At Michigan, Pro-Palestinian Activists Lose, and Money for Student Clubs Is Restored
The New York Times
In a fraught meeting, the student government rejected a plan to redirect its budget from campus activities to aid for Gaza. But the fight is not over.
In a tense, simmering meeting, University of Michigan’s student government restored funding on Tuesday night for campus activities and clubs, which had been paused for months in protest of the war in Gaza.
Campus life was put on edge last spring after pro-Palestinian activists won student government elections to the presidency and vice presidency, and secured a near majority of seats in the assembly. Less than 20 percent of students had turned out to vote.
Fulfilling their campaign promise, the activists moved immediately to withhold around $1.3 million in annual funding for campus activities until the university committed to divest from companies aiding Israel’s war in Gaza.
Many student groups, including Ultimate Frisbee, ballroom dancing and the Black Undergraduate Kinesiology Association, were in limbo, unsure whether they could travel to games, rent rehearsal space or provide outreach to students.
But in a meeting packed with activists on Tuesday, the student assembly voted to support a petition that restored the budget. And it rejected an opposing petition that would have sent most of the student government’s money to another university’s initiative in Gaza.
The fallout was immediate. Pro-Palestinian activists accused the assembly members of complicity in genocide.
A businessman in the Bronx falsified information on thousands of returns, committing one of the largest tax frauds in Department of Justice history, prosecutors said.
Officials in Wisconsin gave little new information on Tuesday about a shooting that left a student and a teacher dead and six others injured.
The president-elect’s latest attempt to overturn his Manhattan conviction was rebuffed by the judge overseeing the case, who called it “mere hearsay and conjecture.”
Undocumented immigrants whose children or spouses are U.S. citizens are feeling particularly vulnerable to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s threats to push them out.
The man whom authorities call a serial killer was charged with second-degree murder in the case of Valerie Mack, who disappeared in 2000.
The Commerce Department is banning the few remaining operations of China Telecom in the United States, a move that appears unlikely to deter Beijing from conducting sophisticated cyberoperations.
The police in Wisconsin are working to establish a motive for the attack, which left a student and teacher dead and six others injured.
The defendant, Rex Heuermann, is due in court Tuesday. Investigators have been trying to tie him to other unsolved killings on Long Island.
Some Republicans have said that a constitutional convention is overdue. Many Democratic-led states have rescinded their long-ago calls for one, and California will soon consider whether to do the same.
The New York City Campaign Finance Board voted to withhold as much as $4.3 million in matching funds from Mayor Eric Adams, hampering his re-election bid.
He built Mississippi’s Republican Party into a conservative powerhouse, making himself a regional power broker in the process.