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☔Scattered showers with highs in the 60s. Sunset tonight is at 7:26 p.m.

Reminder: It’s tax day. If you have not filed yet, it’s time to get on it or request an extension by the end of the day.

Four Things to Know

1. A federal judge in Vermont is considering a future hearing to release Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts PhD. student detained last month by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The legal case is wrapped up in a few different jurisdictions: in Vermont, a judge in federal district court is considering a petition to move her case, based on the ruling of a federal judge in Boston. In Louisiana, where ICE agents took Öztürk to a detention facility, she’s scheduled for a preliminary hearing in immigration court this week.

Monday’s hearing came a day after the Washington Post reported on a State Department memo that said Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not have sufficient evidence to revoke Öztürk’s student visa. Öztürk co-authored an op-ed in the Tufts student paper, calling on the university to divest from Israeli companies because of the war in Gaza. “This is yet another piece of evidence that demonstrates that there is no basis for Rümeysa to have been arrested, transported and detained in Louisiana,” Öztürk’s attorney Jessie Rossman said. “Except for her authorship of this op-ed — and that is clearly not normal immigration enforcement.”

2. The Massachusetts Senate is considering more legal protections for both doctors and patients in reproductive and gender-affirming care. “It’s just happening over and over again, this assault on women’s and transgender care,” said the bill’s sponsor Sen. Cindy Friedman, an Arlington Democrat.

Massachusetts already passed a shield law for reproductive and gender affirming care, in 2022. This version would add privacy protections for the names of providers and patients. It also guarantees that emergency rooms in the state provide patients with emergency reproductive health treatments.

3. Friends and family are remembering six people with Boston-area ties who were killed in a private plane crash in Upstate New York this weekend . Among them were Karenna Groff, a former MIT soccer player and the NCAA’s 2022 woman of the year; Groff’s parents, neuroscientist Dr. Michael Groff and urogynecologist Dr. Joy Saini; her brother, Jared Groff, and his partner Alexia Couyutas Duarte; and Karenna Groff’s boyfriend, James Santoro.

Couyutas Duarte was a paralegal at Metro West Legal Services in Framingham and planned to attend Harvard Law School this fall. “First thing I think of is that huge smile of hers, which is hard to believe I won’t see again,” said Betsy Soule, executive director of Metro West Legal Services. “But she was an incredibly intelligent, motivated and compassionate person, even at such a young age.”

4. Housing prices in Greater Boston are slightly higher than they were this time last year, according to real estate analysts at the Warren Group. Realtors say they’re seeing plenty of interest: one said he counted 50 people coming through one open house in Rockland last weekend. But people who work in real estate said the stock market’s fluctuations and instability around job security have buyers feeling nervous. 

“Home prices have obviously continued to rise and we’re still appreciating even though things are tenuous in the market,” said Jeff Mancovsky of Mortgage Equity Partners in Lynnfield. “So they’re not so hesitant on buying the home. Where they’re hesitant is: Should they lock in, or should they wait?”

Harvard says it won’t comply with Trump’s ‘unprecedented’ demands

Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, announced yesterday that the university will not comply with a list of updated demands that President Donald Trump’s administration sent the Ivy League school on Friday. In response, the Trump administration announced it will freeze $2.2 billion in grant money and $60 million in contracts to the university.

The Trump administration had threatened to review $9 billion in funding the college receives.

“The university will not negotiate over its independence or its constitutional rights,” Garber wrote. “No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

The Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism said Harvard’s letter “reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges — that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws.”

In his letter, Garber said the demands are not about antisemitism but about controlling the “intellectual conditions” at Harvard.

The Trump administration’s demands letter is public , and Garber said he encouraged students and staff to read it “to gain a fuller understanding of the unprecedented demands being made by the federal government to control the Harvard community.”

The Trump administration had demanded that Harvard stop recognizing pro-Palestinian student groups, expel students involved in a pro-Palestine protest at Harvard Business School in 2023 and audit what students, faculty and leadership views on diversity are. The administration also asked the university to start screening international students “to prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including students supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism.” The letter did not define those terms more specifically.

Garber made the announcement Monday in a letter to the university community, writing that Harvard’s lawyers had informed the Trump administration of their rejection of its demands.

“For better or for worse, Harvard is a tremendously important institution in higher education,” Harvard Professor of government Ryan Enos said. “This is a really important symbolic step for all of those that have looked for somebody in higher education to stand up.”

Boston University professor of law Jonathan Feingold said he would like to see more cooperation across campuses.

“I’m honestly not sure how the Trump administration will respond, but what I would most like to see from Harvard is not to stop here, but to announce a much broader alliance with universities across the country that are speaking in unison, saying that we are going to protect each other from these unlawful and anti-democratic attacks,” Feingold said.

Read Diane Adame’s full reporting here.