By Chris Menahan – Information Liberation
President Trump on Tuesday announced that colleges and universities allowing “illegal” anti-Israel protests will lose federal funding and the “agitators” taking part in the demonstrations “will be imprisoned.”
“All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests,” Trump said on TruthSocial. “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on [sic] the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
“Under President @realDonaldTrump, colleges and universities will be held accountable,” Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick for UN Ambassador, said on X. “Antisemitism and anti-Israel hate will not be tolerated on American campuses. Promises made, promises kept.”
Stefanik spoke at the Anti-Defamation League’s Never is Now conference on Monday and heaped praise on ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt for his “tremendous leadership on combatting anti-Semitism.”
She ran down everything the Trump administration is doing to shut down criticism of Israel, ranging from civil rights investigations to threatening deportations, and said “the ADL’s work helping expose the rot on higher ed campuses has been invaluable to these efforts.”
When she briefly gave homage to Trump by repeating his line that October 7th “would never have happened” if he was president, she got loudly booed.
Trump’s call to jail Americans for “illegally” protesting Israel came just one day after Health Secretary Robert Kennedy declared “anti-Semitism” a public health crisis “like racism” and threatened to cut off billions in federal funding to Columbia University unless they make their campus a safe space for Jewish students.
Trump ran on “restoring free speech” but is now working to make criticizing Jews and Israel illegal.