Joe Biden – In 22 states, gay couples can be legally booted from restaurants. How often that happens is unclear

A leader of protests at Columbia University against Israel's war in Gaza was arrested by immigration officers, a campus union said Sunday, after US President Donald Trump vowed to deport foreign pro-Palestinian student demonstrators.

Mahmoud Khalil, one of the most prominent faces in the campus's protest movement that erupted in response to Israel's conduct of the war, was arrested Saturday, the Student Workers of Columbia union said.

"On Saturday, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian recent Columbia graduate and lead negotiator for last spring's Gaza solidarity encampment," the union said in a statement.

US campuses including Columbia's in New York were rocked by student protests against Israel's war in Gaza following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack. The demonstrations ignited accusations of anti-Semitism.

Protests, some of which turned violent and saw campus buildings occupied and lectures disrupted, pitted students protesting Israel's conduct against pro-Israel campaigners, many of whom were Jewish.

Khalil, who remains in immigration enforcement detention, held permanent residency at the time of his arrest prompting thousands of people to sign a petition calling for his release, the union statement added.

"We are also aware of multiple reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents accessing or attempting to access Columbia campus buildings on Friday and Saturday, including undergraduate dorms," the union said.

Columbia did not directly address Khalil's arrest in response to inquiries, but in a statement said "there have been reports of ICE in the streets around campus."

"Columbia has and will continue to follow the law. Consistent with our longstanding practice and the practice of cities and institutions throughout the country, law enforcement must have a judicial warrant to enter non-public University areas, including University buildings," Columbia said.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump railed against the student protest movement linked to the conflict in Gaza, and vowed to deport foreign students who had demonstrated.

He also threatened to cut off federal funding for institutions that he said were not doing enough to combat anti-Semitism.

His administration announced Friday it was cutting $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University, accusing it of failing to protect Jewish students from harassment.

gw/bfm

© Agence France-Presse

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow went after congressional Republicans for quietly barreling forward with a tactic that effectively hands President Donald Trump their power to rescind his tariff policies on a silver platter.

The host devoted her opening monologue on Tuesday to a Republican plan to cede their ability under the National Emergencies Act to end Trump’s tariffs, which Maddow said are causing the American public and businesses across the nation “very real pain and loss of money.”

“So Republicans in Congress have the power to stop Trump from doing what he's doing on tariffs,” Maddow said. “What will they do with that power? The Democrats are going to force them to take a vote on this."

“They’re literally ceding their power. Giving it up. 'We don't want that power,'” Maddow said as she told viewers that Republican leaders "slipped language into a procedural measure that would prevent any such resolution to end the tariffs from receiving any vote this year.”

She added: “They literally had the power to stop Trump from doing something that is hurting the country materially every single day. They have the power to stop him from what he's doing, and so what did they decide to do with that power? They decided to give that power away, so they no longer have that power, so they don't have to decide what to do with it.”

ALSO READ: 'Absolutely unconscionable': Ex-Republican demands Trump removed from office after fight

And, Maddow said, “it gets better” as Republicans found a way to “save themselves from the terrible dilemma of whether or not to cast a recorded vote.”

“Republicans had to figure out some way out of this trap,” she said. “The national emergency law says Congress can end the emergency – he declared a national emergency in order to give himself the ability to proclaim these tariffs.”

“The national emergency law says if a resolution to end the emergency is introduced in Congress, Congress must consider that. They have to start the process of voting on it within 15 days. So now we know Democrats are introducing that resolution that starts the clock ticking. That means Congress is going to have to vote on this in 15 days – tick tock – in order to get around that binding requirement in the law.”

So, she pointed out, Republicans “proclaimed that between now and the end of this Congress, that is just one long day. That’s just one day. The whole rest of the Congress. I am not kidding.”

Watch the clip below or at this link: