Bang your spoons!

On Mar 31 federal judge Gerald J. Pappert ruled that the University of Pennsylvania must turn over lists of Jewish employees as demanded by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Trump admini-stration is “investigating” on-campus antisemitism at Penn. Uh. Oh.

The exact remedies the EEOC will seek to enforce, if any, are unknown. But we need not expect much. Like the Iran war he started, there’s no strategy, just tactics. Indifference and documented abuse of the civil rights of Americans, including summary executions of at least three US citizens, is a hallmark of his autocratic reign as is the laying on of hands and dissing the Pope. Yes, I digress. Sorry.

Judge Pappert ruled that likening this subpoena to the Nazi persecution of the Jews was incorrect and “significantly raised the dispute's temperature by impliedly and even expressly comparing the EEOC's efforts to protect Jewish employees from antisemitism to the Holocaust and the Nazis' compilation of ‘lists of Jews.’ Such allegations are unfortunate and inappropriate.” (Emphasis added.)

Really?

The Laying on of Hands

Allowing Trump, his administration, or anyone, having anything to do with demanding a list of Jews at Penn, Harvard, any Ivy League campus, or anywhere else for that matter, is beyond worrisome. It’s eight-out-of ten terrifying.

Trump has his house Jews: e.g., son-in-law Jared Kushner, his real estate dealmaker pal Witnick, the immigration-obsessed Steven Miller.

Trump may or may not be an intentional antisemite. At Mar-a-Lago he dined with Nick Fuentes, a rabble-rousing, vigorous antisemite. But Trump doesn’t call him out; thus, he is complicit by inference. The EEOC  is an instrument  of his administration. So ultimately it’s on him.

Judge Pappert missed the point.

Photo: NY Times