Suspected D.C. Shooter Charged, Trump vs. Harvard, SCOTUS Ruling On Agency Firings

0:01The man suspected of fatally shooting two Israeli embassy employees in D.C. has been charged with murder. He could still face additional charges. Police are investigating the killings as a possible hate crime. I'm E. Martinez with Michelle Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News.

0:20The Trump administration has opened a new front in its war against Harvard University by revoking the school's ability to sponsor international students. So how are current students affected? I think this moment is not just about visas. It's about values. And independent agencies like the Federal Reserve are supposed to be insulated from political influence. But the Supreme Court says President Trump is allowed to fire members of those agencies, at least for now. Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day.

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1:36Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it. This message comes from Rince, who knows that greatness takes time. So does laundry. So Rince will take your laundry and hand deliver it to your door, expertly cleaned. And you can take the time pursuing your passions. Time once spent sorting and waiting, folding and queuing, now spent challenging and innovating and pushing your way to greatness. So pick up that Irish flute or those calligraphy pens or the daunting Beef Wellington recipe card and leave the laundry to rinse. Rinse. It's time to be great. The man suspected of killing two Israeli embassy employees outside a Jewish museum in Washington, D.C., has been charged with two counts of murder, among other crimes.

2:19Law enforcement officials say they're continuing to investigate the attack as a possible hate crime. NPR's Jennifer Ludden is with us now with the latest. Jennifer, good morning. Good morning. I understand that we now have a lot more information on what exactly happened. So what can you tell us? Yes, we do. We know now from the affidavit that the suspect, Elias Rodriguez, flew from his home in Chicago to Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. That's the day before the attack. He declared a firearm in his checked luggage, and he bought a ticket to the event that was taking place at this Jewish museum three hours before it started.

2:55It was a mixer for young diplomats. From witness interviews and surveillance video, we also have some pretty gruesome details of the shooting. Law enforcement officials say Rodriguez shot at the two victims from the back and kept firing repeatedly even as one of them tried to crawl away. He then discarded his nine millimeter handgun and eventually he went inside the museum and told a police officer that he had done this, saying, quote, I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza. Yeah, and the Washington Post is also reporting that the gunman sat down indoors after the shooting as though he was fleeing the danger.

3:33A witness told the Post that somebody even got him a glass of water. So President Trump and others have called this an act of anti-Semitism, but is it correct that so far he has not been charged with a hate crime? That's right. Not at this point. But Jeanine Pirro, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, told reporters that the murder charges and others are only the beginning. Federal agents raided Rodriguez's home in Chicago yesterday. They learned that he expressed admiration for a person who self-immolated in front of the Israeli embassy here in D.C. last year. He described them as a martyr.

4:07And Pirro says investigators are going through massive amounts of evidence to learn what motivated him. violence against anyone based on their religion is an act of cowardice. It is not an act of a hero. It is the kind of case that we will vigorously pursue. And she says, look, there's going to be additional charges as the evidence warrants. Tell us more about the two people who were killed. They were a young couple. They both worked at the Israeli embassy. What else can you tell us about them? Yeah, it's really quite sad, Michelle. Israel's ambassador to the U.S. said Yaron Lishinsky had bought an engagement ring.

4:45He was planning to propose to Sarah Milgram next week. They were going to be on a trip to Jerusalem. Lishinsky was a German and Israeli citizen. Milgram was American. She grew up in a Kansas City suburb. A friend of Milgram's, Israeli attorney Ayelet Rezin Bedor, told me she took the embassy job after Hamas attacked Israel a year and a half ago. She was already sensing a rise in anti-Semitism, and she wanted to combat that. Not with violence or shoutings or verbal abuse, but in diplomacy, with love, with intelligence. Razine Batur says it is a painful irony that Milgram lost her life in this way.

5:27Finally, Jennifer, very briefly, obviously something like this heightens people's fears, obviously for many Jewish people, but others as well. Are officials saying something about that? Absolutely. D.C.'s police chief says there's going to be more law enforcement officers around faith-based groups, schools, and places like the Jewish Community Center here. That is NPR's Jennifer Ledden. Jennifer, thank you. Thank you.

5:56Harvard University has sued the Trump administration for a second time. This comes less than 24 hours after the Department of Homeland Security revoked Harvard University's ability to enroll international students. Now, for students who are already enrolled, the move is sowing confusion. This kind of makes us all very uneasy and sort of fearful and angry, honestly. The school, which has been in a month long back and forth with the president, says the government's actions are unlawful. NPR's Alyssa Nadwerny is covering the story. Alyssa, so what exactly did the Trump administration do? So on Thursday, Kristi Noem, the U.S.

6:35Secretary of Homeland Security, sent a letter to Harvard saying the administration is terminating Harvard's student exchange certification, which means the school can no longer sponsor student visas. That prevents Harvard from enrolling new students and pulls the rug out from under currently enrolled students. In a statement, Noam says the administration is holding Harvard accountable for, quote, fostering violence and anti-Semitism and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party. She encouraged current students to transfer. Okay, and then Harvard's response? So they were swift in filing a new lawsuit.

7:07In it, they accused the Trump administration of retaliating against Harvard for exercising its First Amendment rights. In a letter to campus, Harvard's president, Alan Garber, called the action unwarranted and said it imperils the future of thousands of scholars. Harvard is already suing the Trump administration over research funding cuts related to accusations of anti-Semitism on campus. That trial is set to start in July. So what kind of an impact do you think this might have on Harvard and its student body? Well, the university has nearly 7 ,000 international students, roughly one-fourth of the student body.

7:38We spoke to several of them. One senior from Canada told us she's worried about whether she'll be able to graduate next week. The students we talked to asked not to be named because they fear retaliation from the U.S. government for speaking out. Another student at Harvard, a third-year undergrad from Europe, told us he came to the U.S. to study to be a professor. I'm very close to graduation. I thought, you know, dang it, if this is the reason that I'm not going to be able to graduate, like I really have no idea what I would do if I were to get deported or if I were unable to re-enroll in September here at Harvard.

8:08Might this move, Alyssa, have implications beyond Harvard? It could, A. I talked with Sean Carver about this. He's the executive director at International House at UC Berkeley. I think Harvard is the canary in the coal mine as the administration kind of uses them to test what they can and cannot do to influence public and private institutions. So it could just be that the administration is having a spat with Harvard. But Carver says other institutions are fearful. This isn't the first time that international students have been a target of the administration. earlier this semester, the government revoked hundreds of student visas, but then reversed that decision.

8:42I've been doing this for over 20 years, and this is probably the most difficult time for international students. You know, more than a million international students study at U.S. colleges and universities. And Carver says international student applications are way down. And he says it's likely because students are looking at Europe, Asia, and Canada for college. And that could ultimately have a big impact on the U.S. economy. One report found last year international students contributed more than$43 billion. That's NPR's Alyssa Nadwarni. Thanks a lot. You bet.

9:21In a 6-3 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court said President Trump can fire two members of independent agencies for now. Yeah, it's not the final say on the matter, but it is an indication of how the Supreme Court views the extent of Trump's power. And P.S. Andrea Hsu is here to explain. Andrea, good morning. Good morning. Could you just start by telling us who are these officials that Trump fired? Yeah, so Gwen Wilcox was a member of the National Labor Relations Board. And Kathy Harris sat on the Merit Systems Protection Board. That's the board that hears federal employee complaints. And they both sued, saying Trump did not have the authority to fire them.

9:58In fact, in creating their agencies, Congress wrote into law that members can only be fired for cause like neglect of duty or malfeasance. But the Trump administration has been arguing that those restrictions on the president violate the Constitution. So that's the fight that's been playing out in the lower courts. And what have the lower courts said? Well, there's already been a lot of ping-ponging back and forth, Michelle. Initially, two judges found Wilcox and Harris's firings not only violated the law, but also ignored Supreme Court precedent, a case called Humphrey's Executor from 90 years ago.

10:31The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Congress could limit the president's power to remove members of independent agencies, and so Wilcox and Harris actually went back to work for a while. But the government appealed, there was some back and forth, and last month Chief Justice John Roberts stepped in and allowed Trump to remove Wilcox and Harris again. And now the entire Supreme Court has weighed in. Yeah. Yesterday, a majority of justices said they think Trump does have the authority to fire Wilcox and Harris for now anyway. They wrote that the Constitution gives the president the power to fire at will those officials who help him carry out his duties with only narrow exceptions.

11:09And they said Wilcox and Harris probably don't qualify for those exceptions. OK, so tell me more about this probably. Does that mean that this is not necessarily a definitive ruling? That's right. It's a stay while the appeals court weighs the merits of the case. To be clear, the Supreme Court hasn't yet heard arguments of this case. This order came out of what's known as the emergency docket, which conservatives have increasingly relied on to get quick decisions without a hearing. And this is something that Liberal Justice Elena Kagan brought up in her dissent. She wrote, our emergency docket, while fit for some things, should not be used to overrule or revise existing law, meaning Humphrey's executor.

11:48She said what's at stake here is not just someone's job, it's this very idea that Congress embraced when it created independent agencies, that, you know, if their members are insulated from political pressure, that they will make sound judgments that benefit the public good. Now, in recent years, the court has been chipping away at this idea, and at Humphrey's executor, but in yesterday's decision, the conservative majority did carve out an exception for one independent agency, the Federal Reserve. Okay, so what did they say about the Fed? Well, Wilcox and Harris had warned that if the court finds that Trump can fire them, that nothing can stop him from firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

12:24And in fact, Trump did threaten to fire Powell, which tanked the markets. Later, he pulled back and said he had no intention of firing Powell. In any event, the conservative majority disagreed with the notion that their order would affect the Fed. They wrote that the Fed is a uniquely structured quasi-private entity with a distinct historical tradition. Kagan scoffed at this in her dissent, and she maintained that the Fed's independence rests on the same foundation as other independent agencies. Now, again, this is not, yesterday's order is not the final word, but it does give us a pretty good sense of how the justices could rule, if and more likely when they hear arguments in this case.

13:02That is NPR's Andrea Hsu. Andrea, thank you. You're welcome.

13:13And finally, last night, President Trump dined with more than 200 investors into the Trump meme coin, the president's personal cryptocurrency venture. The Associated Press reports that at the dinner, hosted at Trump's golf resort in Virginia, the coin's top 25 investors were invited to a private reception with Trump, raising questions about the president's commingling his business interests with his public office. The White House said the president attended the event in his personal time. While there, he stood at a lectern emblazoned with a presidential seal. No media were allowed access.

13:54A lot has changed in higher education since President Trump took office. Students have come to me and just, they feel really scared. Everything that's been going on has kind of changed my life plans. This Sunday on Up First, how members of the class of 2025 are feeling about the state of higher education and their own futures. Listen to the Sunday story right here on NPR's Up First podcast.

14:21And that's Up First for Friday, May 23rd. I'm Michelle Martin. And I'm Amy Martinez. And just a quick reminder that Up First airs on Saturdays, too. Aisha Roscoe and Scott Simon will have the news wherever you get your podcasts. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Krishna Dev Kalamur, Nicole Cohen, Russell Lewis, Ali Schweitzer, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Zian Butch, Nia Dumas, and Ana Perez. We get engineering support from Zach Coleman in Washington, D.C., and Josh Savageau at NPR in St. Paul. And a big thank you to Jeff Jones and all of our colleagues at NPR for their support this week.

14:55Our technical director is Carly Strange, and our executive producer is Jay Shaler. We hope you'll join us again Monday.

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