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Pro-Palestinian student demonstrations and encampments have popped up at dozens of US universities in recent weeks. Columbia University – where protests began – and other elite schools in the Northeast have grabbed plenty of headlines, but where they are facing the harshest pushback – and could ultimately help Republicans win back the White House – is in the South.
Last Thursday at Georgia’s Emory University, officers used tasers and pepper balls to arrest 40 peaceful protesters who had set up an encampment on the school’s football fields just hours before. Afterward, Georgia state Rep. Mike Collins, posted on X: “Not sure what y’all are doing up north, but we don’t give them the time to encamp. Tazers set to stun!”
As word got out that protesters were planning to occupy a lawn on UT Austin’s campus last Wednesday, Gov. Greg Abbott immediately called in more than 100 state troopers. Police pushed students to the ground and arrested 57 of them on trespassing charges. Then, on Monday, 100 more were detained during a second protest. All those arrested have been ordered released due to “deficiencies in probable cause,” but Abbott showed no remorse, posting “these protesters belong in jail,” on X.
That same pattern, of protests quickly resulting in mass arrests to the applause of Republicans, has been seen from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to Virginia Tech. And while politicians on both sides of the aisle have criticized instances of antisemitism at the protests, the GOP is seizing on the demonstrations as symbols of leftist chaos.
As Donald Trump’s trial opened last week, a cast of right-wing provocateurs showed up outside the court in New York City to protest. But as the protests at Columbia erupted, those same Republican figures – including far-right activist Laura Loomer – headed uptown to oppose the demonstrations outside the university gates. Prominent Republicans like House Speaker Mike Johnson, Reps. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, and Mike Lawler, of New York, joined them on campus to condemn the protests and announce their bill, the Antisemitism Awareness Act, mandating that the Education Department adopt the broad definition of antisemitism and enforce anti-discrimination laws. The House will vote on the bill today.
“Republicans are gleefully positioning themselves to be the 'law and order' party this November,” says Eurasia Group’s US Managing Director Jon Leiber. “I would expect that any continued demonstrations on liberal college campuses when schools come back in the fall will be used in service of a narrative that Democrats are the party of chaos.”
And for Democrats, the students demonstrating are a physical embodiment of the way their base has been divided by the war in Gaza. They draw attention to the fact that many young and progressive voters disapprove of Joe Biden’s continued support of Israel in a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.The Biden admin. says it’s high time to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, and it wants to knock it from Schedule I to Schedule III — meaning it would no longer be grouped with heroin and LSD.
Schedule I drugs are considered those with “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” while Schedule III are defined as drugs “with a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence.”
Reclassifying marijuana won’t legalize it at the federal level, but it would mean that the US government recognizes the potential medical benefits of cannabis for the first time. This could boost access to medical marijuana, make legal weed businesses eligible for tax breaks, and open the door for more research on pot.
The Office of Management and Budget still has to review the move, among other steps, before it becomes a reality. But once finalized, it could help boost President Joe Biden’s approval rating. Polling shows that a majority of Americans, particularly young Americans, support legalizing marijuana. As things stand, 24 states and Washington, DC, have already legalized recreational marijuana.With the US still trying, in vain, to negotiate a cease-fire in Gaza, China stepped into the fray with some olive branches of its own this week, hosting Fatah and Hamas, the rival Palestinian factions, for reconciliation talks in Beijing.
The backdrop: The secular nationalists of Fatah, who recognize Israel, and the Islamists of Hamas, who don’t, have long vied for control of the Palestinian movement. After Hamas won the 2006 elections, a brief civil war left Hamas in control of Gaza and Fatah running the West Bank.
What’s China’s angle? Beijing, already a global economic power, wants to cut a larger figure in diplomacy, cultivating an image as a more honest broker than the US, with closer ties to the so-called “Global South.” Last year, for example, Beijing delivered a détente between bitter enemies Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Not so fast. China is looking to foster intra-Palestinian accords here, not a broader peace deal. And it may be that Beijing is, for now, perfectly happy to see the US tied down by the Gaza war anyway.
But by creating conditions for a smaller resolution within Palestine, Beijing could be eyeing a larger role down the road.
300: A Houthi drone launched from Yemen last Friday struck the MSC Orion, a cargo vessel transiting the Indian Ocean, over 300 nautical miles away from the Red Sea, where Houthis have constrained their attacks until now. Striking targets in the Indian Ocean presents a serious escalation, and experts told the Guardian that ships linked to Israel, the US, or the UK would likely need to be rerouted even further from normal shipping lanes to stay safe.
58: A 58% majority of Americans said they believe China is using the social video-sharing app TikTok to “influence American public opinion,” according to a new poll from Reuters and Ipsos. The same poll found that a slim 50% majority also supported banning the app, which the Biden administration may do if parent company ByteDance can’t find a buyer.
3: An unknown perpetrator hurled three firebombs into Warsaw’s main synagogue Tuesday night, drawing major condemnations from Polish political figures but causing little damage. Before the Holocaust, Poland had Europe’s largest Jewish population, over three million, which was so thoroughly expelled or exterminated by the Nazis that today the country has only a few thousand practicing Jews.
30: A Moscow exhibition is displaying over 30 pieces of Western military equipment captured on the battlefield in Ukraine, including an American M1 Abrams tank, a German Leopard 2, and a French AMX-10RC. The Russian government is using the exhibition to show that “the West destroys peace on the planet,” according to Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova.Haiti’s transitional council unexpectedly elected obscure former Sports Minister Fritz Bélizaire as prime minister on Tuesday, dividing the council 4 to 3. Gangs, meanwhile, threaten chaos if they are excluded from government.
Didn’t Haiti just get a new PM? Yes, Michel Patrick Boisvert, the well-known finance minister briefly took the premiership after Ariel Henry stepped down last week.
The appointment of Bélizaire came as a surprise, with four of the transitional council’s seven voting members suddenly revealing their consensus. The new PM has not held any political office in over a decade, and Leslie Voltaire, one of the council members, told the Guardian “I don’t know him.”
Some believe Voltaire’s appointment was orchestrated by former Senator Jean-Charles Moïse. Moïse had to be persuaded to join the council while he also flirted with an alternative transition plan proposed by former coup leader and convicted drug trafficker Guy Philippe. Appointing a nobody like Bélizaire could leave Moïse in a position to call shots.
What about the gangs? All the politicking feels farcical in the face of facts on the ground. The council was sworn in secretly last month as powerful coalitions of armed gangs hold most of the capital, Port-au-Prince. They’ve already toppled one government, and warlord Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier threatened to do it again if they aren’t brought in: “Either we are all at the table, or the table gets destroyed with all of us,” he said.
Last Wednesday, as part of the sweeping foreign-aid package that included much-neededfunding for Ukraine’s defense, President Joe Biden signed into law a bill requiring that TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, sell the popular video-sharing app to an American buyer within a year or face a ban in the United States.
As Iwrote a little over a year ago, I think this is a close call but the right move. TikTok is ultimately beholden to the Chinese government, an authoritarian state-capitalist regime locked in an increasingly adversarial strategic competition with the US. As intelligence agencies have warned, the platform poses a national security vulnerability because Beijing can commandeer it to surveil and manipulate Americans. No remedies or assurances to the contrary can mitigate that risk short of a Chinese divestment or an outright ban.
Most importantly, the Chinese Communist Party already bans all US social media apps under the guise of national security. TikTok itself is banned in China, where ByteDance is only allowed to operate a heavily censored version for domestic users. In my ideal world, this would be an area for US-China competition rather than confrontation. Alas, the CCP isn’t taking down its so-called Great Firewall anytime soon, so I see the US divestment/ban order as a fair and reciprocal response that will protect not only US national security but also American social media companies from their most formidable competitor.
Why now?
TikTok has long drawn political condemnation from both sides of the aisle, especially in the fractious House, where hostility to China is the only reliable area of bipartisan agreement. And yet, over the past three years, the viral Chinese social media platform survived effort after effort to bring it to heel, including a forced divestiture order in 2020 under then-President Donald Trump, a near-pass RESTRICT Act, and a struck-down ban in Montana. Through it all, its reach has continued to grow unabated.
But TikTok’s luck has just about run out. And as strange as it may sound, it had little to do with a change in the US-China relationship and everything to do with … the Gaza war.
Since Oct. 7, many Americans’ TikTok feeds have become awash in anti-Israeli and, in a lot of cases, antisemitic content. This isn’t entirely surprising – after all, by virtue of their demographics (young, non-Western, Muslim), TikTok creators and users are far more likely to hold pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli, and antisemitic views than their Instagram or X counterparts. But beyond this organic bias, there’s also reasonably suggestive evidence that TikTok’s algorithm and moderation rules have artificially suppressed pro-Israeli content and amplified pro-Palestinian and antisemitic sentiment. This is consistent with otherstudies that show ByteDance shapes the feed’s content in accordance with the Chinese Communist Party’s policy goals.
After trying and failing to convince TikTok CEO Shou Chew to change course, a small but motivated group of wealthy and politically connected Jewish and Israeli Americans bootstrapped a PR and lobbying campaign that ultimately managed to achieve what years of anti-China efforts couldn’t.
Congress was already primed to do something/anything on antisemitism and show support for Israel; beating up on Beijing just was the cherry on top. House Speaker Mike Johnson figured he could use the TikTok divestment provision as a sweetener to get the foreign assistance package over the line with his members, knowing the prospect of finally passing Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan aid would be enough to overcome tepid Senate opposition to the TikTok bill. (Maybe he’s effective at his job, after all?) A ban would also meet no resistance from the White House given the Biden administration’s approach to tech and investment restrictions on China, especially in an election year. It was the perfect storm for TikTok.
What’s next?
Worry not: You can keep doomscrolling on TikTok at least through Inauguration Day. The law gives ByteDance until January 19, 2025, to sell the app and allows the president to grant a one-time 90-day extension into April. In the meantime, TikTok will likely challenge the legislation in court on First Amendment grounds, which – though unlikely to succeed – will extend the timeline and almost certainly push any decision into the next presidential administration.
Ironically, TikTok’s best hope lies with Trump retaking the White House in November. Ironically, I say, because Trump was the one who first tried to ban TikTok in 2020 through an executive order that was blocked by the courts … before flip-flopping earlier this year and becoming a vocal opponent of the policy on the back of a sizable campaign contribution by major Republican donor and TikTok investor Jeff Yass. It’s not a stretch to imagine that Trump would use the threat of a divestiture order/ban as a bargaining chip in negotiations with China on other issues closer to his heart and less damaging to his wallet, eventually agreeing not to enforce it in return for concessions in areas such as trade.
Should Biden win reelection and TikTok’s legal challenges fail, it will be up to the Chinese government to decide whether to allow ByteDance to divest. As of now, Beijing’s official position is that it will prohibit the export of TikTok’s AI-powered recommendation algorithm – the platform’s core asset – to a US buyer (without which the app is practically worthless). But the issue is still being quietly debated within the Chinese system, suggesting the only decision maker who really matters, President Xi Jinping, is yet to make a final call – and may not until and unless a sale is actually forced.
Of course, even if Beijing were to sign off on a spinoff, it takes two to tango. There’s only a handful of potential American buyers who could afford theprice tag of TikTok’s US business. Former US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin had reportedly made a bid to purchase the app with a group of investors back in March, but it remains to be seen whether he’d cough up the cash when the rubber meets the road. The most obvious candidates to snap up the company would be publicly traded tech giants that would come under immediate regulatory scrutiny over antitrust issues.
If there was no viable buyer or if China’s government refused to allow the sale, the divestiture order would effectively become a ban. In this scenario, TikTok would eventually be kicked off the US market, forcing the app’s 170 million American users to Google “how to download free VPN.” Overnight, cryptocurrency pump-and-dump schemes would lose their oomph. Real estate influencers would have to move back to their parents’ basements. Kids might have to learn to talk to each other. Chaos would no doubt ensue.
Somewhat more seriously, a ban would put a strain on an already tense US-China relationship. At the same time, given all theefforts to stabilize ties since Woodside, Beijing’s response would focus more on insulating the Chinese economy from further US tech containment efforts than on tit-for-tat retaliation against high-profile US tech companies. Not only because there’s little the Chinese can do on this front that they haven’t been doing for years, with most American social media platforms already banned from the Chinese market. But also because targeting any remaining potential targets, such as Apple or Tesla, risks dampening foreign investor sentiment at a time when China is struggling mightily to boost confidence in its economy.
At the end of the day, Xi doesn’t care much about “decadent” consumer apps such as TikTok. He’d rather worry about the commanding heights of tech and economic competition. The Chinese people writ large, however, would see a ban as yet another US attempt to constrain China’s rise.
Last night, hundreds of New York City Police officers entered Columbia University in riot gear, one night after students occupied a building on campus and 13 days after students pitched an encampment that threw kerosene on a student movement against the war in Gaza on college campuses nationwide.
The police came in droves through the campus gates and directly through the windows of the building that student protesters had barricaded themselves in on Monday. They swept the encampment and the occupied building, detaining protesters with zip ties. Students still on campus were told to go to their dorms or leave the premises. I found myself pushed further and further away from my school, and I watched from beyond the barricades as dozens were arrested and marched onto NYPD detainment buses.
The crackdown at Columbia came alongside chaos at other campuses. There was a round of arrests at City College in Harlem late Tuesday, and police were responding this morning to clashes between pro-Palestinian and counter-protesters at UCLA. On Monday, demonstrators at The New School took over Parsons School of Design. Meanwhile, police cleared an encampment at Yale that protesters have vowed to reoccupy, and an NYU student has reportedly chained themself to a bench and begun a hunger strike, vowing to continue until the demands of student protesters are met.
Nationwide, more than 1,000 students have been taken into police custody since the original encampment began at Columbia on April 18.
Protesters in support of Palestinians in Gaza at UCLA help one another get their eyes rinsed at an encampment on May 1, 2024. REUTERS/David Swanson
What are the protesters’ demands? The movement aims to isolate and put pressure on Israel to stop its bombing campaign in Gaza by forcing universities to divest from companies with ties to the Jewish state or that profit from the war. While protests on US campuses are being driven by the war in Gaza, their impact is transcending the conflict. Some of the demonstrations have featured antisemitic and intimidating chants and posters, while politicians on both sides of the aisle have made visits to college campuses to either support or condemn them.
Schools are striving to restore order before commencement season to avoid becoming the next University of Southern California, which canceled its main graduation ceremony after arresting more than 90 students last week. Columbia has asked the NYPD to stay on campus until at least May 17 to ensure there are no more demonstrations until after graduation.
But protesters aren’t concerned about graduation ceremonies. At Columbia, a new chant “no commencement until divestment” was heard yesterday from the occupied building. Ali, a senior at The New School who was involved in the takeover of Parsons and requested anonymity, laughed when I asked if he was worried about missing graduation. “We are all pushing as hard as we can to get divestment before the end of school. That’s the priority,” he said.
He was optimistic they would succeed, at least on his campus. But the overarching goal of getting the largest university endowments to divest from Israel is certainly not going to happen before students go home for summer.
So what comes next?
Hamilton Hall, the building Columbia protesters occupied Monday night, was also taken over exactly 56 years ago to the day, in the spring of 1968, during the Vietnam War. Demonstrators back then went home for the summer, only to resurface in the thousands at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and, long story short: Things gotugly. The gathering erupted into violence, leading to the activation of the National Guard and the arrest of hundreds of protesters.
This August, the DNC is also in Chicago, so could history repeat itself? When I asked students whether the movement would shift from university endowments to political events, the question took them off-guard.
“People aren’t really talking about what this is going to look like during the 2024 election," said Ali. “But what I do know is that people in this movement aren’t committed to voting for a certain party.” His statement echoed the disillusionment with political parties that I have heard again and again from student protesters.
“I don’t know how Joe Biden doesn’t realize he’s lost us,” said Julia Ye, a senior at NYU.
Cornel West and Jill Stein, two left-leaning third-party candidates, have both visited the Columbia University encampment in hopes of picking up the liberal youth vote. But it remains to be seen whether students will vote for either of them, especially if doing so makes it more likely that Donald Trump wins.
What’s clear is that students are confident the movement isn’t going on vacation. “Right now, all our focus is on university divestment,” said Ye, “but this energy isn’t going anywhere. It will just take a different shape over the summer.”
Students reported that throughout this year of university protests, they have seen their activist networks strengthen and expand, especially between schools. They have coordinated sending excess food donations between encampments in New York City, live-streamed the programming from different encampments across the country on their own, and been catalyzed by each other’s encounters with law enforcement.
“It was cool to see us moving in sync with the Columbia protests yesterday, even if it wasn’t officially organized,” said Gabriella, another senior at The New School who requested anonymity. “We are all watching each other on social media. We all want the same things. This movement is exploding, whether one person is calling for it to or not.”