Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration’s Middle East envoy, suggested in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that the Trump administration may be open to compromises that would allow Iran to keep its nuclear program, ahead of talks set to begin this weekend.

The position would mark a retreat from public rhetoric by President Donald Trump demanding that Iran dismantle its nuclear program but is consistent with Witkoff’s own past comments suggesting he’s open to a deal that would place limits and verification on it instead — an approach similar to the original Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that Trump pulled out of in his first term.

A federal judge ruled on Friday that Columbia University anti-Israel protest leader Mahmoud Khalil can be deported. 

Immigration judge Jamee Comans said at a hearing that the government’s argument that Khalil’s presence in the U.S. posed “potentially serious foreign policy consequences” was sufficient to rule he could be removed from the country. 

More than two dozen pro-Israel faculty and staff members from Georgetown University signed a letter — as part of a newly formed coalition — opposing a proposal from their colleagues for the university to divest from companies and academic institutions with ties to the Jewish state. 

In a Thursday night email to the university’s Jewish student groups, Rabbi Ilana Zietman, Georgetown’s director of Jewish life, announced the formation of the new Committee for the Integrity of Academic Institutions as Centers of Learning, which is composed of professors and other faculty members from a variety of departments. 

Yale University’s Poynter Fellowship in Journalism will host a trio of conservative voices in journalism and law on Tuesday for a panel discussion on the rise of distrust from the political right of higher education and the news media. 

The event, titled “Bridging the Divide: Trust in Higher Education and Media Through Conservative Lenses,” will feature Robert Shibley, a free speech lawyer and the former executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression; Jonah Goldberg, a conservative commentator and The Dispatch’s editor-in-chief and co-founder; and Aaron Sibarium, a reporter for the Washington Free Beacon covering law and higher education.

Congressional lawmakers remain wary of efforts to bring Turkey back into the F-35 program, a move that is reportedly under consideration inside the Trump administration.

President Donald Trump is said to be open to a deal to sell Turkey the advanced weapons systems if both parties reach an agreement to render the Russian S-400 air-defense system that Turkey purchased inoperable. Its acquisition of the S-400 initially caused Turkey to be booted from the F-35 program in 2019 under U.S. sanctions law.

The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on Thursday on ending biannual time changes between standard and daylight saving time. Lawmakers who attended appeared unanimously supportive of eliminating the changes, with the primary debate revolving around how to implement the change.

President Donald Trump has voiced support for making daylight saving time permanent, feeding into what appears to be growing momentum on the issue, after the Senate approved legislation, the Sunshine Protection Act, to that effect in 2022. The same legislation is again pending in each chamber.

President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he is nominating Yehuda Kaploun, an Orthodox Jewish businessman, Chabad rabbi and Trump campaign surrogate as his administration’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism.

Kaploun helped with the Trump campaign’s outreach to the Jewish community during his 2024 campaign, including a high-profile event, backed by Dr. Miriam Adelson, where Trump courted Jewish voters in Washington.

The House Education & Workforce Committee will hold another hearing on campus antisemitism next month, its first such hearing since the beginning of this Congress, and the next in a series of high-profile showdowns that have led to the firings of multiple college presidents.

The hearing, scheduled for May 7, will focus on colleges beyond the most elite and well-known, featuring the presidents of California Polytechnic State University (San Luis Obispo), Haverford College and DePaul University — Jeffrey Armstrong, Wendy Raymond and Robert Manuel, respectively.