The recent cancelation of $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University by the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism was seen as a major wake-up call to the country’s universities.
In its press release, the task force announced that the “decisive action” is “a notice to every school and university that receives federal dollars.”
Leo Terrell, leader of the Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism and senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights, told Fox News Digital that Columbia was an initial target for funding cuts because the school has been “in my opinion, the worst of the worst when it comes to allowing this type of conduct to take place and to continue.”
Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive director of the Orthodox Union, told Fox News Digital that “the more dramatic action that the [Trump] administration seems ready to take … seems to be the necessary approach for something as urgent as what we have been facing.” Hauer added that his community has “a lot of hope.”
TRUMP ADMIN WON’T TOLERATE ANTISEMITISM IN SCHOOLS, SAYS LEO TERRELL AS NYC SCHOOLS UNDER MICROSCOPE
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Protesters demonstrate near Columbia University in New York City on Feb. 2, 2024.(Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
Hauer added that recent protests at Columbia University and Barnard College “reminded us how alive the issue [of campus antisemitism] is.”
Terrell said President Donald Trump’s executive order directing increased efforts to fight antisemitism “set the tone for every single agency” involved in the task force, which includes the Departments of Justice, Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and State, in addition to the U.S. General Services Administration and the FBI. Terrell said newly confirmed Secretary of Education Linda McMahon “is involved in this extensively, per the directive from [U.S. Attorney General] Pam Bondi.”
He says experts within his task force will be assessing schools based on about nine criteria to determine whether they are adequately protecting Jewish students. In addition to looking for evidence of hate crimes and examining schools’ tax-exempt status, Terrell said the task force will search for violations of Title VI and Title VII in the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Title VI protects Americans who engage in programs that receive federal funds from discrimination based upon race, color and national origin. Former President Joe Biden’s administration used Title VI when the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights examined hostile antisemitic environments on K-12 and college campuses. Title VII prevents federal employment discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex or color.
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The task force’s move at Columbia follows weeks of protests at the university and affiliated Barnard College. In January, students stormed a Columbia classroom and “allegedly threw around [fliers] filled with hateful speech.” The following month, more than 50 protesters took over a building at Barnard College and were said to have assaulted an employee.
COLUMBIA STUDENT DESCRIBES ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTS: ‘IT’S TERRIFYING’
Leo Terrell(REUTERS/Kent Nishimura)
During a March 5 protest on Barnard’s campus, protesters were pictured passing out pamphlets from the “Hamas media office,” in addition to pictures of former Hezbollah terror chief Hassan Nasrallah and stickers featuring former chair of the Hamas terror organization Yahya Sinwar, according to the Times of Israel. In a press release, Columbia confirmed that four of its students were arrested during the Barnard “disruption.” The students were subsequently “suspended and restricted from campus.”
The situation at Columbia has grown more complex after former student Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for allegedly advocating for Hamas. Terrell said Khalil’s arrest was not conducted at the behest of the task force but explained that “all of this is coming out of the Trump executive order.”
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TRUMP VOWS ANTI-ISRAEL ACTIVIST MAHMOUD KHALIL WAS ‘FIRST ARREST OF MANY TO COME’
The NYPD cleared pro-Palestinian demonstrators from Barnard College after a group of student protesters occupied Milstein Library on March 5, 2025.(Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu via Getty Images)
A Columbia representative did not respond to questions from Fox News Digital about the cancellation of its grants, its posture toward ICE on campus or whether it plans to continue employing anti-Israel professors who are accused of spreading antisemitic views.
Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, released a statement on March 7 in which she said “Columbia is taking the government’s action very seriously.” Armstrong sought to “assure the entire Columbia community that we are committed to working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns. To that end, Columbia can, and will, continue to take serious action toward combatting antisemitism on our campus. This is our number one priority.”
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When it comes to demonstrating their effective efforts to combat antisemitism, Terrell said schools must “earn trust.” Citing as an example “the little feeble action” Columbia has taken in response to funding cuts, Terrell asked, “Is it the money driving them or their concern for Jewish-American students?”
Terrell also said there will be no special rewards for schools that have managed antisemitism without federal involvement.
“They have a fundamental right to protect Jewish Americans and Jewish students,” he said.
Beth Bailey is a reporter covering Afghanistan, the Middle East, Asia, and Central America. She was formerly a civilian intelligence analyst with the Department of the Army. You can follow Beth on Twitter @BWBailey85
BURLINGTON, Vt. — Shelley MacDonald and her husband, both Canadian citizens, had been living in Paris for over a decade when the pandemic hit. She’d been selling baked goods and hosting a dinner club called Paris Bread in their apartment. She wanted to open a business in the United States, where she could operate in English. It was time to leave, except that, at the moment, only American passport holders could fly into the United States.
With ingenuity and grit, the couple discovered a visa for foreign entrepreneurs and secured one from the American Embassy the day it reopened after lockdown. Once their passports were stamped, they had 30 days to fly out and move everything they owned to this picturesque college town.
Since 2022, MacDonald has run Belleville Bakery & Catering near City Hall in Burlington, Vt., down the street from the University of Vermont. She’s training staff, including students, and offering confections you might see in a Parisian patisserie, most not as fancy. She has different varieties of all-butter croissants, cinnamon snails and feta-garlic snails made with croissant trimmings, tempting lunch items such as bacon cheddar quiche and tuna sandwiches with smoked Gouda on homemade onions buns, and dinners such as lasagna, rigatoni, and chicken pot pie to take home.
Shelley MacDonald, a Canadian citizen, lived in Paris before moving to Burlington.Sheryl Julian
“I think the town is adorable with kind people who help you when you don’t need to be helped,” says MacDonald, sitting in the bright bakery. “There’s something very special about Vermont.”
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She and her husband — the hyperrealist painter André Beaulieu — picked Burlington because they had visited often when they lived in his hometown, Montreal. “The real reason is so that I could open a business in English,” she told her 48,000 Instagram followers, “so that I could function in my native language, for all of the reading and writing and dealing with lawyers and accountants and plumbers that you need to do when you own a business.”
MacDonald describes their new situation as “the best of both possible worlds, where I get to live in English in a really cute space, and he gets to live with me in English in a really cute space and he’s really close to home.” She describes her business as her “dream job.”
The 100-year-old building whose storefront she renovated is large and airy, with bakers in the kitchen in full view making croissant and brioche doughs, prepping cookie batters and galette pastry.
Quiches at Belleville Bakery.Sheryl Julian
MacDonald moves quickly, laughs easily, and greets customers warmly. “People come into a bakery looking for a treat and some kind of care,” she says. When you’ve finished eating, you don’t have to take your plates and cups to various bins for recycle and trash. That system horrifies her. “No bussing,” she says. “We take care of you.”
Her clientele skews older, she has noticed, and they’re looking for somewhere to go. “The demand is enormous,” she says. She describes her personality as “Shelley takes care of people.” Remembering her days running an underground restaurant, MacDonald now offers twice-monthly Sunday brunches and dinners, both served at a long table farmhouse-style so everyone talks to their neighbors.
MacDonald, who is willing to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks, also has a successful mail-order arm to send cookies across the country. They’re thick and perfectly round in flavors such as orange gingersnap, pistachio chocolate, and lemon pistachio shortbread.
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She also gives classes in the bakery and writes a weekly newsletter, which she snail-mails for free. “People are lonely,” she says. They want to receive real mail.
Feta-garlic snails at Belleville Bakery.Sheryl Julian
Born and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia, MacDonald, 59, also lived in Vancouver. She met Beaulieu in Montreal. His large, striking artworks hang in the bakery.
In order to get a US E-2 Investor Visa, they had to invest $15,000 in a new US company (some applicants invest considerably more) and have secured premises in the destination city. Sight-unseen, they rented a painting studio in The Soda Plant in Burlington for Beaulieu, which qualified them.
The bakery’s name is the English version of Beaulieu’s surname. Beaulieu means “beautiful place,” she says. Belleville, which means “beautiful city,” is easier for Americans to spell.
Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, who happened to be there when I was — she said she stops by often since her office is so close — describes the bakery as “loveliness in this corner. [MacDonald] draws people into this community.”
Cinnamon snails at Belleville Bakery.Sheryl Julian
The bakery has become known for its I am Proud of Me Banana Cake. It’s really banana bread, but when MacDonald made it in France, customers wondered why it was called bread.
When you buy one, MacDonald asks you what you’re proud of. She’s heard many comments, mostly emotional. One woman in her 20s was going to drive on the highway for the first time, someone else was excited to have completed exams. Then a man came in to say he was proud of his wife for finishing chemo.
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“She’d been planning this cake during her treatment,” MacDonald told a local TV reporter who did a segment on her. Donations started coming in so other cancer patients at the local hospital could get a banana cake; MacDonald also sends cakes to a palliative care center and a teen drop-in center.
Those efforts came to the attention of a program director at the University of Vermont, who called MacDonald in the middle of Vermont’s dark, cold February winter. The administrator was running a mental health day for freshmen. She bought 100 banana cakes from MacDonald and asked her to come and hand them out.
The line was an hour long. Students waited patiently, not just to get an I am Proud of Me Banana Cake, but also for a moment to tell MacDonald what was on their mind.
Belleville Bakery & Catering, 217 College St., Burlington, Vt., www.bellevillevt.com
Sheryl Julian can be reached at sheryl.julian@globe.com.
BOSTON (WHDH) – The Boston Pops are preparing for their Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular this weekend with half a million people expected to celebrate the United States’ 250th birthday on the Charles River Esplanade.
The President and CEO of Boston Symphony Orchestra said an even bigger celebration is being prepared at the hatch-shell this year.
“Everything is bigger. You only turn 250 once!” said Chad Smith, President and CEO of Boston Symphony. “We recognize that Massachusetts has been a center of revolution, not just in the Revolutionary War, but through the last 250 years. That spirit, sense of innovation, the sense of pushing our country forward is going to be on display as well.”
Organizers are bringing in lighting, sound equipment, extra stages, and of course – the fireworks.
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“Planning to bring in new details and amplify the experience on the Fourth of July with a bigger firework show. They’re going to have drones for the first time, amazing talent,” said Kate Fox, Executive Director at the Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism.
This year’s spectacular is being hosted by actress Jane Lynch, and will feature performances by country star Lainey Wilson, Chance the Rapper, Trombone Shorty, and Broadway star Megan Hilty.
“We’re going to have remarkable artists that represent the vast diversity and breadth of American music,” Smith said.
The Boston Pops have been performing on the Esplanade for the Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular for 52 years, and organizers said this year’s show will highlight the history of Massachusetts.
“The history of the Pops is so closely tied to the Massachusetts story on the Fourth of July,” Fox said.
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The fireworks show will begin at 9:15 p.m., and will be set to live music from the Pops.
(Copyright (c) 2026 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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Pittsburgh officials are partnering with a nonprofit to provide a unique way to thank veterans for their service while getting a grand look at the Steel City.
A 90-foot Ferris wheel dubbed the Salute to Service Wheel will be spinning on the North Shore from Wednesday through Sunday.
It’s provided by Piatt Companies and Piatt Sotheby’s International Realty with half of ticket sale proceeds going to Veterans Leadership Program.
First launched in 1982, VLP helps veterans navigate life’s transitions. Efforts include wellness services, housing, career development and various support programs.
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Mayor Corey O’Connor, parks and recreation director Eric Sloan, Piatt Companies CEO Lucas Piatt and representatives from the Veterans Leadership Program are expected to host a grand opening celebration Wednesday around 12:30 p.m. at North Shore Drive and Art Rooney Avenue and take the first rides.
It is part of Pittsburgh’s Independence Day celebration.
Tickets are on sale now and cost $11.20, including a $1.20 service fee. They can be found at pittsburghpa.gov.
Bookings are in hour intervals from 2-9 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday and from 2-8 p.m. Sunday.
Riders smaller than 48 inches tall must be accompanied by an adult.
