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National Mass Mobilization to Fight Back Against Trump & Musk
Saturday, April 5, 2025
1:00 P.M. - 3:00 P.M.
Civic Center Plaza
335 McAllister Street
San Francisco, CA
Hands Off!
San Francisco Fights Back!
Join INDIVISIBLE SF, our friends at 50501, and many other organizations for a national Mass Mobilization on April 5.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk think this country belongs to them. San Francisco is fighting back!
They're taking everything they can get their hands on—our health care, our data, our jobs, our services—and daring the world to stop them. This is a crisis, and the time to act is now.
On Saturday, April 5th, we're taking to the streets to fight back with a clear message: Hands off!
This mass mobilization day is our message to the world that we do not consent to the destruction of our government and our economy for the benefit of Trump and his billionaire allies. Alongside Americans across the country, we are marching, rallying, and protesting to demand a stop the chaos and build an opposition movement against the looting of our country.
A core principle behind all Hands Off! events is a commitment to nonviolent action. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values.
Check out handsoff2025.com for more information.
HandsOff Mobilize link here:
https://www.mobilize.us/handsoff/event/764837/
Indivisible Mobilize link here:
https://www.mobilize.us/indivisible/event/764736/
Source:: https://www.mobilize.us/handsoff/event/764837/
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How Trump Got Rich
It had nothing to do with brains!
Some excerpts from Wikipedia:
Donald John Trump was born on June 14, 1946, at Jamaica Hospital in the New York City borough of Queens, the fourth child of Fred Trump and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump. He is of German and Scottish descent. He grew up with his older siblings, Maryanne, Fred Jr., and Elizabeth, and his younger brother, Robert, in a mansion in the Jamaica Estates neighborhood of Queens. Fred Trump paid his children each about $20,000 a year, equivalent to $265,000 a year in 2024. Trump was a millionaire at age eight by contemporary standards. Trump attended the private Kew-Forest School through seventh grade.
He was a difficult child and showed an early interest in his father’s business. His father enrolled him in New York Military Academy, a private boarding school, to complete secondary school. Trump considered a show business career but instead in 1964 enrolled at Fordham University. Two years later, he transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in May 1968 with a Bachelor of Science in economics.
He was exempted from the draft during the Vietnam War due to a claim of bone spurs in his heels. …Starting in 1968, Trump was employed at his father’s real estate company, Trump Management, which owned racially segregated middle-class rental housing in New York City’s outer boroughs.
In 1971, his father made him president of the company and he began using the Trump Organization as an umbrella brand. Roy Cohn was Trump’s fixer, lawyer, and mentor for 13 years in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1973, Cohn helped Trump countersue the U.S. government for $100 million (equivalent to $708 million in 2024) over its charges that Trump’s properties had racially discriminatory practices. Trump’s counterclaims were dismissed, and the government’s case was settled with the Trumps signing a consent decree agreeing to desegregate; four years later, Trumps again faced the courts when they were found in contempt of the decree.
Before age thirty, he showed his propensity for litigation, no matter the outcome and cost; even when he lost, he described the case as a win. Helping Trump projects, Cohn was a consigliere whose Mafia connections controlled construction unions. Cohn introduced political consultant Roger Stone to Trump, who enlisted Stone’s services to deal with the federal government.
Between 1991 and 2009, he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for six of his businesses: the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, the casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and the Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts company.
In 1992, Trump, his siblings Maryanne, Elizabeth, and Robert, and his cousin John W. Walter, each with a 20 percent share, formed All County Building Supply & Maintenance Corp. The company had no offices and is alleged to have been a shell company for paying the vendors providing services and supplies for Trump’s rental units, then billing those services and supplies to Trump Management with markups of 20–50 percent and more.
The owners shared the proceeds generated by the markups. The increased costs were used to get state approval for increasing the rents of his rent-stabilized units. …Trump has said he began his career with “a small loan of a million dollars” from his father and that he had to pay it back with interest.
He borrowed at least $60 million from his father, largely did not repay the loans, and received another $413 million (2018 equivalent, adjusted for inflation) from his father’s company.
Posing as a Trump Organization official named “John Barron,” Trump called journalist Jonathan Greenberg in 1984, trying to get a higher ranking on the Forbes 400 list of wealthy Americans. Trump self-reported his net worth over a wide range: from a low of minus $900 million in 1990, to a high of $10 billion in 2015. In 2024, Forbes estimated his net worth at $2.3 billion and ranked him the 1,438th wealthiest person in the world.
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We need a united, independent, democratically organized mass movement for peace, justice and equality in solidarity with similar movements worldwide if we are to survive the death agony of capitalism and its inevitable descent into fascism and barbarism before it destroys the world altogether!
—Bonnie Weinstein
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Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky
In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries.
Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin:
“To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?”
Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine.
A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism.
To sign the online petition at freeboris.info
—Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024
https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine.
Petition in Support of Boris Kagarlitsky
We, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison.
Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles.
The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested.
On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release.
The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison.
The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences.
There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering.
Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course.
We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally.
We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest.
Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitsky
https://freeboris.info
The petition is also available on Change.org
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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1) Israel’s Perfect Storm: Fighting Enemies Abroad and Each Other at Home
For months, Israelis put aside their deep rifts to fight a common enemy. Now, amid a renewed government push for power, they are battling one another.
By Patrick Kingsley, Reporting from Jerusalem, March 24, 2025
Eighteen months ago, in the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel, Israelis suspended their internal conflicts to form a united military front against a shared external threat.
Now, that semblance of common cause has been cast aside. Beyond its borders, Israel has resumed fighting on four fronts — in Gaza, Lebanon, the occupied West Bank and Yemen. And internally, Israel’s citizens have returned to the bitter domestic feuds that once again, pose existential questions about their country’s future.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition has revived its contentious efforts, frozen after the attack in 2023, to expand its control over other branches of government. The moves have set off mass protests after the government tried to fire the head of Israel’s domestic intelligence service as well as the attorney general — two powerful gatekeepers who are overseeing investigations into both Mr. Netanyahu and his aides.
This week, Parliament will vote on the government’s plan to give itself greater control over the selection of justices on the Supreme Court, an institution that has long thwarted the ambitions of Mr. Netanyahu’s ultranationalist and religiously conservative allies.
“The foundations of the state are shaking,” Ehud Olmert, a former Israeli prime minister, said in an interview. “In Israel, Netanyahu is ready to sacrifice everything for his survival and we are closer to a civil war than people realize. In Gaza, we have returned to fighting — and for what? And overseas, I never remember such hatred, such opposition, to the state of Israel.”
To Mr. Netanyahu and his supporters, the moves are a legitimate effort to rein in unelected bureaucrats and judicial officials who have stymied the will of an elected government. “The leftist Deep State weaponizes the justice system to thwart the people’s will,” Mr. Netanyahu wrote on social media last week.
But to his critics, Mr. Netanyahu’s decisions constitute, at best, a huge conflict of interest for a prime minister currently standing trial for corruption. At worst, they are an attempted putsch against the judicial branches of government.
Mr. Netanyahu has further spurred domestic anger by breaking the cease-fire with Hamas in Gaza; the return to war endangers not only Palestinians but up to 60 Israeli hostages still held in the territory. In returning to war, Mr. Netanyahu has also drawn retaliation from Hamas’s allies in Lebanon and Yemen. And he has tested the patience and resolve of tens of thousands of exhausted military reservists who will be required to sustain what was already Israel’s longest war.
The public anger is exacerbated by the impression that Mr. Netanyahu has benefited politically from the return to war, which has helped shore up his fragile coalition government.
A far-right faction, Jewish Power, quit the government at the outset of a cease-fire in January, which raised the possibility that the war might end with Hamas still in charge of Gaza.
Hours after Israel restarted strikes on Gaza last Tuesday, killing hundreds of Palestinians, the party’s leader, Itamar Ben-Gvir, praised the move and returned his group to the government, bolstering Mr. Netanyahu's majority in Parliament. That paves the way for the party to vote in favor of a new national budget whose passage by the end of the month is necessary to prevent the government’s collapse.
Mr. Ben-Gvir, who now oversees the police, is also one of the strongest supporters of the move to sack Ronen Bar, the head of the domestic intelligence service, and Gali Baharav-Miara, the attorney general. Both are considered to be significant checks on the far-right leader who was barred from serving in the Israeli military because of his extreme views and who has several convictions for incitement to racism and support for a terrorist group.
Analysts are divided about whether Mr. Netanyahu intends to continue endlessly with his various moves — both on the battlefield in Gaza and against his critics at home.
Some think he could soften some of his stances after the budget votes at the end of March, reducing his reliance on Mr. Ben-Gvir. A major litmus test is expected on April 8, when the Supreme Court is scheduled to rule on the legality of Mr. Bar’s firing. Mr. Netanyahu has hinted that he may ignore the ruling, and his response will indicate how far he is willing to defy the constitutional order.
“I don’t see him saying ‘no’ to the Supreme Court,” said Nadav Shtrauchler, a former adviser to Mr. Netanyahu, adding, “In the vast majority of cases, Netanyahu ends up being conservative.” But even if the Israeli leader steps back from the brink, his critics say that Mr. Netanyahu has already caused irreparable damage by breaking so many norms to reach this point.
Mr. Olmert, the former prime minister, was also investigated for corruption while in office, and was ultimately convicted and jailed. But he resigned his post before the case reached trial, and his government never tried to fire the attorney general who oversaw the investigation.
“What Netanyahu is doing would have been unthinkable,” Mr. Olmert said.
Myra Noveck contributed reporting.
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2) After a Brief Return Home, Palestinians Are Displaced Once Again
The Israeli military’s renewed drive into Gaza has pushed families to flee neighborhoods they had only recently returned to during a cease-fire.
By Hiba Yazbek and Bilal Shbair, Reporting from Jerusalem and Khan Younis, Gaza, March 24, 2025
Palestinians fleeing the north of Gaza Strip with their belongings to the center of Gaza City. Credit...Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
As the Israeli military has expanded its offensive in the Gaza Strip, taking control of more territory in parts of the south and north and issuing new evacuation orders, many people who had only recently returned to their homes have been forcibly displaced once again.
Israel’s drive into the southern city of Rafah pushed thousands of families from the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood, near the border with Egypt, to flee on foot on Sunday before Israeli troops completely encircled the area by the afternoon.
For many, the new round of mass displacement brought back painful memories of the earlier days of the war in Gaza. Residents of Tal al-Sultan and nearby areas said they had to walk on a specific route amid bombardment, carrying very few belongings, during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast during daytime.
Most of those who fled on Sunday walked several miles north to the city of Khan Younis, where they were left without shelter because of a severe shortage of basic necessities and tents, the Rafah local government, which includes Tal al-Sultan, said in a statement.
The Israeli military renewed its offensive in Gaza last week after an impasse in talks to extend a fragile, temporary cease-fire with Hamas that went into effect in mid-January. That truce was intended to be the first of three phases leading to the end of a war that began with the Hamas-led assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, but the second phrase has been delayed indefinitely.
Gaza’s health ministry said on Monday that 61 people were killed in Israeli bombardments over the past day, a day after it said the death toll in the enclave had surpassed 50,000 since the war began almost 18 months ago. The ministry’s figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
The Israeli military said in a statement on Sunday that its troops had killed several fighters in Tal al-Sultan and raided a site it said was used as a Hamas command and control center. It did not provide evidence of its claims, which could not be independently verified.
On Monday, Al Jazeera reported that Hussam Shabat, a journalist who contributed to its coverage of the war, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his car in northern Gaza. At least 208 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, according to the Gaza government press office. The Israeli military said it was looking into the report.
The Palestinian civil defense in Gaza said on Sunday that Israel’s siege of Tal al-Sultan had endangered the lives of nearly 50,000 people living there, with some either unable or unwilling to flee. Some residents, after months of repeated displacement, had only recently been able to return to their homes, or what was left of them, during the short-lived cease-fire.
“We left with the clothes on our backs under fire and bombardment,” said Mustafa Jabr, 36, after walking for nearly six hours along a sandy route with his family from their home in Tal al-Sultan on Sunday morning. “It was a very surprising and intense attack,” he said from a friend’s house in southern Khan Younis, where the family was now sheltering.
Mr. Jabr said that before encircling the neighborhood, Israeli vehicles had been regularly patrolling the area around the Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow strip of Gaza along the border with Egypt and one of the main sticking points in the cease-fire talks. But at dawn on Sunday, residents were jolted up by “sudden bombardment,” before fliers ordering people to evacuate along a specified route began raining down, he said.
“So we headed north under a hail of tank shelling and quadcopter fire that wounded dozens,” said Mr. Jabr. “Many old people were abandoned along the route because they were too weak to keep walking on the sand,” he said, adding, “The scenes I saw on the way were horrific, there were so many children and old people and disabled people.”
Mr. Jabr’s family was now among an increasing number of families in Gaza who were once again wondering when they would be able to return to their homes.
Ahmad and Faten al-Sayyed also fled on Sunday, walking with their four children to a relative’s tent in western Khan Younis. They had recently returned to their damaged home in Rafah after nine months of sheltering in a tent in Khan Younis, only to find themselves back in another tent less than a month later.
“I thought the second phase of negotiations would begin while we were back in our home in Rafah,” said Mr. al-Sayyed.
Although occasional gunfire was heard in Rafah in recent days, Mr. al-Sayyed said that he was shocked when Israeli troops advanced into the area. “We never imagined it would escalate into a full siege and military operation,” he said.
As soon as the evacuation orders were issued, Mr. al-Sayyed told his children to pack two outfits each in their school bags.
Some on the route were carrying terrified, crying children, while others clutched whatever belongings they could. Most of the adults, observing Ramadan, neither ate nor drank anything along the way.
The elderly and ill, some in wheelchairs, struggled to keep up as drones “followed us, hovering above, moving right and left, watching every step,” said Mr. al-Sayyed.
The crowd found itself trapped for nearly an hour and a half after Israeli forces blocked the road, while people pleaded with the Red Cross to get them to safety.
“We could hear bulldozers and occasional gunfire,” Mr. al-Sayyed recalled. “Later, I saw how they had cleared paths for people to pass through, built mounds of sand around the area, set up fences and cameras, and positioned soldiers on top of those sand barriers,” he added, referring to Israeli troops.
They were then instructed to continue walking toward a United Nations warehouse, where an Israeli tank stopped them again and troops told everyone to sit on the ground.
“After nearly 20 minutes, the soldiers asked the women and children to sit on the right side of the street, while the men were ordered to sit on the left side,” said Mr. al-Sayyed. “People were terrified and their eyes were filled with fear,” he said, adding: “Mothers were crying for their grown sons, not wanting to be separated from them, fearing that they would be killed or arrested.”
Eventually, it was Mr. al-Sayyed’s turn to be searched by the soldiers. He said he was ordered to strip down and was made to remain seated, blindfolded, for more than an hour. He was then released and caught up with his wife and children.
“All I could hear was crying, and all I could see were scared faces,” said Ms. al-Sayyed.
“My son Mohammed was very terrified when he saw a dead boy,” she added. “He just collapsed onto the sand, screaming in a completely unhinged way, and all I could do was cry along with him.”
Iyad Abuheweila contributed reporting from Cairo.
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3) Columbia’s Capitulation Will Hurt Us All
By Jonathan R. Cole, March 24, 2025
Dr. Cole is a professor of the university at Columbia and a former provost and dean of faculties.
Kyle Myles for The New York Times
When most Americans think about our great universities, they probably don’t think about the origins of lasers, FM radio or bar codes; they don’t think about the Google algorithm, the invention of the computer and the iPhone, cures for childhood leukemia, the Pap smear, scientific agriculture or the discovery of mRNA vaccines. They almost certainly don’t think about the CRISPR technology that may lead to cures of many genetic-based diseases. And they definitely don’t think about the electric toothbrush, Gatorade, the Heimlich maneuver or Viagra.
Yet all these discoveries and inventions — and tens of thousands more — have their origins at American public and private research universities. For over a half century, these institutions have housed the best and most innovative sites of learning in the world. During World War II, university researchers, often at government-sponsored laboratories, developed enhanced radar technology, found a way to mass-produce penicillin, developed the jet engine and mastered techniques for blood plasma transfusions. Each of these discoveries helped the Allies defeat authoritarian aggression.
Today, the pre-eminence of the American research university is under severe attack from the federal government. It must be defended.
Again and again, basic research has led to fantastically lucrative private development. Stanford graduates spawned Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Instagram, Netflix and a thousand more businesses. The University of California, Berkeley, produced companies, including many A.I. startups, that are developing better medical treatment for Americans. M.I.T., Harvard, Arizona State, the University of Wisconsin and the University of Texas, among others, have become the origin for many private enterprises supporting the American economy.
The Trump administration has sought to impose its will on higher education by withdrawing more than a billion dollars of funding from some universities and threatening others with similar punishment. It has sought to deport student protesters who are legal residents. All this represents a fundamental assault on the values and functioning of our university system. Columbia and Johns Hopkins, founded in 1876 and America’s first true research university, may be only the first to feel the effects of this needless use of a sledgehammer.
Columbia’s capitulation last week to the Trump administration, in which it agreed to a number of demands in order to restore federal funding, obliterates its leadership in defending free inquiry. If Columbia allows authoritarian-minded leaders to dictate what we can teach, then the federal government will dictate what we can read, what books we may have in our libraries, what art we can display, what problems scientists can explore. Then, we are no longer a free university.
Most people think of universities in terms of undergraduate and professional education — of teaching and the transmission of knowledge, as well as football and basketball. This makes perfect sense. Teaching is higher education’s first calling, and it occurs at all levels at pre-eminent universities.
What has made our universities the greatest in the world, however, is not just the quality of our undergraduate education, but our ability to fulfill one of the central quests of modern life: the production of new knowledge through discoveries that change the world. The Nobel economist Robert Solow and others have estimated that such university-based discoveries are responsible for a large share of our nation’s productivity growth.
It is the United States — not Europe, Russia or China — that has dominated the last several waves of fundamental discovery, findings that have made us the wealthiest nation in the world. Since their inception, about 40 percent of Nobel Prizes have gone to Americans. And about 35 percent of all American Nobel laureates have been immigrants to the United States. This is but one small indicator of American research accomplishments. This leadership has strengthened our democracy.
The agreement between the federal government and our universities took hold during World War II. In 1944, when it became clear that the Allies would prevail, President Franklin Roosevelt asked his closest science adviser, Vannevar Bush, how the United States could advance its science and technology leadership after the war. It was a time when scientists were exhausted by their wartime work and many wanted to return to quieter lives at universities. But Bush, sharing the dying president’s belief in the need for a manifesto that would articulate both values and policy, set to work on what would become the policy document “Science: The Endless Frontier.”
As developed by Bush, the compact between the American government and the universities created the National Science Foundation and reorganized the National Institutes of Health. The central message of the compact was this: The United States would commit taxpayer dollars to fund research primarily through its universities, not through government-controlled laboratories. The universities would be given intellectual autonomy to conduct research deemed by peer scientists and engineers to be of the highest potential to advance the country. The government would not invade the space of free inquiry and academic freedom, because that would limit the ability of scientists to be fully creative.
By 1950, the model was largely adopted by Congress. Thus began American supremacy in scientific and technological discovery, as well as the economic and military dominance that has lasted for three-quarters of a century.
Recently, Arizona State University’s president, Michael Crow, one of the most innovative leaders in American higher education today, used the iPhone 16 as an example of universities’ unheralded contributions. Almost every part of the device, from the chips used to power it to the glass covering it — the culmination of thousands of discoveries — had their origins at research universities, mostly in the United States. Such contributions represent the invisible hand behind the creation of much American wealth. Now the Trump administration, for vindictive reasons, has placed that superiority and leadership under threat.
If we look over our shoulder, we can see China catching up to our investments in research and development. In the past quarter century, investments by China in higher education have become similar to those in the United States, and it has increased the building of new research-oriented universities to compete with us in STEM fields.
This is hardly the time to cripple our own universities. Apart from the competition with China, we are on the cusp of thousands of transformative discoveries, and each could be hurt by Mr. Trump’s actions. Here are a few competitive battles that we could easily lose: America as leader in the development of quantum computing; America as leader in the development of useful artificial intelligence and hydrogen and fusion power; America as leader in discovering cures for various forms of cancer and Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.
Maintaining a laboratory and preparing for discovery is not something you can easily turn on or off. If a lab has its funding suddenly taken away, it will shut down. If you cut off researchers working on a cure for, say, pancreatic cancer, the work that their lab has done may be irreparably damaged and the knowledge lost. Moreover, if young people in the United States or abroad feel great uncertainty in university research here, they are more than likely to turn to other occupations and away from this country.
We tend to think that humans are at the top of the food chain. That is not true. We almost certainly share that position with bacteria and viruses, many of which can cause us great harm. To prevent the next pandemic and a host of other diseases, support of science and engineering at our universities is an imperative.
We should renew and update the terms of the 1945 compact to reinforce the basic principles and values that have served us so well for decades, and could for decades more to come. Academic freedom and free inquiry are the backbone of that compact. Where there are opportunities for reform, it is incumbent for research universities to take on those tasks themselves, without political interference.
I have spent almost 65 years at Columbia. I entered as an undergraduate in 1960, received my doctorate there, and never left. Yes, universities are contentious places, but they are supposed to be places where criticism takes place — whether political, humanistic or scientific disputes. When I became provost and dean of faculties, serving 14 years as Columbia’s chief academic officer, I dealt, alongside my colleagues, with student protests almost every year. When the federal government threatened Columbia with arrests or withdrawal of federal funds after the passage of the USA Patriot Act in 2001, we defended academic freedom and free inquiry.
Today, the stakes are higher. We are in a fight for survival and appeasement never works. Despite platitudes to the contrary, Columbia’s leaders have weakened our community and our leadership among the greatest educational institutions in the world. This is not the way to fight Mr. Trump’s efforts at silencing our great American universities. If we don’t resist collectively by all legal means, and by social influence and legislative pressure, we are apt to see the destruction of our most revered institutions and the enormous benefits they accrue to America.
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4) Trump’s Cuts to Columbia Were a ‘Gun to the Head,’ Faculty Lawsuit Says
The Trump administration’s cancellation of $400 million in aid violates the Constitution, a teachers’ union and a faculty group argue in a new suit.
By Alyce McFadden, March 25, 2025
The funding cuts have effectively terminated numerous projects at Columbia, including research into early cancer detection and links between diabetes and dementia. Credit...Marco Postigo Storel for The New York Times
Two groups representing Columbia University faculty members on Tuesday sued the Trump administration over $400 million in federal funding cuts and demands that the school make dramatic changes to student discipline and admissions policies.
The plaintiffs, the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers, asked a Manhattan federal court to restore the funding and argued that the cuts were unconstitutional.
The two groups and Protect Democracy, a nonprofit organization representing them, said in a news release that the funding cuts and an accompanying letter demanding changes to Columbia policy violated the First Amendment. The Trump administration’s actions “have created instability and a deep chilling effect on college campuses across the country,” the statement said.
Todd Wolfson, the president of the A.A.U.P., a faculty rights group, said in the statement that the funding cuts were part of a larger effort to target campus free speech, which would have consequences beyond Columbia.
“The Trump administration’s threats and coercion at Columbia are part of a clear authoritarian playbook meant to crush academic freedom and critical research in American higher education,” Mr. Wolfson said.
The funding cuts have imperiled vital scientific and public health research that contributes to the “prosperity of all Americans,” the groups said. The cuts have effectively terminated numerous projects, including research into early cancer detection, the effects of Covid-19 on pregnancy and links between diabetes and dementia.
The lawsuit names as defendants several federal agencies and officials, including the Justice Department, the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services. The funding cuts “represent an existential ‘gun to the head’ for a university,” the complaint said.
On Friday, Columbia capitulated to several of the Trump administration’s demands, pledging that the university would overhaul its campus security protocols, protest policies and Middle Eastern studies department.
The federal government has not agreed to restore Columbia’s funding. Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service, which is part of the General Services Administration, one of the agencies calling for changes at the university, said that Columbia’s policy changes were “early steps” and a “positive sign.”
Several of the agencies named in the lawsuit did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. Spokespeople for two of them, the General Services Administration and the Justice Department, declined to comment.
A number of Columbia professors have opposed the Trump administration’s efforts to punish the university and some students for pro-Palestinian protests. On Monday, at least 50 faculty members gathered outside the university’s gates to protest the cuts and the school’s response. Some held signs proclaiming, “Protect Academic Freedom” and “Columbia Fight Back.”
Reinhold Martin, the president of Columbia’s A.A.U.P. chapter and a professor of architecture, said in the joint statement that faculty members had a responsibility to speak up.
“The integrity of civic discourse and the freedoms that form the basis of a democratic society are under attack,” Mr. Martin said. “We have to stand up.”
The Trump administration faces a slew of lawsuits challenging budget freezes across the federal government. But the actions at issue in this suit are different, according to Orion Danjuma, counsel at Protect Democracy, because the administration’s letter to the university represents a “ransom note” demanding “key changes about the way it operates.”
Mr. Danjuma added that he was not aware of other instances of the government canceling grants to force policy changes at a private institution.
“That is all new, and the damage is quite severe,” he said.
The lawsuit also argues that the administration violated provisions of Title VI, a section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibiting discrimination in institutions that receive federal funding. The administration has cited Title VI as justification for its decision to cut Columbia’s funding, but the suit argues that the administration failed to comply with some of Title VI’s requirements.
Some of the steps the administration failed to follow, the suit asserts, include holding a hearing, providing evidence and giving the university the opportunity to voluntarily comply with the White House’s demands. These requirements were created, the groups argued in the statement, to “prevent the government from exercising too much unfettered control over funding recipients.”
The administration has started to scrutinize dozens of other colleges and universities. Last week, the White House announced that it would suspend $175 million in federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania because of the school’s policies on transgender students’ participation in sports.
“They have said essentially — sort of said with glee — that they’re planning to bankrupt a host of other universities that they perceive as being enemies to their preferred viewpoint,” Mr. Danjuma said. “So we know that this is not the end, this is the beginning of a broader attack on civil society and higher education.”
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5) Professors Sue Trump Administration Over Arrests of Campus Protesters
The lawsuit says the detention of noncitizen students and faculty members deprives U.S. citizens of their right to engage with foreign-born peers.
By Sharon Otterman, March 25, 2025
Demonstrators have marched to demand that immigration authorities release Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist and former Columbia student who is a legal permanent resident. Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times
Groups representing university professors sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, alleging that its practice of arresting and threatening noncitizen students and faculty members for protesting on campus deprives U.S. citizens of their right to engage with foreign-born peers and to hear their perspectives.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, takes a broader approach than a flurry of other recent lawsuits challenging the federal government’s deportation policies on college campuses. Those suits, including two involving a Columbia student and a recent graduate who are green card holders, aim to stop individual deportation proceedings.
The lawsuit filed Tuesday challenges the Trump administration’s overall approach to deportation, saying it is unconstitutional.
The decision to target noncitizens who participate in pro-Palestinian protest activity and speech, the lawsuit argues, has created a broadly chilling effect on what can be heard on college campuses.
“Today, the administration is going after pro-Palestinian speech, but tomorrow it can go after speech criticizing fossil fuels, speech promoting D.E.I. or speech defending gender-affirming care,” said Ramya Krishnan, a senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia, which is representing the professors in the lawsuit.
“There’s really no limiting principle to the administration’s theory here, and that’s part of what’s so disturbing,” she said.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit include the American Association of University Professors, a nonprofit group focused on issues of academic freedom, and three of its chapters, at Harvard, New York University and Rutgers, as well as the nonprofit Middle East Studies Association. The Knight Institute is an independent organization that does not represent the Columbia administration.
The suit hinges on a First Amendment principle that Americans have a right not only to express ideas but also to hear them. This is being violated, it argues, as noncitizens avoid political protests, purge their social media and step back from participation in groups engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy. It is also reflected through self-censoring in the classroom, which is done to avoid attention, the suit says.
“We’ve spoken to faculty that have modified their syllabi or decided against teaching entire courses out of fear that teaching certain material could put a target on their backs,” Ms. Krishnan said.
The lawsuit argues that the deportation policy also violates the Fifth Amendment, which ensures due process, because it fails to give noncitizen students and faculty members “fair warning as to what speech and association the government believes to be grounds for arrest, detention and deportation.”
The defendants named in the lawsuit are President Trump; Marco Rubio, the secretary of state; Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security; and Todd Lyons, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The State Department said by email that “as a general matter, we do not comment on ongoing or pending litigation.” The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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6) Israeli Police Release Palestinian Oscar Winner Who Said He Was Assaulted
Hamdan Ballal said he was struck as he guarded his home during an attack by settlers. The Israeli authorities said he had been detained on suspicion of throwing stones, which he denied.
By Natan Odenheimer, Aaron Boxerman and Adam Rasgon, Reporting from Jerusalem, March 25, 2025
Hamdan Ballal, center, after winning the Oscar for best documentary feature for “No Other Land” this month. Credit...Nina Westervelt for The New York Times
The Israeli authorities on Tuesday released a Palestinian director of an Oscar-winning documentary who was detained overnight after what he and witnesses said was an attack by Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
The police said that the filmmaker, Hamdan Ballal, one of the directors of the documentary, “No Other Land,” was questioned along with two other Palestinians on suspicion of hurling stones, property damage and “endangering regional security.” All three deny the accusations, their lawyer said.
The details of the episode are still not entirely clear, and both sides provided conflicting accounts of the events surrounding Mr. Ballal’s detention. But witnesses said the detention took place as a group of Israeli settlers — some of whom were masked — carried out an assault in the outskirts of Mr. Ballal’s home village of Susya in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
After his release on Tuesday, Mr. Ballal, 37, said he had been guarding his home during the attack, worried that the settlers would try to barge in. Suddenly, a man struck Mr. Ballal on the head while two Israeli soldiers leveled their guns at him, he said.
“I fell to the ground and then the man beat me all over my body,” Mr. Ballal said in a phone interview.
Israeli soldiers later arrested Mr. Ballal and held him overnight. Mr. Ballal said he was blindfolded while soldiers placed different objects on his head and mocked him, saying: “This is the Oscar-winning filmmaker.”
The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment on Mr. Ballal’s account.
One Israeli settler, a minor, was also detained. The Israeli police said he had been released to receive medical treatment and would be questioned later.
The episode drew attention to rising attacks by hard-line Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank. During the past year, Jewish extremists have thrown rocks at Palestinians, set cars on fire and defaced homes. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recorded more than 1,000 incidents of settler violence in 2024.
Human rights groups have long said that Israeli officials rarely crack down on the perpetrators. Despite a handful of high-profile prosecutions, a vast majority of police investigations into attacks by Israelis on Palestinians are closed without charges, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group.
President Trump has taken a softer stance on settler violence, canceling sanctions imposed by the Biden administration against individuals accused of carrying out violent acts against Palestinians. On Tuesday, a confirmation hearing for Mike Huckabee, Mr. Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel and an outspoken supporter of settlement building, was underway.
The two sides provided different accounts about the events surrounding Mr. Ballal’s arrest. In a statement, the Israeli military said “several terrorists” had hurled stones at Israeli vehicles, igniting a violent confrontation in which Israelis and Palestinians threw rocks at one another.
Nasser Nawaja, a fieldworker for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem who lives in Susya, and other Palestinians said the confrontation began after the town’s residents had sought to drive away Israeli shepherds herding livestock on land claimed by the village.
The group of Israeli assailants, some masked, soon joined the others on the outskirts of the village, where they attacked two Palestinian homes, they said.
Witness videos obtained and reviewed by The New York Times showed part of the assault. In cellphone and dashcam footage, a masked man approaches three activists who had responded to calls from Palestinians for help, pushes them and tries to punch one of them. The three activists retreat to their car as several other masked men run toward it and smash the windshield with a rock.
Basel Adra, another director of the documentary, who was also on the scene, said Israeli soldiers and police officers on the scene did little to stop the masked Israeli assailants, even as they sought to disperse the Palestinians. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the claim.
Mr. Ballal was among four directors — the others were Mr. Adra, Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham — in the Palestinian-Israeli film collective that received the Academy Award for best documentary this month. The film documents the demolition of West Bank residents’ homes in or near the villages of Masafer Yatta by Israeli forces claiming the area for a live-fire military training ground.
After repeated attacks, Palestinian residents in the southern West Bank, including from Mr. Hamdan’s village, took their case to the Israeli Supreme Court at the end of 2023, arguing that Israeli security forces were not protecting them from attacks, and that as a result, some villagers had fled their homes.
In a ruling last year, the court expressed concern over Israel’s failure to protect them and said the government — including the Israeli military — must protect Palestinians against future attacks “even in the complicated circumstances of this period.”
Malachy Browne contributed reporting.
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7) They Are America’s Most Powerful Law Firms. Their Silence Is Deafening.
By Deborah Pearlstein, March 25, 2025
Ms. Pearlstein is a visiting professor of law and public affairs at Princeton and the director of its Program in Law and Public Policy.
Larry Fink
In his chaotic attempt to dismantle democratic governance, redefine citizenship and cast aside fundamental rights of speech and due process, President Trump has all but declared war on one of the most effective forces to stand in his way: America’s legal institutions.
He has moved to purge the Department of Justice of all but those he perceives as loyal to him personally, demanded changes to law school curriculums, called with increasing furor for the impeachment of judges with whom he disagrees, attacked by name public-interest attorneys and bar associations that oppose his policies, and inched perilously close to defying court orders outright. In recent weeks Mr. Trump has also gone after the nation’s leading law firms — Covington & Burling; Perkins Coie; Paul, Weiss; and many more — with measures meant to hobble their ability to do business.
Of all of the American legal institutions now facing sustained attack, none would seem better positioned to push back against Mr. Trump’s strongman tactics than this class of wealthy and politically connected firms, known collectively as Big Law. Counsel to the world’s most powerful corporations, they are engaged in every sector of the marketplace and central to ensuring that the United States and global economy continue to spin. Yet where many ordinary judges, law school deans and public interest attorneys of both political parties have found the courage to push back against Mr. Trump’s anti-constitutional histrionics, Big Law has largely stayed silent or worse.
These firms face a classic problem of collective action: Every individual firm has an incentive to keep quiet, but if everyone stays silent, all will lose. The problem is understandable. It is also solvable. It requires firms to find the courage to act together.
Covington & Burling, the white-shoe Washington-based firm, was first to be targeted by the president. Its offense: having provided pro bono legal work for Jack Smith, who led the federal prosecution against Mr. Trump for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. On Feb. 25, Mr. Trump issued an executive order that suspended the security clearances of Covington lawyers who had anything to do with Mr. Smith’s representation and directed federal agencies to end any business with the firm. The firm has had virtually nothing to say in response.
Perkins Coie likewise attracted Mr. Trump’s ire for having represented Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign. He ordered a review for any government contracts with the firm, while also effectively barring its lawyers from federal buildings and stripping them of security clearances — potentially disabling sanctions for a firm whose clients have included major defense contractors like Boeing, Microsoft and Northrop Grumman. To its credit, Perkins Coie decided to mount a defense, and turned to Quinn Emanuel, an equally prestigious Los Angeles-based firm, to lead it. According to a Times report, Quinn Emanuel balked. (The firm Williams & Connolly has taken the case.) Since then, other firms have reportedly declined to sign an amicus brief on Perkins Coie’s behalf.
Most stunning of all, Paul, Weiss, one of the most venerable firms in the world, elected last week to strike a deal with Mr. Trump, agreeing, among other things, to contribute tens of millions of dollars worth of pro bono services to some of the president’s favored causes. The firm’s chair later explained it did so because clients were getting spooked and other firms — rather than rallying to Paul, Weiss’s defense — began “aggressively soliciting our clients and recruiting our attorneys.”
The choice by these firms to accommodate Mr. Trump’s attacks, either through action or silence, is deeply wrong. It weakens the rule-of-law system on which all Americans depend — a system in which the rules are publicly known and set in advance, not subject to the whims of arbitrary vendettas. It equally hastens America’s slide from a system of constitutional democracy, in which executive power is constrained by multiple independent institutions, to a regime of fiat akin to those authoritarian governments our country has long stood against.
The choice is misguided as a business strategy, too, compromising attorney ethics, which can expose them to discipline by bar associations and courts, and giving clients ample reason to doubt that the firms will act unflinchingly in their defense. Above all, it is futile, as it will do nothing to protect the firms from the extortion-based governance we now appear to face for at least the next four years.
Mr. Trump’s tactics against Big Law and other legal institutions seem clearly aimed at demonstrating there is no law but whatever deal the president is personally willing to strike, indeed no law but Trump. Such a vision cannot be reconciled with the idea of individual rights nor with the idea that ordered rules, not raw power, constrain the behavior of the people and their governors alike.
More to the present point, it cannot be reconciled with the obligation of contract, the foundation of the global economy. America’s commitment to the rule of law has been the rock on which all of the nation’s business interests depend. Its stability is a central reason investors from around the world long flocked to our shores. If that stability gives way to a system in which it is no longer possible to rely on or even to know the rules of the game, no one stands to lose more than the corporate clients these law firms represent.
It’s not hard to see why these firms may have decided to cede to Mr. Trump’s power grab. Partners have fiduciary obligations to their peers and employees. If the firm can just avoid open antagonism of the governing regime, the thinking may go, then it will survive until the turbulence subsides. Paul, Weiss’s chairman, Brad Karp, has repeatedly tried to assure his firm that the arrangement he struck was consistent with the principles that have guided the firm for its 150-year history.
Yet the deal Mr. Karp described to his colleagues differed markedly from the one the president announced. Mr. Trump’s version has the firm acknowledging both the “wrongdoing” of Mark Pomerantz, a former partner who explored a criminal case against Mr. Trump while working for the Manhattan district attorney, and the “grave dangers of Weaponization, and the vital need to restore our System of Justice” that Mr. Trump has long complained were used against him. Whatever Mr. Karp believes he agreed to, the president plainly does not share his view.
It is wrong to imagine such a deal could safeguard the interests of the commercial clients on which these law firms depend. And it is foolhardy to imagine these clients can go four years without taking any position that rankles this administration.
Take Citigroup, which has been a client of Paul, Weiss. Its subsidiary, Citibank, already finds itself in litigation over the administration’s (almost certainly unlawful) effort to impound spending on Congress’s greenhouse gas reduction initiatives. In service of that impoundment, the Trump administration demanded Citibank freeze billions in funding for nonprofits. If a court orders Citibank to unfreeze the funds, which side will it take, the administration’s or the court’s? Or consider Verizon, a client of Quinn Emanuel. Verizon seems on the verge of being nudged out of its $2.4 billion contract with the Federal Aviation Administration because Elon Musk has reportedly decided that his business, Starlink, is more deserving of the work. Does sound counsel require advising Verizon to just let that one go?
Corporations from Coca-Cola to Ford have been affected by Mr. Trump’s tariffs. They may well hope to negotiate their way out of the worst of the economic damage. But if those negotiations fail, or if the president’s promises prove as erratic as his tariffs, will the storied firms that represent these companies fight hard for their interests? Or will the firms push them to accept a lesser compromise, in the hopes of protecting themselves against presidential wrath?
Big Law’s parallel hope — that the courts will save them from having to take the worst of the administration’s direct heat — has already been proven unavailing. When Mr. Trump issued his extraordinary order blackballing Perkins Coie, a Federal District Court in Washington moved with remarkable efficiency to block key parts of the order from taking effect. But even assuming that the court’s temporary judgment survives the coming appeals — and that the administration complies with it — the damage is already done.
Many of Perkins Coie’s clients jumped ship on the basis of the initial order alone. And the court’s opinion clearly did nothing to slow Mr. Trump down. Just two days after being told that parts of the first order were unlawful, he issued his nearly identical order against Paul, Weiss. Three days after that, Mr. Trump’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced it was now looking into “D.E.I. practices” at 20 more firms, a list no longer limited to those firms with Democratic connections.
Over the weekend, Mr. Trump issued the broadest attack yet, ordering the attorney general to seek punishment for any lawyer or firm that takes a position in litigation the administration deems “unscrupulous.” In the climate of fear reinforced by Paul, Weiss’s actions — and other firms’ silence — threats alone are enough to drive away any firm’s business.
Another excuse circulating among Big Law lawyers is that speaking out won’t make a difference either way. Perkins Coie, after all, won its case without the broad support of its peer institutions.
That argument misses the point. Coming to Perkins Coie’s defense isn’t a decision about litigation strategy. It is about standing up to the administration’s intimidation. Signing on to joint briefs is not the only way to do that. Fellow firms and their clients could contribute to a joint defense fund, to help defray the costs of litigation and lost business for those on the receiving end of Mr. Trump’s score-settling wrath.
The point is for Big Law to do something — anything — as a group to demonstrate that they will continue to place their obligations to their clients and to the law above their fear of the bully. Solidarity can prove that point. And it can shore up the hope we all retain that the world’s strongest economy and oldest democracy will not both, simultaneously, fall.
The excuses made for Big Law’s silence are of course not limited to Big Law. The same collective action problem no doubt informs the discussions taking place inside the corner offices of the firms’ corporate clients, in the boardrooms of major media enterprises, at the gatherings of university trustees. The solutions to such problems are limited. But one tried and true approach remains clear: joining forces to fight back.
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8) Grilling PBS and NPR is the latest attack from Washington on the press.
By Michael M. Grynbaum, Reporting on media, March 26, 2025
The NPR headquarters building in Washington on Wednesday. Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times
The congressional hearing on Wednesday into supposed political bias at PBS and NPR represents another front of the attacks on the American media spearheaded by the Trump administration.
In the two months since President Trump took office a second time, the White House has barred The Associated Press from attending certain events, broken decades of tradition by hand-selecting the media outlets that can participate in the presidential press pool, and sought to dismantle the federal agency that oversees Voice of America, the federally funded broadcaster with a history of independent news reporting.
Those developments came on top of the lawsuits that Mr. Trump, before taking office, filed against several news outlets over coverage that he disliked, including CBS News, ABC News and The Des Moines Register. ABC News ultimately paid $16 million to settle with Mr. Trump.
Brendan Carr, whom Mr. Trump selected as the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has questioned the objectivity of major news organizations and demanded that CBS release the full transcript of an interview with Kamala Harris that figured in the president’s private lawsuit against the network.
Mr. Carr has also ordered an investigation into PBS and NPR, with a focus on whether member stations violated government rules.
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9) In Rare Protest, Gazans Voice Frustration With Hamas
One Gazan who attended the rally said the protesters wanted Hamas to end the war and leave the enclave.
By Iyad AbuheweilaAbu Bakr BashirAaron Boxerman and Malachy Browne
Aaron Boxerman reported from Jerusalem., Published March 25, 2025, Updated March 26, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/25/world/middleeast/gaza-protests-hamas.html
Palestinians in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya marched on Tuesday in a rally calling for an end to the war. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Palestinians protested in Gaza on Tuesday in a rare show of dissent against Hamas, with some chanting slogans critical of the armed group’s grip on the territory after more than year of devastating war with Israel.
Videos verified by The New York Times showed groups of Gazans in the half-ruined streets in the northern town of Beit Lahiya. Some carried more neutral signs that opposed the continuation of the war, while others chanted slogans calling for Hamas to get out.
Gazans, at least publicly, tend to blame Israel for much of the death, destruction and hunger the war has brought. But at least some hold Hamas responsible, as well, for starting the conflict by leading the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, abducting 251 people to Gaza and continuing to fight rather than giving up its power in exchange for a cease-fire.
The anger appeared to have resurfaced after Israel last week abandoned a two-month cease-fire and resumed its bombardment of Gaza in an attempt to pressure Hamas to free more of the remaining hostages.
“We want to continue until the bloodshed stops and Hamas leaves the Palestinian scene,” said Ahmed al-Masri, a 35-year-old construction worker who said he had participated in the rally.
Ibrahim, 32, another Gazan who joined the protest, said he had arrived in downtown Beit Lahiya to buy food before stumbling into the crowd of demonstrators. He asked to be identified by his first name only for fear of retribution by Hamas.
He said the protesters’ message to Hamas was end the war and leave Gaza.
Since seizing full control of Gaza in 2007, Hamas has cracked down harshly on dissent by detaining critics and aggressively dispersing demonstrations against its policies. A 2018 Human Rights Watch report accused the group of routinely arresting and torturing opponents.
While at least some Gazans have quietly voiced frustrations with Hamas and criticisms of its leaders since the war began, few were willing to express them publicly.
Last year, Amin Abed, one of the few prominent critics of Hamas who remained inside Gaza, said he had been ambushed by the group’s feared internal security forces. The masked officers beat him with hammers and metal bars, he said.
A spokesman for the Hamas government in Gaza suggested Mr. Abed and another dissident had been victims of criminal activity, adding that the Hamas-run Interior Ministry was investigating the episodes.
Hamas is still believed to command thousands of armed fighters despite concerted efforts by Israel to eliminate the militant group. During the two-month cease-fire with Israel that began in January, the group tried to reassert its dominance over the enclave.
Some Gazans fear any truce that would leave Hamas in control of Gaza would only make another war inevitable.
“Without Hamas going away, the next war will only be a matter of time,” said Helal Warshagha, 27, an activist from Beit Lahiya who fled Gaza before Oct. 7, 2023.
“We’ve had enough of the war, destruction and killing,” he added.
Adam Rasgon contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
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10) Israel’s New Spending Plan Is a Win for Netanyahu
A budget approved by Israel’s Parliament cements Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s power and includes significant military spending.
By Lara Jakes and Patrick Kingsley, March 26, 2025
Lara Jakes covers global conflicts and diplomacy. Patrick Kingsley leads The New York Times’s reporting team in Jerusalem.
Israeli military vehicles along the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel last week. Credit...Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A spending plan approved by Israel’s Parliament hands Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a big political victory and devotes a significant chunk to military spending, signaling that Israel expects to stay on a war footing for the longer term.
The $206 billion budget was approved on Tuesday with broad enough support — 66 votes to 52 — to shore up Mr. Netanyahu’s power after more than a year of public backlash over Israeli hostages, sharp political opposition and legal challenges.
The passing of the budget has profound political as well as financial implications. Had it failed to pass by the end of the month, Parliament would have been automatically disbanded. That would have set off elections, some 18 months early, that Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition of right-wing parties might have lost, according to most recent polls.
Now, Mr. Netanyahu has much greater leeway to set his government’s priorities, both at home and in Gaza, because it will be harder for any single disgruntled party in his coalition to threaten its downfall.
“That could mean doubling down on extreme right-wing populism and the war in Gaza, or it could mean figuring out an exit strategy and attempting a dash to a Saudi normalization deal,” said Michael Koplow, an analyst at Israel Policy Forum, a New York-based research group. “But whichever path it is will reflect Netanyahu’s own calculations rather than what he is being pushed into by his coalition partners.”
The vote drew sharp protests from demonstrators, who blocked roads to the Parliament, holding signs to demand that Mr. Netanyahu move more quickly in negotiations to free several dozen hostages who have been held in the Gaza Strip for nearly 18 months. Talks to resume a cease-fire with Hamas appear stalled, and a recent government decision to return to war is raising fears among Israelis for the hostages who have not been released.
Yair Lapid, the leader of Israel’s parliamentary opposition, claimed the budget also included cuts to essential services like health care, welfare and education while diverting funds to Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition partners.
“The budget harms every Israeli citizen, especially working people,” Mr. Lapid said. “Just to keep the coalition going for a few more months, it sells out the citizens of Israel.”
The budget capped spending at $168.8 billion, allocating more money — $29.9 billion — to Israel’s defense ministry than any other government agency. Nearly 18 percent of the newly approved budget for 2025 will fund its military and defense operations.
A summary of the budget said that allocation reflected the continuing need for significant military spending since October 2023, when the Hamas-led assault that killed about 1,200 Israelis touched off the ongoing war in Gaza. Spending increased last year, the budget said, as Israel opened new fronts in Lebanon and Syria and stepped up airstrikes against Iran and Yemen.
“This is a war budget, and with God’s help it will also be the victory budget,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, an ally of Mr. Netanyahu, said in a statement after the budget was approved on Tuesday.
The United States, which is part of deadlocked peace negotiations to free the Israeli hostages and end the war in Gaza, has eased some of Israel’s wartime expenses by supplying billions of dollars in weapons.
Already this year, the Trump administration has bypassed Congress to allow the sales of more than $12 billion in arms to Israel over the coming decade — including $2 billion in bombs like the 2,000-pound munition that human rights officials and advocates said had indiscriminately killed civilians in Gaza.
Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
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11) Paramilitary Fighters Flee Sudan’s Capital, a Major Shift in Civil War
In dramatic scenes that appear to mark a turning point in nearly two years of civil war, Sudan’s military is driving fighters of its rival, the Rapid Support Forces, out of Khartoum.
By Declan Walsh, Reporting from Khartoum, March 26, 2025
“The fighting has killed an estimated 150,000 people and displaced more than 13 million, sending nearly four million fleeing to neighboring countries — amounting to the world’s largest displacement crisis. Refugees have told of fleeing rapes, massacres and starvation.”
Sudanese army soldiers moved through the recently captured areas of central Khartoum, on Tuesday. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
Paramilitary fighters with Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces began withdrawing from the battle-torn capital of Khartoum in large numbers on Wednesday, fleeing a city they had occupied since a ruinous war broke out nearly two years ago.
The capture of the city by Sudan’s military marks a dramatic turning point in what is currently Africa’s largest war. The Rapid Support Forces, known as the R.S.F., is likely to withdraw to its stronghold in Darfur, in the west of the country, according to analysts.
Surveillance drone footage circulated by Sudan’s military showed hundreds of R.S.F. fighters crossing a dam on the Nile at Jebel Aulia, south of the capital — their last remaining escape route.
Brig. Gen. Nabil Abdullah, a military spokesman, said the military had captured a major R.S.F. camp near the dam. “This was their last remaining camp in Khartoum,” he said. “A few remnants remain in pockets here and there. They will soon be destroyed.”
The two generals who lead Sudan’s military and the Rapid Support Forces, once allies, went to war nearly two years ago over a dispute about a plan for the R.S.F. paramilitary troops to be absorbed by the military.
The fighting has killed an estimated 150,000 people and displaced more than 13 million, sending nearly four million fleeing to neighboring countries — amounting to the world’s largest displacement crisis. Refugees have told of fleeing rapes, massacres and starvation.
Videos posted to social media showed civilians celebrating as Sudanese military forces arrived into the south of Khartoum, hours after the paramilitaries had fled.
In Kalakla, 10 miles south of the city center, civilians poured onto the streets, whooping and cheering, to hail Sudanese military forces who arrived on motorbikes.
Similar scenes unfolded in other neighborhoods closer to the center of the city as military forces advanced, videos verified by The New York Times showed.
The sudden withdrawal comes five days after the army captured the presidential palace in central Khartoum, a key symbolic and strategic victory that signaled a momentous change in the direction of the war.
Since then, the army has steadily seized control of the capital, taking control of the devastated city center before moving toward the international airport.
Pockets of R.S.F. fighters continued to resist the military’s advance. As Times reporters walked through the deserted city center on Tuesday, explosions and bursts of gunfire rang out from sporadic fighting a few streets away.
But on Wednesday morning, the army declared that it had seized control of the airport, which is littered with the ruins of passengers jets abandoned in April 2023, at the start of the war. On Wednesday afternoon, soldiers posed on the runway for television cameras before an abandoned plane.
The last concentration of R.S.F. fighters in the capital appeared to be in the southern and western part of Omdurman, on the west bank of the Nile. The army controls the northern half of Omdurman, and army controlled areas have received sporadic shellfire from R.S.F. positions in recent years.
Abdalrahman Altayeb contributed reporting.
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12) U.S. to End Vaccine Funds for Poor Countries
A 281-page spreadsheet obtained by The Times lists the Trump administration’s plans for thousands of foreign aid programs.
By Stephanie Nolen, Stephanie Nolen covers global health, March 26, 2025
A young woman receiving a vaccine shot in Sudan last year. Credit...AFP, via Getty Images
The Trump administration intends to terminate the United States’ financial support for Gavi, the organization that has helped purchase critical vaccines for children in developing countries, saving millions of lives over the past quarter century, and to significantly scale back support for efforts to combat malaria, one of the biggest killers globally.
The administration has decided to continue some key grants for medications to treat H.I.V. and tuberculosis, and food aid to countries facing civil wars and natural disasters.
Those decisions are included in a 281-page spreadsheet that the United States Agency for International Development sent to Congress Monday night, listing the foreign aid projects it plans to continue and to terminate. The New York Times obtained a copy of the spreadsheet and other documents describing the plans.
The documents provide a sweeping overview of the extraordinary scale of the administration’s retreat from a half-century-long effort to present the United States to the developing world as a compassionate ally and to lead the fight against infectious diseases that kill millions of people annually.
The cover letter details the skeletal remains of U.S.A.I.D. after the cuts, with most of its funding eliminated, and only 869 of more than 6,000 employees still on active duty.
In all, the administration has decided to continue 898 U.S.A.I.D. awards and to end 5,341, the letter says. It says the remaining programs are worth up to $78 billion. But only $8.3 billion of that is unobligated funds — money still available to disburse. Because that amount covers awards that run several years into the future, the figure suggests a massive reduction in the $40 billion that U.S.A.I.D. used to spend annually.
A spokesperson for the State Department, which now runs what is left of U.S.A.I.D., confirmed the terminations on the list were accurate and said that “each award terminated was reviewed individually for alignment with agency and administration priorities, and terminations were executed where Secretary Rubio determined the award was inconsistent with the national interest or agency policy priorities.”
The memo to Congress presents the plan for foreign assistance as a unilateral decision. However because spending on individual health programs such as H.I.V. or vaccination is congressionally allocated, it is not clear that the administration has legal power to end those programs. This issue is currently being litigated in multiple court challenges.
Among the programs terminated is funding for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which conducts surveillance for diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans, including bird flu, in 49 countries. Some major programs to track and fight malaria, one of the world’s top killers of children, have also been ended.
Dr. Austin Demby, the health minister of Sierra Leone, which relies on Gavi’s support to help purchase vaccines, said he was “shocked and perturbed” by the decision to terminate U.S. funding and warned that the ramifications would be felt worldwide.
“This is not just a bureaucratic decision, there are children’s lives at stake, global health security will be at stake,” he said. “Supporting Gavi in Sierra Leone is not just a Sierra Leone issue, it’s something the region, the world, benefits from.”
In addition to trying to reach all children with routine immunizations, Sierra Leone is currently battling an mpox outbreak, for which Gavi has provided both vaccines and critical support to deliver them, he said.
“We hope the U.S. government will continue to be the global leader it always been — putting money in Gavi is not an expenditure, it’s an investment,” Dr. Demby said
Gavi is estimated to have saved the lives of 19 million children since it was set up 25 years ago. The United States contributes 13 percent of its budget.
The terminated grant to Gavi was worth $2.6 billion through 2030. Gavi was counting on a pledge made last year by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for its next funding cycle.
New vaccines with the promise to save millions of lives in low-income countries, such as one to protect children from severe malaria and another to protect teenage girls against the virus that causes cervical cancer, have recently become available, and Gavi was expanding the portfolio of support it could give those countries.
The loss of U.S. funds will set back the organization’s ability to continue to provide its basic range of services — such as immunization for measles and polio — to a growing population of children in the poorest countries, let alone expand to include new vaccines.
By Gavi’s own estimate, the loss of U.S. support may mean 75 million children do not receive routine vaccinations in the next five years, with more than 1.2 million children dying as a result.
The U.S. has been among the top donors to the organization since its creation, and became the largest during the Covid-19 pandemic. While European countries have historically provided significant funding, many are now reducing foreign aid spending as they grapple with the change in U.S. policy on Ukraine and the U.S. demand that they increase their defense spending. Japan, another major Gavi donor, is struggling with a depreciating currency.
Dr. Sania Nishtar, Gavi’s chief executive, said that she hoped the Trump administration would reconsider the decision to end its support. Gavi’s work keeps people everywhere, including Americans, safe, she said. In addition to protecting individual children, vaccination reduces the possibility of large outbreaks. The organization maintains global stockpiles for vaccines against diseases such as Ebola and cholera, deploying them in rapid response efforts for epidemics.
Gavi’s structure requires countries to pay part of the cost of vaccines, with their share growing as income levels rise; middle-income countries are weaned from support.
The memo says that 869 U.S.A.I.D. personnel were working as of last Friday, while 3,848 were on administrative leave and 1,602 are in the process of being laid off. Of 300 probationary employees who were initially fired, 270 have returned to work following a court order prohibiting their dismissal.
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13) 10,000 Federal Health Dept. Workers to Be Laid Off
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a major restructuring of the department, which now employs about 82,000 people.
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Christina Jewett, March 27, 2025
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, is reorganizing the Health and Human Services Department. Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times
The Trump administration on Thursday announced a layoff of 10,000 employees at the Health and Human Services Department, as part of a broad reorganization designed to bring communications and other functions directly under the purview of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The layoffs are a drastic reduction in personnel for the sprawling health department, which now employs about 82,000 people and touches the lives of every American through its oversight of medical care, food and drugs. Together with previous layoffs and departures, the move will bring the department down to about 62,000 employees, the agency said.
The restructuring will include creating a new division called the Administration for a Healthy America. “We’re going to do more with less,” Mr. Kennedy said, even as he acknowledged it would be “a painful period for H.H.S.”
The 28 divisions of the health agency will be consolidated into 15 new divisions, according to a statement issued by the department. Mr. Kennedy announced the changes in a YouTube video. The staff cuts, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, are being made in line with President Trump’s order to implement the Department of Government Efficiency’s shrinking of the federal work force.
Mr. Kennedy said rates of chronic disease rose under the Biden administration even as the government grew. He pitched the changes as a way to refocus the agency on Americans’ health, but did not outline any specifics on how he would mediate rates of diabetes, heart disease or any other condition.
The reorganization will cut 3,500 jobs from the Food and Drug Administration, which approves and oversees the safety of a vast swath of the medications and consumer products people eat and rely on for well-being, according to an H.H.S. fact sheet. The cuts are said to be administrative, but some of the roles support research and monitoring of the safety and purity of food and drugs, as well as travel planning for inspectors who investigate overseas food and drug facilities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will also have its work force cut by about 2,400 employees, and will narrow its focus to “preparing for and responding to epidemics and outbreaks,” the fact sheet said. The C.D.C. also does work on H.I.V./AIDS, tobacco control, maternal health and the distribution of vaccines for children. The National Institutes of Health will lose 1,200 staff members, and the agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid is expected to lose 300.
All of those agencies have campuses outside of Washington and tend to operate under their own authority, and Mr. Kennedy has been at odds with all of them. Mr. Kennedy assailed them, and other parts of the department, in his video.
“When I arrived, I found that over half of our employees don’t even come to work,” he claimed. “H.H.S. has more than 100 communications offices and more than 40 I.T. departments and dozens of procurement offices and nine H.R. departments. In many cases, they don’t even talk to each other. They’re mainly operating in silos.
The plan also includes collapsing 10 regional H.H.S. offices into five.
Dr. Robert Califf, the F.D.A. administrator during the Biden administration, said his team worked with staff to drum up support for an 8,000 person reorganization to change how its divisions for food and facility inspections operate. Given how morale-crushing the second Trump administration has been for the department, with many staff members laid off on the false premise that their performance was subpar, the effort could be all the more challenging.
“If you are coming to work sick to your stomach, as Russell Vought said he wanted them to,” he said, referring to the head of the Office of Management and Budget, “then people are not going to be able to collaborate as well. They’ll be suspicious of each other, right?”
Mr. Califf said such a sudden and massive reduction in staff and reorganization could also disrupt services and safety oversight that the public relies on.
Mr. Kennedy also suggested in the video that the changes would help his team get more access to data, a prospect that has been fraught, given Mr. Kennedy’s long history of manipulating figures to advance arguments about the harm of vaccines that have widely been deemed safe.
“In one case, defiant bureaucrats impeded the secretary’s office from accessing the closely guarded databases that might reveal the dangers of certain drugs and medical interventions,” Mr. Kennedy said.
Mr. Kennedy said the new division, the Administration for a Healthy America, would combine a number of agencies focused on substance abuse treatment and chemical safety, as well as the agency that administers courts that handle federal claims over vaccine injuries.
“We’re going to consolidate all of these departments and make them accountable to you, the American taxpayer and the American patient,” Mr. Kennedy said. “These goals will honor the aspirations of the vast majority of existing H.H.S. employees who actually yearn to make America healthy.”
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14) Judge Orders U.S. to Stop Attempts to Deport Columbia Undergraduate
The administration has been seeking to arrest and deport Yunseo Chung, who immigrated from South Korea as a child, after she participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
By Santul Nerkar and Jonah E. Bromwich, March 25, 2025
Yunseo Chung moved to the United States with her family from South Korea when she was 7 years old and was valedictorian of her high school. Credit...CLEAR
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to halt its efforts to arrest and deport a 21-year old Columbia University student who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
The administration began seeking to arrest the student, Yunseo Chung, this month, according to a lawsuit filed by Ms. Chung’s lawyers.
The judge, Naomi Buchwald, said during a hearing in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday that “nothing in the record” indicated that Ms. Chung posed a danger to the community or a “foreign-policy risk” or had communicated with terrorist organizations.
Ms. Chung is a legal permanent resident. She was not a prominent participant in demonstrations on Columbia’s campus; she was arrested along with several other students this month at a protest at Barnard College, the Manhattan university’s sister school.
A high school valedictorian who moved to the United States from South Korea when she was 7, she has not been detained by federal agents, and her lawyers have declined to comment on her whereabouts.
Ramzi Kassem, a lawyer for Ms. Chung and co-director of CLEAR, a legal clinic at the City University of New York, said at a news conference after the hearing that his client “remained a resident of the Southern District of New York” and that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had not been able to find her. During the hearing, he said that she was “keeping up with her coursework.”
Ms. Chung expressed her relief at the judge’s ruling in a statement on Tuesday evening. “After the constant dread in the back of my mind over the past few weeks, this decision feels like a million pounds off of my chest. I feel like I could fly,” she said, adding that she was grateful to her legal team, as well we professors, students and staff members at Columbia who she said “have given me strength at every turn.”
The Trump administration has cited a rarely used legal statute to justify its mission to detain and deport Ms. Chung. The government argues that her presence in the United States hinders the administration’s foreign policy goal of stopping the spread of antisemitism.
Judge Buchwald’s order said that if the government were to try and detain Ms. Chung under the basis of a different statute, it must “provide sufficient advance notice” to her and her attorneys.
The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, had offered the same rationale it is using in the Chung case after the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate of a Columbia master’s program who is detained in Louisiana.
Mr. Khalil was arrested before his lawyers were able to petition a judge in his defense. Ms. Chung, by contrast, sued while she was still free, and Judge Buchwald moved swiftly on Tuesday without explicitly mentioning the Khalil case.
“No trips to Louisiana here,” Judge Buchwald said, and barred transferring Ms. Chung away from the Southern District of New York.
Mr. Kassem said that the court had done the “just and fair thing,” and that the government was trying to silence pro-Palestinian activism.
“She’s a college junior doing what generations of college students before have done, which is speak up and protest,” Mr. Kassem said.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on Monday that Ms. Chung’s conduct had been “concerning” and mentioned her arrest by the New York Police Department at what it called a “pro-Hamas protest at Barnard College.” She was issued a desk appearance ticket on a misdemeanor charge of obstructing governmental administration and released.
The statement said that ICE would “investigate individuals engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization.” They did not immediately respond to a request to provide evidence that Ms. Chung had supported Hamas, and press representatives for the department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Judge Buchwald’s decision.
ICE officials tried hard to arrest the 21-year-old, according to her lawsuit. Federal agents visited her parents’ home, texted Ms. Chung directly and, after federal prosecutors became involved, searched two residences on the Columbia University campus.
The search warrants, which were included in court filings, cited a criminal law that targets those who shelter noncitizens present in the United States illegally.
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15) New York County Clerk Blocks Texas Court Filing Against Doctor Over Abortion Pills
The showdown catapults the interstate abortion wars to a new level.
By Pam Belluck, March 27, 2025
Pam Belluck has covered reproductive health for over a decade.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks to a crowd of anti-abortion supporters outside the U.S. Supreme Court. Credit...Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
A New York county clerk on Thursday blocked Texas from filing a legal action against a New York doctor for prescribing and sending abortion pills to a Texas woman.
The unprecedented move catapults the interstate abortion wars to a new level, setting the stage for a high-stakes legal battle between states that ban abortion and states that support abortion rights.
The dispute is widely expected to reach the Supreme Court, pitting Texas, which has a near-total abortion ban, against New York, which has a shield law that is intended to protect abortion providers who send medications to patients in other states.
New York is one of eight states that have enacted “telemedicine abortion shield laws” after the Supreme Court overturned the national right to an abortion in 2022. The laws prevent officials from extraditing abortion providers to other states or from responding to subpoenas and other legal actions — a stark departure from typical interstate practices of cooperating in such cases.
The action by the New York county clerk is the first time that an abortion shield law has been used.
This case involves Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter of New Paltz, N.Y., who works with telemedicine abortion organizations to provide abortion pills to patients across the country. In December, the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, sued Dr. Carpenter, who is not licensed in Texas, accusing her of sending abortion pills to a Texas woman, in violation of the state’s ban.
Dr. Carpenter and her lawyers did not respond to the lawsuit and did not show up for a court hearing last month in Texas. Judge Bryan Gantt of Collin County District Court issued a default judgment, ordering Dr. Carpenter to pay a penalty of $113,000 and to stop sending abortion medication to Texas.
On Thursday, citing New York’s shield law, the acting clerk of Ulster County in Kingston, N.Y., Taylor Bruck, said he would not grant Texas’ motion seeking to enforce the Collin County order. He also refused to allow Texas to file a summons that sought to force Dr. Carpenter to pay the penalty and comply with the Texas ruling.
“In accordance with the New York State Shield Law, I have refused this filing and will refuse any similar filings that may come to our office,” Mr. Bruck said in a statement. “Since this decision is likely to result in further litigation, I must refrain from discussing specific details about the situation.”
New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, had previously sent guidance to courts and officials throughout the state, directing them to follow the shield law and indicating how they could comply and which specific actions were prohibited.
“I commend the Ulster County Clerk for doing what is right,” Ms. James said in a statement. “New York’s shield law was created to protect patients and providers from out-of-state anti-choice attacks, and we will not allow anyone to undermine health care providers’ ability to deliver necessary care to their patients. My office will always defend New York’s medical professionals and the people they serve.”
The Texas attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Legal experts said that a likely next step would be for Texas to file a challenge to the shield law in a state or federal court in New York.
Texas was the first state with an abortion ban to initiate legal action against abortion providers in states with shield laws. In January, the first criminal charges against a shield-law abortion provider were filed in a second state, Louisiana. In that case, a state grand jury issued a criminal indictment, also against Dr. Carpenter, accusing her of violating Louisiana’s near-total abortion ban by sending pills to that state.
Last month, Louisiana officials issued an extradition order for Dr. Carpenter, which was immediately rebuffed by New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul.
“I will not be signing an extradition order that came from the governor of Louisiana — not now, not ever,” Ms. Hochul said then.
Dr. Carpenter and her lawyers have not commented about either the Texas or Louisiana case. The Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, an organization Dr. Carpenter co-founded, has issued statements in response to the cases. “Shield laws are essential in safeguarding and enabling abortion care regardless of a patient’s ZIP code or ability to pay,” the coalition has said. “They are fundamental to ensuring everyone can access reproductive health care as a human right.”
Telemedicine abortion shield laws have become a key strategy for supporters of abortion rights. Under these laws, which have been in use since summer 2023, health care providers in states where abortion is legal have been sending more than 10,000 abortion pills per month to patients in states with abortion bans or restrictions.
The Texas lawsuit accuses Dr. Carpenter of providing a 20-year-old woman with the two medications used in a standard abortion regimen, mifepristone and misoprostol. Typically used up through 12 weeks into pregnancy, mifepristone blocks a hormone needed for pregnancies to develop, and misoprostol, taken 24 to 48 hours later, causes contractions similar to a miscarriage.
According to a complaint filed by the Texas attorney general’s office, the woman, who had been nine weeks pregnant, asked the “biological father of her unborn child” to take her to the emergency room in July “because of hemorrhage or severe bleeding.” The man “suspected that the biological mother had in fact done something to contribute to the miscarriage,” the suit said, and he went back to their home in Collin County, where he “discovered the two above-referenced medications from Carpenter.”
In the Collin County court hearing last month, Ernest C. Garcia, chief of the administrative law division in the attorney general’s office, said that the man “then filed a complaint with the Texas Attorney General’s Office.”
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