Weekly Recap: April 27th - May 3rd
A recap of the big political stories affecting the United States this past week.
Some college campus protests over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza intensified this week, while others reached an agreement with their universities and ended.
Columbia University saw students break into and barricade themselves inside Hamilton Hall, a building that has served as a center for protests numerous times in decades past. This time, due to a breakdown in negotiations with the school and vandalism of the property, the university president requested police remove the students. Playing out live on many networks, a large show of force by the New York police arrived, moved protesters who were outside further away from the building, and entered the hall through a window to arrest the students inside.
UCLA saw an escalation to their protests as counter-protesters showed up and engaged in fights causing the encampment to put up more barriers in order to strengthen their position. Police were sent in with rubber bullets to remove the students and the barricades.
Contrary to these headline-grabbing moments, most protests nationwide have remained peaceful without any violent rhetoric or vandalism. Brown University agreed to have future meetings exploring its ability to divest from Israel, which led the protesters to agree to take down their tents and leave the lawn.
Trump’s business fraud case involving election interference continued this week with new witness testimony. The trial is focused on the covering up of hush money payments that were made to keep Trump’s affairs out of the news ahead of the 2016 election.
Hope Hicks, a former top adviser in the Trump administration, was called to the stand to testify about what she knew of the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. Hicks has remained loyal to Trump and cried on the stand as she had to answer questions from the prosecution.
She answered that it did not fit Michael Cohen’s personality, Trump’s fixer, to have made the payment to Daniels on his own, as the defense has been trying to claim. She also said that when the hush money story came out in 2018, Trump said, “It was better to be dealing with it now, and it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election.”
Before the new testimony, the court heard arguments that Trump had violated his gag order. The judge fined Trump the maximum amount of $9000, $1000 per violation, and warned that future violations of the gag order may result in jail time for the former President.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said she intends to finally bring a vote to the House floor to vacate Speaker Johnson from his position, but she admits the vote will fail. Greene now claims the point of the vote is to show which Republicans are part of the “uniparty” by having them on record as voting against vacating Johnson.
This division in the party has arisen from many Republicans in Congress voting with Democrats to pass the budget, FISA reauthorization, and a foreign aid bill while MAGA Republicans have continued to try and obstruct all progress. As MAGA’s power and influence is fading, politicians like Greene are finding ways to continue to gain media attention through complaints and political threats against other Republicans, including her motion to vacate the Speaker.
This week, progress was made in a new ceasefire arrangement between Israel and Hamas. The negotiators are optimistic, but even if an agreement is reached this weekend, it would take several more days to finalize all of the details.
Prime Minister Netanyahu made the talks more difficult by saying that Israel would press ahead with an invasion of Rafah, where Israel believes the last remaining Hamas battalions are bunkered down, whether or not a ceasefire agreement is reached.
The US has continued to urge Israel to call off their invasion of Rafah, where 1 million displaced Palestinians are living after fleeing other areas of Gaza that were under attack. One of the Hamas demands for a ceasefire is a guarantee that Israel will honor the ceasefire and not continue any attacks, including the planned invasion.