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On Thursday, the university announced it was expelling, suspending and revoking the degrees of 22 students following last year’s Hamilton Hall protest, fulfilling one of the nine demands issued in a letter from the Trump administration to Columbia.

The University Judicial Board (UJB) - which has been overseeing disciplinary proceedings for pro-Palestinian protestors since the fall and issued the punishments - said it was issuing “multi-year suspension, temporary degree revocations, and expulsions related to the occupation of Hamilton Hall” on 30 April.

Previously, the UJB - an independent body of faculty, staff and students - had only suspended students. One of the demands made by the Trump administration is to eliminate the UJB and centralise discipline beneath the president’s office, giving them sole jurisdiction over punishing students.

A statement from the Columbia Palestine Solidarity Coalition alleged that co-chair of the Board of Trustees David Greenwald - who worked at Goldman Sachs for 20 years - “was revealed to have personally interfered in the disciplinary cases of these students”.

An estimated six students were expelled from Columbia University, according to student organisers. One of the students expelled and fired was Grant Miner, president of the Student Workers of Columbia (SWC) union.

According to the union, the expulsion occurred a day before contract negotiations were set to begin with the university on Friday. In a press release issued on Friday, they said: “Miner was expelled without any evidence after nearly a year of disciplinary proceedings.”

“The first bargaining session between SWC and Columbia begins Friday, where the Union will present demands to protect international and undocumented student workers.

"Mahmoud Khalil, a UAW card signer, was detained by the US government last week, making Miner the second SWC member to be targeted. The Union is demanding protections for international and undocumented students, which would make it more difficult for Columbia to cave to federal pressure by aiding the Department of Homeland Security in abducting student workers.”

At the time of publication, SWC said Columbia had cancelled bargaining two hours before negotiations were due to take place.

Recent coverage of Gaza and the West Bank illustrates that, while corporate media occasionally outright call for expelling Palestinians from their land, more often the way these outlets support ethnic cleansing is by declining to call it ethnic cleansing.

Recent coverage of Gaza and the West Bank illustrates that, while corporate media occasionally outright call for expelling Palestinians from their land, more often the way these outlets support ethnic cleansing is by declining to call it ethnic cleansing.

Antisemitism is surely increasing. Hate crimes have increased in general—most targeting Black people—especially since the first Trump presidency, and hate incidents generally rise during violent outbreaks like the war on Gaza, and during election periods. But since most antisemitism originates in the white nationalist right wing, why focus primarily on people—including Jews—who are legitimately protesting their own government’s support for Israeli actions against Palestinians? Or on Palestinians themselves, who have every right to promote the humanity and rights of their people?

The ADL’s bad-faith accusations weaponize antisemitism to protect Israel at the expense of democratic and anti-racist principles. Anyone who doubted the ADL’s politics should be convinced by its abhorrent defense of Elon Musk’s Nazi salute and its support for Donald Trump.

To pursue effective public policy, policymakers and the public should refuse to cite the ADL’s flawed statistics, and instead develop thoughtful and nuanced ways to understand and address antisemitism and other forms of bigotry and discrimination. Media can play a key role by exposing the politicization of antisemitism by the ADL, including its prioritization of protection for Israel from criticism over the free speech that is fundamental to democratic discourse.

The Washington Post won’t say why it cancelled a six-figure ad buy calling for Elon Musk to be fired, but it’s likely the same reason the Post insisted Musk wasn’t Nazi-saluting on Inauguration Day, and why the paper killed its endorsement of Kamala Harris: because that’s what Jeff Bezos wants.

In mere months, entire Palestinian communities between Ramallah and Jericho have been chased out by settler violence and state policies — paving the way for a total Israeli takeover of thousands of acres of land.

The fallout highlights how geopolitical tensions and financial risks can destabilize global franchises. Reports suggest consumer boycotts targeting Western brands over Israel’s actions in Gaza significantly impacted KFC’s Turkish sales . Meanwhile, İş Gıda’s debt-fueled growth strategy left it vulnerable to economic shocks, including Turkey’s inflation crisis.

BDS works. That's why it's illegal.

...Saturday’s exchange offered a revealing view of the outsized role US corporate media play in the general dehumanization of the Palestinian people—an approach that conveniently coincides with the Middle East policy of the United States, which is predicated on the obsessive funneling of hundreds of billions of dollars in assistance and weaponry to Israel’s genocidal army. And now that President Donald Trump has decided that the US can take over Gaza by simply expelling its inhabitants, well, dehumanizing them may serve an even handier purpose.

Granted, it’s a lot easier for a news report to tell the individual stories of three people than to tell the stories of 183. But the relentless empathetic media attention to the three Israeli men—who, mind you, are not the ones currently facing a genocide—deliberately leaves little to no room for Palestinian victims of an Israeli carceral system that has for decades been characterized by illegal arbitrary detention, torture and in-custody death.

So it is that we learn the names and ages of the three Israelis, the names of their family members, and empathy-inducing details of their captivity and physical appearance, while the 183 Palestinians remain at best a side note, and at worst a largely faceless mass of newly freed terrorists...

... Saturday’s exchange offered a revealing view of the outsized role US corporate media play in the general dehumanization of the Palestinian people—an approach that conveniently coincides with the Middle East policy of the United States, which is predicated on the obsessive funneling of hundreds of billions of dollars in assistance and weaponry to Israel’s genocidal army. And now that President Donald Trump has decided that the US can take over Gaza by simply expelling its inhabitants, well, dehumanizing them may serve an even handier purpose.

Granted, it’s a lot easier for a news report to tell the individual stories of three people than to tell the stories of 183. But the relentless empathetic media attention to the three Israeli men—who, mind you, are not the ones currently facing a genocide—deliberately leaves little to no room for Palestinian victims of an Israeli carceral system that has for decades been characterized by illegal arbitrary detention, torture and in-custody death.

So it is that we learn the names and ages of the three Israelis, the names of their family members, and empathy-inducing details of their captivity and physical appearance, while the 183 Palestinians remain at best a side note, and at worst a largely faceless mass of newly freed terrorists...

Imagine the leader of a global superpower announcing a plan for removing an entire ethnic group from a territory they’ve long inhabited. Neighboring states would have to make land available to that superpower to resettle the displaced peoples. The refugees would “have their own administration in this territory” but they would “not acquire … citizenship” since any “sense of responsibility towards the world” would forbid making “the gift of a sovereign state” to a people “which has had no independent state for thousands of years.”

No, the plan described in brief here is not President Donald Trump’s Gaza plan, proposing a United States takeover of Gaza and mass relocation of its Palestinian population. It is the so-called “Madagascar Plan,” devised by Nazi Germany in 1940 to “resettle” European Jews.

That plan was the Third Reich’s final major proposal for removing the Jews from the Greater Germanic Reich Adolf Hitler envisioned in Mein Kampf prior to the “Final Solution” — the indiscriminate shootings of Jewish men, women, and children on the Eastern Front, leading to mass killings in death camps and gas chambers in late 1941. In that history lies a warning: Plans for the mass relocation of a population seen as troublesome or dangerous can rapidly devolve into the loss of sovereignty, of human and civil rights, and, eventually, ethnic cleansing.

In this News Brief, we detail the Trump's administration's strategy of trying to terrorize migrant communities, why it's not working as planned, how The New York Times is manufacturing a pro-mass deportation consensus and how migrant communities and their allies are fighting back.

We are joined by Chris from the humanitarian aid organization No More Deaths.