🌊 Crisis in C̶o̶l̶o̶m̶b̶i̶a̶ Columbia

Throwback to a year ago when Big News…fired everybody.

A year ago this week, Fox fired Tucker Carlson, CNN fired Don Lemon, and NBCUniversal fired its CEO — all in the span of 24 hours. The legacy news media had apparently been watching too much Star Wars and tried their own version of “execute Order 66.” What we’ve learned since then is that these Jedi cable news hosts were nothing more than performers. They don’t share many of the views they espoused on air and have done the classic “watch the new uncensored me” rebrands since. Forget fake news, how about fake news anchors?

…not sure that one will be catching on, but we tried.

In today's edition:

–Max, Max, Jen, and Alex

KEY STORY

Ukraine Aid Details

The US said it will look to deploy aid to Ukraine “quickly” amid accelerating Russian advances

• Russia has recently gained a significant battlefield advantage, allowing it to seize several cities and towns and threaten others. Ukraine has warned of a major Russian offensive this summer

• On Saturday, the House passed $60B in aid for Ukraine, paving the way for the US to provide Ukraine with artillery, air defenses, and other supplies it needs

• In anticipation of Congress approving aid, the US has positioned weapon stockpiles in Germany so that it can provide the aid “quickly,” a US official said

Dig Deeper

• Notably, Trump did not oppose the $60B aid package, which negotiators saw as crucial to its approval in the House

• Analysts attributed Trump’s implied support to the fact that the aid is in the form of forgivable loans, not grants, meaning theoretically – although not likely – Ukraine has to pay them back

• Some speculated that Trump doesn’t want to inherit a mess in Europe if he is elected; others suggested he doesn’t want Ukraine to collapse, which could be blamed on Republicans

KEY STORY

Opening Statements

Lawyers presented opening arguments in Donald Trump’s New York “hush money” trial

• New York prosecutors have charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels. They allege he did so to interfere with the 2016 election

• During opening statements, a prosecutor argued that Trump engaged in a “criminal conspiracy and cover up” to prevent damaging reports against him

• The defense called the state’s witnesses unreliable, adding, “There's nothing wrong with trying to influence an election…It's called democracy”

Dig Deeper

• Prosecutors claim Trump paid Daniels in exchange for her not sharing details about their alleged affair

• The 34 charges – usually misdemeanor offenses – are being prosecuted as felonies because prosecutors allege they were committed with the purpose of interfering with the 2016 election

• The defense argued that Michael Cohen – Trump’s former lawyer, who is accused of having facilitated the payment to Daniels in 2016 – is an “admitted liar,” referring to his previous perjury conviction. They also suggested that Daniels had a financial incentive to lie

KEY STORY

Columbia Goes Remote

Columbia, an Ivy League university in New York City, announced it would hold classes under a hybrid format in response to a wave of pro-Palestinian protests

• On Thursday, police arrested 100+ student protesters who had set up an encampment on campus. Columbia President Minouche Shafik authorized the arrests, and the university suspended the students

• The arrests triggered larger protests and sit-ins over the weekend, during which there were reports of protesters making antisemitic comments

• On Monday, Shafik said classes would be held remotely: “We need a reset,” she said. The university has since announced that classes will be under a hybrid format for the rest of the semester

Dig Deeper

• Videos emerged of protesters heckling Jewish students, and during one viral exchange, a protester said, “The 7th of October is going to be every day for you.” That and other comments prompted a slew of politicians, including NYC Mayor Eric Adams and President Biden, to issue statements condemning antisemitism

• On Monday, students across various other elite institutions held their own pro-Palestinian protests in solidarity with Columbia, resulting in 150+ arrests at Yale and New York University (NYU)

KEY STORY

Israeli Resignation

Israel’s top military intelligence official resigned, making him the first person to do so over the October 7 attack

• General ​​Aharon Haliva, chief of Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate, was on vacation during the attack and reportedly disregarded warnings of “certain signs” indicating an imminent attack. Several other top officials are expected to also resign

• In related news, the US is reportedly considering sanctioning an Israeli military unit over its alleged human rights violations in the West Bank

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to oppose those sanctions “with all my strength”

Dig Deeper

• Per documents and emails viewed by The New York Times, Israeli intelligence had obtained a copy of Hamas’ attack ahead of time, but largely disregarded it, calling it overly ambitious

• Notably, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not acknowledged failures on his part related to the October 7 attack

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RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

🚙 Tesla shares fell to a 15-month low on Monday ahead of the release of its first-quarter earnings report on Tuesday

🌎 On Earth Day, President Biden unveiled $7B in grants for residential solar projects and announced ~2,000 open positions for the American Climate Corps, a national climate service that Biden created last year

👻 The US Supreme Court agreed to hear a case challenging a Biden administration regulation on difficult-to-track “ghost guns”

🇸🇾 Five rockets were fired at a US military base in Syria from Iraq on Sunday, marking the first attack on US forces in the Middle East since February

🏀 The UN released a report that found that some employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the premier Palestinian relief body, have not been politically neutral

🎓 After an IPO in China on Tuesday, there will be at least six billionaires who made their fortunes in bubble tea

COMMUNITY

We founded RocaNews because we wanted news companies to give us just the facts – not tell us what to think. That inspires us to do the “Roca Votes” story each week, in which we summarize a controversial topic and see how Roca Nation feels about it.

This week’s debate asks: Should the University of Southern California have cut the commencement speech of its pro-Palestine valedictorian?

Keep the debate going and reply to this email to let us know what you think!

Yesterday’s Poll:

Would a pro-Palestine activist speech unfairly distract from a college graduation?

Yes: 73%
No: 20%
Unsure: 7%

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

🚄 The future is now, old man: Work started Monday on Brightline West’s $12B high-speed passenger rail line between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, with a projected 2028 opening

🛒 Let him cook! California police arrested a man after he grilled in a shopping cart using a sword as a skewer in the middle of the street

🚽 No more pooping in SF: San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood celebrated the opening of its first public restroom. It first made headlines in 2022 for its staggering $1.7M cost, which they got down to $200k

🏀 Holy Knicks: The New York Knicks won Game 2 of their playoff series against the Philadelphia 76ers in dramatic fashion. Trailing 101-96 with 30 seconds to go, the Knicks hit back-to-back 3-pointers to win the game

🍺 Gutweiser: A Belgian court acquitted a man on drunk driving charges due to auto-brewery syndrome, a rare condition where the body produces alcohol

ROCA WRAP
A Second Chance

Michael Colgan shouldn’t be alive.

On April 25, 2018, the 21-year-old Ohio State University student was running on a treadmill.

It was two days before his last final exam, and he had spent the day studying: “Just a normal day, not doing any funny business…had like half a cup of coffee.”

“All of a sudden, I just tried to breathe in,” Colgan told Roca. “I was like, oh man, something felt wrong.”

He started getting tunnel vision and felt like he was “getting crushed.”

“I tried to breathe in again, but it was like I was underwater,” he recalled.

Colgan tried to slow the treadmill, but had no feeling in his body. “And then it's kind of hard to explain,” he said, “but when you're dying, you can kind of tell that you're dying.”

“My experience was a couple of seconds, but it felt like forever. And then the last thing I remember is I felt I hit my head, and that is all I remember for a few days.”

Colgan’s memory resumed three days later in a hospital room where he was watching a Pacers-Cavaliers NBA playoffs game, unaware he had already seen it twice.

“I essentially was dead for too long,” he told Roca. “So I had some short-term memory loss for a few days.”

In total, Colgan had been functionally dead for seven minutes.

Colgan had suffered a cardiac arrest: His heart rate had dropped to zero and his brain had stopped receiving oxygen.

After collapsing, a friend of his had come over to the treadmill “to make fun of [him]” for falling off; when the friend realized Colgan wasn’t breathing, he called for help.

A different friend of Colgan’s was supposed to be working the front desk.

Miraculously, Colgan says, that friend had taken the day off. In her place was a student who had overseen Ohio State’s AED training program. That student immediately knew what to do and used the AED and CPR to revive Colgan.

After seven minutes, his heart was back on.

The odds of somebody surviving in a situation like Colgan’s is 10.6%.

To this day, Colgan’s doctors have not been able to figure out his cause.

His doctor told him, “I'm going to be honest, I don't know what happened to you. If anyone else knows what happens, claims they know what happens to you, they're guessing. What probably happened is you pissed out too much potassium and had one bad heartbeat and went into cardiac arrest.”

Colgan said that in around 15% of cardiac arrests, no cause can be identified (To pre-empt Covid vax speculation: This was in 2018).

This wasn’t Colgan’s first near-death experience: When he was 16, he tried marijuana and had a seizure, which he said “felt similar to the heart attack.”

His doctors told him he was likely allergic to cannabis and that had triggered “a precursor cardiac arrest,” but he had snapped out of it.

That time, he also thought he was going to die: “I thought I was in a bright meadow surrounded by tall, bright figures speaking in high pitch voices.”

“And that was very peaceful. That was, it kind of felt like a dream a little bit, but it was not scary. I wasn't in pain or in fear of anything.”

Colgan can’t say if he had a spiritual experience during his treadmill event because he lost his memory around it.

He also said that while he was thankful to be alive, stress and fear were greater than any other emotion upon coming back to life.

Too scared to exercise or go on walks, he put on 30 pounds over the next year.

But one day, his mother – a “little 4’10” Italian lady” – said to him, “Michael, if that's the way you're going to live your life, you might as well have died.”

Colgan said that remark forced him to start living again: He became a leader in Ohio’s branch of the American Heart Association, connected with other people who have suffered similar events, and decided to make the most out of life, which led him to move to New York City.

“Now I just think I need to live my life to the fullest,” he told Roca. “I have a second chance.”

Colgan is a Roca reader who got in touch via our Instagram.

If you have or know anyone who has an interesting or powerful story, let us know by replying to this email!

And if you want to hear Colgan tell his story, you can listen to him on Roca’s We the 66 podcast!

Reply to this email to let us know what you think!

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

Happy Tuesday Roca! We have a question for the public teachers out there.

Have you been asked to modify your syllabus or teaching content due to restrictions on books (like book bans and gag orders) or other material? If yes, please email us! We’re covering a story on that and want to incorporate teachers’ perspectives.

— Max, Max, Alex and Jen