The Department of Justice announced Friday that a federal “task force to combat antisemitism” would visit 10 U.S. college campuses as part of investigations into allegations of antisemitic incidents at campuses roiled by pro-Palestinian protests last spring.

The department said the task force, which is looking into “allegations that the schools may have failed to protect Jewish students and faculty members from unlawful discrimination,” would go to Columbia, George Washington University, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, New York University, the University of Minnesota, Northwestern, the University of Southern California, UCLA and UC Berkeley.

It did not specify when the visits would take place or which alleged incidents the task force would research. All the campuses have either been part of Department of Education civil rights antisemitism complaints or have been subject to numerous internal reports of antisemitism as demonstrations grew following the the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s war in Gaza.

In a statement, Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and task force leading member Leo Terrill said the group’s “mandate is to bring the full force of the federal government to bear in our effort to eradicate antisemitism, particularly in schools. These visits are just one of many steps this administration is taking to deliver on that commitment.”

Trump orders English as official language

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order designating English as the official language of the United States, according to the White House.

The order will allow government agencies and organizations that receive federal funding to choose whether to continue to offer documents and services in language other than English, according to a fact sheet about the impending order.

Trump had been expected to sign the order Friday. But by Friday night, the White House had not announced the order had been signed and did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

The executive order will rescind a mandate from former President Bill Clinton that required the government and organizations that received federal funding to provide language assistance to non-English speakers.

Designating English as the national language “promotes unity, establishes efficiency in government operations, and creates a pathway for civic engagement,” according to the White House.

More than 30 states have already passed laws designating English as their official language, according to U.S. English, a group that advocates for making English the official language in the United States.

For decades, lawmakers in Congress have introduced legislation to designate English as the official language of the U.S., but those efforts have not succeeded.

Within hours of Trump’s inauguration last month, the new administration took down the Spanish language version of the official White House website.

Trump terminating fair housing grants

President Donald Trump’s administration has begun terminating grants to organizations that enforce the Fair Housing Act by taking complaints, investigating and litigating housing discrimination cases for Americans across the country, according to a document and information obtained by The Associated Press on Friday.

The grants are disbursed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to private nonprofits, which act as the frontline enforcement of the federal anti-discrimination law. They educate communities on their rights, test whether a landlord is racially discriminating, investigate complaints, resolve disputes and can fund legal counsel.

Of some 34,000 fair housing complaints lodged in the U.S. in 2023, these private nonprofits processed 75%, according to a report from the National Fair Housing Alliance. The rest were fielded by state and local governments, with HUD and the U.S. Department of Justice working on less than 6% combined.

It’s the highest number of complaints since the first report in the 1990s, and over half were lodged for discrimination based on a disability.

Of the 162 active grants going to the private nonprofits to do that work, nearly half are slated for cancellation, said Nikitra Bailey, executive vice president at the National Fair Housing Alliance. Bailey added that some organizations rely entirely on the grants and may have to shutter, others will have to lay off staff.

Democratic Party sues Trump over FEC

The Democratic Party sued President Donald Trump on Friday, contending that his assertion of control over independent executive-branch agencies, which include the bipartisan Federal Election Commission, violated federal election law.

The lawsuit, which was jointly filed by the three national Democratic committees in federal court in Washington, D.C., is the first time the party has sued Trump in his second term. It comes as Democrats are embroiled in an internal debate over their strategy for opposing Trump’s overhaul of the federal government.

The order stated that those agencies cannot interpret the law differently than the president or attorney general. That assertion effectively brings oversight of the bipartisan Federal Election Commission, which regulates campaigns for federal office, under direct control of the president, Democrats argue.

“The executive order purports to provide President Trump — the leader of the Republican Party — with the ability to order the FEC to take particular positions on any question of law arising in the commission’s performance of any of its duties,” the Democrats’ lawsuit states. The filing also argues that the executive order violates federal election law, undermining Congress.

Senior Washington prosecutors demoted

Several senior leaders in Washington’s federal prosecutors office have been demoted to jobs handling misdemeanors or other low-level matters, in the latest move by President Donald Trump’s U.S. attorney to roil the office that oversaw the massive prosecution of the U.S. Capitol attack, three people familiar with the matter said Friday.

Interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin’s move to reassign at least seven of the most senior and experienced prosecutors has shocked lawyers in the office, which was already shaken by the firings of a slew of lawyers who handled Jan. 6 cases. Among those being reassigned include several prosecutors who handled or oversaw politically sensitive cases involving the Jan. 6 riot and Trump allies Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon.

The prosecutors were informed in an email that they were being reassigned to work on misdemeanor cases or moved to the Early Case Assessment Section, which evaluates new cases and handles early court proceedings, like arraignments in Superior Court.

Education Department gets buyout offers

Education Department employees received an email Friday offering buyouts before what were described as “very significant” layoffs.

The email, sent to all of the department’s employees at 11:03 a.m., urged workers to consider a “one-time offer” of a taxable payment of up to $25,000 if they completed an application to retire or resign by the end of the day Monday. The email, which was reviewed by The New York Times, noted that employees were receiving the offer before the department underwent “a very significant reduction in force.”

The email appeared to have been briefly recalled Friday, according to three people who received the original notice. They described it as simply vanishing from their inboxes, causing confusion among employees about the status of any offer.

But a seemingly identical email was sent out again Friday afternoon, presenting the same choice and giving employees three days to contemplate its terms.

A spokesperson for the department did not respond to a request for comment about the offer or ensuing communications.

FBI returns seized Mar-a-Lago boxes

The FBI on Friday gave President Donald Trump the boxes of materials the bureau had seized during a search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in 2022, the White House announced.

Files that investigators said contained classified material were among the thousands of items taken in the search, and they had formed the central evidence in a criminal case charging Trump with illegally taking them when he left office after his first term and blocking the government’s efforts to retrieve them.

But a judge unexpectedly threw out the charges last year, and prosecutors dropped their appeal to reinstate them after Trump was reelected in November. Jack Smith, the special counsel in the case, said at the time that the charges had been dismissed because of a department policy that barred filing charges against a sitting president.

Trump repeatedly argued that he had a legal right to the documents despite their classification. After the case was dropped, the president and his allies said they would seek the return of the files that had been seized.

The White House communications director said that happened Friday afternoon.

Ugandan boy, 4, dies amid Ebola aid cutoff

The Ebola outbreak in Uganda, which had seemed to be in retreat, has claimed a new victim: a 4-year-old boy who died Monday, according to a State Department cable viewed by The New York Times.

News of the child’s death comes even as the Trump administration has canceled at least four of the five contracts with organizations that helped manage the outbreak. It also placed the manager of the Ebola response at USAID on administrative leave.

Uganda’s Ministry of Health informed U.S. officials of the death Thursday. The confirmed case has not yet been announced by the Ugandan government nor the World Health Organization, but federal officials involved in the response alerted the White House on Thursday night.

“Continued support from the terminated awards is not only vital to save lives but also vital in protecting the health and security of the United States and global community,” William W. Popp, the U.S. ambassador to Uganda, wrote in the cable.

Uganda has experienced a serious Ebola outbreak since January that had appeared to be receding. The new case brings the total number of cases to 10, including two deaths. The first known fatality, a 32-year-old nurse, was reported in late January.

— News service reports