Trump Cheers Chilling Arrest of Palestinian Activist Mahmoud Khalil

Donald Trump is celebrating the detention of Columbia University graduate and pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, despite his being a green card holder.

The president boasted about Khalil’s arrest on his Truth Social account Monday afternoon, calling him “a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student on the campus of Columbia University,” and warned, “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,” Trump posted. “Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country—never to return again.”

Last week, Trump threatened to pull funding from schools that allow “illegal protests” and added that “agitators” would be “imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested.” Following this, the Trump administration canceled $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University for what it called “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.”

The president is making good on his threats and gloating about it, and the fact that Khalil is an Algerian citizen of Palestinian origin suggests that the administration’s first targets may be ethnically motivated. Plus, it overlaps with Trump’s goal of mass deportations of immigrants, only in this case, the president is including legal immigrants in this attack on the First Amendment. Will Democrats stand up and demand free speech protections, or will they oppose pro-Palestinian protesters?

The Supreme Court is taking up a case to decide whether states can ban conversion therapy—a widely discredited method of changing a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity that has proven both harmful and ineffective—or if such a ban is an infringement on First Amendment rights.

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear Chiles v. Salazar, where Kaley Chiles, a Colorado therapist, challenged a state law outlawing “any practice or treatment … that attempts or purports to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Chiles has asserted her right to treat individuals with “same-sex attractions or gender identity confusion” who seek to “prioritize their faith above their feelings,” according to The Hill. Chiles said in court documents that she only works with adults and children “who are internally motivated to seek counseling.”

The Supreme Court has refused to hear similar cases in the past, but now its conservative majority, which has appeared enthusiastic about the prospect of upholding bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youths, may weigh an important question that will affect the lives of LGBTQ people across the country. There are currently 20 states that have laws restricting conversion therapy.

The suit is backed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative legal group that led challenges to nationwide abortion access. A press release on the ADF’s website alleged that by not allowing her to perform conversion therapy, Chiles was in turn “being forced to promote the government’s gender ideology.”

“Many of Chiles’ clients come to her because they share her Christian worldview and faith-based values. These clients believe their lives will be more fulfilling if they are aligned with the teachings of their faith. Yet Colorado law censors Chiles from speaking words her clients want to hear because the government does not like the view she expresses,” the press release said.

In 2022, a Colorado district court rejected the suit, and in 2023, a panel of judges at the Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law did not regulate speech but professional conduct—and it seems that question will determine the outcome of this case. States are legally able to regulate professional conduct as a means of preventing malpractice. To overturn that rule could potentially undermine all state efforts against professional malpractice.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear the case during its next annual term, which begins in October.

The Trump administration has revealed that, under Donald Trump’s helm, the federal government will try to deport immigrants who arrived here by completely legal means.

On Saturday, several agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate student who co-organized the pro-Palestine sit-in on campus last year. The agents took him into custody at his university-owned apartment, where they also threatened to arrest his wife, an eight-month pregnant American citizen, according to Khalil’s attorney Amy Greer.

ICE claimed that they were acting on State Department orders to revoke Khalil’s student visa. But when notified by Greer that Khalil was in the U.S. as a permanent resident with a green card, the agency told her that they would be revoking that instead, reported NPR.

Greer said that she was informed Khalil had been sent to an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, but was not there when she attempted to visit on Sunday. By Sunday night, it was still unclear where Khalil was.

But in an interview with Fox Business Monday, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said it was “absolutely” acceptable to detain and deport “legal” immigrants.

“Absolutely we can,” Homan said. “Did he violate the terms of his visa? Did he violate the terms of his residency here? You know, committing crimes? Attacking Israeli students? Locking down buildings, destroying property, absolutely.”

Homan was referring to an incident in which pro-Palestine students occupied Hamilton Hall, an administrative building on Columbia’s campus that students have similarly occupied over the last several decades for various civil rights protests, including demonstrations against the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa. This time, students renamed the building “Hind’s Hall” in honor of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl who had been killed by the Israeli military that year.

“Any resident alien who commits a crime is eligible for deportation,” Homan told Fox.

“We’re going to send a strong message here to anyone on a foreign visa: You are given a great right to come to the greatest country on Earth to study in our colleges. But when you come here to study, you got to obey the laws of this country,” Homan added. “Don’t violate our laws.”

Homan’s comments echoed those of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who posted on X Sunday that the administration would be revoking the visas and green cards “of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.” It was not clear how the White House would be identifying alleged Hamas supporters.

The New York Civil Liberties Union said in a statement that Khalil’s detainment was an “extreme attack” on the First Amendment.

“Ripping a student from their home, challenging their immigration status, and detaining them solely based on political viewpoint will chill student speech and advocacy across campus,” a statement from the civil rights organization read. “Political speech should never be a basis for punishment, or lead to deportation.”

Simultaneously to Khalil’s detainment, the Trump administration rescinded $400 million in federal grants last week to the Ivy League university, claiming that the school was suffering from rampant antisemitism and had failed to act “in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” Over the last couple of weeks, before the grants were withdrawn, Columbia expelled three Barnard students for their participation in protest of U.S. involvement in Israel’s war on Gaza.

It was the first time in 57 years that the school had expelled anyone for exercising their First Amendment right to protest, and the first time since 1936 that students had been kicked out for nonviolent political protest. (Robert Burke was expelled that year for rallying against Columbia’s ties to Nazism, reported The Nation.)

Columbia did little to protect the health and rights of their students who participated in the anti-genocide protest. At least one on-campus protest was infiltrated by Israeli soldiers, resulting in the use of chemical weapons that hospitalized pro-Palestine demonstrators with “temporary vision loss, nausea and abdominal pain,” reported Al Jazeera.

Republican Representative Don Bacon warned Monday that Donald Trump’s botched handling of the negotiations to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was forfeiting America’s status as a global leader.

During an interview on CNN, the Nebraska Republican was asked whether he felt that Trump’s stance on Russia was “too conciliatory” and amounted to “walking away” from the American legacy as the leader of the free world.

“We are the leader of the free world, but right now, many countries are questioning, are we still the leader of the free world?” Bacon said.

“We may be the most powerful country in the world, we were the leader of the free world, but it appears to many leaders and people all over—to include Republicans in Nebraska—that this administration is walking away from that legacy,” Bacon said.

“I’m not interested in a foreign policy that is totally built on realism, or transactionalism, where it’s just, ‘What do we have in it for us?’ I believe in having a foreign policy where it’s a mix of realism, protecting our country, and idealism,” Bacon said.

Bacon urged Americans to be “clear-eyed” and have “moral clarity” when it came to negotiating with Russia. To him, that meant understanding that Russian President Vladimir Putin is the aggressor, period.

Bacon cited Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—which Trump has suggested was somehow Ukraine’s fault—as well as the Kremlin’s lethal attacks against its critics, and Russia’s seemingly renewed aerial attack campaign in Ukraine.

“[Putin’s] ramped up the bombing of cities since President Trump has been harsh toward President Zelenskiy,” Bacon said.

“We’re playing into the hands of Putin and it’s devastating for our national security, and our foreign affairs for the years to come. So, I’m very concerned,” he added.

Trump has continued to make outrageous demands of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, while asking absolutely nothing of Putin, who is responsible for the continued fighting in Ukraine. During an interview on Fox News Sunday, Trump suggested that Ukraine “may not survive anyway”—a startling admission for someone who has placed himself at the head of negotiations.

It does seem that the United States is well on its way back from being a “city upon a hill,” and was recently included on the Civicus Monitor Watchlist, a selection of countries experiencing a rapid decline in civil freedoms published by the Civicus, a civil rights–tracking watchdog.

The list referred to Trump’s onslaught of executive orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, undocumented immigrants, and transgender Americans, as well as other legislative actions infringing on the freedom of association, peaceful assembly, and expression.

Vice President JD Vance is being attacked by his own cousin, who fought on the front lines in Ukraine, over his insults to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the Trump administration’s abandonment of the country. 

Nate Vance, a Texas native who volunteered for Ukraine and fought on the front lines against Russia for three years, told French newspaper Le Figaro that Donald Trump and Vance are turning the U.S. into “Vladimir Putin’s useful idiots.”

“JD is a good guy, intelligent,” Nate Vance said. “When he criticized aid to Ukraine, I told myself that it was because he had to please a certain electorate and that it was a political game. But what they did to Zelensky was an ambush of absolute bad faith.”

Nate and JD are first cousins: JD’s mother is the sister of Nate’s father. Nate, a Marine veteran like JD, traveled to Ukraine in 2022, fighting in some of its deadliest battles, according to the publication. 

“You’re family but that doesn’t mean I’m going to accept the fact that you’re getting my comrades killed,” Vance said. He believes that the U.S. has benefited from aiding Ukraine, and that U.S. equipment has been used effectively in the war, and was incensed after watching Trump and Vance disrespect Zelenskiy in the Oval Office two weeks ago.   

“I was disappointed. When JD justified his distrust of Zelensky by the ‘reports’ he had seen, I thought I was going to choke,” Vance said. “His own cousin was on the frontline. I could have told him the truth, plain and simple, without any personal agenda. He never tried to find out more.”

Nate Vance left the Ukrainian war in January after his cousin was sworn in as vice president, having kept his relationship to JD under wraps until then, due to the risk of being captured because of his famous relative. The lifelong Republican is at odds not only with his cousin but with other members of his family—his mother, Donna, called Zelenskiy a “pretentious little shit” on Facebook. 

Vance has tried to contact his cousin multiple times, going back to JD’s time in the Senate, to no avail. 

“From Ukraine, reaching a senator is not easy,” Nate Vance said. “But I left messages at his office. I never heard back.”

One of the highest ranking members of the State Department used to tweet about how gay and stupid he thought now Secretary of State Marco Rubio was, according to CNN.

Darren Beattie, who used to be one of Trump’s speechwriters before being fired for openly fraternizing with white nationalists, has multiple deleted tweets slandering his current boss.

“Forget Wainwright park, forget the foam, forget the war promotion and the neocon sugar daddies, forget the low IQ, forget the 2016 primary … Rubio is TOUGH ON CHINA (and good for military industrial complex),” Beattie wrote sarcastically in just 2021, referring to unsupported far-right claims that Rubio has attended “gay foam parties.”

“If a bunch of DC wonks try to reinvent Marco Rubio as a nationalist, but a ‘respectable’ one who promises tax credits to BLM supporters and is ‘TOUGH ON CHINA’ will you be a good dog and vote for him?” Beattie wrote in the following tweet.

“I bet Rubio still thinks Assad gassed his own people,” Beattie commented over a tweet in which Rubio criticized Russia for its tactics in Ukraine.

“The idea behind the Hawley/Rubio scam is this. They are smart enough to know the rebranded neoconservatism of Nikki Haley and Crenshaw has no legs,” Beattie wrote in 2020. “Also smart enough to know free-market libertarianism has no legs.”

Beattie is now the State Department’s primary adviser on public affairs and public diplomacy, and he also heads the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which handles things like Fulbright scholarships.

Rubio has declined to comment.

These tweets are a microcosm of the strange position Rubio finds himself in: someone once considered a moderate, commonsense Republican in the midst of his party’s right-wing takeover, now trying to smile and wave his way through it.

Donald Trump doesn’t seem to have any faith in Ukraine, after all.

​​During an interview with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo that aired Sunday, the president expressed a complete lack of faith that Ukraine could continue to survive—either with or without U.S. involvement.

“Are you comfortable with that? The fact that you walked away, and Ukraine may not survive?” Bartiromo asked, referring to a recent conversation she had with Polish President Andrzej Duda in which the foreign leader cast doubts on Ukraine’s longevity.

“Well, it may not survive anyway,” Trump said. “But, you know, we have some weaknesses with Russia. It takes two. Look, it was not going to happen, that war, and it happened. So, now we’re stuck with this mess.”

Trump then went on to blame former President Joe Biden for leaving the war in his hands.

Following a disastrous meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy late last month, the White House ordered a pause on military aid and intelligence sharing with Kyiv in its ongoing war with Russia. That alone could be enough to devastate Ukraine’s ability to target Russian forces in its fight against the dictator-led superpower.

Deciding to backtrack on the global treatises has also rattled international confidence in U.S. allyship. After a week in which Trump sparked a trade war, sent the stock market tumbling, and effectively failed the stipulations of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, a coalition of the country’s strongest allies were reportedly examining how they could revise their current protocols with Washington in order to withhold intelligence and safeguard foreign assets, according to four sources and a foreign official that spoke with NBC News.

Trump has repeatedly ducked reporters’ questions as to whether his administration’s actions have aligned U.S. policy with Moscow, though in the background of his spat with Ukraine, the president reportedly directed administration officials last week to draft a proposal that would lift sanctions on Russia.

During another portion of the interview, Bartiromo asked Trump if he believed he was giving Russia and Ukraine equal treatment in ongoing peace talks.

“I think so,” Trump said.

“Are you favoring one over the other?” she pressed.

Trump then practically admitted that he wasn’t treating them the same, due to their varying positions in the world.

“They’re very different places, OK? Very, very different,” the president continued. “You’re talking about different levels of power. You’re talking about different parts of the world.”

Droves of world leaders have denounced the U.S. in the weeks since Trump was inaugurated. They have condemned his aggression toward America’s long-standing alliances and his willingness to throw Western nations into a reckless trade war, and have cast aspersions on his seemingly warm relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russian forces crossed the Ukrainian border on February 24, 2022, which Putin tried to justify by falsely claiming that he needed to protect civilians in eastern Ukraine. The U.S. and Russia opened discussions at a meeting in Saudi Arabia last month, seeking a conclusion to the three-year war, but the assembly conspicuously excluded Ukrainian leadership.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is struggling to come up with accomplishments in the face of public criticism and pressure from Trump administration officials.

Several leading DOGE officials are desperate to show positive results from their work. Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla employee who now works with DOGE in the General Service Administration, or GSA, told his employees in a meeting last week that “I need wins to defend,” The Washington Post reports.

Some of the pressure on DOGE is coming from President Trump himself. Last week, he said that agency chiefs, and not Elon Musk, are in charge of making department cuts, and said on Truth Social that he prefers the “‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet.’” DOGE officials are also concerned about their image, with negative headlines and angry town halls reinforcing how damaging their agency cuts are.

A Washington Post-Ipsos poll last month showed that nearly half of Americans disapprove of what Musk has done with the federal government, as opposed to 34 percent who approve.

“P.R. is viewed as a big mess internally right now. I think everyone there knows they need to do a better job of telling the story,” one anonymous source told the Post. “And that’s going to be a big component of the next phase of DOGE, leaning into storytelling and showing the wins and not having the story told for them.”

Following their cuts to federal offices, which have resulted in thousands of federal workers being fired, DOGE’s next step is to build apps and websites for government services and federal employees. But even on this, DOGE has undermined its own efforts. For example, DOGE’s effort to overhaul the Social Security website and services upended an effort already underway in the U.S. Digital Service, with the team working on it being pushed out, former head of the USDS Mina Hsiang said.

​​“When you fire people who have deep understandings of the mission you want to accomplish, you’re sort of starting from zero,” said Hsiang, who left before the USDS became the U.S. DOGE Service in January.

DOGE employees have a short timeline to show what they’ve achieved: They have only months until their tenure as “special government employees” ends. In some cases, they are passing on this pressure to federal workers, giving them only minutes to complete tasks. DOGE seems to prioritize speed and coding skills over security and protecting sensitive information, said an employee of 18F, a digital unit inside the GSA.

“Anyone can make something look nice,” said the employee, who is now on administrative leave. But making sure government systems don’t break “is a lot more complicated. And I don’t think [people at DOGE] care about it at all.”

Americans should come up with a totally new calendar to measure how long they’ll be affected under the president’s tariff plan, per the president.

During an interview with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo that aired Sunday, Donald Trump dodged whether the country would dive headlong into a recession, and suggested that Americans should model their economic projections on a 100-year model—like China—rather than assess his performance on a quarterly basis.

“Are you expecting a recession this year?” Bartiromo asked.

“I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big,” Trump said.

Instead, Trump said, “There could be a little disruption.”

“Look, what I have to do is build a strong country,” the president continued, responding to criticism about the recent stock market drop. “You can’t really watch the stock market. If you look at China, they have a 100-year perspective. We have a quarter. We go by quarters. And you can’t go by that.”

Last month, Trump announced he would impose a 25 percent tariff on goods from America’s closest neighbors. Two days later, he backtracked, giving Canada and Mexico a one-month delay. On March 4, the tariffs went into effect, sparking retaliatory tariffs from Canada, as well as outcry from America’s Big Three automakers.

A couple more days later, Trump directed another one-month pause for goods that met his 2020 trade deal, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which a White House official told CNBC covered roughly 50 percent of Mexican imports and 38 percent of Canadian imports. And then, in an interview that aired Friday, Trump said the tariffs could go higher than 25 percent.

As a result, the last week saw drastic market fluctuations, with the stock market tumbling as the tariffs went into effect. The Dow dropped 670 points, and by the end of the week, Republican lawmakers were fed up.

“The tariffs could go up as time goes by, and they may go up,” Trump told Bartiromo. “We may go up with some tariffs. I don’t think we’ll go down, but we may go up.”

“For years, globalists have been ripping off the United States. They’ve been taking money away from the United States, and all we’re doing is getting some of it back, and we’re going to treat our country fairly,” Trump said, echoing language from one of his former key advisers, Steve Bannon. “This country has been ripped off from every nation in the world, every company in the world. We’ve been ripped off at levels never seen before, and what we’re going to do is get it back.”

Donald Trump wants Americans to “shut up” about the soaring price of eggs.

Trump shared an article on Truth Social Saturday titled, “Shut Up About Egg Prices—Trump Is Saving Consumers Millions,” written by Charlie Kirk, the CEO of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, which assisted the president during his campaign.

The article posited that Democrats were “positively giddy about the price of eggs,” which reached $8 a dozen last week. While Democrats may long for “proof that these backward, ‘extreme’ MAGA Republicans didn’t know what they were voting for,” the high price of eggs was “in no way President Trump’s fault,” Kirk wrote.

Kirk echoed the right-wing claim that the high egg prices were the fault of the Biden administration, because it had killed way too many chickens in response to the bird flu outbreak—in reality, that’s an Agriculture Department policy that has continued during the first months of the Trump administration.

Kirk also claimed that it didn’t matter if egg prices went up—though Trump seemed to think it did when trying to win votes on the campaign trail—because the Trump administration would save consumers money in other important ways, by cutting taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security.

Trump has bragged about winning the election based solely on his promise to lower the price of groceries. Since claiming the presidency, though, Trump has plainly stated that he actually has no idea how to get consumer prices down. With the president’s endorsement, Kirk’s article reads like an admission. “I’m Sorry. I Can’t. Don’t Hate Me.”

Trump’s unwieldy economic policy only makes that more clear.

The president’s decision to enact steep tariffs on America’s closest trading partners, Canada, Mexico, and China, led to a major sell-off in the stock market last week and new forecasts predicting a recession on the horizon. Washington Post economic columnist Heather Long said on MSNBC that it was “hard to envision” prices coming down amid the ensuing trade war.

Trump’s insistence that American consumers should keep quiet about their concerns is particularly disturbing when just last week, he seemed to soft-launch the idea that despite his promises to reverse inflation, the U.S. was headed toward another recession. Already, members of the Trump administration have been trying to sugarcoat the economic meltdown, calling it a “detox” or “transition” period.

In a post on Truth Social Sunday evening, Trump had a much different message.

“We’re going to become so rich, you’re not gonna know where to spend all that money,” he wrote. “I’m telling you—just watch!”