Trump exits UNESCO again, citing anti-Israel bias — and spurring concern for Jewish sites
(JTA) — President Donald Trump has once again withdrawn the United States from UNESCO, accusing the U.N.’s science and cultural and organization of an anti-Israel bias and a “globalist” agenda.
In a statement Tuesday that drew mixed reactions from Jewish groups, the State Department accused the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which preserves cultural heritage sites around the world, of advancing “divisive social and cultural causes” and maintaining an “outsized focus on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals,” which it referred to as having a “globalist, ideological agenda.”
It also criticized UNESCO for admitting the “State of Palestine” as a member state, and pointed to that decision as contributing to the “proliferation of anti-Israel rhetoric within the organization.”
During Trump’s first term in 2017, the United States also withdrew from UNESCO over the organization’s alleged anti-Israel bias, but that decision was reversed by the Biden administration in 2023.
Report: More than $25m in US Homeland Security grants went to radical groups with terror ties
(JNS) — The U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent more than $25 million to extremist groups with ties to Islamist terror groups between 2013 and 2023, according to a new report from the Middle East Forum.
Gregg Roman, executive director of the think tank, told JNS that the forum pored over publicly accessible government spending data.
“We matched these grants with extremist groups found in our research archives to identify the misuse of taxpayer dollars on a grand scale,” he said.
“Americans should know that their hard-earned money was allocated to build up security around a luxurious mosque compound in Maryland owned by Turkey’s Islamist government and that mosques in Michigan and Texas that serve as outposts for Iran’s regime were also recipients of DHS funds,” he told JNS.
Some $750,000 in federal grants went “to mosques suspected of operating on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran or its proxies,” according to the report. The report acknowledges that it is not known if the U.S. government ultimately paid the grants, only that it earmarked them in a specific year. (JNS sought comment from the Department of Homeland Security.)
Court overturns conviction in case of Etan Patz, Jewish 6-year-old whose 1979 disappearance riveted America
(JTA) — A New York federal appeals court ruled Monday to overturn the guilty verdict for the man convicted in the 1979 disappearance of Etan Patz, the Jewish 6-year-old whose kidnapping and presumed murder changed America’s approach to missing-child cases.
Pedro Hernandez, 64, was convicted of Etan’s kidnapping and murder in 2017 and was serving a 25-year sentence until the appeals court ordered Monday that he be released unless he gets a retrial within “a reasonable period.”
Etan went missing in May 1979 on the first day that he was allowed by his mother to walk alone to his school bus stop in New York City. He was one of the first missing children to be pictured on milk cartons to seek the public’s help in finding him, but despite extensive searches for him, he was never found.
In 1998, Etan’s uncle, Rabbi Norman Patz, told the New York Jewish Week that the family continued to struggle with the pain of not knowing what happened to their son: “It doesn’t go away. And until they discover a body, there’s no closure.”
Columbia agrees to pay $221m to settle federal Jew-hatred probe
(JNS) — Columbia University agreed to pay $221 million to the U.S. government to settle federal investigations of its response to antisemitism on campus, the private Ivy League school said on Wednesday.
The university stated that it would pay $200 million over three years to the federal government, and another $21 million to settle with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “Importantly, the agreement preserves Columbia’s autonomy and authority over faculty hiring, admissions and academic decision-making,” it said.
“Under today’s agreement, a vast majority of the federal grants which were terminated or paused in March 2025 will be reinstated, and Columbia’s access to billions of dollars in current and future grants will be restored,” Columbia said.
