Category News

The US president claims that the country will be protected from space-based missile threats.

In Washington, DC, the country’s capital, federal prosecutors have charged a man who is accused of fatally shooting two Israeli embassy employees.

Elias Rodriguez was charged with two counts of first-degree murder on Thursday in federal court, as well as with murdering foreign officials, causing death with a gun, and aggravated assault with a weapon.

In a subsequent press conference, interim US Attorney Jeanine Pirro warned that the prosecution was looking through evidence for additional crimes and that those charges were only the start.

Pirro said, “This is a horrific crime, and I and this office will not tolerate these crimes,” Pirro continued.

“We will continue to look into this as a hate crime and a terrorism crime, and we will add more charges as the evidence warrants.”

Rodriguez is accused of shooting American employee Sarah Milgrim and Israeli citizen Yaron Lischinsky at the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC.

The two employees were leaving an event hosted by the pro-Israel American Jewish Committee at the Capital Jewish Museum on Wednesday evening at 9:08 PM Eastern time (01:08 GMT Thursday). At the scene, both were declared dead.

The young couple’s engagement is scheduled for the upcoming days, according to Israeli Embassy staff.

A young couple was about to get engaged in a foreign country when their bodies were taken from their bodies in a body bag in the dead of night. Pirro appeared to primarily make reference to Lischinsky’s foreign roots, saying, “We are not going to tolerate that anymore.”

Because these kinds of incidents remind us of past events that we can never and must never forget, this kind of case picks at old sores and scars.

One of Washington’s oldest synagogues, in the city’s heartland, is located next to the museum, so she made note of the attack on Wednesday night.

According to Pamela Smith, the suspect chanted “Free Palestine! ” to the Washington Metropolitan Police. “Free Palestine” following the incident. Rodriguez, who was originally from Chicago, appeared to have made an appearance and was taken into custody shortly after the shooting.

Rodriguez claimed in an affidavit that Rodriguez “did it for Palestine.” For Gaza, I did it.

Israel’s war against Gaza, where millions of Palestinians have been left without basic food and supplies, is drawing international condemnation as a result of the shooting.

At least 53, 000 people have been killed in the war, according to experts from human rights organizations and the UN.

Jewish, Muslim, and Arab communities have all reported increases in harassment and racism since the war started on October 7, 2023.

Officials on Wednesday protested anti-Semitism, and President Donald Trump’s administration pledged to pursue the suspect in every legal way.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated on Thursday that the Department of Justice would pursue the perpetrator of this offense to the fullest extent permitted by the law. Under President Donald Trump, “Hatred has no place in the United States of America.”

She then compared “anti-Semitic illegal behavior” to anti-war protests at US universities, which have been largely peaceful. However, pro-Jewish hatred has been largely disapproved by protest leaders.

One US Congressman claimed that the “Palestinian cause” was “vil” after the shooting. Randy Fine, the representative from the republic of Virginia, continued to advocate that the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan should end with World War II.

He claimed that “we nuked the Japanese twice to secure an unconditional surrender.” “That needs to be the same here,” he said. This culture needs to be eradicated because something is fundamentally, fundamentally wrong with it.

The Israeli government also referred to the shooting as an attack on its state.

The administration of President Donald Trump has taken a hard line against top US universities over their responses to pro-Palestine protests, as well as their diversity initiatives and curricula.

The move on Thursday to block Harvard University from enrolling foreign students represents the latest escalation in a months-long standoff, which critics say has been rooted in unfounded claims of rampant anti-Semitism.

In a statement, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the administration was “holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus”.

Harvard has called the latest move “unlawful” and a “retaliatory action”.

Here’s how we got here:

December 2023: The standoff stretches back to the months following the October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, and the resulting Israeli offensive on Gaza, in which at least 53,655 Palestinians have since been killed.

Then-Harvard President Claudine Gay’s testimony before Congress on the administration’s response to pro-Palestine protests sparks outrage, as elected officials, particularly Republicans, call for greater crackdowns.

Gay subsequently resigns from her post and is replaced by Alan Garber in August 2024.

January 2025: Trump takes office in January 2025, following a campaign where he vowed to crack down on pro-Palestine protests, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes, and “woke ideology” on college campuses.

Trump also signs a series of executive orders calling for government agencies to take actions against DEI programmes at private institutions, including universities, and to increase government actions to combat anti-Semitism, particularly on campuses.

February 2025: The US Department of Justice (DOJ) launches a task force to “root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses”.

The task force later announces it will visit 10 schools, saying it was “aware of allegations that the schools may have failed to protect Jewish students and faculty members from unlawful discrimination, in potential violation of federal law”.

The schools include Harvard, as well as Columbia University, George Washington University, Johns Hopkins University, New York University, Northwestern University, the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Southern California.

March 7, 2025: The Trump administration takes its first action against a US university, slashing $400m in federal funding to Columbia University and accusing the school of “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students”.

A subsequent letter from the Department of Education warns Harvard and dozens of other universities of “potential enforcement actions”.

March 21, 2025: Columbia yields to Trump’s demands, which include banning face masks, empowering campus police with arresting authority, and installing a new administrator to oversee the department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies and the Center for Palestine Studies.

March 31, 2025: The US Departments of Education (ED), Health and Human Services (HHS), and the US General Services Administration (GSA) announce an official review of $255.6m in Harvard contracts and $8.7bn in multi-year grants.

The review is part of the “ongoing efforts of the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism”, the statement said.

April 11, 2025: Harvard is sent a letter saying the university has “failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment” and listing several Trump administration demands.

The demands include a governance overhaul that lessens the power of students and some staff, reforming hiring and admissions practices, refusing to admit students deemed “hostile to the American values and institutions”, doing away with diversity programmes, and auditing several academic programmes and centres, including several related to the Middle East.

April 14, 2025: Harvard President Garber issues a forceful rejection of the demands, writing: “The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights”.

The US administration announces an immediate freeze on funding, including $2.2bn in multi-year grants and $60m in multi-year contracts.

April 15, 2025: In a Truth Social post, Trump floats that Harvard could lose “Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity”. He accuses Harvard of “pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness’”.

April 16, 2025: The Department of Homeland Security calls on Harvard to turn over records on any foreign students’ “illegal and violent activities”, while threatening to revoke the university’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program approval. The certification is required for it to enrol foreign students. Noem gives an April 30 deadline for this.

April 21, 2025: Harvard files a lawsuit against the Trump administration, accusing it of violating the First Amendment of the US Constitution with “arbitrary and capricious” funding cuts.

April 30, 2025: Harvard says it shared information requested by Noem regarding foreign students, but does not release the nature of the information provided.

May 2, 2025: Trump again says the administration will take away Harvard’s tax-exempt status. No action is immediately taken.

May 5, 2025: The Trump administration says it is cutting all new federal grants to Harvard.

May 13, 2025: The US Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism announces another $450m in federal funding from eight federal agencies.

May 19, 2025: The DOJ announces it will use the False Claims Act, typically used to punish federal funding recipients accused of corruption, to crack down on universities like Harvard over DEI policies. The Department of Health and Human Services also says it is terminating $60m in federal grants to Harvard.

May 22, 2025: Noem announces revocation of Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program, blocking it from enrolling new foreign students and saying current students will need to transfer to continue their studies.