Mahmoud Khalil: arrest of Palestinian student activist raises alarm about free speech in US
Good morning, and welcome to our US politics blog.
The Trump administration’s decision to have immigration authorities arrest Mahmoud Khalil – a vocal critic of Israel’s war on Gaza – for alleged support of Hamas is an attack on free speech, the American Civil Liberties Union has warned.
Khalil, who grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, served as a lead negotiator for the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University last year, mediating between protesters and university administrators.
Khalil, a permanent US resident with a green card, was reportedly detained at his Columbia apartment building in Manhattan in front of his wife, an American citizen who is eight months pregnant, on Saturday evening.
The Trump administration has not said Khalil is accused of or charged with a crime, but Trump wrote that his presence in the US was “contrary to national and foreign policy interests.” The US president said Khalil’s arrest was the “first arrest of many to come”.
The Department of Homeland Security accused the former student of “leading activities aligned to Hamas” but gave no details.
“This arrest is unprecedented, illegal, and un-American,” said Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.
“The federal government is claiming the authority to deport people with deep ties to the US and revoke their green cards for advocating positions that the government opposes. To be clear: the first amendment protects everyone in the US. The government’s actions are obviously intended to intimidate and chill speech on one side of a public debate.”
This morning, a federal judge in New York City ordered that Khalil not be deported for now and set a court hearing in the case for Wednesday.
The Education Department on Monday sent letters to 60 US universities, including Harvard, Columbia, Yale and four University of California schools, warning them of cuts in federal funding unless they addressed allegations of antisemitism on campus.
Key events
Republicans to put government funding bill up for a vote in House
Republicans in the House of Representatives plan to put their bill to fund the government and prevent a shutdown that would begin Friday up for a vote in the closely divided chamber today.
Democrats are encouraging their members to vote no on the legislation, which would keep the government open until the end of September but also make a variety of spending cuts. The GOP thus needs unanimity to pass the legislation, as their margin in the chamber is so small they can’t afford a single defection. We’ll see if they have that.
Voting is currently expected to take place sometime after 1.30pm. Here’s more about the bill:
White House blames ‘animal spirits’ for Wall Street sell off
Donald Trump (and other presidents, to be fair) love to tout a healthy stock market, but there was little of that sentiment to be found on Wall Street yesterday. Major US stock indices fell significantly in the day’s trading, with traders pointing the finger at Trump’s imposition of tariffs on US trading partners and threats to levy more next month, all of which they fear will send the economy in a recession.
The trend may not necessarily continue – markets open in about an hour and a half, and futures are currently showing decent gains. But a big stock market sell off in the opening weeks of their new administration is something Trump wants to get ahead of. So a White House official had this to say yesterday about what caused it:
Want to emphasize that we’re seeing a strong divergence between animal spirits of the stock market and what we’re actually seeing unfold from businesses and business leaders, and the latter is obviously more meaningful than the former on what’s in store for the economy in the medium to long term.
Here’s more about yesterday’s jitters on Wall Street:
The UN human rights office said on Tuesday it has received termination notices from the US government for five of its projects, including its work in Iraq and Ukraine.
Ravina Shamdasani, UN human rights spokesperson, said the notices were for projects in Equatorial Guinea, Iraq, Ukraine and Colombia and also for a fund for Indigenous people.
US president Donald Trump is cutting billions of dollars in foreign aid programmes globally as part of a major spending overhaul by the world’s biggest aid donor.
Polls have opened in Greenland for early parliamentary elections Tuesday as US President Donald Trump seeks control of the strategic Arctic island.
The self-governing region of Denmark is home to 56,000 people, most from Indigenous Inuit backgrounds, and occupies a strategic North Atlantic location. It also contains rare earth minerals key to driving the global economy, AP reported.
Unofficial election results should be available soon after polls close but they won’t be certified for weeks as ballot papers make their way to the capital from remote settlements by boat, plane and helicopter.
The Trump administration is considering cancelling the lease of the support office for a renowned Hawaii climate research station, sources said, raising fears for the future of key work tracking the impact of carbon emissions on global warming.
The office is one of more than 20 rented by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that are proposed to have their leases ended under money-saving efforts by the Department of Government Efficiency led by billionaire Elon Musk, Reuters reported.
The online listing on the DOGE website mentions an NOAA office in Hilo, Hawaii and an estimate of how much would be saved by cancelling its lease – $150,692 a year.
Staff, researchers and other sources gave details on the building’s role as the main support office for the Mauna Loa Observatory about 50 km (30 miles) west of the town.
The observatory, established in 1956 on the northern flank of the Mauna Loa volcano, is recognised as the birthplace of global carbon dioxide monitoring and maintains the world’s longest record of measurements of atmospheric CO2.
Trump pick for Washington US attorney made derogatory and racist comments
Michael Sainato
Trump’s appointee as interim US attorney for the District of Columbia and nominee to hold the position permanently, Ed Martin, has repeatedly made derogatory and racist comments in past social media posts and columns.
Martin’s rhetoric includes falsely claiming Kamala Harris is “self-identified” as Black and calling her the new Rachel Dolezal, claiming Planned Parenthood targets Black communities for abortions, claiming that the supreme court justice Sonia Sotomayor made racist comments to white males about her own identity and invoking false claims about Dr Martin Luther King Jr to affirm support for the Republican party and the Tea Party movement.
Trump appointed Martin to be interim US Attorney in January 2025 Last week, Martin wrote a letter to the dean of Georgetown law school, telling the school to end any diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, claiming his office would not hire anyone associated with a university with DEI programs.
In recent weeks, he has also tried to initiate a grand jury investigation into the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, over 2020 comments about supreme court justices and wrote letters threatening to prosecute Schumer and Congressman Robert Garcia over their criticism of billionaire Elon Musk and the so-called “department of government efficiency”.
He has also referred to himself and other US attorneys as “President Trump’s lawyers” rather than an independent, law-abiding officer sworn to uphold the US constitution. Senate Democrats have asked the DC bar association to investigate Martin for using the office to threaten political opponents and pardon past clients, January 6 defendants.
RFK Jr directs FDA to revise ‘self-affirm’ rule to improve food ingredient safety
The US secretary of health and human services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has directed the Food and Drug Administration to revise safety rules to help eliminate a provision that allows companies to self-affirm that food ingredients are safe.
The move would increase transparency for consumers as well as the FDA’s oversight of food ingredients considered to be safe, Kennedy said on Monday.
“For far too long, ingredient manufacturers and sponsors have exploited a loophole that has allowed new ingredients and chemicals, often with unknown safety data, to be introduced into the US food supply without notification to the FDA or the public,” he said in a statement.
Kennedy has promised to address an epidemic of chronic illness with Donald Trump’s backing, but his broad agenda from making food healthier to studying vaccines could clash with government spending cuts.
Currently, the FDA strongly encourages manufacturers to submit notices under a rule known as “substances generally recognized as safe”, but they can also self-affirm the use of a substance without notifying the FDA.
Eliminating this pathway would make it mandatory for companies that want to introduce new ingredients in foods to publicly notify the FDA of their intended use and submit underlying safety data, HHS said.
The FDA maintains a public inventory where all notices, supporting data, and response letters are available for review.
A federal judge on Monday declined to order president Donald Trump’s administration to restore thousands of foreign aid contracts and grants that have been cancelled since the president took office, though he found that the administration must speed up payments of close to $2bn for already completed work.
The ruling by US district judge Amir Ali in Washington is a setback for organisations that contract with or receive grants from the US Agency for International Development and the state department, and are suing the administration over its sudden freeze in January of nearly all of its foreign aid payments and subsequent termination of most of its agreements with third-party partners.
At the same time, Ali ruled against the Trump administration on a major legal issue, finding that the president cannot refuse to spend money appropriated by the US congress, Reuters reported.
The judge said that all of the appropriated foreign aid funding must ultimately be disbursed, while concluding that he could not dictate exactly how.
South Korea’s acting president Choi Sang-mok said on Tuesday that US president Donald Trump’s “America First” policies had started targeting his country.
Choi said discussions with the United States over tariff measures and stronger cooperation on energy and shipbuilding were beginning ahead of “reciprocal tariffs” set to take effect on 2 April.
The US president announced a global regime of reciprocal tariffs on all US trading partners from 2 April.
Trump has threatened to impose “all-out pressure” on South Korea, Choi said, citing his comments to the U.S. Congress where he singled out the key US Asia ally for applying high tariffs.
Earlier this week, Choi ordered authorities to actively communicate with the Trump administration to resolve any misunderstanding about tariff rates.
US judge says Musk’s DOGE must release records on operations run in ‘secrecy’
A federal judge on Monday ordered the government-downsizing team created by US president Donald Trump and spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk to make public records concerning its operations, which he said had been run in “unusual secrecy.”
US district judge Christopher Cooper in Washington sided with the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in finding that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was likely an agency subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Reuters reported.
The ruling, the first of its kind, marked an early victory for advocates seeking to force DOGE to become more transparent about its role in the mass firings being conducted in the federal workforce and the dismantling of government agencies by the Republican president’s administration.
The Trump administration had argued that DOGE as an arm of the Executive Office of the President was not subject to FOIA, a law that allows the public to seek access to records produced by government agencies that they had not previously disclosed.
But Cooper, an appointee of Democratic president Barack Obama, said that DOGE was exercising “substantial independent authority” much greater than the other components of that office that are usually exempt from FOIA’s requirements.
He said it “appears to have the power not just to evaluate federal programs, but to drastically reshape and even eliminate them wholesale,” a fact that the judge said the agency declined to refute.
He said its “operations thus far have been marked by unusual secrecy,” citing reports about DOGE’s use of an outside server, its employees refusal to identify themselves to career officials and their use of the encrypted app Signal to communicate.
US president Donald Trump on Tuesday said he will buy a new Tesla car to show support for the electric carmaker’s chief and his ally Elon Musk amid recent “Tesla Takedown” protests and the slump in the company’s stock price.
Musk’s role in sweeping cuts to the federal workforce at the behest of Trump has led to protests in the US against Tesla, Reuters reported.
About 350 demonstrators protested outside a Tesla electric vehicle dealership in Portland, Oregon, last week, while nine people were arrested during a raucous demonstration outside a New York City Tesla dealership earlier in March.
Musk is spearheading the Trump administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump defended Musk by saying he was “putting it on the line” to help the country and was doing a “fantastic” job.
“I’m going to buy a brand new Tesla tomorrow morning as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American,” Trump said.
Musk thanked the president for his support on his own social media platform X.
The World Health Organization has started a process of fixing new priorities and announced a one-year limit on staff contracts, an internal memo showed on Tuesday, as it aims to make the UN agency more sustainable after the US withdrawal.
The memo, dated 10 March and signed by WHO’s Assistant Director-General Raul Thomas, laid out further cost-cutting measures – the latest in a series of such steps since US president Donald Trump’s announcement in January.
Senior WHO officials have begun “prioritisation” work over the past three weeks to make the global health agency sustainable, the document says.
“While operating in an extremely fluid environment, WHO’s senior management are working to navigate these shifting tides by undertaking a prioritisation process,” the memo said.
“Their work will ensure that every resource is directed toward the most pressing priorities while preserving WHO’s ability to make a lasting impact,” it said.
Mahmoud Khalil: arrest of Palestinian student activist raises alarm about free speech in US
Good morning, and welcome to our US politics blog.
The Trump administration’s decision to have immigration authorities arrest Mahmoud Khalil – a vocal critic of Israel’s war on Gaza – for alleged support of Hamas is an attack on free speech, the American Civil Liberties Union has warned.
Khalil, who grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, served as a lead negotiator for the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University last year, mediating between protesters and university administrators.
Khalil, a permanent US resident with a green card, was reportedly detained at his Columbia apartment building in Manhattan in front of his wife, an American citizen who is eight months pregnant, on Saturday evening.
The Trump administration has not said Khalil is accused of or charged with a crime, but Trump wrote that his presence in the US was “contrary to national and foreign policy interests.” The US president said Khalil’s arrest was the “first arrest of many to come”.
The Department of Homeland Security accused the former student of “leading activities aligned to Hamas” but gave no details.
“This arrest is unprecedented, illegal, and un-American,” said Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.
“The federal government is claiming the authority to deport people with deep ties to the US and revoke their green cards for advocating positions that the government opposes. To be clear: the first amendment protects everyone in the US. The government’s actions are obviously intended to intimidate and chill speech on one side of a public debate.”
This morning, a federal judge in New York City ordered that Khalil not be deported for now and set a court hearing in the case for Wednesday.
The Education Department on Monday sent letters to 60 US universities, including Harvard, Columbia, Yale and four University of California schools, warning them of cuts in federal funding unless they addressed allegations of antisemitism on campus.
