Columbia University to pay $200 mn in clash with Trump
In a sweeping deal that will restore the prestigious New York institution's federal monies, Columbia has pledged to obey rules that bar it from taking race into consideration in admissions or hiring, among other concessions.
"Columbia University has reached an agreement with the United States government to resolve multiple federal agency investigations into alleged violations of federal anti-discrimination laws," a statement said, adding that the $200 million would be paid over three years.
The university will also pay $21 million to settle investigations brought by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, it said.
"Under today's agreement, a vast majority of the federal grants which were terminated or paused in March 2025 will be reinstated and Columbia's access to billions of dollars in current and future grants will be restored," the statement said.
The promise of the federal funding spigot reopening offers relief for the university, which was under growing financial pressure, despite a comfortable endowment and a reputation it can bank on.
The agreement also represents a victory for Trump, who has repeatedly claimed elite universities brainwash students against his nationalist ideas with left-wing bias.
Thanking Columbia for "agreeing to do what is right," Trump warned in a social media post that "numerous other Higher Education Institutions that have hurt so many, and been so unfair and unjust... are upcoming."
The centuries-old Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is also in a fight with the administration over Trump's threats to rip away federal funding, and Wednesday's carefully worded agreement -- in which Columbia admitted no wrongdoing -- could offer a framework for future deals.
"This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty," Columbia's acting president Claire Shipman said.
"The settlement was carefully crafted to protect the values that define us and allow our essential research partnership with the federal government to get back on track.
"Importantly, it safeguards our independence, a critical condition for academic excellence and scholarly exploration, work that is vital to the public interest."
- Disciplinary actions -
Under the settlement, Columbia will maintain a security force to prevent demonstrations in academic spaces, such as those that rocked the campus last year when pro-Palestinian protestors clashed with law enforcement and occupied university buildings.
The school also agreed to "promptly provide" federal authorities with any requested information on "disciplinary actions involving student visa-holders resulting in expulsions or suspensions, and arrest records that Columbia is aware of for criminal activity, including trespass or other violation of law."
Columbia found itself at the center of a firestorm last year over claims of anti-Semitism triggered by campus protests against Israel's war in Gaza.
Some Jewish students claimed they were intimidated and that authorities did not act to protect them.
The school announced a wave of various student punishments on Tuesday, including expulsions and degree revocations, against nearly 80 students involved in the pro-Palestinian protest movement that has called on the university to divest from Israel.
"Our institution must focus on delivering on its academic mission for our community," Columbia said in a statement about student protests on its campus.
"Disruptions to academic activities are in violation of University policies and rules, and such violations will necessarily generate consequences."
While the university appears to be acquiescing to the Trump administration's demands to quash student protest, one of the most prominent leaders of the US pro-Palestinian campus protests is still raising his voice.
Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate active in campus demonstrations, has sued the Trump administration for $20 million over his arrest and detention by immigration agents.
Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States who is married to a US citizen, missed the birth of his son while being held in a federal immigration detention center in Louisiana.
He called the lawsuit a "first step towards accountability."
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ABC News
28 minutes ago
- ABC News
Can Trump sack his way to better jobs data?
Sam Hawley: Donald Trump didn't like the numbers, so he sacked the messenger. So what are the implications of the US President's decision to get rid of the nation's chief statistician who dared to release revised job figures? Today's staff writer at The Atlantic, Tom Nichols, on the sledgehammer Trump is taking to democracy. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. Sam Hawley: Tom, we know that Donald Trump has trouble dealing with the facts, but wow, he really has gone a step further this time, hasn't he? Tom Nichols: Yeah, although I think that this is more of a warning to the next person rather than Trump really believing that the facts are wrong. I think he is lashing out because he's angry and by firing this person, he's trying to send up a flare that says, from now on, give me the numbers that I prefer. Sam Hawley: Oh, yes, all right. So last week, these new job figures came out and they weren't fantastic. Trump didn't obviously like them, so he sacks the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika McEntarfer, because he says her numbers are wrong. Donald Trump, US President: I think her numbers were wrong, just like I thought her numbers were wrong before the election. Days before the election, she came out with these beautiful numbers for Kamala. Tom Nichols: Well, he was very happy with those numbers earlier in his term when they were reflecting job growth. What happened, of course, is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which does a lot of this work by reporting, by self-reporting from American companies, has to do revisions as they get more information coming in from those companies over time. And ever since the pandemic, those companies have been a bit slower about reporting and kind of getting that data together to get it to the Labor Department. So, of course, every so often, BLS comes out and says, OK, now we're going to revise the jobs report that we put out. And Trump decided that revising the jobs numbers downward, that this was some kind of act of political sabotage. Donald Trump, US President: We're doing so well. I believe the numbers were phony, just like they were before the election. And there were other times. So you know what I did? I fired her. And you know what? I did the right thing. Tom Nichols: Now, again, whether he really believes that after glorifying the good numbers that he got is, I think, questionable. And so he's doing the thing that he likes to do as a former business owner, which is firing people who annoy him. And the quickest way to annoy him is to give him bad news. Sam Hawley: And others in the White House are also now trying to explain this sacking, aren't they? Like Kevin Hassett, who's Trump's economic adviser. He was on Fox News echoing Trump's doubts about the job figures. Kevin Hassett, Director of the National Economic Council: If I were running the BLS and I had the biggest downward revision in 50 years, I would have a really, really detailed report explaining why it happened so that everybody really trusted the data. And so I think what we need is a fresh set of eyes at the BLS. Somebody who can clean this thing up. Sam Hawley: Alright, well, Trump's accusing her of being a Biden stooge. Tom Nichols: Yeah. Sam Hawley: I mean, she's not, obviously. Tom Nichols: Yeah. I mean, these are career, you know, civil servants in the American system. At a certain level of seniority, you have to be nominated by the president, who is the head of the executive branch, and then confirmed by the Senate. And this woman was confirmed overwhelmingly in the Senate, including by two US senators whose names happen to be Marco Rubio and JD Vance, who, of course, are now the secretary of state and the vice president. So there was no issue with her being some sort of political stooge. It's pretty hard to find lifelong statisticians who are also political stooges hiding in the American bureaucracy. Sam Hawley: Wow. OK. Because these revised figures, which showed that job growth wasn't what Donald Trump wanted it to be, it doesn't fit with his narrative, I assume, especially as he rolls out these global tariffs. Tom Nichols: Right. You know, Trump creates his own reality. When reality collides with his promises, he says that the reality is fake. The numbers are fake. The reports are fake. The news is fake. People are out to get me. Everything is rigged. And there's a real danger here, because it's not just the president, you know, being annoyed by these numbers. If you undermine the stability and trustworthiness of BLS, of the statistical organisation, businesses across America count on these numbers, as do foreign governments. So basically, Donald Trump is saying, I don't like bad news, so I'm going to basically blind us about what's actually going on at any given moment in the American economy, which suits him just fine, because he will tell his own story about it. But for the rest of us, it's quite dangerous. Sam Hawley: All right, so Tom, let's look further then into what else Donald Trump has been doing when it comes to the American bureaucracy and, of course, truth and facts. We always knew he wanted to get rid of anyone who was critical of his thinking, right? That was part of so-called Project 2025. Just remind me about that. Tom Nichols: Well, Project 2025, it never mentions Donald Trump. It was meant to be a handbook for the next Republican president. Now, of course, they knew that the next Republican president would be Donald Trump. And so this was a document produced at the Heritage Foundation that had an overarching scheme for essentially destroying entire pieces of the American government and its bureaucratic infrastructure. Of course, people always think that sounds good, because who likes the word bureaucracy, right? I mean, you think of bureaucracy and you think about the Department of Motor Vehicles or trying to get your license renewed or something. But here in the United States, as in every developed country, bureaucracy is how the mail gets delivered. It's how labour statistics get compiled and so on. What they really wanted to do, and this is at the heart of a lot of Project 2025, is to get rid of the apolitical servants in the bureaucracy and replace them with Republican conservative political loyalists. And specifically people, of course, by extension, who are going to be loyal to Donald Trump, which then makes the idea of an apolitical administration of a gigantic country of 350 million people impossible, because it's a return to cronyism and political hackery. But that's exactly what the project aims for in what they would call reforming the bureaucracy. Sam Hawley: So tell me, who else has the president deemed to be standing in his way? Who else has he been after? I know, Tom, the list is long, so you might just want to mention the highlights. Tom Nichols: The Department of Justice, which he is hollowing out and destroying piece by piece. The Department of Defense, which is now in the hands of a talk show host. Those are the two big ones that really could have been a problem. That along with, again, an apolitical civil service that says, well, we can't actually break the law. You know, we can't actually engage in politics in the office. But Trump is pushing to destroy all of those regulations. And he's mostly there. I mean, he has the Department of Justice. What he doesn't have are America's judges, who he's trying, of course, to replace through appointments. But even some of his own appointees are fighting him. And so now the Trump administration is really encouraging threats against American judges. I mean, we are really, you know, in the American judiciary is in the fight of its life here to maintain its independence. Unfortunately, a conservative majority on the Supreme Court has decided that Donald Trump is a king and can do whatever he wants. You know, we're in a pretty dicey situation here in the United States. Sam Hawley: And federal scientists too, right? That's really concerning. Tom Nichols: Oh, absolutely. I mean, climate scientists, you know, virologists, epidemiologists. If you had said to me five years ago that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would be running the Department of Health and Human Services, I would have said that it's a comedy skit on Saturday Night Live. And I wouldn't have believed you. Authoritarian leaders don't like experts. Experts are the people who say, look, you can yell at me and threaten me all day long, but, you know, water is still wet and the sky is still blue. And, you know, people are going to die because of this. I mean, there is going to be real harm to the health and well-being of a lot of Americans because of this kookery that's infested the government now. And again, firing all those civil servants, firing all those government scientists and replacing them with people who want, you know, jobs and nice offices is an important step in that. Sam Hawley: Yeah. And not only sacking people, Tom, I also read that he's trying to change history, rewriting historical documents. Tom Nichols: Well, he was very upset that the Smithsonian Institution had an exhibit about impeachment that included him. And that was taken out. Now, apparently, because of the outcry around that, that he is going to be put back in there, whether he likes it or not, which tells you that if people get angry enough and they make enough noise that, you know, you can have some effect here. Yeah, Trump simply reorders reality whenever he speaks to his liking. And again, he may well know, I mean, at this point, it's so difficult to know what Trump believes and what he imagines or what he confabulates. But he knows that he's speaking to his loyal base. And that base right now is pretty angry with him about the whole Jeffrey Epstein business, which is a whole other drama here in America. So he's trying to throw them all kinds of red meat as fast as he can to try and get their minds off the fact that he didn't fulfill his promise to release all these files about one of his best friends. Sam Hawley: All right, well, Tom, Donald Trump, he's restructuring the bureaucracy to suit his view of the world. Project 2025 was, in essence, a wish list of ways to expand presidential power, if you like. So is that happening in your view? Is Trump becoming more powerful? Tom Nichols: It's hard to say. The best barometer of whether the Republicans and Donald Trump are stronger or weaker is this obvious panic that has overtaken them about losing the House next year. Is he personally more powerful? I don't think so. I think he was probably at the height of his power when he came into office and in those first few months. But there have been so many screw ups and misfires and stumbles that I think, you know, if there was any kind of second term honeymoon, he's mostly squandered that away. And so I think he's still the president of the United States and he is still a force to be reckoned with. But I don't think he's looking quite as powerful as he was even, you know, two or three months ago. Which is not to underestimate him. Because he will do things that other presidents would not. Strangely enough, this Epstein business is the thing that's probably hurt him more than anything. I think he's really worried about his base turning on him. And the only time they've even threatened to turn on him has been over this Epstein business. Sam Hawley: Yeah, interesting. All right. Well, the concern for a long time, of course, has been that Trump will chip away at democracy and democratic norms over his four year term, which is rather long. How much damage could he actually do in that time? Tom Nichols: Oh, he's not chipping away at it. He's jackhammering away at it. The chipping away was in his first term, but that was held in check by people around him who would say things like, Mr. President, you can't do that. Or even more importantly, they would say, Mr. President, I'm not doing that. He learned from that. He has come into office with a bunch of careerists and opportunists and sycophants who are going to do whatever he tells them to do. He's calling for an investigation, for example, into Jack Smith, the special counsel who was looking into his various misdeeds in his first term. And the lawyer who will be the head of that office is a 30 year old guy who got his law degree last year. And he'll do whatever Trump wants him to do. Sam Hawley: Well, Tom, I don't want to be overdramatic, but could he actually succeed then in destroying or at least deeply wounding American democracy? Tom Nichols: Destroying, probably not. One of the strengths of the United States is that we are a sprawling, vast federal system. Donald Trump can say a lot of things, but, you know, New York and California and Illinois and Massachusetts all have their own governors and legislatures. What he can do is encourage the collapse of democracy in pockets. It's one thing to live in Boston. It's another thing to live in Alabama or Louisiana or Mississippi or Texas, where the governor and the legislature are straight up aligned with the president and have decided that if he doesn't like the way the Constitution is written, then they don't like it either. And so I've said in the past, I don't think American democracy collapses from coast to coast. I think it evaporates in pockets. That's where I think the real threats are going to come, is in this kind of cooperation with individual states and governors and legislatures. Sam Hawley: Tom Nichols is a staff writer at The Atlantic. This episode was produced by Sydney Pead. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. ABC News Daily will be back again on Monday. Thanks for listening.
News.com.au
2 hours ago
- News.com.au
Trump demands new US census as redistricting war spreads
US President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered officials to work on a new census excluding undocumented immigrants, as the White House presses Republican states to draw more favorable voter maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Trump called for a "new and highly accurate" census that he wanted based on unspecified "modern day facts and figures" gleaned from the 2024 election. "People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS," he said in the social media post. The US Constitution since 1790 has required a census every 10 years that counts the "whole number of persons in each state" -- including people in the country illegally. The next one is not due until 2030, although preparations for the enormous task are already underway. Trump did not make clear if he was referring to the regularly scheduled population count or a special survey undertaken earlier. The census is used to determine how many members of Congress are elected from each state, and the Pew Research Center estimates that ignoring unauthorized migrants in 2020 would have deprived California, Florida and Texas of one House seat each. It is also used for apportioning votes in the state-by-state "electoral college" that decides presidential elections and for allocating trillions of dollars in federal funding. Trump attempted similar moves in his first term, including the addition of a citizenship question to the census, but was blocked by the Supreme Court. The court declined to rule on whether the millions of people in the country without legal status should be excluded. Trump's call for a new census comes with state-level lawmakers and officials in Texas locking horns over a new electoral map that would likely net Republicans up to five extra House seats in 2026. - Threats to lawmakers - More than 50 Texas Democratic lawmakers have fled to multiple Democratic states in an effort to block the passage of the proposed blueprint during a special legislative session. Texas Republicans have threatened to arrest them, and US Senator John Cornyn announced he had successfully petitioned the FBI to help state and local law enforcement locate them. Republican governors in several other states are exploring new maps in a bid to protect the party's razor-thin majority in the House, which would flip next year with three Democratic gains. Vice President JD Vance was scheduled to visit Indiana on Thursday to discuss redistricting with Governor Mike Braun and press local Republicans to eke out another seat for the party. Politico reported that Republicans could draw as many as 10 new seats ahead of the midterms and are targeting Ohio, Missouri, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. But some Republicans have warned that opening a Pandora's box of mid-cycle partisan redistricting -- known as "gerrymandering" -- risks making conservative lawmakers an endangered species in liberal states Republican congressman Kevin Kiley, whose seat would likely disappear under a retaliatory gerrymandering in California, has introduced a bill to block all mid-decade redistricting. In Indiana, Braun said any redistricting conversation would be "exploratory," as the state's maps were drawn fairly in 2021, Indianapolis public broadcaster WFYI reported. "We tried to adhere to township lines and the configurations don't look like an octopus," Braun said, according to the TV and radio network. Democrats have vowed to retaliate with their own proposals, possibly in New York and California, the country's largest states. Texas legislators were evacuated from their suburban Chicago hotel on Wednesday morning following an unspecified threat. State representative John Bucy told NBC News the group had spent two hours outside the building but had not been diverted from pursuing their "fight for voting rights." Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker authorized state police to guard the group.
News.com.au
4 hours ago
- News.com.au
Kremlin says Trump-Putin meeting agreed for 'coming days'
The Kremlin said Thursday that a summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin was set for the "coming days", both sides having already agreed the venue "in principle". The summit would be the first between sitting US and Russian presidents since Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva in June 2021. It comes as Trump seeks to broker an end to Russia's military assault on Ukraine. Three rounds of direct talks between Moscow and Kyiv have failed to yield any progress towards a ceasefire. The two sides appear as far apart as ever in the conditions they have set for an end to the more than three-year-long conflict. Trump said Wednesday he was likely to meet Putin face-to-face "very soon." They last sat together in 2019 at G20 summit meeting in Japan but have spoken by phone several times since Trump returned to the White House. "At the suggestion of the American side, an agreement has been reached in principle to hold a bilateral summit in the coming days," Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said Thursday in a Kremlin statement. "We are now starting to work out the details together with our American colleagues," he added. The Kremlin said a venue had also been agreed "in principle", but did not name it. "Next week has been set as a target date," said Ushakov. - Putin-Zelensky meeting? - Tens of thousands have been killed since Russia launched its military offensive on Ukraine in February 2022. Russian bombardments have forced millions for flee their homes and destroyed swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine. Putin has resisted multiple calls from the United States, Europe and Kyiv for a ceasefire. At talks in Istanbul, Russian negotiators have outlined hardline territorial demands if Ukraine wants Russia to halt its advance -- calling for Kyiv to withdraw from territory it still controls and renounce Western military support. Moscow has also repeatedly sought to cast doubt on Zelensky's legitimacy and ruled out a meeting between the two leaders until after the terms of a peace deal have been agreed. The announcement of the upcoming summit comes a day after US envoy Steve Witkoff met Putin in Moscow. Witkoff proposed a trilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, but Russia did not respond to that proposal, Ushakov said. "The Russian side left this option completely without comment," he added. Zelensky earlier Thursday had refreshed his call for a meeting with Putin -- which he says is the only way to make progress towards peace. "It is necessary to determine the timing for such a format and the range of issues to be addressed," he wrote on social media. The Ukrainian leader later spoke with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Both "praised the mediation efforts" of Trump, a German government spokesman said. But Zelensky also called for Europe to be included in any potential peace talks. "The war is happening in Europe, and Ukraine is an integral part of Europe -- we are already in negotiations on EU accession. Therefore, Europe must be a participant in the relevant processes," Zelensky said on social media after the call. He also said he would hold several other conversations throughout the course of the day, including with French and Italian officials. "Today, security advisors will hold an online meeting to align our joint views -- Ukraine and the whole Europe, the United States," Zelensky said. "Ukraine is not afraid of meetings and expects the same brave approach from the Russian side. It is time we ended the war," he added. bur/jj/giv
