Flatworm7591

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/40037252

President Donald Trump’s attempt to deport pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil marks one of Trump’s most egregious assaults on democratic liberties since taking office. Yet too many Democrats, particularly in party leadership, are responding to Trump in the most mealymouthed way possible. But this is a problem of Democrats’ own making: Their trepidation stems from their own history of repressing speech critical of Israel — and now we’re all at risk of paying the price for it.

Because of course they are.

The arrest and possible deportation of Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, a Green Card holder with a student visa, for his organizing role at Gaza solidarity protests last year has sent shockwaves throughout American society.

As I wrote at Haaretz (3/11/25), Khalil’s arrest is an intense blow to free speech, as punishment for speech and other First Amendment-protected activities will create a huge chilling effect. In a piece denouncing Khalil’s arrest, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg (3/10/25) quoted American Civil Liberties Union senior staff attorney Brian Hauss saying, “This seems like one of the biggest threats, if not the biggest threat, to First Amendment freedoms in 50 years.”

In a letter (In These Times, 3/18/25) dictated over the phone from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Louisiana, Khalil said, “My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza.”

While a judge blocked his deportation, as of this writing, Khalil is still in ICE custody (Al Jazeera, 3/19/25). AP (3/9/25) reported that his arrest is the first known “deportation effort under Trump’s promised crackdown on students who joined protests against Israel’s war in Gaza that swept college campuses” last year. The Trump administration argues, according to the news service, that people like Khalil, whose Green Card was revoked by the State Department, “forfeited their rights to remain in the country by supporting Hamas.”

Donald Trump is back in office. Tech mogul Elon Musk, now a senior adviser to the president, is helming a government advisory body with an acronym derived from a memecoin: DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). That organization is sinking its teeth into the federal government, and drawing blood.

Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of federal employees are being laid off this year. Over a dozen agencies have been affected. Executive power is being wielded so wildly that a federal judge has lamented “what appears to be the unchecked authority of an unelected individual and an entity that was not created by Congress and over which it has no oversight.”

The Fourth Estate is tasked with serving as a check on abuses of power. But US media were not designed for this.

Though critical in much of their reporting, corporate outlets have at the same time substantially legitimized the project of DOGE. For one, longstanding fearmongering about government spending in the news sections of corporate outlets has elevated precisely the right-wing vision of government animating DOGE.

Even more worryingly, however, criticism of DOGE by major editorial boards has been weak, and in some cases has been overshadowed by these boards’ support for the ideas behind DOGE, or even for DOGE itself.

Key points

• U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on March 20, 2025, aimed at shutting down the Department of Education. While he cannot fully abolish the agency without an act of Congress, he can gut its operations.
• It's still uncertain what Trump's plans look like for a country without a federal education agency. The Department of Education's role is primarily to handle federal finances for education programs. However, experts say that this decision does not affect financial support for federal programs providing services to disadvantaged students, such as those with disabilities or at high-poverty schools.
• While the Trump administration has promised to preserve these popular federal programs, the ability for the government to operate the programs in question may be affected by efforts to diminish or dismantle the Department of Education. Both Democrats and Republicans have called into question the ability of other agencies to handle the department's responsibilities, and staff cuts to the department already are affecting student access to financial aid.
• Advocates and experts are also concerned about the potential effects of losing the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights. After the administration reportedly cut staff at the office as part of its wider Department of Education cuts, the American Civil Liberties Union warned "gutting the OCR severely weakens federal civil rights enforcement, leaving millions of students without crucial protections against discrimination."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/40433241

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A community dedicated to documenting and debunking fallacious arguments and misleading claims found on 4chan. Whether it’s cherry-picked statistics, misleading comparisons, or outright fabrication, we shine a light on the worst logic the imageboard has to offer. Share screenshots, analyze arguments, and discuss where they go wrong. Whether it’s science denial, historical revisionism, or bad math, let’s break it down!

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From diplomatic deception to puppet master fabrications, the Kremlin manipulation playbook may evolve on the surface but its fundamentals remain unchanged.

On Tuesday, 18 March, Putin and US President Donald Trump had a telephone conversation discussing a potential 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine. A proposal that Ukraine had already endorsed during US-Ukraine talks in Jeddah.

The Kremlin published a readout of Tuesday’s call which offers a masterclass in information manipulation. The carefully crafted manipulative Kremlin narrative deceitfully positions Putin as a ‘rational peacemaker’ while effectively turning the ceasefire offer down yet again and embedding multiple long-standing propaganda narratives about Ukraine.

This is entirely consistent with Moscow’s three-year-long strategy of attempting to claim ownership over the peace narrative while relentlessly pursuing war.

The 3rd EEAS Report on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) Threats maps out the digital infrastructure deployed by foreign actors, mainly by Russia, but also by China, to manipulate and interfere in the information space of the EU and partner countries.

Community is [email protected]

Sidebar description is:

A community dedicated to documenting and debunking fallacious arguments and misleading claims found on 4chan. Whether it’s cherry-picked statistics, misleading comparisons, or outright fabrication, we shine a light on the worst logic the imageboard has to offer. Share screenshots, analyze arguments, and discuss where they go wrong. Whether it’s science denial, historical revisionism, or bad math, let’s break it down!

Could it be disproved with 5 seconds of research? Then it will fit in perfectly here!

Anyway I think it's criminally under-subscribed, so maybe check it out :)