Only 14 Democrats Sign Mahmoud Khalil Letter as Everyone Else Cowers

Only 14 Democratic representatives signed a letter calling for the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestine activist and green card holder disappeared by the Trump administration for his organizing at Columbia University.

“We are horrified by the recent illegal abduction and now indefinite detention of Mahmoud Khalil—a U.S. legal permanent resident—by Department of Homeland Security agents, and we unequivocally demand his immediate release from DHS custody,” the letter reads, addressed to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

“Khalil has not been charged or convicted of any crime,” the letter continues. “As the Trump administration proudly admits, he was targeted solely for his activism and organizing.... We must be extremely clear: this is an attempt to criminalize political protest and is a direct assault on the freedom of speech of everyone in this country.”

Representatives Rashida Tlaib, Mark Pocan, Nydia Velázquez, Delia Ramirez, lhan Omar, Jasmine Crockett, Summer Lee, Ayanna Pressley, Lateefah Simon, Al Green, Gwen Moore, André Carson, Nikema Williams, and James McGovern signed the letter.

The absence of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was noted given her previous criticism of Khalil’s arrest, as well as the fact that only 14 congressional Democrats felt compelled enough to publicly support Khalil.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has joined the attacks on Mahmoud Khalil, the pro-Palestine Columbia University activist detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but can’t name any crimes allegedly committed by Khalil.

At a press conference Tuesday morning, Johnson was directly asked what crimes Khalil committed to warrant his arrest, and gave a meandering answer calling the protest organizer a terrorist and attacking university officials for “refusing to take control” of the campus.

“If you are on a student visa and you’re an American, and you’re an aspiring young terrorist who wants to prey upon your Jewish classmates, you’re going home. We’re gonna arrest your—tail, and we’re gonna send you home where you belong,” Johnson said.

There’s just one big problem with that explanation: Khalil doesn’t have a student visa, he has a green card. It’s telling that Johnson couldn’t name a law that was broken but gave a full-throated defense of ICE’s detention of Khalil and President Trump’s decision to target a legal permanent resident of the United States (with a pregnant, U.S. citizen wife) for deportation. It’s an attack on the First Amendment to the Constitution and the right to free speech.

Only a select few Democrats have come out to condemn Khalil’s detention, such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and some members of the House Progressive Caucus. Considering that Trump promises to conduct more arrests and further infringe on a basic American right, with the full support of his fellow Republicans, the entire Democratic Party should be sounding the alarm and pulling out all of the stops.

Just two weeks after insisting that Donald Trump’s budget resolution wouldn’t touch entitlement programs, Republicans have opted to completely give up the game on slashing Medicare and Medicaid.

In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Elon Musk used lies and deceit to try to convince the American public that they should hack the popular social programs—along with food stamps, Social Security, and unemployment—by hundreds of billions of dollars. By Tuesday, Republican lawmakers had already fallen in line.

“If he moves to largely eliminate entitlement programs, are you OK with it?” pressed CNN’s Kate Bolduan.

“I think when he talks about elimination, we’re talking about waste, abuse, and fraud, and it is true that the Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security make up about 75 percent of our budget. It’s mandatory spending,” Missouri Representative Mark Alford said. “We’ve got to find the savings there. We will do that.”

“The budget director was speaking to our whip team last night in a meeting, and he pointed out that there are savings to be made in the Medicaid program,” Alford added.

But Alford’s fealty to the Trump administration might come at the cost of his reelection, as even his own supporters have expressed their malcontent with the destructive White House agenda.

Alford was practically shut down at his own town hall last month after he expressed support for Musk’s sweeping federal layoff plan. At one point, while suggesting to the crowd that they could vote for someone else in the next election if they didn’t approve of Musk’s appointment, one person shouted back, “We didn’t elect Elon!”

Alford seemed to take a page out of Trump’s own playbook in the immediate aftermath, refusing to chalk up the local frustration to his own inaction. In an interview with CNN, Alford referred to his own constituents as “outside agitators.”

The House GOP passed a budget resolution in late February that would gut major social services, including Medicaid, which provides health insurance to more than 72 million Americans. The $880 billion cut is a trade-off for conservatives whom Trump tasked to extend his 2017 tax plan, which will overwhelmingly benefit corporations and is projected to add as much as $15 trillion to the national deficit.

The party practically lied about the contents of the resolution, misdirecting Americans into believing that the bill did not task the House Energy and Commerce Committee to find, at minimum, $880 billion in savings from programs that fall under its jurisdiction, a seismic order that left the committee with practically no other option than to cut away at Medicaid.

In the days immediately following the vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson “ruled out” the largest cuts to the health insurance program, though he failed to offer any specifics as to how his party would make them without affecting Americans’ benefits.

Conservatives are teeing up a vote on the budget measure this week, though they can only spare one party vote without bipartisan support. Johnson has effectively dared Democrats to oppose the effort, hurtling the government toward a potential shutdown come Friday.

Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he would double his disastrous tariffs on Canada, dragging the United States further into a trade war as its stock market continues to fall.

In a lengthy post on Truth Social, the president wrote that his 25 percent tariffs on aluminum and steel coming into the U.S. would now be doubled to 50 percent, and go into effect as soon as Wednesday.

Trump’s newest round of tariffs came in response to Ontario—which is the main provider of electricity to Minnesota, New York, and Michigan—slapping a reciprocal 25 percent tariff on electricity imported to the U.S.

Those tariffs went into effect Monday, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he would “not hesitate to shut the electricity off completely.” Trump’s tariff war now threatens the livelihoods of the American citizens living in those states. But don’t worry, Trump wrote that he intends to announce a “National Emergency on Electricity within the threatened area.”

Trump also demanded that Canada remove its steep tariffs on U.S. dairy products—conveniently forgetting to mention that those tariffs only apply after the U.S. has made a Trump-negotiated quantity of tariff-free dairy sales to Canada.

If Canada failed to lower “other egregious, long time Tariffs,” Trump threatened to raise tariffs on imported cars from Canada into the U.S. on April 2, to “essentially, permanently shut down the automobile manufacturing business in Canada.”

“Those cars can easily be made in the USA!” Trump claimed.

Despite his specific demands, Trump revealed that in the end, the only thing that would satisfy his destructive tendencies would be total submission.

“The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State,” Trump wrote. “This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear.”

The president continued to wax poetic about the outlandish imperialist dream he intends to manifest through economic pressure.

“Canadians’ taxes will be very substantially reduced, they will be more secure, militarily and otherwise, than ever before, there would no longer be a Northern Border problem, and the greatest and most powerful nation in the World will be bigger, better and stronger than ever—And Canada will be a big part of that,” he said.

Trump claimed that getting rid of the “artificial line of separation” would create the “safest and most beautiful Nation anywhere in the World.”

Trump’s announcement comes as the U.S. stock market enters another rough week, after a major sell-off last week that caused Trump to roll back some of his tariffs and then immediately threaten more the next day. Trump’s tariff whiplash has resulted in a roiling stock market that even Fox News is having trouble defending. What’s more, it seems to have taken a sizeable bite out of Elon Musk’s net worth, and sent Tesla stock tumbling.

President Trump’s spite for our neighbors is driving the economy to the edge of recession.

The stock market plummeted after Trump announced Tuesday the doubling of tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, from 25 percent to 50 percent, with more on the way very soon.

“Based on Ontario, Canada, placing a 25% Tariff on ‘Electricity’ coming into the United States, I have instructed my Secretary of Commerce to add an ADDITIONAL 25% Tariff, to 50%, on all STEEL and ALUMINUM COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES FROM CANADA, ONE OF THE HIGHEST TARIFFING NATIONS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. This will go into effect TOMORROW MORNING, March 12th,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.”

These actions have led to intense uncertainty. Monday was the worst day for Nasdaq in over two years, and on Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by nearly 1 percent.

Trump has tried to get out in front of this by using language intended to ease people into the fact that the stock market (and the economy) is going to look absolutely horrendous for a very long time.

“I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America, that’s a big thing. And there are always periods of.… It takes a little time, it takes a little time. But I think it should be great for us,” he said on Sunday when asked if he was expecting a recession this year. “Look, what I have to do is build a strong country. You can’t really watch the stock market.”

On Truth Social, Trump again stated that the only way for this tariff war to end would be for Canada to somehow become the fifty-first state.

“We are subsidizing Canada to the tune of more than 200 Billion Dollars a year. WHY??? This cannot continue. The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State. This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear.”

Trump has also placed 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and 10 percent tariffs on goods from China.

Democrats are losing trust in battleground districts and struggling to connect with independent voters.

That is what new internal polling conducted by the Democratic group Navigator Research says about the party, which doesn’t bode well for next year’s midterm elections. In contested House districts, most voters believe that Democrats in Congress are “more focused on helping other people than people like me.”

Only 27 percent of independent voters in such districts believe that Democrats are focused on helping them, versus 55 percent who say they focus on others. The full findings of the poll, one of the first of battleground congressional districts since November, will be presented to House Democrats and their staff on Wednesday at their Issues Conference in Leesburg, Virginia.

The conference is supposed to help coordinate House Democrats’ messaging heading into the 2026 midterm elections, and if the results are any indication, the party needs to figure things out—and fast.

“The Democratic brand is still not where it needs to be in terms of core trust and understanding people’s challenges,” said Molly Murphy, one of the pollsters. “Even though voters are critical about Trump and some of the things he’s doing, that criticism of Trump doesn’t translate into trust in Democrats. The trust has to be earned.”

One major area that Democrats lack trust is regarding jobs and work. Only 44 percent of polled voters think that Democrats respect work, while just 39 percent think that Democrats value work. A majority of voters, 56 percent to be exact, say that they don’t believe Democrats are looking out for working people, while just 42 percent think that Democrats share their values. And only 39 percent of voters think Democrats have the right priorities.

The party has an uphill battle over the next year, as 69 percent of voters said Democrats were “too focused on being politically correct” and 51 percent said “elitist” was a good descriptor for Democrats. The party has to put together a coherent message that can reach the working people necessary to regain control of Congress, all the more necessary with the damage Donald Trump is doing to the economy and the federal government.

The question is whether the party can come up with an effective strategy that fires up the base and brings in new voters instead of weak stunts and the out-of-touch strategies touted by centrist groups like Third Way. If they don’t, not only will they lose again, but Trump and the GOP will continue to run roughshod over the country.

Donald Trump’s 2025 inaugural entourage was noticeably flush, with several of the world’s richest people—including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Bernard Arnault, and Jeff Bezos—standing behind the president as he was sworn in.

But seven weeks later, that cohort has lost a significant sum of cash, with the five billionaires’ collective net worths tanking by a staggering $209 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Any momentary market gains boosted by Trump’s return to the Oval Office have since vanished. The S&P 500 has lost 6.4 percent since the inauguration, largely thanks to Trump’s whiplash tariff proposals and a mass layoff sweeping the federal government under Musk’s direction.

Musk’s losses stem from a downturn on Tesla, which historically attracted a more liberal consumer base with its electric vehicles. That same base has since soured on the tech billionaire and his products, especially in some of Europe’s stronger economies, such as Germany, which has seen sales in the country fall by more than 70 percent over the last two months, reported Bloomberg. Sales in China—where Tesla has two major factories—have similarly plummeted, falling by 49 percent in February.

Bezos’s financial woes follow his decisions to support Trump’s inauguration fund in December and his increasingly tight grip on The Washington Post, which he announced would now prioritize personal liberties and free markets in its Opinions section. Amazon shares have fallen 14 percent since January 17, according to Bloomberg, which noted that Bezos dined with the president as recently as last month.

On Monday, Trump floated that the “little disruption” caused by his aggressive trade policies could go on for quite a bit longer, urging Americans to come up with a totally new calendar to measure how long they’ll be affected.

“Look, what I have to do is build a strong country,” the president told Fox Business, 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.”

Trump is scheduled to address U.S. business leaders Tuesday at a Business Roundtable meeting at 5 p.m.

A Justice Department official says she was fired for not letting convicted domestic abuser Mel Gibson have a gun, according to The New York Times.

Pardon attorney Liz Oyer told the Times that two weeks ago she was placed on a team working to restore gun rights to individuals with criminal convictions, as many on the right argue that the ban is too restrictive and not specific enough toward each case. Oyer did the work, culling 95 eligible candidates down to nine, and turned her list in. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told her to add one more name to the list: Mel Gibson. 

“They sent it back to me saying, ‘We would like you to add Mel Gibson to this memo,’” she said. She also noted a letter from Gibson’s lawyer to acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove that noted Donald Trump’s recent appointment of Gibson as a “Hollywood ambassador,” as well as his general fame.  

Federal law prohibits people convicted of crimes like misdemeanor state domestic violence from buying or owning a handgun.

“Giving guns back to domestic abusers is a serious matter that, in my view, is not something that I could recommend lightly, because there are real consequences that flow from people who have a history of domestic violence being in possession of firearms,” Oyer said.

Oyer was also aware of the antisemitic outburst Gibson allegedly spewed toward a cop who pulled him over for a suspected DUI in 2006. Gibson denies he used any discriminatory language. 

Oyer refused to add Gibson to the list, and was then asked if her position was “flexible.” She said it was not. 

“He then essentially explained to me that Mel Gibson has a personal relationship with President Trump and that should be sufficient basis for me to make a recommendation and that I would be wise to make the recommendation,” she said. “I literally did not sleep a wink that night because I understood that the position I was in was one that was going to either require me to compromise my strongly held views and ethics or would likely result in me losing my ability to participate in these conversations going forward.”

The next morning, Oyer was called to her office and met with security guards instructing her to leave the premises. She was fired for upholding her principles instead of doing a skeevy favor for one of the president’s buddies. 

There has been no update from the Justice Department on the gun rights restoration list.

Elon Musk took such a massive financial hit Monday that his friend President Donald Trump is now moonlighting as a car salesman.

Tesla stock plummeted 15 percent, drying up the very last drops of Musk’s postelection gains and costing him a whopping $29 billion. In a post on Truth Social within the first hour of Tuesday, the president rushed to defend the bouncing billionaire head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, claiming that he was the victim of an illegal “boycott.”

“To Republicans, Conservatives, and all great Americans, Elon Musk is ‘putting it on the line’ in order to help our Nation, and he is doing a FANTASTIC JOB!” Trump gushed.  

“But the Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World’s great automakers, and Elon’s ‘baby,’ in order to attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for. They tried to do it to me at the 2024 Presidential Ballot Box, but how did that work out?” Trump wrote, pivoting back to his favorite subject: himself.  

“In any event, I’m going to buy a brand new Tesla tomorrow morning as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American. Why should he be punished for putting his tremendous skills to work in order to help MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN???”

Of course, Musk’s money troubles are in part Trump’s fault in the first place. While he is certainly experiencing some brand erosion from his cartoonishly far-right turn, Musk’s Tesla is part of the same market that Trump is actively kneecapping with his plan to enact steep tariffs on America’s closest trading partners and his inability to say whether or not the U.S. is headed for another recession. 

While Tesla’s stock flailed Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 890 points, the broader S&P 500 dropped by 2.7 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite dropped by 4 percent.

Still, the unelected bureaucrat thanked Trump for his show of support, in a post on X, which experienced severe outages Monday (that Musk managed to somehow blame on Ukraine). 

It’s not clear why Trump’s spotlight would lend any help to Musk now—the two are already publicly linked, and isn’t that part of the problem? 

The richest man in the world is trying to convince the American people that they all deserve less.

In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Elon Musk spread debunked lies about Social Security and Medicare to justify eliminating them.

“The waste and fraud in entitlement spending … that’s the big one to eliminate, that’s the sort of half trillion, maybe six or seven hundred billion a year,” Musk said.

“That is also a mechanism by which the Democrats attract and retain illegal immigrants, by essentially paying them to come here, and they’re turning them into voters. This is why the Democrats are so upset about the situation,” he added, unsubtly echoing a white nationalist, Great Replacement theory talking point while Larry Kudlow nodded along. “If we turn off this gigantic money magnet for illegal immigrants, then they will leave. And they will lose voters.”

Trump has said he won’t touch Social Security or Medicare, but Musk’s entitlement math makes it clear that both those programs, as well as Medicaid, are on the chopping block. Millions of older Americans—many of them red-state Republicans—will lose the vital benefits they rely on. And the millions of younger Americans who’ve been having those benefits taken out of their paychecks for years will never see the fruits of that.

Musk’s lies continued. “Why are there 20 million people who are definitely dead marked as alive in the Social Security database?” he asked. “Why were hundreds of millions of dollars of Small Business Administration loans given out to people aged 11 and under? We have an enormous number of people marked alive who are 160.”

This has been long debunked.

“The reported data are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record. These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits,” acting Social Security commissioner Lee Dudek said in February.