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Students take Columbia building; backlash to discrimination law
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Pro-Palestinian protesters took over a building at Columbia University on Tuesday morning, hours after the institution began suspending students who defied orders to dismantle their 80-tent protest encampment. On Monday Minouche Shafik, Columbia’s president, said negotiations to clear the site had failed and rejected protesters’ demand that the university divest from Israel. Demonstrations at campuses across the country have sprung up since police arrested more than 100 students at Columbia for trespassing on April 18th.
Gregg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, instructed the state’s education agency to “ignore” the Biden administration’s decision to include transgender students in revisions to Title IX, a law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools. Several red states have contested the changes, which go into effect on August 1st. Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi and Montana have filed a joint lawsuit against the federal department of education.
California’s population grew by nearly 0.2%, or around 67,000 residents, in 2023, according to figures released by the state’s Department of Finance on Tuesday. The growth might not match that of Florida or Texas, but it is still welcome news for the Golden State, which in 2020 saw its population shrink for the first time since 1850.
America’s drug-enforcement agency will reportedly recommend that the Biden administration re-classify marijuana as a so-called Schedule III substance. The move would still impose regulations on weed, but recognise that—unlike other Schedule I drugs such as heroin— it has medical uses. Pot is legal in many American states but remains federally criminalised.
Echoes of ‘68
The Democratic Party’s convention in Chicago in 1968 was held as Americans protested against the Vietnam War and mourned the loss of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy to assassins’ bullets. It will inevitably be a touchpoint when the party returns to the Windy City for its confab this year. Yet it is only one of several relevant touchstones for the tumult surrounding this year’s gathering, writes our Lexington columnist in the latest introduction to Checks and Balance, our weekly newsletter about American politics.
Trump trial: day nine
The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush-money trial fined the former president $9,000 for repeatedly violating a gag order. Juan Merchan warned Mr Trump that he could face jail time if he continued to post insults about potential witnesses and the jury. Testimony continued on Tuesday in the New York trial, which is expected to last for at least another month.
A view from elsewhere
The protests that have engulfed university campuses are bad news for Joe Biden, who is already “fast losing support” from Arab-American and Muslim voters, wrote Yusef Ziya Durmus in the Daily Sabah , a Turkish newspaper, on April 26th. The protests, and the polls, show that “the tide is turning” when it comes to the president’s “seemingly unopposed support for Israel’s war crimes”, he argued.
Figure of the day
270, the number of days that Congress gave TikTok’s Chinese owners on April 23rd to sell up or see their app banned. Regardless of who wins in November, the Sino-American tech war is likely to heat up. But the approach that Messrs Biden and Trump take may vary. Read our story to find out how.
Today’s polls
The race between the two candidates remains stubbornly stable. Judging from our poll tracker, which is updated daily and shows an average of the latest polls, the race between Mr Biden and Mr Trump is shaping up to be a dead heat.
Daily quiz
Tuesday: What was the name of the island in New York Harbour where many immigrants were processed?
Monday: Who wrote the sonnet inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty?
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—Jon Fetterman, Democratic senator for Pennsylvania, offers a low opinion of the campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza on April 28th.
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