Reuters World News - Harvard, tax bill, DC shooting charge and Gaza

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

The Trump administration has revoked Harvard University's ability to enroll international students - forcing existing students to transfer to other schools or lose their status. A suspect has been charged with murder in the DC shooting of two Israel embassy aides, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has linked the shooting to hostility over his Gaza military offensive. And Trump’s "big, beautiful" tax bill heads to the Senate.  Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter here. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast here. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, the Trump administration takes aim at Harvard's international students. House Republicans pass the tax bill, but the debate's likely to continue in the Senate. And Israel's Netanyahu links the shooting of two embassy staffers in D.C. with hostility over the war in Gaza. It's Friday, May 23rd. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Tara Oaksin, Liverpool. And I'm Christopher Walgesper in Chicago. The Trump administration is revoking Harvard University's ability to enroll international students.

The move to terminate Harvard's student and exchange visitor program certifications is the latest in a contentious back and forth between U.S. President Donald Trump and the university. Ted Heson covers immigration and has been looking into the repercussions. Foreign students make up some 27 percent of the students at Harvard, and they also tend to pay full tuition. So they represent a significant revenue stream. Beyond that, the Trump administration move would not only block new foreign student enrollment at Harvard, but also says that current foreign students need to transfer to new universities or risk losing their legal status. So you can see that this could potentially throw a lot of chaos into university life there for the foreign students, but for the student body in general and for the university. So why is the Trump administration making this move and why now? The Homeland Security Secretary Christy Nob sent a letter to Harvard, and in the letter, she accused the University of fostering violence on campus, anti-Semitism, and actually coordinating with the Chinese

Communist Party. It's unclear what the basis is for some of these allegations. the university has contested it. They say that this is not the case and that they're taking actions to correct anti-Semitism on campus. And she gave them 72 hours to produce a raft of documents about foreign students who've gone to Harvard. And it includes whether they've participated in protests, but also disciplinary action and potential crimes that they may have engaged in. President Trump has had ongoing fight with Harvard University since he took office. And this is an extension of that. And it's actually a mix of two issues, sort of culture wars and thinking that the universities are too liberal, but also President Trump's restrictive immigration approach.

Now to South Africa and some breaking news. Nearly 300 miners are trapped underground in a gold mine. The mining company says efforts are underway to rescue the workers. Haiti is calling for urgent security support from its neighbours. Armed gangs have control of most of the capital and beyond and have displaced more than 1 million people. The US has signalled it won't continue its current funding for Haiti. The top 25 buyers of the Trump meme coin got to sit down at an exclusive dinner last night.

Outside the country club dinner venue, protesters demanded a guest list amid concerns of foreign influence. Split U.S. Supreme Court has blocked a bid to establish the nation's first taxpayer-funded religious charter school. The 4-4 ruling left intact a lower court's decision which found the proposed Oklahoma school would violate the First Amendment separation of church and state. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney-Barritt recused herself from the case. And remember the page with the blog post that Trump held up in a meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. He was claiming that it showed dead white farmers in South Africa.

We can confirm that there was actually a screenshot of a Reuters video taken in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Trump was using it as evidence of mass killings of white South Africans. A Chicago-born man has been charged in federal court with two counts of first-degree murder in a killing widely condemned as an act of anti-Semitism. Elias Rodriguez is accused of opening fire on a group of people as they left an event in Washington, D.C., hosted by the American Jewish Committee. Rodriguez told police on the scene, I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza, according to the charging documents.

The two victims have been identified as Yaron Lashinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgram. The attack comes at a time when Israel is facing sustained international criticism for its escalating Gaza military offensive, while Jewish advocacy groups have warned of a rise in anti-Semitic incidents globally. Emily Rose is in Jerusalem. Much of this is being seen in the wake of an uptick in anti-Semitism, not just in the United States, but across the world. And one of the things we wrote about was a feeling from both Israelis and Jews

across the world of isolation and fear. But it is important to remember here that, that there are internal debates as well, and a real political discussion here about how long the war should continue and the actions that Israel is taken in Gaza. James McKenzie is our bureau chief for Israel and the Palestinian territories. James, could this incident change Israel's conducting Gaza? I don't think it'll change the conduct of the operation there, but I think that the communications we've seen from Netanyahu particularly, but also another comment from the foreign ministry

yesterday, show the way in which Israel is going to be trying to frame its response to this incident and to the sort of increasing international pressure it's faced over Gaza. Essentially, by linking the two incidents, they're reinforcing their message that the war in Gaza is a wider existential war in the face of what it calls Islamist radicalism. This course is an interpretation which is not shared by many others, but that is the Israeli position. Netifference. The United States sees as a danger of European countries recognizing a Palestinian state. Many Israelis think a Palestinian state would simply be a springboard for further attacks on Israel. So they're deeply opposed to it.

But at the same time, they can see that diplomatic moves happening in a lot of countries towards, you know, recognizing a Palestinian state. The sweeping tax and spending bill passed by the U.S. House now goes to the Senate. The bill, passed by a single vote margin, would fulfill many of Trump's populist campaign pledges, like delivering new tax breaks on tips and car loans and boosting spending on the military and border enforcement. It would also saddle the country with trillions of dollars in additional debt. Bo Erickson is on Capitol Hill.

Now, Bo, you spent all day yesterday chasing senators around. How do Republican senators feel about the bill that? is being handed to them. Republican senators were very quick to say how they want to change the legislation and put their own imprint on it. Well, we want to make sure we get Medicaid right. No Medicaid benefit cuts. We want to make sure that we get the no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime. One of the senators I spoke with is Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri. He's quite the populist and he's worried that his constituents back home will not feel any of the benefits of this bill. We've got to deliver actual tax relief to working class people. And just extending the tax cuts from 2017 is fine, but that's no new tax relief to working people.

Another senator that I spoke to is Senator Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, and he's one of those Republicans who is pushing for even more spending cuts. I want to see this succeed, but we have to return to a reasonable pre-pandemic growth spending. And that last point from Ron Johnson, that is shared by several other senators, because this legislation is financed heavily by debt. One of the estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that this package will add more than $3 trillion to the federal government's debt. And that debt is already more than $36 trillion. Growing concern about that level of U.S. government debt means that the Trump administration is going to have to pay up to borrow.

Carmel Grimmons explains. Yields have been rising on long-term government bombs. around the world. Now, the yield on a bond is the interest rate that the government pays to borrow money. So the market is telling governments that if they're going to run big deficits, then they're going to have to pay more to borrow long term. And that matters because higher government bond yields generally means higher borrowing costs for businesses and consumers. To give you a flavor of the kind of pressure governments are under in the bond market, yields on British 30-year government bonds are at their highest level since the late 1990s. US 30-year yields are over 5%

and yields on Japan's longest dated government bombs have climbed to all-time highs. You can hear more all about government deficits on the latest episode of my podcast, Reuters Econ World, out on the Reuters app or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And for today's recommended read, tune in to this feed tomorrow

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