Speaking at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon laid out the administration’s expectations for campus antisemitism policies, but sidestepped how the administration will execute on those directives while making substantial cuts to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

“We’re saying we mean business, these programs and policies have to have teeth, they have to be enforced,” McMahon said. 

She outlined a series of policies the Trump administration wants to see campuses enforce, including banning encampments, prohibiting the use of masks and better vetting of students and professors. Professors, she said, must not teach ideology.

She added that the Office for Civil Rights has opened “many cases” on campus antisemitism and is taking enforcement actions, including pulling funds from multiple schools.

But she failed to directly address concerns from Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), the subcommittee chair, that cuts to OCR could hamper the administration’s ability to adequately address campus antisemitism.

The top National Security Council officials overseeing the Middle East and Israel and Iran portfolios — seen as pro-Israel voices in the administration — were among the dozens of officials dismissed in a widespread purge of the NSC on Friday, two sources familiar with the situation told Jewish Insider.

Eric Trager, who was the senior director for the Middle East and North Africa — the lead official on the Middle East — and Merav Ceren, the director for Israel and Iran, were both Trump administration political appointees but were pushed out in what one official called a purge of “the Deep State” inside the NSC.

Their firings come as voices skeptical of the U.S.’ role in the Middle East increasingly establish a foothold in the administration, and as President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also the acting national security advisor, seek to restructure and slim down the key foreign policy-making body.

According to Axios, officials cut from the NSC will be moved to other positions in the government. Ceren previously came under fire from the far left and far right after false claims that she had previously worked as an Israeli Ministry of Defense official generated accusations of dual loyalty.

NSC spokesman Brian Hughes defended Ceren at the time and denied the accusations, describing her as “a patriotic American who has served in the United States government for years, including for President Trump, Senator Ted Cruz, and Congressman James Comer. We are thrilled to have her expertise in the NSC, where she carries out the President’s agenda on a range of Middle East issues.” He said she “was never employed by the Israeli Defense Ministry, let alone was she an Israeli official.”

Trager and Ceren were hired under former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who was pushed aside after he added a journalist to an administration group chat about U.S. strikes on the Houthis, and after right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer accused him of staffing the NSC with a host of neoconservatives out of step with Trump.

Trager and Ceren had maintained their positions at the time, even as several of Waltz’s top hires were dismissed.