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University of Minnesota, Under Federal Scrutiny, Limits Its Political Speech

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University of Minnesota, Under Federal Scrutiny, Limits Its Political Speech

The University of Minnesota, which President Trump’s Justice Department is scrutinizing for its handling of antisemitism on campus, largely barred itself on Friday from issuing official statements about “matters of public concern or public interest.”

The policy, in the works for months, was not a direct response to the Trump administration’s February announcement that it would investigate whether Minnesota and nine other universities had failed to protect Jewish students and faculty from discrimination.

But Friday’s vote by the board of regents nevertheless fit into the scramble by universities to undercut accusations that they have supported, or downplayed, antisemitic behavior or political activity.

Schools have come under fierce Republican criticism over their responses to protests over the war in Gaza. Campuses have seen bitter debates over defining antisemitism and the threshold for when political expression is intolerant or discriminatory, with university leaders often looking for a balance between allowing free speech and avoiding Washington’s potential ire.

Under Minnesota’s new policy, statements from the university — including ones from divisions like colleges and departments — about public issues will be forbidden unless the president determines the subject has “an actual or potential impact on the mission and operations of the university.”

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The university senate, which includes students, faculty members and other workers, opposed the plan, and in early January, a university task force had urged a narrower approach. Critics have questioned whether the policy violates the First Amendment and argued that it grants excessive power to Minnesota’s president.

But during a raucous meeting on Friday in Minneapolis — the session went into recess twice because of protesters — regents voted, 9 to 3, to approve the policy.

“The university is not, and should not be, in the business of taking positions on these critical and controversial matters of public concern,” said Janie S. Mayeron, the board’s chair. “Individuals can do that. The university, its leaders and units should not.”

Another regent, Robyn J. Gulley, said she had received hundreds of messages ahead of Friday’s vote, with the feedback “largely” opposing the proposal.

“The First Amendment protects not only free speech, but the right to association,” Ms. Gulley said before she voted against the proposal. “There is probably nowhere in the world that that is more important than in universities, where it is not only the right but the obligation of students, faculty, staff to speak” about their areas of research and expertise.

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The notion of “institutional neutrality” is not unique to Minnesota, where the new policy will cover five campuses, including the flagship in Minneapolis. Since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, at least 140 colleges have adopted such policies, according to a report released Tuesday by the Heterodox Academy, a nonprofit that has been critical of progressivism on college campuses.

Before the attack, the report said, only eight schools had neutrality policies.

The last few weeks have put new pressure on Minnesota, with the university among the schools that Justice Department antisemitism investigators said they would visit to weigh “whether remedial action is warranted.”

The department has not detailed why Minnesota made its list. Although Richard W. Painter, a Minnesota law professor who was the White House’s top ethics lawyer for part of George W. Bush’s presidency, told the Department of Education in 2023 about possible antisemitism at the university, he has speculated that the Justice Department’s interest may carry a political motive.

Tim Walz, who was the Democratic nominee for vice president in last year’s election, is Minnesota’s governor, and the district of Representative Ilhan Omar, a Democrat who has been a steadfast critic of Mr. Trump and Israel, includes Minnesota’s main campus.

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Minnesota said in a statement that it was “confident in our approach to combating hate and bias on our campus, and we will always fully cooperate with any review related to these topics.”

In addition to Minnesota, the Justice Department is examining Columbia University; George Washington University; Harvard University; Johns Hopkins University; New York University; Northwestern University; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of California, Berkeley; and the University of Southern California.

But some misgivings about Minnesota, which contended with a protest encampment last spring, predate Mr. Trump’s return to power.

In December 2023, for example, Mr. Painter and a former regent, Michael D. Hsu, complained to the Department of Education that the College of Liberal Arts had allowed departments to use official websites for statements that were critical of Israel.

A website Mr. Hsu and Mr. Painter cited — featuring a statement by the gender, women and sexuality studies faculty — endorsed the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and called for “dismantling Israel’s apartheid system.” (After the statement’s publication, a disclaimer was added to note that it did “not reflect the position of the University of Minnesota.”)

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It was not clear how much Friday’s vote would ease Washington’s skepticism of Minnesota. Some other universities that recently embraced institutional neutrality still ended up under investigation by the Trump administration, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern and Southern California.

Stephanie Saul contributed reporting.

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N.Y. Budget Deal Includes School Cellphone Ban and Public Safety Changes

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N.Y. Budget Deal Includes School Cellphone Ban and Public Safety Changes

Gov. Kathy Hochul on Monday announced the framework of a roughly $254 billion state budget agreement, ending a monthlong stalemate over public safety issues that the governor had insisted on including in the fiscal plan.

The budget deal, which will now go to the Legislature for a full vote, includes changes to make it easier to remove people in psychiatric crisis from public spaces to be evaluated for treatment, and eases so-called discovery requirements for how prosecutors hand over evidence to criminal defendants in the pretrial phase.

Ms. Hochul also successfully pushed for an all-day ban on students having cellphones in schools. But another of the governor’s policy priorities relating to the restriction of the wearing of masks was whittled down by legislators over concerns that it would be selectively enforced and infringe on people’s civil liberties.

“We worked through some really challenging issues,” Ms. Hochul said at a news conference Monday afternoon. “We refused to be drawn into the toxic, divisive politics of the moment.” Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the majority leader, and Carl E. Heastie, the Assembly speaker, were not present at the announcement.

The changes related to criminal justice and mental health were major priorities of Mayor Eric Adams and district attorneys from New York City, who appeared several times with Ms. Hochul to push for the proposals. She made them clear priorities, frustrating lawmakers who were forced to pass several so-called budget extenders to keep the government running after the April 1 deadline passed.

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Ms. Hochul did not provide many details on what exactly would be changed and to what degree, saying that her aides would iron out the final details with legislative leaders in the coming days.

Other changes may yet be in store, depending on the severity of the rolling cuts to federally subsidized programs, the specter of which has heightened anxiety among lawmakers. Most concede that a special legislative session may be needed to reckon with the shortfalls once Congress passes its budget. Ms. Hochul and others have been saying for months now that it is essentially impossible to plan until they fully understand the cuts.

“We can only devise a budget based on the information we have at this time,” Ms. Hochul said, adding the state had already been hit with about $1.2 billion in cuts.

“There’s a possibility that we’ll have to come back later this year and update our budget in response to federal actions,” she added.

Still, New York’s budget agreement, which will be fleshed out and voted on next week, dealt only glancingly with the transformed fiscal picture that could be on the horizon a few months from now — a bleak outlook made even more uncertain by President Trump’s tariff-driven global trade war.

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State Democratic leaders have stressed that congressional Republicans seem all too willing to cut entitlement programs such as Medicaid and Social Security.

Yet the budget proposal called for New York to spend $17 billion more than last year, made possible in part after state officials disclosed earlier this month that tax revenues and the state’s general fund closed the fiscal year with billions more dollars than expected.

Ms. Hochul, who is keenly aware of voters’ frustrations with rising costs for basic goods like food and housing, is up for re-election next year. Several Democrats are considering primary challenges, and several prominent Republicans, including Representative Elise Stefanik, are also weighing bids.

In effort to boost her flagging political prospects, she stuffed her executive budget proposal in January with populist efforts to “put money back in people’s pockets.” It included a $3 billion tax refund that would have seen New Yorkers receive between $300 and $500 and a generous expansion of the state’s child tax credit program.

The framework agreement with the Legislature included the governor’s proposed child tax credit of up to $1,000 for families with a child under 4, but the refund was scaled back in negotiations, amid pushback over whether that was the best use of so much cash. Now about $2 billion will be devoted to the program, with New Yorkers receiving between $200 and $400, depending on their income.

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Similarly Ms. Hochul had promised no increases to state income taxes, although she proposed an extension of an existing tax on residents making more than $1.1 million through tax year 2032, and relief for many middle-class New Yorkers earning up to $323,000 per year as joint filers. The budget agreement reached on Monday maintains the tax cut but includes an increased payroll levy on companies with more than $10 million in revenue.

This largess would help fund the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s $68 billion five-year plan to make systemwide infrastructure upgrades. Smaller companies will see a cut in their payroll tax burden because of the deal. The M.T.A., the state and New York City will each kick in $3 billion to fund the plan. Ms. Hochul also said that $1.2 billion that had been previously allocated for renovating Penn Station will go toward safety improvements and stopping fare evasion.

“It’s a fair plan that asks the most from large employers, but also calls on the city, state and M.T.A. to step up,” said Kathryn S. Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a business group.

Mr. Heastie said the framework agreement included changes to the state’s campaign finance matching system. Donations larger than $250 are currently disqualified from the matching program; the agreement provides for the state to match the first $250 of any donation up to $1,000.

The budget deal also includes a change to the law to allow candidates for governor and lieutenant governor to run together as a ticket, rather than in separate primaries as they do now. The current lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado, recently announced he would not seek another term in the role and is considering challenging Ms. Hochul in next year’s primary.

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Stefanos Chen and Jay Root contributed reporting.

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Opinion | The Jewish Students Caught Up in Trump’s Antisemitism Crackdown

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Opinion | The Jewish Students Caught Up in Trump’s Antisemitism Crackdown

Given these figures, it’s not surprising that Jews have taken a leading role in the protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza. Eleven days after Oct. 7, 2023, progressive and anti-Zionist Jewish groups, including Jewish Voice for Peace, gathered roughly 400 protesters, many wearing shirts that said “Not in Our Name,” and occupied a congressional building. Later that month, Jewish Voice for Peace and its allies led a takeover of New York’s Grand Central Terminal. At Brown University, the first sit-in demanding divestment from companies affiliated with Israel comprised solely Jewish students.

Jewish students are not generally as vulnerable as their Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, Black and noncitizen counterparts, but it is precisely this assumption of greater safety that may have made them more willing to protest in the first place. And many have paid a price. It’s impossible to know what percentage of the students punished for pro-Palestinian activism have been Jewish, since university disciplinary proceedings are often secret. But anecdotal evidence suggests it is significant. And regardless of one’s views about how universities should treat campus activism, there is something bizarre about repressing it in the name of Jewish safety when a number of the students being repressed are Jews.

Since Oct. 7, at least four universities have temporarily suspended or placed on probation their chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace. In 2023 at BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now protests, 20 members were arrested. (The charges were dropped.) At a pro-Israel event at Rockland Community College at the State University of New York on Oct. 12, 2023, a Jewish student who briefly shouted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “Jews for Palestine” was reportedly suspended for the rest of the academic year. In May 2024, a Jewish tenured professor in anthropology at Muhlenberg College said she was fired after she reposted an Instagram post that declared, in part: “Do not cower to Zionists. Shame them. Do not welcome them in your spaces. Do not make them feel comfortable.” In September, Michigan’s attorney general brought felony charges for resisting or obstructing a police officer, as well as misdemeanor trespassing charges, against three Jewish activists — as well as four others — for offenses related to a Gaza solidarity encampment at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. (They all pleaded not guilty).

Even when protest has taken the form of Jewish religious observance, it often has been shut down. Last fall, when Jewish students opposing the war during the holiday of Sukkot built Gaza solidarity sukkahs, temporary boothlike structures in which Jews eat, learn and sleep during the holiday, at least eight universities forcibly dismantled them, or required the students to do so, or canceled approval for their construction. (The universities said that the groups were not allowed to erect structures on campus.)

Despite this, establishment Jewish pro-Israel organizations have applauded universities that have cracked down on pro-Palestinian protest. When Columbia suspended its branch of Jewish Voice for Peace alongside Students for Justice in Palestine, the A.D.L. congratulated the university for fulfilling its “legal & moral obligations to protect Jewish students.” After New Hampshire police broke up Dartmouth’s Gaza solidarity encampment, the A.D.L. thanked the college’s president for “protecting all students’ right to learn in a safe environment.” But the experience was hardly safe for Annelise Orleck, the former chair of the school’s Jewish studies program, who said she was zip-tied, body-slammed and forcibly dragged by police officers when they moved in. After the state attorney general announced that she would bring charges against demonstrators at the University of Michigan’s encampment who had allegedly violated the law, an official at the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor praised her for acting “courageously.” The A.D.L. has since reversed its prior support for the Trump administration’s detention of pro-Palestinian activists. But it still wants universities to impose tough restrictions on campus protest. When I reached out to the organization asking if it had a position on Jewish students getting swept up in campus crackdowns, representatives referred me to Mr. Greenblatt’s recent opinion essays. Each one reiterated the need to fight against what it deems campus antisemitism, but also advocated due process for all those involved.

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Trump Administration Opens Civil Rights Inquiry Into a Long Island Mascot Fight

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Trump Administration Opens Civil Rights Inquiry Into a Long Island Mascot Fight

Federal education officials said on Friday that they had opened a civil rights inquiry into whether New York State could withhold state money from a Long Island school district that has refused to follow a state requirement and drop its Native American mascot.

The announcement came shortly after President Trump expressed his support for the district, in Massapequa, N.Y., in its fight against complying with a state Board of Regents requirement that all districts abandon mascots that appropriate Native American culture or risk losing state funding.

The Massapequa district, whose “Chiefs” logo depicts an illustrated side profile of a Native American man in a feathered headdress, is one of several that have resisted making a change.

The name of the town, a middle-class swath of the South Shore where most residents voted for Mr. Trump in the November election, was derived from the Native American word “Marspeag” or “Mashpeag,” which means “great water land.”

In announcing the investigation, Linda McMahon, the education secretary, said that her department would “not stand by as the state of New York attempts to rewrite history and deny the town of Massapequa the right to celebrate its heritage in its schools.”

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JP O’Hare, a spokesman for the state Education Department, said in a statement that state education officials had not been contacted by the federal government about the matter.

“However,” he added, “the U.S. Department of Education’s attempt to interfere with a state law concerning school district mascots is inconsistent with Secretary McMahon’s March 20, 2025, statement that she is ‘sending education back to the states, where it so rightly belongs.’”

The policy, introduced in 2022, was adopted amid a national push to change Native American mascot names or iconography through legislation and other moves.

When the ban was adopted, about five dozen New York school districts still used Native American-inspired mascots and logos. Districts were given until the end of June this year to eliminate banned mascots.

Since taking office for his second term, Mr. Trump and his administration have waged a relentless campaign against what they argue are illegal diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and have threatened entities that do not fall in line and eliminate such efforts.

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The president has said he would slash funding for low-income students in states that fail to do away with such programs. New York’s Education Department was the first to publicly refuse to comply with the order.

Massapequa school leaders filed a federal lawsuit seeking to keep the “Chiefs” name, but the judge in the case recently moved closer to dismissing it after finding they had failed to provide sufficient evidence for their claims, including that the mascot qualified as protected speech.

In a social media post this week, Mr. Trump criticized New York’s policy and called for Ms. McMahon to intervene.

“Forcing them to change the name, after all of these years, is ridiculous and, in actuality, an affront to our great Indian population,” the president wrote.

In a statement included in the federal Education Department’s announcement, Kerry Watcher, the Massapequa Board of Education president, welcomed the investigation.

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“Attempts to erase Native American imagery do not advance learning,” Ms. Watcher said. “They distract from our core mission of providing a high-quality education grounded in respect, history and community values.”

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