The Department of Homeland Security said on Monday that it had deported a Brown University professor and doctor with a valid visa because they said she attended a Hezbollah leader’s funeral in February during a trip to Lebanon. When questioned by Customs and Border Protection officers upon her return to the United States, Dr. Rasha Alawieh, who is Lebanese, “openly admitted” her support for the leader, Hassan Nasrallah, according to a Homeland Security spokeswoman. Dr. Alawieh was detained at Boston Logan International Airport on Thursday. “A visa is a privilege not a right,” the spokeswoman, Tricia McLaughlin, said in a statement to The New York Times. “Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied. This is common-sense security.” The department did not say how it knew that Dr. Alawieh had attended the funeral, which was held in a sports stadium and attracted tens of thousands of people. It also did not respond to questions about whether Dr. Alawieh has been accused of a crime or immigration violation. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Stephanie Marzouk, a lawyer representing a member of Dr. Alawieh’s family, did not respond to an interview request on Monday. Late on Sunday, a team of lawyers from the firm of Arnold & Porter, who had been set to represent the family, withdrew from the case, telling the court their decision was made “as a result of further diligence.” The federal judge overseeing the case decided to postpone a hearing in the case on Monday after Ms. Marzouk requested more time to prepare. She represents Dr. Alawieh’s cousin, Yara Chehab, who brought the case first to try to stop the government from deporting Dr. Alawieh, and then to seek her return to the United States. Michael Sady, an assistant United States Attorney, filed a new motion in the case on Monday morning, according to the court docket. That filing and others have been sealed. Dr. Alawieh, 34, is a Lebanese citizen who had traveled to her home country last month. She was detained on Thursday when she returned from that trip to the United States, according to a court complaint filed by Ms. Chehab. The judge in the case, Leo T. Sorokin of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts, ordered the government on Friday evening to provide the court with 48 hours’ notice before deporting Dr. Alawieh. But at that time she was apparently already aboard a plane that was sitting on the tarmac in Boston, about to take off for Paris on her way to Lebanon. According to the court docket, the government said on Monday that it was not aware of Judge Sorokin’s order when Dr. Alawieh’s plane took off. But Clare Saunders, one of the lawyers who was initially involved in the case, said in an affidavit filed over the weekend that she was at the airport Friday evening and had informed Customs and Border Protection officers of the judge’s order before the flight departed. Ms. Saunders is with Arnold & Porter, the firm that withdrew from the case on Sunday night. Dr. Alawieh graduated from the American University of Beirut in 2015. Three years later, she came to the United States, where she held medical fellowships at the Ohio State University and the University of Washington, and then worked as a resident at Yale. While she was in Lebanon visiting relatives, the American consulate issued her an H1-B visa, the kind for foreign workers with specialized skills. Before that, she had a J-1 visa, a type used by some foreign students. A spokesman for Brown University, Brian Clark, said, “We continue to seek to learn more about what has happened.” There is a shortage of American doctors working in Dr. Alawieh’s area of specialty, transplant nephrology. Foreign-born physicians play an important role in the field, according to experts. Fear over immigration status could “harm the pipeline even more,” said Dr. George Bayliss, who works in the Brown Medicine kidney transplant program with Dr. Alawieh. Her patients included individuals awaiting transplants and those dealing with the complex conditions that can occur after a transplant, Dr. Bayliss said. He called Dr. Alawieh “a very talented, very thoughtful physician.” He also said he had not discussed politics with her. In a letter on Sunday to members of the university community, Brown’s administration advised foreign students to “consider postponing or delaying personal travel outside the United States until more information is available from the U.S. Department of State.”

Columbia University is now the epicenter of the American culture war. The Trump administration is targeting a former Columbia student — and the university itself — as a test case for its new authoritarian regime. The story of Columbia isn’t simply about Mahmoud Khalil, a former graduate student in international affairs there who was one of the leaders of the pro-Palestinian protests that burst into view almost immediately after the Hamas terror attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. But when federal immigration officials showed up at his apartment building last weekend and whisked him away to a facility in Louisiana to begin deportation proceedings, they brought the malice and incompetence of the Trump administration into stark relief. The incompetence was obvious from the start. At the time of Khalil’s arrest, federal officers seem to have believed that he was in the United States on a student visa. But that was incorrect. He’s a green-card holder, a lawful permanent resident of the United States. The malice was plain as well. In spite of his permanent residency, which agents on the scene appear to have learned about soon enough, the government did not permit Khalil to have a privileged conversation with his lawyer until it was ordered to do so by a federal judge. Khalil was taken from his family when his wife, who is an American citizen, was eight months pregnant. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT What was the reason for his arrest, potential deportation and isolation from his own attorneys? According to the Department of Homeland Security’s Notice to Appear that was provided to Khalil, “The secretary of state has determined that your presence or activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” While that statement sounds damning, the reality is that Khalil was detained because of his protest activity and not because he’d provided illegal support for terrorists. As an administration official told The Free Press, “The allegation here is not that he was breaking the law.” In an interview with NPR, Troy Edgar, the deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, made it clear that the administration was targeting Khalil’s expression. “We’ve invited and allowed the student to come into the country,” Edgar said, “and he’s put himself in the middle of the process of basically pro-Palestinian activity. And at this point, like I said, the secretary of state can review his visa process at any point and revoke it.” But there is no visa to review. Khalil is a permanent resident now. Make no mistake, the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil are a direct attack on free speech. While I’m appalled by the administration’s actions, I’m not surprised that the case arose out of what someone was doing at Columbia. The university has been in various degrees of political turmoil for decades. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In fact, the first time I had to walk through metal detectors to give a speech was at Columbia 20 years ago. I was president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (now called the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), and I went to campus to defend the right of Jewish students to speak out against faculty antisemitism in the university’s Middle East and Asian languages and culture department. I will never forget the menacing atmosphere both on campus and at the event itself. People in the audience shouted at me and shouted at one another. Protesters chanted in the halls.But that experience was insignificant compared with what happened on campus following the Hamas terror attacks. Jewish students faced an ordeal at Columbia and on several other elite American campuses. While many pro-Palestinian demonstrators criticized Israel’s military response peacefully and lawfully, the protests often took a dark turn. Supporters of Hamas celebrated the attacks, and protests against Israel spiraled out of control. Protesters occupied large segments of campus grounds for days on end, and at Columbia a faction of protesters took over Hamilton Hall, a central administrative building. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT According to a 234-page complaint filed against Columbia by a coalition of Jewish students and Jewish organizations, “Jewish and Israeli students have been spat at, physically assaulted, threatened and targeted on campus and social media with epithets,” including statements such as “death to Jews,” “Zionist pig” and “baby killer.” While it’s not possible to determine the truth of every allegation of antisemitic discrimination or harassment against Columbia, the situation was sufficiently serious for the Biden administration to start a Title VI investigation against the university in November 2023, even before the lawless protests of 2024 and 2025. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires federally funded educational institutions to protect students from discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin. Both the Biden and the Trump administrations have interpreted Title VI to prohibit antisemitic discrimination and harassment.At the same time, however, protecting students from discrimination isn’t Columbia’s only priority. It should also be highly protective of free speech and academic freedom. Columbia isn’t a public university, so it is not bound by the First Amendment (which only protects against government censorship), but I’m persuaded by the moral force of the Supreme Court’s words in a 1957 case called Sweezy v. New Hampshire: “Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise, our civilization will stagnate and die.” In other words, universities possess a double obligation — to protect students and faculty and staff members from discrimination and harassment, while also protecting free expression on campus. It’s not an easy task. It requires a combination of wisdom and courage.But the Trump administration possesses neither wisdom nor courage, and it is now in the process of using claims of antisemitism on campus as a justification for grave violations of due process and free speech. The Red Scares of 20th-century anti-communism are being replaced by a new frenzy, whipped up against left-wing supporters of the Palestinian cause. I’m hardly the first person to make that comparison, in part because there is a particularly obvious parallel — in both instances censorship had political appeal. Communism is a repugnant ideology, and the unpopularity of communists and communist ideas (especially at the height of the Cold War) made them inviting targets for populists and demagogues. The government could censor communists to thunderous applause. Sympathy for Hamas (much less support for Hamas) is similarly repugnant. And there are a host of people on college campuses who have said truly vile things about Israel, Zionism and Jews. They have called for the destruction of the Jewish state and for violence against Jews. Punishing these voices also draws thunderous applause, especially from parts of President Trump’s base, but not only there. Even so, just as we rightly look back in shame at the excesses of McCarthyism, we will look back in shame at the excesses of this moment — if we permit anger at campus protests to overwhelm our commitment to due process and free speech. Let’s start with free speech. It’s hard to state all the ways in which I disagree with Khalil’s anti-Israel activism. The encampments interfered with the rights of other students on campus. There is also evidence that a pro-Palestinian group Khalil belonged to did, in fact, endorse violent attacks against Israel, including by posting an essay calling the Oct. 7 attacks a “moral, military and political victory.” But my feelings about the substance of these comments are irrelevant to their constitutionality. Indeed, the entire point of the free speech clause of the First Amendment is to protect speech that other citizens seek to suppress. Popular speech doesn’t need legal protection. In addition, it has long been established that the First Amendment doesn’t just protect the rights of American citizens. The Supreme Court held in a 1945 case called Bridges v. Wixon that “Freedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country.” That doesn’t end the inquiry, however. It turns out that federal statutes muddy the waters and provide authority for federal officials to deport even legal permanent residents if those residents are determined to be a threat to national security or support designated terrorist organizations. These statutes are so rarely invoked that there isn’t sufficient case law to determine exactly how the courts will apply them to Khalil. It’s important to take a brief technical detour to explain. For now, the administration is relying on 8 U.S.C. Section 1227, which states, “An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the secretary of state has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.” A different statute, 8 U.S.C. Section 1182, says that any alien who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization” can be blocked from entering the country. Violation of that same statute can be grounds for deportation as well. But invoking those statutes raises additional questions. First, they’re absurdly broad. The idea that a graduate student’s campus protest could have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” is almost absurd on its face, and even if Khalil did endorse terrorist attacks on Israel, that is still constitutionally protected speech. The First Amendment permits advocacy of violence, including illegal violence, so long as the speaker isn’t inciting imminent lawless action. This standard protects the campus protesters who chanted “Globalize the Intifada,” and it protects people who call for the forcible removal of Palestinians from Gaza. In both circumstances, protesters are endorsing illegal, violent actions. Yet in both circumstances, the Constitution protects their speech. The attack on due process is just as serious as the attack on free speech. This month, the Trump administration announced that it was canceling roughly $400 million in federal contracts and grants to Columbia. The administration’s statement said the cancellations were “due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students” and said “additional cancellations are expected to follow.” At first glance, the action seems lawful. After all, Title VI does require schools to protect students from harassment, and there is ample evidence that Jewish students faced an ordeal on campus. But there’s a problem — federal statutes and regulations permit termination of federal financial assistance only when “compliance cannot be secured by voluntary means” and when “there has been an express finding on the record, after opportunity for hearing, of a failure to comply.” There was no hearing. The administration simply acted. As a rule, our nation does not take the approach of the Queen of Hearts in “Alice in Wonderland”: “sentence first, verdict afterwards.” At least, we are not supposed to. To make matters worse, on Thursday the Trump administration sent Columbia a letter demanding that the administration make changes in its governance, its admissions processes and its academic programs “as a precondition for formal negotiations” with the administration. Yet the administration doesn’t have the legal or constitutional authority to impose those demands. Columbia is still a private university that possesses its own constitutional rights. The administration says it’s just getting started. On March 10, the Department of Education notified 60 universities that they might face enforcement actions for failing to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment. And the president himself wrote that detaining Khalil was “the first arrest of many to come.”The chilling effect on free speech here is profound. Even if Khalil’s rights are ultimately vindicated — and even if Columbia can successfully resist the administration’s efforts to cancel grants and contracts and control what gets taught and by whom — very few people or institutions will be willing to confront the administration, if confrontation carries such a substantial cost. As Jelani Cobb, the dean of the Columbia Journalism School, told a gathering of students, many of them from foreign countries, “Nobody can protect you.” The university has reportedly begun scrutinizing speech that would clearly be constitutionally protected at a public university. On March 6 The Associated Press reported that Columbia was investigating a student named Maryam Alwan for discriminatory harassment. One of her alleged offenses? Writing an essay that called for divestment from Israel. The sad irony of our unconstitutional moment is that the perspectives of foreign students can be particularly valuable when foreign affairs dominate American discourse. Why wouldn’t we want to hear from Israelis and Palestinians, who often have firsthand knowledge of the conditions on the ground? Don’t we want them to be able to speak out and speak freely when they do? It’s a dreadful thing to declare to immigrants or foreign students, “Welcome to the land of the free: Now watch what you say.” I mentioned Sweezy v. New Hampshire earlier. That case arose out of a 1951 law passed in New Hampshire that was designed to suppress so-called subversive activities. As the Supreme Court put it: “A loyalty program was instituted to eliminate ‘subversive persons’ among government personnel. All present employees, as well as candidates for elective office in the future, were required to make sworn statements that they were not ‘subversive persons.’” The identity of the “subversive persons” has changed — from communists to pro-Palestinian protesters — but the impulse to censor is still the same. Yet, as the Supreme Court put it in Sweezy, “Mere unorthodoxy or dissent from the prevailing mores is not to be condemned. The absence of such voices would be a symptom of grave illness in our society.” We thought we cured that illness when we made it through the Red Scares and the Cold War with the First Amendment intact. But that illness is returning. Columbia has become Patient Zero in an outbreak of censorship and repression. And unless it’s stopped there, expect more universities to yield to Trump’s control. Expect political repression to spread far beyond the borders of the university. Expect more dissenters to hear a knock on the door and the question, “Are you …?” Once again, American liberty hangs in the balance. Our Constitution has survived previous waves of government repression. There is no guarantee it will survive another.

Before President Trump chastised Gov. Janet Mills of Maine at the White House last month, and before his administration started investigating Maine’s education system, the seeds of their conflict over transgender athletes had been planted by a state legislator. Representative Laurel Libby, a Republican from Auburn, Maine, had posted on Facebook about a transgender athlete who won a high school pole-vaulting competition. Her critical post, which named and included photos of the student athlete, went viral. About a month later, the fallout has included funding cuts at the University of Maine and a finding by the Trump administration that the state had violated federal law by allowing transgender athletes to compete on two high school teams. The Democratic-controlled Legislature has censured Ms. Libby. And people on both sides of the issue have experienced a complex surge of emotions about Maine suddenly landing in the cross hairs of Mr. Trump. “We’re not often in the center of controversy here, and it’s a little bit of a shock that it’s happened so quickly,” said Keegan Tripp, a junior at the University of Maine and the president of its student body. “We have students afraid for themselves, for their friends — their academics, research, financial situations — and all of this fear is so brand-new.” When the Trump administration issued an executive order on Feb. 5 barring transgender women from women’s sports, Ms. Libby, a 43-year-old mother of five, saw an opportunity to amplify her own position on the matter.After she took to social media to criticize her state for standing by its policy, she said in an interview, she received a tip about a transgender high school student in Maine who was set to compete in a girls’ track event last month. When the student came in first, Ms. Libby posted two photos: one showing the student on the medal podium last year, after competing on the boys’ team and placing fifth, and another taken after the student won the girls’ competition. Ms. Libby’s post circulated widely on conservative social media. Democratic state lawmakers called it bullying; Ms. Libby appeared on Fox News to discuss her refusal to delete it. As the story seized national headlines, Mr. Trump turned his own attention to Maine. When he singled out Ms. Mills at a White House meeting with governors on Feb. 21, telling her that she had “better comply” with his executive order, her response was icy. “See you in court,” Ms. Mills told him. Within days, the administration concluded that the state’s Education Department had failed to comply with Title IX, the civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in education programs, including school sports. It also notified the University of Maine that it was discontinuing $4.5 million in federal funding for its Sea Grant program, which supports marine science education and research. Ms. Libby was also facing consequences. After she had refused to delete her Facebook post about the student athlete, or to issue an apology, the Maine House voted narrowly to censure her for actions it deemed “reprehensible,” barring her from voting or speaking on the House floor. “I think we can all agree that our kids deserve better than to be used as political fodder for internet bullies,” Ryan Fecteau, the House speaker, wrote in an opinion piece in The Bangor Daily News before the vote. “It isn’t just cruel or meanspirited to take advantage of a minor in this way. It can also be downright dangerous.” Ms. Libby called the criticism “a red herring” that Democrats were using to avoid real policy debate. She filed a lawsuit on Tuesday in federal court, claiming that the censure had violated her First Amendment rights by punishing her for a Facebook post that was “constitutionally protected speech on a matter of public concern.” The narrowly split Maine Legislature reflects the divisions among the state’s 1.4 million residents. Kamala Harris won in Maine in last year’s election, with 52 percent of votes, but 45 percent of voters supported Mr. Trump. Ms. Mills’s clash with the president deepened feelings about her on both sides, ratcheting up tensions that spilled into view at recent protests outside the State House in Augusta. Mike Dees, 56, of Skowhegan, said he brought his 11-year-old daughter, Julia, to a “March Against Mills” this month because she had played softball against a team with a transgender player who outhit everyone else on the field. Mr. Dees said he thought that Ms. Mills should be impeached. Theresa Weichmann, 59, of West Gardiner, said that while the issue had not come up in her community that she knew of, she believed that parents and school boards were being pressured into accepting transgender athletes on girls’ teams. “This should have been squashed years ago,” she said.Ms. Mills, 77, is term-limited, and her second term ends next year. She declined an interview request but has said that she intends to fight cuts to Maine’s federal funding. A portion of the University of Maine’s lost Sea Grant funding has since been restored, a spokeswoman said, and negotiations are underway to try and save the rest. Asked by reporters recently about her run-in at the White House, Ms. Mills said the State Legislature is the appropriate place to consider changes to Maine’s policies on transgender athletes. “You don’t change it by executive order or by wishing it differently,” she said. “It’s worthy of a debate — a full democratic debate.” At the anti-Mills march two weeks ago, counterprotesters draped a banner with the slogan “We’re Here, We’re Queer, Get Used to It!” on a white picket fence across the street from the demonstration. They included Doug Emerson, 67, of Portland, who said he was gay and worried that the Trump administration’s recent rhetoric and actions could lead to increased violence against L.G.B.T.Q. people or anyone “who looks other.” “Our gay kids are going to be so much more marginalized and bullied,” Mr. Emerson said. “They’ll live in fear.” Polling suggests that most Americans agree with Ms. Libby. A poll in January by The New York Times and Ipsos found that nearly all Republicans and 67 percent of Democrats believe transgender women should not play women’s sports. Since 2020, 25 states have passed laws barring transgender athletes from joining teams aligned with their gender identities. Maine legislators moved in the opposite direction, updating a state law in 2021 to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on gender identity. In compliance with that law, the Maine Principals Association, which oversees interscholastic athletics, allows transgender students to join teams of either gender. Among the 151 public and private high schools that the association oversees statewide, there are two transgender girls currently competing on girls’ teams, according to a spokesman for the association. Ms. Libby said she believes the actual number is larger — and that even one would be too many. “Any young lady getting displaced by a biological male on a podium is unacceptable,” she said. “I ran track and cross country in college, and I can empathize with these girls, walking into a competition thinking you have a shot of winning, and then finding out a biological male is competing, and the outcome is guaranteed.” On the snow-covered flagship campus of the University of Maine in Orono last week, several students said they had felt empowered by Ms. Mills’s feisty response to Mr. Trump, even as they also feel their campus increasingly at risk of losing federal funding that supports their research, campus jobs and financial aid. “Yes, it put us as a target,” said Gracie Gebel, 19, a sophomore political science major who helped organize a pro-Palestinian demonstration in front of the Fogler Library on March 7. “But you have to be a target if you’re going to protest.” For her part, Ms. Libby said she had no regrets about drawing the attention of the Trump administration, and the costs that Maine may bear as a result. Another Republican legislator has filed a bill that would bar transgender student-athletes in the state from women’s sports, but Ms. Libby sees little chance of it passing. “The only way we get a fair playing field is by federal action,” she said.

The organizers of the New York City Half Marathon insist that they love the Manhattan Bridge. But they are forsaking it. The 13.1-mile race on Sunday morning will take the Brooklyn Bridge. The runners will stream onto the Manhattan-bound lower roadway, not the wooden-planked pedestrian walkway on the upper level. It will be the first time that a race has gone over that bridge, according to the city Department of Transportation. The new route is “anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute faster,” said Ted Metellus, the race director for New York Road Runners, which organizes the Half. The runners will not have to cope with a couple of uphills on the way to the bridge — and the Brooklyn Bridge is flatter than the Manhattan Bridge, he said. So everyone — all 27,000-plus entrants — will set a personal record, because no one has run that course before. Why is New York Road Runners making the change? Construction in Lower Manhattan, according to Metellus — specifically, a part of the $1.45 billion Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency Project, which is intended to protect against flooding as water levels rise with climate change. The massive project has made the section of the New York City Half’s usual route, from the Manhattan Bridge to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive, impassable for runners. Drivers would probably say the same. Only one lane on South Street is open during the day. And the bike lane has been closed completely. The runners will start at Prospect Park, the same as always. They will run along Flatbush Avenue, the same as always — until just before Mile 4, when they will make a left turn onto Tillary Street and, a block or so later, a right onto what the city calls Brooklyn Bridge Boulevard, the elbow-shaped thoroughfare leading to the span. There are other ways to get there, but “Tillary made the most sense,” Metellus said. “It’s a wide intersection. It’s big enough to clear the athletes safely, get them onto the bridge Manhattan-bound.” The change will put the runners onto the F.D.R. about a mile south of where the Manhattan Bridge would have. Of the 27,000-plus entrants, 23,000 or so might notice the difference. New York Road Runners says that more than 4,200 will be running their first half marathon. The four defending champions have signed up: Abel Kipchumba of Kenya and Karoline Bjerkeli Grøvdal of Norway in the men’s and women’s open, and Geert Schipper of the Netherlands and Susannah Scaroni of the United States in the men’s and women’s wheelchair divisions. Also running will be Conner Mantz, who broke the American men’s record in the half marathon with 59:17 at the Houston Half Marathon in January. Kipchumba’s time in the New York City Half last year was 1 minute 10 seconds faster. When it became clear that the route had to be changed, New York Road Runners worked up “seven or eight variations of courses,” Metellus said. “The Brooklyn Bridge was going to be our last option because we wanted to keep the sanctity of the course, which was having us go over the Manhattan Bridge.” Will the runners move back to the Manhattan Bridge in 2026? Metellus called that “the million-dollar question.” He said the construction was scheduled to continue for at least 10 months. “So we’ll see where that plays into what decisions are made about where to go next year,” he said. One of the awards in the New York City Half is the Commissioner’s Cup, based on the times of the top three runners from each of the city departments and offices that enter. Last year — as Ydanis Rodriguez, the transportation commissioner, noted — his department’s top three finishers were second, behind the top three from the Police Department and ahead of the top three from the Fire Department. The commissioners of city agencies serve as honorary captains, and while Rodriguez is not running, the entrants from his department include Joshua Benson, a deputy commissioner whose portfolio includes the city’s speed cameras. They measure the speed of cars, not runners.

Department of Homeland Security officials searched two dorm rooms at Columbia University, days after the immigration authorities arrested and moved to deport a pro-Palestinian activist and recent graduate of the university. Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, said in a note to students and staff late Thursday that the officials had presented federal search warrants for private areas of the university. She added that no one was detained and nothing was taken, and did not specify the target of the warrants. “I am writing heartbroken to inform you that we had federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security (D.H.S.) in two university residences tonight,” Dr. Armstrong wrote. She added that Columbia made every effort to ensure the safety of its students, faculty and staff. The search occurred after the Trump administration said that Columbia would have to make major changes in its student discipline and admissions processes before it would begin talks on reinstating $400 million in government grants and contracts that it canceled last week. The government said it pulled the funding over the university’s failure to protect Jewish students from harassment as pro-Palestinian protests spread on campus last year over the war in Gaza. Some of the demonstrations included chants, signs and literature that expressed support for the Hamas-led terrorist attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Mahmoud Khalil, who recently completed a graduate program at Columbia and is a permanent resident of the United States, played a prominent role in the pro-Palestinian student movement at the university. The Trump administration has said that Mr. Khalil, who is of Palestinian heritage, is a national security threat. It has also accused him of participating in antisemitic activities, though officials have not accused him of having any contact with Hamas. He is being held in a detention center in Louisiana. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment. Columbia declined to comment beyond Dr. Armstrong’s letter.

The University of Minnesota, which President Trump’s Justice Department is scrutinizing for its handling of antisemitism on campus, largely barred itself on Friday from issuing official statements about “matters of public concern or public interest.” The policy, in the works for months, was not a direct response to the Trump administration’s February announcement that it would investigate whether Minnesota and nine other universities had failed to protect Jewish students and faculty from discrimination. But Friday’s vote by the board of regents nevertheless fit into the scramble by universities to undercut accusations that they have supported, or downplayed, antisemitic behavior or political activity. Schools have come under fierce Republican criticism over their responses to protests over the war in Gaza. Campuses have seen bitter debates over defining antisemitism and the threshold for when political expression is intolerant or discriminatory, with university leaders often looking for a balance between allowing free speech and avoiding Washington’s potential ire. Under Minnesota’s new policy, statements from the university — including ones from divisions like colleges and departments — about public issues will be forbidden unless the president determines the subject has “an actual or potential impact on the mission and operations of the university.” The university senate, which includes students, faculty members and other workers, opposed the plan, and in early January, a university task force had urged a narrower approach. Critics have questioned whether the policy violates the First Amendment and argued that it grants excessive power to Minnesota’s president. But during a raucous meeting on Friday in Minneapolis — the session went into recess twice because of protesters — regents voted, 9 to 3, to approve the policy. “The university is not, and should not be, in the business of taking positions on these critical and controversial matters of public concern,” said Janie S. Mayeron, the board’s chair. “Individuals can do that. The university, its leaders and units should not.” Another regent, Robyn J. Gulley, said she had received hundreds of messages ahead of Friday’s vote, with the feedback “largely” opposing the proposal. “The First Amendment protects not only free speech, but the right to association,” Ms. Gulley said before she voted against the proposal. “There is probably nowhere in the world that that is more important than in universities, where it is not only the right but the obligation of students, faculty, staff to speak” about their areas of research and expertise. The notion of “institutional neutrality” is not unique to Minnesota, where the new policy will cover five campuses, including the flagship in Minneapolis. Since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, at least 140 colleges have adopted such policies, according to a report released Tuesday by the Heterodox Academy, a nonprofit that has been critical of progressivism on college campuses. Before the attack, the report said, only eight schools had neutrality policies. The last few weeks have put new pressure on Minnesota, with the university among the schools that Justice Department antisemitism investigators said they would visit to weigh “whether remedial action is warranted.” The department has not detailed why Minnesota made its list. Although Richard W. Painter, a Minnesota law professor who was the White House’s top ethics lawyer for part of George W. Bush’s presidency, told the Department of Education in 2023 about possible antisemitism at the university, he has speculated that the Justice Department’s interest may carry a political motive. Tim Walz, who was the Democratic nominee for vice president in last year’s election, is Minnesota’s governor, and the district of Representative Ilhan Omar, a Democrat who has been a steadfast critic of Mr. Trump and Israel, includes Minnesota’s main campus. Minnesota said in a statement that it was “confident in our approach to combating hate and bias on our campus, and we will always fully cooperate with any review related to these topics.” In addition to Minnesota, the Justice Department is examining Columbia University; George Washington University; Harvard University; Johns Hopkins University; New York University; Northwestern University; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of California, Berkeley; and the University of Southern California. But some misgivings about Minnesota, which contended with a protest encampment last spring, predate Mr. Trump’s return to power. In December 2023, for example, Mr. Painter and a former regent, Michael D. Hsu, complained to the Department of Education that the College of Liberal Arts had allowed departments to use official websites for statements that were critical of Israel. A website Mr. Hsu and Mr. Painter cited — featuring a statement by the gender, women and sexuality studies faculty — endorsed the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and called for “dismantling Israel’s apartheid system.” (After the statement’s publication, a disclaimer was added to note that it did “not reflect the position of the University of Minnesota.”) It was not clear how much Friday’s vote would ease Washington’s skepticism of Minnesota. Some other universities that recently embraced institutional neutrality still ended up under investigation by the Trump administration, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern and Southern California.

High school students in Oklahoma would be asked to identify “discrepancies” in the 2020 election as part of U.S. history classes, according to new social studies standards recently approved by the Oklahoma Board of Education. The proposed standards seem to echo President Trump’s false claims about his 2020 defeat. They ask students to examine factors such as “the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states” and “the security risks of mail-in balloting.” They now head to the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature, which could take up the issue before its term ends in late May, or punt the issue to the governor’s desk. The standards, supported by the state’s hard-charging Republican superintendent, have already received pushback, including from Gov. Kevin Stitt, also a Republican, whose office characterized the changes as a “distraction.” A spokeswoman said the governor had not yet seen the standards in full and it was not clear if he would support them. The additions related to the 2020 election are among several changes that injected a strong conservative viewpoint to the state’s portrayal of modern American politics and Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump repeatedly denied the results of the 2020 election, a view that has been widely embraced by some Republicans, despite a lack of evidence. An earlier version of the new standards — which were released for public comment in December — simply asked students to examine “issues related to the election of 2020 and its outcome.” The new changes were made after the public comment period and quietly approved by the Board of Education last month. They were first reported by NonDoc, a nonprofit news outlet in Oklahoma. The state superintendent, Ryan Walters, said that the standards were not meant to “support or negate a specific outcome” and that “a well-rounded student should be able to make their own conclusions using publicly available data and details.” In a statement, he said, “We believe in giving the next generation the ability to think for themselves rather than accepting radical positions on the election outcome as it is reported by the media.”Mr. Walters, a former history teacher and Trump ally, has emerged as a combative culture warrior in education and national politics. His push to put Bibles in every Oklahoma classroom is being battled in court, and he was briefly floated as a candidate for U.S. secretary of education, before Mr. Trump nominated the former pro-wrestling executive Linda McMahon. But within his own state, Mr. Walters has clashed with members of his party, including Governor Stitt, who was once an ally. Most recently, the two went head-to-head over Mr. Walters’s plan to collect the citizenship status of public school children, which Governor Stitt vowed to fight. Amid his feud with Mr. Walters, and after new national test scores showed Oklahoma remaining near the bottom in reading and math, Mr. Stitt last month replaced half of the state’s Board of Education. The board is made up of five governor appointees and Mr. Walters, who was elected. At least one of the new members said he had not been informed of the changes to the social studies standards, which were approved two weeks after the new members joined.A spokeswoman for the governor, Abegail Cave, said the governor’s priority was transforming Oklahoma into “the best state for education.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “He thinks a lot of what has happened over the past few months and past few years has been more of a distraction,” Ms. Cave said. The new social studies standards, she said, “follow the pattern of being a distraction.” Standards for academic subject areas are rewritten every six years in Oklahoma under state law. They include lengthy outlines on what public schools are expected to teach and what students should know at different grade levels. For example, U.S. history students in Oklahoma learn about the civil rights movement, including key court cases, tactics such as the Montgomery bus boycott and violent responses to the movement, including the Birmingham church bombing and the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The changes centered on more recent history. In examining significant events during Mr. Trump’s first term, an earlier version of the standards had asked students to “explain the responses to and impact of the death of George Floyd, including the Black Lives Matter movement.” In the latest version, that standard was removed. Another change involved the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic. Students would be asked to identify the source of the pandemic as coming from a Chinese lab. That theory has long been hotly debated, but is embraced by Republicans and increasingly favored by C.I.A. officials. The earlier version was less pointed: “Evaluate federal and private response to the Covid epidemic, as well as its lasting impact on global health and American society.” Mr. Walters said the various changes “give students the best opportunity to learn about history without leftist activists indoctrinating kids.” His office did not respond to questions about why the edits were made after the period of public review. State Representative John Waldron, a former social studies teacher who is now vice chair of the House Democratic caucus, said he would oppose the changes and accused Mr. Walters of subverting the typical process to insert his own political beliefs. “The state superintendent campaigned to end indoctrination in our schools, but what he is doing instead with these new standards is promoting his own brand of indoctrination,” Mr. Waldron said in an interview. The edits also made more subtle changes to a unit on “the challenges and accomplishments” of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration. They removed bullet points on the country’s economic recovery in the aftermath of the pandemic and on a signature $1 trillion infrastructure bill. Remaining were bullet points on the “the United States-Mexico border crisis” and Mr. Biden’s foreign policies on issues like the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war.

The federal government took aim on Friday at a small project that helps students seeking business school degrees, along with 45 graduate programs across the country involved with it, as part of a Trump administration promise to dismantle diversity programs. The target is a program called the Ph.D. Project, and its stated mission is to promote the racial diversity of professors in the nation’s business schools, with the idea of “enriching education for all.” The schools named in the investigation include Ivy League institutions like Yale and Cornell and public universities like Ohio State and Arizona State. After the Department of Education announced its investigation, the Ph.D. project, based in Montvale, N.J., said in a statement on Friday that it had opened its process to anyone, regardless of race or ethnicity, indicating it was complying with the administration’s efforts to eliminate diversity preferences. The statement did not say when that decision was made. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Since the organization started in 1994, the Ph.D. Project has worked to increase the number of Black, Hispanic and Native American students earning doctoral degrees in business. Since then, the total of Ph.D. degrees awarded to people in those groups grew from 294 to 1,700, according to statistics posted on the website of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, one of the project’s founding members. Of those students, 1,303 are currently teaching in institutions of higher learning throughout the country, the association said on its website. The association could not immediately be reached for comment. A recent federal filing by the Ph.D. Project shows its annual revenues are about $2 million. Among the business partners that help finance the organization are the KPMG Foundation and LinkedIn, according to a list on the group’s website. The Trump administration has opposed any program that gives preference or assistance to one racial group over another. It has also indicated that it wants to expand the definition of education programs that are discriminatory, arguing in a recent letter that some programs that appear racially neutral are not. “Students must be assessed according to merit and accomplishment, not prejudged by the color of their skin,” Linda McMahon, the education secretary, said in announcing the investigation of the 45 business school programs. “We will not yield on this commitment.” In addition to those 45 schools, the agency said it was investigating seven other schools for violations it characterized as “race-based scholarships and race-based segregation.” The agency provided no additional information about the focus of that investigation.

A second person who took part in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University has been arrested by U.S. immigration agents, after overstaying a student visa, federal officials said on Friday, the latest turn in the crisis engulfing the Ivy League institution. The person, identified by the authorities as Leqaa Kordia, is Palestinian and from the West Bank. She was arrested in Newark on Thursday, officials said. Her student visa was terminated in January 2022, and she was arrested by the New York City police last April for her role in a campus demonstration, the Homeland Security Department said in a statement. The agency also released a video on Friday that it said showed a Columbia student, identified as Ranjani Srinivasan, preparing to enter Canada after her student visa was revoked. The announcements, by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, reflected an escalation of the Trump administration’s focus on Columbia, where protests over the war in Gaza last year ignited a national debate over free speech and antisemitism, and prompted similar demonstrations at dozens of other campuses. The actions came during a tumultuous week at the university, which has experienced a series of escalating controversies since the arrest by federal immigration agents last weekend of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia graduate and prominent figure in pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations. On Friday, more than 200 students gathered outside Columbia’s main campus gates to protest the university’s handling of Mr. Khalil’s arrest. Demonstrators wore kaffiyehs, waved Palestinian flags and carried banners with slogans like “Free Mahmoud,” “I.C.E. off our campuses” and “Columbia You Can’t Hide.” The protest unfolded less than 24 hours after homeland security agents entered the campus with federal warrants and searched two dorm rooms. No one was detained and nothing was taken, according to the university’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong. Social media posts by Ms. Noem on Friday appeared to signal that Columbia continued to be a subject of Trump administration scrutiny. Ms. Noem posted a video on the social media platform X that appeared to show a woman walking through LaGuardia Airport with a small suitcase. Ms. Noem identified the woman as Ms. Srinivasan and said she had used a U.S. Customs and Border Protection app to notify the government of her intention to self-deport. Ms. Srinivasan’s dorm room was one of those searched, according to her lawyer and roommate. “It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America,” Ms. Noem said in a statement. Nathan Yaffe, a member of Ms. Srinivasan’s legal team, confirmed in a statement that federal agents had entered her dorm room on Thursday in an effort to detain her or seek information about her whereabouts. A lawyer for Ms. Kordia could not be immediately identified. The past week has been fraught with crisis on Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus. The Trump administration demanded on Thursday that the university make far-reaching changes to its student discipline and admissions policies before any negotiations regarding the cancellation of $400 million in government grants and contracts could begin. Federal officials wrote in a letter that the university had a week to formalize its definition of antisemitism, ban the wearing of masks “intended to conceal identity or intimidate” and put the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department under “academic receivership.” The government said the moves were necessary because of what they described as Columbia’s failure to protect Jewish students from harassment. Officials from three government agencies wrote that Columbia “has fundamentally failed to protect American students and faculty from antisemitic violence and harassment.” Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, said during a speech at the Justice Department on Friday that the administration was investigating whether incidents on campus have violated civil rights protections or federal terrorism laws. “This is long overdue,” Mr. Blanche said. But civil liberties advocates argued that the government’s demands would not only erode free speech and academic freedom at Columbia but would have a chilling effect on universities across the country. Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia, said in a statement that the “subjugation of universities to official power is a hallmark of autocracy.” Others were particularly concerned by the demand that the university adopt a definition of antisemitism that could penalize those who are critical of Israel. Tyler Coward, the lead counsel for government affairs at the free speech and legal defense group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, called the letter “a blueprint to supercharge censorship at America’s colleges and universities.” “Colleges across the country are likely reading this letter this morning and thinking they better censor speech — or they’re next,” Mr. Coward said in a statement. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT A university spokeswoman said Thursday evening that Columbia was “reviewing the letter” from the government agencies. “We are committed at all times to advancing our mission, supporting our students, and addressing all forms of discrimination and hatred on our campus,” she said. After the dorm search, Ms. Armstrong said in a note to students and staff members late Thursday that she was “heartbroken” over the development, and that Columbia was making every effort to ensure the safety of its students, faculty and staff. In a separate action on Thursday, Columbia announced a range of disciplinary actions against students who occupied a campus building last spring, including expulsions and suspensions, among the steps that Trump administration officials had called for in their letter. The punishments included “multiyear suspensions, temporary degree revocations and expulsions,” the university said in a statement. It was unclear how many students had been punished. Among those expelled was Grant Miner, a Jewish graduate student who was part of a student coalition that has called for Columbia to divest from companies connected to Israel, according to the student workers’ union at the university, which Mr. Miner leads. The union has accused the university of targeting its members. A Columbia spokeswoman said Friday evening that it was “unfortunate” that the group was trying to “conflate student discipline with employment matters,” and that the accusation was false. Mr. Miner, a doctoral student in the English and comparative literature department, said in a statement that “this is an egregious attempt to break the union and squash the movement against genocide in Palestine.” “We will not be intimidated on either front,” he said.

President Trump repeated a number of well-trodden falsehoods on Friday in a grievance-fueled speech at the Justice Department, veering from prepared remarks to single out lawyers and prosecutors and assail the criminal investigations into him. His remarks, billed as a policy address, were wide-ranging, touching on immigration, crime and the price of eggs. Here’s a fact-check.His legal troubles What Was Said “They weaponized the vast powers of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to try and thwart the will of the American people.” “They spied on my campaign, launched one hoax and disinformation operation after another, broke the law on a colossal scale, persecuted my family, staff and supporters, raided my home Mar-a-Lago and did everything within their power to prevent me from becoming the president of the United States.” This lacks evidence. Mr. Trump’s claims refer to a wide array of investigations and criminal cases that occurred before, during and after his first term as president. The F.B.I. investigated contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials; Mr. Trump’s deputy attorney general appointed a special counsel that continued that investigation during his first term; after Mr. Trump left office, he was then charged in four state and federal criminal cases — two concerning his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and one related to his retention of classified documents after he left office. Employees, family members and allies of Mr. Trump became entangled in those cases at various points. But the president and his supporters have provided no evidence of a vast, yearslong conspiracy to coordinate these investigations — taking place over nearly a decade across three presidential administrations — as a political weapon against him. While the F.B.I. privately investigated Mr. Trump’s campaign for ties to Russia in 2016, James Comey, the bureau’s director at the time, publicly announced an investigation of Mr. Trump’s presidential rival at the time, Hillary Clinton, in a move that critics said had aided Mr. Trump politically. Officials in the Trump administration later expressed concern about Mr. Trump’s desire to shut down the investigation of his campaign after he took office, and Rod Rosenstein, Mr. Trump’s deputy attorney general, appointed a special counsel to shield the investigation from political pressure and avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest within the government. After Mr. Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, Mr. Trump was indicted in four criminal felony cases. Of the four cases, two were brought by state or local prosecutors, meaning that the Justice Department has no control over them. His two other criminal cases were overseen by a special counsel, appointed to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Trump’s rival in the 2024 campaign. The 2020 election What Was Said “The elections, which were totally rigged, are a big factor.” False. Though Mr. Trump appeared to refer to multiple elections, he was most likely reprising his lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. A mountain of evidence — recounts, court rulings and audits by elections officials all confirmed Mr. Biden’s electoral victory in 2020. Biden and classified documents What WAS Said “We also terminated the clearances of the Biden crime family and Joe Biden himself. He didn’t deserve it. In fact, he was essentially found guilty. But they said he was incompetent. And therefore, let’s not find him guilty.” False. Mr. Trump was referring to a special counsel investigation into whether Mr. Biden had retained and disclosed classified material after leaving the vice presidency in 2017 — acts that are felony offenses. Robert K. Hur, the special counsel in the case, said in his final report that Mr. Biden had retained and shared sensitive material, but concluded that “no criminal charges are warranted” because the evidence did not “establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” Mr. Hur, in his role as a prosecutor, could not rule that Mr. Biden was guilty before a trial, and the president was never charged with a crime. But Mr. Hur did raise doubts about Mr. Biden’s memory and advanced age based off their interviews, and suggested that had played a role in his decision not to recommend charges. He wrote, “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol What Was Said “I pardoned hundreds of political prisoners who had been grossly mistreated. We removed the senior F.B.I. officials who misdirected resources to send SWAT teams after grandmothers and J6 hostages.” This needs context. Mr. Trump, in one of his first official acts in his second term, pardoned hundreds of people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Many of those included people who had been convicted of violent crimes and weapons charges. Others had threatened law enforcement officials who had investigated the attack. But Mr. Trump has long sought to rewrite the history of the attack, portraying the rioters as martyrs to his political cause. He has also singled out the case of Rebecca Lavrenz, who promoted herself online as the “J6 praying grandma,” for her conviction on misdemeanor charges in connection with the riot. There is no evidence that Ms. Lavrenz was the target of a police SWAT raid. Parents, anti-abortion activists and Catholics What WAS Said The Biden administration “set loose violent criminals while targeting patriotic parents at school board meetings; they drop charges against antifa and Hamas supporters while labeling traditional Catholics as domestic terrorists.” This needs context. Mr. Trump’s claims about the persecution of parents and Catholics stem from F.B.I. efforts to track threats made against school boards, teachers and other officials, as well as a leaked memo prepared by an F.B.I. field office that warned of the potential for extremism for adherents of a “radical-traditionalist Catholic” ideology. Mr. Trump and other Republicans seized on both efforts as evidence that the Biden administration sought to target parents concerned about education efforts opposed on the right — like inclusive policies toward transgender students and diversity initiatives — and to repress Christian groups. In 2021, the F.B.I. had created a “threat tag” to apply to reports of threats, harassment and violence against school officials, which had risen significantly at the time. Such tags are used by the bureau to track trends and share information across offices, and are commonly used for crimes like drug offenses and human trafficking. House Republicans investigated and criticized those efforts. The memo warning of potential extremism among traditional Catholic groups had distinguished between those radicalized and not radicalized, saying “radical-traditionalist Catholics” who could potentially pose a threat were a small minority. The memo had also suggested gathering information and developing sources within churches to help identify suspicious activity. The memo was later withdrawn after it became public, and the nation’s top law enforcement officials repeatedly denounced it. An internal Justice Department investigation later concluded that the memo had violated professional standards but showed “no evidence of malicious intent.” Experts said at the time that they were unaware of any data to support the idea that Catholics were being widely persecuted by the government for their faith — let alone at record levels. Mr. Biden is a practicing Catholic who often cited his faith for guidance on decisions in office. What WAS Said “They imported illegal alien murderers, drug dealers and child predators from all over the world to come into our country while putting elderly Christians and pro-life activists on trial for singing hymns and for saying prayers.” False. Mr. Trump appeared to be referring to the cases of some anti-abortion activists who were convicted of crimes against civil rights, and whom Mr. Trump pardoned soon after taking office. The protesters were not put on trial for praying, as Mr. Trump claimed, but for conspiring against civil rights and violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act — which makes it a crime to threaten, obstruct or injure a person seeking access to a reproductive health clinic or to damage clinic property. The defendants in the case had blockaded an abortion clinic in Washington, D.C., in October 2020. Immigration and crime What WAS Said “Our first full month in office, we achieved the lowest level of illegal border crossings ever recorded … it turned out that we really didn’t need new legislation. All you needed was a new president.” This needs context. Mr. Trump is correct that illegal border crossings have declined drastically since he took office. That is in part because of a series of restrictions he imposed at the border and in part because Mexico, in response to his threat of tariffs, bolstered its migration enforcement. In February, illegal crossings reached a record low of about 8,300. That said, illegal crossings began to decline after the Biden administration over the summer reached a similar agreement with Mexico and the United States imposed new restrictions that sharply curtailed asylum applications. What WAS Said “Under the Biden regime, average monthly homicides increased by 14 percent, property crimes rose tremendously, violent crime went up at least 37 percent that they know of, rapes soared by 42 percent, car theft rose by 48 percent and robbery surged 63 to 100 percent. They don’t even know what the number is.” This lacks evidence. It is unclear what statistics Mr. Trump is referring to in making his comparison, though the general intent is to paint a picture of an America experiencing soaring crime. But in 2024, when Mr. Biden was still in office, murders and crime in general declined in the country. Robberies and rapes were lower than they were before the pandemic. Aggravated assaults were still elevated from the pre-Covid days, but they trended down in 2024. What WAS Said “They didn’t even know why. They imported illegal alien murderers, drug dealers, child predators, from all over the world to come into our country.” False. The Biden administration did not purposely allow criminals into the country, but it did experience a historic level of illegal crossings at the border. Homeland Security secretaries have long said most of the crossings are people fleeing poverty and persecution rather than violent criminals. During the campaign, Mr. Trump effectively highlighted crimes migrants had committed to build support for his immigration policies. But immigrants overall are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States, according to studies of arrest and incarceration rates. Egg prices What WAS Said “By the way, price of eggs is down 35 percent in the last week and half.” This needs context. Signs suggest that wholesale prices, meaning the price retailers pay to procure eggs, have dropped by at least 35 percent since the start the month. That is most likely a relief for consumers, though it remains unclear what exactly it will mean for prices in grocery aisles. Data from the Agriculture Department shows that wholesale egg prices have been falling sharply since the beginning of March after soaring through February, from a national average of over $8 for a dozen large white eggs at the start of the month to under $5 this week. The department cited “no significant outbreaks” of bird flu so far this month and “rapidly improving” supply. (The Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation into major egg producers over prices, though producers point to bird flu as the key culprit.) These prices are still well above long-term averages, though, and the extent to which lower wholesale prices are showing up in retail prices remains to be seen. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released on Wednesday showed that in February, egg prices rose 10.4 percent from the previous month, continuing their climb.