SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
mccarthyism
Make No Mistake, Trump Is Turning the US Into a Police State
The arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil is a blatant attack on the civil liberties without which there can be no meaningful democracy for anyone. Our dark days are getting darker by the moment.
Mar 12, 2025
“America, this republic, this democracy in which we are, is a living thing which cannot be contemplated or categorized, like the image of a thing I can make . . . . It is not and never will be perfect because the standard of perfection does not apply here. Dissent belongs to this living matter as much as consent does. The limitations on dissent are the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and no one else. If you ‘try to make America more American’ . . . you can only destroy it. Your methods, finally, are the justified methods of the police, and only the police.” —Hannah Arendt, “The Ex-Communists,” Commonweal (March 20, 1953).
Hannah Arendt, a German-Jewish immigrant, wrote the above words at the high point of McCarthyism in 1950’s America. It took courage for her to publish these words. For, as her biographer, Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, reports: “The attorney general of the democracy in which she was living had made a speech three days earlier in which he announced that 10,000 citizens were being investigated for denaturalization and 12,000 aliens for deportation as ‘subversives.”
Indeed Arendt’s husband, Heinrich Blucher, was a former communist who was especially vulnerable to the threats of the Attorney General, Albert Brownell. As Blucher himself had written in a letter to Arendt about Brownell’s revival of the harsh McCarran-Walters Act: “The acceptance without opposition of the dreadful new immigration bill has demoralized the best people here, so much so that the forces of the Left, which never really were put in motion, are stunned . . . It seems that one can now deprive someone of citizenship with a simple denunciation . . . And how soon these ‘Born American’ people could become a Master Race.”
That was then, and this is now.
Last weekend, U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) arrested Khalil Mahmoud, a Columbia University graduate student, living in campus housing, who has been one of the leaders of the pro-Palestinian movement on campus. Mahmoud is a Palestinian who was born in Syria, who has been in the U.S. on a student visa, is currently holding a green card, and is married to a U.S. citizen. There is no evidence that he has ever engaged in a violent act. He was apparently arrested in accordance with the Trump Executive Order, “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism,” signed on January 29, 2025, and also in connection with the recently announced State Department “catch and revoke” policy, which employs AI tools to locate, detain, and deport international students considered to be pro-Palestinian and thus, by definition, “anti-Semitic.”
This is not about Hamas or Palestine or Israel or antisemitism. It is about the crackdown on dissent. Period.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio quickly acknowledged the action, announcing that “we will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.” [It must be noted that a U.S. federal judge has just ordered a temporary halt to Mahmoud’s deportation. But it must be noted only parenthetically, because the halt is only temporary, and Mahmoud remains in ICE custody, and if there is any domain where the Trump administration can be relied upon to stick to its metaphorical—and actual—guns, it is this one.]
The arrest of Khalil is a major escalation in a “New Campus McCarthyism” that has beset U.S. higher education for at least the past two years. It follows hard on the Trump administration’s cancellation of over $400 million in Columbia University grants and contracts, and preceded by one day Tuesday’s announcement that the U.S. Department of Education has sent letters to 60 universities “under investigation for antisemitic discrimination and harassment.”
At the same time, what we are now experiencing is more than an attack on academic freedom and university autonomy. It is nothing less than a wholesale assault on constitutional democracy itself, by an authoritarian administration determined to “Make America Great Again,” the Constitution, and democracy, be damned. The arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil is a blatant attack on the civil liberties without which there can be no meaningful democracy for anyone. As columnist Michelle Goldberg put it in the New York Times, “This is The Greatest Threat to Free Speech Since the Red Scare.”
That this arrest and the policy behind it is being justified by this administration–with its Nazi-saluting “DOGE” head and neo-Nazi supporting Vice President and “fine people on both sides” President–as a defense of Jews is beyond cynical. And that many Jewish leaders apparently support this arrest is simply deplorable. For Trump clearly has no real interest in either Jews or Arabs, and is quite content to disrespect the former while trolling the latter, as he did on Elon Musk’s X, posting “Shalom, Mahmoud” above a caption that read: “ICE proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student on the campus of @Columbia University. This is the first arrest of many to come.” Trump followed up with an even more threatening Truth Social post:
We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it. Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country – never to return again. If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests, and you are not welcome here. We expect every one of America’s Colleges and Universities to comply.
But even more ominous was a statement Trump posted last week:
All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.
This is not about Hamas or Palestine or Israel or antisemitism.
It is about the crackdown on dissent. Period. Foreign “agitators,” American “agitators,” it makes no difference.
And while it involves the Education Department’s financial intimidation and punishment of universities, it also involves the coercive power of the federal government—through Homeland Security, Justice, and even Defense—to arrest those among us, regardless of their citizenship status, who engage in “anti-American” behavior as defined by Donald Trump, in other words, those who oppose what Trump is doing.
This should surprise no one. For Trump promised exactly this, in pretty much every speech he gave on the 2023-24 campaign trail, but never more directly that in his too-easily forgotten 2023 Veteran’s Day Speech:
We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections. They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream. . . the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.
Trump is now doing what he promised. And all too many Americans are either excited that he is doing so or merely blasé about their president’s proud decision to literally take a torch to the U.S. Constitution.
Martin Niemöller’s famous saying has been quoted so many times that it is a veritable cliché. All the same, the sentiment it expressed is as true now as it ever was, and it is especially appropriate to note that it is featured on the website of the U.S. Holocaust Museum:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
The arrest of Khalil Mahmoud is an offense to every citizen of the United States, and it sets a precedent that endangers us all.
Trump is turning the United States into a police state.
Are the tattered and tarnished instrumentalities of democracy still at our disposal sufficient to prevent him from succeeding? And if we do not exercise them now, how much longer will they even persist?
Our dark time is getting darker by the day.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'This Is the Fascist Playbook': Arrest of Mahmoud Khalil Shows Depths of Trump Threat
"Arresting and threatening to deport students because of their participation in political protest is the kind of action one ordinarily associates with the world's most repressive regimes."
Mar 10, 2025
Civil rights organizations, legal experts, and lawmakers were among the chorus voicing alarm Sunday and into Monday over the dire implications of the Trump administration's brazen arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian rights organizer who helped lead Columbia University student protests against Israel's assault on Gaza.
"The Trump administration's outrageous detention of Mahmoud is designed to instill terror in students speaking out for Palestinian freedom and immigrant communities," said Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which has helped organize nationwide demonstrations against Israel's catastrophic war on the Palestinian enclave.
"This is the fascist playbook," the group added. "We all must fiercely reject it, and universities must start protecting its students."
Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident with a green card, was arrested on Saturday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who stormed his university-owned apartment in Manhattan. Khalil's attorney toldThe Associated Press that the ICE agents also threatened to arrest his pregnant wife, an American citizen.
As of Monday morning, Khalil—an Algerian citizen of Palestinian origin—was being held in an ICE facility in Louisiana, and the Trump administration is moving to revoke his green card.
While the State Department CAN revoke *visas* with very little legal process involved, stripping someone of a green card is done by DHS (not the State Department) and requires filing formal charges alleging a violation of immigration law and a removal hearing in front of an immigration judge.
[image or embed]
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick ( @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) March 9, 2025 at 7:05 PM
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, said Sunday that Khalil's arrest was carried out "in support of President Trump's executive orders prohibiting antisemitism."
But JVP and other advocacy groups warned that the administration's purported crackdown on antisemitism is a pretext for a dangerous assault on civil liberties, including those of Palestinian rights advocates.
"We are not fooled by the Trump administration's claims that this blatantly unconstitutional and authoritarian attack is somehow in the name of Jewish safety," said JVP. "Deporting anti-war students who are trying to end genocide and silencing political speech endangers all of us. We will not be divided."
"The unlawful detention of Mr. Khalil reeks of McCarthyism. It's clear that the Trump administration is selectively punishing Mr. Khalil for expressing views that aren't MAGA-approved."
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in a statement that "arresting and threatening to deport students because of their participation in political protest is the kind of action one ordinarily associates with the world's most repressive regimes."
"It's genuinely shocking that this appears to be what's going on right here," Jaffer added. "Universities must recognize that these actions pose an existential threat to academic life itself. They must make clear, through action, that they will not sit on the sidelines as the Trump administration terrorizes students and faculty alike and runs roughshod over individual rights and the rule of law."
Khalil's arrest came days after Trump threatened to imprison students engaged in what he described as "illegal protests." AP reported that "Khalil's arrest is the first publicly known deportation effort under Trump's promised crackdown on students who joined protests against the war in Gaza that swept college campuses last spring."
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement Sunday that "the Trump administration's detention of Mahmoud Khalil—a green card holder studying in this country legally—is targeted, retaliatory, and an extreme attack on his First Amendment rights."
"The unlawful detention of Mr. Khalil reeks of McCarthyism. It's clear that the Trump administration is selectively punishing Mr. Khalil for expressing views that aren't MAGA-approved—which is a frightening escalation of Trump's crackdown on pro-Palestine speech, and an aggressive abuse of immigration law," Lieberman added. "Ripping a student from their home, challenging their immigration status, and detaining them solely based on political viewpoint will chill student speech and advocacy across campus. Political speech should never be a basis of punishment, or lead to deportation."
Keep ReadingShow Less
In the Attack on Pro-Palestinian Campus Speech, More Than Jobs Are at Stake
Students and professors across the country are being witch-hunted for their position on Palestine, in a serious threat to democracy, dissent, and the ability of ordinary people to resist authoritarianism.
Jan 30, 2025
For months before U.S. President Donald Trump took office, nearly daily reports rolled in of students and professors on trial for their activism for Palestinian life.
New York University suspended 11 students who were part of a peaceful flyer distribution and sit-in, including students who simply sat in the library lobby in solidarity. Eleven students at Swarthmore College faced expulsion on assault charges for using a bullhorn. Emerson College laid off 10 staff members, blaming protests for Palestine as a cause for low enrollment, and then using layoffs to target pro-Palestine employees. Emerson also put four students on probation for leafleting on a public sidewalk. Thirteen students at Princeton are being criminalized for “trespassing” on their own campus after they participated in a sit-in. Seven students and faculty at Duke have been called before a University Judicial Board, and without notice or due process are facing termination for participating in nonviolent protest. Tenured professors at Emory are facing similar trials. MIT demoted a tenured professor after he proposed a course entitled Decolonization & Liberation Struggles in Haiti, Palestine, & Israel. Professors at Muhlenberg College, Columbia, John Jay College, City University of New York, NYU, and more, have been fired or forced out for advocating for Palestinian rights.
I have spoken with a university librarian fired after teaching a workshop in which they discussed “scholasticide” in Gaza, a K-12 teacher fired for a social media post critical of Israel and the U.S., and scores of K-12 teachers who have been suspended or otherwise disciplined for speaking about the suffering of Palestinians. An avalanche of Title VI Civil Rights Act complaints are being weaponized against educators, many of them filed by individuals or organizations with absolutely no connection to the school in question.
To truly humanize Palestinians is to defy racist empire, which is—in part—why the backlash against the movement for Palestinian life and freedom is so severe.
I am personally facing a Title VI investigation at Gonzaga University, where I was hired as an “activist scholar” to be the lead instructor in a Solidarity and Social Justice program. The allegations against me are over attending a peaceful student “walkout for Palestine,” and forwarding to our faculty listserve an open student letter (signed by hundreds of our students) against Gonzaga’s anti-protest policy. A range of outcomes are possible, including termination. Because I went on a pre-approved medical leave the day after my first interrogation, I have been denied the right to submit further statements or participate in any way until May. In essence, I will be on trial for five months with no representation or ability to advocate for myself.
The number of the similar cases is impossible to know, due in part to near media omission. Many people who have faced or are currently facing investigations are instructed that they must remain silent (and isolated) as to not “compromise” the investigation. Some are quiet because their jobs, prospects for future employment, and safety are at stake. What is clear is that the trials are wide-reaching, extraordinarily punitive, largely coordinated, and were coming down rapidly across the country at educational institutions of all types even before Trump was sworn in.
The witch-hunting of educators and students is combined with related measures, including a nationwide rollout of campus anti-protest policies that appears at least influenced by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, advisers to Project 2025. At the start of the school year around 100 campuses issued broad policy changes that essentially ban meaningful protest. Some universities have gone as far as to fortress entire campuses with checkpoints and surveillance drones, block common gathering areas with fences, and station security guards outside of classrooms.
These are political attacks, designed to crush a movement that is standing with and for people at the brutal bottom of violent systems of oppression. They have a chilling effect, not just upon those they are wielded against, but upon the entirety of public thought and discourse. Some experts have warned that we are witnessing a new McCarthyism, and one that may well exceed the repression of the 1950s.
The new McCarthyism began before Trump and has been partly initiated by “liberal” higher-ed institutions, but Trump’s tyrannical regime will strive to take the trend to harrowing new extremes. Less than two weeks in office, Trump has already issued an executive order—pulled directly from Project Esther—to deport pro-Palestine students that are not citizens and take “forceful and unprecedented steps to marshal all federal resources” against what he described as campuses “infested with radicalism” and “pro-jihadist protests.”
The crackdown on students and educators—being swiftly and terrifyingly exploited and extended by Trump—is a major assault on free speech and academic freedom. It is a grim threat to democracy, dissent, and the ability of ordinary people to resist all of the assaults of authoritarianism and oligarchy that we are up against. It is an alarming slippery slope, that began in large part as a bipartisan attack on a movement that is challenging U.S.-led racist empire.
Activism for Palestinian freedom and equality necessarily confronts American and Western capitalist and imperial interests. It upends supremacist, dehumanizing ideologies—in the case of Palestine, Anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia—that rationalize and sustain a remarkably violent and hierarchical global order. To truly humanize Palestinians is to defy racist empire, which is—in part—why the backlash against the movement for Palestinian life and freedom is so severe, garnering broad support from the far-right and liberals alike.
The witch hunt across educational institutions plays on longstanding Anti-Palestinian racism to vilify all forms of protest for Palestine as terroristic and antisemitic, issuing sweeping charges of antisemitism against any expression of concern for Palestinian life. In this, there is a largely intentional conflation of criticism of Israeli government apartheid and genocide with antisemitism. This misconstruing is also dangerous and oppressive to Jews. According to History and Jewish Studies Professor Annelise Orleck, it seeks to enforce a right-wing Pro-Israel political stance to which all Jews must adhere, and attempts to eviscerate Jewish identities rooted in a long tradition of standing for the rights of the oppressed, democratic pluralism, and social justice. Both Jews and Palestinians have been disproportionately targeted in the campus crackdowns.
While protection of Jewish life has become the pretext for persecuting those who express concern for Palestinian life, a haunting rise in antisemitism on the far-right and at the top is being ignored; at times even defended by groups whose stated mission is to “combat antisemitism.” British-Israeli author Rachel Shabi recently wrote in the The Guardian, “If antisemitism is so blatantly wielded as a political weapon, it creates the impression of a fundamental unseriousness about the subject.” It also undermines the very humanistic movements that are our hope for a world beyond both antisemitism and Anti-Arab racism. To restate words I spoke to students at the protest for which I am being accused of “discrimination” under the Civil Rights Act:
In a moment of such intensive propaganda and power, the world needs your moral clarity. Your moral clarity that all of our lives are inherently interconnected. That the movement for Palestinian liberation is a movement for human liberation. That liberation for Palestinians forces a reckoning with all interlocking systems of oppression, which is core to—not in competition with—Jewish, Black, Brown, Indigenous, White, Collective liberation. Your moral clarity that human solidarity, mutual safety, and freedom is possible. That love, rather than domination, could be the guiding force of our lives together on this one beautiful planet.
We are going to need to hold firm to the principle and aim of collective liberation in the times ahead, and stand with linked arms against attempts to distort our common humanity. I find tremendous hope in the students and educators who have been brave enough to do so, in spite of intense repression and retaliation. It is the courageous acts of ordinary people that will stop the cruel trajectories we are on.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular