On Oct. 7, 2023, a series of pivotal events unfolded that could shape the landscape of the upcoming November election. 

That was when Hamas staged its audacious, terrifying raids into Israel,  launching a Middle East conflagration which dwarfs the wars of 1967 and 1973.

The subject of abortion remains a prominent factor in this fall’s election. But the Middle East has the potential to supersede that. The schism which is cleaving the Democratic Party is now on full display in quadrangles across the country. Photos of occupation, tent cities and ransacked university buildings are now a staple of the daily news consciousness. This all comes nearly 54 years to the day of the massacre at Kent State University in Ohio.

Democrats are struggling to balance the First Amendment rights of students on top of support for human rights in Gaza. But a thread of rampant antisemitism permeates many of these demonstrations. This isn’t lost on voters. Democrats are torn between criticizing the protests and not alienating their base.

COLLEGE GIRL PELTED WITH OBJECTS BY ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTERS FOR STANDING UP FOR US FLAG SPEAKS OUT

A cynic might argue that Republicans are exploiting the Democratic schism. But the GOP really doesn’t need to do much. The daily collegiate contretemps speaks for itself.

Neither party frankly has much of a legislative agenda for the rest of the year. The foreign aid package is complete. TikTok is on the books. Months of work on a bipartisan border security package evaporated within minutes over the winter. Nothing exists in a vacuum. So, the university melees simply presented the GOP with an opening. And the GOP is seemingly better equipped to grapple with the issue than Democrats.

“Students are students, and you’re going to have demonstrations. And that’s just part of being a college student,” said Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., the top Democrat on the House Education Committee. “There’s a difference between protesting against the war and being antisemitic. And many of the protests have slipped into antisemitism.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., led the charge to challenge higher education. Johnson deputized multiple committee chairs to launch a myriad of investigations and hearings into prospective wrongdoing by universities, failures to protect students and threats of switching off the financial spigot for colleges.

“The biggest supply of money comes from us. And so we’re taking a look at how to condition that money on how they handle their campuses in situations like this,” promised Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

House Republicans have already targeted higher education for months – with great success. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., bragged “one down, two to go,” after University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill stepped down in December following her congressional testimony about collegiate antisemitism.

By January, Stefanik added another trophy to her collection, the resignation of Harvard’s Claudine Gay. Gay also stumbled at the same hearing as Magill. It’s notable that Stefanik graduated from Harvard in 2006.

“Two down,” Stefanik said at the time.

MIT President Sally Kornbluth remains on the job after that fateful December hearing. But now, Stefanik and other Republicans are pursuing Columbia University President Minouche Shafik after demonstrators stormed Hamilton Hall.

“President Shafik has allowed campus to be taken by mob rule,” said Stefanik. “She must be immediately removed.”

Students march on Columbia University’s campus in support of a protest encampment supporting Palestinians despite a 2 p.m. deadline issued by university officials to disband or face suspension in New York City April 29, 2024. (REUTERS/David Dee Delgado)

COLUMBIA CELEBRATES ‘ALLEGED TERRORISTS’ WITH ON-CAMPUS MEMORIAL TO ‘JOURNALISTS’ KILLED IN GAZA: REPORT

The issue about the university unrest was practically served up to Republicans on a silver mortar board. Expect a public thrashing for other university presidents at another hearing before the House Education Committee on May 23. 

The House Oversight Committee has jurisdiction over Washington, D.C. That’s why House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., summoned Washington, D.C., Mayor Murial Bowser and D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith for a session next week. Comer is “deeply concerned” that the D.C. police rejected a request from George Washington University to help “remove antisemitic and unlawful protesters” from the campus.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona recently sent a letter to university presidents in which he blasted the harassment of Jewish students. In particular, Cardona said Jewish students were subject “to verbal abuse” and found swastikas on their doors. Others were told to “go back to Poland.”

“These and other such incidents are abhorrent,” wrote Cardona.

But Republican lawmakers believe Cardona and the federal government were slow to probe potential civil rights violations on campuses. Cardona appeared before a Senate hearing earlier this week.

“Do you think right now that this administration is upholding Title VI?” Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., asked.

Title VI is part of the Civil Rights Act that bars discrimination based on race, color or religion.

“We are with the resources that we have,” said Cardona. “The number of cases has tripled since 2009. And we have 58 less people (to investigate now).”

Hundreds of students protest outside the Palestine Solidarity Encampment on the campus of UCLA in Los Angeles May 1, 2024.  (Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)

UCLA STUDENT SLAMS UNIVERSITY FOR ‘ENCOURAGING VIOLENCE,’ TURNING CAMPUS INTO ‘WAR ZONE’: ‘THIS IS A DISGRACE’

Cardona asked for an additional $22 million this budget cycle to hire more investigators and open up additional campus probes. But expect that to be a flashpoint. Especially after Republicans aim to trim funding for the Department of Education.

“Republicans tried to cut it by 25% for the FY ‘24 budget. And the result was flat funding,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.

The GOP is also angling to slash funding for universities lawmakers believe failed to protect students.

“If you’re going to break the law, violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, you’re going to have your federal funds removed,” warned Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., the top Republican on the panel that handles education dollars. 

“Think of the research dollars that go into some of these universities. Think of the federal student aid that goes into these universities. Think of the buildings that were built with federal funds.”

Cardona agrees with some senators about the cash flow.

“Ultimately, if a school refuses to comply with Title VI, yes, we would remove federal dollars,” Cardona testified.

But some lawmakers suggest it’s challenging to determine when a school crosses the line.

“There’s natural tension between the First Amendment (and the) criminal code, Title VI, to make sure that students can have an environment free of hatred and hostility,” said Scott. “And it’s going to be difficult to decide.”

But the politics may be a little clearer.

Voters see chaos on campus. Some on the right are skeptical about higher education to begin with. Democrats are torn about the conflict in the Middle East. Republicans won the House partly because they flipped seats in New York. That’s why freshmen members of Congress, like Reps. Mike Lawler and Anthony D’Esposito, both New York Republicans, have been outspoken about protests at Columbia.

This maelstrom of demonstrations at colleges and universities is now officially on the ballot this fall. And Republicans have demonstrated they believe the milieu works in their favor.

Millions of us are justifiably focused on seeing that Donald Trump is held to account for what he’s allegedly done in the past.

Scheming to flip the legitimate 2020 election result and resisting the peaceful transfer of power, a first for U.S. presidents. Making off with top-secret documents and conspiring to hide them from the feds. Falsifying business records to keep hush money paid to a porn star a secret from voters in 2016.

We mustn’t lose sight, however, of what Trump will do, if — despite all that baggage — he defeats Joe Biden to become president again. His fever dreams are no secret. He’s told us, and his henchmen have, too, in interviews and in exhaustive, scary detail in their so-called Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump term.

Among Trump’s first acts? Turning the historically independent Justice Department into his personal law firm, chock-full of taxpayer-paid Roy Cohns ready to dump the criminal cases against the boss.

And then, despite Trump’s arguments to the Supreme Court that presidents must have legal immunity (something no other president ever sought), he’ll sic his government prosecutors on Biden. As he told Time magazine for its recent cover story, “Biden, I am sure, will be prosecuted for all of his crimes.” What crimes? Trump doesn’t say and his Republican flunkies in the House have come up with bubkes after more than a year of investigation.

Focusing on Trump’s plans is important in its own right. But it’s all the more crucial for voters given that accountability for his past acts is proving so elusive, thanks to Republican appointees on the Supreme Court and the rookie Trump judge handling the classified documents case in Florida. They’re indulging his sand-in-the-gears legal tactics and engineering their own. The hush money case could well be the only one to reach a verdict before November.

That Trump 2.0 hasn’t gotten more attention is a reflection of just how normalized his outrageousness has become — and how distracted voters and the media have been by the prosecutions of Trump 1.0.

In any other era, proposals like these would be big news: The National Guard, and perhaps the military, too, rounding up and deporting an estimated 11 million people who came to this country illegally, most of them years ago, and who now hold jobs, pay taxes and raise children who are citizens. Huge detention camps for migrants. National Guard troops policing city streets at presidential whim. A rollback of climate change programs to “drill, baby, drill.”

For voters not inclined to wade through the voluminous Project 2025, Time’s cover story provided a CliffsNotes version, “If He Wins…How Far Trump Would Go.” He sat for two interviews with the reporter, reflecting his longtime obsession with being a Time coverboy; pre-presidency, he had a fake cover created and hung framed copies in his clubs until the magazine asked that he remove them. (The truly “fake news” headline: “TRUMP IS HITTING ON ALL FRONTS…EVEN TV!”)

His second-term agenda reflects lessons gleaned from the first. Chiefly this one, which is how the Time piece begins: “He was too nice.”

Trump unleashed would only hire advisors who agree that the 2020 election was stolen from him. He’d “absolutely” pardon every rioter convicted and charged with Jan. 6 crimes (more than 800 have pleaded guilty or been convicted by juries). He’d gut the civil service and revert to a spoils system of MAGA loyalists. He’d spend federal funds as he wanted, not as annual budget laws stipulated. And because “there is a definite anti-white feeling in this country,” he’d look into changing laws that are “very unfair” to white Americans.

Trump would almost certainly spur inflation by raising tariffs at least 10% on all imports and up to 100% on Chinese goods. He simply dismisses multiple analyses that found his earlier tariffs on steel and aluminum imports raised prices for U.S. manufacturers and consumers and cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. Steel companies “love me because I saved their industry,” he said. In fact, whole operations shuttered and the number of steelworker jobs shrank over his term.

On foreign policy, Trump stood by his talk of encouraging the Russians “to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies he believes aren’t spending enough on their own defense. He told Time he “wouldn’t give a penny” to Ukraine unless Europe ponies up equally, which — contrary to Trump’s claims — it already is doing.

The former president fell back on his new states’ rights stance on abortion to dismiss all questions about the issue. Say red states want to monitor women’s pregnancies to police compliance with their abortion bans. “I think they might do that,” he said, and “it’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not” with that.

Yet Trump might not be as hands-off as this suggests. Project 2025 envisions federal regulatory agencies imposing anti-abortion policies and the revival of the 19th-century Comstock Act to criminalize mailing abortion pills, now the main method to end pregnancies. Trump’s silence about all that is how his allies want it; everyone knows the abortion-rights issue is a loser for him and Republicans in general.

“I just don’t want him to shoot off his mouth,” one anti-abortion ally told the New York Times recently. “I think the pro-life groups should keep their mouths shut as much as possible until the election.”

And the more we fixate on his current legal travails, to the exclusion of divining his future plans, the easier that cover-up will be.

@jackiekcalmes

FIRST ON FOX: The conservative, “woke-free” beer company that launched last year hoping to rival Bud Light will host an event Tuesday at a University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill fraternity house to celebrate the actions of the students who defended the American flag from anti-Israel protesters on campus earlier this week.

Dubbed the “Frat Boy Summer Kickoff,” the event will be held at the Kappa Alpha Order fraternity house and will be hosted by the Ultra Right Beer Company.

“We’re trying to get this very organic, just a good old-fashioned, frat row, beer party,” said Seth Weathers, CEO of Ultra Right Beer Company, told Fox News Digital. “I love what the kids did, obviously, protecting the flag.”

“I love the idea of just continuing to encourage them about what they did so that that will encourage, you know, other kids in college and everywhere else to know they did the right thing,” he added.

UNC FRAT BROTHERS WHO DEFENDED US FLAG SPEAK OUT: ‘DEEPLY IMPORTANT TO US’

Ultra Right Beer Company will be giving away free beer to those in attendance for what Weathers believes will turn into a “really good event” that “multiple fraternities” and Old Row, a Barstool Sports subsidiary, are involved with.

“We’re doing free beer,” he said. “We’re making it really simple — show up, you got free beer. We’re bringing half a tractor trailer load of beer for this thing just in anticipation of the kind of crowd it sounds like we’re going to have.”

Multiple fraternity brothers at UNC Chapel Hill garnered praise earlier this week after they were photographed hoisting an American flag that had been removed once and replaced with a Palestinian flag on the university’s quad. Their decision to step in came as anti-Israel agitators attempted to take down the American flag for a second time after UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts responded with law enforcement officers to return the American flag to its place.

The flag had been flying at half-staff after four Charlotte officers were killed in the line of duty Monday.

Weathers said the event is a “pro-America celebration in celebration of these kids and what they did in encouraging more to do the same.”

UNC FRATERNITY BROTHERS DEFEND REINSTATED AMERICAN FLAG FROM CAMPUS MOB WHO REPLACED WITH PALESTINIAN FLAG

UNC Chapel Hill students hold up the American flag during a campus protest on April 30, 2024. (Parker Ali/The Daily Tar Heel)

“Our brand’s all about that. We’re all about patriotism, and we’re all about people boldly showing their patriotism and their beliefs. And when you see kids doing it, we’re excited about that,” he said.

Several Republican lawmakers have praised the fraternity brothers for stepping in and refusing to allow the removal of the American flag from its campus, including Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, who praised them for displaying “extreme courage” and “deep patriotism.”

The fraternity brothers defended the flag for over an hour until police were able to clear the protest and safely place it back on the flagpole. All the while, the frat brothers experienced profanity and rude gestures from protesters, along with water, bottles and rocks being thrown at them.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre remarked this week that the students’ actions were “admirable.”

A GoFundMe page was created to throw the fraternity brothers a “rager” for their decision to defend the flag on campus and raised more than $500,000, as of Saturday.

The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s campus on Thursday, May 2, 2024. (Fox News Digital)

“These kids are going to be pulled a million directions with everyone trying to get a hold of their GoFundMe money,” Weather said. “We wanted to do something organic for them to encourage more of the patriotism we saw on campus last week.”

Ultra Right Beer Company launched in April 2023 as a rival to Bud Light following its partnership with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney, which ruffled the feathers of conservatives around the country who had long supported the beer giant.

Fox News’ Audrey Conklin and Alexander Hall contributed to this report.