Since Donald Trump’s second presidential term began two months ago, his malicious lies and flagrant law breaking has been near-constant and demoralizing. He is hard at work transforming the United States of America into a dystopian landscape.

In the last couple of weeks, the Trump administration has gone to battle against a federal judge who ordered that migrants and alleged gang members could not be deported without due process. (One plane holding migrants took off anyway , the other two, already in the air en route to El Salvador, didn’t turn back for U.S. soil.) Trump then called for that federal judge’s impeachment , much to the consternation of John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, who took the extraordinary step of publicly rebuking the president.

The Trump administration issued an order to ban transgender people from military service back in January. Although a federal judge this week blocked the enforcement of that ban , recent experience tells us Trump is willing to challenge the authority of the judiciary. Another judge found the dismantling of USAID probably violated the Constitution. This week the president signed an order to dismantle the Department of Education.

And then there was the shuttering of Voice of America (VOA), founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda via shortwave radio. By the end of World War II, VOA broadcast 3,200 programs around the world in 40 languages. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) , which extends VOA’s mandate, had until last Saturday, March 15, operated in 23 countries and 27 languages.

I also cannot abide the Trump administration, which is weaponizing antisemitism, by using the excuse of protecting Jews to violate the right to free speech and due process ...

Perhaps the biggest story of the last several days is the ICE arrest of Mahmoud Khalil , a 30-year-old born in Syria to Palestinian refugees, who is a graduate student at Columbia University and a green card holder. His wife is an American citizen, and they’re expecting their first child next month . Khalil was a campus leader of the pro-Palestinian protests last year against Israel and the war in Gaza.

After Hamas’ attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Khalil was front and center in coordinating anti-war activities on Columbia’s campus, demanding the university call for a ceasefire and divest its financial ties to Israel. There have been multiple reports of antisemitic language and tropes during the protests last year.

I am a Jewish woman who, at first glance, holds two seemingly divergent views: The state of Israel’s right to keep its people safe from terrorist attacks, the latest being Hamas’ violent attack and murder of innocent civilians on Oct. 7. And the humanitarian in me who prays for the Palestinian people who are suffering and dying in Gaza.

I object to the main principles of Mahmoud Khalil’s activism. But I also cannot abide the Trump administration, which is weaponizing antisemitism , by using the excuse of protecting Jews to violate the right to free speech and due process, and dismantle American democracy.

Here are the details of the case we know so far. On Saturday, March 8, Khalil was arrested in his university-owned apartment, detained in New Jersey and then transferred to a Louisiana detention facility. The Trump administration revoked his green card and and pointed to his role in leading pro-Palestinian protests on Columbia’s campus last year. Khalil’s lawyers argue that he is being targeted for exercising his First Amendment rights.

The charging document explains that Secretary of State Marco Rubio decided Khalil was deportable, an argument based on an obscure provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (also known as the McCarran-Walter Act).

The charging document in Khalil’s case relied on the Act, stating Rubio “has reasonable ground to believe that your presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” This is troubling for two reasons. First, it gives the secretary the power to deem what speech is protected by the First Amendment (and what speech is not). And second, the secretary’s unlimited discretion seems to violate the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause – “[no person shall] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

I am not the first person to draw parallels between the 1952 Act, which contributed to sparking McCarthyism in our country , and today. Trump’s efforts to put noncitizens on notice echoes this Cold War-era law by targeting students on foreign visas who may not have committed a crime, but hold views deemed unacceptable by the administration.

In 1952, the Act was meant to root out Soviet spies and communist sympathizers, but it also targeted Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors who were suspected to be Soviet infiltrators. Jewish legislators protested the Act, and President Truman vetoed it. Nevertheless, it passed with a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress. Benjamin Epstein, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, at the time said immigration regulations like the McCarran-Walter Act were “examples of the worst kind of legislation, discriminatory and abusive of American concepts and ideals.”

But my feelings about the substance of these comments are irrelevant to their constitutionality. Indeed, the entire point of the free speech clause of the First Amendment is to protect speech that other citizens seek to suppress. Popular speech doesn’t need legal protection.

As of this writing, Khalil is still in Louisiana but is expected to be transferred to New Jersey, where his case will be heard. The Trump administration has been ordered by two federal judges not to remove Khalil from the country.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) – which exists, for now — sent letters to 60 colleges and universities, putting them on notice for supposedly not protecting Jewish students on campus, in compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act which “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.” Massachusetts schools on the list include Harvard University, UMass-Amherst, Tufts University, Emerson College, Boston University and Wellesley College.

Trump is threatening to upend higher education and free speech as we know it. His actions have demolished scientific and medical research. Some $800 million in federal grants were paused to Johns Hopkins University. Federal grants worth $400 million were suspended at Columbia University. UMass-Chan Medical School rescinded dozens of offers to graduate students because of uncertain federal funding. Given the latest hit list of schools, it seems clear monies for more institutions is at risk.

Jews like me are being used by the Trump administration under the veil of offering the government’s “protection.” But we feel no safer from antisemitism as a result of this administration’s actions.

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