TV News LIES

The US education department is freezing about $2.3bn in federal funds to Harvard University, the agency said on Monday.

The announcement comes after the Ivy League school has decided to fight the White House’s demands that it crack down on antisemitism and alleged civil rights violations, including shutting down diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

“Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges – that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws,” said a member of a department taskforce on combating antisemitism in a statement.

The education department taskforce on combating antisemitism said in a statement it was freezing $2.2bn in grants and $60m in multi-year contract value to Harvard.

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Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi was arrested by federal agents Monday while he was in a naturalization interview at an immigration office in Vermont.

Mahdawi, a Palestinian student and green-card holder, was arrested by agents with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in Colchester, Vt., according to a court filing.

Mahdawi was a leader in the pro-Palestinian protests last spring, making him the latest such activist targeted by the Trump administration. The first and most prominent foreign-born student demonstrator now in immigration custody, Mahmoud Khalil, also attended Columbia.

“The Trump administration detained Mohsen Mahdawi in direct retaliation for his advocacy on behalf of Palestinians and because of his identity as a Palestinian. His detention is an attempt to silence those who speak out against the atrocities in Gaza. It is also unconstitutional,” attorney Luna Droubi said.

The court filing said Mahdawi was targeted by a pro-Israel organization called Betar US, which said on social media that “visa holder Mohsen Mahdawi is on our deport list.”

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The head of a U.S.-funded Arabic-language television and online news outlet that claims a 30 million-strong audience in the Middle East and North Africa terminated most staff and curtailed TV programming Saturday, accusing the Trump administration and Elon Musk of having “irresponsibly and unlawfully” cut off funding.

In notices to Al Hurra news staffers about their dismissals, chief Jeffrey Gedmin said he had given up on the U.S. administration’s freeze lifting anytime soon for the congressionally approved money for Al Hurra and its U.S.-funded Arabic language sister organizations.

Gedmin accused Kari Lake, President Donald Trump’s appointee to the American government agency overseeing Al Hurra, Voice of America and other U.S.-funded news programming abroad, of dodging his efforts to speak with her about the funding cutoff.

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A private plane that crashed in upstate New York over the weekend was carrying six members of a close-knit family of physicians and distinguished student-athletes on a trip to the Catskills for a birthday celebration and the Passover holiday.

The twin-engine Mitsubishi MU-2B went down shortly after noon Saturday in a muddy field in Copake, New York, near the Massachusetts line, killing everyone on board, according to authorities and a family member who spoke to The Associated Press.

President Donald Trump’s top advisers and Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, said Monday that they had no basis for the small Central American nation to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was wrongly deported there last month.

Trump administration officials emphasized that Abrego Garcia, who was sent to a notorious gang prison in El Salvador, was a citizen of that country and that the U.S. has no say in his future. And Bukele, who has been a vital partner for the Trump administration in its deportation efforts, said he does not “have the power to return him to the United States.”

The Supreme Court has ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return.

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A federal judge in Vermont questioned on Monday whether the Trump administration would instigate a "constitutional crisis" by not releasing a Turkish student at Tufts University from immigration custody if he concluded her arrest was unlawful.

U.S. District Judge William Sessions raised that prospect during a hearing in Burlington as he suggested he may order authorities to move Rumeysa Ozturk from the Louisiana detention center she has been in for nearly three weeks back to Vermont, where she was briefly held after her arrest last month.

The judge heard arguments in the case after a federal judge in Massachusetts transferred the 30-year-old's lawsuit challenging her detention to Vermont rather than dismiss it or send it to Louisiana as the U.S. Justice Department wanted.

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