The Trump Administration’s War on Academia is Escalating

The Trump administration is escalating its crackdown on foreign students whom it accuses of supporting terrorism, detaining Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow and Indian citizen Badar Khan Suri Monday night.

Suri was detained by masked Department of Homeland Security agents outside of his Arlington, Virginia, home. They told him that his visa was revoked under the same law that Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil was detained under: the Immigration and Nationality Act, which gives the Secretary of State the authority to deport someone if their presence has “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”

Like Khalil, Suri had no prior criminal record and has not been charged with a crime, according to his lawyer, Hassan Ahmed. Ahmed argued in a federal court petition that Suri, who was in the United States on a student visa, is facing deportation due to his U.S. citizen wife, Mapheze Saleh, who is a Georgetown graduate student of Palestinian descent and therefore he opposes America’s Middle East policy.

Saleh has been targeted on social media, in right-wing media outlets, and even the Embassy of Israel in the U.S. due to the fact that her father, Ahmed Yousef, was once an adviser to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh more than a decade ago.

Ahmed told The New York Times that Suri was being punished “seemingly based on who his father-in-law was.” The Times also received a voice message from Yousef, a Gaza resident, who said he does not currently hold a senior position in Hamas and called the October 7 attacks on Israel “a terrible error.”

Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson, said in an X post that Suri “was a foreign exchange student at Georgetown University actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media.”

“Suri has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas,” McLaughlin’s post continued, without providing any evidence.

Unlike in Khalil’s case, Suri’s university appears to be backing up the researcher, who also teaches classes at Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, part of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

“Dr. Khan Suri is an Indian national who was duly granted a visa to enter the United States to continue his doctoral research on peacebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are not aware of him engaging in any illegal activity, and we have not received a reason for his detention,” a university spokesperson said in a statement. “We support our community members’ rights to free and open inquiry, deliberation and debate, even if the underlying ideas may be difficult, controversial or objectionable. We expect the legal system to adjudicate this case fairly.”

Columbia University, in contrast, appears to be giving the Trump administration whatever it wants in the hopes that $400 million in federal funding will be restored to the institution. What university officials fail to realize is that giving in to the administration’s demands won’t save the institution, and in fact will deal a serious blow to academic freedom and free speech, effectively silencing every foreign college student in America.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt struggled Thursday to justify Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s shilling for Elon Musk’s Tesla.

During an appearance on Fox News Wednesday, Lutnick had urged viewers to buy stock in the Trump ally’s electric vehicle company because it “will never be this cheap again.”

“I mean who wouldn’t invest in Elon Musk, you gotta be kidding me!” Lutnick said.

Notably, Cabinet members do not typically endorse products, as the Code of Federal Regulations states that “public servants are generally barred from using their office’s platform to endorse companies and products.”

The next day, Leavitt was asked whether Lutnick’s recommendation to buy Tesla stock was the “stance of the administration.”

“I think the commerce secretary was reiterating that the president supports an American-made company, like Tesla, who produces a very good product for the American people, which was beloved by the American people—particularly Democrats—until Elon Musk decided to vote for Donald Trump,” Leavitt said.

But Musk didn’t just vote for Trump, he threw billions behind his presidential campaign and was rewarded with a fake Cabinet position at the head of the Department of Government Efficiency. While Musk initially enjoyed a postelection “Trump bump,” his stock has only suffered as he unleashed DOGE on the federal government, rifling through citizens’ private information, slashing essential programs, and hastily cutting massive swaths of the federal workforce.

A CNN poll found that 53 percent of Americans now hold a negative view of the billionaire bureaucrat—with only 35 percent holding a positive view. As public perception of Musk has cratered, so too have Tesla shares fallen. Tesla stock was down 5 percent over the last five days, 35 percent over the last month, and 42 percent since January, shedding nearly $121 billion of Musk’s personal net worth.

Leavitt then shifted topics slightly, expounding on what a “scary time” it was for Tesla owners amid a spate of vandalism incidents and widespread protests at dealerships.

“And now we’ve seen despicable and unacceptable violence taking place across our country at Tesla dealerships, against workers, employees, and also innocent Americans who drive these vehicles,” Leavitt said.

While Donald Trump, who held a surreal press event for Tesla at the White House last week, may be exempt from federal conflict of interest laws, Lutnick probably isn’t. And the Code of Federal Regulations specifically prohibits public officials from using their office for private gain.

Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services firm once run by Lutnick but now helmed by his children, also upgraded Tesla stock Wednesday, citing a buying opportunity. It seems Lutnick may be trying to rescue Musk’s falling stock to the benefit of his family business, as Cantor Fitzgerald held roughly 740,000 shares of Tesla stock at the end of 2024.

Unfortunately for Lutnick and Musk, the commerce secretary’s endorsement didn’t appear to do very much good: Tesla stock dropped 1.7 percent in premarket trading after his appearance on Fox News, as one of Wall Street’s most bullish Tesla advocates warned that Musk’s company was undergoing a “crisis.”

Fox News host Harris Faulkner invented a new crime—“terrorism plus”—for those caught setting Teslas on fire. She thinks the death penalty should be considered in some cases.

Faulkner and Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt reacted to footage of Tesla attacks in Las Vegas on Tuesday with horror, suggesting that if someone was to be hurt in such attacks—they weren’t—then the perpetrator should be charged with “terrorism plus.”

“If there’s someone in one of these cars and they blow up … that can happen. That becomes murder. Or worse. Terrorism plus,” Faulkner said. “And I know that on January 20, the president signed through an executive order, restoring the death penalty … this is deadly, dangerous stuff these liberal protesters are playing with.”

“It is, Harris,” Leavitt replied. “And what I can tell you is that President Trump condemns this violence and he is determined to restore law and order in our country, and he will ensure that the harshest penalties are pursued for those who are engaging in this vicious violence that we have seen targeted at this American company.” ‘

Elon Musk himself has been fanning the flames. “It’s just fully terrorism at this point,” he wrote on X. “This level of violence is insane and deeply wrong,” he continued. “Tesla just makes electric cars and has done nothing to deserve these evil attacks.” Musk tellingly depicts the company as fully autonomous, as if no human being—let alone one of the most powerful people on the planet—is responsible for it.

It’s worth noting, moreover, that Faulkner’s “terrorism plus” designation imagines a crime that has not been committed. Property destruction has occurred, but no one has been injured in the nationwide vandalism spree.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has appointed an official from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to head USAID—the very same day a federal judge ruled that DOGE could no longer mess around with the federal agency. Now Musk may be able to continue ripping the development organization to shreds.

Jeremy Lewin was appointed Tuesday to lead what remains of USAID, after serving as DOGE’s team lead at the federal agency. In February, DOGE raided USAID’s offices and subsequently laid off up to 50 percent of the agency’s employees while placing the rest on administrative leave. The Trump administration intends to keep fewer than 300 of USAID’s 10,000 employees, four sources told Reuters. Rubio announced earlier this month that a whopping 83 percent of all USAID’s programs had been terminated.

On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that Musk and DOGE’s efforts to eliminate USAID were likely unconstitutional because they had shuttered the agency without congressional approval, and Congress alone maintains the authority to create or terminate federal agencies. The judge barred DOGE from taking “any actions relating to USAID without the express authorization of a USAID official with legal authority to take or approve the action.”

However, the order maintained that actions that were ratified by a USAID official would not be subject to the same restrictions, so as not to “enjoin USAID.” It seems that Lewin’s appointment to USAID might allow them to work around the judge’s order and continue to execute DOGE’s cost-cutting agenda at the already gutted development agency.

In a brief court filing Wednesday, lawyers for Musk and DOGE sought to clarify that the appointment of Lewin, who now has authority over the day-to-day work at USAID, did not constitute more DOGE meddling at USAID.

The lawyers asserted that the decision to appoint Lewin came before the judge’s order, though it was only formally announced on Tuesday. “Mr. Lewin surely does not fall within the spirit of this Court’s decision—and Defendants file this motion to ensure he is not wrongfully picked up by its letter,” the lawyers wrote.

Lawyers requested that the judge amend his order so that it specifically did not include Lewin, as “the injunction may bar him from engaging in a wide range of work he is otherwise authorized—and tasked—to perform. That is untenable.”

In a declaration, Lewin claimed that he was no longer affiliated with the defendants subject to the judge’s order. “None of Elon Musk, USDS, or any USDS employee has any formal authority over me. None has the legal authority to direct me or anyone at USAID,” Lewin said.

Republicans are learning fast that the Department of Government Efficiency’s federal cuts are not popular.

Representative Harriet Hagemen was booed and chanted down by a crowd of her constituents during a Wyoming town hall Wednesday night as she attempted to defend Elon Musk’s influence over the executive branch.

“DOGE is not dismantling Social Security,” Hagemen said as hundreds of people jeered.

The crowd also chanted, “Deport Elon” as Hagemen attempted to explain her work on the Judiciary Committee.

Things took a turn for the worse when one woman from the incensed crowd claimed that she was a recently laid-off employee of the Agriculture Department.

“In a state where so many farmers rely on government programs for drought and disaster relief, [Donald] Trump’s plans to cut these programs and the people who administer them, coupled with the tariffs, will decimate Wyoming farms in rural communities,” the woman said as the crowd applauded her. “What are you doing about that?”

“I disagree,” Hagemen said, once again souring the crowd on her. The Republican lawmaker then went on to accost the irate crowd for challenging her actions, claiming it was “bizarre” to her “how obsessed you are with federal government.”

That sent attendees into a rage, with some people screaming, “Oh my God!” and expletives at the irony.

“Calm down, calm down,” Hagemen continued, laughing. “All DOGE is doing—you guys are going to have a heart attack if you don’t calm down. Your hysteria is really over the top.”

Dissenting crowds in deep-red Wyoming should be a warning signal to Republicans around the country. In November, state residents voted to send Trump back to the White House by a whopping 46 percent margin. But on Wednesday, roughly three-quarters of the hostile, 500-person crowd were there to oppose Hagemen and elements of Trump’s agenda, reported the Cowboy State Daily.

Musk has eyed slashes to Social Security. Changes are already underway: By DOGE’s demand, the Social Security Administration is nixing some 7,000 employees, or roughly 12 percent of agency staff, and closing offices around the country.

An internal Social Security Administration memo leaked earlier this week proposed changes that could further hamper the agency’s processing abilities for the retirement income program, including altering its phone service to require America’s aging population to verify their identity over the internet rather than by phone for new applications, as has been required.

By acting Deputy Commissioner Doris Diaz’s own estimates, that could send some 75,000 to 85,000 people to Social Security offices in order to access their benefits—which they’ve paid into throughout their working life by way of payroll taxes and are theoretically entitled to. But even before Musk’s involvement, the SSA’s physical offices were already beleaguered with extraordinarily long wait times, forcing Americans to wait months before receiving their benefits.

Beyond that, Musk—the world’s richest man—clearly has no affinity for the popular program. In recent weeks, he’s accused Social Security of being the “biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” and rife with fraud. In order to sell the unsavory cuts to America’s “third rail” social issue, Musk has hinged Social Security on an immigration conspiracy theory, claiming that Democrats—who failed to win the House, the Senate, or the Oval Office in November—are using “entitlements fraud” to stay in power by winning over the votes of undocumented immigrants, a group that (reminder) cannot vote.

Republicans in Congress are refusing to hold town halls in their districts out of fear of criticism, and now Democrats are swooping in.

In Wisconsin, Representative Derrick Van Orden didn’t show up at a town hall meeting Tuesday in his district in Viroqua, so Democratic Representative Mark Pocan showed up, speaking to 300 people next to an empty chair with Van Orden’s name on it.

“Derrick was a NO SHOW, but over 300 people in the town of 4500 showed up. Empty seat for him,” Pocan posted on X. “Of note: Derrick doesn’t respond to constituents & they don’t like cuts to Medicaid & other programs.”

Van Orden “is afraid of his constituents, and he can be fired in 2026,” Pocan noted in a follow-up post. The Republican congressman plans to switch to virtual town halls, calling protesters at Republican-led town halls “George Soros-funded agitators” and comparing them to Nazis.

Pocan has done this before to Van Orden, mocking the Republican for being “on vacation” last month after Van Orden and other Republicans refused to show up at a Wisconsin Farmers Union event where farmers spoke on their concerns with Donald Trump’s policies. And it appears that Democrats elsewhere may soon take a similar approach.

The Democratic National Committee announced Wednesday that it will put up billboards in Republican districts in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania telling local residents to push their members of Congress to hold town halls. The billboards will even include these Republicans’ phone numbers.

“Republicans are refusing to meet with their constituents after voting to take away health care and make it harder for families to put food on the table,” the new chair of the DNC, Ken Martin, said in a statement. “This isn’t surprising—over the last few months, one word has come to describe Republicans: cowards.”

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who was Kamala Harris’s running mate in 2024, is also holding events in Republican districts, visiting Eau Claire, Wisconsin, in Van Orden’s district on Tuesday for a “People v. Musk” rally following earlier visits to Iowa and Nebraska. Senator Bernie Sanders has held several rallies in Republican territory, and he and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plan to visit Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado later this week.

Will it help, though? Democrats are currently struggling to come up with an effective plan to fight against Trump and the GOP’s massive overhaul of the federal government. Meanwhile, tech oligarch Elon Musk is throwing millions of dollars into political races to shore up support for the Trump agenda. The Democrats need to grab the attention of an already frustrated electorate and leverage its rage against the GOP.

Repealing the Inflation Reduction Act—something President Trump is currently trying very hard to do—could result in a $160 billion hit to the gross domestic product, according to Semafor.

A complete IRA repeal would devastate the country’s economy. It could lead to 790,000 lost job losses by 2030, while household energy bills would increase by up to $370 per year, on average, by 2035.

This is ominous news for an economy already on the brink of recession. That recession is being driven by Trump’s ongoing trade war with America’s closest allies—25 percent levies are currently being placed on many imports from Mexico and Canada—which Fed Chair Jerome Powell just admitted was making inflation worse. Cuts to the IRA would have a massive negative impact on American manufacturing, delivering a devastating blow to a sector that those tariffs are theoretically intended to boost. Slashing the IRA would also particularly harm red states, which have received a whopping 77 percent of clean energy manufacturing and deployment investment since the third quarter of 2022.

A full repeal of the IRA is not expected, of course, but Speaker Mike Johnson did describe his vision for the cuts as “somewhere between a scalpel and a sledgehammer.” Even if the bill is not repealed—or curtailed—by Congress, agency cuts made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have likely already affected its implementation.

The National Archives released thousands of declassified documents this week relating to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy—but in its effort to make the unredacted trove public, it published the Social Security numbers of over 200 former congressional staffers.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that buried within the 60,000 pages of mostly unredacted documents were the Social Security numbers of more than 100 staff members of the Senate Church Committee, and more than 100 staff members of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The names of those who were doxxed include several high-profile figures, including a former assistant secretary of state, a former U.S. ambassador, and several prominent figures in the intelligence and legal fields.   

The Senate Church Committee was formed in 1975 to study the intelligence abuses of federal agencies, and the Committee on Assassinations investigated Kennedy’s death. 

Joseph diGenova, a former Trump campaign lawyer who previously investigated intelligence abuses in the 1970s, was not aware that his private information was included within the JFK files until the Post reached out to him. He called the move “absolutely outrageous,” “sloppy,” and “unprofessional.”

“It makes sense that my name is in there,” diGenova said. “But the other sensitive stuff—it’s like a first-grade, elementary-level rule of security to redact things like that.”

“It not only means identity theft, but I’ve had threats against me,” diGenova added. 

One former Senate staffer, who spoke with the Post under the condition of anonymity, directed their ire at the Trump administration, now that they had become a target for identity theft and fraud. 

“It just shows the danger of how this administration is handling these things with no thought of who gets damaged in the process,” they said. 

Following up on his executive order from January, Trump had promised Monday that all the files related to the assassination would be made public by Tuesday afternoon—setting off a scramble at the Department of Justice to make it happen as quickly as possible. Attorneys in the DOJ’s National Security Division were called to urgently provide a second set of eyes to review the documents for release, even though they had already received an initial review by the FBI. 

Mary Ellen Callahan, former chief privacy officer at the Department of Homeland Security, told the Post that the mass publication of sensitive information was “absolutely” a violation of the 1974 Privacy Act, which requires agencies to be careful in their handling of sensitive information. 

“Social Security is literally the keys to the kingdom to everybody,” said Callahan.

Some of the undocumented immigrants that the Trump administration deported to El Salvador were not hardened criminals or gang members, as it claims, but rather people without criminal records whose gang affiliations are dubious at best.

Linette Tobin, an attorney for detained Venezuelan immigrant Jerce Reyes Barrios, released a sworn statement about the accusations against her client Wednesday night. Reyes Barrios, her statement says, was a professional soccer player in his native country but sought asylum in the United States after being detained and tortured for marching in two political demonstrations against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Reyes Barrios’s petition for asylum was pending, with a hearing scheduled for April, when he was deported March 15 to El Salvador without any notice to his family or attorney. Tobin only was able to reach an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official three days later.

The government accuses Reyes Barrios of being a member of the Tren de Aragua gang based on two “Gang Membership Identification Criteria.” The first was a tattoo on his arm of a crown on top of a soccer ball with a rosary and the word “Dios,” which is Spanish for “God.” Reyes Barrios chose this tattoo because it resembles the logo for Spanish soccer team Real Madrid. The second was a social media post with a picture of Reyes Barrios making “rock and roll” or “I love you” hand gestures.

Reyes Barrios’s account is one of many sworn statements from immigrants detained and immediately sent off to El Salvador as part of an agreement with the country, without any due process. Some, like Reyes Barrios, were detained merely because they have tattoos that look suspicious to immigration officials but are in fact harmless. Many had pending hearings about their asylum claims.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has pursued a hard-line immigration policy that disregards due process in favor of swift deportations, cutting a deal with a friendly autocrat in El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele without much in the way of legal justification. Unlike any of President Trump’s other Cabinet picks, Rubio got the vote of every single Senate Democrat in his confirmation. Some Democrats now regret their votes, and it’s easy to see why.

Corporate executives are allegedly trying to talk the president “off the ledge” of his tariff plan, according to an ex-Trump official.

In an interview with MSNBC Wednesday, former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci claimed that Donald Trump’s weekends are consumed by fearful phone calls from CEOs looking to reverse the clock on the president’s trade war.

“Remember, he’s living alone in the White House, Nicolle,” Scaramucci, who was fired after serving just 11 days during Trump’s first term, told host Nicolle Wallace. “I think it’s important for people to understand that there’s nobody there to hand-check him. There’s no family in there.

“And so he’s taking calls over the weekend from various CEOs that I know that are trying to talk him off the ledge of this sort of stuff,” Scaramucci said.

Scaramucci further predicted that Trump’s economic actions won’t only fail to bring manufacturing back to American shores but could also lead to a recession—something that he argued won’t bode well for the president or his allies in upcoming elections.

“The stock market will. I mean, you take the market down another 15 percent, we go into a recession, you’ll flip the Congress, even though the Democrats weren’t really doing so well from an approval rating right now,” said Scaramucci. “You knock the economy off the grid, the Democrats will be back in power, and that will liquidate some of President Trump’s power.

“So he’s doing this thinking that it’s going to restore manufacturing, but it’s actually going to have the opposite effect, and market participants know this,” Scaramucci said, pointing to the flow of capital into European markets since Trump announced the tariffs.

Trump has repeatedly attempted to spin the tariffs to claim that foreign countries will pay the difference on the rising cost of goods, but economists point out that’s not how tariffs work. Instead, Trump’s global tariff war is expected to affect just about every sector of life for the average American.

Products that will see prices rise include groceries such as avocados, maple syrup, ground beef, cherry tomatoes, sugar, bananas, nuts, cooking oil, squash, cucumbers, strawberries, and pineapples. The order also had immediate ramifications for countless other business sectors, raising the price on everything from liquor to gas.

Children’s toys, shoes, beer and alcohol, and crude oil were all hit in Trump’s 25 percent tariff hike on Canada and Mexico, alongside an additional 10 percent tariff on China. Car manufacturers BMW, Audi, Nissan, and Mazda were also affected, as was American-owned Ford. And every industry that relies on lumber, aluminum, and steel—from artisan goods to construction—will see markups as the materials themselves become more costly.