WASHINGTON: House Republicans on Tuesday announced an investigation into the federal funding for universities where students have protested the Israel-Hamas war, broadening a campaign that has placed heavy scrutiny on how presidents at the nation’s most prestigious colleges have dealt with reports of antisemitism on campus.
Several House committees will be tasked with a wide probe that ultimately threatens to withhold federal research grants and other government support to the universities, placing another pressure point on campus administrators who are struggling to manage pro-Palestinian encampments, allegations of discrimination against Jewish students and questions of how they are integrating free speech and campus safety.
The House investigation follows several recent high-profile hearings that precipitated the resignations of presidents at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. And House Republicans promised more scrutiny, saying they were calling on the administrators of Yale, UCLA and the University of Michigan to testify next month.
“We will not allow antisemitism to thrive on campus, and we will hold these universities accountable for their failure to protect Jewish students on campus,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson at a news conference.
Nationwide, campus protesters have called for their institutions to cut financial ties to Israel and decried how thousands of civilians in Gaza have been killed by Israel following the deadly attack by Hamas on Oct. 7.
Some organizers have called for Hamas to violently seize Israeli territory and derided Zionism. Jewish students, meanwhile, have reported being targeted and say campus administrators have not done enough to protect them.
After Johnson visited Columbia last week with several other top House Republicans, he said “the anti-Jewish hatred was appalling.”
Republicans are also turning to the issue at a time when election season is fully underway and leadership needs a cause that unites them and divides Democrats. The House GOP’s impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden has fallen flat and the Republican conference is smarting after a series of important bills left GOP lawmakers deeply divided. Democrats have feuded internally at times over the Israel-Hamas war and how campus administrators have handled the protests.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in a floor speech Tuesday that it was “unacceptable when Jewish students are targeted for being Jewish, when protests exhibit verbal abuse, systemic intimidation, or glorification of the murderous and hateful Hamas or the violence of October 7th.”
Rep. Pete Aguilar, the No. 3 House Democrat, at a news conference Tuesday said that it was important for colleges “to ensure that everybody has an ability to protest and to make their voice heard but they have a responsibility to honor the safety of individuals.”
“For many of Jewish descent, they do not feel safe, and that is a real issue,” he said, but added that he wanted to allow university administrators to act before Congress stepped in.
But the Republican speaker promised to use “all the tools available” to push the universities. Johnson was joined by chairs for six committees with jurisdiction over a wide range of government programs, including National Science Foundation grants, health research grants, visas for international students and the tax code for nonprofit universities.
Without Democratic support in the divided Congress, it is not clear what legislative punishments House Republicans could actually implement. Any bills from the House would be unlikely to advance in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
But so far, the House hearings with university presidents have produced viral moments and given Republicans high-profile opportunities to denounce campuses as hotbeds of antisemitism. In December, the presidents of Ivy League universities struggled to answer pointed questions about whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate each university’s code of conduct.
Rep. Elize Stefanik, the New York Republican who posed the question in the December hearing, said it became the highest-viewed congressional hearing in history. She also cast the campaign against antisemitism as part of a broader conservative push against what they say is overt liberal bias at elite American universities.
“Enough is enough,” she said. “It is time to restore law and order, academic integrity and moral decency to America’s higher education institutions.”
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce is also requesting that the administrators of Yale, UCLA and the University of Michigan appear at a hearing on May 23 that focuses on how they handled the recent protests.
“As Republican leaders, we have a clear message for mealy-mouthed, spineless leaders: Congress will not tolerate your dereliction of duty to your Jewish students,” said the committee chair, North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx.
At a hearing of the committee earlier this month, Columbia University’s president took a firm stance against antisemitism. But at the same time, a protest was underway on Columbia’s campus that would soon set off others like it nationwide. The university began suspending students this week in an attempt to clear the protest encampment on campus.
The university is also facing federal legal complaints. A class-action lawsuit on behalf of Jewish students alleges Columbia breached its contract by failing to maintain a safe learning environment.
Meanwhile, a legal group representing pro-Palestinian students is urging the US Department of Education’s civil rights office to investigate whether Columbia’s treatment of the protesting students violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell called on university administrators to “take charge.”
“On campus, protect Jewish community members. Clear the encampments. Let students go to class and take their exams. And allow graduations to proceed,” he said.
House Republicans launch investigation into federal funding for universities amid campus protests
https://arab.news/n78mt
House Republicans launch investigation into federal funding for universities amid campus protests
- Nationwide, campus protesters have called for their institutions to cut financial ties to Israel
President-elect Trump names Susie Wiles as chief of staff
Wiles is widely credited within and outside Trump’s inner circle for running what was, by far, his most disciplined and well-executed campaign. She largely avoided the spotlight, even refusing to take the mic to speak as Trump celebrated his victory early Wednesday morning.
“Susie is tough, smart, innovative, and is universally admired and respected. Susie will continue to work tirelessly to Make America Great Again,” Trump said in a statement. “It is a well deserved honor to have Susie as the first-ever female Chief of Staff in United States history. I have no doubt that she will make our country proud.”
Wiles is a longtime Florida-based Republican strategist who ran Trump’s campaign in the state in 2016 and 2020. Before that, she ran Rick Scott’s 2010 campaign for Florida governor and briefly served as the manager of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman’s 2012 presidential campaign.
Chad army inflicts ‘many dead’ on Boko Haram extremists
N’DJAMENA: Chad’s military inflicted “many dead and wounded” in air strikes against Boko Haram jihadists, President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno said on Thursday.
“We carried out several air strikes on enemy positions that resulted in many dead and wounded,” Deby told reporters in the Lake Chad region, without giving specific numbers.
Deby, who gave an interview in full military fatigues, said he had “personally” launched the counter-attack against Boko Haram, which targeted the Chadian army in an attack last month in the western region, close to the border with Nigeria.
The Chad government had vowed to “obliterate” Boko Haram when launching its operation in late October after the jihadists killed around 40 people and wounded dozens more in a raid on a military garrison.
The operation “aims not only to secure our peaceful population” but also to “hunt down, root out and obliterate the capability of Boko Haram and its affiliates to cause harm,” interim Prime Minister Abderahim Bireme Hamid told reporters last week.
In a vast expanse of water and swamps, the Lake Chad region’s countless islets serve as hideouts for jihadist groups, such as Boko Haram and its offshoot Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP), who carry out regular attacks on the country’s army and civilians.
Chad and its neighbors Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon set up a multinational force of some 8,500 soldiers in the area in 2015 to tackle the jihadists.
Boko Haram launched an insurgency in Nigeria in 2009, leaving more than 40,000 people dead, and the organization has since spread to neighboring countries.
In March 2020, the Chadian army suffered its biggest ever one-day losses in the region, when around 100 troops died in a raid on the lake’s Bohoma peninsula.
Undocumented immigrants in US ‘terrified’ as Trump returns
- Trump repeatedly rail against illegal immigrants during the election campaign
The 22-year-old, a graduate student in biomedical engineering who lives in Phoenix, Arizona, is haunted by the incoming president’s promises of mass deportations.
“I was terrified,” said Palazuelos, reflecting on the moment he heard the news.
“I am in fear of being deported, of losing everything that I’ve worked so hard for, and, most importantly, being separated from my family.”
Born in Mexico, he has lived in the United States since he was four years old. He is one of the country’s so-called “Dreamers,” a term for migrants who were brought into the country as children and never obtained US citizenship.
Throughout the election campaign, Palazuelos heard Trump repeatedly rail against illegal immigrants, employing violent rhetoric about those who “poison the blood” of the United States.
Trump has never specified how he intends to go about his plan for mass deportation, which experts warn would be extremely complicated and expensive.
“What do mass deportations mean? Who does that include?” Palazuelos asked.
“Does it include people like me, Dreamers, people that came here from a very young age, that had no say?“
Compounding the stress, the southwestern state of Arizona has just approved by referendum a law allowing state police to arrest illegal immigrants. That power was previously reserved for federal border police.
If the proposition is deemed constitutional by courts, Palazuelos fears becoming the target of heightened racial profiling.
“What makes someone a suspect of being here illegally, whether they don’t speak English?” he asked.
“My grandma, she’s a United States citizen, however, she doesn’t speak English very well. Meanwhile, I speak English, but is it because of the color of my skin that I would possibly be suspected or detained?“
Jose Patino, 35, also feels a sense of “dread” and “sadness.” His situation feels more fragile than ever.
Born in Mexico and brought to the United States aged six, he now works for Aliento, a community organization helping undocumented immigrants.
He personally benefited from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigrant policy brought in by Barack Obama, offering protections and work permits for those in his situation.
But for Patino, those safeguards will expire next year, and Trump has promised to end the DACA program.
Indeed, Trump already tried to dismantle it during his previous term, but his decree was scuppered by a US Supreme Court decision, largely on procedural grounds.
Faced with this uncertainty, Patino is considering moving to a state that would refuse to report him to federal authorities, such as Colorado or California.
He remembers well the struggle of being undocumented in his twenties — a time when he could not obtain a basic job like flipping burgers in McDonald’s, and could not apply for a driver’s license or travel for fear of being deported.
“I don’t personally want to go back to that kind of life,” Patino said.
For him, Trump’s electoral win is not just scary, but an insult.
“We’re contributing to this country. So that’s the hard part: me following the rules, working, paying my taxes, helping this country grow, that’s not enough,” he said.
“So it’s frustrating, and it’s hurtful.”
Patino understands why so many Hispanic voters, often faced with economic difficulties, ended up voting for Trump.
Those who are here legally “believe that they’re not going to be targeted,” he said.
“A lot of Latinos associate wealth and success with whiteness, and they want to be part of that group and to be included, rather than be outside of it and be marginalized and be considered ‘the other,’” he said.
Still, he is angry with his own uncles and cousins who, having once been undocumented themselves, voted for Trump.
“We cannot have a conversation together, because it’s going to get into argument and probably into a fight,” he said.
Putin says Ukraine must remain neutral for there to be peace
- “If there is no neutrality, it is difficult to imagine the existence of any good-neighborly relations between Russia and Ukraine,” Putin said
- Putin said Russia had recognized Ukraine’s post-Soviet borders based on the understanding that it would be neutral
SOCHI, Russia: President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Ukraine should remain neutral for there to be a chance for peace, adding that the borders of Ukraine should be in accordance with the wishes of the people living in Russian-claimed territory.
“If there is no neutrality, it is difficult to imagine the existence of any good-neighborly relations between Russia and Ukraine,” Putin said.
Putin said Russia had recognized Ukraine’s post-Soviet borders based on the understanding that it would be neutral. The US-led NATO military alliance has repeatedly said that Ukraine would one day join.
If Ukraine was not neutral, it would be “constantly used as a tool in the wrong hands and to the detriment of the interests of the Russian Federation,” Putin said.
Russia controls about a fifth of Ukraine after more than two and a half years of war. Putin on
June 14
set out his terms for an end to the conflict: Ukraine would have to drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw all of its troops from all of the territory of the regions claimed by Russia.
Ukraine rejects those conditions as tantamount to surrender and President Volodymyr Zelensky has presented a “victory plan” for which he has requested additional Western support.
“We are determined to create conditions for a long-term settlement so that Ukraine is an independent, sovereign state, and not an instrument in the hands of third countries, and not used in their interests,” Putin said.
Asked about the future borders of Ukraine, Putin said: “The borders of Ukraine should be in accordance with the sovereign decisions of people who live in certain territories and which we call our historical territories.”
Ukraine says that it will not rest until every last Russian soldier is ejected from its territory though even US generals say that such an aim would take massive resources that Ukraine currently does not have.
Russian attack on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia kills four, wounds 40
- Russian forces have stepped up their attacks in Zaporizhzhia in recent days
- “The death toll as a result of Russia’s strikes on Zaporizhzhia has risen to four,” the emergency services said
KYIV: Russian aerial attacks on the frontline city of Zaporizhzhia on Thursday killed at least four people and wounded another 40, including children, officials said.
Another two were killed in a separate attack on the eastern Donetsk region, strikes that followed a wave of overnight drone attacks, including on the capital Kyiv.
Russian forces have stepped up their attacks in Zaporizhzhia in recent days and are making rapid advances in the industrial territory of Donetsk, both of which the Kremlin says are Russian territory.
“The death toll as a result of Russia’s strikes on Zaporizhzhia has risen to four,” the emergency services said in a statement on social media.
“Forty were wounded, including four children,” governor Ivan Fedorov said in a separate statement.
Officials said earlier that a hospital had been damaged in Zaporizhzhia, which had a pre-war population of more than 700,000 people and lies around 35 kilometers (22 miles) from the nearest Russian positions.
A four-month old girl and boys aged one, five and 15 were wounded in the attacks, Fedorov said.
Officials posted images showing rescue workers pulling victims from the rubble and holding back distressed locals from getting to the destroyed buildings.
The strikes later in the Donetsk region killed two people and wounded five more in the village of Mykolaivka, the region’s governor Vadym Filashkin announced on social media.
“One of the shells hit a five-story building and four buildings nearby were damaged,” he wrote on social media.
He posted a photo of a Soviet-era residential building on fire, dozens of its windows blown out with debris littering the ground beneath it.