Employees under the U.S. Agency for Global Media received a new “Fork in the Road” email Friday afternoon, shortly before Voice of America journalists suing the agency won an order temporarily blocking USAGM’s attempts to shutter the news outlet.

The email, seen by POLITICO, originated from a USAGM human resources account and offered employees an “opportunity” to “voluntarily transition out of federal service through the Deferred Resignation Program,” set to be available from Friday through April 9.

Kari Lake — an ally of President Donald Trump serving as a senior official at the agency — and USAGM have faced an onslaught of legal challenges in recent weeks. Employees working for news outlets or technology programs funded or controlled by the agency — including Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and The Open Technology Fund — have all sought to block USAGM from gutting their operations.

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A Tufts University student who was detained by US immigration authorities this week, in an arrest that caused widespread outrage, cannot be deported without a court order, a US judge ordered on Friday.

Rümeysa Öztürk, 30, was detained by masked, plainclothes officers as she walked in a Boston-area suburb on Tuesday, an incident that was captured on surveillance footage that has since gone viral. Öztürk, who is being threatened with deportation to Turkey, is a Fulbright scholar and doctoral student in the US with a visa.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said Öztürk’s visa was terminated, accusing her of engaging in activities in support of Hamas, but providing no evidence to substantiate that claim. Her attorneys, which include lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, have said the arrest appeared to be retaliation for an opinion piece that she and three other students co-wrote for the student newspaper last year, advocating that the university “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and “divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel”.

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Georgia’s Republican-dominated state Senate is going forward with an investigation of Stacey Abrams, a move that comes as President Donald Trump has made a target of the two-time Democratic nominee for Georgia governor.

Republican State Sen. Bill Cowsert of Athens said Thursday that he and other Republicans want to further examine recent ethics findings that voter participation group New Georgia Project improperly coordinated with Abrams’ 2018 campaign for governor.

“We have developed somewhat of a problem these days with dark money in politics, with secret money being used to fund campaigns,” Cowsert said. “The whole purpose of our campaign finance laws is to put sunshine on the issues.”

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