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Trump’s calls for protests condemn George Soros, echo Jan. 6 — and draw Jewish concern
WASHINGTON (JTA) — “They’re coming for me,” Donald Trump said in a fundraising email to his supporters, and he immediately made clear who “they” were: “district attorneys hand-picked and personally funded by George Soros.”
The email, sent late Monday, came a day ahead of when, Trump claims, he is likely to be arrested. He says he will be charged for allegedly paying off a paramour to keep quiet about their sexual encounter, and has sent a flurry of appeals calling for protests.
And those appeals have also named a villain: Soros, the Jewish billionaire and progressive megadonor who is at the center of myriad antisemitic conspiracy theories.
In a post in nearly all-caps on his website, Truth Social, on Saturday, Trump railed against the “CORRUPT & HIGHLY POLITICAL MANHATTAN DISTRICT ATTORNEYS OFFICE, WHICH HAS ALLOWED NEW RECORDS TO BE SET IN VIOLENT CRIME & WHOSE LEADER IS FUNDED BY GEORGE SOROS.”
In that post, Trump also returned to another motif of his with an ominous history. He ended by telling supporters to “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”
To some, that statement recalled Trump’s tweets more than two years ago, when he urged protesters to come to a “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
Jewish groups who track antisemitism and Jewish security say they are keeping an eye on Trump’s latest calls for protests, but note that so far those posts have not attracted the groundswell of support that followed his past appeals. Trump’s 2021 post touted a rally that culminated in violence — the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said organized extremists, who have heeded Trump’s calls in the past, are displaying wariness online this time, fearful of being drawn into a trap. A number of them are preoccupied with the aftermath of Jan. 6, as some of their members are being prosecuted for their roles in the riot.
Other groups, Segal said, are preoccupied with this year’s culture wars. “Proud Boys are busy protesting drag queen story hours,” he said, referring to one of the groups implicated in a number of violent protests.
Michael Masters, CEO of the Secure Community network, the consultancy to the national Jewish community, likewise said his group was not seeing any imminent plans for violence. “We are not seeing anything specific to the Jewish community with respect to recent calls or amplification of calls for protests,” Masters said in a text message.
Nonetheless, Trump’s constant invocation of Soros raises concerns, Segal said, especially given reports of substantive spikes in antisemitic attacks.
“The danger of referencing Soros in a call for protests like this, is that you never know what bad actors are interpreting that as,” Segal said. “It’s not unreasonable for the Jewish community, who feels particularly vulnerable, to hear that in a way that is uncomfortable as well.”
Soros, a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor and financier, has been at the center of countless conspiracy theories for decades, and was the target of a 2018 bomb scare carried out by a pro-Trump antisemitic attacker. He featured prominently in the conspiracy theories embraced by the gunman who massacred 11 worshipers at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.
Bragg is among a number of liberal prosecutors backed in recent election cycles by Color of Change, a political action committee that Soros has funded. He was the largest donor to the group in the most recent election cycle, giving it $1 million out of the $4 million it raised.
It’s not at all clear that Bragg is ready to bring charges, or what charges he would bring against Trump. Speculation about a pending arrest has come only from Trump, and after he predicted the arrest over the weekend, one of his spokesmen quickly walked it back, saying that the Trump camp had no new information.
Trump is lashing out as multiple investigations into him appear to be intensifying, including by state officials in Georgia into election interference and by federal authorities into the role he played in spurring the Jan. 6 violence by rioters who believed his falsehoods about the 2020 election and into his alleged mishandling of highly classified documents.
He also is under pressure from a Republican Party that includes members endeavoring to distance themselves from his myriad scandals, even as he seeks the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
One possible crime Bragg might be investigating is whether Trump falsified records to cover up his payment to Daniels, which was made through his former lawyer Michael Cohen.
Trump’s mentions of Alvin Bragg — the Manhattan district attorney investigating his preelection payoff to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress — seem to constantly come with invocations of Soros. In a post late Monday on Truth Social, he suggested he did not believe the NYPD would take orders from Bragg, should he ask them “TO PUT THEIR GREATEST CHAMPION & FRIEND IN PRISON FOR A CRIME THAT DOESN’T EXIST … ALL THE WHILE THE SOROS ALLOWS MURDERERS AND OTHER VIOLENT CRIMINALS TO FREELY ROAM THE SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK?”
Trump is hardly the only Republican invoking Soros. Trump’s likely rival for the 2024 Republican nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, also mentioned Soros and Bragg in remarks on Monday, while getting a dig in at Trump.
“I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair, I just, I can’t speak to that,” DeSantis said. “But I do know this, the Manhattan district attorney is a Soros-funded prosecutor.”
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3 more men arrested in London arson of ambulances owned by Jewish emergency service
(JTA) — Three more men have been arrested in London in connection with a series of fires on ambulances owned by the Jewish emergency service corps Hatzola, London’s Metropolitan Police Service announced on Wednesday.
Two British men, ages 20 and 19, and a 17-year-old dual British and Pakistani citizen were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit arson. The men were arrested at three different addresses, which were being searched, the police said.
The arrests follow the arrest last week of two British men, ages 45 and 47, in connection with the arson. Those two suspects were released on bail and are being closely monitored while they await a hearing, police said, and their identities have not been made public.
The ambulance arson, which occurred in London’s Jewish neighborhood of Golders Green, is being treated by law enforcement as an antisemitic crime, but authorities have not labeled it as terrorism even as the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism unit is leading the investigation.
“Since this appalling attack last week, we have been working continuously to investigate and identify those responsible,” the unit’s commander, Helen Flanagan, said in a statement. “We know concern among the Jewish community remains high, but I hope these arrests show that we are doing everything we can to bring those responsible to justice.”
A group called Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, or the Islamic Movement of the People of the Right Hand, has claimed responsibility for the attack.
French authorities announced Wednesday they suspect that the same group is also behind an attempted bomb Saturday on a Bank of America building in Paris. The group has has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks throughout Europe in recent weeks, all of them up to now on Jewish institutions. Security analysts know little about the group, which was unheard of until early March, but say it may be tied to pro-Iranian cells based in Europe.
The London ambulance arson has given rise to a new set of antisemitic conspiracy theories. On Monday, the mayor of Bath, England, resigned from his position after drawing criticism for sharing social media posts amplifying claims that the ambulance fires were a “false flag” attack staged by Jews or Israelis.
Police in London said they would deploy drones to monitor security in Jewish neighborhoods during the Passover holiday, with concerns about additional attacks running high.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post 3 more men arrested in London arson of ambulances owned by Jewish emergency service appeared first on The Forward.
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Influencer Myron Gaines performs Nazi salute, denies Holocaust death toll at Ohio University event
(JTA) — The influencer Myron Gaines visited Ohio University last Thursday as part of a national campus tour, performing a Nazi salute and claiming that the Holocaust’s death toll had been purposefully distorted.
Seated at a table on the campus of Ohio University wearing a hoodie that read “Let Em Cook – Oy Vey,” a meme mocking Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust, Gaines greeted the students gathered with a Nazi salute before saying, “Number one, women are stupid, Jews control America and Blacks are criminals.”
Later during the event, Gaines, whose real name is Amrou Fudl, was asked by a Jewish attendee how many people he believed had been killed by the Holocaust, to which he replied “271,000 at best.”
During the ensuing debate, Gaines attempted to cut off the student, saying “hold on one sec, Jew,” claimed that Israel had propagated lies about the Holocaust’s death toll to serve its “victim narrative” and denied evidence that rape occurred during Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Referring to the war in Gaza, Gaines said, “If they could deny a genocide in 2023 all the way to 2026 with 1080p footage, what makes you think they won’t lie about a tragic event from World War II, from which they derive their victim narrative.”
Gaines’ visit to the school follows a series of incendiary campus appearances, including at the University of Florida and the University of South Carolina.
Best known for co-hosting the popular podcast “Fresh and Fit,” which centers on misogynistic views about dating and gender roles, Gaines has increasingly embraced antisemitic conspiracy theories since the summer of 2023, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
In October, Gaines defended a leaked group chat where Young Republicans operatives praised Adolf Hitler, writing on social media, “Yeah we like Hitler. No one gives a f–k what you woke jews think anymore.” In January, Gaines was among a host of far-right influencers including Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate who drew outcry for singing along to Ye’s “Heil Hitler” at a Miami nightclub.
The Hillel chapter of Ohio University decried Gaines’ appearance on campus in a post on Instagram and hosted a lunch during the time period that he was slated to speak to offer students an alternative to his program, according to the Cleveland Jewish News.
“We are deeply troubled by the decision of our fellow Bobcats to invite a podcaster with a long and horrible track record of antisemitic, misogynistic, and homophobic content,” the Ohio University Hillel wrote. “At a time when our students are feeling especially vulnerable due to rising antisemitism, this choice is especially concerning.”
The editorial board of the school’s student newspaper, The Post, criticized the university administration for not releasing a statement denouncing Gaines’ appearance in an op-ed published on Tuesday. Ohio University did not immediately respond to a request for comment from JTA.
“A man who promotes antisemitic conspiracy theories, claims Jewish people control the world — as evident by the shirt reading ‘The Great Noticing’ worn by one of Gaines’ lackeys — and performs a Nazi salute on a college campus is not engaging in meaningful dialogue,” the op-ed read. “That is not a thoughtful debate, it is hate made into spectacle.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Influencer Myron Gaines performs Nazi salute, denies Holocaust death toll at Ohio University event appeared first on The Forward.
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Iran Promises ‘Crushing’ Attacks Against the US and Israel
Symbolic mock-ups of Iranian missiles are displayed on a street, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 22, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
i24 News – Iran has issued a stark warning of “crushing” retaliatory attacks against the United States and Israel following threats from US President Donald Trump to escalate military operations in the coming weeks.
In a statement aired on Iranian state television, the Khatam al-Anbiya operational command said, “this war will continue until your humiliation, your disgrace, your permanent and certain regret, and your surrender,” framing the conflict as a long-term confrontation and invoking “trust in Almighty God.”
Iranian officials further warned that future operations would be “more crushing, broader, and more destructive,” signaling the potential expansion of the conflict across multiple fronts amid ongoing missile and drone exchanges in the region.
The escalation comes after Trump publicly suggested intensifying strikes on Iran, saying operations would continue until “the job is finished” and claiming significant military gains against Iranian strategic capabilities. As tensions rise, both sides appear to be hardening their positions, increasing fears of a wider regional confrontation.
