arab countries.”

In most Arab countries, arranged child marriages, the subjugation of women, genital mutilation of women, and the outlawing of homosexuality are strictly enforced, according to the International Federation for Human Rights.

According to the Institute for National Security Studies, textbooks and religious scripture in the Arab world depict Jews using vitriolic tropes, from the Prophet Muhammad’s seemingly tense relations with Arabian Jews to the influence of modern European antisemitism and backlash against Zionist “settler-colonialism.”

The congressman wrote that his party’s tendency to overlook those issues is an “early warning sign” that the “whole system is starting to break down.”

“The Jewish people may be the target today, but they will come for someone else tomorrow,” he added. “A culture that tolerates violence and hatred against a minority, in language or in policy, is a culture in decay.”

Ultimately, Gottheimer attributed this to the socialist attempt to “hijack” his own party’s “values, ideals, and leadership.”

Not Your Grandfather’s Democratic Party

In July, Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., told CNN that the House Progressive Caucus “had become more of a socialist caucus, and most of the leadership was socialist Democrats,” Cohen said.

“I didn’t feel comfortable in it,” Cohen said, adding that the progressive caucus is now home to members who are “so anti-Israel.”

Rep. Greg Landsman, D-Ohio, also has acknowledged the growing fringe of anti-Israel socialists within the party and has said the issue will divide and “weaken us” from within.

Similarly, Jewish organizations have alerted voters to the rise of this growing fringe of the Democratic Party.

After El-Sayed’s victory, Michigan Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League Elyssa Schmier stated that “Jews across Michigan and the country are alarmed by the rhetoric that defined this race and its implications for the future of political norms in our country,” adding that “anyone seeking public office should know better than to normalize antisemitic tropes.”

In a different statement, Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, accused El-Sayed of “peddling in antisemitic tropes” and “campaigning with notorious bigot Hasan Piker.”

El-Sayed and Kiros have not responded to the Daily Signal’s request for comment.

President Donald Trump said on Monday he will demand that Iran pay compensation for “all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded,” in response to Iran seeking compensation for the damages it has incurred from U.S. and Israeli attacks.

Trump’s social media post came after Iran said over the weekend it was nearing a deal with Oman defining new shipping lanes between them through the Strait of Hormuz but repeated that the United States must meet conditions, including compensation and an end to sanctions and military threats, before the strategic waterway is reopened.

“It is an interesting idea because now I am likewise demanding compensation from Iran, for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs and many conflicts,” he wrote on Truth Social.

Trump also referenced and claimed compensation from Iran for the October 2000 deadly bombing of the U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Cole at a Yemeni port. The FBI has attributed that bombing, which killed 17 sailors and wounded more than three dozen others, to al-Qaeda.

Trump added that Tehran should also pay compensation to the families of the thousands of people killed during anti-government protests in January, Iran’s worst domestic unrest since the era of its 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Rights groups say the Iranian government has continued to crack down on opponents during the war.

(Reporting by Bhargav Acharya and Ismail Shakil; editing by Michelle Nichols)

For some, questions of religious liberty seem abstract. For us and our families, they are deeply personal.

I (Arina) taught at an Archdiocese of Washington (ADW) school for a year, the very school where my young son was later accepted for admission. As Catholics committed to raising him in the faith, my husband and I assumed he would attend. Instead, we ultimately declined his acceptance because the Archdiocese does not recognize religious objections to its vaccination policy, even though the state of Maryland does. We enrolled him in a secular private school that respects Maryland’s religious exemption and our sincerely-held convictions.

My experience is not unique. My co-author, Jay Richards, has faced similar choices with his family.

Catholic schools exist to help parents fulfill their God-given responsibility to educate their children in the faith. They should be among the strongest defenders of parental rights, religious liberty, and the primacy of conscience. Yet on childhood vaccination, ADW has adopted a position more restrictive than the state of Maryland itself. That irony should concern every Catholic.

Maryland Respects What ADW Does Not

The Maryland Department of Health provides a Religious Objection section on its Health Immunization Certificate, and except during a declared emergency or epidemic, the exemption remains valid. Maryland has concluded that protecting public health and respecting religious liberty are not mutually exclusive.

ADW concluded otherwise. Rather than using Maryland’s standard form, the Archdiocese adapted it and removed the Religious Objection section. It compels compliance with Maryland’s vaccination requirements but denies the very accommodation Maryland law provides.

ADW is an outlier among neighboring Catholic dioceses. The Archdiocese of Baltimore follows Maryland law, requiring schools to accept the state’s religious exemption form. Its policy manual provides that “in the case of religious objection or medical contra-indication, form DHMH 89 must be submitted and kept on file and be approved by the school.” Baltimore goes a step further: “it is the position of the Archdiocese of Baltimore that immunization is not required in order to participate in religious education classes.”

Likewise, the Diocese of Arlington follows Virginia law, which recognizes religious exemptions to school immunization requirements.

Even the District of Columbia offers religious exemptions to school immunization requirements.

Why does this one Catholic diocese have less respect for religious conscience than the civil government, and less than neighboring Catholic dioceses?

The Church’s Own Teaching

The irony is especially striking because the Church has repeatedly affirmed both the legitimacy of conscientious objections to certain vaccines and the duty of Catholics to make those objections known.

In its 2005 document “Moral Reflections on Vaccines Prepared from Cells Derived from Aborted Human Fetuses,” the Pontifical Academy for Life wrote that parents and physicians “should take recourse, if necessary, to the use of conscientious objection with regard to the use of vaccines produced by means of cell lines of aborted fetal origin” and “should oppose by all means (in writing, through the various associations, mass media, etc.) the vaccines which do not yet have morally acceptable alternatives.”

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reaffirmed these principles in “Dignitas Personae” (2008). Its 2020 “Note on the Morality of Using Some Anti-COVID-19 Vaccines” reiterated that “vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary.”

The “Catechism of the Catholic Church” teaches that parents have the “first responsibility for the education of their children” and the duty to provide for their physical, spiritual, intellectual, and moral well-being (CCC §§2221–2231). Decisions concerning a child’s health, medical care, and moral formation belong first to parents, who bear ultimate responsibility before God.

Catholic schools exist to assist parents in fulfilling that vocation, not to replace their prudential judgment or compel them to violate sincerely-held convictions. Ironically, Maryland recognizes this principle more readily than one of the nation’s largest Catholic dioceses.

Parents Bear the Responsibility

Many faithful Catholic parents are not opposed to vaccines in general but have legitimate moral and prudential concerns about specific vaccines or vaccination schedules. Some object because certain vaccines are derived from or tested using aborted fetal cell lines. Others have studied the issue carefully and believe that they’re responsible for making weighty medical decisions for their children as individuals, not as wards of the state or public health abstractions.

Moreover, since the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, vaccine manufacturers have enjoyed a liability shield for any vaccine placed on the recommended schedule. So, American parents have plenty of reason for caution when it comes to childhood vaccines.

The question is especially timely given the changing national conversation surrounding childhood vaccines. Earlier this year, the federal government initiated a comprehensive review of the childhood immunization schedule. This underscores an important point: vaccine recommendations involve scientific and medical judgment that evolves as evidence develops. They are recommendations, not immutable articles of faith.

Parents, not schools, carry the ultimate responsibility before God for safeguarding their children’s health and well-being. That includes weighing the advice of trusted physicians, considering their family’s medical history, assessing the risks and benefits of various interventions, and ensuring those decisions are consistent with their sincerely-held religious beliefs. Catholic education should support that responsibility, not replace it.

A Costly Time to Alienate the Faithful

This debate comes at a tough time for Catholic education. Across the country, schools face declining enrollment and financial pressures. Yet some of the families in the Archdiocese of Washington most committed to Catholic education instead choose homeschooling or secular private schools because their own Church refuses to accommodate their convictions.

Despite raising these concerns in a detailed letter to the Archdiocese in February 2025, one of the co-authors of this piece has not received even an acknowledgment of correspondence. As a result, our family’s tuition is going elsewhere. We are not alone. We have spoken with other families in the Archdiocese who have formed a coalition to challenge ADW’s ill-conceived vaccine policy.

The solution is neither novel nor radical. Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia have already shown that public health and religious liberty can coexist, and the Archdiocese of Baltimore and the Diocese of Arlington have shown that Catholic schools can respect parental conscience while complying with state law.

We urge ADW to adopt a religious accommodation that is, at a minimum, consistent with Maryland and District of Columbia law. Doing so would reaffirm the Church’s longstanding commitment to parental rights, conscience, and religious liberty while welcoming, rather than alienating, the very families upon whom the future of Catholic education depends.

For an in-depth discussion on vaccines between the authors, tune in to the Bioethics Babe episode on this topic.

The Justice Department filed three lawsuits Monday against states that offer in-state tuition for illegal aliens, after securing victories in five similar cases.

“Congress long ago made clear that states cannot put illegal aliens over our nation’s own citizens,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in a statement first provided to the Daily Signal. “By granting illegal aliens in-state tuition, New York, Vermont, and Connecticut are doing just that. No more.”

“Our efforts will not cease until President [Donald] Trump’s promise is fulfilled: illegal aliens will not receive benefits denied to our nation’s own citizens,” he added.

The DOJ sued Connecticut, New York, and Vermont, alleging that the states violate federal law by requiring colleges and universities to extend discounted tuition rates to illegal aliens.

The lawsuits claim that the policies violate 8 U.S.C. § 1623(a), which states that “an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a state … for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit (in no less an amount, duration, and scope) without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.”

The DOJ case against Vermont cites Senate Bill 191, Act No. 136, which extends eligibility for Vermont in-state tuition benefits, including grants and scholarships, to certain illegal aliens. Sections of the law explicitly bar the Board of Trustees of the Vermont State Colleges from adopting in-state tuition policies that would “discriminate against or exclude a person based solely on the person’s immigration status, or lack thereof.”

The case against Connecticut cites five state laws, one dating back to 2011, which extend in-state tuition benefits to illegal aliens. One of the laws, Connecticut General Statutes § 10a-19m, “makes illegal aliens who meet a threshold of residency in Connecticut and maintain that status for at least five years eligible for student loan reimbursement payments while denying U.S. citizens not residing in Connecticut that same benefit.”

Monday’s actions come after the Justice Department secured favorable outcomes in similar cases against Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Illinois.

In June 2025, a federal judge enjoined Texas’ laws extending in-state tuition to illegal aliens, after the state’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton agreed with the U.S. Justice Department’s complaint. In August 2025, officials in Kentucky and Oklahoma agreed to end similar preferential treatment for illegals. Nebraska followed suit in April.

Unlike officials in those states, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, a Democrat, defended his state’s policies. Judge David W. Dugan of the Southern District of Illinois, however, ruled in July that the state’s policies violated federal law and granted an injunction blocking them.

“Illinois sought to incentivize illegal immigration on the taxpayer’s dime by treating illegal aliens better than U.S. citizens living in other states, in clear violation of federal law,” U.S. Attorney Steven D. Weinhoeft said. “This ruling enforces the statute Congress wrote and stops the state from putting illegal aliens ahead of American citizens.”

No record shows Raoul appealing the decision to a higher court.

Including Monday’s actions, the Justice Department has sued 17 states over in-state tuition for illegal aliens. Lawsuits remain pending in Minnesota, Virginia, California, New Jersey, Kansas, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland, and Colorado.

The Daily Signal reached out to the attorneys general for Connecticut, New York, and Vermont for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

“This is a simple matter of federal law: colleges cannot provide benefits to illegal aliens that they do not provide to U.S. citizens,” Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate said in a statement on the Monday lawsuits. “This Department of Justice will not tolerate American students being treated like second-class citizens in their own country.”

A fundamental error distorts news about the Democratic Socialists of America’s takeover of the Democratic Party. Journalists claim that the DSA’s radical contenders and their comrades are defeating “moderate” Democratic incumbents. Pundits are wondering how pro-Hamas Abdul El-Sayed deprived “centrist” Congresswoman Haley Stevens of Michigan’s Democratic U.S. Senate nomination.

While the largely triumphant DSA candidates are as left-wing as advertised, the “middle-roaders” whom they are ousting are no such thing. Far-left Democratic incumbents are losing to far-far-left DSA challengers.

To judge Stevens’ alleged centrism, consult her American Conservative Union/CPAC ratings. ACU averages key roll-call votes into lifetime CPAC scores. With 0% farthest-left and 100% farthest-right, moderate Democrats should land in the middle quintile, between 40% and 60%.

Stevens’ lifetime CPAC rating is a paltry 5%. While Americans for Prosperity (AFP) gave her a 9% lifetime score, Heritage Action’s total was a microscopic 1%. 

Congressman Shri Thanedar lost his primary to DSA favorite Donavan McKinney. Thanedar is no moderate. AFP rated him at 15%. The Institute for Legislative Analysis scored him at 9.14%. ACU/CPAC clocked him at just 1%.

Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairman Adriano Espaillat, D–N.Y., is no centrist. His 8% Club for Growth lifetime performance roughly doubles his 4.22% from ILA. His CPAC score halves that, to just 2%.

These losing Democrats are not like Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine, who thrills and aggravates each party about equally (AFP: 48%). Instead, these super-left congressmen succumbed to super-duper left DSA contestants.

This also explains why the DSA’s darlings so easily dispatched these incumbents, in broad daylight: The Democratic Party finally got where it was going. As President Donald J. Trump encapsulated El-Sayed and Stevens: “You have a communist versus a socialist.”

President Bill Clinton famously declared: “The era of Big Government is over.” He wanted abortion “safe legal, and rare,” signed welfare reform, and cut capital-gains taxes. Were he alive, Evil Knievel could not fly his motorcycle from Clinton’s Democratic agenda to today’s DSA platform. 

Now, without perspiring, Bart Simpson could skateboard the gap between Democrats and the DSA. The former enabled the latter.

• Today’s Democrats scotched cash bail, let thugs avoid jail, and returned them to their criminal careers. The DSA wants prisons vacant and padlocked.

• Under President Joe Biden, Democrats tore the southern border wide open and welcomed some 10 million largely unvetted illegal aliens. The DSA advocates the next logical step: “amnesty for all immigrants regardless of status.”

• Senator Charles Schumer of New York led Democrats into a 76-day federal shutdown, to impoverish ICE personnel. The DSA would avoid such drama and simply abolish ICE.

• Democrats are plotting the National Popular Vote Compact to neutralize the Electoral College without a constitutional amendment. The DSA program bluntly says: “Abolish the Electoral College.” It also would junk the Senate.

• Democrats boast about expanding the U.S. Supreme Court, so it would take a jump to the left. The DSA would substitute a “judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.”

• Some Democrats attack Columbus Day and call it Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Francesca Hong, DSA’s pick for governor of Wisconsin, wrote via X in November 2020: “Cancel Thanksgiving. Should have done this in 1621. If it takes a worldwide pandemic for us to realize we should stop celebrating colonialism and the original superspreader event that killed Indegenous [sic] folx and women so be it.” (On Tuesday, she executed an Olympic-grade flip-flop: “My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving.”)

Rank-and-file Democrats applaud these developments. A July 17-20 Fox News survey found that only 41% of registered Democrats have a favorable opinion of capitalism. However, 52% feel positive about socialism. Fully 59% cheer the DSA.

Democratic congressmen Tom Suozzi of New York and Adam Gray of California launched Promise to America to hobble the hard Left. “We are capitalist, not socialist,” their pledge reads. “We want safety, not lawlessness …We are proud, not ashamed of America.” Since June 25, among 212 House Democrats, only 10 have signed this patriotic manifesto.

The DSA’s upstarts are suffocating today’s non-centrist Democrats. These incumbents have no right to complain. They planted the socialist seeds that grew into the communist weeds that now are asphyxiating them and the modern Democratic Party.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

The great Ceuta mass migration crisis—during which a human tsunami of 72,000 North Africans swamped the Spanish enclave on the Moroccan coast on July 30 and 31—could easily have lasted for months. However, it is all over but for some mopping up.

Few if any more are coming or adding to the death toll of 75. Most of those who crashed the European Union’s gates at Spain’s Ceuta are back in Morocco. A few thousand migrants remain who are generally harder to return under Spanish/European Union rules—such as sub-Saharan Africans and unaccompanied minors.  

But it is no coincidence that the Spanish-Moroccan border is as quiet as President Donald Trump made the U.S.-Mexico border on about his first day in office.

Spain’s socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez remains unapologetically supportive of illegal immigration and an open-borders advocate. But for one moment, when he was caught in the clinch of a humanitarian and political emergency in front of television cameras, Sanchez appears to have torn a page from the Trump border playbook.

By independent media accounts, Sanchez quickly militarized the Ceuta marine border, provided little if any food or shelter, and oversaw the expeditious expulsion of most of the 72,000 who flooded the Spanish territory.

Sanchez will no doubt return to his true open borders colors soon. But the Trump method that ended the Ceuta crisis offers lessons that are crucial to understand—as is how Sanchez and his United States Socialist brethren always start such crises.

The principle at play when mass migrations start and end is surprisingly self-evident yet somehow still escapes acknowledgement in leftist American policymaking.

When a government admits illegal aliens into its rich country, unlimited millions will surge toward the breach, willing to invest time and money for the effort. Conversely, when a government quickly expels and denies entry, aspiring border crossers stay home, unwilling to risk their time and money.

The principle of what turns these crises on and then off is as universal as it is simple; it is applicable to all countries and geographies in Europe and elsewhere. Yet policies that start mass migration crises can be only found in leftist playbooks, while policies that end them are found in conservative ones. Sanchez crossed the political divide for about a minute when stealing from Trump served him. No doubt he and his fellow travelers hope no one noticed so they can go back to their own damaging playbook.

Take the U.S.-Mexico border as an example of how this works.

Former President Joe Biden sparked off the worst border crisis in American history, pulling in millions of border crossers from 2021-2025, when he let them all in for years at the border on various kinds of asylum or humanitarian protection claims, as I describe in the second chapter of my book “Overrun.” Millions down trail who learned on social media about the good fortunes of those up-trail enthusiastically laid down their smuggling money bet and surged en masse toward the breach to collect their own almost guaranteed entry-and-stay reward to pay it all back and keep earning.

Trump quickly flipped the switch off with policies that have expelled nearly 100% of new crossers that have been caught. Crucially, he ordered Border Patrol and the U.S. military to catch all they could. Not surprisingly, few down trail who learned about this unwanted up-trail outcome were willing to pay smuggling fees or attempt the trip on their own.

Ceuta now stands as just the latest example where this simple approach, which has played out according to script everywhere it has been applied, including countries like Hungary and Poland.

In the Ceuta case, the North Africans flooded in because of Sanchez’s amnesty offer to legalize a half million illegal aliens, followed by a Spanish Supreme Court ruling that greatly slows Spain’s immigration enforcement for migrants arriving by sea.

But Prime Minister Sanchez’s soldiers found ways to encourage almost all of the recent arrivals to go back to Morocco anyway. Word spread fast about unpalatable outcomes (and that the Spaniards weren’t providing food), and no one down-trail wanted to bother trying.

Crisis ended.

The fact that a leftist, illegal immigration advocate like Sanchez resorted to a Trumpian policy goes to show that political leaders on his side of the spectrum actually understand how to enforce immigration but will resort to proven methods only when a crisis threatens their political power.

We saw this on naked display during the great Biden border crisis to shut down the power-threatening Del Rio bridge crisis in about 12 days. The large-scale crisis under the international bridge caught major international media attention in September 2021, when more than 15,000 mostly Haitians poured in from Mexico thinking they’d all be admitted in like thousands of Haitians before them. A political threat for Biden developed because every day more were arriving than the administration could release into the country, portending a permanent televised political embarrassment like the one Sanchez recently faced.

The Biden administration ended it fast, though, by ordering Trumpian air deportations it had once publicly condemned. Thousands of Haitians immediately fled back into Mexico and, soon after, not a soul was under the bridge except for workers clearing trash.

Biden then, just like Sanchez now, as well as leftist leaders throughout Europe and in the U.S., still embrace their open borders by interior release policies rather than the principle proven to replace chaos with peace—even though they have shown that they know better.

The Democratic National Committee has not updated its 2024 border security playbook, the last official party word about how it would fix the southern border. The candidates still talk about fixing “root causes” of mass migration by investing U.S. tax money in poor countries and “comprehensive immigration reform” to replace a “broken immigration system” that Trump immediately showed could be put into perfect working order with a little elbow grease.

The so-called “New Democratic Coalition,” made up of progressive leftists who are on the political rise, issued a policy platform last year that speaks only of amnesty and increasing intake processors at the border to let illegal immigrants into the country for asylum claims—the perfect recipe for another event like those at Ceuta and the Del Rio bridge.

Left-leaning leaders in the U.S.  can’t have missed how their Spanish political compatriot just ended the recent crisis when he was facing real power loss. But they probably averted their eyes and, even if they did see it, will never learn the Ceuta lesson until after the U.S. has suffered real damage.

President Donald Trump announced that Will Scharf will become White House counsel.

“It is my Great Honor to announce that, effective September 1st, Will Scharf will become Assistant to the President and White House Counsel, replacing a man, David Warrington, who has done a truly outstanding job as White House Counsel and, before that, for my Presidential Campaign,” Trump said Sunday in a Truth Social post. “David will be going on to the Private Sector.”

“Will has done an amazing job in his current role as White House Staff Secretary, and has also served as Chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission,” Trump said. “I know Will well!”

As White House staff secretary, Scharf is responsible for presenting executive orders and other presidential actions to Trump before he signs them in the Oval Office.

The Office of White House Counsel advises the president and White House staff on legal issues.

Trump noted that Scharf represented him before the Supreme Court in 2024 in a case involving whether former presidents are immune from prosecution for official acts taken while in office. Scharf was part of Trump’s legal defense in the election interference case brought by special counsel Jack Smith.

“He also previously served as a Federal Prosecutor, worked as an attorney in private practice, clerked for two Federal Appeals Court Judges, and was a top student at both Princeton University, and Harvard Law School,” Trump wrote.

Trump did not announce a successor to Scharf as staff secretary.

“Will is Tough, Strong, and Smart!” the president said. “He also loves our Country, and respects the Law. Will Scharf will do a great job as White House Counsel!”

Scharf previously worked for then-Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens; he later served as an assistant U.S. attorney before running unsuccessfully for Missouri attorney general. Scharf was also involved in Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation.

Brown University President Christina Paxson is resigning after two years of federal scrutiny into antisemitic activity and school safety policies at the college. On the same day as Paxson’s announcement—Aug. 3—the U.S. Department of Education released a statement calling on college leaders nationwide to “reaffirm higher education’s foundational commitments to academic excellence, pathbreaking research, and national service.”

Conspicuous timing, both.

Paxson, Brown’s president since 2012, has endured a difficult two years. In March 2025, Brown landed on the Education Department’s list of 60 universities under investigation for possible civil rights violations. A year earlier, in April 2024, Brown’s campus was the site of a pro-Palestinian student encampment, where students posted signs supporting the terrorist group that massacred some 1,400 Israelis in October 2023. Brown officials later agreed to vote on whether to divest from weapons manufacturers (in October 2024, the board voted against divestment).

In April 2025, one year after the encampment, the Education Department withheld about $510 million in taxpayer funding from Brown’s medical research programs, citing the university’s failure to protect civil rights. Brown later reached a settlement with federal officials. As part of the agreement, the university committed to protecting women’s private spaces, barring men from competing in girls sports, ending so-called gender-reassignment surgeries, and taking “significant, proactive, effective steps to combat antisemitism and ensure a campus environment free from harassment and discrimination.”

After the tragic shooting of two students on campus in December 2025, the Education Department opened another investigation into Brown, this time reviewing the university’s campus security policies. That investigation is ongoing.

All of this makes Brown hardly remarkable. Like most Ivy League institutions and other selective schools, Brown has a left-leaning administration, weak civil rights protections, and high tuition. For roughly $100,000 per year, students also get access to a diversity, equity, and inclusion office that hosted a Vietnamese “transgender” speaker in April.

Students should hope the college takes meaningful steps to combat antisemitism and harassment. Families, meanwhile, would welcome a renewed focus on academics.

That brings us to the Education Department’s Aug. 3 statement. Education Secretary Linda McMahon called for “bold university leadership” to restore transparency and merit in admissions.

The department had cited Brown’s admissions practices when it withheld federal taxpayer funding in 2025. In its agreement with the Education Department to restore research funding, Brown agreed to “reaffirm” its commitment to civil rights laws in admissions.

McMahon also called on universities to strengthen commitments to free speech, intellectual pluralism, value for students, rigorous academic standards, protections against foreign influence in campus academics, and American security interests. These are reasonable priorities for university leaders—and the kind of policies that could set one school apart from its peers.

The Heritage Foundation’s “Choosing College with Confidence” college guide evaluates hundreds of schools and has found that institutions protecting free speech are the minority. The same is true of schools with policies that encourage a diversity of ideas on campus and reject DEI.

Brown officials will struggle to carve out a unique niche given the school’s DEI office and gender-focused activities. Paxson’s replacement—or Paxson herself, since she does not step down until next year—will need to build campus support for basic truths: Boys and girls are different, and DEI initiatives that rely on racial preferences are discriminatory.

This is the challenge facing presidents at hundreds, if not thousands, of postsecondary institutions. In “Higher Education in America: It’s Worse Than You Think,” contributing author Andrew Gillen writes that 74% of faculty identify with the far left or liberal side of the political spectrum. By contrast, just 14.9% say they are “middle of the road,” and only 10.8% identify with “far right” or “conservative” ideas.

If Brown wants to distinguish itself from a sea of stale, ideologically captured colleges, its next president should take McMahon’s letter seriously—especially the call to create value for students. That mission would help set Brown apart.

In the early months of President Donald Trump’s first term, when enemies of the administration clung to the since-discredited Russia collusion narrative, the FBI opened a probe called “March Toll” into then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

The FBI launched the probe at the behest of two Democrat senators, one of whom resigned from office in disgrace before the bureau concluded the investigation of Sessions. The senators, Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Al Franken of Minnesota, wrote to then-FBI Director James Comey to demand an investigation. In 2017, Trump fired Comey, who became a Trump enemy.

The probe lasted a year, from May 2017 to May 2018.

It began on May 10, one day after Trump fired Comey as FBI director. Sessions had already recused himself from the Russia investigation into Trump. Later that month, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate the alleged Russia collusion.

The White House recently declassified information regarding the FBI’s probe into Sessions, his interaction with a Russian ambassador, and whether he was honest in his Senate testimony. The documents tell the story of a cast of Washington characters who tried to target Trump through his first attorney general. Today in Washington, practically none of the figures are still in government, but Trump is president again.

The FBI called it “highly sensitive” and categorized the probe as a “sensitive investigative matter,” or SIM, and put it under “prohibited status” under the authority of Assistant FBI Director E.W. “Bill” Priestap, the documents show. Priestap was a key figure in launching the Russia probe into Trump.

The opening of the probe into Sessions happened on May 10, 2017, according to a memo. The case file was to be kept in a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) at the FBI Washington Field Office.

A separate May 10 memo said, “The FBI received the referenced letter dated March 20, 2017, from two U.S. senators.” It goes on to say that a crime or “threat to national security has or may have occurred.”

The memo referred to the letter from Leahy and Franken. They noted in the letter that, in a written question to Sessions during the Senate confirmation process, Leahy asked, “Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election either before or after election day?” Sessions answered, “No.”

During the Jan. 10, 2017, confirmation hearing, Franken asked a similar question, to which Sessions replied that he had been called a surrogate in the Trump campaign and “did not have communications with the Russians.”

The Democrat senators asked for a probe after widely reported revelations that Sessions, while a U.S. senator from Alabama, met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in 2016.

In their letter to Comey, the senators called the testimony “discernibly false” and “unequivocally false.” They asked that Comey investigate Sessions.

In a March 6, 2017, letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and ranking member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Sessions said he told the truth in the Jan. 10 hearing. The letter came before Leahy and Franken demanded a probe.

By January 2018, Franken resigned from the Senate over a sexual harassment scandal. After eight terms, Leahy did not seek reelection to the Seante in 2022.

The Sessions matter was under investigation by special counsel Mueller’s office.

On May 8, 2018, Aaron Zebley of the special counsel’s office wrote to someone on the investigative team about closing the probe.

“After interviewing the Attorney General and conducting additional investigation, the SCO closed its investigation of potential false statements or perjury in the Attorney General’s confirmation hearing testimony and related written submissions to Congress,” Zebley wrote.

“As is the case in any investigation, material new information could lead to further investigation of those matters,” Zebley added. “The SCO advised Chuck Cooper, private counsel to the Attorney General, of that information on March 21, 2018.”

After clashes with Trump, Sessions resigned as attorney general in November 2018.

In April 2019, the Mueller team issued a report that found no evidence that the Trump 2016 campaign conspired with the Russian government over election interference. However, the report said the Trump campaign knew of Russian meddling and did not oppose it.

Priestap, who oversaw the Sessions probe, left the FBI in 2019. That year, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion probe found that Priestap made the decision to launch the investigation dubbed “Crossfire Hurricane.” He was also heavily involved in the prosecution of Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, for allegedly lying to investigators after speaking with Kislyak. Before that, Priestap also worked on the investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server and helped draft Comey’s 2016 statement about not prosecuting Clinton.

This year, Comey was indicted in April after posting a photo of seashells arranged to spell “8647,” which was perceived as a threat of violence to Trump, the 47th president.