President Donald Trump announced Wednesday night that Columbia University would pay the federal government $200 million in a settlement over its handling of anti-Israel protests. 

In addition to the penalty paid to the federal government, Trump said the university would pay $20 million to its Jewish employees “who were unlawfully targeted and harassed.” In exchange, the Trump administration will unfreeze federal funding and close down several investigations into the Ivy League university.  

“I am pleased to announce that the Trump Administration has reached a historic agreement with Columbia University. Columbia has agreed to pay a penalty of $200 Million Dollars to the United States Government for violating Federal Law, in addition to over $20 Million to their Jewish employees who were unlawfully targeted and harassed. Columbia has also committed to ending their ridiculous DEI policies, admitting students based ONLY on MERIT, and protecting the Civil Liberties of their students on campus,” Trump posted on Truth Social. 

“Numerous other Higher Education Institutions that have hurt so many, and been so unfair and unjust, and have wrongly spent federal money, much of it from our government, are upcoming,” Trump added. “It’s a great honor to have been involved, and I want to thank and congratulate Secretary Linda McMahon, and all those who worked with us on this important deal. I also want to thank and commend Columbia University for agreeing to do what is right. I look forward to watching them have a great future in our Country, maybe greater than ever before!”

In the settlement, Columbia agreed to review its Middle East-related programs and task its senior vice provost with making recommendations to university leaders about “ways to improve and support Jewish students.” Columbia said in a statement that it does “not admit to wrongdoing with this resolution agreement” but recognized that “Jewish students and faculty have experienced painful, unacceptable incidents.”

The settlement also includes a provision prohibiting the university from creating DEI programs. 

“Columbia shall not maintain programs that promote unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotas, diversity targets, or similar efforts. For example, Columbia will not provide benefits or advantages to individuals on the basis of protected characteristics in any school, component, division, department, foundation, association or element within the entire Columbia University system,” the settlement says. 

Admission to the university must also be based on merit, and the university is prohibited from using any proxy, such as a diversity narrative included in an application, for racial preferences, according to the settlement. Columbia will be required to provide a breakdown of students it has accepted and rejected, including data on race, GPA, and standardized test scores, to ensure compliance with the settlement. 

Columbia also agreed to hire employees based only on individual qualifications and academic and professional merit, and to ensure that women had access to all female housing, sports teams, locker rooms, and showering facilities. 

“This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,” said acting University President Claire Shipman. “The settlement was carefully crafted to protect the values that define us and allow our essential research partnership with the federal government to get back on track.”

The settlement comes just days after Columbia suspended or expelled more than 70 students, including many who participated in the storming of the university library during anti-Israel protests.

The Department of Defense awarded a contract worth up to $200 million to an artificial intelligence company whose CEO said that President Donald Trump was a “legitimate threat to the rule of law” and likened him to a “feudal warlord.” 

Anthropic, a San Francisco-based company with extensive links to Democrats, was awarded a contract earlier this month to develop national security AI capabilities for the Pentagon. This contract comes after CEO Dario Amodei lambasted Trump as a “clown” who appointed “idiots” to government positions. 

Beginning with a $2 million award, Anthropic will work with the Defense Department to “anticipate and mitigate potential adversarial uses of AI” and the exchange of “technical insights, performance data, and operational feedback to accelerate responsible AI adoption across the defense enterprise.” 

By the end of the project, the company, which created AI chatbot Claude, could be awarded 200 million in taxpayer dollars. 

According to the Department of Defense, the project will mainly take place in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and will focus on developing “prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in across warfighting and enterprise domains.”

Before the company was awarded the lucrative contract, Amodei had a history of decrying Trump and urging voters to back Democrats. 

“But the stakes are too high for me not to say where I stand. Harris will be the steadier hand and the more trustworthy leader in an age of rapid and disruptive technological change,” he said in a Facebook post before the 2024 election.

Amodei did admit in the post that he was not speaking for Anthropic and that he would “try to find areas of agreement and opportunities for good policy making” regardless of who was elected.

Over the years, Amodei has donated extensively to Democrats, including $37,800 to President Joe Biden, $20,700 to Hillary Clinton, and $47,750 to the DNC, according to Federal Election Commission records.

In another Facebook post from 2018, wrote that Trump “represents a serious and legitimate threat to the rule of law,” said that Trump “appoints idiots to important government positions,” and urged Americans to “vote against this clown.”

He said that a “feudal warlord lens” explained a lot about how Trump operates. 

“He sees the Attorney General as someone whose job is to protect him personally, rather than someone whose job is to enforce the laws, he sees the White House Counsel as responsible for abetting his illegal actions, rather than advising him on what is or isn’t legal,” he wrote. 

The CEO also opined on gerrymandering, urging the adoption of measures that “would effectively abolish the Electoral College.” He claimed that voting for Democrats was the only way to address gerrymandering in the country.

Last week, Dario attended an event with Trump last week at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania as Anthropic committed $2 million to the university for AI and technology research.

Anthropic also has other close ties to Democratic donors and former Biden administration officials. 

During its early stages, the company received backing from Dustin Moskovitz, a billionaire entrepreneur who donated around $37 million to a PAC backing Harris. Netflix founder Reed Hastings, another prominent Democrat donor, sits on the board of Anthropic. Former Biden advisers who now work with Anthropic include Elizabeth Kelly, Tarun Chhabra, Benjamin Merkel, and Ben Buchanan.

Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment.

On Wednesday, Trump laid out details of his AI action plan, which included plans to require companies that get federal contracts to have ideologically free chatbots. The Daily Wire has previously reported on how OpenAi’s ChatGPT will help kids get access to abortion pills and attack crisis pregnancy centers.

Anthropic said that there was “alignment” between its goals and Trump’s action plan.

“We look forward to working with the Administration to implement these initiatives while ensuring appropriate attention to catastrophic risks and maintaining strong export controls,” Anthropic said Wednesday. “Together, we can ensure that powerful AI systems are developed safely in America, by American companies, reflecting American values and interests.”