MagazinAisle

Blog

  • Dwayne Johnson and Stephen Merchant Adapting ‘Fighting With My Family’ Into Stage Musical

    Dwayne Johnson and Stephen Merchant Adapting ‘Fighting With My Family’ Into Stage Musical

    Dwayne Johnson and Stephen Merchant‘s 2019 film Fighting With My Family is getting the musical treatment.

    Merchant’s biopic is being developed for the stage by Tilted Musicals, in collaboration with Seven Bucks Productions (co-founded by Johnson and Dany Garcia), Merchant himself, Kevin Misher and Birmingham Hippodrome.

    With the book and lyrics by Olivier Award-winning playwright Jon Brittain (Rotterdam, Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder!), Fighting With My Family will feature a new soundtrack by singer-songwriter Miranda Cooper and Nick Coler.

    The movie, directed and written by the U.K. Office co-creator Merchant, premiered in January 2019 at Sundance. The movie follows the true story of WWE superstar Paige (real name Saraya Bevis), played in the film by Florence Pugh. Vince Vaughn depicted her WWE trainer, and The Smashing Machine star Johnson featured as himself, as well as a producer on the film opposite Garcia for Seven Bucks Productions.

    Merchant confessed he always thought of the film as a musical. “A young woman from the ‘chorus line’ fighting to get her big break, surrounded by theatrical, larger-than-life characters and huge sweeping emotions,” he said. “I approached each wrestling match like it was a different dance number, building to a big show-stopping finale. Seeing the film reimagined for the stage feels like the natural next step.”

    Johnson, who will next be seen in the live-action Moana and Jumanji 3, said Fighting With My Family feels “exceptionally well-suited for the stage.” He continued: “It’s packed with personal emotion expressed through the dynamic world of wrestling, which has always been about storytelling and connecting with a live audience. Working with Stephen Merchant on the film was a truly special experience, and his brilliant work deserves this new act. As it comes to life musically, I have no doubt it will be an absolute blast for theatergoers.”

    It marks the first musical developed and produced by Tilted Musicals, a new production company run by Cooper and U.K. producer-director Sam Hodges.

  • ‘On the Road (En El Camino)’ Tops Winners at 43rd Miami Film Festival – Film News in Brief

    ‘On the Road (En El Camino)’ Tops Winners at 43rd Miami Film Festival – Film News in Brief

    “On the Road (En El Camino)” led the winners at the 43rd Miami Film Festival, taking the festival’s top jury prize, the $10,000 Marimbas Award. Directed by David Pablos, the film was recognized as the narrative feature that best exemplifies “richness and resonance for cinema’s future,” according to the festival.

    Additional top honors included the Made in MIA Feature Film Award, which went to “The Old Man and the Parrot,” directed by Gabriel de Varona. The prize, which carries a $15,000 cash award, recognizes films that prominently feature South Florida in their story or production.

    The $10,000 Jordan Ressler First Feature Award was awarded to “Second Victims,” directed by Zinnini Elkington, honoring the best debut narrative feature.

    Audience awards were led by “Comandante Fritz,” directed by Pavel Giroud, which won the Audience Feature Film Award. “Milly, Queen of Merengue,” directed by Leticia Tonos Paniagua, was named first runner-up, followed by “I Swear,” directed by Kirk Jones.

    In documentary categories, “TheyDream,” directed by William D. Caballero, won the Documentary Achievement Award, while “Runa Simi,” directed by Augusto Zegarra, took the Audience Documentary Film Award.

    The festival, presented by Miami Dade College, ran April 9–19 and featured films from around the world, continuing its focus on Ibero-American and international cinema.

    Monday, April 20

    Manny Jacinto, Liza Soberano, and More to Star in Filipino Animated Series “Sun Chaser,” Pilot Launches at Annecy International Animation Film Festival

    The animated adventure-comedy series “Sun Chaser” will launch its pilot during the 2026 Annecy International Animation Film Festival, held June 21–27 in Annecy, France.

    Created by Bobby Pontillas and Bernard Badion and produced by an all-Filipino team of artists, “Sun Chaser” follows the story of Jordan Santos (Manny Jacinto), “a self-absorbed teen whose carefree summer is upended when an ancient icy villain attacks his grandmother’s island in the Philippines. Thrust into an unexpected role as protector of his younger cousins, Jordan and his crew are pulled into a mythic ocean realm, setting sail aboard a legendary vessel known as the Sun Chaser. As they navigate enchanted seas and extraordinary islands to rescue his grandmother and save the island, Jordan must evolve from a reluctant kid into a true leader.”

    Along with Jacinto, Liza Soberano (“Forgotten Island”), Eugene Cordero (“Loki”), and stand-up comedian JR De Guzman will star. Philippine performers Charo Santos, Dingdong Dantes, Zia Dantes, AC Bonifacio, and KD Estrada round out the cast.

    “Sun Chaser” previously won Animation du Monde at the 2025 festival and is produced by Miguel Del Rosario and Marlyn Montano. The film is animated entirely by the Toon City and PlayLab studios in the Phillipines and is co-produced by Liza Soberano’s Funny Face Films.

  • ‘Survivor’ 50 Sneak Peek: Jeff Probst Competes for the First Time — Thanks to Jimmy Fallon (EXCLUSIVE)

    ‘Survivor’ 50 Sneak Peek: Jeff Probst Competes for the First Time — Thanks to Jimmy Fallon (EXCLUSIVE)

    Jeff Probst is ready to play “Survivor” … or is he?

    In a new exclusive sneak peek of the Wednesday, April 22, episode, the host and showrunner steps in to compete in his first immunity challenge (“Wrist Assured” or “Water Weight,” depending on what season in the past you’ve watched), during which he must hold up a portion of his own weight in a pail of water.

    “Everybody ready to make a little ‘Survivor’ history?” Probst asks as the challenge begins.

    Immediately after beginning, he says, “I will admit, it is much heavier than I thought.” Then, he reveals that his competing was actually Jimmy Fallon’s idea, which he brought up during “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon.”

    “He knew we were doing ‘In the Hands of the Fans’ and we were voting, so he did his own poll with his audience, and one of the questions was [whether] should I ever participate as a player,” Probst explains. “It was, like, 90% [yes], so thanks, Jimmy. That’s why we’re out here.”

    Probst then asks the group if someone else could drop so they could take over hosting duties. While Ozzy tells Christian he could drop, Probst then says, “Devens, you’re not going to win this. Why don’t you just drop?” Devens, surprised, yells, “Porbst!” Moments later, he admits, “That’s tempting.”

    It was previously revealed that Jimmy Fallon would be one of the massive “Survivor” celebrity fans who became part of the game as a twist — along with the previously seen Zac Brown and upcoming Mr. Bease.

    Watch the exclusive sneak peek below. “Survivor” airs on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET. on CBS and streams the next day on Paramount+.

  • This Frankenstein AI Merges Claude Opus, GLM and Qwen—And Outperforms Top Models

    This Frankenstein AI Merges Claude Opus, GLM and Qwen—And Outperforms Top Models

    In brief

    • AI engineer Kyle Hessling merged two of Jackrong’s Claude Opus 4.6 and GLM-5.1 distilled finetunes into a single “frankenmerge.”
    • A post-merge “heal fine-tune” was required to fix garbled code output caused by the layer boundary between the two independently-trained models.
    • The model over-reasons on some tasks, but it’s a solvable problem.

    You thought Qwopus was cool because it merged Qwen and Opus? Well, Kyle Hessling, an AI engineer with a lot of knowledge and free time just took that recipe and threw GLM—one of the best reasoning models out there—into the mix. The result is an 18 billion parameter frankenmerge that fits on a cheap GPU and outperforms Alibaba’s newest 35B model.

    For those who don’t know, parameters are the numerical values baked into a neural network during training, like dials that a neural network can adjust — the more of them, the more knowledge and complexity the model can handle, and the more memory it needs to run.

    Hessling, an AI infrastructure engineer, stacked two of Jackrong’s Qwen3.5 finetunes on top of each other: layers 0 through 31 from Qwopus 3.5-9B-v3.5, which distills Claude 4.6 Opus’s reasoning style into Qwen as a base model, and layers 32 through 63 from Qwen 3.5-9B-GLM5.1-Distill-v1, trained on reasoning data from z.AI’s GLM-5.1 teacher model on top of the same Qwen base.

    The hypothesis: Give the model Opus-style structured planning in the first half of the reasoning and GLM’s problem decomposition scaffold in the second—64 layers total, in one model.

    The technique is called a passthrough frankenmerge—no blending, no averaging of weights, just raw layer stacking. Hessling had to write his own merge script from scratch because existing tools don’t support Qwen 3.5’s hybrid linear/full attention architecture. The resulting model passed 40 out of 44 capability tests, beating Alibaba’s Qwen 3.6-35B-A3B MoE—which requires 22 GB of VRAM—while running on just 9.2 GB in Q4_K_M quantization.

    An NVIDIA RTX 3060 handles it fine… theoretically.

    Hessling explains that making this model wasn’t easy. The raw merge used to throw garbled code. But even so, the test models he published went kind of viral among enthusiasts.

    Hessling’s final fix was a “heal fine-tune”—basically a QLoRA (a bit of code that is embedded into the model like an appendix and heavily conditions the final output) targeting all attention and projections.

    We tried it, and even though the idea of having Qwen, Claude Opus, and GLM 5.1 running locally in our potato is beyond tempting, in reality we found that the model is so good at reasoning through things that it ends up overthinking.

    When tested it on an M1 MacBook running an MLX quantized version (a model optimized to run on Macs). When prompted to generate our usual test game, the reasoning chain ran so long it hit the token limit and gave us a nice long piece of reasoning without a working result in a zero shot interaction. That’s a daily-use blocker for anyone wanting to run this locally on consumer hardware for any serious application.

    We went a bit softer and things still were challenging. A simple “write a Snake game” prompt took over 40 minutes in reasoning… lots of it.

    You can see the results in our Github repository.

    This is a known tension in the Qwopus lineage: Jackrong’s v2 finetunes were built to address Qwen 3.5’s tendency toward repetitive internal loops and “think more economically.” Stacking 64 layers of two reasoning distills appears to amplify that behavior on certain prompts.

    That’s a solvable problem, and the open-source community will likely solve it. What matters here is the broader pattern: a pseudonymous developer publishes specialized finetunes with full training guides, another enthusiast stacks them with a custom script, runs 1,000 healing steps, and lands a model that outperforms a 35 billion parameter release from one of the world’s largest AI labs. The whole thing fits in a small file.

    This is what makes open-source worth watching—not just the big labs releasing weights, but the layer-by-layer solutions, the specialization happening below the radar. The gap between a weekend project and a frontier deployment is narrower the more developers join the community.

    Jackrong has since mirrored Hessling’s repository, and the model had accumulated over three thousand downloads within its first two weeks of availability.

    Daily Debrief Newsletter

    Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.

  • Mississippi Law School Requires AI Training as Courts Grapple With the Tech

    Mississippi Law School Requires AI Training as Courts Grapple With the Tech

    In brief

    • Mississippi College School of Law now requires all first-year students to take an AI course.
    • The move follows courtroom incidents involving faulty AI-generated legal work.
    • Students are building prototype tools aimed at tasks like jury analysis and legal drafting.

    Mississippi College School of Law now requires all first-year students to complete a course on artificial intelligence, according to a report by Mississippi Today.

    The Jackson-based college is one of the first law schools to mandate AI instruction for all students.

    “The potential benefits of these new technologies as a force multiplier in the practice of law just can’t be ignored,” Mississippi College School of Law Dean John P. Anderson told Decrypt. “Whether our students plan to be litigators or transactional attorneys, their future employers will expect familiarity with these AI tools. We want the firms hiring our students to be confident that every MC Law grad is competent in AI technologies.

    The requirement comes as courts confront both the potential benefits and the risks of using AI tools in legal practice. In 2024, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts warned that generative AI can fabricate information and lead lawyers to cite non-existent cases, raising concerns about reliability and due process in the legal system.

    More recently, in February, a federal judge ruled that defendants’ conversations with AI chatbots are not protected by attorney-client privilege and can be admitted as evidence. The decision prompted law firms across the country to send notices to clients, and even amend some agreements, as law offices increasingly turn to AI tools themselves. And now law schools, too, are being forced to adapt to the new normal.

    The AI course at the Mississippi College School of Law was first announced in October and requires all first-year students to complete a certification course on artificial intelligence and the law, and aims to teach students how to use the technology responsibly and verify its outputs rather than rely on it blindly.

    “When used effectively, responsibly, and ethically, AI tools can help solo practitioners or small firms go toe-to-toe with larger firms and corporations with greater financial resources,” Anderson said. “We know our students are already experimenting with these AI tools on their own. If we don’t teach them about the dangers of these tools, and how to use them effectively, responsibly, and ethically early on in their law school careers, then we run the risk that they will go into practice unprepared and with bad habits that could cost their future employers and clients dearly.”

    According to Mississippi College, the class was designed and taught by Oliver Roberts, editor-in-chief of AI at The National Law Review and founder of Wickard AI.

    “Whether you like AI or not, I believe you should be learning about it because you can strengthen your arguments for it or against it by learning the foundational concepts of it,” Roberts told Mississippi Today.

    Mississippi College School of Law joins a growing list of schools offering courses on AI fundamentals. In March, a proposal was introduced in California that would require mandatory AI training for law students.

    The AI course requirement reflects a broader shift as courts and law schools prepare lawyers to work with AI systems entering legal practice, and comes as courts experiment with similar tools.

    Last month, a Los Angeles Superior Court pilot program tested Learned Hand, an AI system that summarizes filings, organizes evidence, and drafts rulings to help judges manage rising caseloads without replacing human decision-making.

    “We’re at a place in society where courts are under tremendous strain,” Learned Hand founder and CEO Shlomo Klapper told Decrypt. “Their caseloads go up, but no help is coming,” he said, adding that advances in artificial intelligence are “massively dropping the cost of litigation.”

    Editor’s note: This article was updated after publication to include comments from Mississippi College School of Law Dean John P. Anderson.

    Daily Debrief Newsletter

    Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.

  • Trump’s Media Company Appoints Kevin McGurn, Former Hulu and Vevo Exec, Interim CEO

    Trump’s Media Company Appoints Kevin McGurn, Former Hulu and Vevo Exec, Interim CEO

    Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of social-media platform Truth Social and other businesses whose mission is “to end Big Tech’s assault on free speech by opening up the internet and giving people their voices back,” announced the appointment of Kevin McGurn as interim CEO effective immediately.

    McGurn, who has previously worked as an executive at Hulu, Vevo and T-Mobile, has served as an adviser to Trump Media since December 2024. He will succeed Devin Nunes, the former U.S. congressman who has been TMTG’s CEO since 2022 and is now exiting the company.

    “I want to thank Devin Nunes for his dedicated service to the company over the past four years, and congratulate Kevin McGurn on his appointment as Interim CEO,” Donald Trump Jr., a TMTG board member, said in an April 21 statement on behalf of the company’s board of directors. “Kevin brings deep experience across media, technology and capital markets, as well as a strong understanding of Trump Media’s operations and strategic priorities. His familiarity with the Company and alignment with our leadership team uniquely position him to guide Trump Media through this important period.”

    Last December, Trump Media & Technology Group announced a merger agreement with nuclear fusion company TAE Technologies in an all-stock deal valued at more than $6 billion. The companies said the transaction is expected to close in mid-2026. In February, Trump Media said it was considering a potential spin-off of “businesses including Truth Social into a new publicly traded company” following the closing of the pending merger transaction between TMTG and TAE.

    For full-year 2025, Trump Media & Technology Group reported $3.7 million in revenue and a $712.3 million consolidated net loss. According to the company, the net loss included non-cash losses related to changes in the fair value of digital assets and digital assets pledged ($403.2 million) and non-cash losses stemming from the fair value mark to market of digital asset related securities ($178.8 million). The figure also includes $59.2 million in non-cash stock-based compensation and $27 million in non-cash interest expense on outstanding debt.

    TMTG said that at the end of 2025, it had financial assets of approximately $2.5 billion comprising cash, restricted cash, short-term investments, equity securities, note receivable, digital assets and digital assets pledged.

    In a statement on Truth Social, Nunes said in part that “having achieved Trump Media’s original mission of giving the American people their voices back, and with the Company’s future secured through our strong balance sheet, it’s an appropriate time for Kevin McGurn, a Trump Media advisor with deep experience in media, mergers, and acquisitions, to take over the Company’s leadership and steer Trump Media through its current transition phase.”

    Nunes continued, “This will allow me to focus more intently on my role as Chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and on other ventures, knowing the company is in safe hands under Kevin’s stewardship.”

  • Anne Hathaway Pushed ‘Devil Wears Prada 2’ Producers to Cast Size-Inclusive Models Because ‘All Different Shapes Are Beautiful’

    Anne Hathaway Pushed ‘Devil Wears Prada 2’ Producers to Cast Size-Inclusive Models Because ‘All Different Shapes Are Beautiful’

    Meryl Streep made headlines last month after revealing that her co-star Anne Hathaway consulted producers on the set of “The Devil Wears Prada 2” to avoid featuring models who were too “skeletal.”

    “I was struck by how not only beautiful and young — everyone seems young to me — but alarmingly thin the models were,” Streep told Harper’s Bazaar in March. “I thought that all had been addressed years ago. Annie clocked it too, and she made a beeline to the producers about it, securing promises that the models in the show that we were putting together for our film would not be so skeletal! She’s a stand-up girl.”

    In a conversation with Variety at the film’s worldwide premiere in New York, Hathaway explained what prompted her to speak up and open the conversation.

    “I had noticed that we had beautiful models on set, and a lot of them were more traditionally model-sized,” she said on the red carpet Monday night. “I knew what the context of the scene was, and I thought the scene would be so much more enjoyable for the audience if we had just a wider range of bodies on display, because all different shapes are beautiful.”

    The sequel, backed by greater studio resources than the original, actually filmed sequences during live runway shows at Milan Fashion Week. Hathaway, who drew on the star power she’s accumulated over the past 20 years, credited the film’s producers for quickly adjusting to her request.

    “I just went to the producers and I asked that question: ‘Don’t you think the scene would be stronger if we had a more inclusive approach to sizing?’” she recounted. “They looked up and were so sad that they hadn’t thought about it. I think they were so locked in, just kind of going with the flow. But as soon as they saw it, they were the ones who made it happen in like an hour.”

    Hathaway concluded, “It all begins with the question, right?”

    “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” as with most sequels released in the modern era, features a more diverse cast than its predecessor. New additions include Lucy Liu and “Bridgerton” breakout star Simone Ashley, who says she’s “honored” to be part of a production that “represents women in a real way.” Helen J. Shen, the 26-year-old Chinese-American actor who plays the new assistant to Streep’s Miranda Priestly, credited Hathaway for “leading by osmosis” and helping create a more inclusive set.

    “I was so happy to hear that she said that,” Shen said, referring to Hathaway’s conversation with the film’s producers. “Twenty years ago, if I think about this particular movie, I don’t know that I would have gotten cast. To know that there are people out there who maybe think the Runway offices or fashion aren’t for them, I say, hell no.”

    “The Devil Wears Prada 2” hits theaters on May 1.

  • Ethereum whale rotates $1.14mln into ASTEROID – Here’s what it means!

    A clear capital rotation unfolds as a single whale shifts from Ethereum into a high-risk memecoin, reshaping short-term liquidity.

    Over two days, the address sold about 497 $ETH worth roughly $1.14 million and accumulated approximately 3.84 billion Asteroid Shiba [ASTEROID] with the price near $0.00029.

    Source: X

    This move stood out because it is not passive accumulation.

    It reflects a deliberate shift from a large-cap asset into a micro-cap, which signals a higher risk appetite and a search for outsized returns.

    This concentration affects price behavior.

    In a thin market, sustained buying can push prices higher faster than usual. However, the same structure increases fragility, as exits can reverse gains just as quickly.

    Source: Etherscan

    The remaining 368 Ethereum [$ETH] adds uncertainty. It suggests the whale may continue accumulating, which extends upward pressure, yet it also leaves room for a staged exit.

    This implies the market may see short-term momentum, while participants face higher volatility and timing risk.

    Thin liquidity amplifies price swings

    As the whale rotation directs over $1 million from $ETH into Asteroid Shiba, the price begins to react sharply, which signals a liquidity-driven move. This shift happens as capital seeks higher upside, moving from large-cap stability into a thin, high-risk market.

    The structure then shapes the reaction.

    With only about $7.6 million in liquidity against a $165 million valuation, depth remains limited. As volume rises near $88 million, flows begin to dominate price, which pushes rapid gains through shallow pools.

    This buildup creates momentum, yet it lacks broad participation. As a result, the price reflects concentrated demand rather than sustained market interest.

    With roughly 22,000 holders, control stays narrow, which implies participants face higher volatility, where gains depend on continued inflows and remain vulnerable to quick reversals.

    Momentum and liquidity trap risk

    At the time of writing, Asteroid Shiba had rallied by over 15% in 24 hours. This rally reflected reflexive momentum, where an initial large buy triggered rapid price acceleration and drew market attention.

    As visibility increased, retail FOMO followed, with traders rushing in to capture short-term gains rather than assess fundamentals.

    This reaction builds through social amplification, where rising discussion pulls in momentum traders and reinforces the uptrend. As more participants enter, demand feeds on itself, which pushes prices beyond sustainable levels.

    However, this same structure creates a liquidity trap.

    With a small holder base and thin depth, buying pressure becomes fragile once it slows. As momentum fades, a large holder can distribute strength, which turns late entrants into exit liquidity.

    This implies sharp reversals, where thin liquidity amplifies downside as selling pressure quickly overwhelms limited demand.

    Final Summary

    • Asteroid Shiba rally reflects whale-driven liquidity concentration, where thin depth amplifies gains but leaves price highly sensitive to sudden capital shifts.
    • ASTEROID’s momentum risks a liquidity trap, where fading demand can turn late buyers into exit liquidity and trigger sharp reversals.
  • Nearly 8,000 people died or disappeared on migration routes in 2025: IOM

    Nearly 8,000 people died or disappeared on migration routes in 2025: IOM

    More than four in every 10 deaths and disappearances occurred on sea routes to Europe, the UN agency says.

    Published On 21 Apr 2026

    Nearly 8,000 people died or disappeared on migration routes last year, with sea routes to Europe the most deadly, according to the United Nations.

    The UN’s International Organization for Migration said that many of the victims were lost in “invisible shipwrecks,” as it released new figures in a report on Tuesday.

    Recommended Stories

    list of 4 itemsend of list

    “These figures bear witness to our collective failure to prevent these tragedies,” Maria Moita, who directs the UN agency’s humanitarian and response department, told a news conference.

    The figure of 7,904 people that the UN counted as died or missing in 2025 constituted a fall from the all-time high of 9,197 in 2024, the IOM said in its report. However, it added that the drop was partly due to 1,500 suspected cases that went unverified due to aid cuts.

    Total deaths since 2014 exceed 82,000, with about 340,000 family members estimated to have been directly affected.

    Shifting routes

    More than four in every 10 deaths and disappearances occurred on sea routes to Europe, the IOM reports.

    “In Europe, overall arrivals declined, but the profile of movements changed, with Bangladeshi nationals becoming the largest group arriving while Syrian arrivals fell following political and policy shifts,” the report reads.

    Many cases were so-called “invisible shipwrecks” where entire boats are lost at sea and never found.

    The West African route northwards accounted for 1,200 deaths, while Asia reported a record number of deaths, including hundreds of Rohingya refugees fleeing violence in Myanmar or misery in crowded refugee camps in Bangladesh.

    The organisation stressed that the data showed migration routes “are shifting rather than easing, with risks remaining high along increasingly dangerous journeys”.

    “Routes are shifting in response to conflict, climate pressures and policy changes, but the risks are still very real,” said IOM Director General Amy Pope.

    “Behind these numbers are people taking dangerous journeys and families left waiting for news that may never come,” she added.

    “Data is critical to understanding these routes and designing interventions that can reduce risks, save lives and promote safer migration pathways.”

  • Pro-Palestine legal aid requests stay high in 2025 amid US campus pressure

    Pro-Palestine legal aid requests stay high in 2025 amid US campus pressure

    Washington, DC – Requests for legal support related to pro-Palestine advocacy remained high in the United States last year, as President Donald Trump threatened activists and universities with penalties.

    In an annual report released on Tuesday, Palestine Legal, an organisation that “supports the movement for Palestinian freedom in the US”, said it received 1,131 queries for legal support in 2025.

    Recommended Stories

    list of 3 itemsend of list

    The figure is below the record 2,184 requests the group received in 2024, when pro-Palestine protests swept US campuses — and were regularly met with crackdowns from both school administrators and law enforcement.

    Despite universities enacting new restrictions on protests across the country, the figures from 2025 show that pro-Palestine advocacy has persisted, according to Dima Khalidi, the executive director of Palestine Legal.

    “Our 2025 year-end report shows that while universities have largely cowered and caved to coercive pressure from the Trump administration and its pro-Israel supporters, student activists for Palestinian and collective freedom remain a model of moral conviction and courage,” Khalidi said.

    “Even when facing punitive consequences for speaking out, they are holding the line of dissent against injustice from the US to Palestine, because they understand the cost of surrender for all of us.”

    Palestine Legal said that the “overwhelming majority of requests” for legal support came from university students and faculty in 2025, but a growing number, 122, were categorised as “immigration and border-related”.

    The group received 851 requests from people or organisations targeted for their Palestine-related advocacy, as well as 280 more asking for legal guidance on conducting advocacy.

    Despite the drop from 2024, the rate of complaints last year remained 300 percent higher than in 2022, the year before Israel began its genocidal war in Gaza on October 7, 2023.

    Since then, at least 72,560 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza.

    Pressure campaigns

    In 2024, Trump campaigned for a second term in the White House in part on a pledge to crack down on the pro-Palestinian protest movement, which sought to shine a light on the human rights abuses unfolding during the war.

    He has framed such protests as anti-Semitic, and since his inauguration in 2025, he has led a campaign to penalise schools that played host to pro-Palestinian activism.

    To date, five universities have struck deals with Trump after he threatened to withhold billions in federal funding. They include Columbia University, where a pro-Palestine encampment and resulting police crackdown drew international attention.

    Columbia eventually reached a $200m settlement with the Trump administration and moved to make several policy changes it said were aimed at combatting anti-Semitism.

    Rights groups have condemned such policies as conflating pro-Palestine advocacy with anti-Jewish sentiment. They also warn that Trump’s actions risk dampening free speech, a protected right under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

    All told, nearly 80 of the students who took part in Columbia’s protests faced serious academic discipline, including expulsions, suspensions, and degree revocations, as of July 2025.

    Meanwhile, the Trump administration used immigration enforcement to target pro-Palestine protesters and advocates, including scholars like Rumeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Badar Khan Suri and Mahmoud Khalil.

    To date, the deportation proceedings against Ozturk, who was in the US on a student visa, and Mahdawi, a US permanent resident detained at his citizenship hearing, have been abandoned.

    Ozturk has since voluntarily returned to her native Turkiye after completing her doctoral studies at Tufts University.

    The government is still proceeding with deportation efforts against Khan Suri, a Georgetown University researcher, and Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and permanent US resident.

    Separately, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided five homes connected to pro-Palestine activists at the University of Michigan in April 2025, sparking outrage. Federal authorities seized properties, but no arrests were made.

    Despite the restrictive climate across the country, Palestine Legal hailed a string of legal victories in 2025 that upheld the right to pro-Palestinian protest.

    Last August, for instance, a federal court dismissed a complaint that sought to penalise UNRWA USA, a non-profit that supports the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), under the Antiterrorism Act of 1990.

    A separate lawsuit launched by Palestine Legal and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) charged that the University of Maryland had tread on the free speech rights of students by banning Students for Justice in Palestine (UMD SJP). That case resulted in a $100,000 settlement.

    Meanwhile, federal judges have sided with Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in their challenges to the Trump administration’s defunding efforts.

    “The fights that Palestine Legal and our partners have waged affirm that the Trump administration, universities, and Israel advocacy groups cannot, without consequence, run roughshod over growing demands to respect and protect Palestinian rights,” Palestine Legal said at the conclusion of its report.

    “The developments throughout 2025 made crystal clear that if we allow our right to stand for Palestinian freedom to be trampled, all of our fundamental rights will be in jeopardy in the face of an authoritarian slide.”