US, Ukraine sign economic deal after Trump presses Kyiv to pay back US for help in repelling Russia

Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi was released from US immigration custody on Wednesday, after a judge ruled he should be free on bail to challenge the Trump administration’s efforts to deport him over his participation in pro-Palestinian protests. Mahdawi, born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank, was arrested earlier this month upon arriving for an interview for his US citizenship petition. A judge swiftly ordered President Donald Trump’s administration not to deport him from the United States or take him out of the state of Vermont.
After two weeks in detention, Mahdawi walked out of the federal courthouse in Burlington, Vermont, following US District Judge Geoffrey Crawford order that he be released at a court hearing on Wednesday.
In his ruling, Crawford said Mahdawi did not pose a danger to the public and was not a flight risk. The judge drew parallels between the current political climate and the Red Scare and McCarthyism eras of the last century when thousands of people were targeted for deportation due to their political views.
Mahdawi’s release marked a setback for the Trump administration’s efforts to deport pro-Palestinian foreign university students, though other students remain in jail.
“I am saying it clear and loud to President Trump and his cabinet, I am not afraid of you,” Mahdawi said after he emerged from the courthouse, dozens of protesters waving Palestinian flags chanting “no fear” and “yes love.”
“This is a light of hope, hope and faith in the justice system in America,” Mahdawi said of Crawford’s decision to release him.
Trump administration officials have said student visa and green card holders are subject to deportation over their support for Palestinians and criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza, calling their actions a threat to US foreign policy.
Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said Mahdawi’s privilege of studying in the United States on a green card should be taken away.
“When you advocate for violence, glorify and support terrorists that relish the killing of Americans, and harass Jews, that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country,” McLaughlin said in a statement. “No judge, not this one or any other, is going to stop us from doing that.”
Trump’s critics have called the effort an attack on free speech rights under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
“Mahdawi is here in the United States legally and acted legally,” Vermont’s US Congressional delegation of Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Peter Welch and Representative Becca Balint said in a statement. “The Trump Administration’s actions in this case — and in so many other cases of wrongfully detained, deported, and disappeared people — are shameful and immoral.” Other protesters in similar circumstances include Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk. Both Khalil and Ozturk remain in custody and have not been charged with any crimes.
Mahdawi, a green card holder, has lived in Vermont for 10 years and is set to graduate from Columbia in May, according to his lawyers.
He has not been accused of any crime. Rather, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said his pro-Palestinian activism could potentially undermine the Middle East peace process.
“They arrested me. What’s the reason? Because I raised my voice, and I said no to war, yes to peace,” Mahdawi said outside the courthouse. “Because I said, ‘Enough is enough. Killing more than 50,000 Palestinians is more than enough.’” In his ruling, Crawford said Mahdawi had exercised his right to advocate for a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Gaza. As a noncitizen resident, he enjoyed the same First Amendment free speech rights as US citizens, Crawford said.
People who knew Mahdawi described him as a peaceful figure who sought consensus in a highly-charged political environment, the judge added.
“Even if he were a firebrand, his conduct is protected by the First Amendment,” Crawford wrote.

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Wednesday acknowledged that his tariffs could result in fewer and costlier products in the United States, saying American kids might “have two dolls instead of 30 dolls,” but he insisted China will suffer more from his trade war.
The US president has tried to reassure a nervous country that his tariffs will not provoke a recession, after a new government report showed that the US economy shrank during the first three months of the year.
Trump was quick to blame his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, for any setbacks while telling his Cabinet that his tariffs meant China was “having tremendous difficulty because their factories are not doing business,” adding that the US didn’t really need imports from the world’s dominant manufacturer.
“You know, somebody said, ‘Oh, the shelves are going to be open,’” Trump continued, offering a hypothetical. “Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls. So maybe the two dolls will cost a couple bucks more than they would normally.”
His remarks followed a defensive morning after the Commerce Department reported that the US economy shrank at an annual rate of 0.3 percent during the first quarter. Behind the decline was a surge in imports as companies tried to front-run the sweeping tariffs on autos, steel, aluminum and almost every country. And even positive signs of increased domestic consumption indicated that purchases might be occurring before the import taxes lead to price increases.
Trump pointed his finger at Biden as the stock market fell Wednesday morning in response to the gross domestic product report.
“This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” the Republican president, who took office in January, posted on his social media site. “Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers. Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden ‘Overhang.’ This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS.”
But the GDP report gives Democrats ammunition to claim that Trump’s policies could shove the economy into a recession. Democrats’ statements after the GDP report noted how quickly the economy, which still has a healthy 4.2 percent unemployment rate, appears to lose momentum within weeks of Trump returning.
“Trump has been in office for only 100 days, and costs, chaos and corruption are already on the rise,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon “The economy is slowing, prices are going up, and middle-class families are feeling the pinch.”
The report landed as Trump is trying to put the focus on new corporate investments in the US as he spends the week celebrating his 100th day in office. He planned remarks later in the day on the subject.
Trump’s economic message contains some clashing arguments and dismisses data that raises red flags.
He wants credit for an aggressive first 100 days back in the White House that included mass layoffs of federal workers and the start of a trade war with 145 percent in new tariffs against China. He also wants to blame the negative response of the financial markets on Biden, who left office months ago. He’s also saying his tariffs are negotiating tools to generate trade deals but at the same time banking on hundreds of billions of dollars in tariff revenues to help cover his planned income tax cuts.
Trump highlighted the positive aspects of the GDP report at the Cabinet meeting. But that session revealed how his administration is also trying to take credit for policies that involve the Biden administration.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick talked about his recent trip to Arizona to see the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s computer chip factories. The company notes on its website that it announced plans in May 2020, during Trump’s first term when the coronavirus pandemic disrupted the global economy, to build its first plant in Arizona. The company announced a second factory in December 2022, when Biden was in office. After getting up to $6.6 billion in commitments in 2024 from the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, TSMC announced plans for a third plant.
Trump dismissed the importance of the government support that Biden made possible for computer chip factories to open domestically.
“They’re building because of the tariffs,” Trump said.
Yet Democrats are quickly to say that Trump inherited an economy on a steady course of low unemployment and declining inflation that his tariff plans have almost immediately disrupted.
“In just 100 days, President Trump has taken the US economy from strong, stable growth to negative GDP,” said Heather Boushey, a former member of Biden’s White House Council of Economic Advisers. “This astonishing turn of fortune is directly due to the incoherence of his economic policy and his mismanagement of federal policy more generally.”
But White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told reporters that the GDP drop was a “one-shot deal” because of the increased imports, which mathematically subtract from the measure of economic activity. Navarro said that the individual and business income tax cuts planned by Trump would help growth in the months ahead.
“All we’re seeing is good, strong news,” Navarro said. “So the idea that there’s a recession coming should be heavily discounted.”