The Dictatorship
Trump is bragging about ICE arresting a legal immigrant for ‘bad’ speech
Mahmoud Khalil was a prominent student leader in Columbia University’s pro-Palestine protests last year. On Saturday, he was taken into detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. According to The Associated Press, his attorney says she spoke to one of the agents over the phone, who told her that Khalil’s student visa was being revoked. The AP also reported that when the attorney told the agents that Khalil had a green card, they said this, too, was being revoked.
Since the 9/11 attacks, Democrats and Republicans have gone along with the idea that saying the magic word ‘terrorism’ amounts to a permission slip to undermine core freedoms.
This is a disturbing escalation in the Trump administration’s war against basic free speech norms. Trump has previously called for cable news channels he finds unfair to have their licenses revokedunconstitutionally retaliated against the AP for refusing to redesignate the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America” in its reporting, and even floated the idea of a constitutional amendment to enable protesters to be imprisoned for flag-burning. But Khalil’s arrest crosses a frightening new threshold of authoritarianism.
Let’s be very clear, though, that this didn’t come out of nowhere. In the decades since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, both Democrats and Republicans have gone along with the idea that saying the magic word “terrorism” amounts to a permission slip to undermine core freedoms. This is always where that road led.
If there was any doubt that Khalil was being punished for protesting Israel’s war in Gaza, it was removed the next day. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that “the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters” will be revoked “so they can be deported.” Trump himself went further on Mondaydeclaring:
“This is the first arrest of many to come. 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. … If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children … you are not welcome here. We expect every one of America’s Colleges and Universities to comply.”
The idea that protests against the war in Gaza are innately pro-Hamas is an insult to the intelligence of the American public. Trump himself has often claimed to have opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003. While the evidence shows that this likely wasn’t his position at the time, if it had been, would that have made him “pro-Saddam Hussein”? Similarly, many in the MAGA movement oppose U.S. backing for Ukraine. If that doesn’t make them “anti-American,” why are students who oppose U.S. backing for Israel’s carnage in Gaza “anti-American”?
And the accusation of antisemitism is, if anything, even more offensive. Anyone who has spent time around the Palestinian solidarity movement in the United States knows that many students who participate in such protests are themselves Jewish — and it’s to be expected that Jewish students would be more likely than Hindu or Catholic or Episcopalian students to have spent time wrestling with how they felt about Israel and Palestine and to thus be inspired to show up to protest the atrocities in Gaza. One of the most popular slogans of Jewish peace organizations says it all: “Not in Our Name.”
Nor is any of this the heart of the issue. Anyone at the protests who actually did support Hamas would have a position I would find loathsome. Perhaps Khalil did have this position (although, if so, I haven’t yet seen any evidence to back up that accusation). But free speech protections have to mean that people can take loathsome positions. No authoritarian regime has ever censored people who say things the regime likes. The test of our commitment to free speech is always whether we defend people’s rights to say things we find vile.
Trump’s announcement suggests that free speech, at least for green card holders, stops at support for “the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children.” But tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian men, women and children have been slaughtered by the Israeli army since Oct. 7, 2023, and millions have been displaced.
Should green card holders who support the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu face deportation for their views?
The whole point of the First Amendment (which applies to government censorship) and broader free speech norms (which can apply to nonstate actors) is that all sides get to have their say, so that the public can hear it all and freely make up their minds. It would be difficult to overstate how central this is to the whole premise of popular democracy.
Trump doesn’t think he can get away with arresting American citizens who agree with Khalil, but his statement leaves little room for doubt that he’d love to do so.
Right now, Trump doesn’t think he can get away with arresting American citizens who agree with Mahmoud Khalil, but his statement leaves little room for doubt that he’d love to do so. He says he “won’t tolerate” protests he deems “anti-American.” His announcement feels like something out of a dystopian science fiction novel about the rise of an authoritarian regime. But let’s be very clear on how we got here, because the rot that led to this started spreading long before Trump was first elected in 2016.
George W. Bush responded to the 9/11 terrorist attacks with unprecedented assaults on civil liberties. The “PATRIOT Act” he pushed through Congress allowed for records to be searched without normal judicial warrants in flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment. He set up “black sites” around the world to detain suspected terrorists without charging them with any crime and openly used “enhanced interrogation” (i.e., torture). He even started a drone program whereby terrorism suspects in countries with which the United States wasn’t at war were extrajudicially executed as they sat at restaurants or cafes surrounded by innocents.
When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, he declined to prosecute anyone involved the illegal torture program, declaring that he wanted to “look forward, not backward.” (I’ve always wondered what would happen if someone arrested for trying to rob a liquor store used that line.) Worse yet, Obama not only didn’t reverse the rest of Bush’s civil liberties-shredding policies but, in some cases, made them his own and expanded them. He greatly expanded the use of drones, even killing American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki and his son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki in Yemen. Obama claimed that al-Awlaki was involved in plotting terrorist attacks, but this claim was never tested in any sort of judicial process. And neither President Joe Biden nor, of course, Trump himself ever gave up the powers asserted by Bush and Obama.
Trump’s open and unabashed declaration that he won’t “tolerate” protests he dislikes and that he’ll use arrests and deportations to intimidate protesters into silence crosses a new frontier in authoritarianism. But we didn’t go from 0 to 60 when he was elected.
I hope the courts block Trump’s latest actions. There’s some hope that this will happen. There’s already been action from a district judge to temporarily block Khalil’s removal from the United States pending further review of the case. But his belief that he can get away with it by accusing protesters of supporting terrorism makes all too much sense after decades of both Democrats and Republicans acting as if there’s a “terrorism exception” to our core rights and freedoms.
If we’re ever going to come back from this brink, we need to take a hard look at how we got here.
Ben Burgis is a political commentator and author. He has written articles for Jacobin and The Daily Beast.
The Dictatorship
Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 6.22.26: Why Trump backed both Republicans in a key S.C. race
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* In South Carolina’s gubernatorial raceDonald Trump endorsed Lt. Gov. Pam Evette last month. Last week, however, ahead of this week’s primary runoff election in the race, the president published an online item telling voters that “you can’t go wrong” with either Evette or state Attorney General Alan Wilson.
If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because Trump has done this before. Around this time two years ago, for example, he endorsed both Republicans running in a congressional primary in Arizona. And two years before that, he endorsed two leading contenders in a Senate primary in Missouri.
Only the president can say for sure why he ended up endorsing Evette and Wilson in the South Carolina race, though it’s worth emphasizing for context that GOP primary voters have already ignored his direction into two gubernatorial primaries this month, and it stands to reason that he hoped to avoid a third.
* We’re one day away from a variety of notable racesincluding but not limited to South Carolina’s gubernatorial race. There are also some congressional primaries in a handful of statesincluding Maryland, New York and Utah.
* In took a while, but the ballots have been tallied under Maine’s ranked-choice systemand we now know that Democrat Hannah Pingree, the former state House speaker, will face off against Republican Bobby Charles, who worked at the State Department during the Bush-Cheney era.
* As for Maine’s closely watched congressional racestate Auditor Matt Dunlap won the Democratic nomination in the battleground 2nd District, defeating state Sen. Joe Baldacci, who enjoyed the backing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Dunlap will run in the fall against a familiar figure: former Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who had moved to Florida a few years ago, but who returned to run for Congress.
* In California’s congressional special electiontwo Democratic candidates — state Sen. Aisha Wahab and Melissa Hernandez, a Bay Area Rapid Transit director — have advanced to an Aug. 18 special general election. The winner will fill the vacancy left by disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell, who resigned in April.
* In a new commercial shared first with MS NOWDemocrat James Talarico has launched his campaign’s first multimillion-dollar ad buy in Texas’ gubernatorial race. In the 30-second spot, Talarico focuses on affordability and the cost of living. The state lawmaker will face scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the fall.
* And in New Jersey, Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr.who has been missing from Capitol Hill since early March, will reportedly return to work on June 30according to a statement from his spokesperson. Neither Kean nor his office have offered any public information about why he has been away.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
The Dictatorship
Trump tries dual endorsement in South Carolina as his pick for governor flounders in polls
After President Donald Trump’s pick for governor in Iowa lost in the Republican primary earlier this month, the president argued that he “would have endorsed the other person” if he had “the proper information.”
Trump is taking no chances in the South Carolina gubernatorial primary. Over the weekend he rescinded his exclusive endorsement of Pamela Evette, the lieutenant governor, announcing instead that he would support both Evette and her runoff opponent, Alan Wilson, the state’s attorney general.
The move put Evette’s political future in jeopardy: Even before Trump’s dual endorsement, she trailed in limited public polling and was seen by political observers in South Carolina as a weak candidate with little to show besides the president’s coveted endorsement.
“Her chief distinction from Alan Wilson was that Trump endorsed her,” said Dr. Dubose Kapeluck, a professor of political science at the Citadel Military College of South Carolina.
Trump’s dual endorsement “was a kiss of death,” he told MS NOW.
Evette, who moved to South Carolina from Ohio to found a successful payroll and HR company in 2000, has been lieutenant governor since 2019, serving under Gov. Henry McMaster, who is term-limited.
In office, she has pursued meaningful but little-celebrated policies, like a key tort reform bill, according to Gil Gatch, a Republican member of the South Carolina state House and an Evette supporter.
But voters could be forgiven for knowing little about Evette besides the fact that Trump endorsed her, which he did just days before the June 9 primary. Visitors to her campaign website are greeted with a full-screen message labeling Evette as “Trump-endorsed.” The first line in her X bio states the same. Pro-Evette television ads are quick to tout the endorsement.
An accomplishment like tort reform, while noted on Evette’s website, “maybe could have been something that was highlighted more heavily,” Gatch told MS NOW.
The political makeup of South Carolina nearly guarantees the next governor will be whoever emerges on Tuesday between Evette and Wilson. They survived a crowded primary field on June 9, and nearly every challenger who fell short of the runoff publicly endorsed the attorney general.
“She’s just not a good candidate,” Josh Kimbrell, a state senator who failed to make the runoff and has since said he’d back Wilson, said of Evette.
“She kind of assumed this was a coronation, and that was never going to go over that well,” he added.
Even some pro-Trump voters were confused by the president’s initial endorsement of Evette, whom he called “a good friend, fighter, and WINNER” in a social media post in May.
“I have no clue why Trump would endorse Pamela Evette,” Leland Lemmons, a 30-year-old Trump supporter told MS NOW as he exited a polling site in the Greenville suburb of Easley on June 9.
“She’s served, you know, a decent time. I just haven’t seen much fruition of what she’s done in office,” he added.
In a post on Truth Social Friday announcing his dual endorsement, Trump wrote, “I can’t hurt one of them by only Endorsing the other, so, therefore, I am going to Endorse, for Governor of South Carolina, both Pam Evette and Alan Wilson!”
In a subsequent statement on X, Evette said, “I was proud to come in first as [Trump’s] endorsed candidate for Governor on June 9th. Looking forward to doing it again on June 23rd.”
After The Washington Post foreshadowed the dual endorsement last Tuesday, allies of Evette were quick to denounce the possibility.
“I would guess that’s fake news,” Suzanne Pucci, a member of Evette’s finance committee, told MS NOW of the chance Trump would also endorse Wilson. “She’s probably not real worried about it.”
Another close ally and supporter told MS NOW at the time the report was “a total, fabricated lie.”
“[Trump] is invested in Pamela Evette because she invested in him. He’s a loyal guy. That kind of stuff is important to him,” added the supporter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“With or without Trump, I think she is going to win,” they said.
On Thursday, a senior campaign aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, brushed off the idea of a dual endorsement, telling MS NOW in a statement, “Pamela Evette has earned the complete and total endorsement of President Trump. She is the only Trump-endorsed candidate in this race and we look forward to delivering a big win for the president on Tuesday.”
Roughly 24 hours later, Trump retracted the exclusive endorsement.
Will McDuffie is a reporter for MS NOW.
As last week’s G7 summit in France got underway, a reporter asked Donald Trump whether his purported deal with Iran was final. “No, it’s not final,” the president replied. Later that day — during a visit to Versaillesof all places — he signed the framework anyway.
But moments after signing his name to the memorandum of understanding, Trump offered an unsubtle hint about what he was thinking at the time. Amid applause from those around him, the American president pointed down and then up while saying“Oil down, stocks up.”
In other words, Trump’s focus had nothing to do with natural security and everything to do with the economy. What’s more, the four-word phrase was part of a larger and underappreciated pattern. The Washington Post reported:
In the more than 100 days since President Donald Trump launched a war with Iran, he has offered a shifting list of reasons for why he started the conflict. But in explaining his push for peace, he named a priority much closer to home: protecting the stock market.
“I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe,” Trump told reporters gathered in the Alpine spa town of Évian-les-Bains, France, after the Group of Seven summit.
As the summit wrapped up, the Republican similarly said“I’ve studied presidents, some good, some bad, some great. Not too many are great and some really bad. … And the one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover. I didn’t want that and who knows what would have happened.”
He pushed the same point in an interview with Axios, which was released over the weekend.
“If I went further, the stock market would be much lower,” the president said. “Now think of this: I have one primary wish as president, in terms of people: I never want to be the late, great Herbert Hoover.”
The comments came days after Trump similarly argued“The alternative to this deal was a global recession. There are stupid people who want to see a global recession. They are just stupid people.”
Whether the president fully appreciates the implications of his own rhetoric, this string of comments doesn’t just shed light on his motivations for accepting a defeat, it also suggests he saw his failed policy in Iran as pushing the global economy toward a dangerous cliff.
In other words, based on Trump’s own comments, the war he started was poised to create an “economic catastrophe,” which he was desperate to avoid — and which led him to accept a framework that empowered Iran to get what it wanted in exchange for effectively no concessions at all.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
- Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 6.22.26: Why Trump backed both Republicans in a key S.C. race
- Trump tries dual endorsement in South Carolina as his pick for governor flounders in polls
- Fears of an ‘economic catastrophe’ helped push Trump toward an Iran deal
- In back-to-back reversals, the Trump administration folds under pressure
- Vance touts ‘successful’ first round of U.S.-Iran talks after Trump threatens new attacks
- Turek leads Hinson in Iowa Senate poll of likely general election voters
- Capitol agenda: House GOP races to make Recon 3.0 real
- A rising populist tide is threatening New York’s powerful incumbents
- Poll: Americans draw a new line in the betting bonanza sweeping over Wall Street — politics.
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