By: Noah Roghman – nationalreview.com – April 24, 2025

The party’s rebranding is about to be tested.

Democrats have reason to think their strategy is working.

The latest Fox News poll found that, while the public supports Donald Trump’s actions in relation to border security by a whopping 15 points, he is narrowly underwater on the issue of “immigration.” The distinction between border policy and immigration policy is one the president himself helped establish. It probably reflects the public’s discomfort with the extent to which Trump’s deportation policies have produced conflicts with the courts.

A Pew Research Center survey released this week supports this assessment. By overwhelming margins — 88 and 78 percent respectively — the public thinks the administration must follow the rulings issued by the Supreme Court and federal district courts. Moreover, voters are more worried about the president’s observing the rule of law than they are about the judiciary. Fully two-thirds of Fox poll respondents, including a majority of Republicans, say the president should not defy the courts even if he believes they are overreaching.

If Democrats are so inclined, they might cite this data to conclude that the public is once again on their side. All the flashy trips to El Salvador, the theatrical press conferences outside U.S. detention centers, and appeals to voters’ emotions are paying off. Right?

Perhaps. But the fact that the president’s political position might be eroding doesn’t mean Democrats are the beneficiaries. What’s more, the Democratic Party’s rebranding as a vehicle for the promotion and preservation of the rule of law is about to be tested.

The president’s deportation initiatives that Democrats have taken a stand against are inextricably bound to campus politics and Trump’s executive order aimed at combating antisemitism. Again, that’s not Trump’s doing but his opposition’s.

Democratic lawmakers manned the barricades on behalf of Columbia University–affiliated deportation target Mahmoud Khalil. They argued that the administration had sought to punish him for engaging in constitutionally protected speech and, therefore, could not meet the procedural requirements necessary to expedite his removal — right up until the Trump administration did just that.

The Democratic Party went to bat for this figure, a test case for the administration’s contention that noncitizen agitators who align with U.S.-designated terrorist groups are making life on campuses hell for other students. And now that hell, which they tacitly defended, is making a comeback.

On Wednesday night, Yale University hosted Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir — a controversialist and contentious figure, even within the Israeli government. The invitation was bound to stir the “pro-Palestinian” mobs to action, and it did just that. True to form, the demonstrators didn’t reserve their ire solely for Ben-Gvir and Yale’s administrators. Rather, they took their frustrations out on the Jews in their midst.

Masked protesters cosplaying in Bedouin scarves locked arms in the effort to block visibly Jewish students from navigating Yale’s campus. They barked at and harassed media figures documenting their escapades, such as the Daily Wire’s Kassy Akiva. They adorned themselves with Hamas-branded regalia.

Yale responded to the menacing disruptions by rescinding its recognition of the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter and promising disciplinary action for those who engaged in the demonstration — a prudent course, since the university is already facing a Department of Education probe into its lax approach to similar past events. But this gesture may be insufficient to satisfy the Trump administration. The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division “is tracking the concerning activities at Yale, and is in touch with affected students,” wrote Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon.

Yale isn’t the only font from which Democratic headaches continue to flow. Columbia University — the center of the outbreak of campus antisemitism that erupted, perversely enough, following the worst one-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust — is at it again. “A group of protesters is planning to set up tent encampments on Columbia University campuses this week in protest of the war in Gaza,” NBC News reported on Wednesday. “Columbia did not confirm or deny whether it knew about the upcoming protests.”

Well, Columbia’s administrators are aware of them now. It is incumbent on them to take proactive measures to ensure that their students’ civil rights are not violated. Moreover, Democratic lawmakers are obliged to pressure campus administrators to do their jobs.

These schools know which of the two major political parties is more deferential to their faculty and staff. Democratic officials know that they benefit more from the absurdly lopsided political donations of education professionals at the university level. And the public knows full well that the institutional culture on America’s campuses is liberal. No one is confused about the power dynamics at play here. And if colleges experience another antisemitic eruption, voters will know whom to blame.

The public isn’t stupid. They remember the excuses that were made for the pro-Hamas protesters throughout 2024. They recall the efforts made to coddle the protesters, to insist that they had “a point” even as they vandalized their surroundings and terrorized people. Maybe much of the public didn’t read the Associated Press report noting that, even six days out from the election, Kamala Harris still hoped to harness the protesters’ enthusiasm if she could only “validate their concerns.” But they saw the results of that effort in her deferential approach toward her tormentors. Most forebodingly, as evinced by the firebombing of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s home, they know this is a violent movement in search of a pretext.

Democrats have made a smart bet in positioning themselves squarely on the side of the rule of law. If they want that makeover to stick in voters’ minds, they cannot be selective about the laws they want to see rule. Overcoming the Biden administration’s legacy of contempt for the primacy of law would be challenging enough, but giving the universities aligned with their politics another pass might scuttle the enterprise entirely.

If Democrats can stand consistently behind their newfound convictions, voters may reward them. If they won’t, Democratic discomfort over the Trump administration’s flirtation with defying the courts will be exposed as opportunistic and hollow — another confirmation of the wisdom of the verdict that voters rendered last November.

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Source: Campus Protests and Democrats’ Newfound Commitment to the Rule of Law | National Review