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Trump can’t levy antisemitism fines against the University of California, judge rules
(JTA) — A federal judge has indefinitely barred the Trump administration from leveling a fine in excess of $1 billion against the University of California system for failures in addressing campus antisemitism.
Calling the administration’s strong-arming of the UC system “coercive and retaliatory,” U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco ruled that federal investigators had failed to follow standard protocol for Title VI civil rights investigations.
Lin’s preliminary injunction came as the UC system continues to negotiate a planned settlement with the administration related to antisemitism investigations.
Much of the Trump administration’s case against UC involves UCLA, which in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks became a hotbed of campus conflicts over Israel. Student protesters barred “Zionists” from entering certain sections of campus; brawls also broke out with pro-Israel counter-protesters. The university settled with a group of Jewish students this summer, but Trump has continued to push aggressive fines over the objections of a contingent of its Jewish community.
A growing number of other universities, including, most recently, Cornell and the University of Virginia, have also signed deals with Trump to preserve federal funding and end antisemitism investigations. UC leaders have said the Trump-imposed fines are an existential threat to the school. A federal judge had previously ordered the reversal of Trump’s funding freeze to Harvard for similar stated reasoning around antisemitism.
University staffers and academic groups had sued the administration, saying that Trump’s actions were already having a punishing effect on their First Amendment concerns.
“Rooting out antisemitism is undisputedly a laudable and important goal,” Lin wrote in her decision. “However, the unrebutted evidence shows that the Task Force Agencies and the Funding Agencies have gone well beyond that stated purpose.”
Lin continued, “The record shows that Defendants engaged in a concerted policy to use allegations of antisemitism to justify funding cancellations, when their intent is to coerce universities into purging disfavored ‘left’ and ‘woke’ viewpoints from their campuses and replace them with views that the Administration favors.”
In a New York Times story this week about staffers who recently resigned or were fired from the Justice Department, a former lawyer in the Civil Rights Division, Ejaz Baluch, said his colleagues found that pro-Israel professors at UCLA were harassed and the school’s complaint process was flawed. But Baluch felt the fine sought by the administration was disproportionate. “We thought, $1 billion? They are making that up out of thin air,” said Baluch. “There is no way the damages we found added up to anything like that amount.”
Lin’s ruling also came amid a growing antisemitism controversy on another UC campus. UC Berkeley protesters last week chanted “Zionists out” and “Free Palestine,” with some wearing keffiyehs, as part of a larger demonstration against an event staged by right-wing group Turning Point USA, the group founded by slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk. At least four people were arrested during the protests, with injuries also reported. One Jewish UC Berkeley student told the Jewish News of Northern California she was targeted with antisemitic taunts from protesters.
On Monday the Justice Department and the FBI launched an investigation into the protests.
The post Trump can’t levy antisemitism fines against the University of California, judge rules appeared first on The Forward.
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UK PM Starmer Says There Could Be New Powers to Ban Pro-Palestinian Marches
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer gives a media statement at Downing Street in London, Britain, April 30, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Jack Taylor/File photo
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the government could ban pro-Palestinian marches in some circumstances because of the “cumulative effect” the demonstrations had on the Jewish community after two Jewish men were stabbed in London on Wednesday.
Starmer told the BBC that he would always defend freedom of expression and peaceful protest, but chants like “Globalize the Intifada” during demonstrations were “completely off limits” and those voicing them should be prosecuted.
Pro-Palestinian marches have become a regular feature in London since the October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel that triggered the Gaza war. Critics say the demonstrations have generated hostility and become a focus for antisemitism.
Protesters have argued they are exercising their democratic right to spotlight ongoing human rights and political issues related to the situation in Gaza.
Starmer said he was not denying there were “very strong legitimate views about the Middle East, about Gaza,” but many people in the Jewish community had told him they were concerned about the repeat nature of the marches.
Asked if the tougher response should focus on chants and banners, or whether the protests should be stopped altogether, Starmer said: “I think certainly the first, and I think there are instances for the latter.”
“I think it’s time to look across the board at protests and the cumulative effect,” he said, adding that the government needed to look at what further powers it could take.
Britain raised its terrorism threat level to “severe” on Thursday amid mounting security concerns that foreign states were helping fuel violence, including against the Jewish community.
“We are seeing an elevated threat to Jewish and Israeli individuals and institutions in the UK,” the head of counter-terrorism policing, Laurence Taylor, said in a statement, adding that police were also working “against an unpredictable global situation that has consequences closer to home, including physical threats by state-linked actors.”
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War Likely to Resume After Trump’s Rejection of Latest Proposal, Says IRGC General
Iranians carry a model of a missile during a celebration following an IRGC attack on Israel, in Tehran, Iran, April 15, 2024. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
i24 News – A senior Iranian military figure said that fighting with the US was “likely” to resume after President Donald Trump stated he was dissatisfied with Tehran’s latest proposal, regime media reported on Saturday.
The comments of General Mohammad Jafar Asadi, one of the top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders, were relayed by the Fars news agency, considered as a mouthpiece of the the powerful paramilitary body.
“Evidence has shown that the Americans do not not adhere to any commitments,” Asadi was quoted as saying.
He further added that Washington’s decision-making was “primarily media-driven aimed first at preventing a drop in oil prices and second at extricating themselves from the mess they have created.”
Iranian armed forces are ready “for any new adventures or foolishness from the Americans,” he said, going to assert that the Iran war would prove for the US a tragedy comparable with what was for Israel the October 7 massacre.
“Just as our martyred Leader said that the Zionist regime will never be the same as before the Al‑Aqsa Storm operation [the name chosen by Hamas leadership for the October 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel], the United States will also never return to what it was before its attack on Iran,” he said. “The world has understood the true nature of America, and no matter how much malice it shows now, it is no longer the America that many once feared.”
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Trump Says US Navy Acting ‘Like Pirates’ to Carry Out Naval Blockade of Iranian Ports
A view of Iranian-flagged cargo ship M/V Touska as the US Navy Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyer USS Spruance conducts its interception in a location given as the north Arabian Sea, in this screen capture from a video released April 19, 2026. Photo: CENTCOM/Handout via REUTERS
President Donald Trump said on Friday the US Navy was acting “like pirates” in carrying out Washington’s naval blockade of Iranian ports during the US and Israel’s war against Iran.
Trump made the comments while describing the seizure by US forces of a ship a few days ago.
“We took over the ship, we took over the cargo, we took over the oil. It’s a very profitable business,” Trump said in remarks on Friday evening. “We’re like pirates. We’re sort of like pirates but we are not playing games.”
Some of Tehran’s vessels have been seized by the US after leaving Iranian ports, along with sanctioned container ships and Iranian tankers in Asian waters.
Iran has blocked nearly all ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz apart from its own since the start of the war. Trump has imposed a separate blockade of Iranian ports.
The US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. Iran responded with its own strikes on Israel and Gulf states that host US bases. US-Israeli strikes on Iran and Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed thousands and displaced millions.
The war has raised oil prices and led to the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for about 20 percent of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments.
Trump, who has offered shifting timelines and goals for the war that remains unpopular in the US, has faced widespread condemnation over his comments on the conflict, including when he threatened to destroy Iran’s entire civilization last month.
Many US experts said last month that American strikes on Iran may amount to war crimes after Trump threatened to target civilian infrastructure.