US-Turkish commentator stopped at border, questioned about Gaza views
Hasan Piker says he was held by US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) at Chicago’s O’Hare airport and questioned for nearly two hours about his views on Trump and Israel’s war on Gaza.
In a livestream on Twitch, where he has 2.8 million followers, Piker, who was carrying a US passport when he entered the country, said he was led to a private room on his arrival.
He said a CBP officer questioned him about his criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza, asking him, “Do you like Hamas? Like, do you support Hamas? Do you think Hamas is a resistance group?”
The incident has drawn criticism from rights advocates.
Chip Gibbons, the policy director of Defending Rights & Dissent, said the rights group was “deeply disturbed that CBP is stopping political commentators at the border to interrogate them about First Amendment-protected activities”.
“Such an abuse of power is an affront to press freedom,” Gibbons said.
Republicans make new push to pass ‘Nonprofit Killer Bill’
Republicans in the US House of Representatives have included provisions in a 389-page tax plan that could give the Trump administration the power to strip the tax-exempt status of nonprofit groups, according to a rights group.
In a statement on X, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said the bill would allow the Trump administration to “silence and financially dismantle organizations, particularly Muslim, Palestinian, and human rights groups, that dare to criticize U.S. foreign policy or call out Israel’s genocide in Gaza and attacks on civilians the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen”.
The group called the bill “a direct attack on free speech and dissent”.
The so-called “Nonprofit Killer Bill”, which was voted down by the Congress last November, is included on pages 380 to 388 of the sweeping tax bill.
Trump administration terminates more grants to Harvard
The Trump administration says eight federal agencies will terminate another $450m in grants to Harvard University amid a dispute on what it called “pervasive race discrimination and anti-Semitic harassment plaguing its campus”.
An administration anti-Semitism task force cited what it described as a “dark problem” on the elite university’s campus.
“By prioritizing appeasement over accountability, institutional leaders have forfeited the school’s claim to taxpayer support,” a task force said in a statement.
The Trump administration already cancelled $2.2bn in federal funding last week.
Universities holding Nakba memorials will see funds cut: Israel minister
Any Israeli university where students hold events to commemorate the Nakba – the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948 – will have their funding cut, Education Minister Yoav Kisch has warned.
In a post on X, he published a letter to far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich demanding funds be denied to Israel’s Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University after Nakba commemorations were held there.
“Academia is not a platform for incitement under the guise of freedom of expression,” Kisch wrote, claiming the events at the two universities are “part of a broader and worrying phenomenon”.
Students have been holding similar pro-Palestine events in universities across the world, particularly in the United States. Kisch particularly attacked Tel Aviv University President Ariel Porat, urging him to “look and learn what is happening in the US to universities that commemorate Nakba Day”.
