Karoline Leavitt Sends Ominous Warning to Recently Freed Tufts Student

The Trump administration remains delusionally committed to its abuse of executive power, doubling down on threats to Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk after a federal judge ordered her release on Friday.

In March, Öztürk, a Turkish Ph.D. student on a Fulbright scholarship, was disappeared from the Boston area by masked, plainclothes ICE agents after she wrote an op-ed that called for Tufts to acknowledge the ongoing genocide in Palestine and to divest from Israel. Her release—after six weeks in ICE detention—is a direct rebuke of the Trump administration’s actions, as was the release of Palestinian student activist Mohsen Mahdawi last month.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt was tasked with answering for the Trump administration’s legal loss.

“Does the administration have any response to the news today that a federal judge has ordered the immediate release of Rümeysa Öztürk from detention?” a reporter asked Leavitt on Friday afternoon. “Particularly his comments that the government submitted no evidence other than an op-ed that Öztürk wrote last year?”

Leavitt defaulted to one of her go-to answers: It’s the judges who are crazy.

“I think our overall feeling—we’ve made quite clear lower level judges should not be dictating the foreign policy of the United States, and we absolutely believe that the president and the Department of Homeland Security are well within their legal rights to deport illegal immigrants,” Leavitt replied. “As for visa revocations, the secretary of state has the right to do that as well. It is a privilege not a right to come to this country on a visa.”

This is one of many examples of the Trump administration only considering the courts valid when they agree with the rulings they make. Green card holder Mahmoud Khalil, who missed the birth of his child while being detained in Louisiana, and Georgetown student Badar Khan Suri, who is now held in a Texas detention center, are still in custody.

Senate Republicans are defending their Democratic colleague, John Fetterman, after a series of reports called into question his mental fitness to remain in office.

Senators Tom Cotton, Chuck Grassley, and fellow Pennsylvanian Dave McCormick all defended Fetterman in a series of posts on X Thursday, rallying behind the Democrat who has alienated his staff and his constituents by hawkishly supporting Israel in its massacre of Gazans and taking a softer line with President Trump.

Democratic Representative Ritchie Torres, who has also alienated much of the left with his stance on Israel, accused Fetterman’s critics of attacking him for his “unapologetic pro-Israel politics.”

Reports from New York magazine and The Philadelphia Inquirer over the past week exposed how Fetterman frequently loses his temper and patience and has become disengaged from his duties as a senator, missing meetings and votes. Fetterman also reportedly avoids colleagues and spends many hours alone in his Washington, D.C., office. New York reported that Fetterman even misses regular medical check-ups, drives erratically, and has diminished spatial awareness.

Despite these worrying reports, Republicans may be trying to rally around Fetterman because they smell blood in the water. Politico reports that a recent internal poll shows Fetterman losing support from Democratic voters in his own home area of Pittsburgh. While Fetterman has defended Trump in the past few months, he still is a relatively reliable Democratic vote in the Senate, and the GOP could see an opportunity to replace him in 2028 with one of their own.

Republicans could also be trying to convince Fetterman not to resign from the Senate. The New York profile mentioned tension between Fetterman and his wife, Gisele, a formerly undocumented immigrant from Brazil, over his turn toward Trump and his vehement support for Israel—and it’s conceivable that Fetterman chooses to resign, citing health or family reasons.

A replacement senator appointed by Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro would result in a more solid Democratic vote and hurt Republican chances to retake the Pennsylvania Senate seat in 2028. Whatever the reason for the sudden show of support, Republicans probably have an ulterior motive.

The White House doesn’t want you looking too closely at Donald Trump’s business deals in the Middle East.

On Wednesday, the president said that he was considering renaming the Persian Gulf (which is thousands of miles away from U.S. shores) the “Arabian Gulf,” just days after his family announced billions of dollars in forthcoming real estate deals in the region. (As a side note, Iran has warned of “wrath” for Trump’s geopolitical meddling.)

But on Friday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to brush that under the rug, scolding the press for questioning whether Trump had something personal to gain out of the pitch or his upcoming trip to the Middle East. Instead, she implored Americans to believe that Trump—a renowned crook and court-determined fraudster—is completely selfless in his pursuit of power.

“I think it’s frankly ridiculous that anyone in this room would even suggest that President Trump is doing anything for his own benefit,” Leavitt said. “He left a life of luxury and a life of running a very successful real estate empire for public service, not just once but twice.”

“The American public reelected him back to this White House because they trust he acts in the best interests of this country and putting the American public first,” Leavitt continued. “This is a president who has actually lost money for being president.”

But that’s a lie. The Trump family has made plenty of money thanks to Trump’s return to power. Scott Galloway, an NYU Business School professor and podcaster, told MSNBC Thursday that within the first three months of Trump’s second term, his family had become “$3 billion wealthier.” Forbes estimated in March that, in the preceding 12 months, Trump had effectively doubled his fortune, bringing it from $2.3 billion to $5.1 billion.

“So that’s a billion dollars a month,” Galloway said, describing the current administration as a “kleptocracy that would make Putin blush.”

The Trump family’s Middle East real estate plans include a Trump-branded golf course in Qatar (as part of a $5.5 billion development project), a $1 billion Trump hotel and residence in Dubai, and a $2 billion cryptocurrency investment by an Abu Dhabi firm in one of Trump’s cryptocurrency projects, the World Liberty Financial Coin.

The family also revealed in December that they would be expanding their presence in Saudi Arabia, announcing Trump Tower Jeddah. The price tag for the building has not been made public, but one of the developers on the project, Dar Global, compared it to another $530 million Trump Tower in the city, reported Reuters.

The Trumps have held deep financial ties to the region for years. After Trump’s first term, Saudi Arabia invested $2 billion in a firm belonging to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.

Trump is expected to travel to Saudi Arabia next week, where it’s anticipated that he’ll make the “Arabian Gulf” rumor official, according to two officials who spoke with the Associated Press.

As a reminder, it’s actually unconstitutional for presidents to profit from or receive compensation from foreign governments. The White House has contested that the deals are not a conflict of interest since the president’s assets are managed by his eldest sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr. But Trump’s pockets will undoubtedly be lined by the deal—even if he has to wait a handful of years before he’s out of office to see the cashflow. In the meantime, he’ll receive myriad personal benefits from his relationships in the Middle East for arranging the deal.

A two-minute-long takedown of his trade policies on MSNBC sent the president into a rage on Friday.

“Donald Trump is backed into a corner,” said MSNBC business host Stephanie Ruhle. “His grand plans of ‘tariffs, tariffs, tariffs,’ aren’t working. You’re seeing day in and day out more business leaders—whether it’s Warren Buffett, or Jamie Dimon, or Ken Griffin—on big global stages saying, ‘This is going to crush us economically.’ And then you’ve got congressmen, senators from every state, saying to this White House, ‘Our small businesses are strangling, are dying here.’ I’m not saying Donald Trump has changed what he thinks in his heart, but he’s backed into a corner and he needs to get off this crazy tariff train, and he knows it.”

“So what did we see with England.… You’ve got a P.M. there who is a close ally of Donald Trump, and they’re saying, ‘Let’s put on a show, let’s create a theater, and let’s say we’ve got a deal.’ Yes, there aren’t any details to it, there is still a 10 percent tariff, which is why Jay Powell is not cutting rates, cuz 10 percent is more than triple what it was, so it’s still going to be painful, especially for small business,” Ruhle continued. “But what’s most important is the language around China. A week ago, China was like, ‘We’re not showing up unless you lower the tariffs,’ and [they] didn’t. Forty-eight hours ago Donald Trump said, ‘We’re not gonna lower the tariffs.’ Yesterday he said, ‘Yeah, maybe.’ And today things are softening even more.… Donald Trump is looking for some sort of exit here.”

“Look at the cargo ships coming into Seattle, the Port of Los Angeles; pick the port. We’re getting fewer and fewer ships with less and less cargo. And unless he turns this around, three weeks from now you walk into a store and we’re going to have a Covid-like supply chain crisis, and Trump is looking for an exit.”

Ruhle brilliantly exposed the president’s waffling on tariffs, introducing them with strongman language and massive guarantees while the reality is far more uncompelling. He introduced a trade deal with the U.K. on Thursday that wasn’t even finished. By Friday, he walked back his tariffs on China before even negotiating, announcing a steep 65 percent drop in tariffs is on the table (making it a still outrageous rate of 80 percent tariffs on the country).

Ruhle’s analysis clearly bothered the president, who took to Truth Social to express his disgust.

“I just watched an exhausted, highly neurotic Stephanie Ruhle spew LIES about Tariffs, as do many others, in order not to give me the Victory that they all see coming. Few people know Stephanie Ruhle, but I do, and she doesn’t have what it takes,” he wrote, personally attacking the MSNBC host. “Our Deal with the United Kingdom yesterday was AMAZING for both Countries and, in addition to everything else, British Airways just ordered $10 Billion Dollars worth of new Boeing planes. We’re going to make a fortune with Tariffs, only smart people understand that, and Stephanie was never known as a ‘High IQ’ person. MSDNC has become the Voice of the Democrat Party, and they should be treated as a Political Advocate with all of the Taxes and Penalties therefrom. Their Ratings are terrible, but Brian Roberts and his crew should be forced to TELL THE TRUTH. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Trump chooses not to engage with any of Ruhle’s arguments, instead choosing to focus on her demeanor and her workplace.

Columbia University’s crackdown on free speech just got even worse: The school tried to suspend four student journalists who covered a pro-Palestinian protest at Butler Library this week, according to The Columbia Spectator.

Columbia College and Barnard College issued interim suspensions to one reporter at the Spectator and three student journalists at WKCR, the student-run radio station that has provided consistent on-the-ground coverage of the student demonstrations at the university—including the massive raid by police at the Gaza solidarity protest in Hamilton Hall last year.

Disciplinary emails obtained by the Spectator cited “information received” from Public Safety, which indicated that Sawyer Huckabee (class of 2026), Natalie Lahr (class of 2028), Celeste Gamble (class of 2027), and Spectator reporter Luisa Sukkar (class of 2026) had been involved in the demonstration in the Lawrence A. Wien Reading Room at Butler Library Wednesday afternoon. However, the student journalists at WCKR wore prominently displayed press placards and Huckabee identified herself as a journalist to public safety officers before leaving the building, the Spectator reported.

New York City Police were dispatched to the university, and 78 students were arrested.

Columbia lifted its suspension on one reporter only five hours after its initial notification Thursday afternoon, but the other three students remained suspended until Friday at 9 a.m.

In an email to alumni Wednesday, Acting President Claire Shipman touted a commitment to free speech while admitting that the university had called the police on its own students. Shipman also made the disturbing move of blaming the protesters for the targeting of its international students.

“I am deeply disturbed at the idea that, at a moment when our international community feels particularly vulnerable, a small group of students would choose to make our institution a target,” Shipman wrote.

But it’s the institution, not the students, that has refused to shield its own community from the Trump administration’s immigration and free speech crackdown. After Donald Trump rescinded $400 million in federal funding, the university administration agreed to the president’s outrageous demands for a complete overhaul of the school’s protest policies, as well as the adoption of a new definition of antisemitism, among several other concessions that severely undermined academic independence from the federal government.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote in a post on X Wednesday night that the administration was “reviewing the visa status of the trespassers and vandals who took over Columbia University’s library.”

“Pro-Hamas thugs are no longer welcome in our great nation,” he added.

Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as permanent U.S. attorney for Washington will soon start walking in a different direction.

Ed Martin has served as acting U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., since Trump’s inauguration. But mounting pressure from Senate Republicans, who seemed increasingly unlikely to advance Martin’s nomination to keep the job, forced the White House to look elsewhere.

Martin, a conservative political operative from Missouri who garnered national attention for his staunch support of January 6 rioters, had used his time at the U.S. attorney’s office to help Trump transform the key prosecutor’s chair into a tool for the president’s political retribution. He threatened to investigate some of Trump’s purported enemies, including Democratic lawmakers, universities and schools, and critics of tech billionaire Elon Musk. But on Thursday, Martin found out that his time at the office was coming to an end.

Instead, he’d be the recipient of an entirely different title.

“Ed Martin has done an AMAZING job as interim U.S. Attorney, and will be moving to the Department of Justice as the new Director of the Weaponization Working Group, Associate Deputy Attorney General, and Pardon Attorney,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Thursday evening. “In these highly important roles, Ed will make sure we finally investigate the Weaponization of our Government under the Biden Regime, and provide much needed Justice for its victims. Congratulations Ed!”

In Martin’s place, Trump tapped ex–Fox News host Jeanine Pirro. The former prosecutor has been one of Trump’s most ardent defenders at a network that already has an apparent soft spot for him. In internal emails made public by the conservative media behemoth’s lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems, Pirro’s former executive producer once described the election conspiracist’s beliefs as “completely crazy.” Pirro has not held a law enforcement job in roughly two decades.

But the tap-and-replace strategy may have an underlying motive.

“By replacing one interim U.S. attorney with another, the Trump administration appears to be trying a legal tactic that could essentially eliminate any need to submit U.S. attorney picks to the Senate for confirmation,” assessed The New York Times.

Martin isn’t the only member of Trumpverse to receive a cozy new assignment. After he publicized massive national security risks in the Trump administration’s communication channels by accidentally inviting a journalist to a Signal group chat, former national security adviser Mike Waltz was “promoted” to the role of U.N. ambassador.

Trump was reportedly sensitive to the idea of ousting Waltz, believing that doing so would be interpreted as a bend to public pressure. One source familiar with the situation at the National Security Council told CBS News last week that the president believed enough time had passed that the administration could reasonably reframe Waltz’s departure as part of a larger “reorganization.”

A federal judge ruled Friday that Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk must be released from detention “immediately.”

U.S. District Judge William Sessions ruled that Öztürk, who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement over an op-ed she wrote advocating for the school to make good on student resolutions to acknowledge the genocide in Gaza and to divest from Israel, had made “substantial claims” that her constitutional rights had been violated.

“That literally is the case. There is no evidence here as to the motivation absent the consideration of the op-ed,” Sessions said, independent journalist Adam Klasfield reported on X. Sessions said that there was no evidence that Öztürk had engaged in violent acts or advocated for violence.

“Her continued detention chills the speech of the millions and millions of people who are not citizens,” Sessions added.

Öztürk was arrested in March, even after the State Department had determined that the Trump administration had no evidence linking her to antisemitic activity. After her shocking abduction on the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts, by masked federal agents, she was moved to an immigration facility in Basile, Louisiana, where she attended the bail hearing remotely.

Öztürk’s lawyers argued that their client, who suffers from asthma, faced “significant health risks” staying in the facility, and asked Sessions to grant her bail immediately, according to CBS News. Öztürk is now free to travel back to Massachusetts and Vermont.

The judge’s ruling represents a huge defeat for the Trump administration, which has sought to crack down on pro-Palestinian speech by targeting international students for deportation, alleging that they had engaged in vague “antisemitic activities.” The students targeted by these efforts have committed no crime.

Last month, a federal judge ordered the release of Mohsen Mahdawi, a graduate student at Columbia University who had been arrested at his citizenship interview. Mahdawi, who was involved in pro-Palestinian organizing on campus, explicitly denounced antisemitism.

Green card holder Mahmoud Khalil, who missed the birth of his child while being detained in Louisiana, and Georgetown scholar Badar Khan Suri, who is now held in a Texas detention center, still remain in custody.

This story has been updated.

Jared Kushner is back to advising Donald Trump, ahead of the president’s trip to the Middle East.

Kushner is reportedly advising administration officials in negotiations with Arab leaders, CNN reports, citing sources in the White House and people close to the president’s son-in-law. While Kushner isn’t expected to travel with Trump, he has been talking to foreign leaders, including Saudi Arabia’s, about normalizing relations with Israel.

While Trump’s stated priority for the trip is to make trade deals with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, Kushner and others in the White House are trying to use the trip to expand the Abraham Accords, which Kushner negotiated during Trump’s first term. The accords led to the normalization of relations between Israel and several Arab countries, including Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco, and Sudan.

Kushner has specifically been advising Trump officials on how to approach Saudi Arabia regarding normalizing relations with Israel, with the administration hoping for progress on that front. They don’t expect a deal to come from the trip, though.

“We fully expect other countries to sign (agreements) first before Saudi,” a senior Trump administration official told CNN, adding that there are discussions with a “wide range of countries.”

“When it comes to the Middle East, Jared is an expert,” another administration official said. “He knows all the players and is one of the few people who has the ear of the Arab leaders, as well as the Israelis.”

Like his father-in-law, Kushner has extensive business dealings in the Middle East, raising ethical concerns. He is pocketing billions from Saudi Arabia and reportedly speaking with the country’s crown prince every week. Also like Trump, Kushner has praised Gaza’s waterfront beachfront property as “very valuable,” a troubling sign given Israel’s vote this week to occupy the territory.

It’s anyone’s guess as to what Kushner’s actual agenda is in advising the Trump administration. It could be to line his own pockets or to further a real estate development project in Gaza. Either way, it presents a host of ethical issues.

The messages Donald Trump is sending about a proposal to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans aren’t just mixed; they’re actually inscrutable.

In a post on Truth Social Friday, the president appeared torn about whether he planned to actually follow through on his proposal to hike taxes on the superrich.

“The problem with even a ‘TINY’ tax increase for the RICH, which I and all others would graciously accept in order to help the lower and middle income workers, is that the Radical Left Democrat Lunatics would go around screaming, ‘Read my lips,’ the fabled Quote by George Bush the Elder that is said to have cost him the Election. NO, Ross Perot cost him the Election! In any event, Republicans should probably not do it, but I’m OK if they do!!!” Trump wrote.

Trump was referring to President George H.W. Bush’s famous campaign promise, “Read my lips: no new taxes.” Ultimately, Bush left income tax alone but raised other levies on oil and chemicals, increased fees on international travel, and moved up the collection dates for certain taxes. Trump seemed unwilling to break his campaign promises to lower taxes for Americans.

But it was Trump who reportedly pitched House Speaker Mike Johnson Wednesday on creating a new 39.6 percent tax bracket for individuals earning at least $2.5 million, or couples making $5 million, people familiar with the discussions told Bloomberg. Trump has been adamant that his sweeping reciprocal tariffs will replace the federal funding lost by eliminating the income tax.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Bloomberg Television’s Balance of Power
Thursday that higher taxes for the rich could help offset other tax cuts.

During his first term, Trump slashed rates “from 39.6 to 37. So, if he just goes back to what he did last time, I’m in favor of that,” Lutnick said. “I think it’s smart, as long as it is a redistribution to his priorities of no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security.”

The Trump administration’s tariff scheme appears less and less likely to bring manufacturing jobs back to U.S. shores.

Businesses across the country are crunching the numbers and realizing that, despite Donald Trump’s insistence, they can’t balance out his tariff hikes across the supply chain.

“Some manufacturers who had plans to open factories in the country say the new duties are only adding to the significant obstacles they already faced,” Bloomberg reported Friday.

That’s because the supply chain to produce those goods in the United States simply isn’t there, requiring companies to import raw materials and factory equipment—which Trump’s tariffs have made unaffordable—from abroad.

And Trump’s unpredictable approach to announcing and enacting or even retracting his tariffs has added confusion and significant volatility to the market, making businesses less likely to invest in large, long-term projects such as factory development.

Nora Orozco, the owner of footwear company Evolutions Brands, wants to open a Texas factory that would create 200 jobs. But the nitty-gritty of Trump’s so-called “manufacturing renaissance” just doesn’t work, according to the small-business owner.

“I like the idea of onshoring, but this makes it impossible for us,” Orozco told Bloomberg.

Reinvigorating American manufacturing has been a tall order for both political parties since the country offshored and automated the bulk of those jobs decades ago. But 2022 did see a spike in job announcements for reshored manufacturing gigs, according to the Reshoring Initiative, a U.S. manufacturing advocacy nonprofit.

That was thanks to President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which passed with zero Republican support at the time, and his CHIPS and Science Act. Biden’s landmark legislative victory is currently on the chopping block as conservative lawmakers look to make room in the federal budget for an extension to Trump’s tax plan.