Right-Wing Group Sends Trump Deportation List Over Palestine Activism

A far-right, extremist group has compiled a list of foreign students and teachers that it thinks should be expelled from the United States for protesting against Israel, and turned it over to officials in the Trump administration.

Betar, a Revisionist Zionist organization inspired by European fascist movements, has been using facial recognition and soliciting tips to identify protesters at rallies and encampments opposing Israel’s brutal war in Gaza over the past year.

“The Zionist community in America has had enough, and while we vowed many months ago to build lists and have them deported, we are pleased that this will now begin,” a spokesperson for the group, Daniel Levy, told Salon. “We have already submitted names of hundreds of terror supporters to the Trump administration who proudly support terror and don’t belong in this country as they are here on visas.”

Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday that gives federal agencies the power to identify, punish, and deport foreign nationals allegedly prejudiced against Judaism and Jewish people, a blatant attempt to stifle pro-Palestine activism in the United States. Betar wants to make the Trump administration’s attack on the First Amendment even easier.

Levy told Salon that his organization has given its list to attorney general nominee Pam Bondi, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump adviser Stephen Miller, U.N. ambassador nominee Elise Stefanik, and other members of the Trump administration. The list isn’t just composed of protesters, either: Betar is targeting academics who advocate for Palestine or who teach an “alternate history” that conflicts with the organization’s worldview.

This, according to Levy, includes people who advocate for a one-state solution: a single, secular democratic state encompassing both Israel and the Palestinian territories.

“When they say ‘one-state solution,’ it’s not for the benefit of the truth or for the benefit of the Jews. They want the six million Jews wiped out,” Levy said.

Trump’s executive order ostensibly aimed at antisemitism is straight out of the playbook of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which, along with its political manifesto Project 2025, has crafted “Project Esther” to target pro-Palestine activists. An extremist organization like Betar fits right into that plan, helping with the fascist legwork.

A social scientist who wrote an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times has accused the paper’s Trump-friendly owner of bending his words to suit Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s appointment to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Eric Reinhart, a political anthropologist and psychoanalytic clinician, published an essay in the West Coast daily Friday suggesting that Kennedy’s controversial appointment could “pay off” so long as he “pushes real reform.” But the freelancer claims that the pro-Kennedy argument wasn’t his choice—nor his original intent.

“My first time working with the Los Angeles Times, and I expect also my last,” Eric Reinhart, a political anthropologist and psychoanalytic clinician, wrote on X following the article’s publication. “A vote for RFK Jr is a vote for nothing but chaos, the opposite of the essential public-systems building I argue for in the OpEd, and mass death.”

The original and final versions of Reinhart’s article differ drastically in message. The first paragraph of the published opinion piece takes an optimistic tone about Kennedy’s role in the Trump administration, suggesting that the virulent conspiracy theorist could be an answer and solution to the American public’s bubbling resentment toward the health care industry.

President Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reflects anger and frustration at the wanton greed underlying America’s health systems. Major changes are coming. But we must not let those changes leave us even worse off than we already are.

But compare the soft and forgiving language of the published version to Reinhart’s original copy, which he shared on X shortly after the article’s publication. In it, he likens the sociopolitical reckoning of Kennedy’s nomination to the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the nation’s health agencies and the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson are both reflections of the same reality: anger at the wanton greed underlying America’s health systems has reached a fever pitch, and it will not be held back any longer. Major changes are coming, but they may leave us even worse off than we already are.

Additionally, the published iteration of the text completely nixed Reinhart’s closing remarks, in which the social scientist reiterated Kennedy’s blatant disregard for scientific evidence.

Although RFK Jr. and Luigi Mangione are both responses to the same underlying problem of US healthcare corruption, there is a major difference between them: one operated outside the law to kill one person in defense of millions, whereas the other—via his egomaniacal disregard for scientific evidence—seeks to use law itself to inflict preventable death on those millions.

Reinhart vented deeper frustration on BlueSky, where he pointed fingers at the political interests of the paper’s biotech billionaire owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, as a potential reason for the intervention in his thesis.

“Editing out the most urgent point of an OpEd in the minutes before sending to press while then also assigning a title and image that suggest an argument entirely opposite to the author’s clear intent is pretty shitty,” Reinhart wrote.

It is not unusual for news outlets to edit, trim, change, or otherwise alter copy before it reaches publication—even without the author’s consent. But it is noteworthy that the Los Angeles Times’ heavy-handed pen sliced and diced a new argument out of a piece criticizing Kennedy, days after the paper’s owner formally endorsed him.

Soon-Shiong publicly supported Kennedy’s nomination to head HHS earlier this week. In a post on Twitter, the billionaire said that he had not met Kennedy “until a few months ago” but over time had come to “truly believe” that he had “the American public’s best interests at heart.”

“I have worried about toxins and the cause of cancer my entire career. As a physician scientist I really hope he is confirmed tomorrow,” Soon-Shiong posted on Tuesday.

In 2018, Soon-Shiong took control of the Los Angeles Times and The San Diego Union-Tribune in a $500 million deal from Tribune Publishing.

Read Reinhart’s unedited op-ed here.

Republican Congressman Eric Burlison admitted Friday there was no evidence that diversity, equity, and inclusion policies were responsible for the deadly plane crash near Washington, D.C., earlier this week.

Sixty-seven people are believed to be dead after a passenger plane hit a military helicopter midair near Ronald Reagan Nation Airport. The actual cause of the crash remains unknown, but Donald Trump has blamed who he always does: anyone who isn’t a white, straight, able-bodied man.

Trump’s cronies have been quick to echo his harmful theory, but Burlison was forced to admit there was no evidence to prove it, in an interview with Fox News.

“Do you have any evidence that any of those hires were DEI hires?” host Maria Bartiromo asked Burlison after he too criticized the FAA’s diversity hires.

“Not until we get into the investigation,” Burlison admitted.

Burlison is taking a page from Trump’s book. In a press conference on Thursday, Trump said the Federal Aviation Administration’s efforts to hire “workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions” in air traffic control centers led to the crash. Trump admitted he had no evidence to back his claim but said he believed it to be true because he has “common sense.”

It’s yet another ridiculous attempt to blame literally every problem on DEI efforts enacted by Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

Ironically though, it was Trump’s own first administration that launched a diversity program to hire air controllers with the very criteria he claimed were responsible for the deadliest U.S. plane crash in 25 years, The Washington Post reported Thursday evening.

Republicans’ new Senate majority leader, John Thune, is being forced to choose between his fearless MAGA leader and the constituents who chose him to represent their interests. 

Trump on Thursday confirmed his plans to levy aggressive 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, after complaining about “the people that have poured into our country,” “the drugs, fentanyl and everything else,” and “the massive subsidies we are giving to Canada and to Mexico in the form of deficits.”

While Trump and his base cheer on the strongman isolationism, Thune’s constituents in his home state of South Dakota could potentially suffer. The state’s entire economy is reliant on agriculture—it exports soybeans, corn, and beef primarily, according to a Politico analysis. And it just so happens that China and Mexico are the biggest export markets for U.S. agriculture. 

Tariffs against these countries would cripple South Dakota’s economy, as they did in 2018 when Trump enacted the very same tariffs during his trade war. Senators in similar precarious situations are looking to Thune to talk the president down.  

“Obviously the president is somebody who sees great value in the use of tariffs as a tool and we’ll have, I’m sure, lots of conversations,” Thune told Politico, striking a diplomatic chord. “People up here have different views about how and when to use them but I see value when they are used in a targeted way.”

Meanwhile, Thune has been pushing the president’s Cabinet picks through, even after Trump overruled Thune’s plan to split the GOP tax bill in two, signaling that he won’t be open to the Senate majority leader’s hesitations. We’ll see if Thune finds the guts to speak up.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. admitted to senators late Thursday that there was at least one incident in which he settled a case over inappropriate behavior.

The revelation came by way of a series of follow-up questions Democrats sent to the Department of Health and Human Services secretary nominee. Senators wanted to know if Kennedy had ever reached a legal settlement over accusations of misconduct.

Two questions in the list, obtained by Mother Jones, read as follows:

“Yes or no, have you ever reached a settlement agreement with an individual or organization that accused you of misconduct or inappropriate behavior?”

“Yes or no, have you ever agreed to or been subject to a non-disclosure agreement with any individual or organization?”

Kennedy answered yes to each one but offered no follow-up details.

Mother Jones reached out to Kennedy to elaborate on the answer, querying if the 71-year-old’s settlements had to do with previously reported allegations, such as claims that he allegedly groped his children’s babysitter, Eliza Cooney, in the late 1990s.

A spokesperson for Kennedy, Katie Miller, sent a brief reply to the publication: “As a matter of policy, we don’t respond to Mother Jones.”

Kennedy had denied Cooney’s accusation when asked about it during his Senate confirmation hearing. And when Senator Patty Murray asked if there were other instances where Kennedy made “sexual advances toward an individual without their consent,” he said, “No.”

Kennedy, a virulent vaccine conspiracy theorist, was tapped by Donald Trump to run the country’s health policy.

His private life has given pause to a number of lawmakers responsible for confirming him. Kennedy has publicly admitted to dumping a dead bear cub in Central Park, believed the 2004 presidential election was stolen from Democrat John Kerry, peddled conspiracies that the CIA killed his uncle, chainsawed off the head of a dead whale (per his daughter Kick Kennedy), and last week was described by his cousin Caroline Kennedy as a “predator” who is “addicted to attention and power.”

“I have known Bobby my whole life; we grew up together,” the former ambassador to Australia and Japan wrote in a letter to lawmakers obtained by The Washington Post.

“His basement, his garage, his dorm room were the centers of the action where drugs were available, and he enjoyed showing off how he put baby chickens and mice in the blender to feed his hawks,” she continued. “It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence.”

And Kennedy’s history in public health is questionable, at best. His stances, which include unscientific beliefs that AIDS is not caused by HIV and that a large number of vaccines should be stripped from the market, could have major impacts on the agency designed to protect America’s health, especially as bird flu outbreaks begin to dot the country.