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Trump officials intensify Columbia dispute with accreditation threat

by Evelyn Reynolds 4 June 2025, 21:20

The Department of Education announced on Wednesday afternoon that it has notified Columbia University’s accreditor of an alleged violation of federal anti-discrimination laws by the elite private university in New York that is part of the Ivy League.The alleged violation means that Columbia, in the Trump administration’s assessment, has “failed to meet the standards” set by the relevant regional, government-recognized but independent body responsible for the accreditation of degree-granting institutions, as a kind of educational quality controller.In this case the accreditor is the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. Accreditors determine which institutions are eligible for federal student loans and various federal grants.The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment.“Accreditors have an enormous public responsibility as gatekeepers of federal student aid. They determine which institutions are eligible for federal student loans and Pell grants,” the secretary of education, Linda McMahon, said in a statement. Pell grants are awarded as federal financial aid to students with exceptional financial need.A spokesperson for the Middle States Commission on Higher Education declined to provide comment but confirmed that the organization had received a letter from the Department of Education about the matter on Wednesday.While the federal government does not directly accredit US universities, it has a role in overseeing the mostly private organizations that do. Trump has often complained that accreditors approve institutions that fail to provide, in his view, quality education.The notice marks the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s bid to dictate to Columbia after accusing the college of failing to protect students from antisemitic harassment.It follows the cancellation of $400m in federal grants and contracts, after which the university yielded to a series of changes demanded by the administration, including setting up a new disciplinary committee, initiating investigations into students critical of Israel’s war in Gaza, and ceding control of its Middle East studies department.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionColumbia was at the forefront of student encampment protests last spring, with more direct action protests erupting in recent weeks and jeers at leadership at commencement ceremonies last month, and has cycled through a series of university presidents in the past 18 months.The Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services said last month that an investigation found that the university had acted with “deliberate indifference” toward the harassment of Jewish students during campus protests, while Columbia has previously said it would work with the government to address antisemitism, harassment and discrimination.Reuters contributed reporting More

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We in the cultural sector must stand up to Trump’s attacks – if not now, when? | Gus Casely-Hayford
by Evelyn Reynolds 4 June 2025, 14:32
In one of his recent Truth Social posts, Donald Trump appeared to fire Kim Sajet – the fearless and utterly brilliant director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. The president used his social media platform to claim that Sajet’s support for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) made her unsuitable for her role. “Upon the request and recommendation of many people, I am hereby terminating the employment of Kim Sajet as Director of the National Portrait Gallery”, Trump wrote. “She is a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI, which is totally inappropriate for her position. Her replacement will be named shortly.”Where to start? By now, we all know the arts has become the terrain for a brutal proxy battle for hearts and minds. A culture war 2.0, where not just reputations are at stake, but institutions, whole sectors and ways of thinking. But I am hoping that even Trump’s support base have begun to grow a little bored with these attacks on figures and institutions in the cultural sector. The culture war has moved beyond farce into the deeply tragic.I am sure even many of the president’s most loyal supporters know deep down that the Smithsonian (a vast complex of 21 museums) is a genuine force for good, an institution that represents so much of the US at its very best. And like the Kennedy Center, the cultural institution that Trump took control of earlier this year, or the universities his administration has attacked, the Smithsonian is a fish in a barrel: easy to bully, its financial destiny in significant part tied to public funding, with limited scope to defend itself. This contrived political theatre damages critical institutions, threatens the careers of talented, dedicated people, and its repercussions will be deep and long-lasting.Good museums are not sleepy institutions trapped in heritage-aspic. Across its 178-year history, the Smithsonian has consistently evolved to reflect ambient change and address public need. Like many other national museums around the world, these changes, particularly in recent years, have been driven by an aspiration to engage and enfranchise, to broaden audiences and to catalyse national conversations. I would have thought that seeking to give value back to a greater number of the population is uncontroversial. Institutions this important, mostly sponsored by the public, must simply, continually, work to be ever more universal, inclusive and open. Left or right, that has value. In times like these, when we are, as citizens of western democracies, so riven and divided, the arts have a job to do of being a space for inclusive debate.But the truth is that DEI isn’t some new-fangled indulgence. That drive to be inclusive is what good museums were created to deliver. Twenty-five years ago, I began my career at the British Museum. I still remember reading its founding purpose for the first time. The British Museum was created for “all studious and curious persons”. I remember thinking that the word that does the really hard work in that statement is “all”. The British Museum was created in the mid-18th century around an inclusive imperative, around the idea that we might all hope to find ourselves reflected in its spaces and concerns.Its founders must have recognised the powerful need for a national museum: it was created at a time when Britain was going through a period of existential anxiety, when Scots were rebelling; the country needed a unifying narrative. I am sure the British Museum’s founders knew exactly what they were doing when they committed the institution to that beautifully enfranchising ambition of being for us all. And yes, I know museums have so often failed miserably to live up to these inclusive objectives, but we must never stop trying, nor relinquish the basis on which the public can hold us to account.Universities and museums are vital for healthy societies, and their independence, their bravery, their sometimes maddening honesty, underpins so much that is important. We undermine that at our peril. I spent a number of treasured years as a Smithsonian museum director and fell for its ethos and its dedicated people. It was founded on an ambition to propagate “the increase and diffusion of knowledge”. It was created to enable transformational change through sharing and empowering US citizens with knowledge, with truth. I cannot think of a time when this has been more important.It is unclear whether Trump has the authority to fire Sajet. What is clear is that his move is designed to demoralise her and all my former Smithsonian colleagues. That’s why, directing a different museum now, across the Atlantic, I feel moved to write. We in the cultural sector everywhere need to stand up and be counted, we need to celebrate Kim Sajet, we need to not retreat from diversity here in Britain. To my former colleagues, I say that speaking the truth and having the courage to do so when it is difficult does not make you unsuitable for your roles in a demographically complex democracy; it is probably the most important aspect of what we are called upon to do. It is easy writing the diversity action plan, but having the moral courage to stand up for those principles when they are needed – that is heroic.
Gus Casely-Hayford is a curator, cultural historian, broadcaster and lecturer who is currently the director of V&A East More
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Antisemitic and Islamophobic violence is rising in the United States. Both must stop | Moustafa Bayoumi
by Evelyn Reynolds 4 June 2025, 10:00
This must stop. Two incidents of political violence, both targeting groups of Jewish people, are two incidents too many. Less than two weeks ago, a gunman shot and killed two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington DC, yelling “Free Palestine” as he was being detained. This week, a man used a “makeshift flamethrower” along with other incendiary devices to attack a Boulder, Colorado, rally organized by Run for Their Lives, a group which organizes events “calling for the immediate release of the hostages held by Hamas”. Eight people were injured in this latest assault, at least two of them seriously.These horrific acts will no doubt increase the anxiety many Jewish people have about increasing – and increasingly violent – antisemitism in the US. Understandably so. Antisemitism must not be given any oxygen to breathe. One can oppose Israel’s 600-plus day war, relentlessly pounding innocent people in Gaza, while vigorously opposing all forms of antisemitism. In fact, one must oppose both. Such is our duty to each other in a civilized world.And as we have a duty to call out antisemitism when we see it, we also have an equal duty to remember that Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims have also been subjected to extreme forms of violence and bigotry in the US since the beginning of this terrible war. And while we are certain to hear much about today’s rising antisemitism in the coming days, as we should, we must also make sure to acknowledge the rising threats against Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims.Consider what happened to Wadea al-Fayoume, a six-year-old Palestinian American boy. Wadea was murdered in October 2023 by his landlord, who stabbed the young boy 26 times in his home in Plainfield Township, Illinois. The landlord also attacked the boy’s mother, Hanan Shaheen, stabbing her over a dozen times while telling her “you, as a Muslim, must die.” Joseph Czuba, 73, the landlord, was found guilty of murder, attempted murder, and hate crime charges last month and sentenced to 53 years in prison.Or there are the three Palestinian friends, all college students, who were out for a stroll in Vermont during the Thanksgiving long weekend in 2023. They were gunned down in what many are assuming is a hate crime. The three were speaking a mixture of Arabic and English and were sporting keffiyehs, and one of the three, Hisham Awartani, is now paralyzed from the neck down due to the shooting. The alleged assailant, Jason Eaton, is currently on trial for the shooting.And there’s the time, in May 2024, when a woman attempted to drown a three-year old Palestinian girl in a swimming pool in an apartment complex in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Euless. The suspect, Elizabeth Wolf, was arrested after the attack and, in September 2024, a grand jury indicted Wolf on attempted capital murder and bodily injury to a child under and intentionally causing bodily injury to a child. The grand jury also included a hate crime enhancement in the indictment.Or what about the evening when Zacharia Doar and three of his friends were attacked while they were in their truck, which had a keffiyeh hanging off its side. They were returning from a rally for Palestine in Austin, Texas, in February 2024. Their alleged attacker, Bert James Baker, was yelling racial slurs at them when he reportedly pulled Doar out of the truck and stabbed the 23-year-old Palestinian American in the back. Austin police labeled the attack a hate crime, though the grand jury did not include a hate crime finding in their indictment of Baker for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.We should recall that more than 30 protestors for Palestinian rights have filed a lawsuit against campus officials at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and law enforcement agencies, alleging that their civil rights had been violated during protests on campus. Last year, a mob of at least a 100 masked young men descended on an encampment for Palestine that had been erected on campus. The mob attacked the protest for hours while law enforcement watched from the sidelines. As the New York Times described it, “counterprotesters swarmed individuals – sometimes a group descended on a single person. They could be seen punching, kicking and attacking people with makeshift weapons, including sticks, traffic cones and wooden boards.” Dozens of people were injured and taken to the hospital for treatment, according to the Los Angeles Times.These are just a few of the stories of violence and abuse. There are, unfortunately, plenty more, such as the Illinois woman who allegedly attacked a man and his pregnant wife at a Panera Bread because the man was wearing a shirt that said “Palestine.” The woman was charged with two counts of a hate crime and one count of misdemeanor disorderly conduct. Or there’s the bizarre case of the Jewish man in Miami Beach who allegedly shot at two men he believed to be Palestinians but who were in fact Jewish Israeli tourists. While in custody, the shooter told the police “he saw two Palestinians and shot and killed both,” according to arrest documents. Stranger still, one of the men who was shot reportedly posted on social media that he and his father “survived an attempted murder motivated by antisemitism,” and then ended his message writing “death to Arabs.”The organizations which track antisemitism and Islamophobia have each recorded record high incidents and complaints in the past year, as the violence of this war blows back our shores. None of this should be happening, and it’s clear that our first line of defense, and our responsibility as Americans, is to stop this war immediately, “before this violence grows and spreads further, consuming even more innocent lives in its monstrous path.” I wrote those words just over a week ago after the murder of embassy staffers in Washington DC. In a grim turn of events, they are even more true today.
Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist More
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BBC accuses White House of misrepresenting fatal Gaza attack report
by Evelyn Reynolds 4 June 2025, 09:30
The BBC has defended its reporting on the war in Gaza and accused the White House of misrepresenting its journalism after Donald Trump’s administration criticised its coverage of a fatal attack near a US-backed aid distribution site.Senior BBC journalists said the White House was political point-scoring after Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, accused the corporation of taking “the word of Hamas with total truth”. She also falsely claimed that the BBC had removed a story about the incident.Leavitt launched her attack on the BBC after being asked about reports that Israeli forces opened fire near an aid distribution centre in Rafah. Brandishing a print-out of images taken from the BBC’s website, she accused the corporation of having to “correct and take down” its story about the fatalities and injuries involved in the attack.The Hamas-run health ministry had said at least 31 people were killed in the gunfire. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) later said at least 21 Palestinians were killed by IDF troops.In a briefing on Tuesday, Leavitt said: “The administration is aware of those reports and we are currently looking into the veracity of them because, unfortunately, unlike some in the media, we don’t take the word of Hamas with total truth. We like to look into it when they speak, unlike the BBC.“And then, oh, wait, they had to correct and take down their entire story, saying: ‘We reviewed the footage and couldn’t find any evidence of anything.’”The BBC swiftly issued a robust statement. It said that casualty numbers were updated throughout the day from multiple sources, as is the case of any incident of the kind in a chaotic war zone. It also clarified that the accusation from Leavitt that the BBC had removed a story was false.“The claim the BBC took down a story after reviewing footage is completely wrong,” it said. “We did not remove any story and we stand by our journalism.View image in fullscreen“Our news stories and headlines about Sunday’s aid distribution centre incident were updated throughout the day with the latest fatality figures as they came in from various sources … This is totally normal practice on any fast-moving news story.”It said the White House had conflated that incident with a “completely separate” report by BBC Verify, the corporation’s factchecking team, which found a viral video posted on social media was not linked to the aid distribution centre it claimed to show. “This video did not run on BBC news channels and had not informed our reporting,” it said. “Conflating these two stories is simply misleading.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe BBC called on the White House to join forces with its calls for “immediate access” to Gaza. International journalists are prevented from entering by Israel.Jonathan Munro, the deputy director of the BBC News, said the claims were wrong, adding: “It’s important that accurate journalism is respected, and that governments call for free access to Gaza.”Jeremy Bowen, the corporation’s international editor, accused the White House of launching a political attack. “To be quite frank, the Trump administration does not have a good record when it comes to telling the truth itself,” he said. “She’s making a political point, basically.“Israel doesn’t let us in because it’s doing things there, clearly I think, that they don’t want us to see otherwise they would allow free reporting.“I’ve reported on wars for the best part of 40 years. I’ve reported on more than 20 wars. And I’m telling you, even when you get full access, it is really difficult to report them. When you can’t get in, it’s even harder.” More
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‘Saying Trump is dangerous is not enough’: Bernie Sanders on Biden, billionaires – and why the Democrats failed
by Evelyn Reynolds 4 June 2025, 04:00
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‘I think what Trumpism is about, is an understanding that the system in America is not working for working-class people,” says Bernie Sanders, sitting in the Guardian’s offices in London. “In a phoney, hypocritical way, Trump has tapped into that. His quote-unquote ‘solutions’ will only make a bad situation worse.”View image in fullscreenIn person, Sanders’ 83 years read differently than in photograph, perhaps because of how conversational he is. His voice is magnetic – a Brooklyn accent that feels both warm and tough. “But what I have been aware of, and I’ve talked about it for years, is that in America, the very richest people are doing phenomenally well, while 60% of our people live paycheck to paycheck.”Later, he will say the same thing to an audience in London – only with more emphasis and passion. “Sixty per cent. Six-zero. Do you know what paycheck to paycheck means?” It’s exhilarating to hear Sanders speak to a crowd: his zeal is reflected back in their faces, his moral clarity is such a relief, set against the cynicism and resignation of most of the Democratic party’s opposition to Trump and his administration. Class war is as old as time, but it’s a peculiarity of this age that you rarely hear a politician name it. “I do,” he tells me. “There is a class war going on. The people on top are waging that war.”It’s a look at what could have been. Sanders ran, of course, to be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, and again in 2020. The first time, there was a real sense, in the US and abroad, that something incredible might happen: that someone with “almost no name recognition,” he says, a senator from the small state of Vermont, might successfully challenge Hillary Clinton, whom the party had already anointed. We all know how that worked out. Was it the greatest disappointment of his political life? “Well, you’re too busy to feel things,” he says. “You’re just working very hard.”What is absolutely unequivocal is his criticism of the Democrats. The party, he thinks, lacks any real progressive promise. “What they say is, ‘The status quo is working pretty good, and we will tinker around the edges’, and that is not a message that resonates with working people”. He refuses to indulge in any personal ill-will towards Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. The most he’ll voice is a weary resignation about 2020, when his campaign “won the first three states, primary states, in terms of popular votes. Then the Democratic establishment made sure the other candidates dropped out, and they rallied around Joe Biden. You know, that’s the world that we live in. We are taking on not just the Republican leadership, we are taking on a Democratic establishment which is tied to elements of corporate America.”During the 2024 election, he “worked very hard to see that Kamala Harris was elected. I was all over the country and was one of her major surrogates. We begged our campaign to start talking about the needs of working people. But their consultants and the money people behind them thought of another strategy, showing that she was more conservative, that she worked with people like Liz Cheney, worked with Republicans, had billionaires going out and saying that she’s wonderful. They thought that was the right approach. I did not think that was the approach, and I was public about that.” He pauses, and not for effect: it’s hard to relive November 2024. “But my voice did not carry,” he says.Sanders started his political life in 1981, when he was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont. His brother, Larry, is 90 and lives in Oxfordshire. He stood as a Green candidate in David Cameron’s old parliamentary seat in 2016. In a speech that year, supporting Sanders as the Democratic nominee, Larry gave a brief portrait of their parents. “Eli Sanders and Dorothy Wexford Sanders. They did not have easy lives, and they died young,” he said. Dorothy was born in New York, to Jewish immigrant parents fleeing Russian pogroms. Eli arrived in the US in 1921, most of his family remaining in what is now Poland and what was then Austrian Galicia, to be “wiped out by Hitler,” Sanders has said in the past. Eli worried constantly about providing for his family and both he and Dorothy were political, Larry said in the speech: “They loved the New Deal of Franklin D Roosevelt, and would be especially proud that Bernard is renewing that vision.”View image in fullscreenSanders’ charge to the Democrats now is twofold. “Their weakness is, I think, that their credibility is now quite low. And they don’t have much of a message for working people, other than to say Trump is dangerous. I think that’s just not enough.” He point blank refuses to get into Trump’s administration – its excesses, surprises, non-surprises, without first walking through everything that was already wrong with the US. “What the Democrats have to absolutely make clear is this: we’re going to take on the billionaire class. They’re going to start paying their fair share of taxes. We’re going to have healthcare for all people as a human right. We’re going to have a strong childcare system that every American can afford. We’re going to make public colleges and universities tuition-free. We’re going to create millions of jobs transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel. We’re going to build housing – boy, housing is like it is here, just a huge crisis. We’re going to build millions of units of low-income and affordable housing. Do Democrats say that? No.”That Sanders will not be drawn on every new Trump calumny, instead focusing on an economic reality that’s been worsening for decades, does help him keep on course. And it definitely doesn’t stop him giving Trump both barrels. “We don’t usually have presidents suing the media, threatening the media if they write bad stories about them. We don’t usually have presidents threatening to impeach judges. We don’t have presidents suing law firms. You add all that together, it is a movement for authoritarianism.” Is it worse than he predicted? I was thinking specifically about the extrajudicial detentions and deportations, students dragged off campus and held for weeks, perfectly legal migrants sent to El Salvador, when they weren’t even from there. “First time around, Trump was not as well organised. They’ve had four years to get their act together, so to speak. And that’s what this Project 2025 document was about.”Project 2025 was a document published by rightwing thinktank the Heritage Foundation in 2024, offering a terrifying vision for a second Trump term. An outright proposal to dismantle the US government, it was a roadmap to crackdown on immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, abortion rights – as well as being against action on the climate crisis and against vaccines. If it looked like a blueprint for The Handmaid’s Tale and The Road combined, none of the alarm last year could ever have encompassed the reality that would come. Among many other things, the Trump administration would go on to deport people without due process, and then ignore a supreme court ruling that an 18th-century wartime declaration about “alien enemies” was not a proper legal instrument.I ask a question about who funds the Heritage Foundation – as it keeps all donations secret, which raises questions about whose interests Project 2025 is really serving. His reply is impatient: “It doesn’t matter who it is they have. There’s no lack of well-paid, right-wing consultants and intellectuals who can move this country to an oligarchic authoritarian society.” His tone is clear – stop getting lost in detail, stop looking for hidden connections, stop messing around and start fighting.“One of the frightening aspects of what’s going on is the degree to which the establishment-type folks have caved in, and so quickly,” he says. “That was much less the case, during Trump’s first term.” He mentions Jeff Bezos, “who one had assumed was kind of a moderate Democrat”, losing his editorial board because they were going to endorse Kamala Harris. “Same thing in the Los Angeles Times. When you have ABC agreeing to a settlement with Trump; the bogus lawsuit against CBS that Paramount are negotiating right now. When you have major, billion-dollar law firms saying, ‘OK, we plead guilty to having clients who went to court against you and your friends, that was a terrible crime, we’re going to give you millions of dollars.’ Harvard has buckled up a little bit and appears not to be caving in, but a lot of universities have. None of this was the case eight years ago. They are creating the overall mentality that it will be dangerous to be strongly critical of Donald Trump.”View image in fullscreenIn other areas, money is talking so loudly in politics that it’s all you can hear. Sanders has used Gaza as an example when he says that politicians are afraid to speak out on Israel’s actions in case Super Pacs – which can put forward unlimited amounts of money for a candidate – will penalise them at the next election. Today, he says it’s not just Gaza, but a host of other issues. “If you say, ‘Do you really think it’s a good idea to cut Medicaid and give tax breaks to billionaires? Do you really think that climate change is a hoax?” there will be a number, not a majority, but a number of Republicans who would say: ‘No. But if I stand up and vote ‘no’, the next day, Elon Musk would say, “All right, you are going to be primaried [a candidate will be fielded against you], and Trump will support your opponent. I will put unlimited sums of money to elect your opponent.”’ Good luck to you.’”While that pattern is undoubtedly visible across many issues, the example of Gaza is particularly stark – with groups such as Aipac, funded by pro-Israel billionaires, putting tens of millions of dollars against congressional candidates, mainly Democrats, that it did not deem to be sufficiently supportive of Israel in the run-up to 2024. As the atrocities in Gaza leave many in civil society dumbfounded, what is the long game here, I ask. “That’s a difficult question, and I don’t know the answer. I will tell you that the United States has had a long-term relationship with Israel, and there are many people who have intellectually chosen not to understand that Netanyahu does not represent the Israel of 20 years ago. The moderate democratic society is now controlled by right-wing racist extremists who have done, and are doing today, absolutely horrific things to the Palestinian people in violation of American law and international law. They refuse to recognise that.” In Dublin, he was heckled for not using the word genocide, and some US progressives were dismayed, two years ago, when he didn’t call for an immediate ceasefire. He speaks out now, choosing his words carefully; he’s not on the fence.Since the end of March, Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (he always calls her that, never AOC), have been holding campaign rallies all over the US from Arizona to Utah. They are deliberately not skipping the diehard Democratic states – but have been more surprised by the numbers they’ve been getting in red states. “This is not a campaign. This is a political rally, and I think the numbers are almost unprecedented. Large numbers of people, including in conservative areas, do not want to see oligarchy in America, do not want to see authoritarianism, do not want to see massive tax breaks for the rich and cuts to the programmes that working-class people desperately need.” Sure, he and AOC sometimes disagree, “my wife and I disagree on issues! But Alexandria, I think, comes pretty much from where I come from.”View image in fullscreenHe has hope for the future, too. There are a couple of dozen people in the house Progressive Caucus – a 98-strong group of the more left-wing members of the Democratic party in Congress – that are “strong progressives”, he says. “Alexandria is maybe one of the most articulate and charismatic, but there are others there as well.” Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib to name a few.Sanders is clear that he and Ocasio-Cortez are not trying to start a third political party. Instead, they’re “trying to build a grassroots movement of working-class people and young people … If you’re seeing candidates now arising who are progressive, that’s down to a lot of the work that we are doing for the 2026 midterms.”Sanders in person is very much as he is in his book, It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, in which he lays out some principles, among them, “wars and excessive military budgets are not good”; “carbon emissions are not good”; “racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia are not good”; “exploiting workers is not good”. It’s really the sight of him igniting a crowd that’s so hopeful, which holds for him, too – he keeps his optimism because he has the “fortune of being able to go around the country and speak to large numbers of wonderful people”. The message doesn’t change, though – it doesn’t have to be new: it just has to be true.As he leaves to make his way upstairs to the photography studio, he strides on ahead, his wife Jane O’Meara Sanders, an activist herself, making small talk with me in his wake. It’s not that he’s performing vigour in an era where politicians’ ages are relentlessly analysed. It’s just his manner – all this urgent change should have happened yesterday. More
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‘They are in shock’: Indian students fear Trump has ended their American dream
by Evelyn Reynolds 3 June 2025, 23:01
For weeks, Subash Devatwal’s phone has not stopped ringing. Some of the calls have been from distressed students, at other times it is their panicked parents, but all have the same question – is their dream of studying in the US still possible?Devatwal runs an education consultancy in Ahmedabad, the main city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It is one of thousands of such organisations that exist across the country, helping Indian students achieve what many consider to be the ultimate symbol of success: getting into an American university.It has long been a booming business for Devatwal. Families in India will often invest their entire life savings to send their children to study in the US and last year there were more than 330,000 Indians enrolled at American universities, more than any other foreign nationality, overtaking Chinese students in numbers for the first time in years.But this year the situation looks drastically different. As Donald Trump’s administration has taken aim at international students – first implementing draconian screening measures over political views and then last week ordering all US embassies globally to indefinitely pause all student visa interviews – many Indian students and their families have been left in limbo.Trump’s unilateral decision to block Harvard University from admitting international students, which was later blocked by the courts, also caused widespread panic and stoked fears that foreign students at other universities could get caught in the president’s crosshairs.“The students are in shock. Most of them spend several years preparing to study in the US,” said Devatwal. He said many of his clients were now hesitant to pursue a US degree, given the high levels of turmoil and uncertainty following the Trump administration’s new policies. Indian students can expect to pay between $40,000 to $80,000 (£29,500 to £59,000) a year on tuition alone to study in the US.In previous years, Devatwal’s organisation sent more than 100 students to American universities but this year he said the number had dropped to about 10. Instead, families were shifting their focus to the UK and other European countries. A recent analysis by the Hindu newspaper estimated a 28% drop in Indian students going to the US in 2025.View image in fullscreen“Families contribute their savings, take out loans from banks and borrow from relatives, all in the hope that the student will secure a good job abroad, repay the debt, and build a promising future,” said Devatwal. “In such uncertain circumstances, parents are understandably reluctant to let their children take such a risky path.”Brijesh Patel, 50, a textile trader in Surat, Gujarat, said he had been saving money for over a decade to make sure his son could go to a US university, including selling his wife’s jewellery and borrowing money from relatives.“Everyone in the family wanted our son to go to the US for his studies and make something good of his life,” said Patel. His 21-year-old son, who he asked not to be named for fear of retribution by the US authorities, had secured a place at two American universities for his master’s degree and Patel had already paid 700,000 rupees (£6,000) to consultancies who helped with the applications.But amid the turmoil under Trump, Patel said his son was being advised not to even apply for his student visa, due to the uncertainty and high probability of rejection. “We simply can’t take that risk. If our son goes now and something goes wrong, we won’t be able to save that kind of money again,” he said.However, Patel said he was not willing to give up on the family dream just yet. “I am an optimist, and my son is willing to wait a year,” he said. “We’re hoping that things improve by then. It’s not just my son who will be living the American dream, it’s all of us: my wife, our relatives and our neighbours. I’ve struggled my whole life – I don’t want my son to face the same struggles here in India.”The fear among prospective and current students was palpable. Several Indian students studying in the US declined to speak to the Guardian, fearing it could jeopardise their visas.In India, a student selected in December to be one of this year’s Fulbright-Nehru doctoral fellows – a highly competitive scholarship that pays for the brightest students to study abroad at US universities as part of their PhD thesis – said the applications of their entire cohort had recently been demoted back to “semi-finalists”.The student, who asked to remain anonymous over fears it would affect their application, said they had invitation letters from top Ivy League universities for the fellowship, which is considered one of the most prestigious scholarships in the US, but now everything was up in the air. “We are supposed to start in October and our orientation was scheduled for May, all the flights and hotels were even booked, but then it all got cancelled. Now we’ve been informed all our applications are under review by the Trump administration,” said the student.They said it had caused “huge panic and anxiety” among those accepted. “I know a lot of people are going back through their social media, deleting things and doing a lot of self-censoring.”Piyush Bhartiya, a co-founder of the educational technology company AdmitKard, said many parents who had been set on sending their children to the US were rethinking their plans. He cited one example of a student who had been admitted to New York University for the coming year but was instead planning to go to the London School of Economics after the US visa interviews were paused.Bhartiya said Indian students primarily went to the US to study Stem subjects – science, technology, engineering and maths – and so the focus had shifted to other countries strong in these areas.“Germany is the main country where students are shifting to for Stem subjects,” he said. “Other countries like Ireland, France, the Netherlands, which are also gaining substantial interest in the students. At the undergraduate level, the Middle East has also seen a lot of gain in interest given parents feel that it is close by and safer and given the current political environment they may want their kids closer to the home.”Among the Indian students forced to abandon their plans is Nihar Gokhale, 36. He had a fully funded offer for a PhD at a private university in Massachusetts, but recently received a letter saying the funding was being withdrawn, as the university faced issues under the Trump administration.“It was quite shocking. I spoke to people at the university, and they admitted it was an exceptional situation for them too,” said Gokhale.Without the funding, the US was financially “out of the question” and he said he had an offer from the UK he now intended to take up.“For at least the next three or four years, I’m not considering the US at all,” he said. More
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Are Lindsey Graham’s contortions about to prod Trump into Russia sanctions?
by Evelyn Reynolds 3 June 2025, 17:47
Has Lindsey Graham been playing the long game with Donald Trump?Graham, who has calibrated his pro-Ukraine support since the inauguration to stay in the US president’s orbit, has said he expects this week that the Senate will begin moving his Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025, a bill that he says would impose “bone-breaking sanctions” on Vladimir Putin and a 500% tariff on goods imported from countries that buy Russian oil and other goods, potentially targeting China and India.The fate of the bill still depends on whether Trump gives the go-ahead, according to congressional insiders. But Trump’s growing frustration with Putin has emboldened some in the GOP to begin speaking out on the conflict again – with the notoriously flexible Graham leading the charge for tougher sanctions on the Kremlin. Is it nearing a critical mass moment in Congress – a body that has largely abdicated its role in foreign policy since Trump’s inauguration?“I hope so, because it is the right action to take,” said Don Bacon, a Republican House representative who has criticised the White House on its Ukraine policy. “But it is risky to speak for others. I know where I stand. The Senate has an overwhelming majority in support of sanctions and we should move out. It is in our national security interests that Russia fails here and it should be obvious that Putin doesn’t want peace, but wants dominance over Ukraine.”Trump’s shift on Russia has come as his efforts to negotiate a speedy ceasefire have failed. Talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul on Monday led to little progress, and continued outreach from his personal envoy, Steve Witkoff, to the Kremlin has not brought concessions from Vladimir Putin. A leaked draft of Russia’s demands at the negotiations depicted a capitulation: withdrawal from Ukrainian territory claimed by Russia, no Nato membership for Ukraine, caps on the size of the country’s military.Yet it has specifically been the bombardment of cities that has upset Trump, proving once again that Putin has managed to be his own worst enemy when it comes to negotiations.“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him,” Trump said last week, repeating part of the comments in public. “He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever.”As the White House looks for means to increase pressure on Russia and its enablers like China, the bill backed by Graham and the Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal has become a convenient tool to do just that. One person in GOP circles said that the White House was considering letting Republicans “vote their conscience” – in effect allowing Congress to support the bill without facing blowback from the Trump administration.But that would involve a final decision by the White House, and Trump has still not openly backed new sanctions as more than just a contingency.“Despite support of 82 or so senators, the bill can’t move without support in the House, and the speaker of the House won’t move it without the president’s support,” said Kori Schake of the American Enterprise Institute. “And it’s not clear the president has really decided Putin’s the impediment to a ceasefire. Additionally, the Senate will be consumed with passing the reconciliation bill for the next few weeks.”But as of Tuesday, the leadership appeared ready to move forward.The weather vane for Trump’s gusty foreign policy on Ukraine has been Graham, a veteran political survivor who has built a strong relationship with the president through relentless flattery and has tailored his views to match Trump’s when convenient. On Ukraine, he has been so bendable that he could not be broken.“They play a very careful game because they don’t want to upset their relationship with the big guy,” said one person knowledgable about discussions among congressional Republicans. “At the same time, I do think his heart and his head is in the right place. Just really not quite his own courage.”Graham’s interventions have been meaningful. He was instrumental in pushing the minerals deal that Ukraine signed with the US as a way to get Trump’s buy-in for its defense. Over a game of golf, he pitched Trump on the “trillions” in mineral wealth in Ukraine and later showed him a map (Trump said he wanted “half” according to one account).At the same time, he publicly fumed about Volodymyr Zelenskyy following the disastrous White House meeting of late February when Trump and JD Vance argued with the wartime leader. “I don’t know if we can ever do business with Zelenskyy again,” Graham said, also suggesting that the Ukrainian leader should resign. (Zelenskyy shot back later that he was ready to offer him citizenship if he wanted to discuss who should lead Ukraine).Graham’s latitude has stunned some of his former colleagues. A former colleague who had worked with Graham on Ukraine policy said that his remarks about Zelenskyy had given him “whiplash”. Asked if Graham had a coherent strategy to influence Trump, the person said: “Graham’s strategy is to put Graham first.”“I think that he understands the big game,” said another person familiar with discussions over the bill. “He would like the policy to be sound, which means [putting sanctions] on the Kremlin. But he values his relationship with the president and that that trumps the first calculation. So if he really feels the president’s against, he’s not going to go for it.”Now, with Trump signaling greater readiness for sanctions, Graham has traveled to Kyiv to meet with Zelenskyy (all smiles) and to Brussels, where he and the EU president, Ursula von der Leyen, discussed potential EU and US sanctions packages to turn up the pressure on Moscow.“Senator Graham deserves a lot of credit for making the case for tougher pressure on the Kremlin,” said John Hardie, the Russia program deputy director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative thinktank. “Carrots clearly haven’t worked, so it’s time to start using some sticks, including by going after Russia’s oil revenue. This economic pressure should be paired with sustained military assistance for Ukraine.”Hardie and others noted that Trump could increase pressure on Russia without the Senate bill.“If President Trump were to decide to go the pressure route, he already has the tools at his disposal to do so,” said Hardie. “For example, he could immediately designate the rest of Russia’s shadow fleet and other non-western entities facilitating Russian oil exports and could join with G7 partners in lowering the G7 oil price cap.”And even if the sanctions are passed, they will ultimately rely on Trump’s decision to enforce them.“The Senate is prepared either way,” Graham wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week. “I have coordinated with the White House on the Russia sanctions bill since its inception. The bill would put Russia on a trade island, slapping 500% tariffs on any country that buys Moscow’s energy products. The consequences of its barbaric invasion must be made real to those that prop it up. If China or India stopped buying cheap oil, Mr Putin’s war machine would grind to a halt.” More
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Trump extendss sympathy after Biden cancer diagnosis – but it doesn’t last long
by Evelyn Reynolds 3 June 2025, 13:00
After Joe Biden revealed his cancer diagnosis, Donald Trump offered an uncharacteristically empathetic and simple response.“Melania and I are saddened to hear about Joe Biden’s recent medical diagnosis. We extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family, and we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery,” the president wrote on social media.But the compassion didn’t last long.Trump soon reverted to type, dabbling in a burgeoning right-wing conspiracy theory about Biden’s health and comparing the former president, who has stage four prostate cancer, to a corpse, as Trump’s hangers-on and acolytes used the diagnosis to attack Biden and his wife.Trump posted his well-wishing message on 18 May, after Biden’s office announced the 82-year-old had been diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.The president’s tone changed quickly, however. Trump spent Memorial Day – which the Department of Defense describes as being intended to “honor all those who died in service to the US during peacetime and war”, attacking his one time rival and his time in office.“Happy Memorial Day to all,” the president wrote on Truth Social.“Including the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country through warped radical left minds, who allowed 21,000,000 million people to illegally enter our country, many of them being criminals and the mentally insane, through an open border that only an incompetent president would approve, and through judges who are on a mission to keep murderers, drug dealers, rapists, gang members, and released prisoners from all over the world, in our country so they can rob, murder, and rape again – all protected by these USA hating judges who suffer from an ideology that is sick, and very dangerous for our country.”It was clear that Trump’s “warmest and best wishes” to Biden had been firmly retracted, and that became even more transparent as Trump went on to promote an emerging, fact-free, theory that Biden hid the cancer diagnosis while in office.“I’m surprised that the public wasn’t notified a long time ago because to get to stage nine, that’s a long time,” Trump said – seemingly conflating the Gleason score, which measures how cancerous cells look compared with normal cells, with Biden’s stage four cancer.Trump’s comments hinted at the growing conspiracy theory about Biden’s alleged use of an “autopen” – a device which replicates a person’s signature – to sign legislation while in office. The president continued the theme when he suggested that Biden, while president, was taken advantage of by unnamed individuals who “knew he was cognitively impaired”.It has been a growing issue on the right. This week, Trump’s AI czar David Sacks speculated that Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator, “controlled the autopen during that administration”, in comments seized upon by the rightwing conspiracy theory Alex Jones, among others.That set the ball rolling. Trump twice posted about the pen, in one post he claimed that the alleged use of the autopen was “the Biggest Scandal in American History” as he suggested Biden was not of “sound mind”. On Thursday, the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt followed up in an official briefing, suggesting Jill Biden should “speak up about what she saw” about the health of her husband, who is said to be reviewing treatment options for the aggressive cancer that was discovered less than two weeks ago.Others in Trump’s orbit have also made unsavory comments, including Donald Trump Jr, who mocked Jill Biden over the diagnosis. Trump Jr posted on social media: “What I want to know is how did Dr Jill Biden miss stage five metastatic cancer or is this yet another coverup???”It was a message that neatly managed to combine the autopen theory with a callback to Republican mocking of Jill Biden, who holds a doctorate in education and is not a medical doctor.But for all the Republican group-think about Biden’s health, it was left to Trump himself to offer the bleakest take, reposting a message on Truth Social that read: “They stole the 2020 election and hijacked the country using a decrepit corpse as a frontman They used an autopen to start wars, steal from our treasury, and pardon their friends Arrest those responsible and charge them with TREASON.”In late April, as Trump approached 100 days in office, NBC News reported that Trump had posted or commented on Biden, or his family, at least 580 times since becoming president. With that little commitment, perhaps in hindsight it shouldn’t be surprising that a cancer diagnosis would not stop the commander-in-chief. More
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Philadelphia paper warns Fetterman to take Senate job seriously – ‘or step away’
by Evelyn Reynolds 2 June 2025, 20:27
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial board has issued a sharp rebuke of Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman in a new opinion piece, urging him to take his job “seriously” and writing that “it’s time for Fetterman to serve Pennsylvanians, or step away.”In a strongly worded piece published on Sunday, the editorial board of the Philadelphia Inquirer, which endorsed Fetterman during his 2022 Senate campaign, said the first-term Democrat “has missed more votes than nearly every other senator in the past two years” and “regularly skips committee hearings, cancels meetings, avoids the daily caucus lunches with colleagues, and rarely goes on the Senate floor”.The editorial board also wrote that six former Fetterman staffers told an Inquirer reporter that Fetterman was frequently absent or spent hours alone in his office, avoiding colleagues and meetings.“Being an elected official comes with public scrutiny,” the board wrote. “If Fetterman can’t handle the attention or perform his job, then in the best interest of the country and the nearly 13 million residents of Pennsylvania he represents, he should step aside.”“Being an elected representative is a privilege, not an entitlement,” it added. “Being a US senator is a serious job that requires full-time engagement.”Fetterman responded to the piece and allegations on Monday during a Fox News debate with Republican senator David McCormick.“For me, it’s very clear, it’s just part of like this weird – this weird smear,” Fetterman said. “The more kinds of, left kind of media continues to have these kinds of an attack, and it’s just part of a smear and that’s just not … it’s just not accurate.”He continued: “I’ve always been there, and for me, if I miss some of those votes, I’ve made 90% of them, and we all know those votes that I’ve missed were on Monday. Those are travel days and I have three young kids and … those are throwaway procedural votes that … they were never determined if they were important. That’s a choice that I made.”Fetterman also reportedly claimed senators Bernie Sanders and Patty Murray had missed more votes than he has.“Why aren’t the left media yelling and demanding them and claiming they’re not doing their job?” Fetterman said.In response, a spokesperson for Murray told Politico that most of her missed votes occurred during a vote-a-rama when her husband was hospitalized.A spokesperson for Sanders did not immediately respond to request for comment from Politico, but the outlet pointed out that according to data from GovTrack.us, a government transparency site, Sanders has missed 836 of 6,226 rollcall votes since 1991, or about 13.4%. Murray has missed 290 of 11,106 rollcall votes since 1993, or roughly 2.6%.By comparison, Politico reported that Fetterman has missed 174 of 961 rollcall votes, approximately 18.1%, in his first term, according to GovTrack.us.The editorial on Sunday comes as last month, New York magazine published an article on Fetterman which quoted several former and current Fetterman staffers who expressed concerns about the Senator’s mental and physical health, and his behavior.In response, Fetterman dismissed the piece, calling it “a one-source story, with a couple anonymous sources” and labeling it a “hit piece from a very left publication”. More

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Trump extendss sympathy after Biden cancer diagnosis – but it doesn’t last long

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