Columbia University, Epicenter of Gaza Protests, Launches New Revolt

Roughly 100 Columbia University students and alumni launched a “Revolt for Rafah” encampment on Friday night. Student protesters say their protest is a direct response to the Rafah massacre and a recent Washington Post article exposing a group of wealthy elites who used their power to influence New York City Mayor Eric Adams into using the police to quash student protests at Columbia University in April.

Dubbed “Revolt for Rafah: Installation 1,” the encampment was launched on Alumni Reunion Weekend at Columbia University. To date, alumni have stated intent to withhold an estimated $67 million in donations to the university unless it drops disciplinary charges against student activists. On Friday, The Intercept reported Columbia University had quietly changed its disciplinary rules as disciplinary hearings were set to begin.

In April, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of several pro-Palestine groups at Columbia University, launched the first Gaza Solidarity Encampment in the nation. After that encampment was swept by the NYPD and more than 100 students were arrested, students at Columbia University launched a second encampment. Students at more than 130 campuses across the United States followed suit, launching their own Gaza Solidarity Encampments, according to data compiled by Harvard’s Crowd Counting Consortium—with more globally.

Student encampments have called on their universities to disclose their financial portfolio and revenue sources and to divest from weapons manufacturers and companies directly tied to Israel. Friday’s “Revolt for Rafah” encampment describes itself as “more rage,” according to an organizer who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“Revolt for Rafah: Installation One will persist throughout Columbia’s alumni programming,” CUAD said in a statement. “Disruptions and demonstrations like these will continue throughout the summer and beyond until Columbia ceases to align with occupation and genocide. We refuse to have our tuition dollars fund the wholesale destruction of Gaza. We will not rest until divestment.”

“We are outraged by Columbia’s complicity in the killing of our people in Gaza, and most recently the massacre in Rafah,” a statement inviting people to join the “pop-up encampment-style installation” provided to The New Republic reads. “We are equally outraged by Columbia’s use of brute force and their capitulation to the Billionaire’s lobby instead of to the ‘safety of the students.’ We will resist, until Columbia divests.”

Republican Representative Jim Jordan is reacting to Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony charges by inviting the prosecutors to answer questions on Capitol Hill.

In two letters posted to X (formerly Twitter) on Friday, Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, invited Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, as well as senior counsel Matthew Colangelo, to speak before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on June 13.

The move is not a subpoena, and thus carries no legal weight or compulsion for Bragg or Colangelo to attend. So then why issue the letters? Jordan probably is hoping for the off-chance that Bragg and Colangelo do show up so that he and his fellow Republicans can grandstand with Trump watching. Or, in the likely event the pair don’t appear, he can claim they are hiding because Trump’s prosecution was clearly politicized. Either way, the move itself is blatantly for political and not legal purposes, which isn’t surprising from Jordan, who went to law school and then never even took the bar exam.

The Ohio congressman tried and failed to push impeachment proceedings against President Joe Biden, only to have star witness Alexander Smirnov be indicted for lying to the FBI and working for Russian intelligence. Jordan still insisted that impeachment was worth pursuing after that, despite not being able to spin the Smirnov news. Fellow Republican Ken Buck called out Jordan for knowing that Smirnov wasn’t a credible witness before his indictment, but Jordan was undeterred, scrambling for new evidence to use against Biden. That led to a rebuke from the Justice Department over what Jordan claims Democrats are doing now: causing politicized conflict.

If Jordan expects anything from Trump in return for this symbolic effort, it’s not likely to be cash, as Trump doesn’t want to give up any of the fundraising money he’s made since his conviction. (Trump has lost a lot of money since Thursday evening too.) Maybe Jordan’s after a cushy Cabinet post.

Rudolph Giuliani, Trump’s former lawyer, may soon be barred from practicing law for anyone.

The ex–New York City mayor is facing disbarment after the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility recommended that he lose his law license over his involvement in lawsuits alleging election fraud in 2020.

“We conclude that disbarment is the only sanction that will protect the public, the courts, and the integrity of the legal profession, and deter other lawyers from launching similarly baseless claims in the pursuit of such wide-ranging yet completely unjustified relief,” the board’s recommendation reads.

In the rest of its 62-page decision, the board highlighted Giuliani’s weaponization of his law license and criticized his efforts to overthrow the election results in Pennsylvania in particular. The decision follows Giuliani’s law license being suspended nearly three years ago over his support of Trump’s efforts to claim that he didn’t really lose in 2020. Now the final decision to disbar Giuliani permanently goes to the D.C. Court of Appeals.

Giuliani will likely soon join a list of other prominent Trump 2020 lawyers who have been disbarred, including Jenna Ellis. John Eastman may soon join them, as well.

It hasn’t been a good year for Giuliani, although he’s in deep denial about it, not including his thoughts on the 2020 election. He filed for bankruptcy last year but is still spending lavishly and ignoring his many creditors. He’s desperately trying to make money, even resorting to selling his own brand of coffee. He can’t find a new accountant after his old one dropped him, and one of his ex-cronies, Lev Parnas, spilled the beans on how Giuliani tried to manufacture a Biden-Ukraine scandal, something that Giuliani still hasn’t given up on.

On top of that, Giuliani has to deal with more fallout from his 2020 election efforts. After being indicted in Arizona for his election machinations there, he doubled down on his allegations of fraud and had a pitiful defense for his actions: highlighting all of the states where he challenged election results. He even taunted the Arizona attorney general in trying to dodge a subpoena, only to be served near his Florida residence anyway. And Trump still hasn’t paid him for all of that legal work, either.

It’s easy to see why Giuliani should be disbarred, as he doesn’t seem to know when to stop, no matter how much trouble he’s in. But hey, it’s something that he has in common with his most famous client.

The Texas Supreme Court unanimously rejected a challenge to the state’s abortion laws Friday, overturning a lower court’s decision that would have allowed women within Texas to actually access abortions granted within the confines of the state’s ban.

The case, Zurawski v. Texas, began with five women and eventually grew to represent 20 women and two doctors. It became the strongest challenge to the constitutionality of the state’s myriad abortion restrictions implemented since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which brought the suit last year, argued that while the state’s laws technically left room for abortions in urgent circumstances, they were also so vague that they practically restricted all medical practitioners from actually considering the procedure as an option. Specifically, people could undergo abortions during complicated pregnancies so long as their doctor made a “good faith judgment” that it was medically necessary.

But opponents to the laws have argued that “good faith” is too subjective for language determining medical access—and could potentially open doctors up to lawsuits brought by anyone who didn’t believe the procedure was required. The court, however, did not see that complication.

“A physician who tells a patient, ‘Your life is threatened by a complication that has arisen during your pregnancy, and you may die, or there is a serious risk you will suffer substantial physical impairment unless an abortion is performed,’ and in the same breath states ‘but the law won’t allow me to provide an abortion in these circumstances’ is simply wrong in that legal assessment,” wrote Justice Jane Bland in the court’s opinion.

The ruling effectively leaves people in need of abortions within the state just two options: either leave, or risk death.

“Sadly, what we know is that there are anti-abortion advocates who will always question [a doctor’s] decision,” Molly Duane, senior counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights, told The Texas Tribune. “I don’t know how all of this will actually function in practice … the fact that true exceptions do not exist in practice will continue to be the norm.”

The brief opinion made no mention of the 20-plus women who were represented by the lawsuit and who individually suffered under Texas’s nearly airtight abortion restrictions. Lauren Miller, a Dallas mother who was forced out of state after learning that one of her twin fetuses had a complication that threatened her health as well as the health of her other child, told the Tribune that the decision felt like a “gut punch.”

“I read the ruling. I felt like I had missed something. And so I immediately reread it, and I realized what was missing in those pages was us. We weren’t there. We didn’t exist,” Miller told the publication.

One member of the court, Justice Brett Busby, left enough wiggle room in his concurring opinion for a broader challenge to the law. But legal challenges are time-consuming, and in the meantime, more patients could be forced to wait until their symptoms are life-threatening before doctors can offer them abortions.

Texas has recently turned up the heat on its anti-abortion policies, forcing the issue into the center of the Lone Star State’s politics. Over the weekend, a policy agenda proposed by the GOP convention in San Antonio included calls for legislation that would transform the fetal personhood ideology into law, a move that would effectively categorize any person receiving an abortion at any stage as a murderer.

House Speaker and fascist elf Mike Johnson called in to Fox and Friends on Friday to express his desire for the Supreme Court to “step in” and overturn the criminal convictions handed down by a Manhattan jury against Trump on Thursday.

During the segment, which Johnson published to his official YouTube channel, Johnson intimated that he’s spoken with Supreme Court justices who are “deeply concerned” about the criminal justice system functioning properly for once. “I think that the justices on the court—I know many of them personally—I think they are deeply concerned about that, as we are. So I think they’ll set this straight.”

Johnson, either from wishful thinking or showing his hand, shifted from what he thinks and hopes the Supreme Court will do to essentially speaking on behalf of the court’s conservative bloc, promising viewers, “This will be overturned, guys, there’s no question about it; it’s just going to take some time to do it.”

Trump has plans to appeal his conviction, after issuing a variety of false statements about the trial over its duration. Per New York penal law, he has 30 days to submit the appeal—which would come just weeks before his July 11 sentencing hearing. That appeal would begin at the New York Court of Appeals. If that state-level court denies his appeal, Trump can petition to ask the Supreme Court to review the case. Considering the conservative majority on the court, with its three justices directly appointed by Trump, they’ll likely hear the case and potentially overturn the conviction. How long that process takes can range from months to years.

At a press conference Friday, Donald Trump ranted and raved about his displeasure at being found guilty of 34 felony charges in his hush-money trial.

Standing in front of a line of flags at Trump Tower in New York, Trump took aim at Michael Cohen, Judge Juan Merchan, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Democrats, and just about anyone who he thinks wronged him, violating his gag order in the process. But his biggest target might have been the English language.

At times, his words were hard to follow, as the first convicted felon former president went off on tangents with sentences with no clear end.

In one bizarre sentence, he demonstrated a profound misunderstanding of the word “literally” by claiming witnesses “for our side” were “literally crucified by this man who looks like an angel, but he’s really a devil,” referring to Merchan.

This could very well be another sign of cognitive decline from the Republican presidential nominee, exacerbated by possibly the worst news he’s ever received. Last week, at a Bronx rally, he bragged about being able to put on his pants, and two weeks ago, he seemed to freeze while speaking at the NRA’s annual convention. His rant on Friday included an attack on immigrants who speak incomprehensible languages, a nod to similar bizarre remarks he made at the southern U.S. border in February.

If Trump hadn’t also explained why he didn’t testify at this trial, anyone watching his remarks would have realized why themselves.

Donald Trump claims he wanted to testify in his hush-money trial—but he was afraid he’d be found guilty of more crimes. Trump’s statements came during a meandering, often incoherent tirade in front of the press at Trump Tower on Friday, the day after he was convicted of 34 felonies by a Manhattan jury.

“I would have testified. I wanted to testify,” he said one day after his first criminal trial came to a close.

“The judge allowed them to go into everything I was ever involved in–not this case–everything I was ever involved in, which is a first. In other words, you could go into every single thing that I ever did [and ask], ‘Was he a bad boy here? Was he a bad boy there?’” he continued, seeming to imply that if the prosecution really dug into his past they would have found more crimes.

“But you would have been, you would have said something out of whack, like, ‘It was a beautiful sunny day,’ and it was actually raining out,” Trump continued, providing a false example of perjury, before seemingly word-associating to talk about the pro-Trump gathering outside Manhattan Criminal Court.

Trump opened his presser with claims that witnesses for Trump’s defense were “literally crucified” by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who Trump described as looking “so nice and soft” and that he “looks like an angel, but he’s really a devil” before moving on to his boilerplate racist rant about migrants.

During the trial, Trump falsely claimed he was prohibited from testifying as a result of a gag order restricting his public statements after he incited harassment against judge Juan Merchan and Merchan’s daughter. Trump allies opposed him testifying, voicing concerns about his tendency to ramble.

The day after Donald Trump became the first former president to be convicted of a felony, he rushed to Trump Tower to hold a press conference proclaiming his innocence. But in doing so, he also immediately violated his gag order.

In a 30-minute speech on Friday, Trump slammed his former fixer Michael Cohen as slimy and untrustworthy.

“Again, if I wrote down and paid a lawyer—and by the way, this was a highly qualified lawyer. Now, I’m not allowed to use his name because of the gag order,” Trump said. “But, you know, he’s a sleazebag.”

“Everybody knows that,” he continued. “Took me a while to find out, but he was effective. He did work.”

Trump’s gag order—which has not yet been lifted—bars him from publicly attacking the court staff, witnesses, or jurors involved in the case. And he’s already been hit with repercussions for previous transgressions. Earlier this month, Judge Juan Merchan ruled that Trump would have to pay $10,000—the maximum penalty of $1,000 per violation—for continually breaking the order.

But that ruling came with an added threat that is still on the table. Since the court could not craft an “appropriate” financial penalty for a deep-pocketed defendant like Trump, Merchan wrote that, in order to “protect the dignity of the judicial system and to compel respect for its mandates,” the court “must therefore consider whether in some instances, jail may be a necessary punishment.”

Trump is due to be sentenced on July 11, just days before the Republican National Convention. And his words could come back to haunt him in that hearing: In criminal cases, judges often consider a defendant’s level of remorse (or lack thereof) when deciding a sentence.

Meanwhile, Cohen responded Friday in real time, posting on X that “Trump’s press conference was nothing shy of a batshit crazy avalanche of broken brain word manure,” while tagging his nickname for his former boss: “#VonShitzInPantz.”

Senator Joe Manchin is leaving the Democratic Party and registering as an independent.

Politico reports that the West Virginia politician and thorn in the side of liberal priorities has made the decision to leave, citing sources close to Manchin. Shortly after, on Friday morning, Manchin confirmed the move.

Manchin had previously announced that he would not run for reelection for his Senate seat. His change in party affiliation now means he can run as an independent for the Senate, or even for governor of West Virginia, where he’d take on Republican rival Jim Justice. He has not announced plans to do either yet. Right now, the move makes him the fourth independent in the Democratic Caucus.

It’s the latest move from Manchin in a long career of taking shots at the Democratic Party. At one time, he was a critical part of the Democrats’ majority in the Senate, which he used to his advantage. He regularly sided with Republicans on critical issues such as student loan relief and climate change. He worked to keep the Senate filibuster, despite Democratic objections, with the help of fellow Democratic (and also now independent) Senator Kyrsten Sinema. He refused to back President Biden’s Build Back Better bill, resulting in the watered-down Inflation Reduction Act. He even killed the expanded Child Tax Credit.

So what’s the reason behind this move now? Manchin already toyed with a third-party run for president before backing out. Is Manchin going to stay in politics after all, staying in the Senate or looking at the governorship? Either way, it will be, in his mind, the best decision for himself.

Donald Trump and his fans are losing big on the crypto marketplace following his guilty verdict, despite his bragging just days earlier that he was confident in cryptocurrency.

As news of the verdict broke Thursday, the TRUMP token fell 35 percent, while a memecoin for President Joe Biden called “Jeo Boden” grew 20 percent.

Trump may have personally lost money last night too. According to blockchain data tracked by Arkham Intelligence, the former president reportedly holds assets worth approximately $10 million, with sizable amounts of MAGA tokens, ethereum (ETH), and MAGA VP tokens.

Alongside these memetokens, Trump has launched three NFT collections since December 2022, including the “Mugshot Edition NFTs.” But as the hush-money trial began in late April, the first edition of the Trump Digital Trading Card’s trading volumes fell 99 percent in 30 days.

Trump has bet heavily on a cryptocurrency payoff. Earlier this month, he spent one of his few days off the trial courting NFT buyers at a dinner in Mar-a-lago. Shortly after, he vowed to “build a crypto army.” And on Thursday, just hours before the verdict, Bloomberg reported that Trump was discussing crypto policy with Elon Musk.

While Musk denied specifically talking about crypto, it does appear that the Trump campaign is looking for an advisory role for Elon if he wins a second term.

Meanwhile, Trump and his allies are losing on standard markets too, with Truth Social stocks plummeting as much as 15 percent on Thursday.

Despite Trump’s myriad monetary failures, crypto traders at Polymarket, the blockchain-powered betting site, are still banking on Trump defeating Biden—putting his odds of winning at 54 percent—even after the conviction. Traders are also placing $900,000 wagers on whether Trump will see the inside of a jail cell by November, with some saying he has a 17 percent chance of imprisonment.

Ultimately, let’s hope the only blocks and chains Trump is involved with in the next year are in a cell block.