Category: Nation & World

WASHINGTON — A Trump administration task force created to combat antisemitism pushed for settlements with Ivy League universities despite government investigations that were rushed and incomplete or that failed to establish legal violations by the schools, a former Justice Department lawyer alleged in a whistleblower disclosure obtained by the Associated Press.

The complaint alleges that the investigations into some of the nation’s most prestigious academic institutions were designed to strong-arm the schools into cutting deals for political purposes. Outcomes of the investigations were “predetermined, without regard to the evidence” in a “politically mandated effort” to extract money from schools through settlement demands and funding freezes under the pretext of rooting out antisemitism, the complaint alleges.

The work of the multiagency task force, launched by the Justice Department under then-Attorney General Pam Bondi in February 2025, was “marked by extraordinary procedural irregularities, predetermined outcomes without factual or legal support” and disregard for the law and Constitution, lawyers for the former government attorney wrote in seeking watchdog investigations into their client’s complaints.

The complaint taps into a broader public discussion about the administration’s efforts to confront allegations of antisemitism at colleges, a problem that received renewed attention during campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza that some Jewish students said made them feel unsafe. President Donald Trump returned to the White House with a goal of rooting out antisemitism that he said had gone unchecked during the Biden administration, but critics have called his government’s response heavy-handed and said it infringed on free speech rights and coerced concessions from public institutions.

A key House Democrat is publicizing whistleblower’s allegations

Lawyers for the former Justice Department attorney, identified as Haley Van Erem, filed the disclosure Tuesday with the inspectors general at the departments of Justice and Health and Human Services and the Office of Special Counsel.

Van Erem spent nearly a decade working in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division before being involuntarily assigned to HHS to work on the Title VI investigations into the universities, the complaint says.

The health department assignees were initially told to scrutinize allegations of antisemitism at medical school commencement ceremonies — the lawyers were advised of a New York Post story describing antisemitic conduct at graduation events, the complaint says — but the inquiries were later expanded to focus on the entire schools in the cases of Columbia and Brown, according to Van Erem’s account.

She left the Justice Department in May 2025 because she was “unwilling to be made vulnerable to further participation in politically motivated investigations unsupported by facts and contrary to law,” says the complaint, which also accuses the task force of having targeted Muslim professors.

Kiersten Pels, a Justice Department spokesperson, said the department “stands behind the integrity” of its investigations. A spokesperson for the Health and Human Services Department did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment Tuesday.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote separately to Harmeet Dhillon, who as the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has been a public face of the department’s efforts to counter antisemitism. In his letter, Raskin said antisemitism at colleges and medical schools is a real problem that needs to be investigated.

“But,” he told Dhillon, “your ‘investigation’ into antisemitism was fake, a pre-baked frame-up operation thoroughly political in nature.”

Raskin wrote that “the whole project was designed to harass professors and administrators at major universities, to curtail their freedom of speech and academic freedom, and to strip targeted institutions of hundreds of millions of dollars in grants that they had already been awarded on the merits of their applications.”

Scrutiny over the handling of investigations into elite schools

The whistleblower complaint deals chiefly with investigations into three Ivy League universities: Brown, Harvard, and Columbia.

It alleges that in the case of Brown, the investigative team did not find evidence to support a violation of Title VI, the section of the Civil Rights Act that bars discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in programs that receive federal funding, but that “leadership refused to permit a notice of no violation and instead sought some form of settlement or resolution despite acknowledging the absence of a legal basis for doing so.”

Investigators did find evidence of discrimination at Columbia, the complaint says, but the investigation was done on an accelerated timetable before adequate factual development and legal review were completed and relied on allegations that “were unsupported, based on news reports or litigation filings, or that implicated protected First Amendment activity.”

Columbia University agreed to pay the government $200 million as part of an agreement restoring access to federal funding. Brown University separately agreed to pay $50 million to Rhode Island workforce development organizations to end the three federal investigations involving allegations of antisemitism and racial bias in admissions, with no findings of wrongdoing.

In the investigation into Harvard, Trump administration officials discussed “extraordinary funding freezes and sweeping proposed settlement terms” before an investigation had been completed that could establish Title VI violations. Sean Keveney, then-HHS acting general counsel, said he believed Harvard would settle because they were “over a barrel,” according to the complaint.

A federal judge last year ordered the Trump administration to reverse its cuts of more than $2.6 billion in research funding for the university, saying the government “used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.” And a different judge last week dismissed a Trump administration lawsuit that accused Harvard University of turning a blind eye to harassment of Jewish students.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday the U.S. has no talks planned with Iran but insisted the Strait of Hormuz remains “open and operating,” despite limited traffic and a reported strike on a ship exiting the waterway.

Earlier this week, Trump threatened to bomb Oman as the country sought a deal with Iran to manage shipping traffic through the strait, two regional officials said Tuesday, a day after Trump reportedly leveled the threat if Oman “gets in the way.” Iran says the waterway will not be reopened until the U.S. meets its conditions.

As talks between Iran and Oman continue, a projectile hit a ship in the strait and Iran-backed Houthi rebels claimed they fired drones at an oil refinery in Saudi Arabia.

Trump looms over negotiations to reopen Strait of Hormuz

As Oman and Iran say they are nearing a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Trump said on social media Tuesday that the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports remains “in full force and effect,” but asserted that all water mines have been removed and that other marine traffic was free to pass.

Trump posted a map depicting the strait as U.S. territory.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi appeared to respond to Trump’s post.

“Just as Trump correctly wrote the name of the eternal Persian Gulf, soon his delusion regarding the Strait of Hormuz will either be corrected or we will correct the delusions of this deluded man,” he wrote on X.

The Trump administration has told Oman it opposes parts of the yet-to-be-announced deal, according to officials briefed on the U.S. position. Those include joint Iranian and Omani management of the passage’s exit route and the collection of voluntary fees from vessels, even if the money is used for security and maritime environmental protection.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists.

The White House on Tuesday referred to Trump’s remarks in the Oval Office and declined to comment further about Oman.

Egypt says Iran-Oman agreement could open door to Iran-U.S. deal

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that the Iranian-Omani deal could pave the way for Washington and Tehran to return to negotiations for a “comprehensive and permanent deal that addresses all concerns and enhances regional security and stability.”

The statement came after a meeting between Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and Omani counterpart Badr al-Busaidi. But it did not address Trump’s latest threat against Oman.

The 60-day negotiating period ended this week between the U.S. and Iran with no clear end to the war in sight.

Ship traffic drops significantly in Strait of Hormuz

Ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz dropped significantly last week, with confirmed crossings falling 19.5% to 95 transits. Only three vessels made it through the waterway on Sunday, according to shipping data platform Kpler.

The ships used the Iranian-designated route through the strait, with no crossings recorded through the Omani routes.

Crossings through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait increased 6.7% to 254 transits, while so-called dark transits, in which ships turn off the transponders that broadcast their location, fell from 40 to 16, Kpler said.

Projectile damages ship in strait causing casualty

An unidentified projectile damaged the engine room of a ship in the Strait of Hormuz near Oman and “resulted in a crew casualty,” according to the British military’s U.K. Maritime Trade Operations center.

The maritime monitoring agency did not release any details about the ship or its cargo, and it was not clear whether the crew member was killed or wounded.

No environmental damage has been reported and the agency said the Omani Coast Guard was assisting other crew members and authorities were investigating.

Iran-backed Houthis claim an attack on a Saudi oil refinery

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels claimed they fired drones at an oil refinery in neighboring Saudi Arabia, the latest attack threatening to reignite Yemen’s civil war and open another front in the Middle East.

The attack targeted a facility run by Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, according to a report by the Houthi-run SABA news agency. There were no immediate reports of damage or comment from Saudi Arabia.

The Houthis have escalated attacks against government forces in Yemen and oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, which supports the Yemeni government, and the kingdom’s shipping in the Red Sea, an important alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.

Israel strike on Gaza City kills 7 people

An Israeli strike hit Gaza City on Tuesday, killing six people, including a child, and wounding 14 others, according to Shifa Hospital, where the casualties were taken.

The Israeli military said it struck Hamas commanders in the Shati area who it said were planning to carry out attacks against Israeli forces.

The heaviest fighting has subsided since a ceasefire in the more than two-year war took hold in October. Israeli forces have carried out repeated airstrikes since then, killing at least 1,266 Palestinians, according to health officials in Gaza.

The Gaza Health Ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. But it does not give a breakdown of civilians and militants.

Missiles fired at the United Arab Emirates

The defense ministry of the United Arab Emirates said two ballistic missiles were launched from Iran toward the UAE on Tuesday.

One landed outside of the country’s waters, and the other landed within them, the Emirati Defense Ministry said. It was unclear whether the missiles were shot down by air defenses or fell. No damage or injuries were reported. There was no immediate statement from Iran.

In the weeks after the U.S. and Israel launched a war against Iran on Feb. 28, the UAE was frequently targeted by Iranian missiles and drones, but Tuesday’s reported attack was the first in weeks.

The Department of Defense has ordered 30 U.S. universities to audit their partnerships with mostly Chinese universities and military training institutions as the Trump administration scrutinizes the country’s growing global influence.

If the schools don’t complete a review and terminate any arrangements deemed problematic within the next two weeks, they face losing funding. The goal is to protect taxpayer-funded research from theft and exploitation, the Pentagon said Monday.

“The Department of War has zero tolerance for academic partnerships that compromise our national security,” Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s chief technology officer, said in a news release.

The release didn’t name the schools, but a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters said they include Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Johns Hopkins University.

The schools didn’t immediately respond to emails from the Associated Press seeking comment.

Sarah Spreitzer, vice president at the American Council on Education, which represents college and university presidents, raised concerns that the announcement suggests, without any evidence, that the schools are engaged in wrongdoing.

The order comes after the Pentagon last month released an updated list of 130 foreign institutions it accused of engaging in “activities that increase the likelihood of U.S. government-funded research and development efforts being misappropriated.”

While the vast majority were Chinese, such as the University of Science and Technology of China and the country’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences, several Iranian and Russian institutions also appeared on the list.

The first version of the list was developed during Trump’s first term, with the help of the American Council on Education, Spreitzer said.

She said most of the council’s member institutions moved away from research partnerships with those institutions in the years that followed. She said she worries U.S. schools will be held liable for partnerships that predate the creation of the list.

“We don’t appreciate the implication that we are not good partners on research security, given that we helped create this list, and given that we’ve always partnered with the federal government when there has been national security concerns,” she said.

The audit comes as the Trump administration continues to express deep concern about China’s activities in the Americas, pushing back on Chinese ownership of ports at either end of the Panama Canal, infrastructure projects funded by China’s Belt and Road initiative in the region, and Chinese investment in the telecommunications sector.

The Justice Department also is investigating whether Harvard University is allowing Chinese donors to create scholarships that exclude American students, adding to the barrage of federal inquiries the Trump administration has opened in its battle against the Ivy League school.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy said in a statement that the country opposes what it described as the politicization of “normal scientific, educational, and academic exchanges.”

“The U.S. side,” the statement continued, “should abandon the Cold War mentality and foster an open, fair, and non-discriminatory environment for educational, scientific, and people-to-people exchanges between China and the United States.”

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Minnesota’s attorney general sued the governor of Texas on Tuesday, seeking to compel the extradition of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent charged with wounding a man and then lying to justify the shooting during the agency’s crackdown in Minneapolis.

Attorney General Keith Ellison is asking a federal judge to bar the sheriff in Cameron County, Texas, from releasing ICE agent Christian Castro, and to order Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to sign his extradition warrant so that Minnesota officers can take custody.

Minnesota officials have clashed with the federal government over who has jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute federal officers for on-duty conduct. Ellison is a Democrat and Abbott is a Republican ally of President Donald Trump.

Castro was arrested in Texas in May on Minnesota charges of assault and falsely reporting a crime in the Jan. 14 wounding of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. Castro, 52, is accused of firing a gun through the front door of a Minneapolis home, striking Sosa-Celis in the leg with a bullet that lodged in a child’s bedroom wall. Prosecutors say Castro then falsely accused Sosa-Celis and another man of attacking an ICE officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel.

Minnesota officials fear ICE agent could flee

Ellison told a news conference that unless he’s extradited, Castro could be released from jail next week — 90 days since he was detained — under Texas law. And if he’s freed, Castro could slip into Mexico from the border town where he’s being held, Ellison said. The lawsuit said Castro has been making calls from jail to a woman in Mexico, talking “about marrying her and buying a house in Mexico when he is released.”

“Christian Castro has been charged with breaking the law in Minnesota,” Ellison said. “He must face justice in Minnesota. Gov. Abbott should have granted Gov. Walz’s extradition request long ago and is required to do so now.”

It was not immediately known if Castro had a lawyer who could speak for him. Online court records in Minnesota and county jail records in Texas did not list a defense attorney.

Abbott’s office said in a statement that it would not comment on “pending extradition matters.”

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said the legal action to compel Castro’s extradition “should be a completely unnecessary lawsuit.” She said jail officials and prosecutors in Texas have been “very cooperative,” and that an extradition “is not supposed to be controversial.”

The office of Cameron County Sheriff Manny Trevino declined to comment Tuesday on the case.

Federal agency has called agent’s prosecution a ‘political stunt’

Authorities say Sosa-Celis was shot after Castro and another officer chased a different man, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, to the Minneapolis apartment duplex where he and Sosa-Celis lived. Sosa-Celis and Aljorna were legally in the U.S., according to Minnesota officials.

Federal authorities initially accused Sosa-Celis and Aljorna of beating an officer. A federal judge later dismissed the charges, and ICE and the Justice Department opened an investigation into whether agents lied about what happened.

Regardless, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has called Moriarty’s prosecution of Castro “unlawful and nothing more than a political stunt,” saying only federal authorities have jurisdiction in the case.

The federal government took a similar stance following the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti during the Minneapolis enforcement surge. Moriarty sued the Trump administration to gain access to evidence in those cases before federal prosecutors turned it over last month.

The extradition lawsuit Ellison filed in U.S. District Court in Texas cites a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that compliance with the Constitution’s extradition clause is mandatory, affording no discretion to the governor or courts of a state where a defendant is being held.

Moriarty said that since Castro’s arrest, Texas has extradited three unrelated criminal defendants without incident to Minnesota.

“Gov. Abbott has received communication with us on an ongoing basis, including recently,” Ellison said. “We have to take the position that they are refusing to honor the extradition request.”

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces launched one of their biggest drone attacks on Russia since Moscow’s invasion over four years ago, firing almost 800 drones only two days after a similar salvo, officials said Tuesday.

Meanwhile, a Russian missile strike on a village in northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region killed at least 10 people and wounded 17 others as the barrage demolished homes, officials said.

The countries are locked in an escalating duel of long-range aerial strikes. Fighting on the roughly 780-mile front line in eastern and southern Ukraine is restricted by large numbers of drones and ground robots threatening troop movements, and neither side is making significant battlefield progress, analysts say.

Putin resists pressure for peace talks

In the past year, Ukraine has devised and deployed domestically produced long-range drones for strikes deep inside Russia. Its drone technology has impressed governments and defense manufacturers around the world.

Officials in Kyiv aim to make the Russian public feel the war’s consequences and pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into negotiating a peace settlement. Putin has so far shown no sign he intends to stop the invasion.

“Putin continues to drag out the war instead of accepting Ukraine’s realistic ceasefire proposals and ending the bloodshed,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a post on X.

Russian air defenses overnight intercepted 791 Ukrainian drones over a number of regions, as well as annexed Crimea and the Black and the Azov seas, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said, in what was the second-largest drone attack since January 2025, according to an Associated Press tally.

More than 600 Ukrainian drones flew toward the Moscow region, where 180 were shot down, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said without elaborating.

Officials reported no deaths or major damage. Ukraine has increasingly launched swarms of hundreds of drones to try to overwhelm Russian air defenses.

In the region that surrounds the capital, three people were wounded, Gov. Andrei Vorobyov said.

Three people were also wounded in the adjacent Ryazan region where three private houses were damaged, Gov. Pavel Malkov said.

The overnight attack started a fire at a warehouse of Wildberries, Russia’s biggest online retailer, in an industrial zone. Ukraine has repeatedly targeted the company, which it says helps supply the Russian military, an allegation Moscow denies.

Wildberries said its facility sustained “insignificant damage.”

Russian TV doesn’t report news of the attack

Coverage of the attack in state and Kremlin-backed Russian media was mostly muted, as is often the case. Russia’s main TV channels — state-run Russia 1 and Channel One — did not mention the attack at all in their morning news bulletins.

But Russian state news agency RIA Novosti featured it among the main news on its website’s homepage, describing it as “one of the most large-scale attacks on Moscow since the beginning of the summer.”

State newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta on its website prominently featured a roundup of what Moscow regional Gov. Andrei Vorobyov reported about the attack, describing it as “massive” in the headline. Pro-Kremlin tabloid MK featured a news brief about it on its home page.

Zelensky accuses Russia of a ‘brutal attack’ on civilians

A Russian missile strike on the village of Pechenihy in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region killed 10 civilians, according to preliminary information, said Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration.

Another 17 people were wounded, he said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called it “a brutal attack” that damaged 10 homes, a cafe, a post office, a store, and at least seven vehicles, according to Syniehubov.

“We will definitely respond to this Russian strike,” he said on social media.

Also, three people were killed and three others were wounded over the past day in Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Sumy region, Ukraine’s National Police said.

U.K. vows continued Ukraine support

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who took office last month, said the U.K. will continue to stand by Ukraine after Russia said that Kyiv’s reported use of British drones for attacks on Russian soil would bring unidentified consequences.

“We are providing support so that Ukraine can defend itself, and that’s been the British position all the way through this conflict by previous prime ministers,” Burnham said. “It remains the case with me.”

British newspaper the Sunday Times reported that two U.K. companies made drones used by Ukraine to hit Russia.

Following the report, the Russian Embassy in the U.K. said in a statement that “London’s actions will inevitably carry consequences.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Russian state TV that Moscow has the right to view British involvement in strikes on Russian territory as “participation in the war, with all the ensuing consequences.”