New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft is pulling his support for Columbia University over the treatment of Jewish students and faculty during pro-Palestinian protests at the campus in New York City.

The announcement by Kraft, a former Columbia student and major donor, adds to pressure on the university, whose president is facing calls by members of Congress to resign.

"I am deeply saddened at the virulent hate that continues to grow on campus and throughout our country," Kraft said in a statement through his Foundation to Combat Antisemitism. "I am no longer confident that Columbia can protect its students and staff and I am not comfortable supporting the university until corrective action is taken."

The businessperson helped kickstart funding for an $11.5 million building with a $3 million donation to construct what would become the Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life in 2000, and he’s donated millions more since.

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President Joe Biden on Monday gave his first public remarks on anti-Israel protests roiling college campuses.

But in condemning the actions of demonstrators who he deemed “antisemitic,” Biden also chastised those who didn’t empathize with the suffering of those in Gaza.

“I condemn the antisemitic protests,” the president told reporters en route back from a speech he had delivered to commemorate Earth Day. “That’s why I have set up a program to deal with that. I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”

Asked a second question about whether Columbia University’s president should resign, Biden said he wasn’t sure. “I will have to find out more about that,” he said.

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Republican Sens. Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley called on President Joe Biden to send the National Guard to Columbia University as pro-Palestinian demonstrations that saw over 100 people arrested last week roil the campus.

The senators issued the appeal for federal action as Monday marks the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover. Over the weekend, a prominent rabbi at the school urged Jewish students to leave the Upper Manhattan campus amid heated protests, and Columbia University announced on Monday that it would hold classes remotely.

Cotton (R-Ark.) blamed Democrats for the protests in a social media post Monday morning, writing that “the radical anti-Israel protestors have always been part of the Democratic Party’s base.”

“The nascent pogroms at Columbia have to stop TODAY, before our Jewish brethren sit for Passover Seder tonight,” Cotton wrote on X. “If Eric Adams won’t send the NYPD and Kathy Hochul won’t send the National Guard, Joe Biden has a duty to take charge and break up these mobs.”

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The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the Biden administration acted legally when it implemented a crackdown on the sale of do-it-yourself “ghost gun” kits.

The justices announced Monday that they will take up a regulation Attorney General Merrick Garland issued in 2022 that sought to consider such kits as firearms so they can’t be used to make untraceable weapons sold without background checks and frequently used in crimes.

The New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s injunction against the rule, concluding that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms appeared to have exceeded its statutory authority when trying to rein in the circulation of ghost guns.

Last August, the Supreme Court voted, 5-4, to allow the Biden administration to implement the regulation while legal challenges to it continued. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberals in granting the federal government’s request to proceed with the rule.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent decades as an environmental lawyer who sued polluters and founded a worldwide movement devoted to protecting waterways.

Now he’s running for president on a climate platform designed to appeal to supporters of both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump — but one that also walks away from some of Kennedy’s own past stances on issues such as fracking.

The independent candidate is staking out some positions well to Biden’s left — such as calling for a permanent ban on natural gas exports. But he criticizes the size of Biden’s mammoth subsidies for green energy, has not committed to keeping the administration rules aimed at cutting greenhouse gas pollution from vehicles and power plants, and hired a communications director who criticized “hysteria” around global warming.

He’s adorning these positions with the kind of anti-big-government, anti-corporate rhetoric and conspiracy theories that flourished among populists of all stripes during the Covid-19 pandemic — including many Trump supporters.

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Joe Biden has largely shied away from lengthy sit downs with national news outlets — but he made an exception for Univision last week.

The interview with the Hispanic media giant wasn’t just a tit-for-tat with Donald Trump, who had appeared on the network months prior. It was an implicit admission from Biden that he has to do more to reach Hispanic voters who have soured on him.

Biden’s campaign is ramping up efforts to reach this highly important group of voters. The campaign has placed ads on ESPN Deportes and LaLiga, to reach Latino voters tuning in to catch soccer games. Both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris conducted a slew of Hispanic media interviews during respective swings out West last month. And the campaign has begun using a new app called Reach to connect with Latino voters.

“I think that Latino voters know how much is at stake,” said Michelle Villegas, the Biden campaign’s Latino engagement director. “But there is an information gap. Our job on this campaign is to reach folks and connect the dots.”

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer should stay out of internal Israeli politics, Israel's president said in an interview Sunday.

"Whilst I respect Charles Schumer for his steadfast support of Israel. I would recommend to American political leaders not to intervene as such in Israeli politics, but leave it to the Israeli public and the body politic to take its own decision," President Isaac Herzog said in an interview with Axel Springer media outlets. POLITICO is owned by Axel Springer.

On March 14, Schumer called for Israel to hold new elections, saying part of the solution for the crises caused by the ongoing Israel-Hamas war would be for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be replaced. “The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after Oct. 7," he said.

Netanyahu subsequently denounced Schumer's call for change. “It’s inappropriate to go to a sister democracy and try to replace the elected leadership there," he said on March 17.

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Donald Trump is spending as much on legal bills as he is on campaigning. Joe Biden, meanwhile, is building a reelection behemoth.

Campaign finance reports filed this week underscored the unusual nature of this campaign: the current president running against his predecessor, who is more preoccupied with his criminal trial than the campaign trail.

Like most incumbent presidents, Biden is outgunning Trump, raising and spending multiple times more than the presumptive GOP nominee, especially with his post-State of the Union ramp-up last month.

But the two aren’t even in the same ballpark. A PAC controlled by Trump spent almost as much on legal bills as his campaign did on anything else — and Biden’s campaign outspent Trump’s by nearly eight-to-one.

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The U.S. is considering sending additional military advisers to the embassy in Kyiv, the latest show of American commitment to Ukraine as Russia appears to be gaining momentum in the two-year conflict.

The advisers would not be in a combat role, but rather would advise and support the Ukrainian government and military, according to Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder.

"Throughout this conflict, the DOD has reviewed and adjusted our presence in-country, as security conditions have evolved. Currently, we are considering sending several additional advisers to augment the Office of Defense Cooperation (ODC) at the Embassy," Ryder said in a statement to POLITICO, noting that "personnel are subject to the same travel restrictions as all embassy employees.

The ODC “performs a variety of advisory and support missions (non-combat), and while it is staffed exclusively by DOD personnel, it is embedded within the U.S. Embassy, under Chief of Mission authority like the rest of the Embassy,” Ryder added.

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By the end of the first week of his criminal trial, Donald Trump had never looked more frustrated.

Confined to a worn, burgundy leather chair for hours on end — without social media to scroll or a throng of associates to entertain him — the former president listened to average New Yorkers give their opinions of him. He weathered admonishments from the bench. He complained at the courthouse about the temperature in the room (“freezing”) and, on Friday, his gag order (“They’re taking away my constitutional rights to speak — and that includes speaking to you,” he said to reporters).

And when he got time away from the courtroom — posing in front of a wall of potato chip bags at a Harlem bodega (“a beautiful place,” he called it) and dining with the Polish president at Trump Tower — Trump still took to posting online about the trial, grumbling on his day off not only about “Stupid Jimmy Kimmel,” but about the jury selection process.

For the first time in months, despite his many legal entanglements in New York and elsewhere, it was Trump, not his opponent, President Joe Biden, who seemed to have been thrown off balance, constrained by a judge’s schedule and gag orders as he whipsawed between the courtroom and the functions of his campaign.

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President Joe Biden will deliver an abortion-focused speech in Florida next week, capitalizing on a looming abortion ban there to make a broader case for reproductive rights.

At a campaign event in Tampa on Tuesday, Biden is expected to tie the 2024 election to access to reproductive rights across the country, a campaign aide confirmed to POLITICO. NBC News first reported Biden’s planned speech.

The Biden campaign has hammered former President Donald Trump over abortion in recent weeks, after Trump announced this month that he would defer to state-level abortion laws. In quick succession, a number of state-level cases put Trump and the GOP on the defensive on the issue. In Arizona, the state Supreme Court reinstated an 1864-era abortion ban, while in Florida, a six-week ban, approved by the state Legislature, will soon go into effect.

Biden’s addressing of abortion head-on is also significant, as the devout Catholic has often displayed discomfort with the issue. Instead, he’s regularly leaned on other messengers, including Vice President Kamala Harris and women who have been directly affected, to argue for abortion rights. His campaign has released several testimonial-style ads that feature women sharing personal stories about abortion.

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Several of the nation's top environmental groups publicly disavowed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., calling the independent presidential candidate and former green group leader a "dangerous conspiracy theorist and science denier" who could pave the way for former President Donald Trump's reelection.

The remarks in a Friday letter amount to a sharp rebuke of Kennedy, who until 2020 led environmental group Waterkeeper Alliance, but whose views casting doubt on the effectiveness of vaccines had long caused a rift with other green organizations.

Kennedy's entry into the presidential race amplified the friction with the environmental movement. Many activists contend Kennedy's candidacy could cost President Joe Biden the White House by drawing young progressive, environmental voters away, helping to reelect Trump, who has vowed to tear down Biden's green policies.

"With so much at stake, we stand united in denouncing RFK Jr.’s false environmentalist claims. We can’t, in good conscience, let him continue co-opting the credibility and successes of our movement for his own personal benefit," the groups wrote in the letter, which was published in The New York Times. "Any support for this Kennedy-in-name-only will inevitably result in a second Trump term and the complete erosion of vital environmental and social gains made to date."

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The Biden administration hopes that staying quiet about Israel’s retaliation against Iran will allow the dangerous moment to pass without escalating into all-out war.

The instruction from within Washington has been to keep mum about Israel’s Friday strikes on Isfahan, three U.S. officials and an Israeli official said, who further noted Israel had yet to comment on the response and that Iran has downplayed the incident. If the chest-beating ends, they hope, so too might the latest Middle Eastern crisis.

“No one wants to escalate things,” said the Israeli official, who like others was granted anonymity to detail the thinking behind the silent approach.

The messaging strategy is illustrated by who declined to comment on Israel’s Friday strike: spokespeople at the National Security Council, the Israeli embassy in the U.S. and the Israel Defense Forces. The only on-record confirmation that Israel was behind the strike has come from Italy’s foreign minister. Antonio Tajani, who was hosting Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a G7 meeting in Capri, said Friday “the United States were informed [at] the last minute” by Israel that it was about to attack. “But there was no involvement on the part of the United States.”

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The Pentagon is preparing to quickly approve a weapons package for Ukraine that includes urgently needed artillery and air defenses as Congress lines up votes to pass additional funding for the country, according to two U.S. officials.

The Biden administration has not made a final decision on how large the tranche would be and what will be in it, said the officials, who were granted anonymity to speak about sensitive internal deliberations. But Defense Department officials are working on putting together a package of U.S. equipment that can move quickly through the bureaucratic process once the legislation passes and is signed by the president, one of the officials said.

“They will have that recommendation to the secretary very quickly, and that gets to the president shortly thereafter,” the official said.

The tranche — which would be only the second the U.S. has sent since running out of funds in December as Congress stalled on the president’s request for additional aid — will include artillery and air defenses to replenish Ukraine’s arsenal, the officials said. The White House approved one emergency package of $300 million last month, using cost savings from previous contracts.

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The Interior Department made a series of moves on Friday putting millions of acres of Alaskan wilderness outside the reach of oil drilling and critical mineral mining, drawing praise from environmental and conservation groups and native tribes while angering Republican lawmakers.

The moves show the Biden administration continuing its efforts to win favor with the environmental voters put off by his administration's approval of the massive Willow oil project in Alaska and its defense of an oil pipeline running through the Strait of Mackinac in Michigan.

But it comes at the expense of angering Alaska's Republican senators, including moderate Sen. Lisa Murkowski who has supported some of the administration's policies and refused to back Biden's opponent in November's presidential race, former President Donald Trump.

Biden said in a statement he was "proud that my Administration is taking action to conserve more than 13 million acres in the Western Arctic and to honor the culture, history, and enduring wisdom of Alaska Natives who have lived on and stewarded these lands since time immemorial."

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According to Donald Trump, he oversaw sky-high economic growth, soaring markets and half-century-low unemployment. Joe Biden says Trump was the first president to preside over a net loss in jobs since Herbert Hoover.

Biden boasts that his own presidency is defined by booming job growth and plunging deficits. Trump says consumers haven’t felt worse in decades, because of inflation.

The weird thing is, they’re both right — about everything.

Voters have the unusual opportunity to choose between two candidates that have already worked in the Oval Office. But the pandemic irreparably garbled data that could act as a point of comparison. Under Trump, the economy added roughly 7 million new jobs, but then shutdowns and panic from Covid pushed more than 22 million people out of work in March and April of 2020 alone. He ultimately ended his term with a net loss of 3 million jobs.

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Speaker Mike Johnson’s sudden bid to deliver aid to Ukraine came days after fresh intelligence described the U.S. ally at a true make-or-break moment in its war with Russia.

It was exactly the kind of dire assessment that President Joe Biden and the White House had spent months privately warning Johnson was inevitable.

The House GOP leader is embracing $60.8 billion in assistance to Ukraine in a push to prevent deep losses on the battlefield, amid warnings that Ukrainians are badly outgunned and losing faith in the U.S. following months of delay in providing new funds.

The intelligence, shown to lawmakers last week and described by two members who have seen it, built on weeks of reports that have alarmed members of Congress and Biden administration officials. On Thursday, CIA Director William Burns warned that, barring more U.S. aid, Ukraine "could lose on the battlefield by the end of 2024."

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After months of tending to foreign policy conflagrations, sticky inflation numbers and various other pop-up crises, the White House is zeroing back in on a key part of its domestic agenda: gun violence.

A new emergency response team will meet in person for the first time on Friday in the Roosevelt Room, where it will unveil a new protocol for responding to mass shootings and surges in community gun violence, according to plans first shared with POLITICO.

Participating in the initiative led by the White House’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention will be officials from the FBI and the departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, Education, and Housing and Urban Development as well as FEMA, AmeriCorps and the Small Business Administration.

The meeting comes during a time of year when the nation has witnessed some of its worst gun tragedies. Saturday is the 25th anniversary of the Columbine shooting, and, in just a few weeks, it will be two years since the mass shooting in a Buffalo supermarket. Soon after that, families in Uvalde, Texas, will mark the second anniversary without their loved ones.

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President Joe Biden’s campaign and Democratic allies, anxiously eyeing third-party threats, are mounting an aggressive effort to neutralize Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The Democratic National Committee has built out a first-of-its-kind unit, hiring staffers specifically dedicated to disabling Kennedy and other third-party candidates. They’ve filed Federal Elections Commission complaints against Kennedy and his allies, while accusing him of being funded by Republican mega donors. Democratic outside groups are also working to dig up dirt on Kennedy and his newly named running mate, Nicole Shanahan, a wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneur and philanthropist.

In the Biden campaign’s latest move, members of the extended Kennedy clan “pledged our unwavering support” to Biden over Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said RFK Jr.’s sister Kerry Kennedy in a speech at a campaign event in Philadelphia on Thursday. So far, the Kennedys, descendents of one of the most beloved Democratic presidents, have largely shunned their family member, some of them calling his campaign “dangerous.”

But the formal endorsement, which featured more than a dozen Kennedy family members, takes that push back a step further.

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