Democrats Take Aim at the Civil Rights Act

By Seth Mandel

Wednesday, August 19, 2026

 

Last year, as the Trump administration continued its investigations into anti-Semitism at elite universities, several civil-rights attorneys at the Department of Justice were temporarily transferred to the agency running the anti-Semitism probe to help with the workload. One of those was Haley Van Erem.

 

The events that followed produced lessons in three problems that have held back the government’s attempts to restore the civil rights of America’s Jewish college students:

 

1. The ideological opposition to combating anti-Semitism among career bureaucrats.

 

2. Those same bureaucrats’ resentment at being told to apply civil-rights law, specifically Title VI, to Jews.

 

3. The Trump administration’s aversion to process norms.

 

Van Erem quit and has now filed a “whistleblower” complaint that appears aimed at derailing the application of civil-rights law to Jews, even as she perfunctorily denounces anti-Semitism.

 

Van Erem contends that the administration began the investigation already believing the colleges violated Jewish students’ civil rights. That’s probably true: by the time Van Erem grudgingly joined the inquiry, civil-rights violations had been happening in full view of the public. These included university employees discriminating against Israeli students on the basis of national origin, mobs physically blocking Jewish students from accessing areas of campus, and the uneven application of university codes of conduct to the detriment of Jews.

 

Van Erem also complains that she was given overly strict deadlines that prevented her from dragging out the process to her satisfaction, and that she was often overruled by her superiors—though her complaint actually paints a picture of her bosses being surprisingly receptive and willing to incorporate the objections of an employee who made clear that she didn’t want to be there. Last, Van Erem describes an administration that would launch investigations without evidence of wrongdoing, but because of the sheer volume of anti-Jewish agitation permitted on these campuses, this particular claim is so ridiculous and self-discrediting as to make one question whether Van Erem is engaging in some form of interpretive performance art.

 

The Trump administration’s aversion to process norms is real, but Van Erem vastly inflates their importance because her motive seems to be to fatally undermine federal application of Title VI processes to Jews. Therefore, the occasional example of genuinely inappropriate interference in education—Trump’s team proposing external curriculum monitors at Harvard, for example—must be exaggerated into something that rises to the level of actionable legal reprisals, such as “gross mismanagement, by departing from investigative sequencing and quality controls as required by regulation.”

 

That last point, the desire to put in legal jeopardy those who investigated anti-Semitism at top universities, is key to understanding this whole event.

 

Like clockwork, Jamie Raskin, the Maryland congressman and ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, took the baton handed to him by Van Erem and promised retribution for Trump officials. He called the anti-Semitism investigations a “frame-up operation” and threatened to push changes to the Civil Rights Act itself.

 

Raskin’s promised lawfare against federal employees involved in strengthening the enforcement of civil-rights law is no doubt the goal of complaints like those voiced by Van Erem. Raskin, further, is the perfect receptacle for these complaints. His Jewishness provides cover for Democrats who are, as Raskin presumably is, intent on dismantling federal protections for Jews and insulating the Democratic Party from accountability for its exploding anti-Semitism.

 

Raskin is also a co-sponsor of legislation that would enforce a partial arms embargo against Israel. He has fought anti-Semitism-related legislation and has been critical of Israel’s response to the October 7 massacre since the beginning of the Hamas-instigated war.

 

Raskin also demanded testimony from Harmeet Dhillon, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, alleging that it was a “a distinct possibility” that Dhillon “deliberately orchestrated a scheme to attack universities, their faculties, and their administrators for political purposes while defrauding the American people and the courts.”

 

If the Democrats, as expected, win control of the House in the midterms, they are vowing to use this power to make government officials pay, and pay dearly, for daring to investigate universities’ discrimination against Jewish students. In the past, this would have struck most observers as a bizarre choice of priorities. In 2026, it’s what the public has come to expect from Raskin and company.