The Wrongologist

The Daily Escape:

Provincetown, MA, March 2025 photo by Marty Cowden

Wrongo hasn’t written since January, and there are two primary reasons. First, his overwhelming feeling of helplessness when the Democrats lost both Houses of Congress along with returning Trump to the White House. Truly, the Dems can’t be forgiven for their meek performance since November.

Second, chemotherapy and radiation can ruin your attention span: It is difficult to read anything long-form, much less write connected sentences. On the other hand, I’m having more good days than bad right now.

But today let’s gear up to talk about the arrest by Trump’s Department of Homeland Security of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate and green card holder, over his participation in protests at Columbia against Israel’s bombing of Gaza.

On Saturday Khalil was arrested by ICE agents in New York City and swiftly moved to a detention facility in Louisiana while the government attempts to deport him.

The NYT reported: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security…said in a statement on Sunday night that Mr. Khalil had been arrested “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting antisemitism.”

‘Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization…’

Aligned”? So, Khalil was arrested for wrong-think. Charlie Pierce asks in Esquire:

“So we’re disappearing people now? Nice to know…Are we now allowing the rendition of legal residents to black sites in the United States?”

More from the NYT:

“Secretary of State Marco Rubio shared a link on X to a news article about Mr. Khalil’s arrest and issued a broad promise: ‘We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.’”

We are six weeks into Trump 2.0 and we now have federal agents going door to door to illegally arrest people who have taken political positions the administration dislikes. It’s a long way from demonstrating on a college campus to collaborating with Hamas. So the Constitution and the law is firmly on Mr. Khalil’s side, assuming that he hasn’t already been disappeared beyond the reach of the judicial system.

Until there’s a complete airing of the reasons for Khalil’s detention, Wrongo has no problem believing this to be an attack on protected political speech—and a dress rehearsal for what this administration has planned if widespread protests of its other policies break out.

Update:

“On Monday, a federal judge in Manhattan ordered the government not to remove Mr. Khalil from the United States while the judge reviewed a petition challenging the legality of his detention. Mr. Khalil’s lawyers also filed a motion on Monday asking the judge to compel the federal government to transfer him back to New York.”

From Trump on social media:

“’We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it…If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests, and you are not welcome here. We expect every one of America’s Colleges and Universities to comply…’”

Whether you agree with the Gaza protests or not, the action of Trump 2.0 against Khalil appears to be another example of the systematic attack on the First Amendment from all sides that is becoming SOP for the Trump administration.

The Trump administration has made Columbia the first target of its push to punish what the President has deemed elite schools’ failures to protect Jewish students during campus protests.

On Friday, the administration announced that it had canceled $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia. In a social media post last week, Mr. Trump vowed to punish individual protesters his administration considered “agitators.”

Martin Niemöller’s unforgettable “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out” applies here. The quote was about Hitler and the Holocaust and was a call to action against apathy.

Trump’s actions so far and threats of more to come need to be taken very seriously. With Trump and the MAGAs and oligarchs in control of the government, free speech is how they choose to define it at any particular moment.

If that isn’t fascism, then Wrongo doesn’t know what else to call it.

Maybe you can come up with a better descriptor. In the meantime, support your favorite free-speech advocacy group.