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Judge Orders Release of Rumeysa Ozturk, Tufts Student Detained by ICE

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Judge Orders Release of Rumeysa Ozturk, Tufts Student Detained by ICE

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Friday to release Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student, saying that her continued detention could potentially chill “the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens.”

At a hearing at the Federal District Court in Vermont, the judge, William K. Sessions III, said Ms. Ozturk should be freed immediately: “Her continued detention cannot stand.”

Ms. Ozturk, a doctoral student from Turkey, has been in detention since March 25, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in masks and plainclothes surrounded her outside her home in Somerville, Mass., while she was on the phone with her mother. She was put on a plane to a detention center in Louisiana, and her friends, family and lawyers didn’t know where she was for 24 hours, they said.

Her arrest led to public outrage at her treatment and criticism that the government is abusing the immigration system to deport international students. In seeking her release, her lawyers have accused the government of detaining her in retaliation for speech that is protected by the First Amendment. The main evidence against her appears to be an essay critical of Israel that she helped to write in a Tufts student newspaper last year.

They also said the conditions at the detention center were exacerbating her chronic asthma and preventing her from carrying out her academic work.

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Her lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai, said she was “relieved and ecstatic” that Ms. Ozturk had been released.

“When did speaking up against oppression become a crime?” Ms. Khanbabai asked. “When did speaking up against genocide become something to be imprisoned for?”

Ms. Ozturk appeared at the hearing by a remote feed from the ICE detention center in Basile, La., to the courtroom in Burlington, Vt. Ms. Ozturk, who is Muslim, wore a head scarf and an orange coverall.

A little over an hour into the hearing, she appeared to suffer an asthma attack, coughing and choking, and the judge allowed her to leave the feed for a while.

Ms. Ozturk testified that she had experienced escalating asthma attacks since her arrest. The first attack came when the plane that was taking her from Vermont to Louisiana stopped in Atlanta, she said.

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A pulmonologist, Dr. Jessica McCannon, testified that Ms. Ozturk’s asthma was poorly controlled in detention and would continue to get worse if she were not released. She said that she had not been able to physically examine Ms. Ozturk but had spoken to her and reviewed her medical records.

The hearing had been expedited by Judge Sessions. Earlier this week, a federal appeals court ordered that she be transferred to Vermont by next week to attend a bail hearing. But Judge Sessions decided to hold the hearing with Ms. Ozturk still in Louisiana.

The hearing was held in Vermont because Ms. Ozturk had spent the night there in the custody of federal agents on the way to Louisiana, on a circuitous route that her lawyers said had prevented them from finding her.

Government lawyers in the appeals court hearing declined to discuss questions about speech raised by another judge. But Judge Sessions did not mince words on Friday, suggesting the government was trying to deport Ms. Ozturk based on the slenderest of evidence that she had posed a threat to American foreign policy interests.

“There has been no evidence that has been introduced by the government other than the Op-Ed,” he said in granting her release.

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He added that noncitizens “may now avoid exercising their First Amendment rights for fear of being whisked away to a detention center from their home.”

Department of Homeland Security officials have said that Ms. Ozturk had “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans.” And following her arrest, Secretary of State Marco Rubio commented on Ms. Ozturk’s detention at a news conference, saying that she had not been given a visa to “become a social activist that tears up our university campuses.”

But during the hearing Friday, the government’s lawyer, Michael Drescher, called no witnesses and hardly spoke. When he did speak, it was mainly to raise technical issues about the conditions of her bail.

Mr. Drescher asked the judge to bear in mind that even though Ms. Ozturk was being released from immigration custody, the deportation proceeding against her would continue.

Judge Sessions said Ms. Ozturk was free to return home to Somerville. He said he did not see any risk that she would flee. “She’s also free to travel to Massachusetts and Vermont as she sees fit” for further court appearances, he added.

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The judge said he wanted to give Ms. Ozturk maximum mobility so she could pursue the educational opportunities that she needed to complete her doctorate.

Ms. Ozturk testified that she had been confined with 23 other women in a space intended for 14 people. Stress and the smells of cleaning supplies had exacerbated her asthma, she said. But when she sought treatment, the medical staff at the detention center had been condescending and had raised their voices at her, she said, and a nurse had ripped off her head scarf.

She testified that it was “impossible” to work on her dissertation in detention because she did not have access to her computer, professors, library or peers. Ms. Ozturk, who specializes in children’s media, is due to finish her doctoral dissertation in December and to graduate in February, according to the testimony.

Her adviser, Sara Johnson, testified that Ms. Ozturk had been doing innovative research on how adolescents used social media to benefit other people.

In describing her ties to the Tufts community, Ms. Ozturk said she had helped organize an event with colleagues where community members came together to express grief for children in conflict areas around the world, “from Gaza to Israel, from Russia to Ukraine, from Congo to Haiti, from Sudan to Yemen, from Cameroon to Afghanistan, from all parts of the world.”

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The judge’s decision was another defeat for the government’s efforts to deport international students associated with pro-Palestinian advocacy. A week ago, a different federal judge in Vermont, Geoffrey W. Crawford, ordered the release of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia student, from detention on bail.

Mr. Mahdawi is a permanent resident of the United States and is about to graduate from Columbia in May. His lawyers say that the government detained him in retaliation for his pro-Palestinian activism. He was arrested on April 14, after a naturalization interview at an immigration field office.

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

Three more people have been criminally charged with destruction of property at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Officers say they detained Cameron Thiers, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Justin Carreno one Saturday afternoon in June and described in court documents witnessing them peeling and removing pieces of blue paint from the Reflecting Pool.

One officer “witnessed Carreno reach down into the reflecting pool and pull up a piece of the blue paint,” according to the court documents.

The officer who detained Dennison-Gibby “found 1 additional piece of the reflecting pool liner” in her purse, the documents said.

All three incidents were recorded on the officers’ body worn cameras, they said in the court documents.

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Several “partnering law enforcement agencies assigned to the Reflecting Pool” working with US Park Police were involved in detaining the two men and one woman — including officers from Texas, Oklahoma, Montana and California.

One of the officers said in court documents that Thiers “admitted to removing a piece of blue sealant from the Reflecting Pool and still had it in his hand when I made contact with him.”

The three defendants were arraigned in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charges of destruction of property with a value less than $1,000. The judge ordered them to stay away from the Reflecting Pool.

Lawyers for Thiers and Dennison-Gibby declined to comment. CNN has reached out to Carreno’s attorney.

If found guilty of destruction of property, the defendants could be fined up to $1,000 and face a maximum of 180 days behind bars.

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The New York Times first reported that three additional people had been charged with damaging the Reflecting Pool.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that vandals caused major damage to the pool by gashing the lining after his administration spent more than $14 million on renovations, though he has not provided evidence to support that claim. The officers who charged Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby did not accuse them of gashing the lining.

Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn was indicted by a grand jury in Washington, DC, last week for allegedly damaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn — unlike Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby – was charged with destruction of property with a value of more than $1,000 which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, if convicted. He is set to be arraigned in court Thursday.

Crews began draining the Reflecting Pool over the weekend to make repairs, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, for the second time in three months.

The move comes after weeks of problems – algae blooms, green-hued water, a chipping bottom and the administration’s allegations of vandalism – that have plagued the iconic landmark, making its woes the subject of national interest.

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.

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Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.

In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.

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The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.

Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

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City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

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Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

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Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

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“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

@fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

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Image from @fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

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Image from @Bogs4NY via X

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The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

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Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

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Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

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