An eruption of campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war has handed Republicans a way to hammer two of their favorite targets: Liberal academia, where pro-Palestinian sentiment has long flourished, and Democratic leaders, who are so far rebuffing calls to roll out the National Guard in response to disruptive demonstrations.

Democratic officials led by the White House on Thursday spurned the politically charged request from House Speaker Mike Johnson to deploy troops to quell the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, turning back the question to governors even as they provided them air cover.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has so far declined to seek federal assistance in the face of the swelling protests, which grew as university officials invited police onto the campus and they made hundreds of arrests.

The intensifying demonstrations have swept across the country, from New York to Texas to California, where administrators at the University of Southern California on Thursday canceled the main commencement ceremony, planned for May 10.

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The New York Times issued a scorching statement on Thursday blasting President Joe Biden for avoiding media interviews as establishing a “dangerous precedent,” as liberals criticized the paper in response to a POLITICO report detailing friction between the Times and the White House.

The Times in a statement called it “troubling” that Biden “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”

The New York Times issued the statement as reporters for the publication also pushed back on the POLITICO story, which detailed the tense relationship between the storied publication and the White House, denying that publisher A.G. Sulzberger shapes coverage.

“[I]n meetings with Vice President Harris and other administration officials, the publisher of The Times focused instead on a higher principle: That systematically avoiding interviews and questions from major news organizations doesn’t just undermine an important norm, it also establishes a dangerous precedent that future presidents can use to avoid scrutiny and accountability,” the statement reads. “That is why Mr. Sulzberger has repeatedly urged the White House to have the president sit down with The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, CNN and other major independent news organizations that millions of Americans rely on to understand their government.”

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The U.S. is putting the finishing touches on one of its largest Ukraine military aid packages to date, preparing to ink contracts for as much as $6 billion worth of weapons and equipment for Kyiv’s forces, according to two U.S. officials.

The package, which could be finalized and announced as soon as Friday, will dip into the $61 billion in Ukraine funding signed into law by President Joe Biden on Wednesday. It would include Patriot air defense munitions, artillery ammunition, drones, counter-drone weapons, and air-to-air missiles to be fitted on fighter planes, according to the two officials and a third person familiar with the planning.

The equipment — which also includes ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems — likely won’t arrive in Ukraine for several years, as the money is being allocated under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. Under USAI, the Pentagon issues contracts to American defense firms to build new equipment for Ukraine, as opposed to drawing from current U.S. stocks.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is expected to announce the new aid during a virtual meeting on Friday of the 50-plus nations that make up the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. It will be a big boost after the U.S. was forced to show up empty-handed for the monthly gathering for months while the funding was stalled in Congress.

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Second gentleman Doug Emhoff held private calls with two Jewish community leaders at Columbia University earlier this week, as the college grappled with its response to pro-Palestinian protests on campus.

The calls with Rabbi Elie Buechler, who directs the school’s Orthodox Union-Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus, and Brian Cohen, executive director of Columbia’s chapter of Hillel, focused largely on addressing antisemitism, a White House official said.

“The Second Gentleman recognized that while every American has the right to freedom of speech and to protest peacefully, hate speech and calls for violence against Jews is both antisemitic and unacceptable,” said the official, who was granted anonymity to describe private conversations.

Emhoff, the nation’s most prominent Jewish official, also emphasized that “no student should feel unsafe on campus and offered his support on behalf of the Administration."

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The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday revived Obama-era net neutrality rules, setting up another clash with the telecom industry and Republicans.

Key details
The 3-2 vote along partisan lines is a victory for Democrats, who have pushed for this type of regulation for the last two decades and say it’s necessary for consumer protection, fair competition and national security.

The rules, which prevent broadband providers from blocking and throttling consumers’ internet traffic, were repealed in 2017 during the Trump era. The order also reclassifies broadband as a telecom service, as the 2015 rules did, expanding the agency’s authority to regulate internet networks. An earlier version of the rules was struck down by a court in 2014.

“I think in a modern digital economy we should have a national net neutrality policy and make clear the nation’s expert on communications has the ability to act when it comes to broadband,” FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said ahead of the vote. “In our post-pandemic world, we know that broadband is a necessity, not a luxury.”

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President Joe Biden’s hot streak of success on the economy hit an unexpected detour Thursday, as a government report showed growth was slower than forecast and prices higher.

GDP grew at a 1.6 percent pace in the first three months of the year — less than half the pace of the previous quarter and far slower than economists had predicted — with a particular drag coming from the trade deficit as a strong dollar hurt exports.

The report comes as the Federal Reserve is actively trying to slow the economy in its bid to tame price spikes, but a potentially troubling trend is that progress toward the central bank’s 2 percent inflation target has also stalled after making considerable headway in 2023. That bolsters the case for the Fed to hold off on interest rate cuts, keeping pressure on the economy, and also gives Republicans a fresh talking point in an election year.

The big question now is what this report suggests will happen going forward. The worst-case scenario for Biden would be for the economy to continue to slow while inflation stays elevated — a phenomenon known as stagflation. Based on Thursday’s snapshot of the economy, that looks like a possibility, given that inflation, as measured by the personal consumption expenditures index, rose 3.7 percent in the first quarter even as GDP growth slowed.

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Vice President Kamala Harris will hold a roundtable discussion on criminal justice reform with reality TV star and businesswoman Kim Kardashian, three people familiar with the Thursday gathering told POLITICO.

The event, which will take place at the White House, will feature four people who received clemency from the Biden administration yesterday, all of whom were convicted of nonviolent offenses.

“During her remarks, the Vice President will announce the finalization of a Small Business Administration rule that will remove most restrictions on loan eligibility that are based on the person’s criminal record,” said a White House official, who like the others was granted anonymity to discuss internal matters.

Kardashian became a proponent of criminal justice reform during former President Donald Trump’s administration when she visited the White House to push for several pardons and advocate for criminal justice legislation. Her star power lent credence to that cause but her proximity to Trump sparked some blowback among those critical of the former president’s broader record.

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When news broke one Saturday night in March 2023 that President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Federal Aviation Administration was withdrawing, Mark Walker was the reporter on duty in the New York Times Washington bureau. Assigned to write up the news, Walker asked the White House for a comment just before midnight. Assistant press secretary Abdullah Hasan was still up and emailed a quote blaming the withdrawal on a barrage of “unfounded Republican attacks.” After going through edits, Walker’s 502-word story was posted on the Times’ website in the wee hours Sunday morning.

Then all hell broke loose.

Hasan, who has since left the White House, had offered the quote to Walker on background sourced to “an administration official.” Walker, not a member of the Times’ White House team, was unfamiliar with the protocol and had made an unintended mistake and attributed the quote to Hasan. When officials in the press shop called him Sunday morning about the mistake, they asked to speak with White House Editor Elizabeth Kennedy. But the number he gave them was the cell phone of Elisabeth Bumiller, the Times Washington bureau chief.

Bumiller, who was away from Washington visiting family, received a call from Emilie Simons, a White House deputy press secretary who had actually written the statement. According to three people familiar with the conversation, Simons asked that Hasan’s name be removed and the quote attributed to a nameless official. Bumiller, who expressed dismay that the issue had been escalated to her level, was reluctant to alter a story that had already been online for over 12 hours.

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President Joe Biden’s administration issued rules Thursday ordering power companies to cut pollution from coal plants — a major plank in his efforts to fight climate change, amid complaints from progressive green voters who say he’s done too little to curb fossil fuels.

The rules from the Environmental Protection Agency build on the administration’s long list of climate-fighting policies and are certain to draw opposition from the coal industry and Republicans. But the bigger challenge for Biden will hinge on whether they will appease progressive voters worried about climate change without losing centrist Democrats wary of the costs of his transition to clean energy.

Biden is likely to need a strong turnout among young, climate-focused voters to beat former President Donald Trump in the November election, but many of the progressives who helped send him to the White House in 2020 have expressed frustration at his approval of several high-profile oil and gas projects. Many of those young activists have also voiced anger at the president’s handling of the war in Gaza, an issue boiling over this week with escalating protests on some college campuses.

“Biden can’t create green jobs on Monday, on Tuesday approve a big oil export project, and then expect young people to turn out in the numbers that he needs us to,” said Stevie O’Hanlon, spokesperson for the youth climate group Sunrise Movement.

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President Joe Biden and Speaker Mike Johnson built an unlikely working relationship in recent months — a partnership that handed Biden a pivotal foreign policy victory and surprised much of Washington, which assumed nothing at all would get done.

But that relationship remains one of convenience. And as congressional Democrats debate whether to prop up Johnson’s speakership amid threats from Republicans looking to oust him, Biden is signaling that he’s going to stay out of it.

The White House will instead leave it up to House Democratic leaders to determine whether to rescue Johnson or let Republicans once again devour their own and pitch the chamber back into chaos.

Within the West Wing, the prevailing belief is that Biden has already gotten everything he could have asked for from Johnson’s brief time as speaker — and that, even if he felt compelled to pay him back, any involvement in a high-stakes speakership fight would hurt, not help.

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California Sen. Laphonza Butler urged President Joe Biden on Wednesday to consider the fate of thousands of U.S. employees of TikTok hours after he signed legislation that will force a sale of the app or ban it from the U.S.

The forced divestiture of TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, was part of a legislative package that included military aid to Ukraine. It passed the Senate in a 79-18 vote, which included support from Butler.

Butler, a former labor leader appointed in October by Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill the seat of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, said the administration should weigh the consequences of the legislation on the company’s approximately 8,000 workers, who are mostly in California and New York.

“Their employment and the livelihoods of their families hang in the balance,” she wrote.

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NEW YORK — Speaker Mike Johnson said he will call Joe Biden and demand the president send the National Guard to Columbia University — an escalation after protesters constantly shouted him and other Republicans down during a visit to the campus Wednesday.

Johnson, flanked by GOP lawmakers from New York and elsewhere, repeated his calls for the university’s embattled president to step down. But protesters shouted “who are you people?” "Mike, you suck!" and chanted “free Palestine,” making it almost impossible for the gaggle of reporters and others to hear the speaker.

“This is dangerous. This is not the First Amendment, this is not free expression,” Johnson said.

He later added: “If this is not contained quickly and if these threats and intimidation are not stopped, there is an appropriate time for the National Guard.”

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Police arresting students. Helicopters buzzing over New York City. Demonstrators shouting and lawmakers condemning university officials.

Videos of the campus protests, shared widely on TikTok, X and elsewhere, are spreading on social media and show the most visceral aspects of the demonstrations. Much like the war in the Middle East itself, the images can inform and inflame viewers — and serve as a reminder that in the modern age, videos spread on social media can shape public opinion.

Videos from New York show tension spilling off campus

Aerial videos shot from above the city show hundreds of students have set up an encampment on Columbia’s campus, including dozens of tents where they have been sleeping and eating for a week. New York University had an encampment of its own but it was cleared out by police on Monday night. Students say the demonstrations are to show their support for Palestinians in Gaza and to pressure their universities to “divest all economic and academic stakes in Israel.”

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Despite the time and political capital spent on the $60 billion aid for Ukraine, some Biden administration officials are skeptical it’s enough for Ukraine to win its two-year war with Russia.

Battlefield dynamics have shifted a lot in the last few months, partly because Ukraine ran low on weaponry and ammunition while Congress debated authorizing more aid, according to three U.S. officials, all granted anonymity to detail sensitive internal thinking. During that period, Ukraine struggled to maintain eastern territory, though Russia didn’t make significant gains, either.

Russia maintains a manpower and weapons advantage, and it would take a lot to reverse months and years of territorial losses. U.S. officials also ask questions about Ukraine’s own tactics and priorities, especially after Kyiv’s counteroffensive failed, sapping forces of materiel and morale.

“The immediate goal is to stop Ukrainian losses and help Ukraine regain momentum and turn the tide on the battlefield. After that, the goal is to help Ukraine begin to regain its territory,” said one of the officials. “Will they have what they need to win? Ultimately, yes. But it’s not a guarantee that they will. Military operations are much more complicated than that.”

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The Biden administration last month secretly shipped long-range missiles to Ukraine for the first time in the two-year war — and Kyiv has already used the weapon twice to strike deep behind Russian lines.

In March, the U.S. quietly approved the transfer of a number of Army Tactical Missile Systems with a range of nearly 200 miles, said a senior Biden administration official and two U.S. officials, allowing President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s forces to put at risk more Russian targets inside Ukrainian sovereign territory.

The administration will include additional long-range ATACMS in a new $1 billion package of military aid President Joe Biden approved on Wednesday, one of the U.S. officials said.

The provision of the long-range version of the ATACMS ends a lengthy drama in which Ukraine clamored for years to receive the weapon, driving a wedge between Washington and Kyiv. The U.S. quietly sent the medium-range version of the missile in October, but Ukraine continued to press for a weapon that would allow it to strike farther behind Russia’s lines.

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President Joe Biden on Wednesday praised passage of the long-awaited $95 billion aid bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and pledged that the money would quickly move to its intended destinations.

Speaking hours after the conclusion of months of a painstaking congressional standoff, the president was both celebratory and stern. He argued that the bill should have been done sooner and warned about what could have happened had it not passed at all.

He also said that the fresh aid reaffirmed America’s support of Ukraine, highlighting the threats facing Kyiv. The U.S., he added, will begin sending the first shipment of equipment, including air defense munitions, artillery, rocket systems and armored vehicles, in “a few hours.”

Biden also said the bill included “vital” support for Israel, noting that its passage comes less than two weeks after Iran launched an unsuccessful attack on the country. But he added that the bill will also increase humanitarian assistance to the “innocent people of Gaza,” warning that Israel must ensure the support reaches Palestinians without delay.

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President Joe Biden signed a bill Wednesday forcing TikTok to find a new owner within a year or face a ban — setting the course for what’s likely to be a drawn-out legal battle with potential political costs for the president.

His endorsement capped a nearly four-year effort spanning two administrations to cut off China’s access to the video app used by 170 million Americans.

The Senate voted Tuesday to pass the TikTok bill as part of a broader foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

A coming battle: "This unconstitutional law is a TikTok ban, and we will challenge it in court,” TikTok said in a statement after the president signed the bill. The company claims it violates the First Amendment rights of its users.

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The battle for the House will be determined by a smaller number of races than it has in at least the past two decades.

There are roughly 30 truly competitive seats, split about evenly between Democratic and Republican-held districts, according to a POLITICO analysis based on fundraising data, candidate recruitment and interviews with a dozen party strategists, incumbents and challengers.

And with just over six months until Election Day, neither Democrats nor Republicans have a clear edge in the fight for control of the chamber. Anyone expecting either party to emerge from 2024 with a significant and easier-to-govern majority should think again.

“Both sides know that it's gonna be an incredibly close election,” said Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a former House GOP campaign chair. “Post-redistricting and with all the polarization in the country, both sides have a pretty high floor. Both sides have a pretty low ceiling. So I don't think we'll see majorities in the 240s and 50s.”

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The Biden administration is preparing a roughly $1 billion package of military aid for Ukraine, as the Senate is poised to pass a bill to provide urgently needed funding for Kyiv, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.

The tranche will include artillery, air defenses and armored vehicles — Bradley Fighting Vehicles, as well as potentially older Humvees and M113 armored personnel carriers POLITICO first reported on Monday. The Pentagon is still putting the finishing touches on the package, but the total will be roughly $1 billion, said the people, one of whom is a U.S. official. Both were granted anonymity to speak ahead of an announcement.

The package the U.S. is working on is significantly larger than the most recent tranche of weapons authorized for Ukraine in March, which totaled $300 million. That was only the second package the Defense Department was able to send Kyiv since December, when it ran out of funding to support the war effort.

The Senate put its recess on hold to vote Tuesday to begin votes on legislation that would provide $95 billion for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan in total.

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Student Gaza solidarity protests are engulfing some of the nation’s top colleges as university presidents, U.S. lawmakers and even President Joe Biden struggle to quell the growing unrest amid fierce partisan blowback.

The protests, which began against the backdrop of Columbia University’s prominent campus lawn last week but in the past two days began to extend into New York City and spread to colleges across the country, are upending the final weeks of the spring semester as leaders scramble to respond.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams was scheduled to meet with college administrators Tuesday to share best practices, including using security personnel to ensure individuals who don’t attend their schools do not enter campus, as Columbia and New York University students planned demonstrations outside their campus borders.

“We should address this when it is just a spark,” Adams told reporters during an unrelated press conference Tuesday. “Let’s not wait until it’s a blazing fire.”

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