Tracking corruption and abuse of power in the nation’s capital

Antisemitism is monstrously heinous; it led to the gravest crime of the 20th century. Which is why a well-grounded allegation of antisemitism is a reputational dagger. But when the accusation is pretextual, it harms the innocent and casts a shadow over all allegations of antisemitism.

Recall that following the outbreak of the Gaza war and nationwide campus protests, the Trump administration launched a high-profile crackdown, stripping hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants from Harvard, Columbia, and Brown under the banner of protecting Jewish students.

But Haley Van Erem, a former DOJ attorney, recently filed a whistleblower complaint disclosing that the administration pressured DOJ and HHS staff to pursue antisemitism investigations that lacked factual bases and singled out Muslim faculty members regardless of whether they were allegedly implicated.

Van Erem’s attorneys at the Government Accountability Project (GAP) wrote Congress that the administration pressured staff to make findings that were “predetermined, without regard to the evidence” and intended to coerce the universities into large monetary settlements. And that pressure worked: Columbia and Brown caved, settling lawsuits for $270 million.  

Harvard, backed by a more formidable endowment, resisted and prevailed. Federal Judge Richard Stearns dismissed the government's claims, ruling the alleged incidents were far too isolated and episodic to constitute a systemic civil rights violation, echoing fellow federal Judge Allison Burroughs, who scolded the administration for using “antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault” on higher education. On September 30, 2026, UCLA accused DOJ of weaponizing civil rights laws and asked a federal judge to dismiss the government’s claim that the school had failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students from harassment.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee, wrote the chief of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, blasting the investigation as a “a pre-baked frame-up operation thoroughly political in nature." Ouch.

Thanks to Haley Van Erem, GAP, and Rep. Raskin for standing up to the abuse of power.

Doug Burgum would like you to know that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is a “big success.”

For sure, it was a big something.

After Donald Trump ordered the pool repainted “American flag blue” for the country’s 250th birthday, the water turned green and the paint started flaking off. But wily Burgum—Trump’s Secretary of the Interior and the man in charge of our national parks and a fifth of the nation’s land—fingered the culprits, “vandals,” and he found a receptive ear in the very stable genius inhabiting the Oval Office.

Alas, the guy who got the $14.7 million no-bid contract acknowledged he was the one who screwed up.

Still, the pool is a puddle compared to Doug’s real legacy.

On day one in office, Burgum reopened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—one of America’s last untouched wildernesses—to oil and gas exploration. Since then, as chief executor of Trump’s “Unleashing American Energy” agenda, he’s freed millions more acres of public land to drilling, including areas bordering national parks.

Harold Hamm, the oil billionaire, brags he hand-picked Doug for the job. They’re buds from when Burgum was North Dakota governor. In fact, Hamm’s company, Continental Resources, kicked in a quarter million to Burgum’s 2023 presidential run. (He did run, right? Right?) And Continental Resources still pays Doug’s family for oil pumped from their farm. In 2026, Doug returned the favor, helping Continental dodge a court order and score 70-plus drilling permits.

After all, what are friends for?

But not all American energy gets unleashed. Trump, ever the champion of birds and his golf course vistas, hates wind power, and so does Doug. Burgum personally pulled the plug on Revolution Wind, an offshore wind farm that was already 80% built. Then his department paid a French energy giant nearly $1 billion in taxpayer money not to build wind farms.

No wonder the White House calls Burgum “one of the most valuable members” of Trump’s cabinet.

Standing strong for fossil fuels takes rare political courage—and an appreciation for who’s your sugar daddy—especially now that wind energy costs consumers way less than oil-fired power.