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The department will begin issuing layoff notices to employees via email "in the coming days," according to a staff memo obtained by The Washington Post.
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The first trial in a case challenging the Trump administration's policy of detaining and deporting international students and professors who participate in pro-Palestinian activism is underway in Boston. The American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association brought the lawsuit. Government lawyers tried to get it dismissed, but U.S. District Judge William Young, an 84-year-old Ronald Reagan nominee, ordered a trial, saying it was the "best way to get at truth."
"Students and faculty all over the country are quite literally terrified about the possibility that their advocacy and expression will lead to detention," says Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and one of the lawyers challenging the Trump administration. "They are terrified that ICE agents will show up at their door any day and take them away."
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President Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House for a second straight day Tuesday, as Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, claimed Israel and Hamas were nearing a breakthrough on a ceasefire agreement. Israeli media are reporting Netanyahu is under "extreme" pressure to reach a 60-day ceasefire deal, but Netanyahu's "interests and the interests of his government remain to make this a perpetual, ongoing war," says Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy. The U.S.-Israeli proposal would see 10 living Israeli hostages released, along with the bodies of deceased hostages, in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. Hamas negotiators are also seeking the withdrawal of Israeli forces, guarantees for an end to the war, the resumption of humanitarian aid shipments overseen by the U.N. and the International Committee of the Red Cross, and an end to the operations of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
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