This three minute video statement about the Trump Administration detaining and attempting to deport anti-genocide protestor Mahmoud Khalil by US Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) is several days old now, I have no interest in talking about voting or internal Democratic Party politics with you, and I have absolutely nothing nice to say about what I consider a collaborationist (with fascists) opposition in the U.S. federal government.

I'm sharing it simply because Murphy is displaying a shocking amount of frankness for a U.S. Senator speaking to the public, and he is absolutely correct; particularly when he points out that the Trump regime is illegally targeting Khalil precisely because he's the type of person politically unaware Americans will be unwilling to fight for, that allowing this assault on free speech will allow Trump to drastically expand the powers of the American (fascist) police state, and that if nobody stops this then literally anyone who doesn't agree with Trump could be next. Of course, what Murphy leaves out is that part of the reason Trump thinks he can get away with all of this is that the previous (Democrat) administration actively worked to portray anti-genocide student protestors and supporting professors as antisemitic criminals to justify unleashing the police on folks opposing a genocide in Gaza armed, funded, and politically protected by the Biden administration, but that doesn't make what Murphy does say any less true - even if very few members of a Democratic Party purporting to oppose Trump are willing to join him in saying them.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/chris-murphy-warns-today-it-s-mahmoud-khalil-tomorrow-it-s-me-or-you/vi-AA1ALX92

And because I'm absolutely certain that some extremely low-information ActBlue donor is going to get upset at me for saying that last part, here's an article talking about how few Democrats in Congress were willing to put their names to a statement unequivocally opposing the Trump regime's arrest and detainment of a green card holding activist with an American wife, for exercising free speech rights to oppose a genocide:

https://truthout.org/articles/only-14-house-members-sign-letter-calling-for-activist-mahmoud-khalils-release/

In the time since this was published, several more Democrats have come out to publicly oppose Khalil's unlawful abduction and imprisonment, but it's certainly nowhere near the majority of elected Democrats it should be, and many of these later statements have pathetically continued to conflate protesting against a US-backed genocide by Israel in Gaza, with antisemitism - thereby essentially helping to make Trump's emotional argument for him, while opposing only the legal grounds on which the fascist Trump regime claims to be acting.

While you certainly don't "have to hand it to the nazis," I must admit that it's way easier to show people that the Trump regime's attempts to target anti-genocide protestors using "War on Terror" logic will lead to them targeting all protestors using that same logic, when they just blurt that part out loud:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/deportation-protest

DHS Official Explicitly Equates Protest to Terrorism in 'Stunning' Interview

"The Trump administration has accused Khalil, who is of Palestinian descent, of leading "activities aligned to Hamas" and protests where pro-Hamas propaganda was distributed, but officials have provided no evidence that he's provided support to Hamas or other groups designated as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government.

A White House official this week told The Free Press that Khalil is not being accused of breaking any laws, but is rather "a threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States," and Edgar's comments to Martin offered further evidence evidence that DHS is working to deport Khalil without accusing him of a crime.

"He is coming in to basically be a student that is not going to be supporting terrorism," said Edgar. "So, the issue is he was let into the country on this visa. He has been promoting this antisemitism activity at the university. And at this point, the State Department has revoked his visa for supporting a terrorist type organization."

This story comes out of an interview with Troy Edgar (Trump's deputy homeland security secretary) by NPR's Michel Martin; thus it's important to note that while Edgar isn't making a legal argument here, he is absolutely working the court of public opinion to sway your perception about the legality of Trump's unlawful arrest, detainment, and ongoing attempts to deport a former Columbia University student green card holder, legally residing in the country with his wife (who is an American citizen), for protesting a genocide (by Israel) in Gaza, facilitated by both the current, and prior US administrations.

With that in mind, the first thing I'd like to point out is the bizarre, manipulative, and legally irrelevant language Edgar uses here. From a technical standpoint, the phrase "activities aligned with Hamas" is wholly unrelated to any law on the books in America, even our nightmare War on Terror era anti-terrorism laws, while simultaneously covering such a broad spectrum of activities that untold millions of Americans could potentially be "engaging in activities aligned with Hamas" - if for example, as in Khalil's case, you've advocated for ending Israel's genocide in Gaza, or the US government's arm shipments to Israel that make it possible, you've technically engaged in "activities aligned with Hamas," who also want the genocide and arms shipments to end. Does anyone, including Troy Edgar know what "a terrorist type organization" means? You won't find a single paragraph in US law that discusses prohibitions against supporting "a terrorist *type* organization" and this is really just a way for Edgar to say Khalil is working for "terrorists" without exposing himself to liability for false accusations; it's a poison phrase to turn public opinion against the accused, and in favor of the Trump administration's unlawful and quite frankly fascist actions. This is of course setting aside that Edgar, much like the rest of the Trump regime, continues to use the War on Terror legal language of "supporting a terrorist organization" (typically financially, materially, or logistically) to describe protesting a genocide; a stretch that also has no basis in American law that I'm aware of.

Additionally of course, there's the bombshell this article is mostly based around to consider; a US deputy homeland security secretary just went on public radio and argued that (legally nebulous) "pro-Palestine activity" and even just protesting in general, is terrorism. While many disingenuous bootlickers will try to parse Edgar's words here, he was given plenty of opportunities to answer questions about what "terrorist" activities the government was alleging Khalil engaged in, and Troy continually repeated the phrases "pro-Palestinian activity" and "protesting." Furthermore given that the entire Trump administration keeps making this "mistake" over and over again, it seems pretty reasonable to assume that at least from a propaganda perspective this is the regime's official position on supporting Palestinians and protesting in general.

Folks, can you think of any reason why an increasingly unpopular fascist administration presiding over the rapid impoverishment of the US labor class, and working with Israel to ethnically cleanse Gaza, would want to declare "pro-Palestinian activity" and "protesting" to be terrorist activity? Might it be because they expect a lot of Americans to start getting interested in Palestinians and protesting?

#Fascism #Trump #MahmoudKhalil #CivilRights #DHS #TroyEdgar #Gaza #Israel #Palestine #FreeSpeech

As I wrote several times during the first Trump presidency, the obscene amount of power the US system of government affords the president (whomever he or she may be) over immigration, border policing, and counter-terrorism activities, has always meant that Donald Trump doesn't have to build a Gestapo; he already has a ready made cavalcade of security forces more or less directly under his control and ideologically aligned with vast portions of his xenophobic, nativist, and ultimately fascist agenda - including the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and the CBP. This direct control and ideological alignment in turn, goes a long way towards explaining why the Trump regime is targeting migrants, foreign visitors legally inside the United States, and folks crossing the border, as a test laboratory for fascist ideological policing policies you can bet your ass Trump intends to roll out against the rest of America if nobody stops him from doing so by whatever methods are necessary.

Take for example this recent story of a French researcher who was denied entry to the US, threatened with federal charges, and then expelled from the country for messages on his phone to friends and colleagues in which he was critical of the Trump administration's drastic cuts to science research funding:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/trump-musk-french-scientist-detained

French scientist denied US entry after phone messages critical of Trump found

"France’s research minister said a French scientist was denied entry to the US this month after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages in which he had expressed criticism of the Trump administration.

“I learned with concern that a French researcher” on assignment for the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) “who was traveling to a conference near Houston was denied entry to the United States before being expelled”, Philippe Baptiste, France’s minister of higher education and research, said in a statement on Monday to Agence France-Presse published by Le Monde. “This measure was apparently taken by the American authorities because the researcher’s phone contained exchanges with colleagues and friends in which he expressed a personal opinion on the Trump administration’s research policy,” the minister added."

Naturally, you're probably thinking "criticizing Trump's shortsighted budget policies and Elon Musk's hard on for destroying any scientific research capabilities he and his tech fascist buddies don't own isn't a crime, and doesn't represent a danger to American security" and you're absolutely right. Unfortunately due to America's twin historical freak outs about "communist spies" and "terrorists" the fact is that American border authorities have already been conducting ideological screening at the borders and turning away folks who share benign opinions with millions of Americans under the guise of "keeping us safe," for decades. What's new here under the Trump regime, is the argument that thinking Der Führer and Elon Musk are idiots, is now being treated as prima facie evidence that someone, even a scientist here for a scientific conference, is a danger to the national security of the United States. In other words, what Trump's border Gestapo is doing here is *probably* legal, but it's still fascist; which is part of why I keep reminding you that America has been embracing fascist ideology and building a fascist police state for far longer than Donald Trump has been involved in politics.

Even more disturbing however, is the news that the FBI was called in to investigate the researcher and charges were considered; again, for criticizing Donald Trump and Elon Musk's quest to gut scientific research funding.

"Another AFP source said that US authorities accused the French researcher of “hateful and conspiratorial messages”. He was reportedly also informed of an FBI investigation, but told that “charges were dropped” before being expelled."

As note above, the researcher was told that the "charges were dropped," but it says a lot about the FBI under the Trump regime that the US government was actively looking for a way to turn private conversations critical of Trump into a criminal offense in the first place. Right now there are probably more than a hundred million Americans expressing critical opinions of Trump, Musk, and the Pork Reich regime; which is a rather ominous thought when you remember that the Trump administration is already manufacturing consent to apply this kind of ideological policing domestically under the guise of opposing "terrorism" and protecting public safety.

#Fascism #Trump #USPol #Gestapo #Immigration #DHS #CBP #FBI #ICE #BorderFascism #IdeologicalPolicing #Musk #PoliceState

Like many folks who study how fascist governments operate, I've been quick to warn people that given the blatantly illegal methods by which the Trump regime has targeted migrants, foreign visitors to the United States, and student anti-genocide protestors legally in the country, it was only a matter of time before Downmarket Mussolini tried to expand those tactics to target dissidents born in the United States. After watching the US Attorney General call Tesla vandalism "domestic terrorism" yesterday, and reading Trump's unhinged social media rants about shipping folks caught vandalizing Tesla cars or dealerships to El Salvador, I think it's safe to say we're already here.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-tesla-el-salvador

'Delusional' Trump Threatens to Send Tesla Vandals to Prison for 20 Years... in El Salvador

"People that get caught sabotaging Teslas will stand a very good chance of going to jail for up to twenty years, and that includes the funders," Trump stated overnight, adding in all caps: "WE ARE LOOKING FOR YOU!!!"

Several hours later, Trump took up the issue again on his TruthSocial platform, saying: "I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20-year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla. Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!"

Civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill said the threat, which follows on Trump's highly controversial deportation of alleged gang members to El Salvador last week, should not be taken lightly.

"Remember that this is where his discussions with El Salvador began," said Ifill in response to Trump's rantings on Friday. "The migrant detentions there are the dry run. He wants to ship U.S. prisoners to El Salvador. We cannot sleepwalk through this."

Well folks, smoke 'em if you got 'em because I'm pretty sure this bloviating nazi windbag is serious. Given the pattern we've been observing by which Trump's musing are treated as "objective" reality by his fascist minions, and how the regime then transforms that (un)reality into enforcement action regardless of the law, I don't think it's a good idea to wave this off as 'Trump being Trump." Just yesterday regime Attorney General Pam Bondi was publicly making the argument that what is, legally speaking, mere vandalism, is actually a "wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties," and that line was then parroted by a variety of regime-loyal mouthpieces in the larger discourse. This process of laying the ground work to transform fascist unreality into a presumed mandate to act is precisely the tactic we saw the Trump regime employ to justify kidnapping student anti-genocide protest leaders residing legally in the United States, render over 200 prisoners to a slave labor dungeon in El Salvador without due process, attempting to either seize control of, or destroy Columbia University, manufacture consent to annex Canada, and even attempt to shutter the US Department of Education. Furthermore, given the regime's continued insistence that invoking the word "terrorism" is a magic spell that allows them to ignore US law and our constitutionally-protected rights, you'd have to be some kind of rube to assume Bondi's media performance yesterday, and Trump's late night social media rant, aren't a coordinated effort to manufacture consent to escalate the regime's war on resistance to include American protestors and dissidents opposing the administration's fascist fuckery.

Of course it almost goes without saying that what Trump is proposing here, the rendition of American citizens to a slave labor prison in El Salvador for the high crime of vandalizing some cars, is highly illegal and a blatant violation of our legally-enshrined civil rights, but that hasn't really stopped the Trump administration from plowing ahead with its war on protest and resistance so far. Furthermore, decades and decades of bipartisan demonization of "criminals" and protestors, particularly those engaging in direct action, likely ensures that many Americans aren't going to notice this fascist repression, or care very much if they do. Naturally, the Trump regime is relying on that attitude prevailing in the larger public consciousness, which is why they're employing a boiling frog strategy of going after people they say are "gang members," "terrorists," "illegals," "antisemites," "troublemakers," and "criminals," first.

As I've noted in the past, whether or not the Trump administration is *successfully* able to get away with blatant violations of the law while enacting his fascist war on our civil rights is unknowable in the present, but the pre-existing pattern of regime behavior in the Trump 2.0 era makes it pretty clear that if Trump says it, he at least means to *try* and do it; which makes all of this an ominous warning for everyone.

#Trump #Fascism #Musk #Tesla #CivilRights #ElSalvador #PamBondi #Protests #ManufacturingConsent #Gulag #USConsitution

After securing the craven surrender of high profile liberal law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP without even entering a courtroom, an emboldened Downmarket Mussolini has ordered his comically corrupt Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to seek disciplinary actions against lawyers who are "filing frivolous claims designed to cause delays." What's a "frivolous claim?" Only Trump and Bondi know, but the note about delays makes it clear that Der Führer is angry that his fascist agenda is being blocked by numerous judicial restraining orders and hopes to do an end around the courts by threatening lawyers and law firms into not even filing suits to halt the regime in the first place.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/22/trump-ramps-ups-retribution-campaign-against-legal-community

Trump ramps up retribution campaign against legal community

"The memo, as a result, created a formal mechanism for Trump to unilaterally decide whether to impose politically charged sanctions through executive orders that strip lawyers of the security clearances they need to perform their jobs or prevent them from working on federal contracts.

Multiple legal experts suggested the memo would theoretically allow Bondi to decide a particular lawsuit that triggered a temporary injunction was causing an unnecessary delay, and refer the firm that filed the suit to face the effects of a punitive executive order.

That could cause a chilling effect and lead to the volume of litigation against the Trump administration to decline, the experts said. Even if the lawsuits are in fact for a legitimate purpose, there’s fear that their representation could put them in the president’s cross hairs and endanger their legal practices.

Trump also directed Bondi to open a review into the “conduct” of lawyers and their respective law firms in litigation against the federal government reaching back to the start of his first term in 2017 – and recommend whether it warranted additional punitive actions.

The memo comes as Trump in recent weeks has used executive orders targeting law firms to great effect."

Frankly, I don't have much to add here that we didn't already look at when I wrote up the Paul Weiss surrender situation we discussed a few days ago. The fact is that Trump has no legal authority to harass and punish lawyers for bringing cases before a judge to stop the Trump regime's often illegal, and frequently unconstitutional activities. Providing a check to the executive branch's power when it violates our civil rights, exceeds the President's authority, or is just straight up criming, is literally the prescribed role of the judiciary branch in the American system of government; the lawyers filing suits to stop Trump's fascist agenda aren't doing anything wrong, they're in fact doing their job as defined in the US Constitution. Trump just doesn't give a shit, and if he can't break the judges ruling against him, he'll happily try to further his authoritarian agenda by using his Department of Justice to harass the lawyers filing against his actions, and starving the law firms of federal access and contracts.

The good news here is that unlike some of their cowardly brethren in white shoe DC law firms, numerous legal advocacy organizations more closely associated with civil rights litigation, are openly stating that they have no intention of backing down. Groups like the ACLU, the Center for Reproductive Rights, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and Democracy Forward, have all issued statements pushing back on Trump's claims and promising to not only continue the fight, but also to keep bringing more cases against an overreaching Trump regime now acting unlawfully pretty much every day.

I'm not sure how much faith I have in the lawyers and the courts to stop fascism; after all, none of these folks have an army or a police force at their disposal to enforce court orders against a fascist regime and a president already granted virtual legal immunity by a 6-3 fascist high SCOTUS. But as I mentioned elsewhere, you can't win if you don't fight, and it is impossible to install a fascist dictatorship without a whole lot of collaboration, cowardice, and capitulation by the society the fascists are trying to dominate. Win or lose, fighting back is the first step towards stopping fascism, and as a society our best hope of resisting remains acting in infinite ways, across every sector, to make it cost more in time, effort, money, and if necessary in blood, to impose fascism, than the folks doing so stand to benefit from that fascism. Saying "no" is at least a start.

#Fascism #Trump #Lawfare #CivilRights #PamBondi #DoJ #Legal #Courts

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes And this is probably just a coincidence, right?

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/05/us/politics/pam-bondi-brother.html?smid=nytcore-android-share