Texas has one of the strictest abortion restrictions in the country, banning abortion in nearly all situations with very limited exceptions. Since the near-total ban went into effect, several women in the state have shared stories and filed lawsuits, saying that they were denied critical care while experiencing pregnancy complications. On March 14, one of the lawmakers behind the state’s restrictive abortion laws introduced a bill seeking to clarify medical exceptions. But some abortion-rights advocates and legal experts say the bill won’t do what it claims to, and even worry that it could open the door to prosecuting pregnant people and people who help patients access abortions. Here’s what to know. What is current Texas law? The only exception to Texas’ abortion ban is if a person is experiencing a “life-threatening” medical emergency “that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.” But the current version of the law does not get more specific than that. Doctors have said that the near-total ban causes confusion over when they can provide treatment in urgent situations, leading to care delays or denials. However, there is specificity over the potential severe penalties for doctors who are found to have violated the state’s ban: up to $100,000 in fines, 99 years in prison, and losing their medical license. In the fall of 2024, ProPublica reported that three Texas women died after they didn’t receive appropriate care while experiencing miscarriages. What is the new proposed bill, SB 31? Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes—who has previously said that exceptions to the state’s near-total ban are “plenty clear”—said during a Senate committee hearing on March 27 that there have been “reports that some doctors and some hospitals are not following the law,” meaning that they have denied necessary medical care. He said he recently introduced a bill, SB 31, in order to “remove any excuse from a doctor or a hospital” from treating a patient experiencing medical emergencies. Republican Texas Rep. Charlie Geren has filed the same bill in the House. (Neither Hughes’s nor Geren’s office responded to a request for comment on this story.) The bill doesn’t expand abortion access in the state, but removes language from the state’s laws that requires a pregnant person to be experiencing a “life-threatening” condition for a doctor to provide care. The bill adds that it “does not require a physician to delay, alter or withhold medical treatment provided to a pregnant female if doing so would create a greater risk of the pregnant female’s death; or substantial impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant female.” It says that a patient’s emergency “need not be imminent or irreversible” for a doctor to provide care. It specifies that ectopic pregnancies are considered exceptions to the state’s near-total abortion ban, but doesn’t include exceptions for fetal anomalies, rape, or incest. The bill also includes language that instructs the State Bar of Texas and the Texas Medical Board to hold education sessions for lawyers and doctors about the medical exceptions to the state’s ban. Why is it controversial? The bill has received some rare bipartisan support, as well as support from both anti-abortion groups and some medical organizations, including the Texas Medical Association. Dr. Julie Ayala, an ob-gyn who practices in Texas, testified during the Senate committee hearing on March 27 on behalf of the Texas Medical Association that she believes “this bill will clear up confusion” and “save women’s lives.” But other abortion rights advocates, doctors, and legal experts say the bill won’t do what it claims. “It’s an attempt to add some clarity, but I think the underlying reasons that we’re seeing what we’re seeing with denials to care aren’t really changed in the bill,” says Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law with expertise in abortion. While the bill specifies some situations in which abortion is permitted, “pregnancy is complicated, so there are a lot of other scenarios that aren’t going to be enumerated in the bill where physicians aren’t going to know what to do,” Ziegler says. The bill also doesn’t remove the severe penalties for doctors who are found to have violated the state’s near-total ban—one of the reasons “we’re seeing physicians refuse to provide care,” Ziegler says. Samantha Casiano, an advocate for the reproductive rights advocacy nonprofit Free & Just, also criticized the bill. Casiano, who lives in Texas, was forced to carry her baby to term even after doctors told her at 20 weeks of pregnancy that her baby had anencephaly, a fatal birth defect, and wouldn’t survive. Her baby died four hours after being born. Casiano was one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit Zurawski v. State of Texas that was brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights and made national headlines for challenging Texas’ abortion ban. The Texas Supreme Court ruled against the women at the heart of the lawsuit in May 2024, refusing to clarify the exceptions to the state’s abortion ban. “Nothing in [SB 31] would’ve helped my situation at all,” Casiano says. “I’m just so upset that I felt like from 20 weeks to 32 weeks, I was basically a walking coffin for my daughter until I had to give birth, and then she had to suffer and be in agony. So where in that [bill] does that help my situation, or families and mothers like me? It was really upsetting and disappointing to read it.” Dr. Austin Dennard is an ob-gyn practicing in Texas who joined the Zurawski v. State of Texas lawsuit after she was forced to travel out of state to receive care when she learned that her baby had anencephaly. Dennard says that while she believes some of the people behind the bill had good intentions, she doesn’t think the bill “is going to make a lick of difference in the real practicality of practicing medicine.” She says the bill’s language is still very confusing, even to reproductive rights lawyers she’s spoken with, adding that “exceptions don’t work” to ensure access to care. As for the education sessions about the medical exceptions, Dennard questions who would be creating that guidance, and if it would be coming from anti-abortion sources. “It’s extremely disappointing to me, and if anyone is celebrating, I think that they are extremely naive to think that these individuals actually really want to make a change,” says Dennard, who is an advocate for Free & Just. “It feels like a political publicity movement rather than [a] true desire to help people.” A cracked-open “door” to further restrictions Advocates and experts also point out that SB 31 amends a 1925 law predating Roe v. Wade. The 1925 law bans abortion and penalizes anyone who “furnishes the means for procuring an abortion,” with the possibility of up to five years in prison. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had previously tried to enforce the 1925 law after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe, but a federal judge blocked the move in 2023. Now, advocates and experts worry that the bill could “open the door” to the 1925 law being used to prosecute abortion patients, as well as people and groups who help patients access care, such as through abortion funds. “If there is even a sliver of [a] chance that that bill could open the door to that 1925 criminalization of women and people that help you get an abortion, we have to be concerned,” says Kaitlyn Kash, a Free & Just advocate. Kash was forced to travel out of Texas to receive an abortion after learning that her baby had severe skeletal dysplasia, which impacts bone and cartilage growth, and that her baby likely wouldn’t survive. Texas is also considering a separate bill that would allow authorities to charge people who obtain abortions with homicide, making it one of at least 10 states that have introduced bills for the 2025 legislative session that open the door for penalizing patients—a growing trend since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe. According to Ziegler, SB 31 carves out some situations that wouldn’t be considered “aiding and abetting” an abortion, but in doing so, leaves open the possibility that other situations would be. “It’s sort of a similar dynamic to what you see with the exceptions,” Ziegler says. “There’s some clarity in a few narrow situations, and then a lot of gray area and threat of prosecution in most others.” She adds that Hughes has also introduced another bill, SB 2880, which—among other attempts to crack down on abortion—would expand who could be penalized for “aiding and abetting” abortions, including people who pay for or reimburse the costs associated with obtaining an abortion. Amanda Zurawski, the lead plaintiff in the Zurawski v. State of Texas lawsuit, was denied an abortion after experiencing a complication called preterm pre-labor rupture of membranes (PPROM) because doctors said they detected fetal cardiac activity. A few days later, she developed sepsis, a life-threatening condition. Doctors performed an emergency induction abortion, and she had to spend several days in the ICU. Zurawski, now a Free & Just advocate, criticized SB 31 for attempting to create “blanket rules over every single pregnancy in the state of Texas, because no two are the same.” “I like to believe—I think I have to believe—that the intent of this bill is not malicious,” she says, but she adds that Texas officials have attempted to penalize people providing access to abortion care. The Texas Attorney General’s office recently announced that it had filed criminal charges against a midwife and medical assistant, accusing them of illegally providing abortions in Texas. Dennard says she has received pressure from some people behind the bill and other physicians who disagree with her to support it. While some doctors and legal experts have said that the clarity would make “modest but not meaningless” changes and could save some lives, advocates say they don’t believe it will work. “We shouldn’t be begging for scraps,” Kash says.”You don’t legislate medicine.”

Severe flooding swept South Texas and cities across the border in Mexico on Thursday, as half a year’s rainfall drenched the region in less than two days. Officials warned of more rain on Friday and shut schools on the U.S. side. Thunderstorms brought 10 to 15 inches of rain to the parts of Texas where flash flood warnings were in effect, said Geoffrey Bogorad, a senior forecaster at the National Weather Service office in Brownsville. As much as four more inches were expected to fall, he said, as the Weather Service warned of more flash floods on Friday. The rain has flooded homes and roads and prompted at least nine school districts in the Rio Grande Valley to cancel classes on Friday. Multiple cities in South Texas this week saw record amounts of rain for late March, with 12 inches falling in Harlingen, and 11 in McAllen, during a 24-hour period, Mr. Bogorad said. The semiarid region along the border with Mexico usually receives about 25 inches annually. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “This is a particularly dangerous situation,” the Weather Service said in a statement late Thursday, adding that the flash flooding was life-threatening and the damage could be catastrophic. “Do not attempt to travel unless you are fleeing an area subject to flooding, or under an evacuation order.” The storms have also soaked Mexico. The weather authorities there warned late Thursday of winds of up to 50 miles per hour overnight, with heavy rain and some hail expected in the border states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon. Thunderstorms began dousing South Texas on Wednesday. Meteorologists warned of heavy rainfall and flash flooding as they observed another round of thunderstorms on Thursday. By the afternoon, the storm had flooded homes in McAllen and damaged buildings with winds a strong as 70 m.p.h. Images on social media showed highways and access roads in South Texas and Mexico flooded with up to four feet of water. The police also said that a tornado had touched down in Edcouch on Thursday, though no damage was reported, according to Mr. Bogorad. Water rescues were taking place late Thursday in La Feria as meteorologists declared a flash flood emergency, urging residents to seek higher ground immediately. Many of the water rescues were from cars getting stuck in rising waters, Mr. Bogorad said. There were no reports of injuries. “I don’t recall seeing this type of rainfall in March in deep South Texas,” he said. “This is a pretty substantial widespread event.” Flash flood warnings were active in Brooks, Cameron, Hidalgo, Kenedy, Starr and Willacy counties on Thursday night and expected to last into Friday morning. A warning is issued when a flash flood is imminent or occurring and residents should move to high ground. School districts in Texas near the border, including those in Donna, Hidalgo, Mission, McAllen, Mercedes, Pharr, Progreso, San Benito and Weslaco announced that they were canceling classes on Friday, citing the weather. South Texas College also said that it would close all campuses on Friday. A flood watch, which signals that flooding is possible, was in effect early Friday for more than 5.4 million people in South and Southeast Texas and southern Louisiana.

At least four people died and hundreds of others were rescued in flooding in South Texas and Mexico after more than 20 inches of rain fell near the border on Thursday and Friday. Three deaths were confirmed in a local disaster declaration by a judge in Hidalgo County, which is about 150 miles southwest of Corpus Christi. The identities of those who died were not immediately known, officials said. A fourth person drowned in Reynosa, a city in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, which borders Hidalgo County, state officials said. Parts of Hidalgo County got 14 inches of rain, which caused “significant property damage,” county officials said. The rain in Southern Texas, about a half-year’s worth in two days, had subsided by Friday evening. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Officials in the nearby city of Harlingen, which recorded 21 inches of rain, said on Friday that emergency responders had rescued more than 200 residents and that hundreds more were awaiting rescue. In Tamaulipas, people were picked up by boats, rescued from roofs and carried through waist-high waters, according to photographs from the state government and the state’s spokeswoman for public security. Large buses were fully submerged in water. “A lot of rain fell in a few hours,” the spokeswoman, Blanca Zumaya Escobedo, said. She added that the places in Tamaulipas most affected were the cities of Reynosa and Rio Bravo. The people of Primera, Texas, a city just northwest of Harlingen, are used to preparing for bad weather events, Victor, a resident, explained. Southern Texas has experienced several mass flooding events in recent years.. “Seeing the water was bringing back all of those emotions, anxiety, kind of dread that your home would be underwater again,” said Victor, who declined to provide his last name. “It’s just a feeling that you can’t shake.” Over the next several days, the rains were expected to move northeast toward Mississippi and Arkansas, according to the National Weather Service.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reportedly has plans to perform a large study on a “possible connection” between vaccines and autism—a topic of interest to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, despite plenty of research showing no such connection exists. During his Senate confirmation hearings, Kennedy was asked by Republican senator and physician Bill Cassidy about his views on vaccines and autism. “Will you reassure mothers unequivocally and without qualification that the measles and the hepatitis B vaccines do not cause autism?” Cassidy asked. Advertisement “If the data is there, I will absolutely do that,” Kennedy replied. Of course, the data is there—in abundance. There is ample scientific evidence that vaccines do not cause autism. Yet Kennedy and those who discount this research claim that it is either flawed or insufficient to disprove a possible link. That raises the question: could more “data” change their minds? If a lack of “good data” is truly driving people to avoid vaccines, it would be important to know, exactly, what new data could possibly change minds. Considering that most parents are probably not reading and appraising scientific studies themselves (either because they’re busy or because scientific studies are not really written for general audiences), this question is best asked to the high-profile vaccine skeptics in which some parents have placed their trust and whose opinions are taken seriously by millions of Americans.

Oklahoma’s conservative Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, and its conservative Republican schools superintendent have appeared to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the years of Donald J. Trump, with the former sending Oklahoma guardsmen to the southern border and the latter stocking the state’s schools with Trump-branded Bibles. But when the superintendent, Ryan Walters, proposed finding the undocumented students in Oklahoma’s schools, Mr. Stitt said enough is enough. “When I saw them picking on kids, I thought that’s a step too far,” Mr. Stitt said in a recent interview in his office in the State Capitol. In an era of anything-goes politics on the nation’s right, the fight in Oklahoma may suggest there is an outer limit to what is acceptable, even for conservatives. Or it could offer a preview of the next frontier in the nation’s battle over immigration. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “It’s incredibly unfortunate that the governor has decided to undermine President Trump’s immigration agenda and take these type of swipes at him,” Mr. Walters said. “He’s attacking President Trump.” It began when Mr. Walters, the state’s elected superintendent of schools, proposed new rules that would require Oklahoma public schools to collect citizenship information from students. The proposed rules were approved by the state school board in January, and they are now being considered by the Oklahoma Legislature. But Mr. Stitt, no softy on immigration, lashed out immediately. He soon named replacements to the school board, whose members are appointed by the governor, so he could better resist proposals from the schools chief. Mr. Stitt has been a strong proponent of border security, sending troops to help patrol the Texas border and lining up to support Mr. Trump’s deportation efforts. But in going after school children, Mr. Stitt said that Mr. Walters — a former high school history teacher who was once a protégé of the governor — crossed a line. “I’ve never heard Trump talk about, ‘Hey, we’re going to go after kids,’” Mr. Stitt said. Mr. Stitt, who is in his final term as governor, said he had spoken with Mr. Walters and tried to talk him out of it. “You’re just trying to make a political statement, trying to get your name in the paper,” Mr. Stitt said he told him. “That’s why people hate politicians.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Walters, who has been mentioned as a potential candidate for governor next year, has not wavered.In his office in the state education building, he argued in an interview that his approach closely aligned with the thrust of Mr. Trump’s policies, such as ending automatic citizenship for nearly every person born on U.S. soil and allowing federal immigration agents to enter schools. An attack on the citizenship proposal, he said, was akin to an attack on the president. Mr. Walters’s goals seem contradictory. Gathering data on the number of migrant students in Oklahoma schools would help provide language services, he said. But he also said he wants to better calculate the cost of undocumented students to state taxpayers. “My concern are the taxpayers, the citizens of the country and of Oklahoma,” he said. “Those are the people that are here legally, that voted in the elections, that need to be protected.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT His office estimated around 5,000 migrant students attend state public schools, at a cost of about $200 million a year. Bills in several state legislatures, including in Texas and New Jersey, echo Mr. Walters’s efforts, as they seek to allow schools to collect tuition from migrant students. Such legislation, which would probably be challenged in court, appeared to be aimed at challenging the core of a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision that said states could not prevent undocumented children from attending public schools. That ruling has been a target of some Republicans in recent years, particularly as the balance of power on the Supreme Court has shifted in favor of conservatives. Mr. Walters said he favored overturning the precedent. Mr. Stitt said he did not. Jackson Lahmeyer, a pastor in Tulsa, Okla., and member of Mr. Trump’s newly created White House Faith Office, said he liked both the governor and the school superintendent, but sided with Mr. Walters on collecting citizenship data. “This is the agenda of the president who won,” said Mr. Lahmeyer, whose church has attracted members of Mr. Trump’s family and administration. “We need to know if students are U.S. citizens or if they’re not.” The governor said he did not object to enforcing immigration law but worried that undocumented parents would potentially keep their children home, rather than be forced to disclose their immigration status. “The kids didn’t do anything wrong, is my point,” he said. Mr. Stitt, a mortgage company entrepreneur who was first elected in 2018, suggested a better solution involved fixing the immigration system — an idea that hearkened back to the pre-Trump Republican Party of George W. Bush — so that companies who want to sponsor foreign workers could legally do so more easily. The Oklahoma citizenship proposal must still be considered by the Legislature before the governor has a chance to formally block it. Privately, Republicans in the Legislature have chafed at the measure, said Tyler Powell, a Republican political consultant in Oklahoma. Publicly, they have mostly avoided the fray. The leaders of the State House and Senate did not respond to requests for comment. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Powell said the rightward shift in Republican primaries in 2024 has many worried about angering Mr. Walters, who is popular with the state’s core Republican base. “Everyone has a little bit of a fear of Walters,” he said. “Behind the scenes they have ensured that Walters’s policies don’t go through, but they don’t want to come out and walk a plank with their voters.” Mr. Walters has gained attention nationally for his efforts to introduce religious and Trump-branded conservative instruction into public schools, garnering praise from religious conservatives and those strongly aligned with Mr. Trump. He has moved to purchase Bibles for public schools, create a religious charter school and to alter state curriculum to teach the “discrepancies” in the 2020 election, among other things. “My opinion is Walters needs to stop trying to gain the attention of the president and do his job,” said Mark McBride, a former Republican member of the Oklahoma State House who worked on education issues. “I hope that Governor Stitt will continue to push back on the superintendent.” Mr. Stitt stepped in to replace three members of the State Board of Education in February with new members who would be aligned with him. He said in the interview that he would soon be adding a fourth to fill an empty position, giving him a majority on the board. Kendra Wesson, an education activist, was one of the board members who voted for the citizenship proposal and was replaced by Mr. Stitt. She said the actual text of the rule — which involved the collection of aggregate data — had been misconstrued by proponents. “There’s nothing in the rule about going after kids,” she said, adding that it was about helping schools and teachers educate students who arrived speaking different languages. “I feel it is so important to get resources out to them.” Ms. Wesson said that when the governor called her to tell her he would be replacing her on the board, he offered her a seat on another board. But, she said, it came with an “ultimatum to publicly disavow Ryan Walters.” A spokeswoman for the governor said Ms. Wesson was never asked to disavow Mr. Walters. Nonetheless, she now serves on an education advisory committee — one that Mr. Walters started.

Momodou Taal, the British-Gambian Ph.D. student who faces possible deportation for his pro-Palestinian activism at Cornell, said he never envisioned becoming embroiled in an American protest movement when he arrived on campus in 2022. He had been mostly content to study, teach and work on his dissertation, a look at sovereignty and political economy in Guinea. Even so, politics ran in his family — he is the great-grandson of Gambia’s first president, Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara — and he has been interested in the Palestinian cause since he was a teenager. He studied Arabic and Sharia law in Cairo. And when war broke out in Gaza, Mr. Taal, 31, found himself increasingly drawn to the protests on Cornell’s campus, he said in a phone interview this week. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT On the day of the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023, Mr. Taal posted online, “Glory to the Resistance.” Cornell suspended him twice for his activities in the year that followed. When dozens of tents went up on the campus lawn as part of an effort to get the school to divest its holdings in companies supporting the conflict, he was among the group’s leaders who refused to disband for two weeks. Later, he was suspended for participating in an unruly protest. Now, he is one of at least nine international students the Trump administration is trying to remove from the country in its promise to quell activities it calls antisemitic. But unlike some of the other students, who have been picked up by immigration agents and held in a detention facility in Louisiana, Mr. Taal has not yet been detained. Before he could be detained, he filed a pre-emptive lawsuit and he is fighting to block his detention in court. During the interview this week, he did not reveal his location. Fearing he would be taken into custody, Mr. Taal did not appear for a hearing in his court case on Tuesday. But he also said he would voluntarily surrender if the court ordered it. Editors’ Picks What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 Simple Sandals Are Always a Good Investment Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “This process is imminently hanging over me, and it has impacted every aspect of my life. I feel like a prisoner already, although all I have done is exercise my rights,” Mr. Taal wrote in court papers. A court ruling on Thursday denying a request to delay government action against Mr. Taal seemed to increase the chances of his detention or deportation, but another hearing in the case is scheduled for next week.In an executive order signed on Jan. 29, President Trump said it would be U.S. policy to use “all available and appropriate legal tools,” including to “remove” aliens who engage in “unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.” “We know there are more students at Columbia and other universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post on March 10. “We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Trump’s comment followed the first detention of such students, on March 8, when ICE agents took in Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate student. Others include Yunseo Chung, a legal permanent resident who moved to the United States from South Korea when she was 7. She had participated in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia, where she is a student. A doctoral student at Tufts University, Rumeysa Ozturk, was also detained by ICE officers. She was the co-author of an essay in the Tufts student newspaper last year criticizing the university administration’s response to the war in Gaza. Officials in the Trump administration have argued in several cases that a “visa is a privilege, not a right.” Civil libertarians have called the deportation effort one of the biggest assaults on free speech in decades. Unlike Mr. Khalil, who is a permanent resident of the United States, Mr. Taal, who holds joint United Kingdom and Gambian citizenship, is here on a student visa. Lawyers for Mr. Taal have said efforts to deport him are a violation of his First Amendment rights. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Taal grew up in the United Kingdom, where his parents had emigrated, and said he spoke before British Parliament at age 15. At one point, he aspired to be Britain’s first Black prime minister. Around that time, someone gave him “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” Mr. Taal said he was inspired, “given that he was a Muslim and also Black.” He came to Cornell in 2022 to study for a Ph.D. in Africana studies. After the war broke out in Gaza, he joined a newly formed campus organization, the Cornell Coalition for Mutual Liberation. In fall 2023, the group staged demonstrations at major buildings, held a “leftist potluck” and even put on a mock trial attacking Cornell’s president at the time, Martha Pollack. Mr. Taal, whose activities were covered extensively by the campus newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, assumed the title of “intercampus liaison” for the organization and became a visible presence at rallies. In February 2024, at a demonstration outside Cornell’s Day Hall, he led chants after Cornell’s student assembly rejected a resolution to end university partnerships with companies that provided weapons to Israel. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “We are in solidarity with the armed resistance in Palestine from the river to the sea,” Mr. Taal told a crowd on campus following the vote. Some on campus saw such statements as threatening. The phrase “from the river to the sea” has been interpreted by some Jews as a genocidal call to eliminate the state of Israel. Mr. Taal has said he views it as a call for Palestinian liberation. “I know there have been times people don’t like some things I’ve said,” said Mr. Taal. But, he added, “I’ve never been violent. I’ve never been convicted of a crime. I’ve never been arrested.” Asked about his social media post on Oct. 7, he said he did not support a particular Palestinian group. “What I support is the Palestinian right to resist to colonialism, as guaranteed by international law and the principle of self determination,” he added. A pro-Zionist organization called Betar had been tracking Mr. Taal’s activities, according to court documents. The group placed him on a list of students it was circulating to members of Congress, urging that they be deported, according to Mr. Taal’s lawsuit. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In a recent post on X, Betar took credit for federal efforts to deport Mr. Taal. Eliza Salamon, a 2024 Cornell graduate who is Jewish and who was involved in the Cornell protests, said that accusations of antisemitism against Mr. Taal are unfounded. “I’ve always seen Momodou treat everyone with the utmost respect, and I think it’s truly awful that these false accusations of antisemitism are being weaponized,” she said. By April 2024, Mr. Taal’s activism had pushed Cornell’s administration to its limit. He served as the official representative for an encampment of 17 tents, occupied by 50 students, that had been erected on Cornell’s Arts Quad. In an April 26 letter, Cornell officials notified Mr. Taal that he was temporarily suspended for ignoring demands to remove the encampment, along with several other violations, including loud and disruptive behavior. Last September, Mr. Taal ran afoul of the administration once again, when a crowd of students entered the Statler Hotel on campus to protest a career fair where exhibitors included weapons manufacturers. Cornell again suspended Mr. Taal, saying he had ignored police orders and participated in “unreasonably loud” chants. Mr. Taal feared he would lose his visa. But as a petition supporting him gathered thousands of signatures, the university permitted him to remain in his Ph.D. program, as long as he continued his studies remotely. He was also no longer able to teach his class, titled “What is Blackness,” an analysis of how the conception of race varies based on geography. He would have been eligible to return to campus at the end of this semester. Cornell University has not commented on his detention. “There’s nothing in the Immigration and Nationality Act that makes someone deportable for attending a protest,” Eric T. Lee, a lawyer representing Mr. Taal, said at a court hearing in Syracuse, N.Y., on Tuesday. “What we’re asking this court to do is strike down these orders. They’re plainly unconstitutional.” Mr. Lee has said the lawsuit is a test case on the question of whether the government can jail people for their speech. For his part, Mr. Taal said he hopes to have the option of remaining in the country as he completes his dissertation. At Cornell, about 200 students held an emergency rally on March 20 as a show of support.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio estimated that he had signed perhaps more than 300 letters revoking the visas of students, visitors and others to force their expulsion from the United States because of their foreign policy views or criminal activities. He has been signing letters daily to revoke visas since taking office in late January, Mr. Rubio told reporters on Thursday night aboard an Air Force passenger jet traveling between Paramaribo, Suriname, and Miami, where he lives with his family. Mr. Rubio was concluding a three-nation tour in the Caribbean and South America. “I don’t know actually if it’s primarily student visas,” he said. “It’s a combination of visas. They’re visitors to the country. If they’re taking activities that are counter to our foreign, to our national interest, to our foreign policy, we’ll revoke the visa.” He said he reviewed each case himself before signing off on actions that would be taken by immigration agents. Mr. Rubio said that a visa holder charged with a crime while in the United States should automatically lose their visa. He is also expelling permanent U.S. residents by stripping them of their green cards. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “My standard: If we knew this information about them before we gave them a visa, would we have allowed them in?” he said. “And if the answer is no, then we revoke the visa.” Mr. Rubio declined to say how the cases arrived at his desk. “We’re not going to talk about the process by which we’re identifying it because obviously we’re looking for more people,” he said. Mr. Rubio has been the most senior aide of President Trump involved in the contentious deportation efforts in communities across the United States. In mid-March, Mr. Rubio finalized a deal in which President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador agreed to accept U.S. deportation flights with more than 200 migrants, who were put into a prison there. At least some of the migrants had fled to the United States from the repressive autocratic government of Venezuela and were not criminals, their lawyers say, but the United States failed to give them due process during their detention and deportation. Mr. Rubio has also told the Homeland Security Department to detain students or recent graduates for deportation because of what he called their opposition to American foreign policy. Editors’ Picks What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 Simple Sandals Are Always a Good Investment Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT He told reporters on Thursday at a news conference in Georgetown, Guyana, that he had revoked the student visa of a Tufts University doctorate student and Fulbright scholar from Turkey. The student, Rumeysa Ozturk, was one of several authors of a student newspaper essay last year calling for university support of Palestinian rights and divestment from Israel. After Mr. Rubio’s action, six people in black clothes and some wearing masks — presumably federal agents — seized her off a street outside her home in Somerville, Mass. Mr. Rubio has also signed off on stripping the permanent residency status of two other students who were involved in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University: Mahmoud Khalil, born in Syria, and Yunseo Chung, born in South Korea. Mr. Khalil, 30, is married to a U.S. citizen who was eight months pregnant when immigration agents seized him from their home in New York this month and took him to a detention center in Louisiana. Ms. Chung, 21, has been in the United States since age 7 with her family. Mr. Rubio has been named in separate lawsuits filed by Mr. Khalil and Ms. Chung, as well as other legal challenges to the visa and green card revocations and attempted deportations. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In Ms. Chung’s case, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to halt its efforts to deport her. Mr. Rubio has vigorously defended the actions when asked in recent days about them. He has avoided talking about details of each case but has described many of the people whose visas or green cards he has stripped as activists in movements whose participants have vandalized buildings, held disruptive rallies at universities and prevented other students from attending class. “At some point I hope we run out because we’ve gotten rid of all of them,” he said in Guyana. “But we’re looking every day for these lunatics that are tearing things up.” He added, “I encourage every country to do that, by the way, because I think it’s crazy to invite students into your country that are coming onto your campus and destabilizing it.” Critics say Mr. Trump and Mr. Rubio’s actions are similar to those taken by authoritarian governments that seek to suppress free speech and assembly. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT On Thursday, Mr. Rubio was asked twice whether under his rationale, Chinese Communist Party officials and authorities in Hong Kong had the right to deport foreign students involved in the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. As a senator from Florida, Mr. Rubio supported the protests through legislation, even though some of the protesters’ actions disrupted campuses and public life. On the plane, Mr. Rubio said, “Well, every country in the world can deny visas to whoever they want. It’s that simple. That’s a fact. Whether we like it or not, they can deny visas.”

The interim president of Columbia University abruptly left her post Friday evening as the school confronted the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding and the Trump administration’s mounting skepticism about its leadership. The move came one week after Columbia bowed to a series of demands from the federal government, which had canceled approximately $400 million in essential federal funding, and it made way for Columbia’s third leader since August. Claire Shipman, who had been the co-chair of the university’s board of trustees, was named the acting president and replaced Dr. Katrina Armstrong. The university, which was deeply shaken by a protest encampment last spring and a volley of accusations that it had become a safe haven for antisemitism, announced the leadership change in an email to the campus Friday night. The letter thanked Dr. Armstrong for her efforts during “a time of great uncertainty for the university” and said that Ms. Shipman has “a clear understanding of the serious challenges facing our community.” Less than a week ago, the Trump administration had signaled that it was satisfied with Dr. Armstrong and the steps she was taking to restore the funding. But in a statement on Friday, its Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism said that Dr. Armstrong’s departure from the presidency was “an important step toward advancing negotiations” between the government and the university. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The statement included a cryptic mention of a “concerning revelation” this week, which appeared to refer to comments from Dr. Armstrong at a faculty meeting last weekend. According to a faculty member who attended, Dr. Armstrong and her provost, Angela Olinto, confused some people when they seemed to downplay the effects of the university’s agreement with the government. A transcript of the meeting had been leaked to the news media, as well as to the Trump administration, according to two people familiar with the situation. Ms. Shipman, a journalist with two degrees from Columbia, is taking charge of one of the nation’s pre-eminent universities at an extraordinarily charged moment in American higher education. The federal government is threatening to end the flow of billions of dollars to universities across the country, many of which are facing inquiries from agencies that range from the Justice Department to the Department of Health and Human Services. But the Trump administration’s punitive approach to universities is playing out most acutely at Columbia. The university, a hub of last spring’s campus protest movement against the war in Gaza, has spent months confronting accusations from one side that it condoned antisemitic behavior and permitted lawlessness to dominate, and from the other that it stifled academic and political speech. The government’s move this month to cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in support to Columbia — which draws roughly a fifth of its operating revenues from Washington — represented a dire threat to the university. The government told Columbia it would consider restarting those grants and contracts only after the university agreed to a list of demands. Editors’ Picks What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 Simple Sandals Are Always a Good Investment Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Last week, it fell to Dr. Armstrong to announce that Columbia had done so. Among other steps, Columbia said it would have 36 campus safety officers with arrest powers, a shift with enormous resonance at a university that has a long history of campus activism and fraught ties with law enforcement. The university also said it would adopt a formal definition of antisemitism, review its admissions policies and, in a turn that was especially alarming to professors who cherish academic freedom, impose new oversight of the university’s Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department. Although university officials said they had already been considering some of the government’s demands, Columbia’s acquiescence drew significant condemnation on the campus and beyond. Other higher education leaders watched nervously, fearing that the university’s decision, without mounting a court challenge that many felt stood a reasonable chance of success, would provoke the government to target other universities. Two days before Columbia announced its decision, the government said it would withhold about $175 million in funding to the University of Pennsylvania because the school allowed a transgender woman to be a member of its women’s swim team in 2022. Dr. Armstrong’s departure from the presidency was about as abrupt as her ascension to it last summer. Then, not long before classes began, Nemat Shafik resigned as president, ending a 13-month tenure that had led to global criticism of Columbia. “Dr. Armstrong accepted the role of interim president at a time of great uncertainty for the university and worked tirelessly to promote the interests of our community,” David J. Greenwald, the chair of the board of trustees, said in a statement on Friday. The university said that Dr. Armstrong would remain at Columbia as the head of the university’s medical center. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In an email addressed to colleagues on Friday evening, Dr. Armstrong said it had been “a singular honor to lead Columbia University in this important and challenging time.” “My heart is with science, and my passion is with healing,” she added. “That is where I can best serve this University and our community moving forward.” The Wall Street Journal first reported that Dr. Armstrong would be leaving the Columbia presidency. Less than a week ago, Linda McMahon, the Trump administration’s education secretary, had suggested that she was pleased with Dr. Armstrong’s work. “She knew that this was her responsibility to make sure that children on her campus were safe,” Ms. McMahon, told CNN last weekend. “She wanted to make sure there was no discrimination of any kind. She wanted to address any systemic issues that were identified relative to the antisemitism on campus. And they have worked very hard in a very short period of time.” Ms. McMahon said then that Columbia was “on the right track so that we can move forward,” but she stopped short of saying that the government would revive its varied funding agreements with Columbia. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT But the government’s concern about Dr. Armstrong’s commitment was clear by Tuesday, prompting her to release a public letter reaffirming her seriousness. “Any suggestion that these measures are illusory, or lack my personal support, is unequivocally false,” she wrote to Columbia’s community. Brent R. Stockwell, the chair of Columbia’s department of biological sciences, said that despite the criticism this week from some quarters, Dr. Armstrong had maintained the backing of those who felt that reclaiming the university’s federal funding was paramount. “She had quite a lot of support,” Professor Stockwell said. He said he could not speak for everyone but that many in the school’s research community “aren’t willing to give up on the dream that Columbia can better the world and the lives of Americans through research. That is what we are trying to achieve, and that requires federal funds.” Representative Tim Walberg, Republican of Michigan, and the chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which has been seeking student discipline records from Columbia, said the school must redouble its efforts to overcome its failure “to uphold its commitment to Jewish students and faculty.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Representative Walberg also signaled to the new interim president that she would not receive a honeymoon. “Ms. Shipman, while we wish you all good success, we will be watching closely,” Representative Walberg said. Adarsh Pachori, an engineering graduate student at Columbia, said he was left “uncomfortable and worried” by the sudden change in university leadership. “This resignation along with the funding withdrawal, talk of deportations and government involvement in general is frustrating,” said Mr. Pachori, who was walking on campus Friday night. “It is starting to seem that Columbia administration simply caves to the demands of the U.S. government instead of upholding the beliefs and values that are promised at Columbia.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested a graduate student attending the University of Minnesota earlier this week, the school said Friday in a statement that called the situation “deeply concerning.” The student was taken into custody on Thursday at an off-campus residence, the school’s president, Rebecca Cunningham, said in the statement. “The university had no prior knowledge of this incident and did not share any information with federal authorities before it occurred,” the statement said. The university did not identify the student’s name, nationality or visa type. Jake Ricker, a university spokesman, said the student was enrolled in the Carlson School of Management. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT ICE officials did not immediately respond to a request for information about the case. The arrest follows other incidents in which ICE targeted international students or scholars at American universities. Three involved students at Columbia University. The other individuals ICE detained or sought to arrest attended Brown, Tufts, Cornell and the University of Alabama. Another case that drew consternation among civil liberties advocates involved Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident and recent graduate at Columbia University who had his green card revoked. A common factor in some of those cases has been the students’ involvement in pro-Palestinian protests or writings last year. Mr. Khalil, who was born in Syria to Palestinian refugees, and who is married to an American citizen, is fighting in federal court the government’s efforts to deport him. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters aboard his plane on Thursday that U.S. officials were “going to err on the side of caution” in weighing visa revocations. Editors’ Picks What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 Simple Sandals Are Always a Good Investment Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “We are not going to be importing activists into the United States,” Mr. Rubio said. “They’re here to study. They’re here to go to class. They’re not here to lead activist movements that are disruptive and undermine” universities. While Thursday’s arrest was the first publicly known immigration enforcement action involving a University of Minnesota student, the Trump administration signaled weeks ago that it was scrutinizing the college. The Justice Department announced last month that Minnesota was among 10 schools that investigators would visit to determine whether they “failed to protect Jewish students and faculty members from unlawful discrimination.” The Twin Cities campus — the flagship of Minnesota’s five campuses — was on a list of 60 colleges the Department of Education warned this month were at risk of “potential enforcement actions” because of accusations of antisemitism. Minnesota, which was among the major universities that had a pro-Palestinian protest encampment last spring, has grappled for more than a year with concerns about speech on campus. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Two weeks ago the university’s board of regents declared that Minnesota should largely refrain from issuing official statements about “matters of public concern or public interest.” Top elected officials in the state said Friday evening that they were awaiting more details about Thursday’s arrest, but some signaled alarm. “Our campuses should be a safe place for all students, staff, and visitors,” State Senator Doron Clark said in a statement. “We must stand up against the Trump administration’s senseless demonization of our friends, family and neighbors.”

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. The White House on Thursday announced it was walking away from the nomination of Elise Stefanik to be the United States’ representative at the United Nations, a plum gig that has been a launching pad for folks like George H.W. Bush and Madeleine Albright. In pulling the nom, the Trump administration acknowledged that the Republicans’ slim majority in the House would be imperiled if she stepped away. The choice of Stefanik, a no-nonsense and pragmatic millennial, to represent the U.S. at the United Nations was widely viewed as Trump’s most responsible pick in an otherwise chaotic Cabinet. Given a choice between a solid rep on the world stage and a guaranteed yes vote in the House, Trump served himself in the short term but short-changed his already-wobbly diplomatic portfolio. "There are others that can do a good job at the United Nations," the President wrote on his social-media platform, Truth Social. Earlier this year, Stefanik stepped out of her role as a member of House Republican Leadership to prepare for her new job in New York, where she was poised to serve at turns as Washington’s enforcer of MAGA’s vision for the world and as that world’s punching bag. Instead, she is being pushed aside on the argument that her House seat in Upstate New York is too valuable to be put in play. It was an unexpected development for many in Congress, including some Democrats, who looked forward to watching how one of their own might navigate the tricky terrain of global diplomacy while balancing the realities of Trumpism and responsible policy. House Republicans have a fragile majority, one that is going to be tested next week with special elections in Florida that should be safely red but have some worried a Trump backlash may be stronger than most realize. Republicans around Washington are worried about the pair of ballots heading to school gyms, church rec rooms, and library basements on Tuesday. With a razor-thin majority—and tons of outside money pouring into Florida—House Republicans have zero margin for error. And ceding New York’s seat held by Stefanik would only add to the frailty, even in yet another district that Trump carried easily just a few months ago. Stefanik had exactly the right resume for the job she just lost. Before joining Congress, she worked in the George W. Bush White House and served as a policy adviser to Mitt Romney’s running mate, future Speaker Paul Ryan. She is a Harvard-educated pro who was seen as a future heavy hitter in the GOP. She put on the armor to be Trump’s defender during two impeachments, even as she realized it was a risky move. She rolled the dice and learned why the House almost always wins. It was only a few months ago that Trump asked Stefanik to give up her hard-won seat and she agreed. She aced her Senate confirmation hearing. She wooed the right diplomats in courtesy calls. She made the rounds with the proper players in the foreign policy think tanks while winking that she still had an eye on Cold War strategic baselines. She even got plaudits from Democrats who otherwise view the Trump 2.0 team as a parade of amateurism worthy of contempt. Still, it fell apart when Trump realized he would rather preserve a coin-toss majority in the House than have what some hoped would be a slam-dunk Ambassador on the global stage. It’s why House Speaker Mike Johnson, half-jokingly, said in November that Trump “fully understands and appreciates the math here” to preserve the majority and told him to stop raiding the cookie jar. At Trump’s first joint address to Congress in his second term, rather than join the Cabinet in the primo stage, Stefanik sat with House rank-and-file membership. She was relegated to the cheap seats because her vote was needed to keep Johnson wedded to the gavel. The bet was that she would get the bump up to the U.N. once things were settled in Florida, where voters have choices next week over who gets to replace Mike Waltz, who got the promotion to run the White House Situation Room as Trump’s national security adviser, and Matt Gaetz, whose alleged interest in young women and drugs forced him from office. Instead, Stefanik is getting put back on the bench. The White House says she would rejoin House Leadership, but it’s not as if the slots there have an opening. There’s a rich history of parties creating new jobs when exceptional talent is willing to take them on, but Stefanik already gave up a legitimately powerful position to take on that unenviable task of representing Trump on the global stage. Now, she’s back at the job she was set to leave because Republicans have 218 seats in the House, Democrats have 213 seats, and four are open. Some are surely enjoying some schadenfreude at Stefanik’s expense. Eight years ago, she ran the numbers and decided aligning with Trump would serve her better than joining former bosses like Karl Rove. She defended Trump’s worst impulses, raised a boatload of cash for House Republican sycophants, and hitched her wagon to MAGA’s star. “I look forward to the day when Elise is able to join my Administration in the future,” Trump wrote. In the meantime, she’s the latest casualty of a President burning up his political capital faster than he expected.