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United States President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to target US universities that are hubs of student protests, from even before his election in November.

Since he was sworn in on January 20, he has taken steps to back his plans, including executive orders. On Monday, he launched a new tirade, threatening to halt federal funding for schools, colleges, and universities if they allow “illegal protests”.

Trump took to his Truth Social platform to deliver his newest threat, one that includes a promise to imprison “agitators”.

“Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested,” Trump wrote.

But who is he targeting, what has Trump done so far, can he compel universities to act against student protesters, and how might higher education institutions respond?

Who are the intended targets?

US Ambassador to the UN Elise Stefanik shared Trump’s remarks in a post on X, saying “antisemitism and anti-Israel hate will not be tolerated on American campuses”, confirming that pro-Palestinian protesters and speech critical of Israel are the targets of the president’s threat.

Under President @realDonaldTrump, colleges and universities will be held accountable. Antisemitism and anti-Israel hate will not be tolerated on American campuses. Promises made, promises kept. @POTUS @realDonaldTrump @WhiteHouse pic.twitter.com/h9nq1gVJRO

Trump’s announcement comes after he signed a series of executive orders in January targeting alleged anti-Semitism on campuses.

In one directive, he pledged to deport foreign university students and staff involved in pro-Palestinian protests as part of the crackdown.

He also created a task force through the Attorney General’s office devoted to combating alleged anti-Semitic speech, investigating universities that do not do enough to crack down on such speech.

The orders and threats come months after huge pro-Palestine, student-led protests swept the country last spring as Israel’s genocide raged in Gaza. Students demanded an end to Israel’s military offensive, an end to US support for Israel, and for their universities to divest from companies with ties to Israel.

Columbia University was widely seen as the epicentre of the protests, which resulted in mass arrests and student suspensions, ending in the resignation of the university’s president, Minouche Shafik, several months later.

The demonstrations also spread to other universities including Harvard, Yale, and the University of California.

Can Trump legally compel universities to stop protests?

“It’s complicated,” said Jenin Younis, a civil liberties and free speech lawyer.

“It’s hard to say that the tweet itself is unlawful, since it alone isn’t enforceable,” Younis told Al Jazeera of Trump’s latest post threatening funding. “So, it depends how the administration executes this particular threat, and it has not yet given details.”

Radhika Sainath, a senior lawyer at Palestine Legal, a US-based nonprofit, said the executive orders aren’t binding rules for universities to follow.

“This executive order sets up a framework to encourage – but not require – schools to spy on and report their non-citizen students and staff,” Sainath told Al Jazeera. “As far as we can tell, these will be non-binding guidelines with no enforcement power or pressure.”

Still, Trump’s directives are extremely concerning, experts said.

“The strength of these orders lies in their chilling effect,” Younes said, adding they are clearly intended to silence First Amendment-protected speech.

Fearing consequences, some universities may voluntarily clamp down on speech they believe will subject them to funding cuts, she said, and pressure students and professors alike into silence.

Universities received $60bn in funding for research and development in 2023, constituting 55 percent of their total budget for science and engineering research.

According to Sainath, this is the “most significant escalation in McCarthyite tactics from the Executive Branch regarding Palestine since October 7, [2023]”.

Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, director of research for Israel-Palestine at the nonprofit DAWN, says Trump’s threats are a “twisted new form of transnational repression”.

“Restricting free speech and expression by cutting state funds, or more accurately, creating a chilling effect by threatening to do so, is a hallmark of autocratic takeovers,” Omer-Man told Al Jazeera, adding that in his view, such tactics can be “as effective as outlawing unpopular political views outright”.

Were universities targeted under Biden’s administration?

Yes. Universities that witnessed pro-Palestine protests across the country were also targeted in multiple ways under former US President Joe Biden, who was critical of the student encampments.

University heads had tried, and largely failed, to quell the demonstrations, which often saw the police intervening violently, with videos emerging from different states showing hundreds of students and even faculty members being arrested.

In Columbia University, several deans resigned, as well as Shafik, who stepped down as president after she was summoned to a congressional committee over allegations the university had failed to protect students and staff from rising anti-Semitism.

After the questioning, Shafik allowed police into campus to arrest the students and was faced with angry calls to resign.

Trump now appears to be doubling down on targeting universities and students.

He is “escalating the crackdown” on the Palestine movement and attempting to undermine the students’ and staff’s constitutional rights to speak out and organise, Sainath said.

Will the threats work?

Not on protesters, according to the experts.

Omer-Man said the unprecedented support for Palestine on US campuses was “so powerful precisely because students and faculty already faced consequences for speaking out against Israeli apartheid and stood up anyway”.

Students have continued to speak up for Palestine ever since Trump unveiled his executive orders.

Universities, though, are under pressure. This week, Columbia University was forced to reiterate its commitment to “combating antiSemitism” after Trump’s administration said it could pull more than $50m in contracts between the university and the federal government.

A statement by federal agencies cited the school’s “ongoing inaction in the face of relentless harassment of Jewish students”.

However, Omer-Man said young Americans have “never been dissuaded by violent attempts to bury the nation’s conscience”.

Sainath agreed.

“Students – and faculty – are continuing to speak out, often at great personal risk, as people of conscience have done throughout history,” she said. “Their voices are key in ending US support for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, which is why Israel’s supporters are doing everything they can to stop this growing movement.”

How might universities respond?

It might be difficult for universities to legally challenge these executive orders, Younes said.

It could be “easier to challenge them in a specific case”, once the government withholds funds or implements policies pursuant to the executive order, she said.

Sainath said it was important for schools to “stay on the right side of history here – they do not have to cooperate and indeed should not cooperate” with these orders.

Just last week, Israeli troops tore down a Palestinian family’s shed in Masafer Yatta, a remote, hilly corner at the southern edge of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

It was the latest instance of destruction targeting a collection of hamlets whose population is threatened with expulsion.

Over the weekend, Masafer Yatta residents cheered the Oscar win of a documentary, No Other Land, which depicts life in the beleaguered community, and hoped it would bring them some help.

No Other Land follows Palestinian activist Basel Adra, as he risks arrest to document the destruction of Masafer Yatta West Bank, joined by his co-director, Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham.

The joint Palestinian-Israeli production has won a string of international awards, starting at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024. Five years in the making, it gained greater resonance amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza, as well as increasing raids in the West Bank that have caused the displacement of tens of thousands of Palestinians.

In al-Tuwaneh, one of the hamlets that make up Masafer Yatta, Salem Adra said his family stayed up all night for the Oscar ceremony. They watched as his older brother, Basel, the film’s co-director, came on stage to accept the award for the best documentary.

“It was such a huge surprise, such joy”, he said.

Salem said he hoped the Oscar win “opens the world’s eyes to what’s happening here in Masafer Yatta”.

“It’s a win for all of Palestine and for everyone who lives in Masafer Yatta”, he said.

Since the film was first released, he said, threats and pressure against his family have increased. Their car has been stoned by the settlers. After the movie won an award at the Berlin International Film Festival a year ago, the military returned over and over to the family, and once detained his father, searching his phone and asking: “Why are you filming”?

The Israeli military designated Masafer Yatta as a live-fire training zone in the 1980s and ordered residents, mostly Arab Bedouin, to be expelled. Israel said the Bedouin did not have permanent structures in the area. But families say they have lived and herded their sheep and goats across the area long before Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 war.

After a 20-year legal battle by residents, Israel’s Supreme Court upheld the expulsion order in 2022. But about 1, 000 residents have largely remained in place, as Israeli troops regularly demolish homes, tents, water tanks and olive orchards.

Palestinians fear outright expulsion could come at any time.

Basel urged the world to “put an end to the injustice and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people” in his acceptance speech on Sunday night.

Indonesian authorities are using cloud seeding to mitigate heavy rainfall that has caused severe flooding in the capital, Jakarta, and its surrounding areas, killing at least one person and displacing thousands.

The deluge, which began on Monday, has affected Jakarta, home to about 11 million people, along with the neighbouring cities of Bogor, Bekasi, and Tangerang.

Authorities said the rains could persist until March 11 and have taken preemptive measures to reduce further damage.

At least 2, 200 people have been displaced, with some seeking safety on rooftops or using ropes to wade through the rising waters.

Cloud seeding, a technique that involves releasing salt or other chemicals into clouds to trigger rain, aims to steer rainfall away from flood-hit areas or limit the formation of heavier downpours.

The operation is expected to continue until Saturday, focusing on mountainous areas in West Java province, where rainfall often flows into the capital.

“We can’t prevent the rain, that’s impossible, but we can reduce the intensity”, Dwikorita Karnawati, head of Indonesia’s weather agency, told reporters on Tuesday. “We can’t let the clouds get too big, so we will make it come down little by little”.

Rescue teams have deployed rubber boats and relief supplies to the worst-hit areas, evacuating residents or assisting those reluctant to leave their homes.

Zynaida Shelepenko is still bebogged over the events that occurred on Friday at the White House in Kiev, Ukraine.

According to the 52-year-old bank clerk, who spoke with American President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, “They cornered Zelenskyy like two bandits, like two mafiosi who want your money and your humiliation.”

Shelepenko said that because Trump refused to apologize for the spat and that his aborted trip to Washington, DC, “didn’t bring anything positive,” she was not surprised by his decision on Monday night to freeze military aid to Ukraine.

There is a clear winner from these tensions between Washington and Kyiv, who were close allies until Trump came to power, with the president of Ukraine and his US counterpart who has since struck more conciliatory tones.

Who is cheering right now, guys? She referred to Russian President Vladimir Putin as the “vampire,” the Kremlin’s child killer. The most blatant incident in American history occurred.

According to military analyst Mykhailo Zhirokhov, based in Chernihiv, the decision will cause “great financial and legal problems” for US arms manufacturers like Lockheed, which have been ordered to produce weapons for Kyiv.

Washington may stop training Ukrainian pilots and other service members on how to fly F-16 fighter jets and advanced weaponry, as well as providing crucial, real-time intelligence from military satellites to Ukraine.

Zhirokhov told Al Jazeera, “This would be the worst-case scenario.”

In the event that Kyiv runs out of ammunition and weapons within a few months, he said, a diplomatic solution would be best.

The suspension will have a significant impact on Ukraine’s air defense capabilities, particularly in the highly developed, US-made Patriot systems stationed in major cities like Kyiv and Odesa.

The missiles are only made in the US and cost several million dollars, despite Germany and Israel providing the systems and missiles.

Patriots have proven to be the most potent and powerful weapon in the fight against the majority of Russian cruise and ballistic missiles, even those that Putin has described as invincible.

According to Zhirokhov, there will also be a severe shortage of missiles for the Western-supplied F-16 jets and the HIMARS multiple rocket launchers.

According to Kyiv-based analyst Igar Tyshkevych, Trump’s decision has an underlying geopolitical motive despite his reputation as chaotic and unpredictable.

Trump sees Ukraine as a barrier to a looming global dominance conflict with ascending China.

Trump wants Putin to “drag]Moscow] as far as possible” from China by appealing to Moscow and lifting US sanctions against Russia over Ukraine, according to Tyshkevych.

Trump “thinks he has to do it quickly,” he told Al Jazeera. It is of utmost importance to press Ukraine to accept concessions from Russia and a ceasefire, he said.

Ukraine spent “too much time” on debates.

Trump’s strategy resembles the 18th-century divisions of Poland between Russia, Austria, and Prussia, according to a history teacher-turned-soldier.

Poland was a member of an alliance with Lithuania at the time, making up the majority of what is now western and central Ukraine. The Polish parliament’s cumbersome voting system, which allowed each aristocrat to veto decisions on the most contentious issues for months, contributed to the divisions.

According to Anatoly, a 37-year-old serviceman recovering from contusions at a hospital in central Kyiv, “their parliament spent too much time on debates, while Russia and the Germans were improving their armies.”

“Unfortunately, Ukraine too spent too much time on discussions about the destruction of Soviet-era weapons and the resurgence of armed forces,” said Anatoly, who withheld his last name in accordance with wartime protocol.

In exchange for security guarantees from four nuclear powers: Russia, the US, France, and the United Kingdom, Kyiv gave up its entire Soviet-era nuclear arsenal, which is the third-largest in the world.

The West also contributed to the destruction of conventional Soviet weapons, including tanks, artillery, and shells, throughout the 1990s and the early 2000s, while Kyiv paid Moscow for the delivery of its heavy bombers due to the supply of natural gas.

However, according to German University’s Bremen University researcher Nikolay Mitrokhin, the conflict in Washington, DC benefits both sides.

Trump removed tens of billion-dollar commitments, he said, and will likely support US arms manufacturers in making billions from the weapons the European Union will commission for Kyiv.

Trump “paid for it by playing the Northern Hemisphere’s nickname.” He’s grown used to that, Mitrokhin told Al Jazeera.

Zelenskyy’s revival of his fading image as a tireless, fearless hero, according to Mitrokhin, was the most significant benefit.

Zelenskyy will receive a lot more Western military support, according to him, while what appears to be a Gordian knot actually helped shift the EU’s position away from empty declarations.

Every top Ukrainian official dreams about a total lack of external control over his work, Mitrokhin said, adding that Zelenskyy doesn’t have to sign the deal on the real US control over the funds for arming and rebuilding Ukraine.

Because Zelenskyy’s armed forces prevented the fall of Pokrovsk, a crucial eastern city, and even launched counterattacks on the eastern front, he said, he won’t have to hold a presidential election.

Meanwhile, anti-Trump politicians in Germany, France, Canada, and the UK feel constrained by Washington’s efforts to strengthen NATO.

Mitrokhin claimed that the scandal is “a political gift to them.”

Putin will gain political benefits, he said, adding that Trump will be more active without being burdened by Ukraine.

However, the overall perspective is pessimistic.