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, but her chief of staff said she was waiting on one detail from Khalil’s legal team, when signing for the letter was closed. He added that she would sign the letter if it was still open.*

In the end, only 14 congressional Democrats felt compelled enough to publicly support Khalil.

*This piece was updated to reflect Ocasio-Cortez’s stance on the letter.

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.