Share
0 0 0 0

Columbia Activist’s Case Goes to Court

1 day ago
3,018


Outside a Manhattan courthouse today, hundreds of protesters gathered to criticize the Trump administration’s plan to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate who helped lead protests there against Israel. Inside, a judge said he would grant Khalil’s lawyers the ability to speak with him privately for the first time since he was arrested and sent to immigration detention in Louisiana.

The case is at the center of President Trump’s effort to expel foreign students who took part in last year’s campus protests over the war in Gaza. After months of threatening deportations, Trump celebrated the arrest of Khalil, a legal permanent resident with a green card, as the first of “many to come.”

Behind the scenes, federal investigators who typically focus on human traffickers and drug smugglers have been searching social media for posts showing protesters’ sympathy toward Hamas. The authorities have not accused Khalil of having any contact with the terrorist group or providing material support to it. Instead, Trump’s aides are arguing that he had organized antisemitic activities on campus, which makes him deportable under an obscure legal statute.

“This is not about free speech,” Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, said today. “This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with. No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card.” Trump’s critics argue that Khalil’s pending deportation is a clear violation of the First Amendment.

Senate Democrats will not help Republicans pass a bill to fund the government through Sept. 30, according to Chuck Schumer, the party’s leader in the chamber. Schumer instead urged Republicans to consider a shorter extension to allow time to negotiate individual spending bills.

The decision significantly raised the chances of a shutdown at the end of the week, when the government’s funding is set to run out. There is little time to find another path: House Republicans left town after passing their funding bill. Here’s the latest.

Just hours after Trump’s global tariffs on steel and aluminum imports took effect this morning, the European Union and Canada responded with retaliatory measures.

Canada said it would impose additional fees on $20 billion worth of U.S. goods, effectively raising the prices for imported American metal, computers and sporting goods, among other things.

The conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the New York Philharmonic are excitedly preparing to premiere a five-minute piece by the great 20th-century composer Maurice Ravel. The work, which will be performed for the first time tomorrow, was written around 1900 but was never published.

Written for an unfinished cantata about the Babylonian queen Semiramis, the piece was only recently discovered when researchers at a Paris library began looking for works that could be performed to commemorate Ravel’s 150th birthday. “It’s precious,” Dudamel said.

It was five years ago this week when Covid seemed to grind the world to a halt almost overnight. In the months that followed, many of us spent a lot of time online, where fun and wacky trends offered some joy in the dark days of lockdown.

When Eric Bauza was in high school, he was tasked with delivering the morning announcements over the P.A. system. In that role, he tried to amuse his classmates with different cartoon voices.

What some would see as a chore, Bauza now views as a catalyst for his career. Bauza is now a professional voice actor: He voices both Daffy Duck and Porky Pig in the new “Looney Tunes” movie; he has performed as Sylvester, Tweety and Elmer Fudd; and, when Antonio Banderas is unavailable, he takes over for Puss in Boots. Hear him switch between voices.

Have an exuberant evening.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back tomorrow. — Matthew

Philip Pacheco was our photo editor today.

We welcome your feedback. Write to us at evening@nytimes.com.



Source link