“To all college presidents, I say remove the encampments immediately. Let’s defeat the radicals and take back our campuses for ordinary students.” Donald Trump asked this during a rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Calling the pro-Palestine protesters “raving lunatics” potentially recruited by liberal groups to divert attention from the wave of migrants at the border, the former American president praised the New York City police officers who, in riot gear, arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University and evacuated a building they had occupied. Over the past few days – the New York Times recalls – Trump has used the protests to downplay the episodes of violence involving right-wing extremists during his presidency and suggested that the government would be lenient with the demonstrators, compared to supporters who he says were treated harshly after storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
Hundreds of young people demonstrating to ask for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip remain barricaded inside the UCLA campus, the University of California, in Los Angeles, despite the arrival of the police and an eviction order. According to a reconstruction also published online by the Associated Press news agency, “a large number of agents” arrived in the area since yesterday afternoon. At the same time, empty buses were parked outside the campus, presumably to be used to transfer protesters and students. Photographs and videos also released on social networks show a tent camp where the UCLA protesters are concentrated, near Royce Hall. Yesterday the police raided another campus, at Columbia University, in New York, to clear out a building occupied by students who also contested the United States’ choices in supporting Israel. According to a count by the Associated Press, since 18 April there have already been 38 raids by agents. Instead, 1,600 arrests have been carried out at around thirty schools and universities.
