curated citations to news sources
NPR: Trump administration revokes Harvard’s ability to enroll international students
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“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, wrote in a statement. “It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments.”
In a statement, Harvard said the action was “unlawful.”
“This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission,” the statement said. “We are fully committed to maintaining Harvard’s ability to host international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the University – and this nation – immeasurably.”
(NPR more…)
NY Times: Shock at Harvard After Government Says International Students Must Go
Fear and confusion mounted quickly on Thursday as international students, who make up more than a quarter of the university’s enrollment, sought clarity or reassurance.
Harvard: Supporting Our International Students and Scholars
NewsNation: Harvard sues Trump administration over foreign student enrollment ban
- DHS revoked Harvard’s ability to enroll international students on Thursday
- Current foreign students must transfer schools or lose legal status
- Lawsuit filed Friday says White House violated First Amendment
NY Times: In Attacks on Harvard, Chinese See Yet Another Reason to Write Off the U.S.
Beyond the shock for students, President Trump’s moves against higher education are being seen in China as a blow to one of the last admirable American institutions.
William Kristol: A Permanent Stain on Our History
The Trump administration’s embrace of nativism is as shameful as it is self-destructive.
TFN: Trump Expels Israeli Jews from Harvard
Jewish students from around the world face deportation as part of Trump’s war against antisemitism
Reuters: Judge blocks Trump administration from revoking Harvard enrollment of foreign students
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U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs’ order provides temporary relief to the thousands of international students who were faced with being forced to transfer under a policy that the Ivy League school called part of the administration’s broader effort to retaliate against it for refusing to “surrender its academic independence.”
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NBC: White House purges transcripts of Trump’s remarks from its website
Daily Beast: Props Trump Used in Oval Office Rant Were Embarrassingly Wrong
THIS KEEPS HAPPENING
He didn’t even get the country right.NewsNation: Trump threatens Apple with 25% tariff, EU with 50% tariff
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – May 22, 2025
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This bill highlights a truism: In the United States, racism has always gone hand in hand with the concentration of wealth among the very richest people.By driving white fear of a darker-skinned other, elite southern enslavers convinced the poor white farmers who lost their land in the cotton boom of the 1850s to vote for politicians who insisted that the primary responsibility of the federal government was to protect human enslavement.
In an extraordinary meeting with South African president Cyril Ramaphosa at the Oval Office yesterday, President Donald J. Trump echoed the language of enslavers in 1859 almost explicitly when he insisted—falsely—that white South Africans are facing white genocide. …
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Raw Story: GOP lawmaker calls for Gaza to be ‘nuked’ like Japan was in World War II
Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) called for nuclear weapons to be used against Gaza following Wednesday night’s shooting of two Israeli staffers at the Capitol Jewish Museum in Washington.
…“In World War II, we did not negotiate a surrender with the Nazis. We did not negotiate a surrender with the Japanese,” he explained. “We nuked the Japanese twice in order to get unconditional surrender; that needs to be the same here.”
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Fast Company: DOE redirects $365 million from Puerto Rico’s solar projects to oil-dependent power grid
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NY Times: Trump Confirms Attempted Deportation of Migrants to South Sudan
The deportees are stuck in Djibouti amid a legal fight over their expulsions.
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Marisa Kabas: A mother’s urgent plea to stop ICE from deporting her daughters’ birth father tomorrow
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Astral Codex Ten: On Charity Regrants
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Big Picture: Trump’s DOJ Is Now Coming For Members Of Congress
What’s really behind the Justice Department’s baseless charges against Rep. McIver?
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The Threats And Intimidation Are The Point
Putting enemies on notice that dissent will not be tolerated and that the force of the law will be brought to bear against them, is right out of the fascist playbook. It is also a favorite tactic of Trump’s.
(Big Picture more…)
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National Memo: Hegseth Promotes Pentagon Religious Service Preaching God ‘Anointed’ Trump
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NY Times: Trump Administration Opens Investigation Into Diversity Efforts at Virginia School
The Trump administration announced on Thursday that it was investigating the admissions system at an elite public high school in Fairfax County, Va., which has been accused of discriminating against Asian American students to favor other racial groups.
The administration has repeatedly argued that the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action in college admissions should also apply to K-12 education. But the court has never made such a statement, and it chose last year to allow the high school’s admissions program to stand.
(NY Times more…)
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ProPublica: The Trump Administration Leaned on African Countries. The Goal: Get Business for Elon Musk.
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Since Trump’s inauguration, the State Department has intervened on behalf of Starlink in Gambia and at least four other developing nations, previously unreported records and interviews show.
(ProPublica more…)
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Music Business Worldwide: Donald Trump sued by US Copyright Office Director over ‘blatantly unlawful’ firing
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“The Administration’s attempts to remove Ms. Perlmutter as the Register of Copyrights are blatantly unlawful. Congress vested the Librarian of Congress – not the President – with the power to appoint, and therefore to remove, the Register of Copyrights,” Perlmutter’s lawyers stated in the complaint, which can be read in full here.
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Bill McKibben: A Truly Dark Day in DC
And what you can do about it.
Credit where due: I am ever impressed by the feral energy of Trump and his crew, who are able to do an extraordinary amount of damage every single damned day. And somehow their energetic cruelty seems to drain my own reserves: I want to stay in bed. But we fight as best we can, and so here’s my assessment of this dire day, and more importantly what we still might be able to do about it.
…If you add it up, this is all an effort to keep America precisely where it is now. It’s the Make America Immobile Act. Trump is doing his best to freeze things in place: on behalf of oil companies that want to keep pumping oil, on behalf of automakers that want to keep churning out SUVs. That depends, among other things, on shutting down research at universities, because they keep coming up with things that point us in a different direction, be it temperature readings demonstrating climate change or new batteries that enable entirely different technologies. If America lived alone on this planet that would be truly terrible; luckily for everyone else, there are other places (China, and the EU) that are not making the same set of stupid decisions. But if this stands it will kill the future for America.
(Bill McKibben more…)
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Guardian: Revealed: UnitedHealth secretly paid nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers
(Guardian more…)
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TNR: The Democrats Are Having a False Reckoning Over Joe Biden
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Noah Rothman: Trump 2.0 repudiates the conservatism of Trump 1.0.
Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda