Why Are Pro-Palestinian Activists Suddenly So Quiet?
Now this nascent coalition faces a stark choice. Either fade into obscurity after a peak moment of influence, or regroup around a new and riskier goal: fighting to stop Trump from snatching their homeland.
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New York Post
16 minutes ago
- New York Post
America's openness leaves Mahmoud Khalil free — to abuse our freedoms
It's a shame we're still debating whether Mahmoud Khalil should be kicked out of the United States, because this hateful zealot should never have been allowed to step foot on American soil in the first place. Khalil, the former Columbia University graduate student who became a poster boy for critics of President Donald Trump's deportation policies, is back in the headlines this week for all the wrong reasons. In a high-profile interview with The New York Times' Ezra Klein, Khalil made a mockery of those who have insisted he's a well-intentioned humanitarian without animus toward anyone. 'It felt frightening that we had to reach this moment in the Palestinian struggle,' he said of Hamas' barbaric Oct. 7 attack on innocent Israeli civilians. Klein asked the gentlest possible follow-up: 'What do you mean we had to reach this moment?' 'Unfortunately, we couldn't avoid such a moment,' Khalil repeated. In a manner that would have been comical were it not for the horrific subject matter, Klein — ever so eager to vindicate his vile guest — afforded Khalil one more chance to describe the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust in a way that didn't make it out to be a vital but tedious chore. But Khalil tripled down. It was, he said, a necessary evil to 'break the cycle' and 'tell the world that Palestinians are here,' you see. This came just weeks after Khalil refused not once, not twice, but three times to condemn Hamas when he appeared on CNN. 'I simply asked and protested the war in Palestine,' he said of the antisemitic uprising he helped lead on Columbia's campus. 'That's my duty as a Palestinian, as a human being right now, is to ask for the stop of the killing in my home country.' Critics exploded with righteous anger. 'Mahmoud Khalil has not been shy about his support for Hamas — a brutal terrorist organization that violently attacks innocent men, women, and children,' observed White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson. 'Calling the massacre of Israeli civilians a 'desperate attempt' is not political speech — it's moral depravity,' submitted NY state Assemblyman Ari Brown of Nassau County. 'Mahmoud Khalil must be immediately deported,' Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) declared. 'He is a chief pro-Hamas terrorist agitator.' The Trump administration has already tried. When Secretary of State Marco Rubio launched deportation proceedings against Khalil in March, he did so by claiming the then-student's anti-Israel protests on Columbia's campus 'undermine US policy to combat antisemitism around the world and in the United States.' Yet even many of Khalil's critics chafed at the federal government targeting a legal resident and green card holder for offensive speech — and a New Jersey court forced his release. The First Amendment is, after all, among Americans' most cherished inheritances. Many free-speech champions expressed reasonable concern that removing Khalil might open the door to a slippery slope of censorship. That concern, though, elides the all-important threshold question: Why was Khalil ever allowed into the United States at all? There are legal, prudential and philosophical arguments for granting all legal residents the powerful protections of the First Amendment. But there's nothing in the Constitution — nor embedded in our longstanding American values — that compels this country to admit hateful ideologues. Khalil is a 30-year-old man harboring palpable bigotries ('Having lived in the Middle East most of my life, unfortunately, the only Jew you hear about is the one who's trying to kill you,' he explained to Klein), and a tribal loyalty that blinds him to the basic moral principles underpinning American life. Not to mention his unfriendly feelings toward the United States itself. 'I had my own reservations about the impact of America on me,' he told Klein smugly. 'As a Palestinian or as a Syrian refugee in Lebanon, America's influence in the Middle East was very negative.' The United States is an open-minded, benevolent nation predisposed to accepting people of myriad cultures from across the globe. That's an honorable instinct, and most of the time it's the right one. But a line has to be drawn to protect the national interest. And if that line is so weak and vague as to permit the entry of someone unable to condemn kidnapping, torture, murder and rape for political purposes, it's no line at all. It's 'Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,' as Emma Lazarus put it. Not 'Give me your bigots, your knaves / Your privileged yearning to drive Jews into the sea.' Now that he's here, Khalil has the right to promote his hateful, anti-American worldview in as many 'progressive' media outlets as are willing to amplify it. But he does so as a living testament to both the virtues of America — and the failures of its immigration system. Isaac Schorr is a staff writer at Mediaite.
Chicago Tribune
16 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
A look at colleges with federal money targeted by the Trump administration
Several elite U.S. colleges have made deals with President Donald Trump's administration, offering concessions to his political agenda and financial payments to restore federal money that had been withheld. Ivy League schools Columbia, Brown and the University of Pennsylvania reached agreements to resolve federal investigations. The Republican administration is pressing for more, citing the deal it negotiated with Columbia as a 'road map' for other colleges. There is a freeze on billions of dollars of research money for other colleges including Harvard, which has been negotiating with the White House even as it fights in court over the lost grants. And on Friday, a White House official said the Trump administration is seeking a $1 billion settlement from the the University of California, Los Angeles. Like no other president, Trump has used the government's control over federal research funding to push for changes in higher education, decrying elite colleges as places of extreme liberal ideology and antisemitism. Here's a look at universities pressured by the administration's funding cuts. Columbia said on July 23 that it had agreed to a $200 million fine to restore federal funding. The school was threatened with the potential loss of billions of dollars in government support, including more than $400 million in grants canceled earlier this year. The administration pulled the money because of what it described as Columbia's failure to address antisemitism on campus during the Israel-Hamas war. Columbia agreed to administration demands such as overhauling its student disciplinary process and applying a federally backed definition of antisemitism to teaching and a disciplinary committee investigating students critical of Israel. Federal officials said the fine will go to the Treasury Department and cannot be spent until Congress appropriates it. Columbia also agreed to pay $21 million into a compensation fund for employees who may have faced antisemitism. The deal includes a clause that Columbia says preserves its independence, putting in writing that the government does not have the authority to dictate 'hiring, admission decisions, or the content of academic speech.' An agreement last month calls for Brown to pay $50 million to Rhode Island workforce development organizations. That would restore dozens of lost federal research grants and end investigations into allegations of antisemitism and racial bias in Brown admissions. Among other concessions, Brown agreed to adopt the government's definition of 'male' and 'female' and remove any consideration of race from the admissions process. Like the settlement with Columbia, Brown's does not include a finding of wrongdoing. It includes a provision saying the government does not have authority to dictate Brown's curriculum or 'the content of academic speech.' The Trump administration suspended $584 million in federal grants to UCLA, the university said this week, after the Department of Justice said the college had violated civil rights 'by acting with deliberate indifference in creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students.' On Friday, a White House official said the Trump administration was seeking a $1 billion settlement from the university. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about the request and spoke on the condition of anonymity. UCLA is the first public university to have its federal grants targeted by the administration over alleged civil rights violations. Under a July agreement resolving a federal civil rights case, Penn modified three school records set by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and said it would apologize to female athletes 'disadvantaged' by Thomas' participation on the women's swimming team. The Education Department investigated Penn as part of the administration's broader attempt to remove transgender athletes from girls and women's sports. As part of the case, the administration had suspended $175 million in funding to Penn. The administration has frozen more than $2.6 billion in research grants to Harvard, accusing the nation's oldest and wealthiest university of allowing antisemitism to flourish. Harvard has pushed back with several lawsuits. In negotiations for a possible settlement, the administration is seeking for Harvard to pay an amount far higher than Columbia. The White House announced in April that it froze more than $1 billion of Cornell's federal funding as it investigated allegations of civil rights violations. The Ivy League school was among a group of more than 60 universities that received a letter from the Education Department on March 10 urging them to take steps to protect Jewish students or else face 'potential enforcement actions.' Like Cornell, Northwestern saw a halt in some of its federal funding in April. The amount was about $790 million, according to the administration. The administration this week froze $108 million in federal money for Duke. The hold on funding from the National Institutes of Health came days after the departments of Health and Human Services and Education sent a joint letter alleging racial preferences in Duke's hiring and admissions. Dozens of research grants were suspended at Princeton without a clear rationale, according to an April 1 campus message from the university's president, Christopher Eisgruber. The grants came from federal agencies such as the Department of Energy, NASA and the Pentagon.
The Hill
16 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump wages war on renewables
The moves are expected to create issues for the renewable energy industry, ones critics argue could raise power prices. President Trump's tax and spending megabill slashed incentives for wind and solar energy that were part of the Democrats' 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which is expected to significantly stifle the build-out of the growing industry. And in recent weeks, his administration has taken further actions to hamper wind and solar power. To catch you up: Shortly after the bill passed, Trump directed the Treasury Department to take a strict approach in limiting which projects are eligible for the remaining tax credits. The Interior Department also recently announced it would subject wind and solar projects to an elevated review process — a move that was expected to slow down their approvals. Last week, Interior said it would try to block projects that take up a lot of room, which is expected to primarily hurt solar and wind projects. The department said last week that it would weigh 'whether to stop onshore wind development on some federal lands and halting future offshore wind lease sales.' It also moved this week to try to cancel an already approved wind project in Idaho. The Environmental Protection Agency separately announced Thursday it would move to claw back funds under a $7 billion rooftop solar program. The Interior Department's elevated review processes are expected to pertain not only to wind and solar farm approvals but also include a wide range of activities such as grants and assessments of endangered species impacts. Ben Norris, vice president of regulatory affairs with the Solar Energy Industry Association, said he expects some of these reviews would not only delay projects on public lands but could have similar effects on projects on private lands. 'We are hearing about dozens, if not hundreds of projects in the aggregate that otherwise are totally sited on private lands, totally permitted by state and local authorities, but that the Interior Department seems to have found a way to put into limbo, at least for a time,' Norris told The Hill.
