Daily Briefing: Protests overtake US campuses

Campuses nationwide are grappling with growing unrest over the war in Gaza. Also in the news: Donald Trump's lawyers say the former president did not violate a gag order in his New York criminal trial. The Senate will begin voting on a $95 billion foreign aid package on Tuesday.

🙋🏼‍♀️ I'm Nicole Fallert, Daily Briefing author. These are the three occasions when you shouldn't brush your teeth.

Here's the news to know Tuesday.

Students want divestment. What does that mean?

A wave of student-led protests have erupted at U.S. colleges and universities over the Israel-Hamas War, prompting school officials to take extreme measures to tamper-down an increasingly chaotic situation.

In the last 24 hours: Columbia University has suspended in-person classes. Dozens of students were arrested in protests at Yale and New York University. School officials closed Harvard Yard to the public. At NYU, demonstrators tussled with officers and chanted, "We will not stop, we will not rest. Disclose. Divest."

  • What do the students mean by "divest"? Students are demanding that universities show more transparency in their investments and take money out of enterprises with links to Israel's war effort.

  • Jewish students say they don't feel safe and pro-Palestinian groups condemn school leaders for not protecting free speech.

  • The protests are spreading: Students at other Boston-area colleges, like MIT, Tufts and Emerson, have begun their own solidarity encampments, and the movement has also expanded to other prominent universities like Cal-Berkeley and Michigan.

Protestors gather on the streets near the Columbia University campus in New York on April 22, 2024.
Protestors gather on the streets near the Columbia University campus in New York on April 22, 2024.

Voyager 1 is 15 billion miles from home and broken

For the first time since November, NASA engineers restored contact with Voyager 1, a spacecraft 15 billion miles from home. Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 is now the farthest a human-made object has traveled from Earth. The glitch started when a computer problem aboard Voyager 1 corrupted the stream of science and engineering data the craft is sending to Earth, making it unreadable. Read more

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is depicted in this artist’s conception traveling through interstellar space, which it entered in 2012.
NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is depicted in this artist’s conception traveling through interstellar space, which it entered in 2012.

More news to know now

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Will Trump pay for violating a gag order?

The judge overseeing Donald Trump's criminal trial will consider on Tuesday prosecutors' request to fine the former president for violating a gag order barring him from talking publicly about certain people involved in the case and their families. Prosecutors say Trump violated the March order which prevents the former president from making public statements about the trial. Trump's lawyers disagree.

Pivotal foreign aid package heads to Senate

The Democratic-majority Senate is expected Tuesday to approve a $95 billion legislative package providing security assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, over bitter objections from Republican hardliners. House Speaker Mike Johnson chose to ignore ouster threats by hardline members of his fractious majority and push forward the measure through the lower chamber over the weekend. The bill includes $60.84 billion in Ukraine funding as the nation struggles to fight off a two-year Russian invasion. Read more

Keep scrolling

Will a conservative Supreme Court rein in labor unions?

Global coffee giant Starbucks is asking the Supreme Court to require a stricter test for when courts can step in and protect union organizers who are fired or punished. The case concerns temporary injunctions requiring companies to rehire workers, which are particularly important when The National Labor Relations Board thinks a company is trying to illegally squelch budding union organizing campaigns. The agency wielded that tool often as Starbucks waged its own aggressive campaign against workers’ efforts to unionize. Labor sympathizers see the case as part of a corporate backlash to the success of the NLRB and to a rise in union organizing. Read more

Photo of the day: Queen Elizabeth II honored with corgi-adorned statue

The late British monarch, who died in September 2022, was honored posthumously with a bronze statue that shows Queen Elizabeth II striking a formidable pose and features a set of smaller corgi statues surrounding the royal, a tribute to her lifelong love of the dog breed. Read more

The statue is reportedly the first permanent memorial to the late monarch.
The statue is reportedly the first permanent memorial to the late monarch.

Nicole Fallert is a newsletter writer at USA TODAY, sign up for the email here. Want to send Nicole a note? Shoot her an email at NFallert@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Columbia protests, Israel-Hamas war, Gaza, NASA, Trump trial, Supreme Court, Taylor Swift: Daily Briefing