They’re training to be lawyers. They called the lawyer a Nazi.

On April 21, 2026, the UCLA Federalist Society invited DHS General Counsel James Percival to give a talk at UCLA Law School. BAMN organized 150+ protesters to shut it down, labeling Percival a “fascist” and chanting “No ICE, No KKK, No Fascist U.S.A.” Inside, law students held signs that cannot be quoted in a court filing. The administration they called Nazis moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, brokered Arab-Israeli peace, and just spent 40 days dismantling the country that funds Hamas. The actual Nazis killed six million Jews. But go off.

A lawyer. A law school. What could go wrong.

The UCLA Federalist Society — a student chapter of the national conservative legal organization founded in 1982 and now present at every major American law school — invited James H. Percival, General Counsel of the Department of Homeland Security, to speak at an event titled “Inside DHS: A Conversation with General Counsel.” Percival is a lawyer. UCLA is a law school. The event was a conversation with a federal official about immigration law and DHS operations. This is precisely what law schools exist to host.

By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), a radical left organization, saw this differently. On X, BAMN announced a protest-and-picket at 11:30 AM outside Dodd Hall, declaring Percival “Not Welcome Here” and the event “No platform for Fascists.” Their flyer carried the hashtags #TrumpMustGoNow and #NoICEatUCLA. BAMN’s position: a federal official may not speak at a public university law school because BAMN has determined he is a fascist. BAMN has no institutional authority, no elected mandate, and a federal battery charge from the 2017 Berkeley riots on its résumé. But details.

More than 150 demonstrators gathered outside, waving Mexican flags and signs, chanting “No ICE, No KKK, No Fascist U.S.A.” About 70 people attended the event itself. When the moderator announced that questions would be pre-screened — a standard operating procedure for any federal official, indistinguishable from every Senate confirmation hearing, every White House press conference, every corporate earnings call ever conducted — approximately 50 attendees staged a walkout. The remaining protesters in the room held signs. Those signs included: “Fuck you loser,” “Stop caging kids,” “ICE out,” and one that cannot be reprinted here but asks about the taste of the President’s anatomy. Law student Shayok Chakraborty shouted “Why are you detaining children illegally?” and was escorted out by UCPD.

They called the Trump administration Nazis. Here is what the Trump administration actually did for Jewish people.

“Fascist” and “Nazi” are words with specific historical content. Fascism: an authoritarian ultranationalist movement seeking total state control. Nazism: its German variant, responsible for the systematic murder of six million Jewish people, along with millions of Roma, disabled people, political prisoners, and others. These are not terms of general disapproval. They describe specific ideologies committed to specific atrocities.

The administration that 150 UCLA law students and their colleagues called “fascist” has done the following with respect to Jewish people and the State of Israel:

“What fascist ever sought to shrink government? Fascists get into politics to gain power over you and to exempt themselves from the rules they impose on everyone else.”

Greg Gutfeld, Fox News — on the irony of calling small-government conservatives 'fascists'

$56,000 a year. Ranked 15th in the country. Signs that can’t be quoted in a court filing.

UCLA School of Law is the 15th-ranked law school in the United States. Annual tuition: approximately $56,432. The students who attend it are, on paper, among the most intellectually prepared people in American higher education. The LSAT scores required for admission. The undergraduate GPA. The writing samples, the personal statements, the demonstrated interest in the law.

The core competency of a lawyer is not shouting. It is making an argument, presenting evidence, hearing the other side, and identifying the weakness in their position. This is called adversarial process. It is the entire foundation of Anglo-American jurisprudence. It is what every single student at UCLA Law School paid $56,000 to learn.

The event with James Percival was an opportunity to do exactly that — to sit across from the General Counsel of DHS, ask pointed questions, challenge the legal basis for enforcement actions, argue for a different interpretation of the statute. Percival is a lawyer. He would have had to answer to lawyers. That is a proceeding these students are being trained to conduct.

They left. Then held signs with obscenities in the hallway. Then chanted outside. Matthew Weinberg, president of the UCLA Federalist Society, issued a statement condemning “significant disruptions, including repeated interruptions and personal attacks directed at Mr. Percival.” Ilya Shapiro — who himself was blocked from speaking at UC Hastings Law School by a heckler’s veto and later wrote a book about the progressive takeover of legal education — responded on X with a single dry sentence.

By Any Means Necessary. They mean it.

BAMN has been disrupting conservative speakers since the 1990s. In February 2017, BAMN members were among the rioters who caused $100,000 in property damage at UC Berkeley to prevent Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking. BAMN organizer Yvette Felarca was charged with misdemeanor battery and inciting a riot for her role in a 2016 Sacramento attack on white nationalists. BAMN’s name — By Any Means Necessary — is a direct reference to Malcolm X’s call for Black liberation by any means necessary. BAMN, which is primarily a white-led organization, has appropriated this without apparent reflection.

Their method: declare any speaker they oppose a fascist, announce a protest with the stated goal of preventing the event, and describe any institutional response as further evidence of fascism. The BAMN flyer for the UCLA event made clear that Percival was “not welcome” not because of anything he had done, but because he works for the Department of Homeland Security. BAMN does not distinguish between DHS policy and DHS personnel. Every employee is, by definition, a fascist. This is a convenient epistemology if you are BAMN, since it requires no evidence.

A clinical summary

The administration these law students called Nazis moved the American Embassy to Jerusalem. The administration they called fascists brokered peace between Israel and four Arab nations. The administration whose top lawyer they greeted with a sign about anatomy signed an executive order specifically to protect Jewish students from harassment at institutions exactly like UCLA.

The actual Nazis killed six million Jews. The “fascists” at DHS spent 40 days destroying the country that funds the organizations currently calling for the extermination of Jews in the Middle East. If the UCLA protesters have confused these two things, their tuition dollars have been spectacularly wasted. If they haven’t confused them — if they know the difference and are using “fascist” and “Nazi” as content-free insults designed to silence rather than argue — then they are not exercising free speech. They are demonstrating the heckler’s veto: the use of disruption as a substitute for argument.

The heckler’s veto has a long and consistent history on American campuses. It is always aimed at speakers the mob has decided in advance are wrong. It always involves treating disruption as a form of debate. It always ends with the same result: the disrupted event, the condemned speaker, and the students who walked away having learned nothing — because they never heard the argument they were afraid of. These are people training to be lawyers. The courtroom does not have a heckler’s veto. The other side gets to speak. There is a judge. There are rules. UCLA charges $56,000 a year to teach this. On April 21, 2026, a significant portion of its student body demonstrated they skipped that class.

“Someone should write a book about this sort of thing.”

Ilya Shapiro, on X, April 22, 2026 — after watching UCLA law students shut down a DHS lawyer at a law school. Shapiro wrote the book. It's called Canceling Justice.