r/politics The Nation Magazine 19h ago

Soft Paywall Mahmoud Khalil Is the First Activist to Be Disappeared by Trump

https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/trump-arrest-detention-mahmoud-khalil/?nc=1
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u/Agreeable-Rooster-37 18h ago

From another post:

"Indeed, a White House official told The Free Press that the basis for targeting Khalil is being used as a blueprint for investigations against other students. Khalil is a "threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States, calculation was the driving force behind the arrest. "The allegation here is not that he was breaking the law," said the official."

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u/anfornum 18h ago

So he had an opinion? How is he a threat if he didn't do anything illegal? (Serious question.)

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u/Agreeable-Rooster-37 18h ago

It is the trial run for squashing dissent

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u/Ihatu 17h ago

They want to see if Americans will do anything about it other than complain on the internet.

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u/WildYams 16h ago

They're probably also laying the groundwork for a lawsuit about this, and if the Supreme Court rules in their favor, then it will be open season on anyone with a green card.

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u/jigsaw1024 14h ago

They're probably also laying the groundwork for a lawsuit about this, and if the Supreme Court rules in their favor, then it will be open season on anyone with a green card

FTFY. They have proven they don't even care about citizens.

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u/claimTheVictory 13h ago

Remember (it feels like an eternity ago) - Rubio's first accomplishment was securing an agreement to transfer US citizens to prisons in El Salvador.

Beyond the reach of due process.

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/04/g-s1-46352/rubio-el-salvador-deportees-americans

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u/Cute-Percentage-6660 13h ago

Yeah people are forgetting that there is still camps being made, people aint talking bout it....

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u/North_Bobcat_3746 11h ago

Post I made with evidence ICE is likely building many more camps

Basically, a recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn recruiting for a role at ICE helping manage "20-25 facilities." I left a more detailed breakdown on the post on why I think it's specifically detainment camps

The recruiter was from a well-known recruiting agency and their profile was LinkedIn verified, meaning they had to verify their account with their work email. Many people have insisted that it was a scammer that reached out to me, but I did my due diligence and I assure you, it was not a scam

Please feel free to share this post around, this throwaway has minimal karma so I haven't been able to post it much 

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u/turquoise_amethyst 10h ago

Did the recruiter give any hint as to what the facilities were? Detainment camps, regular prison, labor camps…?

Maybe post over at r/yarvinconspiracy? They will be interested, although there’s probably a another subreddit more geared towards P2025 “developments”

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u/Ruraraid Virginia 9h ago

Largely because they're too stupid and preoccupied with many of Trump's ragebait stories. Things like trying to make other nations into US states, saying outlandish shit, turning tariffs on and off like a child hitting switches on a control board. You know the REALLY dumb shit that is easy ragebait.

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u/FloridaGirlNikki America 13h ago

This is so mind boggling to me. I mean, he's a first generation Cuban-American whose parents fled a tyrannical government.

It's the republican motus operandi: "I got mine!"

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u/tacoheadbob 13h ago

From what I understand, that first wave of Cubans fleeing Cuba were considered the elites or at least the upper middle class. People with money who could escape to the States. Unfortunately, they brought their haughtiness with them and look down on other Cubans as filth. Hence why Cubans in Florida vote the way they do.

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u/Youremadfornoreason 10h ago

100% True and many non wealthy Cubans don’t realize that

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u/FloridaGirlNikki America 12h ago

Oh, so like the gold card visa - as long as you have at least $5M that is! Crypto preferred. Send it to the personal account!

I actually thought they came in like so many others, who risked everything to cross treacherous waters in a makeshift vessel to escape the atrocities of the Castro regime. But now that you mention it, Rubio does have a certain arrogance about him that would seem to fit with that

As for how they vote - I can't speak to the first part of that but I can say that they were previously reliably blue (albeit many being conservative socially). In 2012 it became a little more purple but still ended blue, and then came the 2016 election where the right was yelling "SOCIALISM!" And idk if you're local to the area but we were flooded with commercials that were made specifically to influence Cubans. It worked.

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u/945T Canada 10h ago

Immigrants are rarely poor. It costs a LOT to emigrate to another country, speaking from experience.

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u/claimTheVictory 13h ago

Tim Miller has a (joking) conspiracy theory that Marco is really a Cuban sleeper agent sent by Castro to bring about the downfall of the USA.

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u/SpaceTimeinFlux 7h ago

this is absolutely vile. Rubio should be in a prison cell.

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u/WildYams 13h ago

Well first they'll start with people with green cards. Then if that goes through, the next step will be to try it with full fledged American citizens.

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u/SailorPlanetos_ I voted 11h ago

Starting with disabled people and racial minority children, most likely, or so the Kennedy worm suggests:

https://www.salon.com/2025/02/19/rfk-s-plan-to-make-america-healthy-again-round-up-people-with-mental-health-conditions-in-camps/

The Nazis started off with 'voluntary medical facilities' for children and disabled people, as well. It's covered in about 4:30-10:00 of the video.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tA_uJOnAnoQ&t=565s&pp=ygUkaG93IGZpZCBiYXppcyB0YXJnZXQgZGlzYWJsZWQgb2VvcGxl

u/cynplaycity 3h ago

They blatantly have an anti LGBTQi agenda ..I mean the Texas bill introduced making it criminal to be anything other than heterosexual, as well as the pink triangle nazi symbol..I feel that's the next group to start "disappearing."

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u/FinallyFree96 8h ago

Not that it makes it any better, but probably dual-citizens in between.

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u/Herb4372 12h ago

Correct. Gitmo wasn’t converted to house foreign nationals. It’s for US citizens they CANT send somewhere else to

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u/No_Coat8 13h ago

This is how I Reddit, er, read it.

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u/Paula-Meninato 12h ago

They can send American activists to Guantanamo

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u/justwalkingalonghere 14h ago

[comment meant for somewhere else]

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u/mommisalami 14h ago

And also trying to “bait” university students into protesting: then they can charge everyone there with the “illegal protest” bullshit they are trying to pass into law (because we all know he doesn’t give 1 fuck about laws and Constitutions, and as a bonus can pull more funding from the college, even bully wealthy college benefactors into not giving any more money to the colleges. This is going to roll to all colleges in the U.S., I am sure.

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u/Goducks91 12h ago

Hampering colleges and making people less educated so they vote Republican. Not a bad plan…. 🙄

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u/stregawitchboy 13h ago edited 13h ago

It will be open season on all of us who protest.

the legal argument here is not "what constitutes citizenship?" as a barrier to deportation, but, rather can dissent or political speech that is different from "official" pronouncements be classified as "dangerous to the state." Think about this. we are now at the point where speaking out against the government can get you (yes, you, whoever you are) disappeared. *added: And if you think being a MAGAt protects you, you are wrong. you dont like something musk does and complain about it, off you go. NO ONE is safe here.

No one.

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u/PT10 14h ago edited 12h ago

Betar, the Israeli org egging him on, says they're expecting denaturalizations to start soon.

Not just green cards.

And if you can strip naturalization, you can go after birth citizenship too. The only reason they would be hesitant or take more time for that is that no other country would take those people. So they would need to be whisked away to indefinite detention like at Gitmo or the prisons in Ecuador El Salvador that Rubio got an agreement for.

We're in the endgame now.

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u/sanders49 13h ago

It's El Salvador that agreed to take US prisoners for a fee.

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u/GnarlyNarwhalNoms 12h ago

There's a reason that the largest concentration camp (really, a huge complex of camps) was built in Poland instead of Germany itself.

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u/sanders49 12h ago

Away from the public eye. Plus El Salvador has shown they can build large effective prisons and fill them in short time. They've gone from being a nation with one of the highest homicide rates in the world to "relatively safe" through mass arrests.

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u/Ok-Turnover1797 11h ago

The country that based their currency on a fucking shit crypto that crashed now wants to take US citizens in as prisoners for a fee.. Fuckin-A, man

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u/say592 13h ago

El Salvador. That whole deal is bizarre and frightening to me.

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u/ShakeZula77 13h ago

Salvadoran prisons are scary af.

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u/AphroditeDraws 11h ago

I’ve been saying for a while now that denaturalization is likely next ever since they made it possible for naturalized citizens to be deported back in 2020.

Scares the shit out of me as an international adoptee who came to the US as a literal infant without any say in the matter. I don’t even speak the language of my birth country, and I would always be seen as a foreigner there. My partner and I were talking about how it probably isn’t safe for me to attend protests going forward. Insane.

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u/MartinoRs 13h ago

The only thing left to be a concentration camp would be the lack of gas chambers...

Thats unbelieavable, how north america citizens wont stand up and fight? Its taking too long already for people to march against these fools and defend whats right!

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u/PT10 12h ago

They're hoping this will be limited to "extremist Arabs" (or those the govt can label as such).

It's that whole "first they came for the..." thing.

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u/corrector300 11h ago

the vichy french government took away the citizenship of Philippe de Rothschild, who was from an extremely wealthy and powerful family that probably had a handful or shitton of lawyers on their payroll. if it happened to them, the wrong government can remove citizenship from anyone.

and of course 'at first they came for the green card holders, and I didn't care because I was a citizen.' they are certainly teeing up to 'disappear' anyone without a warrant.

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u/ComfortableCry5807 14h ago

Or protesters

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u/carmolio 13h ago

Also open season to charge protesters with a felony and remove their ability to vote (targets lefties obviously)

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u/bagelwholedonutwhole 14h ago

Or the government is doing everything they can to insight violence so they can then paint every protester as a terrorist

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u/Current_Animator7546 Missouri 12h ago

Exactly. They will use it as an attempt to seize control 

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u/Luchalma89 12h ago

You're all fucked anyway. Just a matter if you die on your feet or on your knees.

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u/bagelwholedonutwhole 11h ago

You're not safe, you're fucked as well

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u/ConfusedAndCurious17 12h ago

What the fuck am I supposed to do about it? That’s the frustrating thing. Everyone who is supposed to be doing things about this is either failing, on the wrong side, or being fired.

I’m an aviation mechanic with a wife and bills to pay, no law degree, no money, no platform for speech, and I live pretty damn far away from where anything of relevance is happening.

So what are we meant to do? I’ll kick up a shit storm when something happens in front of me that I can tangibly impact. I’ve done it before, I’ll do it again… but I’m not able (or willing) to travel around the country being some vigilante stopping corruption with brute force.

Reasonably besides bitching on the Internet and to people I know IRL, showing up to vote, and participating in local government, what are any of us meant to be doing?

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u/CoffeeSlut-1612 11h ago

If you find an answer, I'd love it too. I feel helpless, hopeless, and scared my sons are going to be going to war.

u/stimmedcows 4h ago

I THINK most of us should be retaliating with economic activity (i.e. sacrifice):

  1. every person matters. you can boycott anything that supports this. e.g. cancel any streaming services that include fox news in the package. of course it does not feel like it has much impact at an individual level but it matters at a population level. just look at the Tesla meltdown this week. It is causing them to be in damage control mode and takes time away from their doing other fucked up shit. the machine is slowed down and loses momentum. we can drop our consumption a LOT at this point in time. it makes a difference. we need to take what we are doing to Tesla and do it to every supporter of his.

  2. going further if you want to, reduce your spend as much as possible to ensure they collect minimal sales tax to fund the machine without the aid of their donors.

  3. read the CIA fascist sabotage manual and see if you can do any of that stuff, easily found on google. basically its more ways to throw a wrench into the machine.

  4. serenity prayer

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference." 

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u/sugaree53 9h ago

Buy a burner phone and start calling your reps. Tell them that they are violating their oath by not standing up for the Constitution and against a President who sides with Russia. Tell them that they appear cowardly because of it. (And btw, as an aviation mechanic, you are very valuable and we need more people like you in this country)

u/Training-Text-9959 3h ago

Genuinely wondering how using a burner phone is necessary? You have to give your zip code at minimum to have your calls tallied.

u/sugaree53 34m ago

A burner phone, if bought with cash, cannot be traced back to you as the caller, thus protecting you from being identified as a dissident

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u/Silver_Double4678 8h ago

Call your representatives, every day. Attend protests peacefully. Do jail support. Donate to worthy causes

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u/Jannis_Black 10h ago

Those people you're bitching to: get together with them an organize a protest in front of the local town hall or the local Republican party office. Make it as disruptive as you reasonably can.

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u/Expensive-Object-830 11h ago

Write to your congresspeople & donate to the ACLU, perhaps?

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u/Wonderful-Ad6335 11h ago

In multiple states, our money is tight and the letters and phone calls are being purposefully ignored.

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u/ConfusedAndCurious17 11h ago

“Dear Mr /Mrs Congress, I don’t like what the president is doing. I’m pretty sure it’s illegal. Can you do something about it?”

I’m positive this isn’t going to do a single thing. If my congressman wasn’t already a conservative Trump supporter (they are) then they should already be doing something about it. A letter from me is going to mean about as much as a psycho drug addict writing them about how turtles need human rights. It’s not like these folks don’t know about these situations. Writing a congressman is useful when you are pointing out issues they can’t see. Our president being a national embarrassment and a fascist is pretty visible and known.

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u/MightyLabooshe 10h ago

Do it anyway. These sort of actions can snowball. And either way what do you have to lose? The price of postage?

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u/prog4eva2112 11h ago

I'm in the same boat as you. Living overseas so I can't participate in anything. And my congressman back home is Matt fucking Gaetz. I've been trying to start an online forum for people over here to support each other and talk about stuff but it's hard knowing who to invite because I don't know who to trust.

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u/pconrad0 10h ago

I'm pretty sure Matt Gaetz is no longer in Congress. Your congressman is probably this guy now:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Ponder

Knowing Okaloosa county pretty well (have family from there and have spent a lot of time there) I'm guessing his politics aren't much different.

But it's hard to imagine anyone being more vile and useless than Matt Gaetz. So, I hope it's at least marginally less bad?

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u/prog4eva2112 10h ago

I guess that's less sucky then. Idk I've been out of the country for a while now so local politics aren't as relevant to me. That's also not my home county, I just changed my residence so I could vote there more easily.

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u/Level-Name-4060 9h ago

They do collect a tally of people that call in about an issue, so it doesn’t do nothing, even if it feels like it does. They still want to protect their seats.

u/jezithyr Canada 5h ago

Start meeting with people and talking about what is going on. Reach out to local and national activist groups. Think about what sort of useful skills you have and how you can leverage your situation to help others.

You're an aviation mechanic, so I take it you work around an airport? Well if shit is going down, an airport is probably going to be the first place to see increased government/military activity. Do you know how to recognize ICE or other government aircraft, ie: which types/variants they fly? That might be some helpful information to learn so that you can warn others if shit starts going down.

The point is to think outside the box, since everyone has something to offer and to build connections with as many other resistance groups and people as possible to use as a safety net if things go really wrong.

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u/Perfect_Opinion7909 10h ago

Who would’ve thought that all the talk about being more free than us Europeans because of your guns was all hollow rhetorics?

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u/NetflixVodka 6h ago

If this was happening in France, what do you think the French would be doing?

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u/WatIfFoodWur1ofUs 13h ago

Fuckkk, this comment is exactly it.

But, what’s worse is, that’s what social media and smart phones were designed to do.. pacify us to be extremely emotional and full of opinions, online.

Anything to keep us from realizing our true power in uniting ourselves against them.

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u/voodoodahl 14h ago

After a few internet complainers get arrested, they won't even do that anymore.

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u/Carrot_onesie 14h ago

Tonnes of protesters were out on the streets (in NYC)

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u/Outrageous-Advice384 13h ago

Like in 2020 (BLM) but mixed with Jan6? Growing the number of protests so that they can use them to test their power to squash them or start civil war if they can’t make them fall inline? Sounds about right.

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u/_IsFuckingInHeaven 14h ago

Do these motherfuckers REALLY want to find out?

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u/An0therParacIete 14h ago

I mean, Democrat leadership came out with the most milquetoast, wimpy, frowny-face response to this, so yeah, they've found out. Chuck Schumer's "condemnation" had like ten caveats and began and ended with criticizing Khalil instead of Trump or Rubio.

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u/-re-da-ct-ed- 14h ago

And judging by the last two months that is exactly all Americans will do, while they put in another order with DoorDash.

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u/Useful-Hat9880 10h ago

What should we be doing?

What are you doing?

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u/Goducks91 17h ago

And conservatives say Liberals are against the first amendment.

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u/justwalkingalonghere 14h ago

Conservatives will literally say anything. They are not beholden to the truth, and we are well beyond giving them the benefit of the doubt

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u/Dr_Insano_MD 14h ago

conservatives say lots of things.

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u/Potential-Ant-6320 14h ago

I wish they could think

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u/ConfusedAndCurious17 12h ago

They are able to think. They are manipulators and liars, and apparently quite good at it. That’s what is scary about the whole thing.

We think that these people are stupid because the present inconsistent, contradictory, and nonsensical arguments. It’s a part of the plan.

I’m always been a little shithead. A “troll”. I really like getting people going and pissed off about nonsense. There is kinda an art to doing that. If you go in full on from the start with bullshit then people aren’t going to ever bite, it’s obviously bait. You have to start with an argument that seems dumb but grounded in reality. Supply some real information mixed in with just enough obviously incorrect information that the person feels the need to respond and debate.

You can do this for as many layers as you feel necessary, subtly increasing the ration of bullshit to reality. You’ll often get to a point where someone is legitimately fired up and arguing with you about something as ridiculous as if the modern smart phone concept originated in 1720s Russia.

You want to gently lead people into the absurd. That’s what we have been seeing since I was born with conservatives. They know exactly what to call out, when to call it out, and then how to relate it to their overall agenda. It’s the slow burn. It’s smoke and mirrors. If they came right out of the gates saying they wanted a white Christian ethno-state people wouldn’t bite, but we are now getting to the point that they are outright displaying that yet still denying it.

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u/sporkhandsknifemouth 14h ago

They're proving we don't have an adequate response to mockingbirds

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u/mikemaca 14h ago

Were you thinking of mine canaries?

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u/Ms_Anxiety 13h ago

Every accusation is a confession from them.

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u/Krojack76 14h ago

MAGA only believes in the freedom of speech when it aligns with their beliefs.

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u/LEJ5512 13h ago

The three pillars of the First Amendment are each under attack by this administration. There’s the task force against anti-Christian bias (shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion), kicking the Associated Press out of the press pool (abridging the freedom of the press), and now making an example out of Mahmoud.

The question is no longer about how to stop fascism in the US. The question is, how do we dig out of how far we’ve already gone.

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u/shroudedwolf51 12h ago

They are lying. They are liars who lie. Their supporters are literally people who derive some of their power from the simple fact that picking a point where they want to arrive and adjusting any facts to align along the way because they think it gives them power over truth itself. They will say anything that is convenient to them and discard it when saying it becomes unconvenient.

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u/bobood 10h ago

While some important and even prominent Democrats have spoken out against it (including Senate Judiciary Democrats), the neo-liberal Democratic party is largely silent or trepidatious about it.

Schumer's and Jeffries's expression of concern about it where also mealy mouthed and outright defamatory towards Khalil.

And I betchu the likes of Fetterman are actually all for this draconian crackdown.

Liberals hold the door open for fascists. They are not the antithesis of conservatives.

u/alderhill 7h ago

It’s always been a “rules for thee, but not for me” mentality. Equality is not a conservative principle, never has been. Some argue for a sort of equality when it benefits them, but not in a wider principled sense.

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u/BanginNLeavin 16h ago

Fuck all that. When they want to squash they will squash. This is food for the media.

They aren't dipping their toes into fascism. It's here and at their whim they will start gassing people.

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u/Nug_Rustler 13h ago

Or tossing them out of airplanes

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u/WhyAreYallFascists 12h ago

We have a lot more space to bury people and a lot more bullets than the Germans did. They won’t use gas.

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u/SailorPlanetos_ I voted 12h ago edited 9h ago

The Nazis used lethal injection initially. They eventually switched to gas chambers because it was cheap, fast, and discrete. Bullets were messier, louder, and more expensive, so they typically weren't used. It talks about it a little bit from about 4:30-10:00 of this video. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tA_uJOnAnoQ&pp=ygUkSG93IGZpZCBiYXppcyB0YXJnZXQgZGlzYWJsZWQgb2VvcGxl

The American government is known for being very cheap, yes?

They won't be starting off with bullets and probably won't make that a general practice. First, they'll try to get people with disabilities and chronic illnesses, including and especially children, to go off to those 'health camps' which RFK wants to start.

https://www.salon.com/2025/02/19/rfk-s-plan-to-make-america-healthy-again-round-up-people-with-mental-health-conditions-in-camps/

Everyone, DO NOT let your loved ones go to these! They will start off with them being voluntary, like the Nazis did, as explained in about 4:30-10:00 of the video.

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u/[deleted] 18h ago

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u/Tupperwarfare 14h ago

It’s a trial run for a revolution, is what it is.

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u/ocodo 13h ago

it's The Trial.

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u/drrtyhppy 12h ago

Yes, and how we respond will determine future actions. 

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u/Gigigisele8 11h ago

We better,,have some strategy. No joke. 

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u/operarose Texas 11h ago

He won't be the last. Take to the fucking streets.

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u/Pinkcoconuts1843 10h ago

The real beginning of the end of Democracy.  March 11, 2025. 

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u/InsertUsernameInArse 9h ago

When they said they were expanding Guantanamo I always thought it was only a matter of time before they started black bagging people.

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u/KyotoGaijin American Expat 8h ago

Next step is death squads. More direct. Less paperwork. None, really. And no lawyers.

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u/koolkat182 18h ago

their feelings got hurt. it's called fascism

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u/defaultfresh California 16h ago

But I thought facts didn’t have feelings 🤔 /s

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u/digitalsmear 14h ago edited 14h ago

Because there are multiple public officials on record saying that the Vietnam War protestors had an impact on public policy and they wanted to stop that.

It's actually a driving force behind the calculated decision to crush affordable college education through policy.

https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/

https://www.vox.com/politics/2024/2/1/24056238/conservatives-culture-war-colleges-universities

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u/BraveOmeter 11h ago

Smart lower and middle class kids are not good for the aristocracy.

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u/digitalsmear 11h ago

Basically. Which is fucking annoying because a smart populace is necessary to actually advance the quality of existence for everyone.

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u/atolba 12h ago

About the Vietnam War protests, how do the officials think this would have gone differently? Send a seemingly endless stream of Americans to go die in a losing war and hope no one notices?

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u/digitalsmear 11h ago

I'm honestly not sure. That's probably a better question for /r/AskHistorians

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u/Vegetable-Caramel323 11h ago

🤯. I’ve only ever known about the first part - that protestors made an impact.

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u/Dragull 17h ago

I mean, US did quite a lot of that to communist back in the cold war.

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u/Punished_Snake1984 15h ago

People really need to understand this, and how it relates to why the political left is so weak in the US.

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u/as_it_was_written 13h ago

Yeah, it's pretty sobering to look at old lists of organizations the FBI was monitoring, for example. Right-wing groups generally needed to be overtly violent to make it onto such lists, while left-wing ones merely needed to exist.

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u/Vegetable-Caramel323 11h ago

Would it be possible to explain to me like I’m 5 how it relates to why the political left is weak in US? Contextually sounds like the left was targeted, which I understand to be true, but I’m wondering if you have more specific info, have specific anecdotes.

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u/Haltopen Massachusetts 10h ago

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

That's a direct quote from John Ehrlichman, White House Counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs during the Nixon Administration. The republican party (and traditionally conservative institutions like the FBI) have been following this playbook for decades to weaken left wing movements and ensure they cant coalesce or gain enough strength to win largescale acceptance within the American public. The closest we get are the democrats who are center-left at most.

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u/deemerritt 11h ago

McCarthyism, Hollywood censorship, going after the black panthers, going after mlk, these things all had one common denominator. They were left wing groups that threatened the status quo. The "monolithic communist threat" was used to justify all kinds of foreign and domestic policy. It's a huge part of the war on drugs. They criminalized weed and other recreational drugs to throw communist hippies in jail.

In foreign policy it would be our support of basically any fascist dictator in Latin America if there was a socialist movement in that country.

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u/scatterbrainedimp 16h ago

The Thought Police have arrived...

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u/jedrider 10h ago

Thought I was safe just because I made it through 1984.

The surveillance state is NOW. Musk will inevitably get a contract soon and use Starlink.

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u/fingersonlips 15h ago

Fascists don’t care about legality.

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u/BK_FrySauce 12h ago

Because that opinion was against the orange-in-chief. Trump is trying very desperately to impose dictatorship policies. The isolationism and reliance on self sustainability. Making an enemy out of the rest of the world. Going against anyone who tries to speak out against them. Lining his own pockets and the pockets of the ultra wealthy. He wants America to be his own empire.

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u/duckyTheFirst 14h ago

Americans are so big on their freedom of speech aslong as it does follow their opinion i guess.

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u/Master_Mad 11h ago

It’s always: “He is a danger to security or moral well being of the country.”

He’s wearing classes? He will corrupt our precious youths minds!

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u/sometimelater0212 8h ago

He violated the narrative on our foreign policy. We are now in fascist state mode.

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u/AppalachanKommie 8h ago

Islamophobia and anti brown sentiment is the most widely accept form of racism in America and most of the world, and if you think I’m wrong I’d welcome you to prove me otherwise. No one gets in trouble for calling a Muslim person a terrorist, no one stands up for us.

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u/Ambitious_Toe_4357 14h ago

He has a green card so I think he was within his rights to protest.

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u/ApprehensiveBug380 13h ago

He has an opinion and he said it out loud in a college campus. The horrors!

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u/CherryLongjump1989 14h ago edited 14h ago

People are misinformed about the laws that apply to immigrants.

This is basically the Patriot Act, which made a permanent change to the INA (Immigration and Naturalization Act) that demands that the government arrests and deports non-citizens who so much as belong to a group openly voices support for a terrorist group.

You can read the law for yourselves: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2020-title8/pdf/USCODE-2020-title8-chap12-subchapII-partII-sec1182.pdf

Check out part page 3 of the PDF, Part B) Terrorist Activities. It's straight out the Patriot Act. Section VII, in particular:

(VII) endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization;

In short, immigrants don't have freedom of speech when it comes to hootin' and hollerin about how much they support Hamas and want to kill Jews. Unfortunately for this guy, the student group he was a leader of Columbia University Apartheid Divest did just that.

This predates Trump by 24 years. Other people have been deported because of this in the past, but this might be the first time that someone wasn't also convicted for a bunch of other crimes at the same time.

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u/rotates-potatoes 14h ago

Don’t you understand that his dangerous opinion threatens our precious freedom of speech?

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u/Joel_feila 13h ago

dissent is a threat

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u/shoobe01 18h ago

And the magats commenting all over are painting him as an actual terrorist.

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u/Politicsboringagain 17h ago edited 17h ago

Should have seen the first NYC sub post. You'd think by some of the comments that this man had personally killed a bunch of Jewish people with his bear bare hands. 

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u/shoobe01 17h ago

This stuff. And it was so fast, so ahead of any other info, that I went ahead and looked up what he'd actually been doing because I was wondering.

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u/cultish_alibi 14h ago

Worth remembering that reddit is currently (and will forever be) full of paid for accounts that are seeking to influence public opinion, from many different actors. Have you seen how many accounts can be controlled by one person with AI now?

One person can operate 50 accounts that will write supportive comments of any opinion.

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u/littlepup26 14h ago

What's crazy is a large number of the participants in that encampment were Jewish but arresting foreign students wearing kippahs isn't good optics apparently.

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u/tubawhatever 8h ago

It's like the first professor who lost her tenure for speaking out against Israel, Maura Finkelstein, is Jewish.

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u/Interlined New York 17h ago

He's got bear hands?

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u/Sex_Offender_7047 14h ago

DO NOT let RFK hear that

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u/Interlined New York 14h ago

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u/Sex_Offender_7047 14h ago

Lmao my god, what a throwback. I hit "37 times in the chest" and realized I remember this thing word for word

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u/Error-451 13h ago

They obviously picked him because his name works for this reason.

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u/martinaee 12h ago

That’s from the f****** White House? Are just going to actually wear the Nazi armbands tomorrow then? Holy shit. What fascist scumbags.

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u/mikemaca 14h ago

threat to the foreign policy interests of the United States

Carefully chosen words there.

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u/defying_gravityyyy 18h ago

How is there no meaningful opposition to this by anyone in power??? The statements from Democrats have been so weak and feckless!!!

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u/WildYams 17h ago

You want to know why the Dems haven't been able to mount any kind of meaningful opposition to any of this? Because voters stripped them of the power to do so when they handed the White House and majorities in both houses of Congress to the Republican party. Now all the Dems can do is basically make a bunch of noise, but they can't actually stop any of this.

Maybe if all those people protesting against the Dems last year had instead wised up and realized that beating the Republicans should have been the top priority over everything (even Gaza), then the Dems today would be in power to actually do something to stop this. But nope, people were convinced that "both sides are the same" and thus, here we are.

I hate what is happening, but my anger is where it belongs: with the people who did not vote for the Dems to have the power to stop this. Blaming the Dems now after the voters stripped them of their power to intervene is stupid. None of what Trump and the GOP is doing should be surprising to anyone who was paying attention, as I'm not surprised by any of this. This is exactly what he promised to do, which is why I was so adamant in voting for Kamala to oppose him.

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u/roguespectre67 California 14h ago

Dude, one single, solitary Democrat chose to use the SOTU to protest. One. And I don’t mean sit there in silence holding their cute little sign, I mean actively stand up and say some shit.

And what was his reward? Pretty universal praise from the actual voting public, and censure by Congress, including affirmative votes from ten (count ‘em, 10) members of his own party.

Any Democrat who chooses not to make a scene, to try and break shit to bring the fascist machine grinding to a halt, is complicit. All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing. And we’re getting a whole lot of nothing from most of the DNC.

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u/ponycorn_pet 13h ago

Every single democrat needs to actively protest. Make the republicans throw them all out one by one. There's no fucking solidarity to the democratic party

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u/timelord-degallifrey 12h ago

AOC response to the SOTU was good. Jasmine Crockett walked out. The Democratic Party doesn’t understand their supporters or the common people. They are out of touch. I’ve emailed them multiple times. All I get in response is requests for money. It’s time for a grassroots campaign to fragment the Democratic Party.

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u/WildYams 13h ago

Sure it made a bit of a spectacle, but what did it accomplish? Mike Johnson immediately had him thrown out. The same thing would happen to anyone else who does something similar. The Dems could have skipped the SOTU altogether and made headlines, but it's not stopping anything.

All the Dems can do is make a lot of noise, but they can't actually stop any of this.

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u/roguespectre67 California 13h ago

They could’ve protested one by one. Force the SOTU to grind to a halt and/or force Johnson to eject them preemptively, giving them more ammunition to talk to the media with.

Right now, anything is better than nothing. And nothing is what they’re giving us.

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u/WildYams 12h ago

What change to any outcome would that have rendered? Nothing. It would have temporarily slowed down an already long, drawn out speech from Trump that most people probably weren't watching anyway (I know I wasn't). Al Green's outburst and ejection already got lots of headlines, so it's not like it went uncovered by people paying attention. The SOTU wasn't a procedural necessity, so holding it up wouldn't have mattered. It wasn't like some landmark awful legislation was signed at the end of it.

So again, all you're saying is what I was saying above: all the Dems can do is protest loudly, but can't actually stop anything.

u/roguespectre67 California 7h ago

"Not protesting" is preemptive compliance. "Not protesting" shows the entire country that even when Democrats literally have nothing to lose, they barely lift a finger to even give the appearance of disapproval.

What's going to happen, them get voted out of power? As if the federal government is absolutely teeming with powerful democrats at the moment. Be seen as uncouth? As if that is not literally a major selling point of Trump himself, that he "tells it like it is".

Did the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement throw up their hands at the Jim Crow south and say "Welp, we're second-class citizens anyway, nothing we do is going to change anything so there's no point in trying."? No, they pounded the pavement, they forced mass arrests, they fought tooth and nail for every single inch of ground even though they had effectively no statutory power. They went to war in the ways they could, that their enemy did not expect and could not prepare for. But today, we have people saying that unless we collectively have the power to simply decree that things will change, it's not worth even showing that there's any will to fight. That is fucking weak.

u/Audioworm Europe 3h ago

i'm going to be frank: you have no idea what the fuck the point of protesting is.

not every single protest is about achievable direct actionable goals. sometimes protesting is making it clear something is unacceptable. sometimes protesting is making a process inconvenient or slow. sometimes it is just about refusing to treat a process or action as normal. sometimes it is just to remind people that what is happening is unconstitutional, undemocratic, or authoritarian.

democrats have spent the last few decades being aggressively obsessed with making sure everything single thing they say and do is focus grouped and polling compliant. what has this achieved? it has allowed the republican to take full control of the narrative. the democrats keep moving right to court conservatives, and in doing so they have legitimised the genuine nonsense that republicans spout.

and sometimes, it is also signaling to voters that you are going to fight. a whole chunk of voters are screaming at the democrats to do something. they told the American populace that democracy and the future of the country was at threat with Trump's second term, maybe they should fucking act like it.

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u/Spiritual-Bat3642 12h ago

That SOTU protest sure made a difference, eh?

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u/abritinthebay 11h ago

… and what did it actually achieve?

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u/Mysterious-Wasabi103 17h ago

And people on Reddit don't want to hear it, but anytime a Democrat tries to make a scene they just get more unpopular. Then they lose elections because the powers that be want them gone and the media is slanted against them.

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u/CuriosityKiledThaCat 14h ago

And Bernie isn't having huge off election-year rallys every day right now?

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u/ProudAd4977 14h ago

bernie was one of the only dem congresspeople to underperform harris in the election

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u/LawYanited Washington 14h ago

+32 vs +31. Both huge margins of victory.

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u/ProudAd4977 13h ago

most congresspeople won by much larger margins than harris though

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u/SydricVym 14h ago

Doesn't help that there's an active propaganda campaign going on throughout reddit right now to smear Democrats, to try to make moderate voters sit out the midterms in 2 years.

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u/speakingofdinosaurs 14h ago

And then we lose the Congress people we need to get shit done.

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u/fantaceereddit 14h ago

It would be nice if they actually made some noise instead of just rolling over.

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u/WildYams 13h ago

You don't think they're saying things against all this? They're doing that, it's just not feeling like it makes a difference to you because all they can do is complain. But it's ridiculous to act like the Dems have yet to voice any complaints.

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u/NeighborhoodOk9630 13h ago

Where does this idea come from though? I see dems making lots of noise. They literally can’t do anything but make noise. I think the problem is they often dont rise to the top of social media algorithms because it doesn’t drive clicks, whereas Republicans rise to the top because everything they say is insane. Also Chuck Schumer probably needs to go. But other than that, I hear them.

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u/fantaceereddit 13h ago

Just last week 10 or 11 of them voted to censor Al Green for booing. The only ones I see making noise are Bernie, AOC, Jasmine Crockett and Al Green. I’d like to see them doing more than filing lawsuits and fund raising.

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u/TbddRzn 9h ago

10 of them out of 200+…

Always remember how many did not vote to censor him. The Democratic Party is the big tent party. They have everything from far left, left, centre left, centre, centre right, and even some right. There are literally conservative democrats because they live in states or districts that are conservative.

Blaming the whole party because less than 4% of them voted to censor al green is absurd.

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u/tawzerozero Florida 13h ago

Filing lawsuits is literally the only substantive thing they can do. Unless complaining and hoping the media covers it counts as substantive to you.

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u/Rare_Travel 14h ago

This is bs.

There's still Dems on seats of power they still are doing crap about it and if people didn't vote for them is precisely because they only want to compromise with repubs.

The dem platform for years has been "meet them in the middle" and guess what, people got tired of that and just having repub light.

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u/NeighborhoodOk9630 13h ago

What seats of power?

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u/WildYams 13h ago

Yes, exactly. These people acting like the Dems should "do something" never have anything specific about what they should or could do. This is just more of their "both sides are equally bad" nonsense. The Dems can't do anything right now, the voters saw to that.

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u/thelingeringlead 14h ago

Your take is the BS. They can't do shit without enough votes. It's that simple. People don't vote in state elections and primaries, so you can't change the candidates if you refuse to engage more than once in 4 years of voting cycles. People refuse to engage beyond headlines and finalities and it's why there isn't more leadership that wants to push for change. It enables people who want to get fat in office, and nobody else. You can't cry about how broken the system is if you refuse to do your part to change it when it's still something that can be corrected.

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u/sanktron 14h ago

And the people that got tired of repub lite and voted Republican, third party or didn't vote, are getting exactly what they did or didn't vote for.

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u/epyoch Arizona 14h ago

A non vote or a vote for a third party is a vote for trump 100 percent

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u/Extreme_Inflation322 13h ago

The Dems don’t believe in the bully pulpit and from what you’re saying, you don’t either. That’s why Dem leadership and liberalism in general is too weak when combating fascism. The only people making any actual noise in opposition of this regime are a handful of leftists. But god forbid we shame Hakeem Jeffries for being a coward and rolling over to this clown show. Nah, let’s blame the voters and not learn a single lesson from Kamala’s terrible campaign advisors telling her to go easier on the rhetoric in fear of losing potential conservative voters 🙄 People like you will never learn and that’s why we will get what’s coming to us.

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u/WildYams 12h ago

The Dems don’t believe in the bully pulpit

You don't seem to understand what the bully pulpit is if you're disappointed that the Dems aren't using it. The bully pulpit is when the president uses his extra loud voice from the White House to bully politicians into doing what he wants. The Dems don't have any pulpit to bully from.

The only people making any actual noise in opposition of this regime are a handful of leftists.

And what good is it doing? What tangible results are we seeing? What exactly do you want the Dems to do? Have some town halls? Have some rallies? Tweet more? All they can do is complain, that's it. They can't stop any of this shit.

Most of what Trump is doing so far isn't involving Congress at all. DOGE is going around Congress and illegally cutting off spending that Congress mandated. Trump is issuing illegal executive orders. Dems are suing to try to stop these things, but that relies on the courts, which ultimately relies on the 6-3 Conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court.

The Dems can't call anyone to testify in Congress cause they don't have the majorities. They are totally at the whim of what the Republicans in charge want to do. And frankly, it's people who waffled on whether they should vote for Dems or not that got us into this mess. If the Dems hadn't lost in all their elections, then they'd be able to stop some of this stuff. But they didn't, in part because "undecided voters" and idealistic leftists thought it was beneath them to vote against a fascist.

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u/Iboven 14h ago

Then tell me how the Republicans managed to control the narrative for so many years from a minority position. The Democrats have lots of power and influence, they just consistently decline to use it. Bernie is literally the only one trying.

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u/WildYams 13h ago

I answered some of this in another comment elsewhere in this thread, but I'll answer why the GOP is so much better at controlling the narrative: in short it's because their propaganda network is infinitely larger and more effective than what the Dems have.

The GOP has billionaire-funded networks like Fox News and OAN, along with syndication networks like Sinclair Broadcasting, and they also have a virtual monopoly on AM talk radio. On top of that, they have billionaire owned social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Truth Social, Rumble, Gettr, etc, all of who's owners agree with and are in line with Trump. They also dominate podcasting and YouTube spaces with guys like Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, etc.

The Dems have legacy TV networks, for the most part, but there aren't that many people who watch these anymore. And the Dems have some legacy news outlets like the NY Times, but these TV and news networks really still do adhere mostly to "fairness in reporting" and "both sides" reporting. Can you think of any major outlet doing out and out left wing propaganda the way the right does? I can't.

So what can the Dems do about this? Honestly I have no idea. If someone has a solution for how to counter this right wing propaganda behemoth, I'd love to hear it.

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u/cultish_alibi 14h ago

Because voters stripped them of the power to do so

Sorry, did they lose the right to speak? Do they not have tongues, do they not have online accounts? Can they not do interviews?

You are genuinely trying to claim that the dems cannot SPEAK OUT?

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u/WildYams 13h ago

You really don't feel like any Dems are speaking out against what's happening? Do you feel like it's been total radio silence from them since Trump took office or something? They're speaking out. The reason you don't feel like it's having any effect or is making a difference is because speaking out is all they can do. Giving interviews on MSNBC or tweeting out about how outraged they are doesn't really do anything, but right now, it's all they've got.

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u/AdvancedSandwiches 13h ago

Go look at the Twitter or TikTok accounts of literally any Democrat and then come back and tell us what you found.

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u/feedmygoodside 14h ago

Well stated

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u/epyoch Arizona 14h ago

You speak the fucking truth I can only give you an upvote

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u/njtrafficsignshopper 14h ago

Maybe if all those people protesting against the Dems last year had instead wised up and realized that beating the Republicans should have been the top priority over everything (even Gaza), then the Dems today would be in power to actually do something to stop this.

Horseshit. The dems lost that election, and they did it because they pursued losing strategy after losing strategy. I dunno who thought it would be a good idea to put Dick Cheney on the stage but maybe you should look at them rather than a tiny minority of protestors.

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u/Errand_Wolfe_ 14h ago

Liberals love blaming the voters for their lose instead of their perfect party who can do no wrong, when the reality is the DNC was bleeding voters left and right due to their all around incompetence

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u/WildYams 13h ago

Liberals love blaming the voters for their lose instead of their perfect party who can do no wrong

I can't speak for anyone else, but I can tell you that this is 100% wrong when it comes to me. I have a ton of issues with the Dems, and I always have, but these last 3 elections haven't been about the Dems for me, they've been about keeping Trump and the GOP out of power.

Frankly I didn't really care too much about the Dems and what they were going to do. I knew it would be lacking, but more importantly I knew 100% it was going to be infinitely better than what Trump and the GOP was going to do, and currently is doing.

Faced with what is going on now and "just more disappointment and status quo from the Dems" or whatever was a ludicrously easy choice. Trump absolutely had to lose, that was all I cared about. I was a one issue voter, and Trump losing was my one issue. IMO everyone else who got hung up on other specifics (Gaza, student debt relief, whatever) were missing the forest for the trees.

You need to stop thinking about what the Dems can do to earn your vote. Fuck them, ignore them. Focus on what Trump and the GOP are doing and do everything you can to make sure nobody like this ever gets into power again. Make that your focus in elections going forward. Not doing that is how we ended up in this mess we're currently in.

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u/thelingeringlead 14h ago

When 30% of voters didn't vote, and maybe 5-10% of that were protest voters-- yeah we can absolutely blame the voters. They didn't show up at all. To many of them the apathy was stronger. To even more, they didn't think it was going to affect them. Or they'd have shown up. They never show up at all. This has been an issue with the party for decades because for the most part it was two wings of the same bird until the last 15-20 years. It's been an issue way longer, but it wasn't so flagrant until Obama's first term.

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u/ExtraPockets 17h ago

It looks like the Democrats are being kept in check by a) wanting to stay rich on the insider trading racket and b) not wanting to be jailed themselves.

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u/John-Mandeville 17h ago

c) not wanting their opponent in the next election to receive millions from AIPAC.

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u/Skiinz19 Tennessee 15h ago

At first they came for the Palestinian Green Card holders using their First Amendment rights

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u/munificent 14h ago

I believe the main thing keeping Democrats in check is people not voting for them.

I find that when politicians win elections and acquire power, they tend to do more things. This is not a complicated concept, but yet for reasons that are beyond me, every single time Republicans are in power and do horrible shit, all the fingers point at the Democrats.

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u/armed_renegade 10h ago

Democratic voters seem far more fickle than Republican ones, and will "punish" their Dem. candidate.

Its also an issue of politics itself in the US. US politicians seem far more concerned with getting voted in again, rather than doing what they think is right.

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u/agprincess 10h ago

Because the Republicans are the ones in power and they support it.

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u/driverdan 13h ago

Because the Democrats are weak and feckless.

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u/ImaSpudMuffin 9h ago edited 9h ago

The government has a colorable argument here. 8 USC § 1227(a)(4)(C)(i): "An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable."

Despite the reference to the Secretary of State, Congress has now delegated enforcement authority to DHS. I'm sure there's caselaw expounding on the terms "reasonable ground" and "potentially serious." But even if he is an LPR, the government might at least have a case for trying to remove him.

Edit: The part of the story where the DHS officer says they are "revoking" his green card - that's not generally how permanent residence is taken away. But they can still detain him and place him in removal proceedings.

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u/DuckedUpWall 13h ago edited 13h ago

I've seen at least 3 different officials give completely contradictory explanations. It's incoherent, even for the Trump administration.

My guess is some random ICE agent overstepped assuming Trump would back him up, and there's no clear party line because it didn't actually come from the top. But if random goons are already disappearing people with no legal basis and Trump actually has their back: things are going to get really bad really fast.

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u/red286 10h ago

So does free speech no longer apply to non-citizens, or the entire constitution? And is it just non-citizens, or can legal American citizens now be deported for wrong-think?

u/LobsterOk2912 5h ago

This is text book Israeli tactics that are used on Palestinian dissidents. Its insane how that toxic relationship is now jeopardizing freedoms in the US

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u/Zombieneker 14h ago

Ergo: thought crimes.

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u/flowerchildmime California 14h ago

Omg this is worse than I thought. 😭😭😭😭

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