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    Trump to address graduating students at the University of Alabama

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    Donald Trump will travel to heavily Republican Alabama on Thursday to speak to graduating students at the University of Alabama, where he is expected to draw some protesters despite enjoying a deep well of support in the state.The US president’s evening remarks in Tuscaloosa will be his first address to graduates in his second term and will come as he has been celebrating the first 100 days of his administration.The White House did not offer any details about Trump’s planned message.Alabama, where Trump won a commanding 64% of the vote in 2024, is where he has staged a number of his trademark large rallies over the past decade. It also is where Trump showed early signs of strength in his first presidential campaign when he began filling stadiums for his rallies.While the White House has described Trump’s speech as a commencement address, it is actually a special event that was created before graduation ceremonies that begin Friday. Graduating students have the option of attending the event, but it is not required.Former Crimson Tide football coach Nick Saban is also speaking at the event.“As President Trump marks 100 days in office, there is no better place for him to celebrate all the winning than in Tuscaloosa, Alabama,” said the state’s Republican governor, Kay Ivey.Trump’s presence has drawn criticism from the Alabama NAACP and the University of Alabama College Democrats.College Democrats are countering with their own rally, calling it “Tide Against Trump” – a play on the university’s nickname. The event will feature onetime presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke of Texas and former US senator Doug Jones, the last Democrat to hold statewide office in Alabama.The NAACP said Trump’s policies are hurting universities and students, particularly students of color.“The decision for students of color, and really all students, should be to skip his speech and spend that time reflecting on how to make America a more inclusive nation,” said Benard Simelton, president of the Alabama NAACP.Trump’s visit to Alabama is his second trip this week. He held a rally in Michigan on Tuesday to mark 100 days in office.Outside of weekend trips for personal visits, Trump has not made many official trips since taking office on 20 January. He usually speaks to the public from the impromptu news conferences he holds in the Oval Office and at other events at the White House.After his stop in Alabama, Trump is scheduled to travel to Florida for a long weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort.Next month, he is scheduled to give the commencement address at the US military academy in West Point, New York. More

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      North Carolina helps kids earn college degrees in high school. It’s a lifeline for immigrant families

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      Daniel is a high school senior in rural North Carolina. Soon, he will graduate with a high school diploma, an associate degree and a paralegal certification from a local community college. He’s just 17, but he’ll be able to apply for positions at law firms and begin earning an almost $50,000 salary straight out of high school.“The early college program really set me up for success because even though I’m young, I’ll be able to help financially support my family,” said Daniel, a first-generation Salvadorian American who is only using his first name to protect undocumented family members. “I’ve done all of this because of support from my mother and family. I owe everything I’ve accomplished to them and I want to give back.”It’s been a long road for Daniel, who was accepted into a competitive Cooperative Innovative high school while still in middle school. These small, public high schools are located on North Carolina community college campuses, and they enable teens to simultaneously work toward completion of a high school diploma and an associate degree. It’s one of three paths that eligible North Carolina high school students can take as part of Career and College Promise (CCP): a free, statewide dual enrollment program established by the North Carolina state legislature in 2011, and that also facilitates college transfer or further technical education. The program helped Daniel get ahead of the curve, and so far it’s paid off. The teenager was just accepted into Vanderbilt University.According to North Carolina educators who spoke to the Guardian, dual enrollment is one of the state’s best kept secrets – especially for first-generation Latino students like Daniel.And because CCP is open to all qualified high school students, the program offers an extraordinary benefit to undocumented young people. As college students, undocumented immigrants are ineligible for most financial aid and otherwise considered “non-residents”, requiring them to pay out-of-state tuition at more than double the cost to residents. However, undocumented high school students participating in dual enrollment can attend up to four years of community college free of charge.But thanks to Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant vision for the US, students from immigrant families are now afraid – and so too are North Carolina community college educators and administrators, who fear their schools will be targeted for their efforts to extend educational opportunities to Latino communities. For safety reasons, most of the students, educators and administrators who spoke to the Guardian chose to remain anonymous.Engines of equity and accessLatinos have been the fastest growing demographic in North Carolina since the 1990s, with young Latino citizens in particular accounting for much of the growth. Many of these young people are the US citizen children of immigrants or come from mixed-status families where only some family members have authorization to be in the US.But even with 30 years to adjust to shifting demographics, the education system in North Carolina was largely ill-equipped to serve Latino students – especially in rural communities where a large percentage of the state’s Latino population resides.One rural community college staff administrator responsible for Latino engagement has worked tirelessly over the last few years to reach students like Daniel, whom they helped usher through College and Career Promise. They see it as part of their job to spearhead efforts to bring bilingual programs and classes to their community college, hire members of the immigrant community to teach, and perform outreach at local Latino community events. They also work closely to problem-solve with individual students, whether that means referring an undocumented student to scholarship opportunities or walking a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) recipient through the process of obtaining employer-sponsored in-state tuition. Just a few short months ago, these were efforts the staff administrator would have trumpeted – but times have changed.“I am afraid it might call attention to us in a negative way,” they said. “I saw how parents were too scared to drive to schools in [North Carolina] … and how people knew which roads not to take due to the police presence. I don’t want to widely call attention to us as being immigrant-friendly when the goal of this administration is to quash that.”There are valid reasons to be fearful. The Trump administration’s targeting and defunding of institutions with DEI policies have led many to preemptively comply out of fear of losing federal funding, and now that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) rescinded a previous policy warning against carrying out immigration enforcement in “sensitive locations”, schools are fair game for immigration raids. In recent weeks, hundreds of foreign college students have also had their visas revoked by the Trump administration, though it changed course and restored some students’ status after widespread media attention and court challenges.It was because of “serious concerns for the safety of students and the entire campus community” that officials from another North Carolina community college located in a mid-sized city initially spoke on the record, but later decided to remain anonymous. An administrator responsible for Latino student engagement there told the Guardian that when community colleges are forced to hide their efforts to make education more accessible, it also means hiding services from students and community members who need them the most.Alice Dolbow, a senior adviser at the North Carolina non-profit LatinxEd, issued an important reminder to schools now afraid to make these efforts public: helping immigrant and first generation students access higher education is “not against the law”. Her organization focuses on developing Latino education leaders in higher education.“I think many districts found themselves unexpectedly transformed by the increase in immigration,” Dolbow said. “Interestingly, community colleges are catching up at a much faster rate than our K-12 schools and our four-year universities. Programs like CCP are great for all students; they are engines of equity and access for all North Carolinians, including undocumented students. I want to be clear that any programs that happen to also help undocumented students access higher education are not ‘loopholes’. We are not ‘taking advantage of the system’. We are operating within the system and under the laws we have, and we are doing what the laws and system allow.”Latino students in the state – many of whom come from mixed-status families – are also a lifeline for North Carolina community colleges. Before 2020, community college enrollment in the state was on a slow decline. Then, 69,000 CCP students participated in dual enrollment during the pandemic. While community colleges don’t track the immigration status of students in the CCP program, it’s clear that more targeted outreach to the state’s young, growing Latino population can transform community college enrollment and the trajectory of Latino and immigrant families in the state.In many ways, community colleges are primed to serve immigrant communities. They offer flexible schedules; English classes for adults; continuing education; and curriculum programs that can lead to certificates, diplomas and degrees. In recent years, North Carolina has made considerable leeway to recruit Latino students of all kinds, in part, by hiring Latino educators to oversee Latino student engagement and outreach.“It is our job as community colleges to respond to the economic needs of the region, and it’s our job to educate the workforce that responds to those local economic needs,” explained the administrator from the mid-sized city. “If you have this growing population, it’s your job to serve them and by doing that, you are better serving your state.”There’s data to support the assertion. In 2018, the statewide network of 58 public community colleges that make up the North Carolina community college system partnered with population scientists to examine demographic shifts in the state. Latino student outreach was identified as a primary tool to increase community college enrollment and thus, help North Carolina remain competitive in the changing economy.The state has only three “Hispanic-serving Institutions” (HSI), defined in federal legislation as accredited, degree-granting public or private nonprofit institutions of higher education with 25% or more total undergraduate Hispanic full-time equivalent student enrollment. But that’s enough to rank North Carolina among the top 10 states in emerging HSIs, and each of North Carolina’s three existing HSIs are community colleges.‘College is … starting to feel impossible’Still, gaps in community colleges’ outreach, engagement and investment in Latino students become starkly visible when considering the experiences of undocumented students.Olivia, who is also using a pseudonym, is a North Carolina 18-year-old who benefited from dual enrollment as a high school student. After graduation, she’s struggled to pay the exorbitant cost of community college tuition as an undocumented student. Well-meaning community college administrators instructed her to apply for federal student aid, not understanding that her immigration status bars her from receiving it. Others referred her to scholarships she spent hours applying for, only to later learn the scholarships were only available to US citizens.“I feel like every year, I’ve learned about something different that I can’t do,” said Olivia, who came to the US when she was six months old. “I can’t legally work. I can’t get a driver’s license. I can’t leave the country. College is starting to feel like another thing that’s impossible. I’m starting to really worry that I have to give up on school.”Olivia’s dream is to be a pediatrician, but currently she can only afford one community college class a semester. To her parents, it appears as if she’s not working hard enough on her education.“But I’m working myself to the bone,” Olivia insisted. “I just feel like I’m not getting anywhere, and there’s a lot of pain in wanting to be something greater than you’re allowed to be.”Gabriela (also using a pseudonym) understands how hard it is to plan for the future when options are limited. When she was 14, she moved from El Salvador to North Carolina, where she became the first in her family to graduate from high school.CCP would have gone a long way to help the now 21-year-old toward her ultimate goal of becoming an elementary school teacher, but no one ever informed her of the program.Community college administrators who spoke to the Guardian said there are many challenges to getting the word on CCP out. Many high schools don’t have bilingual staff to inform parents of these opportunities. High school counselors tend to focus on advanced learning and programs for students who are headed to traditional four-year colleges instead of CCP.“As an adult, I’ve heard about all of these opportunities that would have made such a difference in my life. I’m 21 and starting from scratch,” said Gabriela. She is legally able to work in the US and has a job as a teacher’s assistant at an elementary school. Like Olivia, Gabriela has encountered administrators who were confused about why she didn’t qualify for in-state tuition. She told another administrator she was undocumented and that person later asked for her social security number.Working at a school only reinforces exactly what she wants to do professionally – and how that career path seems increasingly out of reach. Gabriela works at a school with many undocumented and mixed-status families. Under the Trump administration, many parents are afraid of participating in school life, fearful that something as innocuous as going on a field trip will require government-issued identification that they can’t provide and thus, potentially getting them on Ice’s radar.“I want to comfort them, but at any moment I know that I can be the one who is deported,” Gabriela said. “My work permit can be taken away at any moment, and what happens if I’ve enrolled in school? There are no good options. I want to remain hopeful, but I also feel like: do I really want to go back to school now? Putting myself through school will be such a sacrifice. What if I can’t do anything with my education?”North Carolina organizations such as UndocuCarolina and Pupusas for Education work to fill information and financial gaps in the state for undocumented students, Daca recipients and young people with Temporary Protected Status (TPS). But according to Glenda Polanco, too many North Carolina students are forced to make “decisions about their future out of desperation”.Polanco is the program director of Pupusas for Education, which started in 2016 to provide scholarships to undocumented students through food sales and has since turned into a non-profit organization to support Latino students. Polanco, now 32, was able to take advantage of early college as a North Carolina high school student, but she didn’t understand at the time that college classes would no longer be free after she graduated high school. If not for an extraordinary act of kindness in the form of a North Carolina couple who paid Polanco’s way through university, college would have been out of the realm of possibility.Polanco acknowledges that she was “lucky”. but says she can still remember moments of sheer panic about the cost of school and her future as an immigrant with a temporary status.“With the young people we work with … there is this daunting, insanity-provoking question: why does it have to be this hard?” Polanco said. “I don’t really have a good answer for them, and the anxiety and depression that comes with that uncertainty takes a toll. There is a psychological impact on the immigrant community – including on our parents. They want to give us the world, but none of us can really say what’s going to happen tomorrow.” More

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      American higher education is collapsing before our eyes | Frederico Menino

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      American higher education is living its RMS Titanic moment. The multi-trillion-dollar United States academic-scientific complex, led by the richest and most highly coveted universities in history, remains the envy of the world. “American University Inc” is one of the US’s top exports and among its most valuable stocks. Brands such as Harvard, Columbia, Stanford and so many others are revered worldwide as symbols of academic excellence, independent thinking, breakthrough innovation and prestige. No other university system in the world comes close to amassing as much capital – financial, human, cultural and social – as the mighty American one.Until now.For decades, American University Inc has cruised at full steam through prosperous and pristine waters. Until, in 2025, it hit a colossal iceberg – in this case, a ruthless dealmaker and Ivy League graduate returned to the White House for a vindictive mandate. What has unfolded since then was unimaginable even a few months ago: the once unsinkable ship of US higher education is suddenly making water.From California to New York, imposing cathedrals of higher learning are bleeding from a violent collision with an unbending obstacle. The founder of Truth Social is demanding nothing but absolute subservience from the US temples of truth-seeking.The first casualties of this titanic shock can be estimated by the tens of thousands. In the vulnerable lower decks of the ship, overburdened and highly indebted students, early career researchers and Visa holding scholars – whose sweat and undervalued labor power the steamship of US academia – are drowning in the cold invisibility of academic darkness. Middle Eastern studies programs, DEI initiatives, affirmative action policies and other long neglected passengers are helplessly descending to the bottom of the ocean. The magnitude of the president’s tariffs on US universities is so large and so unprecedented that it is hard to underestimate their devastating impact.In the upper chambers of the damaged ship, post-docs, untenured professors, mid-rank crew members and other second-class passengers are scrambling to find some sort of safety amidst the chaos. Meanwhile, Ivy League presidents, lavishly paid university executives and other distinguished first-class guests are gradually making sense of the tragedy while savoring their hors d’oeuvres. Some have rushed to flood the headlines of liberal media with a tsunami of alarming interviews and op-eds (like this one). As they take notice of the gravity of the impact, university leaders are trying to save their endowments by appealing to deep-pocketed donors and influential networks of lawyers, lawmakers and corporate barons. Other first-classers, for complete lack of shame, character or reason, are trying to cut deals with the iceberg.Despite the abysmal differences between the individuals and interests aboard, the existential questions in everyone’s minds are fundamentally the same: should I stay or should I go? Should I stay and try to save this ship, or should I jump out before it is too late?In a recent survey published by Nature, the world’s most popular scientific journal, an astonishing three out of four scientists working in US universities declared that they were considering to leave the country for better opportunities elsewhere.As they contemplate the majestic ship, now severely bruised and adrift, scientists, students and higher education professionals in the United States – many of them foreigners – are also thinking to themselves: what are we trying to save, anyways? What is this ship all about, after all? What makes US universities so special and worth fighting for?The answer is academic freedom.However, in this critical juncture of US higher education, academic freedom has little to do with abstract ideals, or with the utopian Latin mottos inscribed in the gates of so many American university campuses. The carcass of the steamship is now exposed, with its virtues and vices equally visible. The present moment is severe and it demands exceptional resolve. This is no graduation ceremony – the favorite annual ritual of US academia, where awkwardly dressed academic cadres regurgitate 17th century speeches on the freedom to think, learn, research and teach. This time around, rituals and poetic words alone won’t save the ship.For college students, academic freedom means, in practice, the freedom to learn, free of debt – a liberty that most American learners have long been deprived of. For young adults building the foundations of their professional and civic lives, academic freedom also means the liberty to express themselves fully, and the possibility to share educational spaces with classmates from diverse faiths, genders, ideologies, nationalities and purchasing powers. But even conservative observers such as David Brooks acknowledge that US universities – particularly the richest ones – have failed to address the pervasive impacts of inequality, social media and political radicalism on the education of young citizens.For professors of mathematics, literature or non-western arts and sciences, academic freedom means the freedom to teach unimpeded by censorship and systematic defunding. That freedom has also been persistently under threat long before the recent iceberg collision. As illustrated by Joshua Travis Brown in his newly launched book titled Capitalizing on College: How Higher Education Went From Mission Driven to Margin Obsessed, US colleges have too often abandoned their emancipating missions in exchange for profit margins.Likewise, for researchers of all disciplines, academic freedom means securing the basic material conditions for the performance of their daily truth-seeking enterprises: access to labs, libraries and opportunities to share and openly discuss their findings with peers. The US’s edge on that front still exists. But experts agree that the gap is narrowing. Attentive observers of the vast oceans of knowledge know that “academic shipyards” in Asia, Europe and many parts of the post-colonial world are catching up – and their stocks are rising.Of course, academic freedom also means the autonomy of universities to self-govern, free from the destructive interference of authoritarian governments. As Iveta Silova eloquently observed in a recent op-ed, the past experiences of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union are only a couple of many stark reminders that when free universities bargain their autonomy, everyone loses.Without a doubt, everyone – academics or not – should take an unequivocal stand against the US government offensive on US universities. As a matter of principle, no one with the power of saving the sinking steamship should stand aside, with their arms crossed and their eyes closed. As a matter of practice, however, this is a moment of desolation for too many students and scholars in American academia whose plea have been silenced for too long. For them, staying and fighting may no longer be an option.

      Frederico Menino is the senior program officer of higher education at Open Society Foundations More

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      Trump administration to cancel $1bn in Biden-era school mental health grants

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      The Trump administration is moving to cancel $1bn in school mental health grants, saying they reflect the priorities of the previous administration.Grant recipients were notified on Tuesday that the funding will not be continued after this year. A gun violence bill signed by Joe Biden in 2022 sent $1bn to the grant programs to help schools hire more psychologists, counselors and other mental health workers.A new notice said an education department review of the programs found they violated the purpose of civil rights law, conflicted with the department’s policy of prioritizing merit and fairness, and amounted to an inappropriate use of federal money.The cuts were made public in a social media post from the conservative strategist Christopher Rufo, who claimed the money was used to advance “left-wing racialism and discrimination”. He posted excerpts from several grant documents setting goals to hire certain numbers of nonwhite counselors or pursue other diversity, equity and inclusion policies.“No more slush fund for activists under the guise of mental health,” Rufo wrote.The education department confirmed the cuts. In an update to members of Congress that was obtained by the Associated Press, department officials said the Republican administration would find other ways to support mental health.“The Department plans to re-envision and re-compete its mental health program funds to more effectively support students’ behavioral health needs,” according to the notice.Donald Trump’s administration has cut billions of dollars in federal grants deemed to be related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and has threatened to cut billions more from schools and colleges over diversity practices. The administration says any policy that treats people differently because of their race amounts to discrimination, and it argues that DEI has often been used to discriminate against white and Asian American students. More

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      US supreme court seems open to religious public charter schools

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      The US supreme court’s conservative majority seemed open to establishing the country’s first public religious charter school as they weighed a case Wednesday that could have significant ramifications on the separation of church and state.The Oklahoma state charter school board approved the application for St Isidore, a Catholic virtual charter school. The ACLU and other groups filed suit, as did Republican attorney general Gentner Drummond. The state supreme court sided with Drummond, ruling that the US and Oklahoma constitutions “prohibit the state from using public money for the establishment of a religious institution”.The case is part of a broader push to erode the separation of church and state, a concept established through the US constitution via the “free exercise” clause of the first amendment. Oklahoma is at the forefront of this debate.The eventual ruling is seen as a test of the role of religion in the government and in schools. It comes as school choice programs like vouchers that allow students to use public monies to attend private schools grow nationwide and amid a sustained campaign against public schools.Charter schools are taxpayer-funded and free for students, but operate independently and with more autonomy than traditional public schools. Drummond’s attorney warned the case could upend charter school systems throughout the states, said Gregory Garre, who is representing Drummond in the case. Some states may respond by ramping up religious charter schools and others could halt their charter programs to avoid approving religious schools, he said.“This is going to create uncertainty, confusion and disruption for potentially millions of school children and families across the country,” Garre told the high court.The school’s proponents argue the school is not a government entity, so the state is not endorsing or funding a single religion. They also contend that denying the school from becoming a public charter effectively discriminates against religious organizations and people of faith, and that blocking the school would deprive Oklahoma students of an educational option.Jim Campbell, an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the state charter board, said there are hundreds of families signed up for the school already, despite it not being open. “They’re part of Oklahoma’s community too. They should not be treated as second class,” he said.The conservatives on the court asked questions along similar lines, contending that the school simply wanted to be treated as non-religious entities. Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the school was asking not to be excluded on the basis of religion. He also questioned whether religious-affiliated programs for foster care or food banks could be negatively affected by a ruling against the charter school.“Our cases have made very clear, and I think those are some of the most important cases we’ve had, of saying you can’t treat religious people and religious institutions and religious speech as second class in the United States,” he said on Wednesday. “And when you have a program that’s open to all comers, except religion … that seems like rank discrimination against religion.”Siding with the school would fit with recent court rulings that have eroded the separation between church and state. Rulings in 2022 determined that state governments were in some cases required to fund private religious education and that a Christian football coach at a public school could lead his athletes in prayer.The liberal justices asked how the school intended to include religious beliefs and practices in its curriculum and whether creating a religious charter school crossed the line into the state endorsing a religion.At one point, the liberal Justice Elena Kagan questioned whether other religious communities might teach different curriculum based on their faith, and a lawyer for St Isidore pushed back, saying these hypotheticals shouldn’t justify religious discrimination.“Religious communities are really different in this country, and are often extremely different from secular communities in terms of the education that they think is important for their young people and is critically important to their faith,” Kagan said.The Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, has supported St Isidore, calling the lawsuit “the biggest religious and education freedom case in our nation’s history”. Ryan Walters, the Republican superintendent of public schools in Oklahoma, has frequently spoken in favor of St Isidore and has claimed there should be no separation of church and state. He wrote in a Fox News op-ed this week that denying the school would be “religious bigotry”.“Instead of fighting against parents and telling them that government officials know what is best for their children, we should instead listen to them,” Walters wrote. “There is hope that the supreme court will give us this chance, a chance to take power away from government bureaucrats and give it back to the people.”The Trump administration supported St Isidore in an amicus brief and solicitor general D John Sauer argued in court on Wednesday that denying the school to be a public charter would violate the free exercise of religion.Justice Amy Coney Barrett has recused herself from the case, so it is possible the court could split evenly, which would keep the Oklahoma supreme court’s ruling in place and prevent the school from being a public charter. Barrett has not given a reason why she recused herself, but she is close friends with Nicole Stelle Garnett, who is a faculty fellow at the Notre Dame religious liberty clinic that has represented the school. Barrett also taught at Notre Dame’s law school before joining the court.A decision in the case is likely later this summer. More

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

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      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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      Maga’s sinister obsession with IQ is leading us towards an inhuman future | Quinn Slobodian

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      One thing that Donald Trump and his Silicon Valley partners share is an obsession with IQ. Being a “low-IQ individual” is a standard insult in the president’s repertoire, and being “high-IQ” is an equally standard form of praise for those on the tech right. Yet in the drive for US supremacy in artificial intelligence – signalled by the $500bn (£375bn) Stargate project announcement in the White House and an executive order to integrate AI into public education, beginning in kindergarten – there is a hidden irony. If their vision for our economic future is realised, IQ in the sense that they value will lose its meaning.IQ testing arose at a time when the US and other industrialised nations were worried about the health of their populations. Recruitment campaigns for the Boer war in the UK, and then the first world war elsewhere, showed male populations that were unhealthier than their fathers’ generation. Industrial work seemed to be triggering what looked like a process of degeneration, with a fearful endpoint in the subterranean Morlocks of HG Wells’s classic novella, The Time Machine. Intelligence tests were a way to salvage the diamonds from the rough and find a new officer class – and later a new elite – to guide mass society from the slough of despond into a braver future.When manufacturing still ruled in the US, IQ was valued as a way of measuring educational outcomes, but arguably it was not until the breakthrough of the information economy in the 1980s and 90s that knowledge workers became indisputably the vanguard of future prosperity. It is no coincidence that IQ talk surged in the 1990s, first through Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein’s infamous book, The Bell Curve, which suggested there were long-term and insurmountable gaps in IQ between racial groups, and second, more subtly through gifted and talented search programmes in the US that found kids and plucked them from public schools into supercharged summer programmes for the bright.One such person was Curtis Yarvin, the middle-aged software engineer and amateur political theorist who has drawn attention for his techno-monarchist philosophy and whose work has been positively cited by the US vice-president, JD Vance. As a youngster, Yarvin was part of Julian Stanley’s Center for Talented Youth. From the early 2000s to the present, he has been a consistent advocate for the importance of IQ as a measure of human worth. In the late 2000s, as an exponent of what came to be called the Dark Enlightenment, or “neo-reaction”, he suggested IQ tests could be used to disqualify voters in post-apartheid South Africa.Yarvin’s IQ fetishism was an organic outgrowth of the intellectual subculture of Silicon Valley. People who manipulated symbols and wrote code all day not surprisingly put special stock into the “general intelligence” measured by IQ, which gauged the proximity of minds to computers defined by logic, memory and processing speed.IQ fetishism had a history in the valley; one of the pioneers of the need to take eugenic measures to increase IQ was William Shockley, the inventor of the transistor (the building block of computer chips), who proposed that people with an IQ below the average of 100 should be given $1,000 per IQ point to sterilise themselves. In 2014, the American tech billionaire Peter Thiel said the problem with the Republican party was that too many of its leaders were “lower IQ” compared with those in the Democratic party. IQ was also a common focus of discussion on the popular blog Slate Star Codex and elsewhere in the so-called “rationalist” community.All of this would have remained a quirky symptom of San Francisco Bay Area chatboards were it not for the recent alliance between the world of the tech right and the governing party in Washington DC. The idea that intelligence is hardwired and resistant to early intervention or improvement through state programmes – that IQ is meaningful and real – brings us closer to what Murray and Herrnstein were advocating for in The Bell Curve in the 1990s, what they called “living with inequality”.The US Department of Education was set up in 1980 on a premise opposite to that of The Bell Curve. It worked on the belief that early interventions are crucial for brain development and that measuring outcomes was necessary to fine-tune interventions so that educational testing could produce more even results across the US. This department is in the process of being dismantled by Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency”, with the former World Wrestling Entertainment chief executive Linda McMahon promising to complete the task. Musk, like Trump, frequently refers to IQ as if it is a meaningful and important number. If you believe it is hardwired, then you too would want to destroy the Department of Education and stop trying to create standardised outcomes.People have cast around for ways to characterise the ideology that links the west coast of tech entrepreneurs and founders to the north-east and midwest of tycoons and conservatives around the Maga coalition. One way to see it is as a return to nature, a flight to a belief in implacable truths around intelligence, gender and race in the face of a changing world.Yet here’s the rub. That same coalition has bet the future of the US economy on breakthrough developments in artificial intelligence. To date, generative AI is primarily a means of automating away many of the very white-collar jobs that had previously been the heart of the knowledge economy. ChatGPT, its cheerleaders claim, can code better than a Stanford computer science graduate. It can make slides, take minutes and draft talking points quicker than any product of an elite liberal arts college. It can discover protein structures faster than any top hire from MIT. The argument in favour of paying attention to IQ was that, unfair or not, it was a ticket on to the escalator of upward mobility and meritocracy associated with jobs in finance, tech, advertising and even public service or higher education. If those jobs are whittled down to a nub, then on its own terms, the point of caring about IQ vanishes as well.As Musk has said himself, “we are all extremely dumb” compared with the “digital super intelligence” that he is helping to build through initiatives such as his model at xAI, which recently bought the social media platform X. The Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen wrote once that software was eating the world. If their predictions are true, it will eat the right’s precious IQ too.

      Quinn Slobodian’s latest book is Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Hope as US universities find ‘backbone’ against Trump’s assault on education

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      Americans anxious about their country’s slide into authoritarianism found some solace in the past week over what appears to be growing pushback by American universities against Donald Trump’s assault on higher education.After a barrage of orders, demands and the freezing of billions in federal funds for research had elicited a mostly demure response from university leaders, some are starting to mount a more muscular defense of academic freedom. A statement denouncing the Trump administration’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” was signed by more than 400 university presidents, and the list is growing. Another, signed by more than 100 former university heads, called for a coalition of local leaders, students, labor unions and communities, across party affiliation, to “work against authoritarianism”.And Harvard became the first university to sue the administration over its threats to cut $9bn in federal funding should it not comply with a set of extreme demands to combat alleged antisemitism, demands that university president Alan Garber labeled “unlawful, and beyond the government’s authority”. The legal action followed several others brought by higher education associations and organisations representing faculty, including one by the American Association of University Professors challenging the administration’s revocation of student visas and detention of several international students, which 86 universities joined with amicus briefs.But Trump was not cowed, continuing his weeks-long assault on universities he has accused of being “dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics”. Delivering on campaign threats, he issued a fresh set of executive actions on Wednesday targeting campus diversity initiatives and seeking to overhaul the accreditation system that has long served as quality check on higher education. And despite reports that the White House had made overtures to Harvard to restart talks about its demands – overtures the school has rejected – his tone suggested otherwise in a Truth Social rant in which he called the Ivy League school “a threat to Democracy” and “an Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institution, as are numerous others, with students being accepted from all over the World that want to rip our Country apart”.But even as universities reposition themselves as defenders of free and independent inquiry, many are stepping up their measures to suppress pro-Palestinian discourse, issuing a flurry of warnings and punishments meant to avert a repeat of the mass protest encampments that sprung up across US campuses a year ago.View image in fullscreenThose measures, against protests and criticism of Israel in classrooms and other university settings, echo some of the demands made by the administration of various universities. While the government has gone much further – requiring, for example, the removal of entire academic departments from faculty control and “auditing” student and faculty’s viewpoints – universities have taken other measures slammed by faculty, students and free expression experts as draconian repression of legitimate political speech.This week, Yale University revoked the recognition of a student group that on Tuesday pitched tents on campus to protest a talk by Israel’s far-right security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, while Columbia University, which has largely capitulated to the Trump administration’s demands, issued a warning to students planning to reestablish protest encampments it banned after last year’s protests.At Tulane University in New Orleans, seven students are facing disciplinary action over their participation at an off-campus pro-Palestinian protest (the university maintains the protest was organised by a student group it had banned). At Columbia, two Palestinian student activists have been charged with “discriminatory harassment” over what the university believes is their role in publishing an op-ed in the university paper, and two Instagram posts, calling for restrictions on the admission of former Israeli soldiers to the university.At Indiana University, a professor of Germanic studies became the first scholar to come under investigation under a new state law mandating “intellectual diversity” after a student accused him of pro-Palestinian speech in the classroom. And in Michigan, the FBI and local authorities raided the homes of several pro-Palestinian students on Wednesday, confiscating electronics and briefly detaining two students, as part of a state investigation into a string of alleged vandalism incidents, including at the home of the University of Michigan’s regent. While the university did not appear to be directly involved in the operation, student activists there noted that the raids followed its “repeated targeting of pro-Palestine activists” through “firings, disciplinary measures, and criminal prosecution”.“In order to give any meaning to free speech, academic freedom, equal rights, and the pursuit of truth and justice, universities have to make drastic changes to their conduct over the last year and a half,” said Tori Porell, an attorney at Palestine Legal, which has represented many students facing universities’ disciplinary action and in the last year received more than 2,000 requests for legal support. “That very conduct has put them and their students and faculty in danger. If universities are serious about standing up to Trump and putting their words into action, they will provide meaningful protection for their students, faculty, and staff.”View image in fullscreenSo far, the Trump administration has shown no signs it intends to slow down its attack on universities – with the education department warning 60 institutions that they are under investigation over alleged antisemitism. But Harvard’s lawsuit, and the first efforts at a unified response, set the stage for what is likely to become a protracted battle.“I think now that we’ve seen Harvard stand up and push back against the unwarranted government intrusion, that we’ll see more of this moving forward,” said Lynn Pasquerella, the president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, which has been coordinating university presidents’ collective response to the administration’s actions.Advocates for academic freedom who had previously criticised universities for a weak response to the administration’s “bullying” welcomed Harvard’s suit but called on schools to use the opportunity to show a more consistent defense of free speech and academic freedom.“This legal challenge is a necessary defense of institutional autonomy and the first amendment,” said Tyler Coward, the lead counsel for government affairs at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Fire), noting that the group had long been critical of Harvard’s “commitment” to freedom of expression, for instance after the university adopted a controversial definition of antisemitism that Fire warned would “chill” campus speech.“We hope this moment marks a turning point – away from a model of civil rights enforcement that enables government overreach and toward one that protects free speech, academic freedom, and due process.”But while students, faculty and advocates across the country expressed measured hope that some university leaders were starting to grow a “backbone”, they noted it was students and faculty who were leading the charge and mounting the pressure that forced university leaders to act.“The workers and the unions, faculty, students, staff are leading and developing the fight in how to respond to the Trump administration, and we’re sort of dragging the universities along with us, slowly,” said Todd Wolfson, the president of the AAUP, which has led faculty organising efforts on many campuses and filed four separate lawsuits against the administration over its attacks on universities.Wolfson noted that faculty continues to be critical of how universities are handling campus affairs, including pro-Palestinian speech, as well as their engagement with the Trump administration.“But nonetheless, the attacks on the university right now are not being initiated by the administrations of those universities, they’re being initiated by the federal government,” he said. “And so we must band together, where it’s possible, with our administrations to fight back.” More

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      Trump news at a glance: president targets diversity at US universities; Trump accuses Zelenskyy of endangering peace deal

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      Donald Trump has signed executive orders targeting US universities as his administration seeks to reshape higher education institutions and crack down on diversity and inclusion efforts.The actions address foreign gifts to universities as well as college accreditation, which the president has referred to as his “secret weapon” to upend US universities.Trump has also taken aim at the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, while giving the clearest hint yet that the US would be willing to formally recognise Russia’s seizure of Crimea as part of any peace deal to end the war in Ukraine.Trump continues attack on universitiesThe Trump administration continued its all-out assault on US universities on Wednesday as the president signed executive orders cracking down on college accreditation and foreign gifts.While reading the orders to Donald Trump, White House staff secretary Will Scharf said the third-party groups that accredited universities had relied on “woke ideology” rather than merit.“We should be looking at those who have real merit to get in, and we have to look harder at those universities that aren’t enforcing that,” Linda McMahon, the education secretary, added during the signing in the Oval Office.Read the full storyTrump accuses Zelenskyy of jeopardising imminent peace dealDonald Trump has accused Volodymyr Zelenskyy of endangering what he claimed was an imminent peace deal to end the war in Ukraine, hinting that the US would be willing to formally recognise Russia’s seizure of Crimea as part of any agreement.“Nobody is asking Zelenskyy to recognize Crimea as Russian Territory,” Trump wrote, implying that the US was willing to do so. “If he wants Crimea, why didn’t they fight for it eleven years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired?”Read the full storyStates sue to stop Trump’s ‘insane’ tariff policyA dozen states have sued the Trump administration to stop its tariff policy, saying it is unlawful and has brought chaos to the American economy.Arizona’s attorney general, Kris Mayes, called Trump’s tariff scheme “insane” and said it was “not only economically reckless – it is illegal”.Read the full storyUS peace plan for Russia-Ukraine war emergesThe contours of the White House’s “final” peace proposal to halt the Russian invasion of Ukraine have come into focus with proposals to freeze the frontlines in exchange for terms that critics have termed a surrender to Russian interests in the three-year-old conflict.Read the full storyStock markets climb as Trump backtracksStock markets have risen around the world after Donald Trump said his tariffs on China would come down “substantially” and he had “no intention” of firing the chair of the US central bank, Jay Powell.Read the full storyDick Durbin retires from US SenateThe Senate’s second-highest ranking Democrat, Dick Durbin, announced he will not seek re-election in 2026, bringing an end to a Senate career that spans nearly three decades. In a video statement posted online, Durbin said: “I truly love being a United States senator, but in my heart I know it’s time to pass the torch.”Read the full storyFears grow that leaks make Hegseth top espionage targetAs more develops about the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and his repeated disclosures of sensitive military intelligence in unsecured Signal group chats, there are growing concerns his behavior has weakened the Pentagon in the eyes of its foreign adversaries and made him and his entourage a top espionage target.Read the full storyJudge accuses White House of ‘bad faith’ in Ábrego García caseThe federal court that has found itself in a pitched battle with the executive branch over the summary removal of Salvadorian Kilmar Ábrego García despite a previous order against deportation has now accused the Trump administration of “bad faith” in the case.Read the full storyTrump sets Noaa on ‘non-science trajectory’, workers warnThe Trump administration has shunted one of the US federal government’s top scientific agencies onto a “non-science trajectory” that threatens to derail decades of research and leave the US with “air that’s not breathable and water that’s not drinkable”, say workers.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro described shattered glass, melted furniture and burnt prayer books after arson at his residence weeks ago.

      Norway has launched a new scheme to lure top international researchers amid growing pressure on academic freedom in the US under the Trump administration.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 22 April 2025. More