NYPD Pushes Ridiculous Conspiracy About Columbia University Protests

After arresting 119 people participating in a Gaza solidarity protest at Columbia University on Tuesday, the New York City Police Department is suddenly aggressively pushing the narrative that participants weren’t actually students—but their evidence doesn’t hold up to even basic scrutiny.

Speaking on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Wednesday, NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Tarik Sheppard showcased “heavy industrial chains” and bike locks that he claimed officers encountered “on every door” of the university administrative building Hamilton Hall, where students locked themselves in after the university announced it had reached an “impasse” with protest negotiators. Sheppard, however, claimed that the materials must have arrived from someone off campus, purporting that “this is not what students bring to school.”

And yet, the materials were common city bicycle locks, advertised and sold by campus security.

In the frenzy to beat an already saturated news environment to the punch, mainstream media outlets jumped on the misinformation bandwagon, doing their part to spread details before bothering to verify them. CNN reiterated the “outside agitator” line well into Tuesday night, even after award-winning Columbia-based news sources such as the WKCR radio station fact-checked them with on-the-ground reporting.

In another neglectful instance, CBS New York’s Ali Bauman claimed that New York City Hall sources had told her that the “wife of a known terrorist is with protestors” at the university. She later deleted the post, but not before it reached nearly 250,000 people.

Meanwhile, the international criminal court at The Hague is weighing whether or not to charge Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with war crimes as the country’s war on Gaza claims so many lives that local authorities say they can no longer keep count. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 77,000 Palestinians have been injured in the conflict, according to data from the Gaza Health Ministry. Most of the victims have been women and children.

Israel has advanced its attacks on the beleaguered nation by blocking humanitarian aid from reaching those who need it. Israel has also utilized mass starvation, as well as blocking or destroying access to critical resources such as water, food, fuel, electricity, and medical aid.

Peaceful protest encampments at colleges and universities across the country protesting the institutions’ relationships with the Israeli government and weapons manufacturers have come under brutal attack, with police playing a heavy part. 

At UCLA, counterprotesters attacked the student-led encampment Tuesday night by tearing down barricades and plywood surrounding it. They shouted, “Second Nakba!” referring to the mass displacement and attacks on Palestinians when Israel was founded in 1948, as well as insults and slurs. 

According to the Los Angeles Times, the counterprotesters wore black clothing and black masks, and threw pieces of wood and even fireworks at the encampment. Local TV station Fox 11’s account had a similar description, adding that counterprotesters initially used pepper spray, until some members of the encampment began spraying it back. 

Where were police and security when this was happening? According to The Guardian, their response was lacking. Police in riot gear initially formed a line near the camp but didn’t immediately move to separate protesters and counterprotesters. The campus newspaper, The Daily Bruin, said that four of its reporters were followed and also assaulted. 

At Columbia University in New York, police were directly involved, moving to clear out an academic building that protesters had taken over. NYPD officers showed up on campus with an armored vehicle, using a ladder to enter the building, and made more than 300 arrests.

As the arrested students were led away with their hands in zip ties, supporters cheered for them and chanted, “Let them go.” 

Police cracked down on protests across the city, including violently breaking up protests at City University of New York, a move that a Guardian reporter called “excessive.”

The scenes from other universities across the country were just as shocking. Police moved to break up an encampment at Tulane University in New Orleans with guns drawn, arresting 14 people.  

At the University of Arizona at Tucson, police used nonlethal chemicals to disperse protesters. 

The excessive use of force on nonviolent protesters could all have been avoided. At Northwestern University in Illinois, university officials negotiated a deal with students to increase transparency on investments and fund Palestinian professors and students. At Wesleyan University in Connecticut, President Michael Roth issued a measured statement that refrained from attacking a student protest encampment. 

“The protest has been non-violent and has not disrupted normal campus operations. As long as it continues in this way, the University will not attempt to clear the encampment,” Roth said.

Overall, the national media could do a far better job of articulating what students are pushing for: an end to America’s unconditional support for a brutal ally’s war, and for their universities to end their complicity with that ally. Congress should recognize the brutal assault on academic freedom and free speech, instead of condemning the protesters. 

Most of all, American leaders should end their support for a genocide by ending arms sales to Israel. But none of that is happening right now, and until it does, protests will continue in one form or another no matter how violently the police respond. 

Florida’s new abortion ban went into effect on Wednesday, terminating access to the medical procedure past six weeks of pregnancy—and wiping out access for much of the southeastern United States.

The new law will prohibit abortion well before a lot of people even realize they’re pregnant, and just one week before drugstore pregnancy tests can detect pregnancy hormones in their earliest, and least reliable, window. The restriction will force patients in need of the procedure to seek treatment in North Carolina, where abortion is banned after 12 weeks, or even further.

Governor Ron DeSantis pushed the law through in April 2023 while campaigning for president, despite dissent from within the state. The move was viewed as something that could prove popular with some voters in swing states such as Iowa, but DeSantis’s presidential bid fell apart when he announced in January that he would be withdrawing from the race—and left Florida holding the bag.

“This is the biggest change to the abortion access landscape since Roe was overturned,” Stephanie Loraine Piñeiro, executive director of Florida Access Network, told The New Republic’s Melissa Gira Grant. “This is being done to further decimate the abortion access landscape in a way that you can’t come back from.”

Prior to the ban, Florida allowed abortion up to 15 weeks, making the state a haven for people seeking the medical procedure in the South. The six-week ban passed alongside similarly restrictive bans in neighboring states, meaning that now, abortion access throughout the entire region has been crippled.

Backlash to Florida’s new law has been extreme, with more than a million Floridians signing a petition to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution and putting abortion rights on the ballot in November. That initiative, known as Amendment Four, would protect abortion until “fetal viability” at approximately 24 weeks. Still, a possible win in the second half of the year will come “on the backs” of people who will have to suffer now, giving birth “when they didn’t want to,” executive director of the Chicago Abortion Fund Megan Jeyifo told NPR.

As state violence ramped up against student-led Gaza solidarity protests across the country late Tuesday, Donald Trump couldn’t seem to put his thoughts together.

In a jumbled word salad, Trump hopped from buzzword to buzzword on the issue, and the result is a big nothingburger.

“You look at the antisemitism, the hatred of Israel by so many people,” Trump told Fox News. “You go back 10 years, Israel was protected by Congress. And now, Congress is just doing numbers that are unbelievable with I think a very, very small group of people within Congress, and it’s gotta stop.”

The New York Police Department violently uprooted student protests at Columbia University and City College of New York at the behest of Mayor Eric Adams late Tuesday night, making 282 arrests and indiscriminately attacking activists, students, and members of the press. The upheaval, during which police also threatened to arrest the dean of one of the country’s top journalism schools for shielding the media’s First Amendment right to cover the event, shocked international human rights and press freedom advocates, and even other local lawmakers, who appeared more able in the moment of conflict to voice their opinions than the GOP presidential candidate.

“If any kid is hurt tonight, responsibility will fall on the mayor and [university] presidents,” wrote New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “Other leaders and schools have found a safe, de-escalatory path. This is the opposite of leadership and endangers public safety. A nightmare in the making.”

Protest-related arrests were also made at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Tulane University. Meanwhile, authorities at the University of California Los Angeles allowed a mob of pro-Israel supporters to beat and attack the student encampment with weapons that appeared to include fireworks, pepper spray, and tear gas.

The international criminal court at The Hague is weighing whether or not to charge Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with war crimes as the country’s war on Gaza claims so many lives that local authorities say they can no longer keep count. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 77,000 Palestinians have been injured in the conflict, according to data from the Gaza Health Ministry. Most of the victims have been women and children.

Israel has advanced its attacks on the beleaguered nation by blocking humanitarian aid from reaching those who need it. Israel has also utilized mass starvation, as well as blocking or destroying access to critical resources such as water, food, fuel, electricity, and medical aid.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is now in the doghouse with her fellow Republicans.

More than a week ago, an advance copy of her new book revealed that she shot and killed her pet puppy allegedly because it wasn’t well behaved. After receiving backlash, Noem proceeded to double down, and now her Republican colleagues aren’t holding back.

“I didn’t eat my dog. I didn’t shoot my dog. I loved my dog, and my dog loved me,” Utah Senator Mitt Romney told HuffPost Tuesday evening. During his 2012 run for president, Romney was criticized for a story where he tied his family’s dog to the roof of his car during a road trip with his family.

North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis said Noem was “obviously not an experienced dog trainer because I’ve seen ill-behaved dogs are usually a reflection of their owner.” Tillis, who loves dogs so much that he hosts a “bipawtisan” dog parade for Halloween every year in Washington, noted that most dog owners would “go find someone that would actually take the dog and train it, rehabilitate it.”

In the House of Representatives, several Republicans said Noem’s story hurt their opinion of the governor and that they wouldn’t want her as Donald Trump’s running mate. When asked if the dog story would hurt Noem’s chances, Representative Nicole Malliotakis said to Politico, “It does for me.”

“The worst part of it is that it wasn’t a hit job. She volunteered the information. So, when somebody tells you who they are, believe them,” added Malliotakis, who is known to carry her puppy Luna around the Capitol.

One representative, speaking anonymously, said they didn’t think Noem “was ever a serious [running mate] contender,” making Noem’s revelation—a clear bid to boost her chances as Trump’s potential vice presidential pick—all the more embarrassing. The lawmaker added that the dog story would rule Noem out anyway because it’s “too much of a distraction.”

The Trump campaign apparently agrees, as one campaign official told Semafor that “Governor Noem just keeps proving over and over that she’s a lightweight.”

“We can’t afford a Kamala problem,” the official added, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris.

Noem admitted to deliberately killing her 14-month-old pet dog Cricket in her upcoming book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward. She called the dog “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with,” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”

“It’s a story that doesn’t go away,” said Representative Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota to Politico. “And it’s not a good story.”