Northwestern Settles Federal Probe, Will Pay $75 Million
Northwestern University will pay $75 million to the U.S. Treasury and accept new oversight measures after reaching a sweeping agreement with the Departments of Education, Justice and Health and Human Services. The deal ends federal investigations into allegations that the university failed to protect Jewish students and violated civil-rights and hiring laws.
The settlement, announced Friday, restores access to nearly $790 million in frozen federal funds. It requires the school to supply anonymized admissions data, maintain female-only housing and athletic facilities defined by biological sex, train international students on academic-freedom norms, and establish a board committee to monitor compliance.
U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi called the resolution a “major win” for the administration’s efforts to enforce civil-rights protections for Jewish students. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon and Education Secretary Linda McMahon echoed that view, saying federally funded universities must uphold civil-rights law without exception.
Interim President Henry Bienen emphasized that Northwestern agreed to the deal without conceding any wrongdoing. The university posted a Q&A confirming that point and stressing that the school would not surrender control over hiring, admissions, or curriculum.
“We expect federal funds to resume within days,” Bienen said, adding that Northwestern’s red lines included maintaining full authority over academic and staffing decisions.
The agreement also nullifies the university’s 2024 Deering Meadow pact with anti-Israel encampment organizers which was an arrangement sharply criticized by Jewish groups. The reversal means temporary spaces that had been assigned to Middle Eastern and Muslim student associations will no longer be reserved for those groups.
Northwestern said it will maintain its participation in “scholars at risk” initiatives, though the impact of the administration’s visa restrictions for Afghans remains unclear.
The university added that it will continue supporting Middle Eastern and Muslim students through existing campus facilities and, with alumni, may explore privately owned off-campus spaces for additional community programming.
Files Reveal Argentina Let Nazi Doctor Live Openly for Years
Declassified files released by Argentine President Javier Milei confirm that Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz doctor notorious for lethal experiments on prisoners, lived openly in Argentina for years after World War II. The documents show that authorities knew of his presence as early as the mid-1950s and repeatedly failed to act.
The records, reported by Fox News, trace Mengele’s arrival in 1949 under the alias Helmut Gregor, using an Italian passport. By 1956, he felt secure enough to resume using his real name after obtaining a validated copy of his German birth certificate from the West German Embassy in Buenos Aires.
Argentine intelligence had tracked his movements, his investments, and his involvement in a medical-laboratory partnership believed to be backed by his family. Despite this, a West German extradition request in 1959 was rejected by an Argentine judge as “political persecution,” and bureaucratic stalling across agencies allowed him to flee to Paraguay in early 1960.
A memo dated July 12, 1960, shows officials still searching for him after he had already escaped. Later that year he reached Brazil, where sympathetic German-Brazilian farmers sheltered him. Mengele lived under multiple aliases, such as Peter Hochbichler, José Mengele, Wolfgang Gerhardt, until dying of a stroke while swimming in 1979. His remains were identified in 1985 and confirmed by DNA testing in 1992.
The archive also includes testimony from José Furmanski, a Polish-born Argentine who survived Auschwitz and personally witnessed Mengele’s selections and experiments. His statements, preserved by Argentine intelligence, describe Mengele separating families and conducting fatal procedures on twins.
Historians estimate that Argentina sheltered up to 5,000 Nazi fugitives, including senior figures like Adolf Eichmann. Milei’s transparency initiative places the newly released files in the General Archive of the Nation, where they will now be accessible to researchers and the public.
IDF wipes out Rafah tunnel routes, kills dozens of Hamas operatives
The Israel Defense Forces completed a 40-day operation in eastern Rafah aimed at dismantling the remaining Hamas tunnel network and killing terrorists hiding inside it. The IDF announced Sunday night that forces from the Nahal and Golani Brigades, alongside Yahalom combat engineers and the Gaza Division, eliminated more than 40 Hamas operatives in the past week alone.
Troops uncovered and destroyed dozens of tunnel shafts and underground facilities, along with above-ground infrastructure tied to Hamas operations.
The IDF said forces remain deployed under the parameters of the current U.S.-brokered ceasefire and continue to act against any immediate threats to communities in the western Negev.
On Saturday night, Israeli forces killed four Hamas members as they emerged from the tunnel system. Israeli media outlets reported that the military was investigating whether the commander of Hamas’s East Rafah Battalion, who was responsible for overseeing the entire tunnel grid, was among the dead. Channel 14, citing security sources, reported that the commander, his deputy and a security aide were killed in the fighting.
Israel has reportedly faced U.S. pressure not to strike deep inside the Rafah tunnels, despite the network sitting within IDF-controlled territory under the ceasefire arrangement.
Last week, around 20 terrorists attempted to flee the tunnel system. Several surrendered and were transferred to Israel for interrogation.
