The White House is targeting foreign-born students for deportation. Donald Trump privately vents his frustration about Mike Waltz. And NBC News’ Home Buyer Index shows a thawing market with looming uncertainties.
Here’s what to know today.
Trump admin takes aim at foreign-born college students
The State Department has revoked 300 or more student visas, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, as the White House increasingly targets foreign-born students whose main transgression seems to be activism.
Around the country, scholars have been picked up and held in detention centers, sometimes far from their homes with little warning and often with few details about why they are being detained. The State Department has used an immigration provision that dates to the Cold War to justify some of the detentions. Federal officials can also revoke a student visa if they deem the student a threat.
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“It might be more than 300 at this point,” Rubio said of the number of students whose visas have been revoked. “We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas.”
This week, Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national who was in the country with a valid student visa was pulled off the street. Ozturk co-authored an opinion essay in the Tufts student newspaper last year criticizing the university for how it responds to student demands.
And the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder and Columbia University graduate student who was detained over his pro-Palestinian activism on campus, has sparked protests nationwide. They’re just a couple of many whose detainments in recent weeks have made national headlines.
Huge earthquake causes destruction in Myanmar, collapses buildings in Bangkok
A 7.7-magnitude earthquake centered in Myanmar reverberated across Southeast Asia, killing at least three people in neighboring Thailand and leaving scores of others trapped under a collapsed high-rise in the country’s capital, Bangkok.
The earthquake occurred at a depth of 6 miles near Mandalay, the second-largest city in Myanmar, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was followed minutes later by a 6.4-magnitude aftershock.
In Bangkok, where many of its 17 million residents live in high-rise apartments, the quake sent buildings swaying and forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate their homes and workplaces.
The governor of Bangkok declared the city a disaster zone after a 33-story building under construction collapsed near the popular Chatuchak market, killing at least three people. More than 40 others remained trapped in the rubble, he said. Read more here.
Trump privately vents his frustration about Mike Waltz
Despite publicly expressing support for Mike Waltz, President Donald Trump privately fumed about his national security adviser during conversations he had about his decision to withdraw Rep. Elise Stefanik’s nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, according to two Republican sources with knowledge of the conversation.
Trump’s frustration is two-fold. First, Waltz created the Signal group chat that included an editor of The Atlantic, prompting calls from his allies for him to be the fall guy. The president is also frustrated because the race to replace Waltz in the House is shaping up to be more competitive than it should be. While GOP leaders are confident that Randy Fine, the Republican candidate in the Florida special election, will pull off a win, Trump is worried that the optics of the last few days are fueling a negative narrative and making the party look bad.
But as Trump and his allies take a critical look at Waltz, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who shared details of military plans over a commercial rather than traditional government channels, has gotten full-throated backing.
More politics news:
- A career Department of Homeland Security employee who inadvertently sent unclassified details of an ICE operation to a journalist earlier this year faces serious punishment, drawing questions about unequal punishment in light of the Signal group chat breach.
- Trump is pulling the nomination of Rep. Elise Stefanik to be U.S. ambassador to the U.N., citing concerns about Republicans’ slim majority in the House.
- A consequential decision is expected next week that will shape whether Republican senators can make Trump’s expiring tax cuts permanent.
- The Department of Health and Human Services said it plans to cut 10,000 full-time jobs, which will effectively shutter multiple departments at the CDC and other health agencies.
- Trump took aim at the Smithsonian Institution in an executive order directing Vice President JD Vance to eliminate “improper, divisive, or anti-American” ideology from its programs.
- More than 200 “Tesla Takedown” protests are scheduled to take place tomorrow as people around the world voice their disagreement with Elon Musk’s role in politics.
Simultaneous signs of ease and uncertainty in the housing market
Buying a house in the U.S. is getting easier — slightly — according to new data from the NBC News Home Buyer Index, thanks to improving supply and less competition. However, prices remain high, and experts said any improvement could ride on policy decisions — tariffs and trade wars chief among them.
February’s Home Buyer Index value came in at 80.1, down from pandemic highs in the upper 80s. The index is a scale of 0 to 100 that measures the difficulty a buyer would have trying to purchase a house, taking into account factors such as cost, competition, scarcity and economic instability.
Data reporter Jasmine Cui explains that inventory is improving and homes are staying on the market for longer — 40 days or more on average. But economic uncertainty registered at 91 on the Economic Instability sub-index, higher than this time last year. And any rapid policy changes could shake up the market.
Read All About It
- King Charles III was briefly in the hospital after he experienced side effects of his cancer treatment.
- Yolanda Saldívar, the woman sentenced to life in prison for killing Tejano music icon Selena in 1995, was denied parole, and her next review will be in 2030.
- A Las Vegas man faces state and federal charges after his arrest in connection with an arson attack on a Tesla location.
- The Sundance Film Festival is moving to a new city after more than 40 years in Park City, Utah.
Staff Pick: Greenland’s residents give the ‘Arctic cold shoulder’
Greenland has been placed in the middle of a tug of war between Trump and Denmark — and ahead of a visit by JD Vance and his wife, NBC News correspondent Molly Hunter and producer Charlotte Gardiner travelled to Nuuk to hear from the Greenlanders who find themselves in the limelight. How do they feel about Trump’s escalating rhetoric about taking over their home? Angry and over it. “This can’t be happening, this is not the America we knew,” one local businessman said. — Annie Hill, platforms editor
NBC Select: Online Shopping, Simplified
Amazon’s Big Spring Sale is here, and we found the best tech deals worth shopping so far, including discounts on Bose noise-cancelling headphones, Apple iPads, speakers and more. And are you curious about using beef tallow as a moisturizer? The NBC Select team investigates the skincare trend, which has people slathering beef fat on their faces.
Sign up to The Selection newsletter for hands-on product reviews, expert shopping tips and a look at the best deals and sales each week.
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