LWN in General 2 months ago

Columbia University capitulates to Trump demands to restore $400m in federal funding – live

Trump administration guts homeland security department’s civil rights office – report

The Trump administration has moved to fire almost all employees at the homeland security department’s civil rights office, the New York Times reports, in a move that will undermine its ability to provide oversight as he implements hardline immigration policies.

Here’s more on the significance of the office’s closure, from the Times:

The more than 100 staff members were told they would be put on leave and formally fired in May, according to five current and former government officials. Mr. Trump also closed the ombudsman for Citizenship and Immigration Services, another office responsible for scrutinizing the administration’s legal immigration policies.

The moves were the latest attempt by Mr. Trump to root out civil rights divisions and oversight mechanisms across government agencies. But the shuttering of the Homeland Security Department’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties was particularly notable given the lack of transparency over the administration’s immigration crackdown.

Mr. Trump has been determined in his second term to ensure that his administration is made of up of loyalists who will not try to block his agenda.

Just this week, the Trump administration stonewalled a federal judge seeking information about the use of an 18th-century wartime law to deport immigrants with little to no due process to a prison in El Salvador.

“It’s a demonstration of their total contempt for any checks on their power,” said Deborah Fleischaker, a former civil rights office worker and chief of staff of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Biden administration. She said the office “endeavored to make the D.H.S. mission work with respect for civil rights, civil liberties and privacy.”

“This is a clear message that those things do not matter to this administration,” she added.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the decision was meant to “streamline oversight to remove roadblocks to enforcement.”

“These offices have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining D.H.S.’s mission,” Ms. McLaughlin said. “Rather than supporting law enforcement efforts, they often function as internal adversaries that slow down operations.”

This brings us to the end of another day of live coverage of Donald Trump’s second presidency. We will continue to chronicle events in the days and weeks ahead. In the meantime, here are some of the day’s developments:

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The Trump administration will revoke the temporary legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans in the United States, according to a Federal Register notice on Friday.

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Columbia University agreed to a series of changes demanded by the Trump administration as a pre-condition for restoring $400m in federal funding the government pulled this month amid allegations that the school tolerated antisemitism on campus.

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A US appeals court refused to pause a judge’s ruling requiring the administration to reinstate 25,000 workers at 18 federal agencies who lost their jobs as part of Trump’s purge of the federal workforce.

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The Trump administration has moved to fire almost all employees at the homeland security department’s civil rights office, the New York Times reported.

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At a hearing on whether or not the administration violated a judge’s order to turn around planes that were in the act of deporting people to El Salvador, the judge James Boasberg pledged to “get to the bottom of whether they violated my order”.

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The representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez andthe senator Bernie Sanders reported on social media that 34,000 people turned out for their just-completed rally in Denver “to take on billionaires and win our country back”. They were preceded by an unusual opening act: Alvaro Bedoya, one of the FTC commissioners fired by Trump.

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Steve Witkoff, the real estate developer tasked with ending the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, revealed that Russian president Vladimir Putin sees Trump as “his friend”.

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According to a memo obtained by ABC News, the Trump administration cut off legal aid for 26,000 unaccompanied immigrant children on Friday.

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The Department of Homeland Security asked a Cornell University student who sued the Trump administration seeking to stop the president’s order aimed at foreign students accused of “antisemitism” was asked to “surrender” to immigration officials.

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The US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the senator Bernie Sanders reported on social media that 34,000 people turned out for their just-completed rally in Denver “to take on billionaires and win our country back”.

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Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Bluesky: “This was the largest political gathering in Denver since Obama in 2008. Also bigger than the 2024 DNC. And the largest ever rally in Bernie’s career (and obviously, mine too).”

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“It tells me,” Sanders wrote on X, “that the American people will not allow Trump to move us into oligarchy and authoritarianism. We will fight back. We will win.”

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The massive rally also heard from Alvaro Bedoya, one of the FTC commissioners who said he had been illegally fired by Donald Trump.

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Alvaro Bedoya, one of the illegally dismissed FTC commissioners.

[image or embed]

— Judge Judy and Executioner (@judgyjudes.bsky.social) March 21, 2025 at 4:28 PM

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Steve Witkoff, the real estate developer with no diplomatic experience or subject-matter expertise whom Donald Trump has tasked with ending the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, revealed to Tucker Carlson that Russian president Vladimir Putin sees Trump as “his friend”.

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In an interview posted on X, presidential adviser Elon Musk’s social media platform, Witkoff said that in his second meeting with Putin, the Russian president “got personal”.

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“President Putin had commissioned a beautiful portrait of President Trump, from the leading Russian artist, and actually gave it to me and asked me to take it home to President Trump,” Witkoff said.

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“It was such a gracious moment, and [he] told me his story, Tucker, about how when the president was shot, he went to his local church and met with his priest and prayed for the president,” Witkoff continued. “Not because he was the president of the United, he could become the president of the United States, but because he had a friendship with him, and he was praying for his friend.”

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According to memo obtained by ABC News, the Trump administration cut off legal aid for 26,000 unaccompanied immigrant children on Friday.

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ABC reports that the interior department, which handles contracts for the office of refugee resettlement, informed organizations that collectively receive over $200m in federal grants to represent unaccompanied minors that the contract was partially terminated.

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Last month, the administration issued a stop-work order to the legal aid groups in February, before rescinding that order within 48 hours.

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Advocates say some of the children are just a few months old, and others are school-aged, including teenagers. Many are in exceedingly vulnerable situations and have been abused either in their home countries or in the US, or are minors who have been trafficked.

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A Cornell University PhD student earlier this month sued the Trump administration seeking to stop the president’s order aimed at foreign students accused of “antisemitism”. Days later, the Department of Homeland Security emailed to request that the student “surrender” to immigration officials.

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Momodou Taal, a dual citizen of the UK and Gambia, is one of three Cornell students who are plaintiffs in a lawsuit seeking to block the enforcement of Trump executive orders aimed at deporting foreign university students and staff involved in pro-Palestinian protest.

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“Only in a dictatorship can the leader jail and banish political opponents for criticizing his administration,” Taal, 31, wrote in a statement accompanying the lawsuit, which was submitted by lawyers at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), a civil rights group, on 16 March.

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As Columbia University, a private institution with an endowment of roughly $15bn, announced it was giving in to Donald Trump’s political demands on how to treat students and the governance of an academic department, other Ivy League leaders took a different stance.

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The news about Columbia’s caving to the Trump administration’s demands has put a new spotlight on an essay from earlier this week by Princeton University’s president, Christopher Eisgruber,who calls on other universities to resist:

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… the government is using grants that apply to Columbia science departments as a cudgel to force changes to a completely unrelated department that the government apparently regards as objectionable.

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Nobody should suppose that this will stop at Columbia or with the specific academic programs targeted by the government’s letter. Precisely because great research universities are centers of independent, creative thought, they generate arguments and ideas that challenge political power across fields as varied as international relations, biology, economics, and history. If government officials think that stifling such criticism is politically acceptable and legally permissible, some people in authority will inevitably yield to the temptation to do so.

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… The attack on Columbia is a radical threat to scholarly excellence and to America’s leadership in research. Universities and their leaders should speak up and litigate forcefully to protect their rights.

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Columbia University has agreed to a series of changes demanded by the Trump administration as a pre-condition for restoring $400m in federal funding the government pulled this month amid allegations that the school tolerated antisemitism on campus, Reuters reports. More reactions to this news shortly, but first, what Reuters is reporting:

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Columbia acquiesced to most of the administration’s demands in a memo that laid out measures including banning face masks on campus, empowering security officers to remove or arrest individuals, and taking control of the department that offers courses on the Middle East from its faculty.

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The Ivy League university’s response is being watched by other universities that the administration has sanctioned as it advances its policy objectives in areas ranging from campus protests to transgender sports and diversity initiatives.

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Among the most contentious of the nine demands, Columbia agreed to place its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies department under a new official, the memo said, taking control away from its faculty. The demand had raised alarm among professors at Columbia and elsewhere, who worried that permitting the federal government to dictate how a department is run would set a dangerous precedent.

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Republican lawmakers in the US House of Representatives last year criticized at least two professors of Palestinian descent working in the department for their comments about the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

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The school has also hired three dozen special officers who have the power to arrest people on campus and has revised its anti-discrimination policies, including its authority to sanction campus organizations, the memo said. The school also said it is searching for new faculty members to ‘ensure intellectual diversity.’

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A federal judge and the Trump administration have been engaged in a very active stalemate all week over whether Trump’s justice department violated the judge’s order to turn around planes that were in the act of deporting people to El Salvador under a legally contentious “wartime” law.

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To put it more bluntly, the issue is whether the Trump administration has to listen to what judges tell them to do and what consequences the administration will face if they simply decide they don’t have to.

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Trump and many of his supporters have called for the judge’s impeachment over his insistence that the Trump administration is bound by court orders; John Roberts, the chief justice of US supreme court, made a rare public statement to say that what Republicans were doing was not proper behavior.

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Here’s the latest from the AP:

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A federal judge examining the Trump administration’s use of an 18th-century wartime law to deport Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador vowed Friday to “get to the bottom” of whether the government defied his order to turn the planes around.

n Chief Judge James Boasberg is trying to determine if the administration ignored his turnaround order last weekend when at least two planeloads of immigrants were still in flight.

n “I will get to the bottom of whether they violated my order, who ordered this and what the consequences will be,” Boasberg said during a hearing Friday for a lawsuit challenging the deportations.

n Earlier Friday, the Justice Department informed the judge that top leaders in President Donald Trump’s administration are debating whether to invoke a “state secrets privilege” in response to the district judge’s questions about the deportation flights.

n The Republican administration has largely resisted the judge’s request, calling it an “unnecessary judicial fishing” expedition. Boasberg dismissed its response as “woefully insufficient,” increasing the possibility that he may hold administration officials in contempt of court.

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Here’s more on the significance of the office’s closure, from the Times:

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The more than 100 staff members were told they would be put on leave and formally fired in May, according to five current and former government officials. Mr. Trump also closed the ombudsman for Citizenship and Immigration Services, another office responsible for scrutinizing the administration’s legal immigration policies.

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The moves were the latest attempt by Mr. Trump to root out civil rights divisions and oversight mechanisms across government agencies. But the shuttering of the Homeland Security Department’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties was particularly notable given the lack of transparency over the administration’s immigration crackdown.

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Mr. Trump has been determined in his second term to ensure that his administration is made of up of loyalists who will not try to block his agenda.

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Just this week, the Trump administration stonewalled a federal judge seeking information about the use of an 18th-century wartime law to deport immigrants with little to no due process to a prison in El Salvador.

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“It’s a demonstration of their total contempt for any checks on their power,” said Deborah Fleischaker, a former civil rights office worker and chief of staff of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Biden administration. She said the office “endeavored to make the D.H.S. mission work with respect for civil rights, civil liberties and privacy.”

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“This is a clear message that those things do not matter to this administration,” she added.

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Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the decision was meant to “streamline oversight to remove roadblocks to enforcement.”

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“These offices have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining D.H.S.’s mission,” Ms. McLaughlin said. “Rather than supporting law enforcement efforts, they often function as internal adversaries that slow down operations.”

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Elon Musk visited the Pentagon this morning amid multiple reports that military officials would share with him their confidential plan for war with China. A little bit later in the Oval Office, Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth took questions after announcing a “state of the art” fighter jet program, where the defense secretary denied that Musk had been shown the plan, or that such a disclosure was ever being considered. The president, meanwhile, outlined how functions handled by the Department of Education would be moved to other agencies now that he has ordered it closed, and also said there would be “flexibility” in his new tariff regimen.

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Here’s what else has happened today so far:

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Trumpprofessed his love for King Charles and said he would be open to a reported offer that the United States join the Commonwealth.

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Responding to reports that some of the suspected Venezuelan gang members deported to El Salvador last weekend were not in any gang, Trump said investigators would look into that, while defending his hardline immigration policies.

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John F Kennedy’s assassination came up in Trump’s encounter with the press, when a reporter asked him who killed the former president. Trump did not say, instead explaining why he allowed documents to be released with Social Security numbers and other identifying details included.

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Donald Trump has talked up the new tariffs he has promised to impose on countries worldwide on 2 April, so much so that he’s taking to calling the date “Liberation Day”.

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On that date, the president has ordered the United States to impose “reciprocal” tariffs on trading partners around the world, which will be equal to whatever levies they place on US goods. Exemptions from 25% tariffs that he has given Canada and Mexico will also end on that day.

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It will likely amount to a a major reordering of the United State’s relations with its trading partners, and have major implications for the US economy. Yet for all his talk of tariffs, Trump has indicated that he may change his mind.

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The latest came just now in the Oval Office, where he said there will be “flexibility” with the new tariffs.

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“People are coming to me and talking about tariffs, and a lot of people are asking me if they could have exceptions. And once you do that for one, you have to do that for all,” Trump said.

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“The word flexibility is an important word. Sometimes there’s flexibility, so there’ll be flexibility.”

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Defense secretary Pete Hegseth said that Elon Musk was not shown the Pentagon’s plan for a potential war with China during the Tesla CEO’s visit earlier today.

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“Elon Musk is a patriot. Elon Musk is an innovator. Elon Musk provides a lot of capabilities our government and our military rely on, and I’m grateful for that,” said Hegseth, who added that reports Musk would be shown the plan were meant to “undermine whatever relationship the Pentagon has with” him.

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“We welcomed him today to the Pentagon to talk about [the department of government efficiency] , to talk about efficiencies, to talk about innovations. It was a great informal conversation. The rest of that reporting was fake. There was no war plans. There was no Chinese war plans. There was no secret plans. That’s not what we were doing the Pentagon.”

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Donald Trump has now shifted to defense, unveiling the F-47 fighter jet program, which he promises will deliver a “state of the art” stealth jet.

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“The F-47 will be the most advanced, most capable, most lethal aircraft ever built. An experimental version of the plane has secretly been flying for almost five years, and we’re confident that it massively overpowers the capabilities of any other nation,” Trump said.

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“The F-47 is equipped with state-of-the-art stealth technology. It’s virtually unseeable and unprecedented power, the most power of any jet of its kind ever made.”

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Its designation may be an homage to Trump, who is the 47th president.

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Donald Trump is speaking now in the Oval Office with defense secretary Pete Hegseth by his side, but began by elaborating on how he will implement his executive order yesterday ordering the dismantling of the Department of Education.

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“I’ve decided that the SBA, the Small Business Administration, headed by Kelly Loeffler, terrific person, will handle all of the student loan portfolio,” Trump said.

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“We have a portfolio that’s very large, lots of loans, tens of thousands of loans, pretty complicated deal, and that’s coming out of the Department of Education immediately.”

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He added that the Department of Health and Human Services “will be handling special needs and all of the nutrition programs and everything else.”

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Donald Trump and defense secretary Pete Hegseth are scheduled to at 11am deliver a joint address from the Oval Office, but the White House did not say what it will concern. The Wall Street Journal seems to have uncovered the answer: they will announce a new fighter jet program.

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The new jet will be the most expensive in history, and operate alongside drones, according to the Journal, which adds the plane is geared towards fending off China’s air force in the event of a war.

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Here’s more, from the Journal:

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n

The piloted planes are to be fielded in the 2030s and would fight alongside semiautonomous drones, as the Pentagon seeks to gain a technological edge over U.S. adversaries.

n

The future of the program had been in doubt after the Biden administration opted to leave the final decision on how to proceed to the incoming Trump administration. Elon Musk, the billionaire and Trump ally, has publicly campaigned against manned aircraft, which he said were “obsolete in the age of drones.”

n

Musk arrived at the Pentagon Friday morning for sensitive discussions about China.

n

Air Force officials have argued that piloted planes are still vital for fighting the wars of the future, especially if they incorporate cutting-edge designs, sophisticated sensors, more powerful engines and control the semiautonomous drones that operate with them.

n

…

n

Fielding the plane will be expensive, as the new fighters could cost as much as several hundred million dollars each. The Air Force’s current Lockheed Martin F-35 fighters cost about $80 million.

n

The F-35, which has been a Musk target, is a multi-role plane that is designed mainly for air-to-ground combat. The new fighter has been described as an air-to-air fighter that would replace the F-22 and would be able to fly in heavily defended environments.

n

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Donald Trump is partaking in some royal intrigue with a social media post declaring his love for Britain’s King Charles and saying he would welcome a reported “secret offer” billed as easing tensions with Canada.

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On Truth Social, the president linked to a story in UK tabloid the Sun, which says:

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n

KING Charles will reportedly make a “secret offer” to Donald Trump during his State visit.

n

The Royal proposal is said to potentially reduce tensions between the White House and Canada.

n

Plans are allegedly in the works to make the USA the next “associate member” of the Commonwealth.

n

The international association, which currently boasts 56 states, could welcome the US as a new member.

n

In February, a Tariff war began between the two countries with Trump signing orders to impose near-universal tariffs on goods from Canada entering the United States.

n

The US President revealed Canada could avoid higher taxes if it joined the United States of America as its 51 state.

n

Canada, of which the King is head of state, is part of the Commonwealth of Nations and including America may dampen the current conflict.

n

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To which Trump responded:

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n

I Love King Charles. Sounds good to me!

n

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But trade tensions with Canada are likely to grow worse on 2 April, when an exemption from 25% tariffs he imposed on the country expires.

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Journalists at the Pentagon have spotted Elon Musk arriving for a visit where he will reportedly be briefed on the military’s plan for a potential war with China.

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}],”data”:{“alt”:”Elon Musk arrives at the Pentagon today.”,”caption”:”Elon Musk arrives at the Pentagon today.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Phillip Stewart/Reuters”}},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

Donald Trump and defense secretary Pete Hegseth have both denied the reports that details of the military’s strategy against China will be shared with Musk.

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Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has joined his boss Donald Trump in denying that Elon Musk will be allowed to see the US military’s secret plan for a potential war with China when he visits the Pentagon today.

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On X, Hegseth acknowledged Musk’s visit but said the war plans would not be discussed:

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n

We look forward to welcoming @elonmusk to the Pentagon tomorrow. But the fake news delivers again — this is NOT a meeting about “top secret China war plans.” It’s an informal meeting about innovation, efficiencies & smarter production. Gonna be great!

n

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Trump posted about the matter not once, but twice on Truth Social. Last night, he wrote:

“,”elementId”:”1ac585af-c4eb-4eed-820e-03b4cbb9f2e7″},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.BlockquoteBlockElement”,”html”:”

n

How ridiculous?” China will not even be mentioned or discussed. How disgraceful it is that the discredited media can make up such lies. Anyway, the story is completely untrue!!!

n

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The president issued a denial again this morning in which he attacked a reporter and two outlets that reported the story, while saying: “Elon is NOT BEING BRIEFED ON ANYTHING CHINA BY THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR!!!” The department of war has not existed since 1947.

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Donald Trump has denied a New York Times report that his close ally, billionaire Elon Musk, was due to be briefed by the Pentagon on Friday about the US military’s plan for any war that might break out with China.

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“China will not even be mentioned or discussed,” Trump said in a post about the Pentagon meeting on Truth Social on Thursday.

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The Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, said in a post on X that the meeting would be “about innovation, efficiencies & smarter production”.

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A US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the briefing for Musk would be attended by senior US military officials in the Pentagon and would be an overview on a number of different topics, including China.

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According to the New York Times report, the briefing would include 20 to 30 slides that lay out how the United States would fight in a conflict with China. The newspaper cited two US officials it did not identify.

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Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news on this Friday morning.

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We begin with the news that Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday calling for the dismantling of the education department, an agency Republicans have talked about closing for decades.

n The order says the education secretary, Linda McMahon, will “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities”.

n Eliminating the department altogether would be a cumbersome task, which probably would require an act of Congress, AP reported.

n In the weeks since he took office, the Trump administration already has cut the department’s staff in half and overhauled much of the department’s work.

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Trump adviser Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” has cut dozens of contracts it dismissed as “woke” and wasteful. It gutted the Institute of Education Sciences, which gathers data on the nation’s academic progress.

n The agency’s main role is financial. Annually, it distributes billions in federal money to colleges and schools and manages the federal student loan portfolio. Closing the department would mean redistributing each of those duties to another agency.

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The Department of Education also plays an important regulatory role in services for students, ranging from those with disabilities to low-income and homeless children.

“,”elementId”:”8730d7ec-b010-4d95-8a64-9737b64cbf23″},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

In other news:

“,”elementId”:”6309b40c-2992-406c-a6cc-93b8c3068a01″},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

n
Elon Musk is reportedly visiting the Pentagon on Friday to get a briefing on the US military’s plans for fighting a war with China.

n
Trump said that he is rescinding an executive order targeting a Democratic-leaning law firm after the firm agreed to provide $40m in free legal services in support of his administration’s aims.

n
A federal judge blocked Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” from accessing social security records and ordered them to delete any previously obtained information.

n
Judge James Boasberg, a former law school housemate of Brett Kavanaugh, said the Trump administration “evaded” his order in the case of Venezuelan migrants deported to El Salvador.

n
Trump administration lawyers have embraced the view that the Alien Enemies Act, which Trump invoked to deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang, permits immigration agents to enter homes without a warrant.

n
The justice department has brought charges against three unnamed individuals for using or planning to use molotov cocktails to attack Tesla automobiles and dealerships.

n
Immigration agents arrestedBadar Khan Suri, an Indian national with a valid visa doing research at Georgetown University, and are trying to deport him for alleged support of Hamas. A judge later temporarily barred DHS from deporting him.

n
Tim Walz, who Kamala Harris picked as her running mate, sees an ominous future for the country under Trump, but also opportunities for Democrats to regain their popular support.

n
Trump pushed the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, something presidents typically do not do. Yesterday, the central bank held rates steady while forecasting weaker economic growth.

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Closing summary

The Trump administration will revoke the temporary legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans in the United States, according to a Federal Register notice on Friday.
Columbia University agreed to a series of changes demanded by the Trump administration as a pre-condition for restoring $400m in federal funding the government pulled this month amid allegations that the school tolerated antisemitism on campus.
A US appeals court refused to pause a judge’s ruling requiring the administration to reinstate 25,000 workers at 18 federal agencies who lost their jobs as part of Trump’s purge of the federal workforce.
The Trump administration has moved to fire almost all employees at the homeland security department’s civil rights office, the New York Times reported.
At a hearing on whether or not the administration violated a judge’s order to turn around planes that were in the act of deporting people to El Salvador, the judge James Boasberg pledged to “get to the bottom of whether they violated my order”.
The representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez andthe senator Bernie Sanders reported on social media that 34,000 people turned out for their just-completed rally in Denver “to take on billionaires and win our country back”. They were preceded by an unusual opening act: Alvaro Bedoya, one of the FTC commissioners fired by Trump.
Steve Witkoff, the real estate developer tasked with ending the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, revealed that Russian president Vladimir Putin sees Trump as “his friend”.
According to a memo obtained by ABC News, the Trump administration cut off legal aid for 26,000 unaccompanied immigrant children on Friday.
The Department of Homeland Security asked a Cornell University student who sued the Trump administration seeking to stop the president’s order aimed at foreign students accused of “antisemitism” was asked to “surrender” to immigration officials.

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rally over 30,000 in Denver

“It tells me,” Sanders wrote on X, “that the American people will not allow Trump to move us into oligarchy and authoritarianism. We will fight back. We will win.”

The massive rally also heard from Alvaro Bedoya, one of the FTC commissioners who said he had been illegally fired by Donald Trump.

Alvaro Bedoya, one of the illegally dismissed FTC commissioners.

[image or embed]

— Judge Judy and Executioner (@judgyjudes.bsky.social) March 21, 2025 at 4:28 PM

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Putin sees Trump as “his friend”, Trump’s envoy says

In an interview posted on X, presidential adviser Elon Musk’s social media platform, Witkoff said that in his second meeting with Putin, the Russian president “got personal”.

Donald Trump’s envoy to Russia, Steve Witkoff, in an interview with Tucker Carlson released on Friday.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says he will unveil a plan next week to upgrade the aging, under-staffed US air traffic control system next week.

In a video message posted on Elon Musk’s social media platform X, Duffy, a former Fox television host, said that he had just left a meeting with the president in which the he “laid out a plan to upgrade air-traffic control, briefed him on it, he loves it. He said, ‘Listen, go work with Congress, sell them on it, get the money up front”.

The question of who will get that money could be acontentious one. Last month, the Washington Post reported that the Federal Aviation Administration was “close to canceling a $2.4 billion contract to overhaul a communications system that serves as the backbone of the nation’s air traffic control system and awarding the work to Elon Musk’s Starlink”.

Musk, the president’s top adviser, wrongly said last month that the current system air traffic control facilities and FAA offices use to communicate with one another was operated by a Starlink rival, Verizon.

In fact, a contract to upgrade the system was awarded to Verizon in 2023 and the old system, from another company, is still in operation.

In an appearance with his former co-hosts on Fox and Friends this week, Duffy revealed that his department is already working with employees from another of Musk’s firms. “We have some SpaceX engineers that are helping us” on the new system, Duffy said.

Duffy said earlier this month that he planned to ask Congress for tens of billions of dollars for a multi-year effort to revamp air traffic control and boost hiring after a series of aviation safety incidents raised alarm.

Voice of America employees, journalists and unions sued the Trump administration in New York on Friday, saying that the shutdown of Congressionally-funded news outlets violated the workers’ First Amendment right to journalistic freedom, Reuters reports.

The lawsuit alleges that the US Agency for Global Media, its acting director Victor Morales, and Special Adviser Kari Lake violated several laws when they placed over 1,300 employees on leave and cut funding for several news services last Saturday.

The plaintiffs include the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), The NewsGuild-CWA, the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), Reporters Without Borders (RSF), and seven individual workers. VOA White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara is the lead plaintiff.

In an Oval Office encounter last week, Trump signaled his contempt for VOA’s journalism by brushing off a question from Widakuswara.

When Widakuswara asked the visiting Irish premier, Micheál Martin: “What about the president’s plan to expel Palestinians out of Gaza? Are you discussing that with him and giving him your opinion?” Trump interrupted to say: “Nobody is expelling any Palestinians. Who are you with?” After Widakuswara answered: “I’m with Voice of America, sir.” Trump replied: “Oh, no wonder” and ended the exchange by calling on another reporter to ask a question more to his liking.

“Authoritarian censorship regimes like the Kremlin and the Chinese Communist Party are loudly cheering for the death of Voice of America”, Clayton Weimers, executive director of Reporters Without Borders USA said in a statement. “It’s clear that Donald Trump’s action will encourage harsher crackdowns against journalists and press freedom, putting VOA and RSF staff, correspondents, volunteers, and supporters in greater danger. RSF is compelled to act to protect VOA and the broader press freedom community”.

“Voice of America was founded to spread the truth and fight propaganda from lawless authoritarian regimes—so it’s no surprise that the Trump administration is trying to dismantle it. This blatant political takeover isn’t just an attack on our members’ jobs—it’s an assault on press freedom, journalistic integrity, and democracy the world over”, said Everett Kelley, whose union represents VOA and Office of Cuba Broadcasting employees.

VOA abruptly stopped published news reports last Saturday, when some of its journalists discovered that they had been locked out of the network’s offices in Washington.

According to Nieman Lab, VOA’s 17 local-language WhatsApp channels sent their last updates on Saturday as well.

Misha Komadovsky, another VOA White House correspondent, note that all of VOA’s satellite channels suddenly started running a promotional video that echoed the style of state telvision in authoritarian regimes, with on-screen text that read: “VOA will present the polices of the United States”.

Trump administration cuts off legal aid for unaccompanied immigrant children, again

According to memo obtained by ABC News, the Trump administration cut off legal aid for 26,000 unaccompanied immigrant children on Friday.

Last month, the administration issued a stop-work order to the legal aid groups in February, before rescinding that order within 48 hours.

Two California researchers said Friday that a US government health publication instructed them to remove data on sexual orientation from a scientific manuscript that had been accepted for publication, the Associated Press reports.

The researchers also said they were told to remove the words “gender,” “cisgender” and “equitable” from their paper, which looked at smoking among rural young adults.

The reason given for the changes was to comply with an executive order from President Donald Trump, researchers Tamar Antin and Rachelle Annechino said in a blog post where they included screenshots of the revisions.

Instead of complying, the researchers withdrew their paper from Public Health Reports, the official journal of the US Surgeon General and US Public Health Service.

Ice tells British student at Cornell to ‘surrender’ to immigration authorities

Maanvi Singh

Social media users are calling Columbia University “King’s College” as news breaks that the university has caved to Donald Trump’s political demands in hopes of reversing his federal funding cuts.

“King’s College” is the wealthy Ivy League school’s original name, from its founding in 1754, during the reign of George II, when New York City was part of England’s North American colonies. The school was renamed “Columbia College” after the American Revolution.

Giving it that name again is a way of criticizing both Trump and the university for what some people see as undemocratic behavior.

Trump revokes legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans

Donald Trump’s administration will revoke the temporary legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans in the United States, according to a Federal Register notice on Friday, in the latest expansion of his crackdown on immigration. It will be effective on 24 April.

The move cuts short a two-year “parole” granted to the immigrants under former president Joe Biden that allowed them to enter the country by air if they had US sponsors.

Crux of Columbia’s deal with Trump: new political oversight of Middle East scholars

Many elements of a wealthy private university’s deal with Trump to restore its federal funding will receive new scrutiny in the days to come, but early reports suggest one concession is key: Columbia’s agreement, as the Wall Street Journal reported, “to appoint a senior vice provost with broad authority to oversee the department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies as well as the Center for Palestine Studies”.

“Faculty at Columbia and nationwide are expressing deep reservations about letting the federal government dictate how they can operate an academic department,” the WSJ notes. “The new vice-provost, appointed by Columbia, will review curriculum, nontenure faculty hiring and leadership ‘to ensure the educational offerings are comprehensive and balanced.’”

Again, Columbia is not a government-run university. It is a private university, with a large private endowment.

Princeton University president demands universities stand up to Trump

… the government is using grants that apply to Columbia science departments as a cudgel to force changes to a completely unrelated department that the government apparently regards as objectionable.

Nobody should suppose that this will stop at Columbia or with the specific academic programs targeted by the government’s letter. Precisely because great research universities are centers of independent, creative thought, they generate arguments and ideas that challenge political power across fields as varied as international relations, biology, economics, and history. If government officials think that stifling such criticism is politically acceptable and legally permissible, some people in authority will inevitably yield to the temptation to do so.

… The attack on Columbia is a radical threat to scholarly excellence and to America’s leadership in research. Universities and their leaders should speak up and litigate forcefully to protect their rights.

New York Times: Does the $400m of federal cuts at Columbia have special significance for Trump?

The New York Times has highlighted a decades-old real estate dispute between Columbia University and Donald Trump, noting that dispute also hinged on $400m.

Today, the newspaper reports:

Some former university officials are quietly wondering whether the ultimately unsuccessful property transaction sowed the seeds of Mr Trump’s current focus on Columbia. His administration has demanded that the university turn over vast control of its policies and even curricular decisions in its effort to quell antisemitism on campus. It has also canceled federal grants and contracts at Columbia – valued at $400 million.

The New York Times reports that the Trump Organization and the White House declined to comment on the story.

Why didn’t Columbia University file a lawsuit to fight back against Trump?

Yesterday, the Chronicle of Higher Education asked why Columbia, one of the wealthiest private institutions in the US, had not filed a lawsuit to protect itself from the political demands Trump was making.

Today, after Columbia announced it was giving in to several of the president’s demand, an unnamed Columbia University administrator offered several reasons for Columbia’s choice not to battle Trump in court, including that school leaders had some agreement with what Trump wanted, the Wall Street Journal reports:

A Columbia senior administrator said the school considered legal options to challenge the Trump team but ultimately determined the federal government has so many available levers to claw back money, it would be a difficult fight. Additionally the school believed there was considerable overlap between needed campus changes and Trump’s demands.

How US news organizations are characterizing Columbia’s deal with Trump:

Wall Street Journal: Columbia Yields to Trump in Battle Over Federal Funding

New York Post: Columbia caves to Trump’s demands after $400M threat over campus antisemitism, will institute mask ban and more oversight

New York Times: Columbia Makes Concessions to Trump Amid Bid to Reclaim Federal Funds

Axios: Columbia complies with Trump demands to regain $400 million in funding

Columbia University agrees to Trump conditions in hopes of restoring federal funds

Columbia acquiesced to most of the administration’s demands in a memo that laid out measures including banning face masks on campus, empowering security officers to remove or arrest individuals, and taking control of the department that offers courses on the Middle East from its faculty.

The Ivy League university’s response is being watched by other universities that the administration has sanctioned as it advances its policy objectives in areas ranging from campus protests to transgender sports and diversity initiatives.

Among the most contentious of the nine demands, Columbia agreed to place its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies department under a new official, the memo said, taking control away from its faculty. The demand had raised alarm among professors at Columbia and elsewhere, who worried that permitting the federal government to dictate how a department is run would set a dangerous precedent.

Republican lawmakers in the US House of Representatives last year criticized at least two professors of Palestinian descent working in the department for their comments about the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

The school has also hired three dozen special officers who have the power to arrest people on campus and has revised its anti-discrimination policies, including its authority to sanction campus organizations, the memo said. The school also said it is searching for new faculty members to ‘ensure intellectual diversity.’

A few more key details from today’s deportation flights hearing

As we noted earlier, judge James Boasberg spent some time in a hearing today criticizing the justice department’s conduct and rhetoric in the lawsuit over whether the Trump administration can use an 18th century wartime law to rapidly deport Venezuelans to El Salvador.

But the judge also took issue with the substance of their legal argument. During Friday’s hearing, Boasberg also said the Trump administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan immigrants carries “incredibly troublesome” policy ramifications, the Associated Press reported.

“Why was this law essentially signed in the dark and these people essentially rushed on to planes?” Boasberg asked. “It seems to be that you only do that if you know it’s a problem and you want to get them out of the country before lawsuits can be filed.”

The judge pointed to the US supreme court’s finding that people imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay after the 11 September 2001, terrorist attacks were entitled to challenge whether they had any ties to al-Qaida.

Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports that Lee Gelernt, the lawyer for the ACLU, also said at the hearing that some people on the deportation flights from the US to El Salvador were returned from El Salvador after the government refused to take them, raising more questions about the speed of the deportations.

ACLU attorney Gelernt says there were people who were returned from El Salvador after the flights because they either weren't Venezuelan or were women and the El Salvadoran government declined to take them.

BOASBERG vows to get to the bottom of whether his order was violated.

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) March 21, 2025

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ACLU attorney Gelernt says there were people who were returned from El Salvador after the flights because they either weren’t Venezuelan or were women and the El Salvadoran government declined to take them.

BOASBERG vows to get to the bottom of whether his order was violated.

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) March 21, 2025

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