TV News LIES

The Trump administration is pulling about $400 million in federal funds from Columbia University, citing the school's "continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students," the Department of Education and other agencies announced Friday.

Columbia has been at the center of college protests in which demonstrators demanded an end to U.S. support for Israel because of the civilian deaths and humanitarian crisis in the Israel-Hamas war.

There have been allegations of antisemitism and Islamophobia in protests and counterprotests. Columbia has said it has been fighting antisemitism.

MAGA activists have turned against one of President Donald Trump's own appointees to the Supreme Court: Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Appointed by Trump in 2020, Barrett is a staunch conservative who has joined major rulings in which the court has moved U.S. law to the right, including on abortion and affirmative action.

But that's not enough for some of Trump's most aggressive supporters, who think the former Notre Dame Law School professor has been a disappointment. MAGA supporters see what some call an independent streak as a sign she isn't sufficiently aligned with or loyal to Trump.

"She is a rattled law professor with her head up her a--," said Mike Davis, who once clerked at the Supreme Court for Justice Neil Gorsuch and described Barrett as "weak and timid."

Barrett defenders have dismissed the attacks, scoffing at the idea that the justice’s conservatism is defined by how her decisions align with Trump and insisting Barrett won’t be affected by outside criticism. Barrett, reached via the Supreme Court, did not respond to a request for comment.

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Behind the scenes: The meetings between Boehler and Hamas officials took place in Doha in recent weeks.

• While the Trump administration consulted with Israel about the possibility of engaging with Hamas, Israel learned about aspects of the talks through other channels, one source said.
• The sources spoke with Axios on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the sensitive meetings.

Zoom in: The talks have focused in part on the release of U.S. hostages, which is within Boehler's remit as hostage envoy.

• But they have also included discussions of a broader deal to release all remaining hostages and reach a long-term truce, the sources say. No deal has yet been reached.
• White House envoy Steve Witkoff also planned to travel to Doha this week to meet the prime minister of Qatar about the ceasefire negotiations but canceled the trip on Tuesday night after he saw there was no progress from Hamas' side, a U.S. official said.

A federal court ruled that Donald Trump’s abrupt firing of a former senior official at the top US labor watchdog was illegal, and ordered that she be reinstated.

Gwynne Wilcox was the first member of the National Labor Relations Board to be removed by a US president since the board’s inception in 1935.

The framers of the US constitution “made clear that no one in our system of government was meant to be king – the President included – and not just in name only”, the judge Beryl A Howell, wrote in the ruling.

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Members of Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) unit were barred from entering a small, independent federal agency promoting economic development in Africa on Wednesday after a tense standoff with federal staff they had been sent to fire.

Workers at the US African Development Foundation (USADF), which Donald Trump has ordered to be closed, refused to allow Doge operatives to enter after they arrived at its Washington headquarters on Wednesday afternoon. But the Doge team returned on Thursday, accompanied by agents with the US Marshals Service and Peter Marocco, the acting director of the now-shuttered US Agency for International Development, according to a government official familiar with the situation. This time, they were able to gain access to the building, the official said, and no staff was present.

Scores of legal challenges have been lodged against the sweeping project to upend the government bureaucracy, producing a spate of court rulings declaring the halting of aid illegal and ordering the reinstatement of fired federal workers.

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-The U.S. State Department will use artificial intelligence to revoke visas of foreign students who it perceives as supporters of Palestinian Hamas militants, Axios reported on Thursday, citing senior State Department officials.

Fox News separately reported the State Department revoked the visa of a student who allegedly participated in what the department termed as "Hamas-supporting disruptions." The revocation marked the first such action, according to the report.

The State Department was working with the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, according to Axios.

The State Department did not comment directly on the reports but Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social media that the United States "has zero tolerance for foreign visitors who support terrorists." He added that "violators of U.S. law - including international students - face visa denial or revocation, and deportation."

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