Australian writer on his deportation from the US
Alistair Kitchen is a writer from Australia who was blocked from entering the US in June 2025.
In this Unmute, Kitchen describes how he endured hours of interrogation and had his phone confiscated and forensically downloaded by Customs agents before he was deported back to Australia. He believes it was over his writing on the pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University and his views on Israel-Palestine.
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Al Jazeera
2 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
What's in the $200m deal Trump has struck with Columbia University?
New York City-based Columbia University has agreed to pay $221m to settle claims by US President Donald Trump's administration that it failed to curb anti-Semitism on campus, in exchange for the reinstatement of billions of dollars in federal funding. The deal, agreed on Wednesday, comes after sweeping university campus protests against Israel's war in Gaza during the spring and summer of 2024 and this year were criticised as veering into anti-Semitism. In February, the government cut $400m in federal research funding for Columbia in a bid to force its administrators to respond to alleged harassment of Jewish students and faculty. The unprecedented agreement marks a victory in Trump's efforts to exert greater control over higher education, including campus activism, and could offer a framework for future deals with other universities. What's in the deal Trump has struck with Columbia? Columbia has agreed to pay $200m to the government over three years, as well as making a separate $21m payment to settle claims by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In exchange, the 'vast majority' of the frozen $400m in federal funding will be reinstated, the university said. Columbia will also regain access to billions of dollars' worth of current and future grants under the deal. Columbia is required, within 30 days, to appoint an administrator who will report to the university president and will be responsible for overseeing the deal's compliance. This includes verifying that the institution ends programmes that promote 'unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotas [and] diversity targets'. Additionally, Columbia must review its Middle East curriculum to make sure it is 'comprehensive and balanced' and appoint new faculty staff to its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. Columbia said the agreement establishes Bart Schwartz, of the compliance firm Guidepost Solutions, as an independent monitor who will report to the government on its progress every six months. The university will be expected to compile a report for the monitor to ensure its programmes 'do not promote unlawful DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] goals'. Why have they come to this agreement? Columbia said the agreement formalises already-announced reforms to address harassment of Jewish students and staff, including the hiring of additional public safety personnel, changes to disciplinary processes, and efforts to foster 'an inclusive and respectful learning environment'. The dispute between Columbia and the Trump administration began after Jewish students and faculty complained of harassment on campus by pro-Palestine demonstrators, while pro-Palestinian advocates accused critics of often wrongly conflating opposition to Israel with the hatred of Jews. Columbia's acting president, Claire Shipman, said the agreement marked 'an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty'. 'The settlement was carefully crafted to protect the values that define us and allow our essential research partnership with the federal government to get back on track. Importantly, it safeguards our independence, a critical condition for academic excellence and scholarly exploration, work that is vital to the public interest,' she added. Trump hailed the settlement as 'historic' in a post on his Truth Social platform. 'Numerous other Higher Education Institutions that have hurt so many, and been so unfair and unjust, and have wrongly spent federal money, much of it from our government, are upcoming,' he wrote. How have students and activists reacted? Student activist group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) slammed the settlement as 'a bribe'. 'Imagine selling your students out just so you can pay Trump $221 million dollars and keep funding genocide,' the group wrote on X. It added that Columbia's disciplinary action against students, including suspensions and expulsions, this week was a punishment that 'hugely' exceeded the precedent for non-Palestine-related demonstrations. Non-governmental organisation Palestine Legal accused Columbia of 'weaponising claims of antisemitism to punish those calling for freedom for Palestinians'. 'It is clear that Columbia's desire to create a community 'where all feel welcome' doesn't extend to students who call for an end to Israel's genocide,' the group posted on X. Hasan Piker, a left-wing activist, political commentator and a critic of Trump, said the US president was 'underwater on everything and Columbia is still caving to Trump on everything', adding 'it seems like some of these institutions were looking for the pretext to go right'. What steps has Columbia already taken to pacify the Trump administration? In March, Columbia agreed to a list of demands laid down by Trump in return for negotiations to reinstate its $400m federal funding, which he had revoked a month before, citing 'a failure to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment'. Among other concessions, the university agreed to ban face mask coverings during protests, as well as to install 36 campus police officers with special powers to arrest students. Earlier this month, Columbia adopted a controversial definition of anti-Semitism drafted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which has been criticised for what some say is conflating criticism of the state of Israel and Zionism with anti-Semitism. Critics have warned that the definition could be used to stifle dissent and curb academic freedom. In a letter sent to the United Nations in 2023, 60 human and civil rights organisations said the definition should not be used. 'The IHRA definition has often been used to wrongly label criticism of Israel as antisemitic, and thus chill and sometimes suppress, non-violent protest, activism and speech critical of Israel and/or Zionism, including in the US and Europe,' they wrote. On Tuesday, Columbia also announced it would suspend, expel or revoke degrees for nearly 80 students who participated in a Butler Library demonstration on its campus on May 7, 2025 and a 'Revolt for Rafah' encampment on May 31, 2024 during the university's annual alumni weekend. During protests, students demanded that the university's $14.8bn endowment stop investing in weapons makers and other companies that support Israel. Protest organiser and former student Mahmoud Khalil, 29, was the first person to be detained during the Trump administration's push to deport pro-Palestinian activists who are not US citizens. The school also said it would no longer engage with pro-Palestinian group CUAD. Which other universities has Trump set his sights on, and why? The Trump administration is focusing attention on 10 universities that it deems noteworthy in its campaign to root out anti-Semitism. These are Columbia; George Washington University; Harvard; Johns Hopkins University; New York University; Northwestern; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Minnesota; and the University of Southern California. Columbia University was the first college to see its funding slashed, but several Ivy League schools have been subjected to or threatened with funding cuts since Trump took office in January 2024. More than $2bn in total was frozen for Cornell, Northwestern, Brown and Princeton universities. In April, the administration also threatened to freeze $510m in grants to Brown University over alleged violations 'relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination'. Harvard University was the first – and has so far been the only – major higher education institution to defy Trump's demands and fight back in federal court. This week, it argued in federal court that the Trump administration had illegally cut $2.6bn in funding in what were politically motivated attempts to reshape the institution. Are deals with other universities expected as well? Some universities are also believed to be in talks with the Trump administration, so more deals could be forthcoming. In particular, US news outlets have reported that officials from the Trump administration and Harvard are continuing negotiations, despite the court case brought by Harvard. In June, Trump posted on social media that 'if a Settlement is made on the basis that is currently being discussed, it will be 'mindbogglingly' HISTORIC, and very good for our Country'.
Al Jazeera
5 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Fact check: Could Trump's trade tariffs pay off the US deficit?
One of the Trump administration's biggest tariff boosters, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, recently said tariffs will not only energise the industrial sector in the United States but also help the government's finances. During a July 20 interview on CBS's Face the Nation, Lutnick told host Margaret Brennan that the US is collecting close to $30bn a month in tariffs. 'You got to remember – this is going to pay off our deficit. This is going to make America stronger,' he said. But the maths falls short. Multiplying the most recent month of US tariff collections by a full decade would not cover the 10-year costs of President Donald Trump's new tax-and-spending legislation, much less all federal deficits during that decade. The current tariffs are slated to increase on August 1, including levies ranging from 20 percent to 40 percent for 21 countries, based on what the Trump administration has said. An analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) – Congress's nonpartisan number-crunching arm – also projects that 10 years of tariff revenue increases under Trump will not pay for the added deficits from his bill or the cumulative deficits over the next decade. The projected added deficit from the bill is $3.4 trillion, on top of the existing projected deficit over the next decade of $21.8 trillion. 'I can't envision a scenario where the tariff revenues eliminate the deficit,' said Steve Ellis, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a group that tracks the federal budget. The White House did not respond to a request for comment for this story. How much is the US collecting from Trump tariffs? The federal government has been taking in higher tariff revenues under Trump's more aggressive tariff policies. Currently, the tariffs are a baseline 10 percent for all countries, plus additional tariffs on some products such as steel. Economists say consumers will ultimately swallow much of the tariff increases. Federal tariff revenue tracked by the Penn-Wharton Budget Model shows that, up to July 11, the federal government had collected about $100bn in tariffs so far this year. During the same period in 2024, before Trump took office, the federal government had collected less than $48bn in tariff revenue. In June 2025, the most recent monthly data available, the federal government took in $27bn in tariffs, according to the Treasury Department. A year earlier, that figure was $6bn. That's an increase of $21bn a month because of Trump's trade policies. If the government were to continue collecting tariff revenue at the June 2025 pace for a full decade – 120 months – that would produce $2.52 trillion in tariff revenue. That is in the ballpark of what the CBO published in June. Taking into account the potential economic shrinkage from higher tariffs, such as higher consumer prices, CBO projected that the boost in tariff revenue would reduce total federal deficits by $2.8 trillion over 10 years. How does this tariff revenue compare with the federal deficit? Without adding in the deficits from the bill Trump just signed, CBO's baseline projection for the cumulative deficits over the next 10 years is almost $21.8 trillion. That is about seven times the size of the CBO's projected tariff revenues over the same period. And the projected tariff revenue under Trump would not fully cover the added deficits just from the 'megabill' Trump signed. According to CBO estimates, the law Trump signed on July 4 will raise deficits by $3.4 trillion beyond their previous trajectory over the next 10 years, which exceeds CBO's tariff revenue projection. There is uncertainty about how much tariff revenue Trump's policies will generate, because he has frequently announced and then paused higher tariffs. 'It is hard to know what the end game is,' Ellis said. 'Is it high tariffs to generate revenue, which would reduce economic activity, or is it to rebalance the trade and eventually lower tariffs', and thus their revenue? The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscally hawkish group, has noted that Trump's tariff policies have been challenged in court, and the initial ruling by the Court of International Trade went against the administration. If the initial ruling is upheld on appeal, then Trump would lose his power to unilaterally enact many of the tariffs he has been imposing, and the new tariff revenues now being generated would largely dry up. And even if Trump's tariff powers are upheld on appeal, Trump's successor could reverse them by executive order, meaning any tariff revenues would cover the next four years, not the next 10 years. Our ruling Lutnick said tariffs are 'going to pay off our deficit'. Trump's on-again, off-again pattern for implementing tariffs makes estimates tricky. But two projections show that the Trump administration's tariff revenues would not cover the next 10 years of projected deficits. The CBO said it expects tariff revenues to reach $2.8 trillion over the next 10 years, while a back-of-the-envelope calculation based on the tariffs collected in June 2025 would reach $2.52 trillion. Both sums are only a fraction of the nearly $22 trillion in cumulative deficits projected over the next 10 years. We rate the statement False.
Al Jazeera
6 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Cyber kidnapping scams target Chinese international students
101 East investigates cyber kidnappings – a growing online scam targeting Chinese international students. A disturbing 'cyber kidnapping' scam is targeting Chinese students around the world, forcing them to fake their own abductions for ransom. In December 2023, 17-year-old Chinese student Kai Zhuang disappeared in the United States. His family received ransom demands and a photo of him in distress. Days later, he was found hiding in Utah's mountains. Four months earlier, a 22-year-old female student was reported missing in Australia, with her family receiving photos of her bound and bloodied. She was found unharmed within 24 hours. 101 East investigates how cyber criminals use sophisticated methods to coerce Chinese international students into staging kidnappings.
