It’s 2027 and you’re doom-scrolling in your apartment while eating a single egg for dinner. (Eggs are now $30 a dozen.) You fire off a few angry tweets about abortion rights and go to bed. In the middle of the night armed police break down your door and arrest you for destabilizing the security of the state. You are detained and then – if you hold citizenship elsewhere – deported.
Not so long that sort of scenario happening in the US, where the first amendment protects free speech, would have been implausible. Now, however? It’s creeping closer. As I write this, the Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil is in immigration detention after being arrested and marked for deportation because of his pro-Palestinian activism.
Green card holders can normally only be stripped of their immigration status if they have been convicted of a crime, which Khalil has not. But the Trump administration is rooting around to find any possible excuse to deport Khalil and make an example of him. Earlier this week, Donald Trump called Khalil’s arrest the first “of many to come”, and said he would deport students he said engage in “pro-terrorist, antisemitic, anti-American activity”. And let’s be very clear here: doing anything in support of Palestinians – or simply existing as a Palestinian – seems enough to count as being “pro-terrorist, antisemitic, [and] anti-American” for Trump, who has repeatedly used the word “Palestinian” as a slur.
The significance of Khalil’s detention, the enormity of the current moment, can’t be overstated. “This seems like one of the biggest threats, if not the biggest threat to first amendment freedoms in 50 years,” said Brian Hauss, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s a direct attempt to punish speech because of the viewpoint it espouses.”
While the Trump administration may have instigated Khalil’s arrest, I want to be clear that what’s happening right now isn’t just down to Trump. We did not go from zero to attempting to deport green card holders for political activism in a matter of weeks. The Biden administration’s brutal crackdown on student protesters led to this moment. University officials cooperating with this crackdown on protesters led to this moment. The mainstream media’s dehumanization of Palestinians led to this moment.
Indifference to US-sponsored suffering in Gaza and the West Bank also led to this moment. One of the most depressing things about the past 17 months has been seeing how many people in the US seem unbothered that what many experts have termed a genocide is being committed with their taxpayer dollars. But what’s far worse than ignorance and indifference is cowardice: the people who know a grave injustice is being committed but who are too self-interested to speak out.
What I have tried to say over and over again to those people in my writing is that your silence will not save you. Palestinian rights, trans rights, women’s rights: these are not separate issues. Unless you are a Maga supporter at the top of the food chain, the Trump administration will be coming for you too. This crackdown on free speech and political activism is not going to end with Khalil, or with pro-Palestine activism.
We are not headed to uncharted territory: examples of where Trump seems determined to head are all around us. Look at Saudi Arabia, for example, where Salma al-Shehab (who was finally freed in February) spent more than four years imprisoned on terrorism-related charges for posting tweets in support of women’s rights and retweeting Saudi women activists. She was charged, among other things, with “disturb[ing] public order, [and] destabiliz[ing] the security of society and the stability of the state” and, at one point, was sentenced to 34 years in jail. She spent almost 300 days in prolonged solitary confinement, according to Amnesty International.
Look too at Israel’s use of “administrative detention” – detention without charge or trial that can be renewed indefinitely. Last year, for example, Israeli troops took 23-year-old Layan Nasir away at gunpoint from her parents’ home in the West Bank; there were no arrest warrant or charges, and her parents weren’t notified of where she was held. She was finally released after eight months, but only – one imagines –because she is Christian and her case got the attention of people like the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. Thousands of other Palestinians are currently rotting in Israeli prisons without any sort of timeline for charges or a trial.
Look at Russia, where women are increasingly being targeted and prosecuted under the war censorship laws. Eighteen-year-old Daria Kozyreva, for example, is facing years in prison for criticizing the Ukraine war in a media interview and for pinning a poem of a 19th-century Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevchenko, to his monument in St Petersburg. She was also expelled from her university for her activism.
It should be clear by now that America is not exceptional; the constitution is not a magical document that will protect our freedoms simply by existing. We are sliding towards an authoritarian future at alarming speed and Khalil’s detention is an important reminder that we can’t fight for our rights in isolation. All of our freedoms are intertwined.
Texas bill would make identifying as transgender a felony
The first-of-its-kind bill would charge transgender people with “gender identity fraud” and potentially lead to up to two years in jail. It was filed by a Republican state representative, Tom Oliverson, and has no co-sponsors. Basically, it is unlikely to get passed but is a scary example of where some Republicans want to head.
Abortion pill prescriptions are now being tracked in parts of the US
Last year, Louisiana passed a first-of-its-kind bill reclassifying misoprostol and mifepristone, commonly known as “abortion pills”, as “controlled substances”. Insider reports that, as of March, Louisiana clinicians are required to log every mifepristone and misoprostol prescription they write into a prescription monitoring database run by Bamboo Health. This sort of monitoring (of pills that were approved more than two decades ago!) will have serious consequences. Doctors may not prescribe abortion pills as much because they are worried they will be investigated; patients may be scared about taking them.
Former Texas megachurch pastor and Trump adviser indicted for child sex crimes
It’s always the people you most expect, eh?
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Woman who lived to 117 had genes keeping her cells ‘younger’
Many supercentenarians attribute their longevity to things like chocolate and avoiding marriage. Maria Branyas Morera, who died at age 117 last year, however, said her longevity was down to “luck and good genetics”. And she was right: a study of Branyas’s microbiota mirrored that of an infant, according to new research led by a University of Barcelona professor. Who wants to bet Bryan Johnson, that tech billionaire who is pathologically obsessed with ageing, is on the phone to Spain right now trying to get his hands on that magical microbiota?
Marriage triples risk of obesity in men – but not women
Marriage also increased the odds of being overweight by 62% in men and 39% in women, a new study finds.
Spotify takes down Andrew Tate ‘pimping’ podcast
More than 92,000 people complained about the misogynist influencer’s “degree course” titled “pimping hoes”.
Meet the Guardianas del Conchalito
Joanna Moorhead has a lovely photo essay in the Guardian about a group of Mexican women protecting and restoring the mangroves of Baja California Sur – and showing up the men who shout at them to “Get back to your kitchens”.
UN report accuses Israel of sexual violence and ‘genocidal acts’ in Gaza
United Nations-backed human rights experts have published a report accusing Israel of “the systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other gender-based violence” in Gaza. It’s instructive to see how the US media are covering (or covering up) this damning report. The New York Times, for example did not mention sexual violence in its headline and had a subheading stressing Israel’s (unfounded) claim the findings are “biased”. There’s a reason so many Arab journalists in the west are leaving the industry: it is clear many of our colleagues see us as lesser humans.
The week in pawtriarchy
In otter news, here’s a delightful video of an adorable mammal causing chaos in a kitchen in Shetland. The hungry otter emptied a few cupboards but, unlike the opossum that recently broke into a home in Nebraska and ate an entire Costco chocolate cake, the wet bandit didn’t gobble up any sweets and chowed down on a fish instead.
