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      Trump news at a glance: ‘credibility’ of US economics data at risk, say experts, as president fires labor official

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      After Donald Trump ordered the firing of a federal government official in charge of labor statistics, experts and opposition politicians have expressed alarm that the “credibility” of US economic data was at risk.The US president claimed without evidence that Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of labor statistics, had “rigged” job numbers “in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad”, after data showed jobs growth stalled this summer, prompting accusations that the president was “firing the messenger”.Bill Beach, a former Heritage Foundation economist who was picked by Trump in 2018 to oversee labor statistics, denounced what he called the “totally groundless firing”.“Politicizing economic statistics is a self-defeating act,” said Michael Madowitz, the principal economist at the Roosevelt Institute’s Roosevelt Forward, who added that “credibility is far easier to lose than rebuild, and the credibility of America’s economic data is the foundation on which we’ve built the strongest economy in the world”.Senate Democrat Ron Wyden said “this is the act of somebody who is soft, weak and afraid to own up to the reality of the damage his chaos is inflicting on our economy”.The move came as markets around the world were roiled by Trump’s latest tariff announcement, which left more than 60 countries scrambling to secure trade deals.Here are the key US politics stories of the day:Trump orders firing of jobs report official after hiring slowsDonald Trump ordered the firing of the federal government official in charge of labor statistics, hours after data revealed jobs growth stalled this summer, prompting accusations that he was “firing the messenger”.The US president claimed that Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of labor statistics, had “faked” employment figures in the run-up to last year’s election in an effort to boost Kamala Harris’s chances of victory.Trump later claimed: “Today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.”He produced no evidence for these allegations and insisted that the US economy was, in fact, “BOOMING” on his watch.Read the full storyTrump moves nuclear submarines after ex-Russia leader’s menacing tweetDonald Trump has said that he deployed nuclear-capable submarines to the “appropriate regions” in response to a threatening tweet by Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev, suggesting that he would be ready to launch a nuclear strike as tensions rise over the war in Ukraine.In a post on Truth Social on Friday, Trump wrote that he had decided to reposition the nuclear submarines because of “highly provocative statements” by Medvedev, noting he was now the deputy chair of Russia’s security council.Medvedev had earlier said that Trump’s threats to sanction Russia and a recent ultimatum were “a threat and a step towards war”.Read the full storyDozens of countries scramble to cope with latest tariffsDonald Trump unleashed global chaos with sweeping new tariff rates, triggering a wave of market jitters and fears for jobs in some of the poorest countries, as rates were signed off ranging from 10% to 50%.There was a minor reprieve that opened the door to further negotiations, after the White House said the updated tariffs would take effect on 7 August, not on Friday, the deadline previously set by Trump.Read the full storyTrump steps up attacks on Fed’s independence amid interest rates rowDonald Trump called on top Federal Reserve officials to seize control from its chair, Jerome Powell, if he fails to cut interest rates, stepping up his extraordinary attacks on the central bank’s independence.The US president called Powell “a stubborn MORON” in a series of critical social media posts on Friday, days after the Fed held rates steady for the fifth consecutive time.Read the full storyAmericans blame Trump for high cost of living, says pollAmericans are struggling financially, grappling with debt and the rising cost of living, and are blaming the Trump administration and corporate interests for worsening economic outlooks for working families, according to a new poll.Read the full storyClimate report a ‘farce’ full of misinformation, scientists sayA new Trump administration report that attempts to justify a mass rollback of environmental regulations is chock-full of climate misinformation, experts say.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      The US economy added 73,000 jobs in July, far lower than expected, amid ongoing concerns over Donald Trump’s escalating trade war.

      Poverty and hunger will rise as a result of the Trump administration’s unprecedented cuts to the US federal “food stamps” program, according to experts. Low-income workers who rely on the aid are braced for dire consequences.

      California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, may call a special election in November to begin the process of redrawing the state’s congressional maps in response to Texas’s plans to change its own maps to help Republicans keep their majority in the House of Representatives.

      Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s associate who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking crimes, has been transferred from a federal prison in Florida to a lower-security facility in Texas, the US Bureau of Prisons said on Friday.

      Kamala Harris has said she currently has no desire to re-enter “the system” of American politics because it is “broken”.

      Sixteen states are suing the Trump administration to defend transgender youth healthcare access, which has rapidly eroded across the US due to threats from the federal government.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened 31 July 2025. More

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      Georgia detainee with prosthetic legs who objected to flooded cell sent to solitary

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      A Liberian-born man detained by Ice in Georgia was put in solitary confinement after complaining about flooding in the common area outside his cell at the Stewart detention center that he said was potentially dangerous for his electronic prosthetic legs, the Guardian can reveal.Rodney Taylor recently spent three days in what CoreCivic calls a “restrictive housing unit” at Georgia’s Stewart detention center, after refusing to enter his cell because faulty air conditioning had left the floor in the area outside his cell covered with about an inch of water. That would be a potential disaster for Taylor, since his battery-powered, microprocessor-controlled prosthetic legs can’t get wet.It was only the latest episode for Taylor, a double amputee, since Ice agents detained him at his Loganville, Georgia, home on 15 January. His problems illustrate how ill-prepared the Trump administration is to meet the needs of immigration detainees with disabilities as they carry out mass deportation plans.“They don’t see you as an individual, but as someone being deported,” Taylor said. Taylor’s fiancee, Mildred Pierre, called the experience of monitoring his wellbeing during the last six months like “receiving blow after blow”.The Guardian first reported on Taylor’s case on 25 April. Since then, his challenges in detention have included the screws coming out of his prosthetic legs, causing him to fall and injure his hand, and being unable to obtain new, fitted prosthetic legs at a nearby clinic as a result of them being delivered without a charger for their battery. Then, once his fiancee brought a charger, a second appointment at the clinic two months later left him without results because the clinic was not familiar with Taylor’s model of prosthetics.The immigration detention system “can’t care for anybody beyond basic medical needs”, said Amy Zeidan, a professor of emergency medicine at Atlanta’s Emory University who has researched healthcare in the immigration detention system. The result: “mismanagement bordering on medical neglect” in cases like Taylor’s, she said.View image in fullscreenMeanwhile, Pierre has spent months “trying to figure out – who do I call? Who’s going to listen?”She has contacted Georgia’s senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, as well as non-profit organizations that advocate for people with disabilities and immigrants. “I am afraid for Rodney,” she wrote to Ossoff’s office on Saturday, after her fiancee had the run-in with guards.Warnock’s office said he couldn’t comment casework involving individuals. Ossoff said he couldn’t comment on an individual’s casework.On Sunday, the day after Taylor refused to enter his cell, guards handcuffed him and placed him in solitary confinement – until Tuesday, when Stewart’s assistant warden released him. During this time, he received no water to drink, and could not charge the battery in his prosthetic legs, Pierre said.Brian Todd, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, the company that owns Stewart, wrote in an email that Taylor “is being regularly monitored by facility medical staff, with all known medical issues are being addressed, and our staff continuing to accommodate his needs”. He also said that solitary confinement “does not exist” at Stewart, and that it uses “restrictive housing units”. Experts have said that conditions in CoreCivic’s RHUs are the same as solitary confinement.Taylor was brought to the US from Liberia by his mother on a medical visa when he was a small child. He went through 16 operations. He has two fingers on his right hand. Now 46, he has lived in the US nearly his entire life, works as a barber, is active in promoting cancer awareness in his community and got engaged only 10 days before Ice detained him in January.Despite having a pending application for US residence – commonly known as a “green card” – Ice detained and locked up Taylor in January due to a burglary conviction he received as a teenager and for which the state of Georgia pardoned him in 2010, according to his attorney, who shared paperwork from his case with the Guardian.When he was detained, Taylor was only days away from being fitted for new prosthetics. Requests to Stewart to make an appointment for him to follow through on this appeared to be falling on deaf ears for four months. Then, after the Guardian’s story in April, Taylor received a visit from the warden. An appointment was made for late May.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPierre had gotten Taylor’s clinic in Lawrenceville, Georgia, to send the new prosthetics to a clinic in Albany, Georgia, about 75 miles from Stewart, in February. Nonetheless, when guards took him, shackled, to the rural clinic on 23 May, no one from Stewart or the clinic had ensured that the battery would be charged.Not only that, when he returned in late July, the clinic could not calibrate the legs to his body, since staff was unfamiliar with his model of prosthetics. Using the new prosthetics for months without them being calibrated means he suffers severe pain in his left knee, Taylor told the Guardian.Also in recent months, the Guardian’s and other reporting brought visits from Warnock’s staff and the Georgia Advocacy Office, part of a national network of congressionally authorized non-profit organizations defending the rights of people with disabilities.But when Warnock’s staff met with Taylor, the warden stood outside the door watching through a glass window, and cut the visit short after 15 minutes, Taylor said. “I only had time to answer two or three questions on a list,” he said.One thing that helps Taylor keep his spirits up is the relationships he’s made with fellow detainees. When he was in solitary confinement, several guards went to enter his cell, only to be blocked by a group of detainees. They said, ‘How could y’all do that to him? He’s a good guy,” according to Pierre.Meanwhile, despite the challenges, Taylor is trying his best to stay healthy, avoid any accidents and remain hopeful about his 12 August hearing before an immigration judge, which may result in a decision on whether the US deports him.“I gotta make sure I can be able to walk when I get out of here,” he said.

      This article was amended on 1 August 2025 to clarify it was not Rodney Taylor’s cell, but the area outside it, that was flooded. More

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      Trump fires labor statistics chief hours after data showed jobs growth slowed

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      Donald Trump fired the federal government official in charge of labor statistics, hours after data revealed jobs growth stalled this summer, prompting accusations that he is “firing the messenger”.The US president claimed that Erika McEntarfer, commissioner of labor statistics, had “faked” employment figures in the run-up to last year’s election, in an effort to boost Kamala Harris’s chances of victory.Trump later claimed: “Today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad”.He produced no evidence for these allegations, and insisted that the US economy was, in fact, “BOOMING” on his watch.But Friday’s employment figures told a very different story, and raised questions about the state of the labor market since Trump’s return to office.“We need accurate Jobs Numbers,” he wrote on Truth Social. “I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified.”McEntarfer was contacted for comment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) confirmed in a brief statement that she had been dismissed. William Wiatrowski, the agency’s deputy commissioner, will serve as acting commissioner.Trump’s abrupt announcement came as administration officials scrambled to explain a lackluster employment report. Not only did jobs growth fail to meet expectations in July, but previous estimates for May and June were revised significantly lower.The president was promptly accused of trying to hide accurate statistics. “Trump is firing the messenger because he doesn’t seem to like jobs numbers that reflect how badly he’s damaged the economy,” said Lily Roberts, managing director for inclusive growth at the Center for American Progress, a thinktank, said.“Politicizing our country’s collection of data on what’s going on in the economy … will make it harder to create an economy that makes sure everyone has a good job,” added Roberts. “Borrowing from the authoritarian playbook fuels more uncertainty that will cost Americans for years to come.”Paul Schroeder, executive director of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics, described the president’s allegation as “very damaging and outrageous”, adding: “Not only does it undermine the integrity of federal economic statistics but it also politicizes data which need to remain independent and trustworthy. This action is a grave error by the administration and one that will have ramifications for years to come.”McEntarfer is a widely respected economist and veteran employee of the federal government. She previously worked at the US Census Bureau under George W Bush and at the US census bureau under Barack Obama, Trump and Joe Biden.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn January 2024, before McEntarfer’s confirmation for her current post by the US Senate, her nomination was backed by four former BLS commissioners.In a letter also signed by organizations including the American Statistics Association and a string of senior economists, they said there were “many reasons” to confirm McEntarfer as commissioner of labor statistics, citing her “wealth of research and statistical experience”.She was ultimately confirmed by a vote in the Senate, with 86 votes cast in favor and eight against.Gene Sperling, chair of the national economic council under Bill Clinton and Obama, and who worked as an official under Biden, said he expected Trump to “destroy the credibility” of economic data when his administration suffered its first bad jobs report. “Now: first bad job report, and he just fired BLS head over absurd claims of bias,” Sperling wrote on X, formerly Twitter.Trump’s decision to fire McEntarfer was “outrageous but not surprising”, said Julie Su, former acting US labor secretary under Biden. “He hates facts, so he blames truth-tellers.”The US “needs and deserves trustworthy economic data”, added Su. “This is a pathetic attempt by the president to gaslight everyone about the consequences of his disastrous economic policies.” More

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      Trump administration reportedly suspends $200m in grants to UCLA

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      The Trump administration is suspending some research grants to the University of California, Los Angeles, claiming “antisemitism and bias”, the school announced in a statement on Thursday.“UCLA received a notice that the federal government, through its control of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other agencies, is suspending certain research funding to UCLA,” Julio Frenk, the university chancellor, said in a letter to the campus. The move means “life-saving research” will be defunded, he said.“It is a loss for Americans across the nation whose work, health, and future depend on the groundbreaking work we do.”Frenk did not say the value of the grants, but the Los Angeles Times reported that roughly 300 grants amounting to nearly $200m were suspended.The federal government has moved to pull billions of dollars from prominent universities across the US after accusing the institutions of failing to adequately respond to antisemitism during pro-Palestinian protests, and referred some to the Department of Justice. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has reached agreements with Brown University and Columbia University to restore funding and close investigations into the schools.The agreement with Brown requires the institution to commit to nondiscrimination in admissions and programs, and allow the administration access to admissions data. Meanwhile, Columbia’s controversial deal requires it pay more than $220m, expand its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, review Middle East curriculum and cut programs promoting “unlawful efforts” related to diversity. Harvard remains in a legal fight with the federal government over its move to freeze billions in federal funds.The news out of UCLA comes days after the school reached a nearly $6.5m settlement in a lawsuit by Jewish students and a professor who said the university allowed antisemitic discrimination to take place on campus during protests last year.Earlier this week, the Department of Justice notified the University of California that its investigation found that UCLA’s response to a protest encampment in spring 2024 was “deliberately indifferent to a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students” and that students experienced “severe [and] pervasive” harassment.In his statement about the grant cancellations, Frenk said the university had taken steps to combat antisemitism, and ensure the school is safe and welcoming for all, including the creation of a new Office of Campus and Community Safety and an Initiative to Combat Antisemitism.He also highlighted the university’s history of research, including planetary scientists who search for asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth, a Valley Fever Center and the role researchers played in helping create the internet.“This far-reaching penalty of defunding life-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination,” Frenk wrote. More

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      Seth Meyers on the Epstein conspiracy: ‘This is a crisis of Trump’s making’

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      Late-night hosts discussed the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein scandal and the “spite” behind Donald Trump’s impending tariffs.Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers spoke about the theories circulating over the death of Epstein, spurred on by the alleged missing minute from his jail cell video on the night of his death.He said that Trump is not in the right place to be handling it, as he’s “old” and “tired” and just came back from a golfing vacation in Scotland.While there, he opened a private new golf course, which was on the official White House live stream. “They’re not even pretending any more, there’s no separation,” Meyers said.Trump is “tired from all his golfing and self-enrichment” and was recently seen trying not to fall asleep during a press briefing with Mehmet Oz. “Imagine if Joe Biden did this,” he said.Meyers added that “he can’t hear or understand reporters’ questions any more” before playing footage of him getting confused over a recent question about Russia.Trump has been asked why he cut ties with Epstein and recently said he didn’t want to waste people’s time by going through the details. “Please, my man, waste our time!” Meyers said.He then “dug the hole even deeper” and “made it so much worse” by rambling on about Epstein stealing workers from his spa, which he said was one of the best spas in the world. “Stop talking about the spa – is it your safe word?” Meyers asked.But it’s “not just Trump who keeps digging a hole for himself”, there’s also Dan Bongino, an Epstein-obsessed podcaster who is now the deputy director of the FBI.Despite him claiming that the full, unedited tape would be released, experts have said that while it might be “unclear how much time is missing”, this isn’t the full tape after all.“This whole thing is a crisis of Trump’s making,” he said.Stephen ColbertOn The Late Show, Stephen Colbert reminded viewers that it was the last day of July, which means that the “basket of deplorable tariffs are gonna kick in” the day after.Trump had originally claimed he had made 200 deals ready for 1 August but “on the other hand, no he didn’t”, with just eight in place before the deadline.Colbert said that “his demands are insane” and many of the countries are included “just for spite”.This week also saw him revive the presidential fitness test for American schoolchildren so they could be “as fit as President Trump”. It had originally been retired in 2012 for a switch to a focus on individual health rather than athletic feats.Trump signed the executive order flanked by athletes, including former NFL star Lawrence Taylor, who is a registered sex offender. Colbert called it “a brilliant way to distance yourself from the whole Epstein scandal”.This week also saw lawyer Alan Dershowitz, known for clients such as OJ Simpson, Harvey Weinstein and Trump, make further complaints about how he is shunned while in Martha’s Vineyard.He had previously complained that his politics had made him a social pariah, but now he is suing a vendor who refused to serve him pierogi. He was later seen speaking to a police officer about the incident.“They have bigger crimes to investigate, like someone’s houseguest bringing a domestic chardonnay,” Colbert quipped. More

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      Why the US is burning $10m worth of birth control | Moira Donegan

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      There are few better metaphors for the receding status of American women than one offered up by the Trump administration at a medical waste disposal facility outside Paris this week: rather than distribute nearly $10m worth of birth control, which had been purchased by USAID and was destined to be given to women in low-income countries, primarily in Africa, the Americans decided to burn it.The incinerated contraceptives included 900,000 birth control implants, 2m doses of injectable long-acting birth control, 2m packs of contraceptive pills and 50,000 IUDs. The medicine is just the latest in the far-reaching fallout from cuts made by the so-called “department of government efficiency,” or Doge, a project in which Elon Musk and a group of his very young, overwhelmingly male acolytes unilaterally slashed congressionally appropriated funding to government programs they did not like. The cuts have been devastating for non-profits that work to improve women’s health and safety worldwide. Sarah Shaw, an associate director at the global family planning group MSI Reproductive Choices, says that the cuts will put women at risk as they strain their health with unplanned pregnancies and seek out illegal abortions; other women who are denied access to birth control will lose out on the opportunities for education, professional development or remunerative work that can help them escape abuse, rise out of poverty, pursue their talents and ambitions and better provide for the children they already have.When MSI attempted to buy the contraceptives, the administration would only accept full price, which the organization couldn’t afford, she said. Several non-profits, including MSI, had offered to pay to ship and repackage the supplies, according to another representative. But the Trump administration refused, partially due to federal rules the prohibit the US from providing such goods to groups that perform, provide referrals for or offer education about abortions. In addition to the cost of purchasing the contraceptives, American taxpayers will now be on the hook for about $167,000 for the cost of burning them.It’s just the latest in a series of signs that the Trump administration is turning against the provision of birth control, particularly the safe, effective and woman-controlled hormonal methods that have been a cornerstone of healthcare policy for decades and which were a precondition of women’s advancement in work and education over the past 60 years.In April, the Trump administration abruptly announced that it was suspending a large swath of the domestic service grants distributed under Title X, the program meant to help low-income Americans access birth control, STD treatment and other sexual and reproductive healthcare. Of the 86 Title X grants awarded for fiscal year 2024, nearly 25% were “temporarily withheld”, mostly based on highly suspect allegations that the grant-receiving institutions – including 13 Planned Parenthood affiliates – had failed to comply with Trump executive orders banning things like DEI programs. Eight states now receive zero Title X dollars: California, Hawaii, Maine, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee and Utah. Alaska, Minnesota and Pennsylvania have also lost most of their contraception funding.The domestic cuts – along with the exclusion of Planned Parenthood clinics from Medicaid reimbursements – mean that American women, too, are now facing dramatically greater obstacles to accessing birth control. Clinics that relied on Title X funding are now set to close: 11 Planned Parenthood clinics already have, including in Democratically controlled states like California. Planned Parenthood says that cumulatively, the cuts could lead the organization to close about 200 of its 600 clinics nationwide – a devastating cut to abortion providers in particular that will make a wide range of reproductive services inaccessible to women regardless of where they live.But the Trump administration is not merely forcing these programs for women’s health and dignity go up in flames. They are redirecting them to better suit their preferred cultural outcome: one in which women’s lives, ambitions and talents are all subordinated to the task of childbearing. The New York Times reported last month that the White House is redirecting Title X funds that once went to birth control to instead fund an “infertility training center” and programs in something called “restorative reproductive medicine”. If Title X’s original aim was to help American women control their fertility so as to build healthier families and to enable them to pursue other aims – like learning or work – in the new administration’s version, the program exists mainly to encourage women to have more children. But the switch should not be seen as a genuine investment in infertility, an often devastating condition with which many Americans struggle. Because the new Title X priorities do not, by and large, direct more money to IVF. Trump promised, on the campaign trail, to make IVF free. But the procedure, which has opponents on the Christian right, is not included in the administration’s new priority of “restorative” reproductive medicine, a practice that avoids controversial fertility treatments; instead, doctors seek the “root cause” of a woman’s infertility, which may involve telling them they can conceive with proper diet and exercise.In government, money allocation is a statement of values. With its dramatic cuts to contraceptive funding at home and abroad, the Trump administration is making its values clear. It does not value women’s health; it does not value their dignity, their control over their own lives, their aspirations, their earning potential, their desire to be freed from ignorance, or poverty, or the abuse they suffer under the hands of husbands and fathers. It does not value their ability to control their own bodies, and by extension, it does not value their ability to enter the public sphere. It does not value their dreams, their gifts, their hard work or invention or aspiration to anything other than making babies. American women, like women everywhere, depend on birth control to live lives of freedom and to pursue their dreams. But because of the Trump administration, those dreams are going up in smoke.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      I spent decades at Columbia. I’m withdrawing my fall course due to its deal with Trump | Rashid Khalidi

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      Dear Acting President Shipman,I am writing you an open letter since you have seen fit to communicate the recent decisions of the board of trustees and the administration in a similar fashion.These decisions, taken in close collaboration with the Trump administration, have made it impossible for me to teach modern Middle East history, the field of my scholarship and teaching for more than 50 years, 23 of them at Columbia. Although I have retired, I was scheduled to teach a large lecture course on this topic in the fall as a “special lecturer”, but I cannot do so under the conditions Columbia has accepted by capitulating to the Trump administration in June.Specifically, it is impossible to teach this course (and much else) in light of Columbia’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition deliberately, mendaciously and disingenuously conflates Jewishness with Israel, so that any criticism of Israel, or indeed description of Israeli policies, becomes a criticism of Jews. Citing its potential chilling effect, a co-author of the IHRA definition, Professor Kenneth Stern, has repudiated its current uses. Yet Columbia has announced that it will serve as a guide in disciplinary proceedings.Under this definition of antisemitism, which absurdly conflates criticism of a nation-state, Israel, and a political ideology, Zionism, with the ancient evil of Jew-hatred, it is impossible with any honesty to teach about topics such as the history of the creation of Israel, and the ongoing Palestinian Nakba, culminating in the genocide being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza with the connivance and support of the US and much of western Europe.The Armenian genocide, the nature of the absolute monarchies and military dictatorships that blight most of the Arab world, the undemocratic theocracy in Iran, the incipient dictatorial regime in Türkiye, the fanaticism of Wahhabism: all of these are subject to detailed analysis in my course lectures and readings. However, a simple description of the discriminatory nature of Israel’s 2018 Nation State Law – which states that only the Jewish people have the right of self-determination in Israel, half of whose subjects are Palestinian – or of the apartheid nature of its control over millions of Palestinians who have been under military occupation for 58 years would be impossible in a Middle East history course under the IHRA definition of antisemitism.It is not only faculty members’ academic freedom and freedom of speech that is infringed upon by Columbia’s capitulation to Trump’s diktat. Teaching assistants would be seriously constrained in leading discussion sections, as would students in their questions and discussions, by the constant fear that informers would snitch on them to the fearsome apparatus that Columbia has erected to punish speech critical of Israel, and to crack down on alleged discrimination – which at this moment in history almost invariably amounts simply to opposition to this genocide. Scores of students and many faculty members have been subjected to these kangaroo courts, students such as Mahmoud Khalil have been snatched from their university housing, and Columbia has now promised to render this repressive system even more draconian and opaque.You have stated that no “red lines” have been crossed by these decisions. However, Columbia has appointed a vice-provost initially tasked with surveilling Middle Eastern studies, and it has ordained that faculty and staff must submit to “trainings” on antisemitism from the likes of the Anti-Defamation League, for whom virtually any critique of Zionism or Israel is antisemitic, and Project Shema, whose trainings link many anti-Zionist critiques to antisemitism. It has accepted an “independent” monitor of “compliance” of faculty and student behavior from a firm that in June 2025 hosted an event in honor of Israel. According to Columbia’s agreement with the Trump administration, this “Monitor will have timely access to interview all Agreement-related individuals, and visit all Agreement-related facilities, trainings, transcripts of Agreement-related meetings and disciplinary hearings, and reviews”. Classrooms are pointedly NOT excluded from possible visits from these external non academics.The idea that the teaching, syllabuses and scholarship of some of the most prominent academics in their fields should be vetted by such a vice-provost, such “trainers” or an outside monitor from such a firm is abhorrent. It constitutes the antithesis of the academic freedom that you have disingenuously claimed will not be infringed by this shameful capitulation to the anti-intellectual forces animating the Trump administration.I regret deeply that Columbia’s decisions have obliged me to deprive the nearly 300 students who have registered for this popular course – as many hundreds of others have done for more than two decades – of the chance to learn about the history of the modern Middle East this fall. Although I cannot do anything to compensate them fully for depriving them of the opportunity to take this course, I am planning to offer a public lecture series in New York focused on parts of this course that will be streamed and available for later viewing. Proceeds, if any, will go to Gaza’s universities, every one of which has been destroyed by Israel with US munitions, a war crime about which neither Columbia nor any other US university has seen fit to say a single word.Columbia’s capitulation has turned a university that was once a site of free inquiry and learning into a shadow of its former self, an anti-university, a gated security zone with electronic entry controls, a place of fear and loathing, where faculty and students are told from on high what they can teach and say, under penalty of severe sanctions. Disgracefully, all of this is being done to cover up one of the greatest crimes of this century, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, a crime in which Columbia’s leadership is now fully complicit. – Rashid Khalidi

      Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said professor emeritus of modern Arab studies at Columbia University and author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine More