Image Source: DonkeyHotey – CC BY 2.0

On January 30, 2025, Pres. Donald Trump issued “Executive Order to Combat Anti-Semitism” in which he “promised” that the U.S. government will “[p]rotect the civil rights of our Jewish citizens”; “prosecute anti-Semitic crimes”; and “Deport Hamas Sympathizers and Revoke Student Visas” by “quickly cancel[ing] the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

Adding bravado to his Order, Trump insisted, “I will be your defender, your protector, and I will be the best friend Jewish Americans have ever had in the White House.”

It is unclear who drafted the antisemitism order, but it was likely approved by White House staff secretary Will Scharf. He is Jewish, a Princeton undergrad and Harvard Law School graduate who clerked for a federal judge and was an assistant U.S. attorney before joining Trump’s legal team in October 2023; in 2023, Scharf confounded the group, Jews Against Soros.

On February 5th, Pam Bondi took office as Attorney General and quickly released a flurry of executive memos including one that “establishes Joint Task Force October 7 (“JTF 10-7″) and related initiatives to prioritize seeking justice for victims of the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack in Israel, addressing the ongoing threat posed by Hamas and its affiliates, and combatting antisemitic acts of terrorism and civil rights violations in the homeland.” It opened antisemitism investigations of a slew of colleges including Columbia, Northwestern, Portland State, the University of California (Berkeley) and the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities).

However, Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor, most likely played a key role in formulating the Order. As The New York Times reported shortly before Trump took office,

“Mr. Miller will be in charge of Mr. Trump’s signature issue and the one that Mr. Miller has been fixated on since childhood: immigration. And he has been working, in secrecy, to oversee the team drafting the dozens of executive orders that Mr. Trump will sign after he takes office on Jan. 20.”

In late-2015, Miller joined the Trump campaign on a part-time basis and, by early-16, was a full-time staffer, becoming part of Trump’s core election campaign team. Miller previously served as an assistant to Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and gained political visibility appearing........

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