Police clad in riot gear swarmed Yale University’s Connecticut campus early Monday and arrested dozens of students who refused to clear out from an anti-Israel protest encampment.

At least 47 protesters were cuffed and hauled away from the Ivy League’s New Haven campus on shuttle buses, a university spokesperson confirmed to The Post.

They were slapped with trespassing summons — and will be referred for Yale disciplinary action, which may include suspensions, the rep added.

The mass arrests came after footage posted online showed cops arriving at the Ivy League school and blocking off entrances to a plaza, where roughly 200 protesters had been gathered.

Cops repeatedly warned protesters they risked being arrested if they didn’t clear out, the Yale spokesperson said.

As police descended on the campus, a group of defiant students had locked arms around a flagpole and were singing “We shall not be moved” — as officers could be seen checking the dozens of tents erected in the plaza, according to a video posted on X.

Yale police department forcefully flooded the encampment and issued warnings, banging tents as they entered.

Students stood strong, locking arms around the flagpole, displaying their readiness for arrest. Tearful crowd sang, “We shall not be moved.” pic.twitter.com/3uGOTHNu96

— Kuffiya (@Kuffiyateam) April 22, 2024

While the arrests were underway, others could be heard taunting the Yale Police Depatment (YPD), “YPD or KKK, IDF they’re all the same” and chanting, “Arab blood is not cheap, for the martyrs we will speak,” according to the Yale Daily News.

Cops had cleared the plaza and encampment of student protesters by about 8 a.m.

“Today, members of Yale’s police department isolated the area and asked protestors to show identification; some left voluntarily. When others did not comply after multiple requests, the Yale Police Department issued summonses to 47 students,” the spokesperson said.

“The university made the decision to arrest those individuals who would not leave the Plaza with the safety and security of the entire Yale community in mind and to allow access to university facilities by all members of our community.”

It comes after protests at Yale turned violent over the weekend when a Jewish student journalist reporting on an encampment, which was erected Friday, was stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag Saturday night.

Sahar Tartak, editor-in-chief of the Yale Free Press, was covering the protest when she was suddenly surrounded by demonstrators.

“There’s hundreds of people taunting me and waving the middle finger at me, and then this person waves a Palestinian flag in my face and jabs it in my eye,” Tartak told The Post.

“When I tried to yell and go after him, the protesters got in a line and stopped me.”

Yale president Peter Salovey sent students an email late Sunday warning that the school “will pursue disciplinary actions according to its policies” amid the ongoing demonstrations.

“Many of the students participating in the protests, including those conducting counterprotests, have done so peacefully. However, I am aware of reports of egregious behavior, such as intimidation and harassment, pushing those in crowds, removal of the plaza flag, and other harmful acts,” he wrote.

“Yale does not tolerate actions, including remarks, that threaten, harass, or intimidate members of the university’s Jewish, Muslim, and other communities.

“The Yale Police Department is investigating each report, and we will take action when appropriate, including making referrals for student discipline.”

The arrival of cops comes after more than 100 protesters were cuffed and hauled away when the NYPD was called in to clear out a similar protest at Columbia University last week.

The privileged daughter of Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar amazingly claims she’s homeless and can’t get food after being kicked out of her prestigious $90,000-per-year Barnard College dorm following her arrest at last week’s anti-Israel protests on Columbia University’s campus.

Isra Hirsi, 21, and a handful of other Barnard students were slapped with suspensions after they were among the more than 100 protestors cuffed and hauled away for refusing to clear out from a tent encampment on the Ivy League school’s campus last Thursday.

“I was a little bit frantic, like, where am I going to sleep? Where am I gonna go?” she whined to Teen Vogue after learning she’d been evicted from campus housing and banned from using the dining hall.

“And also all of my s–t is thrown in a random lot. It’s pretty horrible,” said the disgraced student still supported by her Democratic “squad” member mom, who said she is ” enormously proud” of her daughter.

“I have like four shirts, two pairs of pants,” Hirsi complained. “I don’t know when I can go home, and I don’t know if I ever will be able to.”

Hirsi, who is a member of the anti-Israel student group Apartheid Divest, had already received notice of her suspension early Thursday — hours before the NYPD was called in to arrest protestors and help dismantle the anti-Israel protest encampment.

Barnard administrators had initially started warning their students late Wednesday that they risked being suspended if they didn’t clear out.

When Hirsi sought help from Barnard administration after being cut loose from jail on Thursday, she whined that she’d heard crickets.

“I sent them an email like, ‘Hey, I rely on campus for my meals, I rely on my dining plan,’ and they were like, Oh, you can come pick up a prepackaged bag of food, a full 48 hours after I was suspended,” she told the magazine.

“There was no food support, no nothing.”

Speaking about her arrest, Hirsi said she was held in custody for roughly eight hours.

“We had so many people who were born female in our group that they didn’t have enough space for us,” Hirsi told Teen Vogue of her arrest. “It was a very slow process in getting everybody into the cells.

“I was zip-tied for about seven hours and wasn’t released for about eight,” she added.

Elsewhere, she also complained about Barnard’s president, Laura Rosenbury, was taking a tougher stance on students that Columbia University.

“Only Barnard students are evicted, and I think it’s pretty crazy,” Hirsi griped.

“I think it’s really on a school-by-school basis, and Barnard has decided to take a very egregious stand against us,” she continued.

A judge accepted Donald Trump‘s $175 million bond in his civil fraud case after the former president and Attorney General Letitia James reached an agreement to modify the conditions of the bond during a hearing in New York on Monday.

Judge Arthur Engoron said that so long as Trump gave Knight Specialty Insurance, a small Delaware-based insurer, exclusive access to the bank account that is serving as collateral for the bond, then the judge would approve it, according to a Law360 report.

Engoron’s decision comes after James argued in a motion that Trump did not have “sufficiently secure and ascertainable collateral backing the bond” and that Engoron should therefore reject it.

Trump was required to post the bond while he fights a judgment issued by Engoron in February that he pay $454 million in fines and interest after Engoron found Trump and Trump Organization executives liable for years of business fraud.

An appellate court recently agreed with Trump that while the former president’s appeal of the judgment remains pending, he should not have to post a bond for the full amount of the judgment but rather for $175 million. Trump had argued that he could not pay the full amount because no company would authorize a bond payment of that magnitude.

A Schwab brokerage account that Trump had control over was serving as the collateral for Knight’s bond.

“Your hypothetical is calling into question the veracity of one of the largest financial institutions in the world,” Trump’s attorney Chris Kise argued to Engoron when the judge raised questions about the bond on Monday, according to Law360.

An attorney working on behalf of James then proposed an agreement that would prevent Trump from being able to manipulate funds in the Schwab account.

Kise said he would make changes to the account access that were agreeable to James. The agreement is set to be finalized by Friday.

Trump was not present at the hearing because he was attending a concurrent court event in New York for his hush money trial, during which attorneys gave opening statements on the case.

Prior to entering the courtroom for the hush money case on Monday morning, Trump focused his attention on the forthcoming civil fraud hearing, blasting James as the “worst attorney general in the country” and criticizing Engoron.

“I just want you to know that that’s taking place in front of an extremely crazed judge who’s the most overturned judge in New York state,” Trump said.

Planet Fitness — which faced backlash for allowing a trans man to shave in the women’s locker room — hired a new boss who had required employees to undergo “unconscious bias training” and supported “hiring through a DEI lens” at her previous company.

Colleen Keating, who served as chief executive at rental service FirstKey Homes since 2020, will assume the CEO title at Planet Fitness on June 10, the company announced Tuesday.

During Keating’s tenure at the helm of FirstKey, she was a signatory to a document titled “CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion pledge.”

The corporate executives who signed on to the pledge committed to “continually strive to diversify our workforce, hiring through a DE&I lens to find talent in multiple locations and backgrounds.”

Keating succeeds Chris Rondeau.

Shares of Planet Fitness, which has nearly 2,500 locations across the country, fell by around 1.7% Thursday afternoon.

The chain has been the subject of boycott calls after outraged patrons reported seeing unclothed trans gym-goers in the ladies’ locker room.

Planet Fitness member Patricia Silva, 67, began the uproar last month after posting a video of a trans man shaving in the women’s locker room at a Planet Fitness outpost in Alaska.

In the video, Silva said she saw a transgender person “with a penis” go near a girl who “could have been 12 years old…in a towel kind of freaked out there’s a man shaving in her locker room.”

The gym suspended Silva for breaking its policy of photographing another person at the facility.

Earlier this month, North Carolina law enforcement officials arrested 38-year-old Christopher Miller for allegedly barging into a women’s locker room at a local Planet Fitness and exposing himself while claiming that he was a woman.

Miller was arrested on a charge of indecent exposure and booked into the Gaston County jail on April 4.

Planet Fitness’s official company policy allows members to use the restroom and locker room of their self-reported gender identity, but there was no indication that Miller had identified himself as a transgender woman before venturing inside the ladies’ locker room.

Miller was ordered held on $25,000 bond.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a law this week that ends teachers’ ability to abuse a book challenge law that was implemented to protect children from pornographic materials in school.

The law now significantly limits the ability of Florida residents who do not have children in the state’s education system to be able to challenge book titles.

“The idea that someone can use the parents rights and the curriculum transparency to start objecting to every single book to try to make a mockery of this is just wrong,” DeSantis said the day before the bill signing. “That’s performative. That’s political.”

DeSantis said that people did not want their time wasted by the leftists who were trying to get classic books banned.

“We don’t care about your performative efforts to try to make a name for yourself, that’s not appropriate,” he said.

“So when you have some school administrators or teachers that are saying that somehow state law requires them to take classic books off the shelves, that is a lie. That is not true. That is depriving students of a valid education.”

“So I think that 90% of the things, I mean, when they would say that somehow, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ couldn’t be done when that was on the state’s summer reading list for the Florida Department of Education, don’t tell me Florida law says you can’t do that,” he said. “When they said you couldn’t do a book about Hank Aaron, when that was the Book of the Month for the Florida Department of Education, don’t tell us you can do that.”

“We’ve had one teacher put a video out, covered up every book in the classroom, ‘Oh, the state!’” DeSantis said mocking the teacher.

“You know, that’s passive aggressive nonsense, and we’re just not going to tolerate it. … Here’s a good test. If I stood here with with a photo from one of these books and you guys wouldn’t be able to put it on your air, then it’s probably not appropriate in the sixth grade classroom. I mean, that’s probably where we go.”

WATCH:

Under @GovRonDeSantis leadership, Florida will NOT stand for adults trying to weaponize kids’ education for self-promotion and political rage bait. 🔥🔥🔥

👇👀Gov. DeSantis: “Don’t weaponize these book challenges for a political agenda. We don’t have time for the nonsense. We… pic.twitter.com/lXldkL9p6F

— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) April 20, 2024

President Joe Biden on April 22 announced $7 billion in grants for residential solar projects that he says will benefit nearly 1 million households in low-income and disadvantaged communities.

The president unveiled his plan while marking Earth Day during a visit to Triangle, Virginia. He delivered a speech at Prince William Forest Park, which was created by Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal program.

“It’s a big deal,” President Biden said of the Solar for All program.

“Millions of families will save over $400 a year in utility bills. … It will also create 200,000 good paying and union jobs for over five years.”

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has chosen 60 applicants to receive $7 billion in grant awards through the “Solar for All” program as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. The 60 chosen applications include 49 state-level awards, six awards to tribes, and five multistate awards, according to the EPA.

Speaking at the event, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the investment will help Americans save more than $8.7 billion in electric bills in total over the lifetime of the solar panels.

Americans can “cut their electric bills by 70 to 90 percent depending on solar exposure,” Mr. Sanders said.

“The problem is that in order to get those annual savings, you need to make an initial investment, and depending upon the size of your home and where you live, that investment in solar panels may be $10,000 to $20,000, which is a lot of money if you’re an average American,” he said. “That is where the Solar for All Program comes in.”

President Biden has launched the American Climate Corps—an initiative modeled after President Roosevelt’s aforementioned program—which aims to hire more than 20,000 young Americans to undertake climate-related actions, according to the White House.

During his speech, President Biden announced the opening of 2,000 job positions through the organization’s newly launched website.

Recently, the president also announced a series of conservation actions, including protecting more than 13 million acres in the western Arctic.

“Today’s historic actions to protect lands and waters in the western Arctic will ensure continued subsistence use by Alaska Native communities while conserving these special places for future generations,” John Podesta, senior adviser to the president for international climate policy, said in a statement on April 19.

“With these new announcements, the Biden-Harris administration has now protected more than 41 million acres of lands and waters across the country, leaving a huge mark on the history of American conservation.”

During his speech, President Biden also highlighted his administration’s climate initiatives.

“Folks, despite the overwhelming devastation, in red and blue states, there are still those who deny the climate is in crisis. My MAGA Republican friends don’t seem to think it’s in crisis,” he said.

He criticized Republicans for trying to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act.

“This work has never been more urgent. Climate change is the existential crisis of our time; no one can deny its impacts and staggering costs anymore,” he said in a proclamation for Earth Day issued on April 19.

“Climate change is a global issue. Certainly, no one nation can tackle the climate crisis alone; we have to work together. On my first day in office, I immediately rejoined the Paris Climate Accord, reclaiming American leadership in this critical work.”

Earth Day was first observed nationwide on April 22, 1970. Sen. Gaylord Nelson, a Democrat from Wisconsin, introduced the idea to raise awareness about environmental issues.

Inspired by 1960s activism, particularly the anti-Vietnam War “teach-ins,” Mr. Nelson proposed the idea to mobilize public support for environmental protection and to push for policy action at the national level.

That same year, Republican President Richard M. Nixon signed an executive order in July founding the Environmental Protection Agency. Congress then approved the creation of the agency, which opened in December 1970.

The head of Israeli military intelligence on Monday announced his resignation more than six months after the massive intelligence failure preceding Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.

Major General Aharon Haliva is the first senior Israeli Defense Forces officer and high-level government official to resign as a result of its failure to prevent Hamas’ attack, which killed more than 1,200 Israelis and led to another 240 being taken hostage.

Haliva’s resignation is expected to expedite the resignations of other senior officials in the IDF, as well as the Shin Bet security agency and the political echelon.

In his resignation letter delivered to IDF chief of staff Gen. Herzi Halevi on Monday, Haliva wrote that the military intelligence branch under his command didn’t fulfill its mission.

Haliva wrote that he’s taking responsibility for the failure in general — but didn’t specify what his failures were or what mistakes he made.

“I am convinced that for the sake of the state of Israel and for the Israeli people and the next generations, it will be the right thing to do to form a national commission of inquiry that will be able to investigate and thoroughly and comprehensively determine all the reasons and circumstances that led to these terrible events,” he wrote in Hebrew.

Haliva said he will stay in office until his successor is appointed and after an orderly transition process.

Major General Yehuda Fuchs, commander of the IDF Central Command, also notified the IDF chief of staff on Monday of his intention to end his service at the end of his three-year term in August.

Fuchs, who is in charge of the West Bank, wasn’t directly involved in the Oct. 7 failure.

Haliva was one of the top officials who claimed after the May 2021 war in Gaza that Hamas had been deterred and didn’t want another war with Israel for the foreseeable future.

Although Israeli military intelligence managed to get the Hamas war plans more than a year before the attack, Haliva and other senior intelligence officials treated them as “aspirational,” and didn’t order the military intelligence to take further action or build an early warning model that would help prevent an attack.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the only senior official who still hasn’t taken responsibility for the failures surrounding Oct. 7.

Netanyahu and his supporters in the Israeli media have been focusing their criticism over the last six months on Haliva and other senior intelligence and security officials in an attempt to present the failure as being mostly a military one.

Some 127million people in China are on alert after deadly ‘once in a century’ floods killed at least four people and forced tens of thousands to evacuate their homes.

Violent storms have battered southern China since Thursday, state media said today, with 11 people missing amid the torrential downpours that have submerged cities, swept away cars and lashed a region dubbed the ‘factory floor of the world’.

Heavy rain has descended upon the vast southern province of Guangdong in recent days, swelling rivers by up to seven metres and raising fears of severe flooding that local media said could be of the sort only ‘seen around once a century’.

‘Three deaths were reported in Zhaoqing City while the remaining one is a rescuer in Shaoguan City,’ state news agency Xinhua reported, citing local authorities.

Ten others remain missing as search and rescue efforts in the area continue to be carried out, Xinhua added.

China is no stranger to extreme weather but recent years have seen the country hit by severe floods, grinding droughts and record heat.

Across the province, 36 houses collapsed while 48 were severely damaged, resulting in a direct economic loss of nearly 140.6 million yuan, Xinhua reported.

More than 110,000 people have been relocated across Guangdong, according to the news site.

Of those, more than 45,000 were evacuated from the northern city of Qingyuan, which straddles the banks of the Bei River, a tributary in the wider Pearl River Delta, state media reported Sunday.

The authorities said the river was expected to reach levels not seen in 50 years.

Terrifying footage shared on state media and online show large swathes of land submerged in murky waters as rescuers were seen ferrying people on lifeboats in the waist-deep floods.

Other images show muddy waters engulfing shops, homes, and farmland areas of Guangdong as birds-eye photos of the province show a concrete jungle drowning in flood waters.

On Monday, authorities raced to rescue villagers caught in landslides and to evacuate trapped residents, dispatching helicopters and carrying the elderly on their backs through the deluge from their homes.

Others remained on the upper floors of their houses, waiting for the waters to recede as friends delivered food by boat.

Residents were seen climbing with suitcases and children off of rubber boats as they made a desperate attempt to reach safety as the freak weather unleashed its hell upon the province.

In another image of the aftermath, a vehicle was seen crushed by a fallen tree as destruction unravelled across the province.

Footage captured on Saturday showed a bridge crumbling and collapsing into a river as punishing winds blitzed through the area.

Hailstones with diameters of up to 3cm have also been seen shooting down from the grey skies – smashing through the roofs of houses causing major chaos and destruction.

A number of major rivers have burst their banks, with authorities claiming they are now closely monitoring ‘ dangerously high’ water levels.

Guangdong province in #China is facing severe floods due to heavy rain, prompting the evacuation of 110,000 people. Four lives lost, 10 missing. Rivers overflow as officials monitor a potential “once in 100 years” water level peak. The low-lying Pearl River delta remains at high… pic.twitter.com/zgovXy8XQZ

— WorldNews (@FirstWorldNewss) April 22, 2024

China is facing the worst flooding of the last 50 years, reportedly 150 million people were badly affected by the flood. pic.twitter.com/ptyYzj9sYp

— Islam (@AqssssFajr) April 22, 2024

Across the province, around 1.16million households lost power over the weekend, but 80 per cent had their electricity restored by Sunday.

Flights have been cancelled and delayed at Baiyun International Airport in Guangzhou due to continuous rain, while schools have been ordered shut in at least three cities.

Heavy rain is expected to continue throughout Monday, with meteorological authorities forecasting ‘thunderstorms and strong winds in Guangdong’s coastal waters’ – a stretch of sea bordering major cities including Hong Kong and Shenzhen.

Authorities warned that the level of a river in northern Guangdong could hit a ‘once in 100 years’ peak on Monday morning, though this had yet to materialise by noon.

They have also taken pre-emptive steps of draining excessive water levels from reservoirs as the flood levels continue to rise.

Neighbouring provinces, including parts of Fujian, Guizhou and Guangxi, will also be affected by ‘short-term heavy rainfall’, the National Meteorological Centre said.

‘It is expected that the main impact period of strong convection will last from daytime until night,’ it added.

Authorities on Monday issued a yellow alert for rainstorms – the second-lowest in its four-tier system – with high levels of precipitation expected to continue across large swathes of the country.

Guangdong province is China’s densely populated manufacturing heartland, home to around 127million people who now remain on high alert following the disaster weather.

Rabbi Eli Buechler, the director of the OU-JLIC at Columbia/Barnard, is urging students to leave campus and go home due to growing threats of anti-Jewish violence by pro-Hamas provocateurs on the university’s campus.

The move comes after Jewish students and the Chabad rabbi of Columbia University were forced to leave the campus for their safety during a pro-Hamas demonstration on Motzei Shabbos. The protesters, who had erected 60 tents on campus on Wednesday, chanted anti-Israel slogans and threatened violence against Jewish students.

According to video footage posted on social media, the protesters attempted to break through the campus gate, chanting “Break da lock,” “Someone torch it,” and “Pick the lock.” They also shouted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “There is only one solution, Intifada revolution.”

Outside of Columbia University tonight:
Agitators call for an ‘intifada revolution’—a return to a period marked by suicide bombings, shootings and stabbings inside of buses, cafes, hotels and nightclubs. pic.twitter.com/QXs6swBCEV

— The Israel Files (@theisraelfiles) April 18, 2024

The protesters targeted Jewish students, calling them “Al-Qassam’s next targets” in reference to the military wing of Hamas. One protester yelled, “Remember the 7th of October!” – a reference to the Hamas massacre of October 7 – and threatened that it would happen “10,000 times.”

Heard outside Columbia University last night: “Never forget the 7th of October. That will happen not 1 more time, not 5 more times, not 10, not 100, not 1,000, but 10,000 times! The 7th of October is going to be every day for you” pic.twitter.com/7rYJTwlz4x

— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) April 19, 2024

The Columbia Jewish Alumni Association wrote to university president Minouche Shafik, warning that the ongoing protests were creating an unsafe environment for Jewish students and that violence was likely. They called on Shafik to take “all possible steps to protect Jewish safety.”

The university has faced heavy criticism for its handling of the situation. A congressional hearing on Wednesday highlighted the issue, with several congressmen criticizing the university for allowing professors who have celebrated the October 7 attack to continue teaching.

The university claims that it is balancing free speech and the right to protest with the need to protect Jewish students’ safety. However, it is obvious to everyone that more needs to be done to address the issue of antisemitism on campus.

The share of voters who say they have high interest in the 2024 election has hit a nearly 20-year low at this point in a presidential race, according to the latest national NBC News poll, with majorities holding negative views of both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

The poll also shows Biden trimming Trump’s previous lead to just 2 points in a head-to-head contest, an improvement within the margin of error compared to the previous survey, as Biden bests Trump on the issues of abortion and uniting the country, while Trump is ahead on competency and dealing with inflation.

And it finds inflation and immigration topping the list of most important issues facing the country, as just one-third of voters give Biden credit for an improving economy.

But what also stands out in the survey is how the low voter interest and the independent candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could scramble what has been a stable presidential contest with more than six months until Election Day. While Trump holds a 2-point edge over Biden head to head, Biden leads Trump by 2 points in a five-way ballot test including Kennedy and other third-party candidates.

“I don’t think Biden has done much as a president. And if Trump gets elected, I just feel like it’s going to be the same thing as it was before Biden got elected,” said poll respondent Devin Fletcher, 37, of Wayne, Michigan, a Democrat who said he’s still voting for Biden.

“I just don’t feel like I have a candidate that I’m excited to vote for,” Fletcher added.

Another poll respondent from New Jersey, who declined to provide her name and voted for Biden in 2020, said she wouldn’t be voting in November.

“Our candidates are horrible. I have no interest in voting for Biden. He did nothing. And I absolutely will not vote for Trump,” she said.

Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, who conducted the survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, said, “Americans don’t agree on much these days, but nothing unites the country more than voters’ desire to tune this election out.”

The poll was conducted April 12-16, during yet another turbulent time in American politics, including the beginning of Trump’s criminal trial in New York and new attacks and heightened tensions in the Middle East.

According to the poll, 64% of registered voters say they have high levels of interest in November’s election — registering either a “9” or a 10” on a 10-point scale of interest.

That’s lower than what the NBC News poll showed at this time in the 2008 (74%), 2012 (67%), 2016 (69%) and 2020 (77%) presidential contests.

The question dates to the 2008 election cycle. The lowest level of high election interest in the poll during a presidential cycle was in March 2012 — at 59%. But it quickly ticked up in the next survey.

This election cycle, high interest has been both low and relatively flat for months, according to the poll.

McInturff, the Republican pollster, says the high level of interest in the poll has “always been a signal for the level of turnout” for a presidential contest.

“It makes it very hard for us to predict turnout this far in advance of November, but every signal is turnout will be a lower percentage of eligible voters than in 2020,” he said.

By party, the current poll shows 70% of self-identified Republicans saying they have high interest in the coming election, compared with 65% of Democrats who say so.

Independents are at 48%, while only 36% of voters ages 18 to 34 rate themselves as highly interested in the election.

“They just aren’t low interest,” McInturff said of young voters. “They are off-the-charts low.”

An intruder was arrested after breaking in to the Los Angeles mayor’s official residence early Sunday morning, officials say.

The break-in happened around 6:40 a.m. at the Getty House residence in Hancock Park, according to the office of Mayor Karen Bass.

“This morning at about 6:40 AM, an intruder broke into Getty House through a window,” according to a statement from Deputy Mayor Zach Seidl.

“Mayor Bass and her family were not injured and are safe. The Mayor is grateful to LAPD for responding and arresting the suspect.”

LAPD confirmed details, saying the person “smashed a window to gain entry into the Getty House while occupied.” LAPD officers responded and took the suspect into custody without incident.

Bass was home when the male intruder broke in, law enforcement officials told ABC News. An alarm was activated at the home and a large LAPD presence responded, including air support and the mayor’s security detail. The suspect was arrested within minutes of the call.

No further details were available about the intruder’s identity or how he was able to bypass security measures at the residence.

The incident comes as crime continues to rise amid the LA district attorney’s soft-on-crime approach to court cases.

Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón barred prosecutors from pursuing advanced punishments for gang members.

A former senior policy adviser to the Obama administration has appeared in court in Britain charged with child sex offences.

Rahamim ‘Rami’ Shy, 46, who co-ordinated the US government’s strategy to combat terrorists from Al Qaeda and the Taliban, is accused of arranging the commission of a child sex offence, court documents reveal.

He is also charged with possession of two category C indecent images of children and possessing a prohibited image of a child.

Shy, a US citizen, who lives in New Jersey, worked for the White House under president Barack Obama and secretary of state Hillary Clinton, was arrested in late February by Bedfordshire Police. He was charged the following day and appeared at Luton Crown Court via video-link from HMP Bedford on Friday wearing a grey prison-issue tracksuit.

He was not asked to enter a plea to any of the charges and was remanded in custody ahead of a hearing in June.

Most recently employed as an executive at banking group Citi, Shy worked in a senior role at the US Treasury department from 2008 to 2014, advising officials on countering the financing of terrorism and assisting foreign governments to impose sanctions on hostile regimes.

As well as working as a senior adviser to the late US diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who served under the last three Democrat presidents, Shy provided strategic policy analysis to chiefs of staff at the US Department of Defence.

He was deployed to Afghanistan to provide expertise to the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which was set up to maintain stability following the America-led invasion of the country.

According to his LinkedIn page, Shy provided ISAF with counter- terrorist finance expertise and went on to present the US’s strategy on Afghanistan to a congressional hearing in 2010.

Shy was a student at Rutgers University in New Jersey and went on to study international security policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in New York.

A spokesman from Citi said that Shy was no longer an employee at the banking group. Shy is due to go on trial in August.

David Pecker, a key figure in the hush money case against Donald Trump, is reportedly slated to be the first witness to testify against the former president at his New York criminal trial.

Pecker is the former CEO of the company that published The National Enquirer and is expected to deliver the first testimony against Trump after opening arguments begin in his trial on Monday, a source familiar with the matter told the New York Times.

Prosecutors say Pecker’s hush money relationship with Trump and his former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen began at Trump Tower in August 2015, when he agreed to help Trump’s campaign identify negative stories about him.

Trump’s trial centers on allegations that his company’s internal records were obscured to hide reimbursement payments to his former fixer and attorney Michael Cohen, who arranged hush money payments to hide negative stories about him during the 2016 presidential race. The former president has pleaded not guilty to the 34 Class E felonies he faces, which can amount to four years or less in prison if he is convicted, or a lesser sentence like probation.

While Cohen’s payments to porn star Stormy Daniels serve as the case’s primary focus, the indictment against Trump details two other deals, including one with former Playboy model Karen McDougal and another with a former Trump Tower doorman, who claimed the then-presidential candidate had fathered a child out of wedlock.

Pecker and his tabloid purchased the silence of the doorman, whose narrative about the child out of wedlock turned out to be proven false. The media mogul also bought the rights to the story about McDougal and never published it, a practice the indictment describes as “catch and kill.”

In October 2016, when Daniels was preparing to go public and sell her story about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump, the former president’s campaign had just been jolted by the release of the infamous Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump boasted about grabbing women “by the p****.”

Cohen eventually reached a deal with Pecker to silence the story about Daniels’s allegations for $130,000. While Trump has acknowledged reimbursing Cohen, he contends he didn’t know the details about what Cohen was doing.

The former attorney and fixer is expected to be the prosecutors’ star witness because his payments to the porn star are at the very center of Bragg’s indictment. But the problem for prosecutors, which Trump has already made loud and clear, is that Cohen appears to have lied to multiple branches of the federal government in just the past few years.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg‘s team will utilize Pecker’s testimony to help corroborate much of what the former attorney is expected to testify about, and also has plans to invite McDougal and Daniels to the stand. Trump has repeatedly said he would testify in his own defense.

Trump, who is under a gag order and is facing potential fines for speaking about Cohen, has heavily criticized the veracity of his testimony. He posted to social media on Sunday, calling on Justice Juan Merchan to “REMOVE THE GAG ORDER!!!”

“WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO HIDE???” Trump added in his post. Merchan is slated to hold a hearing on Tuesday about prosecutors’ allegations that Trump has violated the gag order ten times since the trial began last Monday and that he should be fined $1,000 per violation.

The revelation by the Times that Pecker would be the first witness comes as prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said Friday he would like Trump to remain clueless about who will testify on Monday, or at least until Sunday evening. Trump’s attorney, Todd Blanche, had asked on Thursday if Steinglass could tell him who the first three would be.

“Mr. Trump has been tweeting about the witnesses,” Steinglass told Merchan last week. “We’re not telling them who the witnesses are.”

Attorney Karen Agnifilo, a Trump critic who formerly worked in top positions in the Manhattan DA’s office, told the Washington Examiner in an email that prosecutors denying defense attorneys notice about their witness order was abnormal, but she also indicated that she viewed it as justifiable.

“He threatens witnesses so when that happens that is what they do,” Agnifilo said.

Opening arguments will begin on Monday at around 9:30 a.m. local time, following a tumultuous first week of the trial, which included interviews with nearly 300 potential jurors — many of whom were immediately dismissed after they said they could not judge the case impartially.

The selection process resumed on Thursday with two previously sworn-in jurors who were subsequently dismissed for separate reasons. The court was able to seat all 12 jurors and six alternates just before the end of the day on Friday.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) confirmed she hasn’t backed off her plan to potentially oust House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) after the passage of a foreign aid package on Saturday.

Greene said after Saturday’s vote that she would wait to call for a vote to vacate, but said Sunday that Johnson’s choices are to resign or be vacated.

“He needs to do the right thing, to resign and allow us to move forward in a controlled process. If he doesn’t do so, he will be vacated,” Greene said in an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.”

When questioned if that meant she would file the motion to vacate, Greene said it was coming “regardless of what Mike Johnson decides to do.”

While Greene wants to force Johnson’s hand, some Democrats have backed the speaker and indicated he should keep his job.

The motion to vacate has only been successfully used once to remove a House speaker with Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in October. During McCarthy’s ouster, every House Democrat voted with Republicans.

“I disagree with Speaker Johnson on many issues and have been very critical of him, but he did the right thing here and he deserves to keep his job until the end of his term,” Khanna said.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) did not say how he would vote on a Johnson ouster, but said Greene, along with Reps. Tom Massie (R-Ky.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), will only embolden foreign adversaries like China, Russia and Iran with the effort to remove the speaker. Massie and Gosar have backed Greene’s removal effort.

“She’s not a serious legislator, quite frankly. That’s why I think the way we’ve been treating her now is she is Putin’s special envoy to Congress,” Moskowitz told “Fox News Sunday” anchor Shannon Bream.

“The idea that she would criticize anybody else that somehow we’re not respecting America — the way you disrespect America is not by standing by our allies, not by strengthening us.”

Watch:

Ben Shapiro and Andrew Tate have once again exchanged a war of words after the former accused the controversial influencer of being a “con-artist”.

The conservative political commentator slammed the former professional kickboxer as a “grifter” for his stance on pro-creation during a rant on The Ben Shapiro Show on Wednesday.

Tate is currently in Romania awaiting trial on charges of human trafficking, rape, evidence tampering and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women. Once his trial is concluded in Romania he will be extradited to the United Kingdom to face further charges of rape. He has denied all charges.

While he awaits trial, Tate has continued his controversial online series where he instructs men on his version of masculinity and his views on society, which Shapiro did not approve of, especially his attitude to fathering children.

Shapiro’s rant was in response to a post by Tate on X, formerly Twitter, in which he lamented his belief that white men were having less babies with women and this meant their “genetic potential was stumped” and that “your race will be nothing more than a few pages in a history book.”

Along with labeling men as “losers” for the perceived drop in birth rates amongst white people, he also blamed women for being “obsessed with money and social media as opposed to being one of many baby factories for a king.”

“The way that he [Tate] quote unquote ‘explodes the myths’ is he plays a really stupid game. It’s a game for stupid people,” Shapiro began.

“The game is like this. I’m going to say two transgressive things, things that violate the taboos of the culture around me. One of those things is true, and one of those things is false.”

Shapiro added: “But because they are both transgressive and because people will oppose me on both of them — one for bad reasons and one for good reasons — this means that I have somehow gotten under the skin of the matrix. Everyone opposes me, which is why I’m a rebel. That’s Andrew Tate’s entire game.”

He then described Tate as “evil” for his attitudes towards women claiming he tells his followers to “treat women like garbage,” and specifically in reference to comments Tate made about his belief that white men needed to procreate more.

“He is a con artist and he is conning you into doing something,” Shapiro said. “He is conning you into giving away the only pathway toward actual societal success and personal success in favor of his vision of a Genghis Khan-like spreading of his seed,” he added, referring to the 13th-century Mongolian ruler who was believed to be so prolific at procreating that he still has 16 million descendants living today.

Anyone who tells you to ignore marriage in favor of impregnating lots of women and abandoning your children is a grifter. The kind of grifter who also sells you meaningless platitudes for $49.99 a month guaranteeing you BIG MONEY INCOME for LITTLE OR NO WORK!

cc: @Cobratate pic.twitter.com/kHGFbnAx4b

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) April 17, 2024

Read more:

Everything You Need to Know About Sex-Trafficking Charges Against Andrew Tate

Leaked Texts Show Andrew Tate’s Alleged Sex-Trafficking Tactics

Four published books, debate trophies, perfect attendance and a 100 average weren’t enough to get a Queens eighth-grader into her dream high school.

Kristina Raevsky, 14, found out on March 7 she wasn’t accepted to Townsend Harris High School in Flushing because of a lottery system that grouped her perfect test scores with kids who scored over a 94.

“I was shocked,” Raevsky told The Post. “Everyone I told said, ‘How is this possible?’ And I told them, ‘I don’t know, it isn’t me that is the problem. The system is the problem.

“Prior to the lottery, before COVID, my mindset was, ‘Well, I have a 100 average, I’m at the top of my class, I have perfect attendance, and I did well on the state tests . . . what could possibly go wrong?’”

But Raevsky’s attendance record and stellar average were no longer factors in the admissions process, which, since 2022, sorts kids into five groups based on seventh-grade core subject grades. For screened schools like Townsend Harris, an essay and a two-minute video submission are additionally considered. Then, kids are subject to a lottery.

“That’s where all the subjectivity comes in,” the Forest Hills student said of the writing and video portions. “If you ask me what to do to change the system, I would say put it back to the way it was when we had objective measures like state tests.

“The lottery determined my fate. At the end of all this, I was reduced to a lottery number,” Raevsky said. Her poor lottery number put her in the 72nd percentile of applicants.

“Life is not a lottery,” she added. “When you go into the medical field, the law field, every single field, everything is based on merit.”

Before the pandemic, screened schools like Townsend Harris chose their own admissions criteria. In 2020, former Mayor Bill de Blasio nixed attendance, state tests and letter grades and implemented a system where students with an 85 or above were entered into the same lottery pool, in an attempt to diversify selective schools.

In 2022, Chancellor David Banks, under Mayor Adams, brought back screens and narrowed the top tier of kids to those with a 94 or above, which those fighting for high-achieving students welcomed.

“Although we agree that it moves high school admissions policy in the right direction, this policy change is just one small step forward after NYC took three very large steps backward,” Raevsky wrote in a Fordham Institute article in 2022. She has long been a vocal advocate for education meritocracy.

Raevsky says she was never a 94 student.

“I can tell you from experience that the difference between a 94 and a 100 is miles apart … the 100 student is sitting there the moment something is assigned thinking, ‘How am I going to complete this assignment? Let me start planning.’

“The 94 student says, ‘Oh, I’ll come to the movies even though there’s a test two days away.’ The 100 student says, ‘I’m sorry but I can’t come. I’m studying.’

“Hundreds take time. Hundreds take sacrifice and perseverance,” said the student, who is on track to be the valedictorian at JHS 157.

Raevsky put Townsend Harris, which offers no geographic preference to Queens students, and only one other school on her list of 12 high school choices.

She was accepted into the Bronx High School of Science, which has its own admissions process, but said it is too far from home.

Plus, she doesn’t want to go to a STEM school.

“I’m a humanities kid,” she said. “I like math, but I like history more, and I like writing and reading more.”

The last book that she wrote, “Marriage or Espionage: Read Between the Lines,” is a historical fiction novel about a spy during the American Revolution.

Raevsky’s ultimate goal is the US Senate, she said, where she would focus on education and public safety.

Now, it’s off to nearby parochial school for her, where she was offered a scholarship. Like many families fed up with the system’s policies, hers is bidding farewell to the city Department of Education.

“I’m really glad I’m going to a private school,” she said. “I’m finally going to be in a place where I belong and am appreciated for my merit and my academic abilities.”

At least two people are dead and six others injured in a shooting at a block party in Memphis, Tennessee, on Saturday, according to police.

“During the follow-up investigation, we learned that there were 8 total victims, with two of those being deceased on the scene,” Memphis police said in an updated statement posted on X.

Police had earlier said that 16 people were shot.

#BREAKING : Several people were shot in a shooting incident that happened during a block party in Memphis.
The mass shooting incident in Memphis on a busy weekend on the nationwide 420 day celebration took place on the corner of Carnes Avenue and Grand Street#Memphis #tennessee… pic.twitter.com/MveqkvuGJG

— upuknews (@upuknews1) April 21, 2024

One of the injured remains in critical condition, while one has been released, police said.

“This was a block party that was occurring without a permit”, police said.

The block party had about 200-300 people in attendance.

At least two suspects are being sought, CBS News said, citing Memphis Police interim chief Cerelyn Davis.

“We believe there are at least two individuals that fired weapons during this incident,” Davis told CBS News.

The U.S. agreed Friday to withdraw its troops from Niger, The Washington Post reported.

U.S. has agreed to remove military personnel from Niger as confirmed by three U.S. officials, according to The Washington Post. This development follows a request from Niger’s government, which came after a military coup in 2023 that saw a junta come to power and declare the U.S. military presence “illegal.”

In a meeting between Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and Nigerien Prime Minister Ali Lamine Zeine, the U.S. agreed to withdraw over 1,000 troops, casting uncertainty over the future of a $110 million American air base.

Officials will soon begin planning the withdrawal, aiming for an orderly and responsible exit, which will require coordination with the Defense Department, the outlet reported.

“The Prime Minister has asked us to withdraw U.S. troops, and we have agreed to do that,” a senior State Department official told The Washington Post in an interview.

“We’ve agreed to begin conversations within days about how to develop a plan,” a senior State Department official said, according to The Washington Post.

“They’ve agreed that we do it in an orderly and responsible way. And we will need to probably dispatch folks to Niamey to sit down and hash it out. And that of course will be a Defense Department project.”

The halt of security cooperation and U.S. military activities, including drone flights, has left American forces in limbo. Niger’s new partnership with Russia, marked by the arrival of Russian military instructors in Niamey to train and equip local forces with systems like air defense, has deepened the diplomatic stalemate, The Washington Post reported.

The shift away from U.S. ties has sparked local protests in Niamey, where hundreds have demonstrated against the American military presence. Despite these challenges, U.S. officials are optimistic about restoring diplomatic relations with Niger, according to The Washington Post.

Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz published a report Thursday claiming that American military personnel stationed in Niger are at an “imminent risk” due to what he describes as a “concealment of intelligence” by the State Department. In the report “Unwelcome in Niger,” Gaetz claims that U.S. troops in Niger are at risk due to a lack of support from the State and Defense Departments.

The report includes statements from several service members, including a high-ranking enlisted officer, who say they feel abandoned and have been blocked from carrying out their missions and returning home after deployment. These troops reached out to Gaetz in April to voice their concerns.

“Real Time” host Bill Maher closed his show Friday night by linking the left’s indoctrination of gender ideology of children to “entrapment.” He also called out Disney’s battle with Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, saying “DeSantis wasn’t wrong.”

The HBO host condemned, “The left will overlook child f—ing if the guy from the wrong party calls it out.”

“As one of the few people in the public eye who’s gone through life and never had kids, someone has to tell me why am I always having to defend them?” Maher exclaimed at the top of his monologue. “I don’t even like kids, but I also think it’s every adult’s job to protect them.”

Maher addressed the widely talked about docuseries “Quiet on Set” on the culture of sexual misconduct that occurred at Nickelodeon, saying while it was the “talk of the town” in Hollywood, it also “exposed hypocrisy,” pointing to the left’s attacks towards DeSantis for cracking down on the “creepy stuff” at Disney involving children.

“The reason we find pedophiles in the Boy Scouts and the rectory and kids TV is that’s where the kids are!” Maher shouted. “DeSantis wasn’t wrong. But we’re so tribal now, the left will overlook child-f—ing if the guy from the wrong party calls it out.”

The HBO host derided the “Drag Queen Story Hour” trend, saying it’s “time to admit” that it’s sometimes “more for the queen than the kids.”

“Sure, kids love a clown but does the clown have to have t-ts?” Maher asked. “And when I see a five-year-old tipping, tipping at a bar under a sign that says ‘It’s not gonna lick itself,’ do I have to pretend that’s cool in order to keep my liberal ID card? Sorry, I can’t do that.”

“I said it before, wokeness is not an extension of liberalism anymore. It’s more often taking something so far that it becomes the opposite. Teaching kids not to hate or judge those who are different? Great. Proud we got there all for that. But at a certain point, inclusion becomes promotion,” Maher said.”

“And contrary to progressive dogma, children aren’t miniature adults wise beyond their years. They’re morons. They’re gullible morons who believe anything and just want to please grown-ups. And they don’t have any frame of reference so they normalize whatever is happening. That’s why endlessly talking about gender to six-year-olds isn’t just inappropriate, it’s what the law would call entrapment, which means enticing people into doing something they wouldn’t ordinarily do.”

“And if you think that some of that isn’t going on with gender in schools, you’re not watching enough TikTok videos,” Maher said before showing clips of teachers touting gender ideology. “There’s a certain kind of activist these days who wants to take heterosexuality, old school, old-fashioned, boring, minding its own business heterosexuality and lump it in with patriarchy and sexism and racism and tell kids ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if you’re anything but that?'”

Watch:

Wowza! Sometimes clarity hits Bill Maher like a tone of bricks 🧱 I just wish it would stick! pic.twitter.com/s2bO3RUsEY

— American Woman (@AmericanFWoman) April 21, 2024

He continued, “It also seems to be the theme of kind of a lot of kids books these days. I never used the phrase ‘gay agenda’ because I thought it was mostly nonsense and it is… mostly. But a director for Disney Television Animation did say after she was hired, ‘The showrunners were super welcoming… to my not-so-secret gay agenda.’”

Maher later concluded, “I’m all for adding queerness wherever… but maybe we should think about giving kids a break from our culture wars for a minute, or at least until the election is over.”

In March, Nickelodeon issued a statement to Fox News Digital regarding the alleged behaviors on past production sets.

“Though we cannot corroborate or negate allegations of behaviors from productions decades ago, Nickelodeon as a matter of policy investigates all formal complaints as part of our commitment to fostering a safe and professional workplace environment free of harassment or other kinds of inappropriate conduct,” the statement said. “Our highest priorities are the well-being and best interests not just of our employees, casts and crews, but of all children, and we have adopted numerous safeguards over the years to help ensure we are living up to our own high standards and the expectations of our audience.”

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump postponed his Saturday night rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, due to the threat of inclement weather.

The former president addressed the crowd via phone shortly after 6:30, less than half an hour before the event was scheduled to begin.

He apologized to his supporters, assuring them that he would return to Aero Center Wilmington at a later date.

“We’re flying in in a few minutes, but they really would prefer that we not come in because there’s a certain danger to all of this, and we want to make sure that everybody is safe above all,” Trump told the crowd.

“And so they’ve asked us to ask people to leave the site and seek shelter.”

The rally would have been Trump’s first since the first of his four criminal trials began this week in New York. As of Friday, all 12 jurors and six alternates had been selected.

“What we’ll do is we’ll make up for this very quickly at another time, but we’ll do it as quick as possible,” Trump said.

“I’m devastated that this could happen, but we want to keep everybody safe — it’s the most important thing. … If you don’t mind, I think we’re going to have to just do a rain check, I’m so sad. I’m in North Carolina right now and waiting to go in, but they’re saying the weather is really getting bad.”

It is unclear when the rally will be made up, but Trump said, “We’ll do it bigger and better.”

The former president is just over six months away from a 2020 rematch against his successor, Democrat Joe Biden.