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    The truth is finally dawning on Britain: toadying to Trump has got us nowhere | Emma Brockes

    It’s not funny, of course – livelihoods if not actual lives depend on reaching a workable accord. But the news that President Trump has probably stiffed the UK into a second- or third-tier boarding group for trade talks, behind South Korea and Japan, triggers at least a snort of recognition for anyone who has experienced versions of that dynamic. The phrase “British negotiators are hopeful” followed almost immediately by use of the word “disappointed” in heavy rotation takes you, with grim amusement, back to every toxic relationship in which you have played Britain to someone else’s America.We are talking, of course, about the wisdom or otherwise of appeasing a man many think of as a tyrant, and the main takeaway from the Guardian’s story on Tuesday is that no matter how the UK pretzels itself to fit Donald Trump’s requirements, none of it will make any difference. Or rather what difference it makes, beyond the immediate relief enjoyed before the flattery wears off, is likely to be negative. It’s a rule of extortion that demands will increase with each capitulation, as Columbia University is finding out to its cost. (After caving to Trump’s demands last month in return for the restoration of $400m in federal funding, the university has not, in fact, had its funding restored. Instead Trump officials have told Columbia its concessions only represent the “first step”.)And now the UK finds itself in a similar pickle to Columbia, with any goodwill generated by King Charles’s letter inviting Trump to Balmoral apparently thrown up in the air. (One thing I’ll say for the royals is that their use of passive-aggressive semiotics in the invitation are absolutely world class: Balmoral is a mid-list palace that, while superior to Blenheim, which Trump visited in 2018 and is basically an off-site for corporate events these days, is decidedly not Buckingham Palace – a subtlety we must assume the king and his cohorts are thoroughly enjoying and Trump has no idea about whatsoever.)Anyway, where does any of this leave the UK? For now, at least, belligerence seems to be getting the better results with Trump, at least for those negotiators who have something he wants. Trump has blinked repeatedly when faced with the negative consequences of his own erratic behaviour, be that from tech companies forcing him to exempt them from tariffs or business leaders persuading him, in the wake of his commitment to putting 145% tariffs on Chinese goods, to wobble and admit they’re not sustainable.The fact is that Apple, Target and Walmart all have greater leverage over Trump than the UK does, which is why watching this latest episode of the special relationship unfold brings on, at least in British viewers, feelings of something like pathos. How many times will we keep going back? Clearly the prime minister’s jolly humouring secures better outcomes than Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first approach at the White House, which has since been corrected to a necessary attitude of fealty. Meanwhile Canada, of all places, is now the nation telling the US in the most strident terms to take a step back and get stuffed.As in all these things, it’s the hope that kills you. Maybe if Britain says exactly the right words in the right order, keeps its breathing to a minimum, manages not to say anything annoying until we’re on the other side of the trade deal, lowers its eyes away from Europe or other allies that might trigger the rage of the aggressor, and continues to laugh at his jokes and listen to his stories, it will succeed in changing the pattern of Trump’s behaviour.The fact that this outcome is considered in any way achievable is perhaps the saddest thing of all. It’s an odd quirk of British-American diplomacy that, despite the vast disparity in power and wealth between the two countries, the sense of exceptionalism on both sides is probably equal. We really do believe we can talk our way out of anything, even when dealing with someone as capricious as Trump – a man for whom no amount of appeasement will hold longer than his mood. The king will be mobilised. The choice of Balmoral for Trump’s summer visit will rest in part on the fact that it’s harder for demonstrators bearing helium-filled balloons in the shape of Trump-as-a-baby to reach.And the diplomatic game will continue. Nothing Trump does seems strategic, but it seems both a calculated humiliation and a warning shot to steer clear of Europe to push the UK down the running order of trade talks. The question, then, becomes one of whether Britain’s poker face is a piece of canny diplomatic froideur and blithe UK negotiating or the uncertain actions of the party in an abusive relationship who understands that the moment of greatest danger is when you try to leave.

    Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More

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    Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi freed after federal judge orders release

    Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian green-card holder and Columbia University student who was detained for his activism, walked out of immigration detention on Wednesday after a federal judge in Vermont ordered his release.Mahdawi had been detained and ordered deported by the Trump administration on 14 April despite not being charged with a crime.“The two weeks of detention so far demonstrate great harm to a person who has been charged with no crime,” said Geoffrey Crawford, a US district judge, at a hearing on Wednesday, according to ABC News. “Mr Mahdawi, I will order you released.”Mahdawi was arrested by Ice in Colchester, Vermont, while attending a naturalization interview.He is one of a number of international students who have been detained in recent months for their advocacy on behalf of Palestinians. The Trump administration is attempting to deport them using an obscure statute that gives the secretary of state the right to revoke the legal status of people in the country deemed a threat to foreign policy.In his ruling, Crawford stated that the evidence before the court “suggests that Mr Mahdawi is neither a flight risk or a danger to the community, and his release will not interfere with his removal proceedings”.Crawford wrote that the government “failed to demonstrate any legitimate interest in Mr Mahdawi’s continued confinement” and that his “continued detention would likely have a chilling effect on protected speech”.Crawford ordered that Mahdawi be released from prison on bail, pending the resolution of his case in federal court.The order allows Mahdawi to continue residing in Vermont and to travel to New York to attend school and meet with his lawyers. His case in federal court will continue alongside separate immigration proceedings.Upon his release, Mahdawi , greeted supporters and thanked them for their support.“For anybody who is doubting justice, this is a light of hope and faith in the justice system in America,” he said in a brief address. “We are witnessing the fight for justice in America, which means a true democracy, and the fight for justice for Palestinians, which means that both liberation[s] are interconnected, because no one of us is free unless we all are.”Shezza Abboushi Dallal, one of Mahdawi’s attorneys said outside the courtroom on Wednesday that “today’s victory cannot be overstated”.“The court’s order to free Mohsen today is a victory for Mohsen, in his just pursuit of continued advocacy for Palestinian lives, and it is a victory for all people in this country invested in their ability to dissent and speak and protest for causes they are morally drawn to,” Abboushi Dallal said. “We will continue our legal battle for Mohsen until his constitutional rights are fully vindicated.”Attorneys for Mahdawi, a lawful permanent US resident, argued that he was being unlawfully detained in “retaliation for his speech advocating for Palestinian human rights” and say that it was “part of a policy intended to silence and chill the speech of those who advocate for Palestinian human rights”.The Trump administration is seeking to deport 34-year-old Mahdawi, claiming that his presence and activities in the US “would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling US foreign policy interest”. Critics say that the crackdown that swept up Mahdawi constitutes an unprecedented assault on free speech.In new court filings submitted on Monday, the justice department included a two-page letter from Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, saying that Mahdawi’s activities and presence in the US “undermines US policy to combat antisemitism” according to NPR, and that his activities could “potentially undermine the peace process underway in the Middle East”.In a statement following Mahdawi’s release, the Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin declared: “No judge, not this one or another, is going to stop the Trump administration from restoring the rule of law to our immigration system.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis week, the Vermont senate voted to condemn “the manner and circumstances” of Mahdawi’s arrest, and called for his immediate release.Several Democratic members of Congress – joined by Senator Bernie Sanders – rallied outside of the state department this week on his behalf.“He has used his voice to advocate for peace, justice and dignity for Palestinians and Israelis” Sanders said. “Not only was this action cruel and inhumane, most importantly, it was illegal, it was unconstitutional.”David Myers, a Jewish history professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has been involved in Israeli-Palestinian dialogue efforts with Mahdawi, said he was overjoyed at the release of his friend. He called Mahdawi’s detention “a profound miscarriage of justice”.“Mohsen was such a clearcut case, given his extraordinary commitments to non-violence, dialogue across difference, and acknowledging the humanity of all,” he said in an email. “If it is a crime to embody such values, then the edifice of democracy in the United States has completely crumbled.”Mahdawi immigrated to the US over a decade ago and began attending Columbia University in 2021. According to his attorneys, last year, as a student at Columbia, he was “an outspoken critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and an activist and organizer in student protests on Columbia’s campus until March of 2024, after which he took a step back and has not been involved in organizing”.Mahdawi, who was born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank, spoke with NPR this week from the Northwest State correctional facility in St Albans, Vermont.“I’m centered, internally I am at peace,” Mahdawi told NPR. “While I still know deeply that this is a level of injustice that I am facing, I have faith. I have faith that justice will prevail.”Also this week, a federal judge in New Jersey ruled that a lawsuit filed by the Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who is also challenging his detention and deportation order, can proceed.The Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk and Georgetown scholar Badar Khan Suri also remain detained and continue to fight against their deportation, which the Trump administration is pursuing on the same foreign policy grounds.Noa Yachot contributed reporting More

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    Denied, detained, deported: the people targeted in Trump’s immigration crackdown

    Donald Trump retook the White House vowing to stage “the largest deportation operation in American history”. As previewed, the administration set about further militarizing the US-Mexico border and targeting people requesting asylum and refugees while conducting raids and deportations in undocumented communities, detaining and deporting immigrants and spreading fear.Critics are outraged, if not surprised. But few expected the new legal chapter that unfolded next: a multipronged crackdown on certain people seen as opponents of the US president’s ideological agenda. This extraordinary assault has come in the context of wider attacks on higher education, the courts and the constitution.Here are some of the most high-profile individual cases that have captured the world’s attention so far because of their extreme and legally dubious nature, mostly involving documented people targeted by the Trump administration in the course of its swift and unlawful power grab.Students and academics hunted and ‘disappeared’In recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) teams suddenly began arresting and detaining foreign-born students and academics on visas or green cards. In most cases the government has cited their roles in pro-Palestinian campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza following the 7 October 2023 attack. Claims that they “support Hamas” are invoked as justification for wanting to deport them, even though they have not been charged with any crimes. Those taken include:Mahmoud KhalilA recent graduate student of Columbia University in New York, Mahmoud Khalil, 30, is a Palestinian green-card holder who was a leader during protests last year. He was arrested without due process in front of his pregnant wife and has been in a detention center in Louisiana since mid-March, denied release to attend the birth. He told an immigration judge that he and hundreds of other detainees were being denied rights the court itself had claimed to prioritize: “Due process and fundamental fairness.”View image in fullscreenThe government is using obscure immigration law to make extraordinary claims in cases like Khalil’s that it can summarily detain and deport people for constitutionally protected free speech if they are deemed adverse to US foreign policy. A far-right group has claimed credit for flagging his and others’ names for scrutiny by the authorities.Rümeysa ÖztürkView image in fullscreenUS immigration officials encircled and grabbed the Tufts University PhD student near Boston and bustled her into an unmarked car, shown in onlooker video. Öztürk, a Fulbright scholar and Turkish national on a visa, had co-written an op-ed in the student newspaper, criticizing Tufts’ response to Israel’s military assault on Gaza and Palestinians. She was rushed into detention in Louisiana in apparent defiance of a court order. Öztürk, 30, says she has been neglected and abused there in “unsafe and inhumane conditions”.Mohsen MahdawiView image in fullscreenMahdawi, a Palestinian green-card holder and student at Columbia University, was apprehended by Ice in Colchester, Vermont, on 14 April, as first reported by the Intercept.He was prominent in the protests at Columbia last year. During his apprehension he was put into an unmarked car outside a federal office where he was attending an interview to become a naturalized US citizen. The administration’s arcane justification is that his activism could “potentially undermine” the Middle East peace process, citing a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). He is detained in Vermont. Democratic lawmakers have visited Khalil, Öztürk and Mahdawi but failed to secure their release.Yunseo ChungView image in fullscreenAnother Columbia student, Chung, 21, sued the administration for trying to deport her, and has gone into hiding. She is a pro-Palestinian campaigner and was arrested by the New York police in March while protesting, as first reported by the New York Times. She said a government official told her lawyer they wanted to remove her from the country and her residency status was being revoked. Chung was born in South Korea and has been in the US since she was seven.Alireza DoroudiView image in fullscreenThe Democrats on campus group at the University of Alabama said of the arrest of Doroudi, 32, an Iranian studying mechanical engineering: “Donald Trump, Tom Homan [Trump’s “border czar”], and Ice have struck a cold, vicious dagger through the heart of UA’s international community.”He was taken to the same Louisiana federal detention center as Khalil. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said he was a threat to national security, without providing details, and the state department had revoked his visa, while an immigration judge refused to release him.Badar Khan SuriView image in fullscreenMore than 370 alumni of Washington DC-based Georgetown University joined 65 current students there in signing on to a letter opposing immigration authorities’ detention of Dr Badar Khan Suri, a senior postdoctoral fellow at the institution’s Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU).The authorities revoked his student visa, alleging the Indian citizen’s father-in-law was an adviser to Hamas officials more than a decade ago – and claiming he was “deportable” because of his posts on social media in support of Palestine. He was taken to Louisiana and then detention in Texas and was given court dates in May.View image in fullscreenKseniia PetrovaThe Harvard Medical School research scientist was stopped at Boston’s Logan airport by US authorities on her way back from France in February, over what appeared to be an irregularity in customs paperwork related to frog embryo samples. She was told her visa was being revoked and she was being deported to her native Russia.When Petrova, 30, said she feared political persecution there because she had criticized the invasion of Ukraine, she was taken away and also ended up in an overcrowded detention facility in Louisiana. Her colleagues say her expertise is “irreplaceable” and Petrova said foreign scientists like her “enrich” America.Student visas revoked, then restored amid chaosMore than 1,400 international students from at least 200 colleges across the US had their “legal status changed” by the state department, including the revoking of visas, in what the specialist publication Inside Higher Education called “an explosion of visa terminations”.Amid scant information and rising panic, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, lambasted protesters and campus activists as “lunatics”. Some were cited for pro-Palestinian views, others concluded they must have been targeted because of minor crimes or offenses, such as a speeding ticket. Some could find no explanation. Then in the face of multiple court challenges, the administration in late April reversed course and restored legal statuses that had been rescinded en masse, but said it was developing a new policy. Uncertainty prevails.The legal rollercoaster came too late for this high-profile case:Felipe Zapata VelásquezView image in fullscreenThe family of the University of Florida student Felipe Zapata Velásquez, 27, said he was “undergoing a physical and emotional recovery process” in his native Colombia after police arrested him in Gainesville in March for traffic offenses and turned him over to Ice. He agreed to be deported, to avoid lengthy detention and legal battles. The Democratic congressman Maxwell Frost accused authorities of “kidnapping” Velásquez.Removed by (admitted) mistakeKilmar Ábrego GarcíaView image in fullscreenThe Salvadorian man was removed to El Salvador by mistake, which the Trump administration admitted. But it is essentially defying a US supreme court order to “facilitate” his return to his home and family in Maryland. Ábrego García was undocumented but had protected status against being deported to El Salvador. He was flown there anyway, without a hearing, to a brutal mega-prison, then later transferred to another facility. The administration accuses him of being a violent gangster and has abandoned him, infuriating a federal judge repeatedly and prompting warnings of a constitutional crisis.He has not been charged with any crimes but was swept up with hundreds of Venezuelans deported there. He has begged to speak to his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, who insists he is not a criminal. The sheet metalworkers union chief, Michael Coleman, described Ábrego García as an “apprentice working hard to pursue the American dream” and said he was not a gang member. Trump said he was eyeing Salvadorian prisons for US citizens.Deported to a third country, without due processThe US deported more than 230 Venezuelan men to the mega-prison in El Salvador without so much as a hearing in mid-March despite an infuriated federal judge trying to halt the flights, then blocking others. Donald Trump took extraordinary action to avoid due process by invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA), a law meant only to be used in wartime, prompting court challenges led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). John Roberts, the US chief justice, rebuked the president when he threatened the judge. The justices, by a majority, did not stop Trump from using the AEA but the bench unanimously reaffirmed the right to due process and said individuals must be able to bring habeas corpus challenges.Most of the men are reportedly not violent criminals or members of violent gangs, as the Trump administration asserts, according to a New York Times investigation.Many appear to have been accused of being members of the transnational Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua partly on the basis of their tattoos, with their families speaking out, including:Andry José Hernández RomeroView image in fullscreenHernández, a 31-year-old makeup artist and hairdresser, entered California last year to attend an asylum appointment, telling the authorities he was under threat in Venezuela as a gay man. But he was detained and accused of being in Tren de Aragua because of his tattoos, then suddenly deported under Trump, deemed a “security threat”.Jerce Reyes Barriosskip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe former professional footballer, 36, has been accused of gang membership by the DHS, seemingly because of his tattoos, including one of a crown sitting atop a soccer ball with a rosary and the word “dios”.“He chose this tattoo because it is similar to the logo for his favourite soccer team, Real Madrid,” his lawyer, Linette Tobin, said, adding that her client fled Venezuela after protesting against the government and being tortured.Francisco Javier García CasiqueView image in fullscreenRelatives were shocked when they spotted Francisco Javier García Casique, 24, in a propaganda video from El Salvador showing scores of Venezuelan prisoners being frog-marched off planes and into custody there. He is a barber in his home town of Maracay and is completely innocent of gang involvement, the family said, adding that Francisco and his brother Sebastián have matching tattoos quoting the Bible.Migrants seeking asylum removed to PanamaA US military plane took off from California in February carrying more than 100 immigrants from countries as far flung as Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Pakistan, dumping them in Panama. They were shackled and deported to a third country without due process because their countries of origin refuse to accept them back from the US. Shocking scenes unfolded of the people locked in a hotel in Panama City, signaling and writing on the windows pleading for help.The people, including children, were then moved and held at a facility deep in the dense jungle that separates Panama from Colombia. They were later reportedly freed and were seeking asylum from other countries, their futures uncertain. One of those deported from the US was:Artemis GhasemzadehView image in fullscreenGhasemzadeh, 27, a migrant from Iran, wrote “Help us” in lipstick on a window of the hotel in Panama City, as a desperate way of alerting New York Times reporters on the street to her and fellow detainees’ plight. She had thought that, especially as a convert from Islam to Christianity who faces danger in Iran as a result, that she would be offered freedom in the US, she told the newspaper while still in custody. She is possibly still in Panama trying to get a foothold.Americans questioned and threatenedAmir MakledView image in fullscreenMakled, a Detroit-born attorney, was questioned at the airport on returning from vacation. He was flagged to a terrorism response team, kept behind and pressured to hand over his phone, then give up some of its contents. The Lebanese American represents a pro-Palestinian student protester who was arrested at the University of Michigan. Experts said the incident was evidence of a weakening of fourth amendment constitutional protections at the border against “unreasonable search and seizure”.Nicole MicheroniView image in fullscreenThis Massachusetts immigration lawyer, a US-born American citizen, spoke out after receiving an email from the Trump administration telling her “it is time for you to leave the United States”. She said it was “probably, hopefully, sent to me in error. But it’s a little concerning these are going out to US citizens.” She told NBC she thought it was a scare tactic.Adam PeñaThis San Diego-based US citizen now carries his American passport and birth certificate everywhere with him and thinks he was sent one of the “time for you to leave” letters in error but because he represents clients in Ice detention locally. “I do believe this email was sent intentionally to immigration advocates around the country to instill fear and intimidation,” he told NBC news.Americans removedChildren who are seven, four and two and are US citizens were removed from the US in late April when their mothers were deported to Honduras. DHS said the two women chose to take their children with them but one of their lawyers told the Guardian that they were denied any opportunity to coordinate the care and custody of their children before being put on deportation flights from Louisiana. A federal judge said it was “illegal and unconstitutional” to thus remove a US citizen “with no meaningful process”.Visitors detainedJasmine Mooney, CanadaView image in fullscreenCanadian Jasmine Mooney was shackled and ended up in Ice detention in the US for two weeks over an alleged work visa irregularity while on one of her frequent visits to California. She spoke out about the harsh conditions and the information black hole and how outraged she was that so many other detainees she met, who helped her, are stranded without access to the kind of resources that ultimately got her out.Rebecca Burke, UKView image in fullscreenThe British graphic artist was stopped at the border when she headed from Seattle to Canada as a backpacker and, because of a visa mix-up, she became one of 32,809 people to be arrested by Ice during the first 50 days of Trump’s presidency. Almost three weeks of grueling detention conditions later, she smuggled out her poignant drawings of fellow detainees when she was released.Jessica Brösche, GermanyThe German tourist and tattoo artist, 29, from Berlin was detained by US immigration authorities and deported back to Germany after spending more than six weeks in US detention, including what she described as eight days in solitary confinement. Her family compared her ordeal to “a horror film”.Fabian Schmidt, GermanyView image in fullscreenThe 34-year-old German national and US green-card holder was apprehended and allegedly “violently interrogated” by US border officials as he was returning to New Hampshire from a trip to Luxembourg. His family said he was held for hours at Boston’s Logan airport, stripped naked and put in a cold shower, then later deprived of food and medicine, and collapsed. His case is being investigated and as of mid-April he was in Ice detention in Rhode Island.Sent back‘Jonathan’A man with a US work visa provided his anonymous account to the Guardian of being denied entry into the US after a trip to his native Australia to scatter his sister’s ashes. He was pulled aside on arrival in Houston, Texas, and accused, variously, of selling drugs and having improper paperwork. After being detained for over a day he was put on a flight back to Australia even though he has worked on the US east coast for five years, where he lived with his girlfriend.Denied entry – for criticizing Trump?Alvin Gibbs, Marc Carrey and Stefan Häublein of band UK SubsView image in fullscreenMembers of the punk rock band UK Subs said they were denied entry and detained in the US on their way to play a gig in Los Angeles, after being questioned about visas. Bassist Alvin Gibbs said: “I can’t help but wonder whether my frequent, and less than flattering, public comments regarding their president [Trump] and his administration played a role.” He and the two band mates were kept in harsh conditions for 24 hours then deported back to the UK.French scientistA French scientist, who has not been publicly named, was denied entry to the US after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages in which he had expressed criticism of the Trump administration, according to a French government minister. The researcher was on his way to a conference in Texas.“Freedom of opinion, free research, and academic freedom are values ​​that we will continue to proudly uphold,” Philippe Baptiste, France’s minister of higher education and research, told Le Monde. More

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    International Students Worry Even as Trump Temporarily Restores Some Legal Statuses

    Students and their immigration lawyers say they were relieved for the temporary reprieve, but emphasized that it was just that — temporary.When Karl Molden, a sophomore at Harvard University from Vienna, learned that the Trump administration had abruptly restored thousands of international students’ ability to legally study in the United States, he said he did not feel reassured.After all, immigration officials have insisted that they could still terminate students’ legal status, even in the face of legal challenges, and the administration has characterized the matter as only a temporary reprieve.“They shouldn’t tempt us into thinking that the administration will stop harassing us,” Mr. Molden said. “They will try to find other ways.”Mr. Molden is not alone in his worry.The dramatic shift from the administration on Friday came after scores of international students filed lawsuits saying that their legal right to study in the United States had been rescinded, often with minimal explanation. In some cases, students had minor traffic violations or other infractions. In others, there appeared to be no obvious reason for the revocations.After learning that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had deleted their records from the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS, many students sued to try to save their status. That prompted a flurry of emergency orders by judges that blocked the changes.Students and their immigration lawyers said on Saturday that they were relieved for the temporary reprieve, but emphasized that it was just that — temporary.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Protesters Chain Themselves to Columbia Gates, Calling for Activists’ Release

    About 10 demonstrators chained themselves to Columbia University’s campus gates at 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in New York on Monday afternoon, protesting the detention of two Palestinian student activists by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. They were part of a larger contingent that sat down outside the gate.The protest followed the detention last week of Mohsen Mahdawi, who is finishing undergraduate studies in philosophy at Columbia’s School of General Studies. Mr. Mahdawi was taken into ICE custody during his naturalization appointment in Vermont.Federal immigration officials detained Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate of the School of International and Public Affairs, last month. Both were organizers of pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia.Demonstrators on Monday called for the immediate release of Mr. Mahdawi and Mr. Khalil. They held signs reading, “Free all our political prisoners” and chanted, “We want justice, you say how? Free Mohsen Mahdawi now!” They also read aloud Mr. Khalil’s writings from the detention center in Jena, La., where he is being held.A Columbia spokesperson said Monday that the university was “monitoring a disruption” and that its public safety officers had cut the locks of about 10 demonstrators.“We will follow all applicable policies and procedures for addressing potential violations,” the Columbia spokesperson said. “This small disruption has not impeded the ability of our students to attend classes as normal; all scheduled campus activities have proceeded as planned.”The New York Police Department said Monday evening that an unspecified number of people had been taken into custody and were being processed. It was unclear what charges they would face. One of those who was detained had been trying to pitch a tent, the police said.It was the second protest this month in which demonstrators attached themselves to Columbia’s gates. More

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    Mahmoud Khalil’s wife Noor Abdalla gives birth as Ice denies his request to attend

    Noor Abdalla, the wife of detained Columbia university graduate and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, has announced the birth of their son.In a statement released on Monday evening, Abdalla wrote: “I welcomed our son into the world earlier today without Mahmoud by my side. Despite our request for ICE to allow Mahmoud to attend the birth, they denied his temporary release to meet our son. This was a purposeful decision by ICE to make me, Mahmoud, and our son suffer.”The Department of Homeland Security denied Khalil the opportunity to attend the birth of his first child, which he was only able to experience via a telephone call. Khalil is being held in a Louisiana detention facility more than 1,000 miles away from the New York hospital where his son was delivered.Abdalla, a 28-year-old dentist who lives in New York, and her son, who was born early Monday morning, are both in good health.Abdalla is a US citizen who was born and raised in Michigan. Her parents immigrated to the US from Syria about 40 years ago.According to emails reviewed by the New York Times, Khalil’s lawyers suggested several ways in which he could have attended the birth, including allowing him a two-week furlough while wearing an ankle monitor and requiring scheduled check-ins.“A two-week furlough in this civil detention matter would be both reasonable and humane so that both parents can be present for the birth of their first child,” the lawyers wrote.The request was denied by the New Orleans field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.Khalil was arrested on 8 March on grounds that he is considered to be a threat to US foreign policy. Earlier this month, an immigration judge ruled that Khalil is eligible to be deported from the United States.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAbdalla has fought for her husband’s release since the day of his arrest, maintaining that the Trump administration is “trying to silence” anyone who speaks up for Palestinian rights.“We will not be silenced. We will persist, with even greater resolve, and we will pass that strength on to our children and our children’s children – until Palestine is free,” she wrote on 8 April.In her statement shortly after her son’s birth, Abdalla vowed to continue to fight for Khalil’s release. “I will continue to fight every day for Mahmoud to come home to us. I know when Mahmoud is freed, he will show our son how to be brave, thoughtful, and compassionate, just like his dad.” More

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    Massachusetts governor calls Trump’s attacks on Harvard ‘bad for science’

    Massachusetts governor Maura Healey said on Sunday that Donald Trump’s attacks on Harvard University and other schools are having detrimental ripple effects, with the shutdown of research labs and cuts to hospitals linked to colleges.During an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, the Democratic governor said that the effects on Harvard are damaging “American competitiveness”, since a number of researchers are leaving the US for opportunities in other countries. After decades of investment in science and innovation, she said: “intellectual assets are being given away.”In the past week, the US president cut off billions of dollars to Harvard in federal funds, after the university refused to concede to a number of the administration’s demands. Trump also called for its tax-exempt status to be revoked, a potentially illegal move, against the world-famous college in Cambridge, Massachusetts.Of the moves against colleges, Healey said: “It’s bad for patients, it’s bad for science, and it’s really bad for American competitiveness. There’s no way a state can make up for the cuts from federal funding.”She added: “I was in a hospital recently, Boston Children’s, where some of the sickest kids in the country receive care. Cuts to Boston Children’s and other hospitals are a direct result of Donald Trump’s actions, as these are part of a teaching hospital system.“These cuts to universities have significant ripple effects, resulting in layoffs of scientists and doctors, and clinical trials for cancer treatments have been shut down.“As governor, I want Massachusetts and America to soar. What Donald Trump is doing is essentially inviting other countries, like China, to take our scientists and researchers. This is terrible, especially considering what he has done to the economy. I am working hard every day to lower costs in my state, cut taxes, and build more housing, while Donald Trump is making life more expensive and harder for all of us.”Since Trump took office, his administration has deployed an “antisemitism taskforce” to demand various policy changes at different universities around the country.Columbia University, one of the first institutions targeted by the taskforce, quickly caved to the Trump administration’s demands to restore $400m in federal funding. Some of the measures that Columbia conceded to included banning face masks on campus, empowering security officers to arrest people, and placing control of the Middle Eastern department under a new senior vice-provost.Former Columbia University president Lee Bollinger said on Sunday that the Trump administration’s attacks on academic institutions represent a significant attack on first amendment rights.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This is a kind of weaponization of the government’s power,” Bolinger said on CNN, adding that it “seems like a campaign of intimidation”.“This is a kind of weaponization of the government’s power,” he said.Earlier this month, the federal government sent Harvard two separate letters with specific demands. After the university publicly rejected those demands, the administration quickly froze nearly $2.3bn in federal funding.The conflict between the administration and the elite university took a strange turn on Friday, with the New York Times reporting that an 11 April letter from the administration with additional demands – which escalated the showdown – was “unauthorized”. The university disputed that the letter was “unauthorized,” claiming the federal government has “doubled down” on its offensive. More

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    The Trump-Harvard showdown is the latest front in a long conservative war against academia

    The showdown between Donald Trump and Harvard University may have exploded into life this week, but the battle represents just the latest step in what has been a decades-long war waged by the right wing on American academia.It’s a fight by conservatives that dates back to Ronald Reagan, the hitherto spiritual leader of the Republican party, all the way to McCarthyism and beyond, experts say, as the rightwing scraps to seize more control in a manner that is “part of a standard playbook of authoritarianism”.Trump reacted furiously this week after the president of Harvard University, the US’s oldest, richest and most prestigious college, refused to acquiesce to demands that would have given the government control over whom it hired and admitted, and what it taught.But the anger was not just that Harvard had refused to roll over. It was that the move represented, for the time being, a step back for the Trump administration in what some believe is part of a wider attempt to overhaul US democracy at large.“It’s as dangerous as anything I’ve ever experienced in my lifetime,” said Todd Wolfson, the president of the American Association of University Professors.“They’re attempting to undermine and destabilize and ultimately control higher education. And at one level, it’s an assault on higher education, at another level, it could be seen as prevalent to a full-on assault on democracy. So I think this is a threat to the future of the United States of America, and because of this country’s role in the world, a threat to the entirety of the globe at this moment.”The government said on Monday it planned to freeze $2.2bn in grants and $60m in multi-year contract value to Harvard, hours after Alan Garber, the university president, said Harvard would not accept a series of demands made by the Trump administration. The demands included appointing a White House-approved external body to “to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity”, and that Harvard “immediately shutter all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs”.Garber said the government’s edicts “represent direct governmental regulation” of the school’s independence and constitutional rights.“No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Garber wrote in an open letter, which was hailed by the left and by college professors concerned at the capitulation of other schools.Yet, as evidenced by Trump’s emotional post on Wednesday, the government’s assault on universities is unlikely to stop anytime soon, particularly if he is to emulate the kind of strongman leaders, such as the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, he has praised in the past.“[People in the Trump administration] have read their history, and they know that authoritarian regimes often target higher education as an independent sector and society, and aim to undermine it because of its role in creating an educated populace that could stand up to all forms of authoritarian rule,” Wolfson said.“And so this is part of a standard playbook of authoritarianism: to attack and to attempt to control or destroy higher education.”The move against universities has echoes of the efforts by the Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy in the middle of the 20th century to root out people he accused of being communists and Marxists. And like McCarthy, Trump’s efforts – led by a group of loyalists including the White House deputy chief of staff and head of policy, Stephen Miller – go beyond just universities. Trump has targeted some of the biggest law firms in the US with executive orders, prompting many to cave and pledge hundreds of millions of dollars of pro bono work to causes backed by the Trump administration.“The Trump administration is following the playbook of totalitarian dictatorships elsewhere in the world. It is trying to use the force of law to intimidate independent civic society organizations, so that opposition to its policies is impossible,” said Steven Pinker, a psychology professor at Harvard and co-chair of the university’s Council on Academic Freedom.“This new incarnation of the American right wing, with complete fealty to a single man, and an unprecedented attempt to disable civic society institutions like law firms and universities, is quite extraordinary.”The Trump administration has framed its move on Harvard and other colleges as an effort to crackdown on antisemitism, following protests against Israel’s war on Gaza, and as a move against alleged civil rights violations on campus. Few outside of the rightwing sphere see that as a good faith argument.“As a Jewish faculty member, I’m sensitive to antisemitism on campus, and it does exist and it should be combated. But the claim that Harvard is a bastion of antisemitism is just wild hyperbole. Three of our last four presidents who’ve served longer than a year have been Jewish. The fourth was married to a Jewish professor,” Pinker said.Harvard has found itself in the Trump administration’s crosshairs because of its status as the best known of America’s universities, one of the eight esteemed Ivy League schools. Thousands of influential figures across politics, media and business attended Harvard’s grand campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts; many of those who didn’t go to Harvard still tend to take an interest in its affairs.“We’ve got between 4,000 and 5,000 higher education institutions in the US. The Ivys always make headlines. The major cultural commentators in this country are obsessed with the Ivys, and have been for a long time. These are things that sell papers, they get a lot of clicks and a lot of attention,” said Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, a historian of US colleges and universities and the author of Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars.“The other thing, too, is what happens at your regional state public flagship university often follows from the trends that are set at the Ivys. Not only do they generate a lot of headlines, they are influential in that way.”Just as Harvard’s existence predates the founding of the US, rightwing antipathy towards universities has been brewing for a long time. When Ronald Reagan was running for governor of California in 1966, he used anger towards anti-Vietnam student protesters for political gain: one of his main campaign strands was a promise to “clean up the mess at Berkeley” – the state’s flagship university.Reagan’s tactics bear echoes of Trump’s. Ray Colvig, UC Berkeley’s chief public information officer at the time, told the university’s news service years later that Reagan “wanted to establish a special process to select faculty in several disciplines”.“In other words, he wanted to set a political standard for appointing faculty members. This idea was widely opposed, and it went away,” Colvig said.Reagan wasn’t the first to take on the universities. Shepherd said efforts to set up rival, conservative universities, date back to the 1920s, while McCarthy’s war on higher education came later. Ellen Schrecker, a historian and author of No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities, wrote in the Nation recently that the Trump administration’s efforts were “worse than McCarthy”, and Shepherd said Trump’s attacks were “much more accelerated” than the communist-paranoid senator’s tactics.“McCarthyism, in the 1940s and 50s, the idea was to identify specific professors, hardly ever students, always faculty, and have them fired. Today, we’re seeing much worse than that. These are attacks on entire programs and departments. So entire departments like Black studies or DEI initiatives. It’s also not just relegated to the professors. We’re seeing students with their visas revoked being literally plucked off the streets,” Shepherd said.Trump hasn’t just targeted Harvard. Columbia University caved to a series of demands from the Trump administration in March, as a pre-condition for restoring $400m in federal funding, while the White House has announced funding freezes to other schools including Brown, Northwestern, Princeton and Cornell.Harvard taking a stand is one of the first signs of a fight back – even if it came after it was reported in March that the leaders of the university’s center for Middle Eastern studies were forced out, a move seen by critics as an attempt to appease Trump – and academics and others hope it could begin a resistance. It is likely to require a group effort to avoid the right wing’s goal for higher education in the US: universities that are in effect government-controlled, and where freedom of speech and thought is restricted.“The right don’t want students to hear about the legacy to slavery. They don’t want them to hear about structural inequalities,” Shepherd said.“They don’t want to hear why billionaires are bad. They don’t want to hear, from the sciences, about climate change. They want a nice, friendly experience where the most students ever get to debate is the differences in Aristotle and Plato.“They don’t want the actual debates that we see unfolding on campuses today.” More