Let’s be absolutely clear: anti-Semitism is real, it is rising, and it is a vile, corrosive force that must be named and fought at every level of society—with clarity, integrity, and unwavering resolve.

But this executive order isn’t about fighting anti-Semitism.

It’s about weaponizing it.

It cloaks itself in righteous outrage, using the real pain of Jewish communities—especially in the wake of October 7—as a cynical pretext for something far more dangerous: a political crackdown on speech, dissent, and academic freedom. It is a tool to police ideas under the guise of protecting people.

Donald Trump’s executive order doesn’t just reaffirm civil rights protections for Jewish students—it stretches them into surveillance, targeting, and immigration enforcement. It pushes universities to monitor foreign students. It pressures federal agencies to comb through administrative and criminal tools for ways to punish those who express the “wrong” kind of politics. It reads less like civil rights policy and more like an edict for ideological cleansing.

It treats college campuses not as places for hard dialogue and debate, but as hostile territories that must be subdued by federal force. And in doing so, it exploits the fear and trauma felt by Jewish students—not to protect them, but to silence others.

Here’s what this order won’t do:

• It won’t actually address the online cesspools where neo-Nazism breeds.

• It won’t dismantle the white supremacist movements Trump himself once hesitated to denounce.

• It won’t touch the conspiracy theories that vilify Jews for global events.

Instead, it trains its sights on college students, faculty, and foreign-born scholars who may protest Israeli policy or speak out against war. It reduces Jewish identity to a pawn in a broader campaign of cultural control. It pretends to defend a community while leveraging their safety for surveillance, intimidation, and suppression.

We’ve seen this playbook before. It starts with “protecting the children,” “defending the nation,” “preserving order.” And it ends in fear, censorship, and alienation—often for the very groups it claims to protect.

To truly fight anti-Semitism, we must name it when it comes from the left or the right—from the streets or from the state. We must protect Jewish students without vilifying Arab ones, and we must hold space for grief, anger, identity, and dissent without the heavy hand of federal intimidation.

This executive order is not a shield for Jewish safety. It is a sword for political persecution.

And history will not look kindly on those who wielded it in the name of justice while gutting its very core.