SCHOOL’S OUT: Riot police at times using flash-bang grenades were moving in on the UCLA protest camp at 4:00 this morning and beginning to make arrests. The police moved in slowly, but firmly.

  Los Angeles Police and highway patrol pulled apart plywood barriers and other objects that protesters had used to build a wall around their encampment. Resisters sprayed officers with what appeared to be fire extinguishers as the night was lit up by an occasional flash and a bang. The cops fired rubber bullets. Smoke drifted over the area as some of the protesters faced the police in a line with arms linked.

  This action seemed to be inevitable after the UCLA administration declared the pro-Palestinian encampment on campus to be illegal. All classes were cancelled yesterday after outbreaks of violence between rival groups overnight Wednesday.

  Today’s action in Los Angeles follows the arrest of roughly 300 protesters in New York, most of them in a major police operation Tuesday night at Columbia University where demonstrators had taken over a building. The school has asked the cops to remain on campus past graduation.

  Students at other universities across the country remain in protest encampments, posing a challenge to administrators trying to protect free speech while trying to keep their school operating. More than 1,300 protesters have been arrested, 90 of them at Dartmouth in New Hampshire.

  In what so far is a rare case, students at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island voluntarily dismantled their protest camp.

REPEAL: Two Arizona Senate Republicans broke with their party and voted for repeal of the state’s 1864 law that bans abortion in all cases except to save the life of the mother. The bill passed 16-14 and now goes to Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, who is expected to sign it.

  The law passed before Arizona was a state was revived from the dead and forgotten this spring when the state’s supreme court ruled that it is still in effect. The issue sparked a campaign to put an abortion-rights ballot measure before Arizona voters in November.

ECON 101: The Federal Reserve yesterday decided to leave interest rates at their 23-year high of 5.2 percent while they keep an eye on inflation. The Fed said they do not plan to begin cutting rates until price increases hit a sustainable rate of two percent.

  Stocks rose on the news but interest rates in particular are putting a damper on the housing market. Fed chair Jerome Powell said, “It is likely that gaining greater confidence will take longer than previously expected.”

TRUMP ON TRIAL: The New York criminal trial of Donald Trump resumes today with lawyer Keith Davidson testifying about the hush-money payment he negotiated for porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence about a sexual fling with the former president. Earlier this week Davidson lifted the lid on the sordid world of payments to protect the reputation of celebrities.

  Davidson’s testimony is paving the way for an appearance by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former “fixer,” who is expected to testify that he engineered the deal, and personally put up $130,000, to shield Trump from scandal weeks before the 2016 election. One thing that has been revealed by testimony is that everyone hated Cohen.

IF HE WINS: Former President Donald Trump told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he would not commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election. “If everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results. I don’t change on that,” Trump told the paper.  “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”

  He repeated his lie that the 2020 election was rigged.

  This comes after Trump’s interview with Time Magazine in which he dodged definitive answers on many of the big questions. Often he said he would not rule something out, it depends on the situation or “it’s possible,” but wouldn’t say he would actually do it. One of his favorites is “We’ll have an announcement in two weeks.”

  He did say he would use the National Guard to enforce the border and round up migrants. He said he would complete the Southern border wall and would like to see Joe Biden prosecuted if the Supreme Court ruling on immunity would allow it. And he said he would not help NATO countries that don’t pay their dues for European defense.

  Trump dodged on whether he would withhold aid from Israel to end the Gaza war. Other matters on which he hedged or gave no answer: A federal abortion ban, life at conception, the abortion pill, monitoring women’s pregnancies to enforce abortion laws, firing an attorney general who refuses to prosecute someone on Trump’s orders, pardoning January 6^th rioters, and whether he would continue to support Ukraine.

  The former president said he was joking when he said he would be a “dictator for a day,” but that when he says things like that, “I think a lot of people like it.”

THE SPIN RACK: Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said she will call a vote next week on ousting Speaker Mike Johnson. She’s angry that Johnson moved ahead with support for Ukraine. Democratic leaders have said that if it comes to a vote they will vote to keep Johnson, so Greene is likely to hit the wall. — United Methodist delegates repealed their church’s longstanding ban on LGBTQ clergy, removing a rule forbidding “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” from being ordained or appointed as ministers. The vote was 692-51.

BELOW THE FOLD:  Marjorie Taylor Greene said she will not vote for the House antisemitism bill because it “could convict Christians of antisemitism for believing the Gospel that says Jesus was handed over to Herod to be crucified by the Jews.”

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