"It's part of a wider strategy to obfuscate MAGA antisemitism and an increasingly fascist regimeGift link to the piece.
Somebody I respect, I don't actually remember who, was warning us against
trying to show that Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian with a graduate degree
from Columbia University who was kidnapped from New York over the weekend by
ICE, and spirited away to Louisiana for deportation proceedings, was innocent
of whatever wrongthink he's suspected of, on the grounds that it doesn't
matter. He's clearly not charged with any crime, which would be a problem, but
he has a right in the United States of America to hold any thoughts whatever,
and associate with whomever he wishes to associate with, whether they're good
people or bad, if only because that's what the First Amendment says, and if I
were to use Mahmoud Khalil's personal behavior as evidence that he
doesn't "deserve" to be deported I'd be suggesting that other people in a
similar position might indeed "deserve" it, but the First Amendment isn't
about what you deserve. It's about what you are owed, your unalienable rights,
even if you are a bad person or have bad friends. It's "the thought we hate",
as Justice Holmes said, that needs the most protection of all, because that's
where it's easiest to not care about people's rights and let the cops do
whatever they want with them.
On the other hand, it isn't just about him. It's about what ICE and the
Trump regime have in mind, what they are trying to accomplish, which isn't
really about the thought they hate. That's just an excuse. If you look more
closely at the case of Mahmoud Khalil, if you try to figure out what he's
accused of and whether or not he might have done something that merits
deportation, you get a clearer picture of what they're really up to, and how
it threatens all of us.
That there was something very funky about the case was evident right from the
beginning:
Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia until this past December, was
inside his university-owned apartment Saturday night [March 8] when several
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents entered and took him into
custody, his attorney, Amy Greer, told The Associated Press.
Greer said she spoke by phone with one of the ICE agents during the arrest,
who said they were acting on State Department orders to revoke Khalil’s
student visa. Informed by the attorney that Khalil was in the United States
as a permanent resident with a green card, the agent said they were revoking
that instead, according to the lawyer. (AP)
How did the ICE agents not know whether the man they were picking
up had a student visa or not? (He had finished his masters' degree—in public
administration, at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, and
of course gotten married, which favored his getting the green card.) Or, given
the swiftness with which they changed their story, were they making stuff up?
I'm in the odd position of being happy to say Jonah Goldberg
is right: the reason DHS goons were sent to Portland in their camos and
unmarked vehicles wasn't to protect federal property, as the administration
claimed, or to rehearse a fascist takeover of the country after he loses the
election, as some have said on the left, but just an effort to get some good
video of Trump taking care of some "chaos in the streets" for use in campaign
ads and the Republican convention.
For days, as fireworks and tear gas erupted in the streets of Portland,
Ore., during the deployment of federal tactical teams cracking down on
raucous demonstrations, President Trump campaigned against protesters he
described as “sick and deranged anarchists & agitators” who he said
had threatened to leave Portland “burned and beaten to the ground.”
But even as the president was doubling down, Vice President Mike Pence and
other senior administration officials were negotiating an agreement with
Oregon’s governor, Kate Brown, to begin withdrawing the federal tactical
teams from Portland.
On Wednesday, Ms. Brown announced that the federal law enforcement agents
guarding the federal courthouse in downtown Portland would begin
withdrawing as early as Thursday. “We know where we are headed,” she said.
“Complete withdrawal of federal troops from the city and the state.”
Federal officials confirmed an agreement but hedged on the timing,
cautioning that a departure would depend on the success of the state’s
promise to secure the area.
That last looks like a wary nod to the one unhappy camper, President Trump,
who doesn't like people suggesting that he's ever quit anything—
.@FoxNews
reported incorrectly what the Federal Government is doing with respect to
Portland. We are demanding that the Governor & Mayor do their job or we
will do it for them. To complicated to discuss in a Tweet, but bad reporting
by Fox (possibly on purpose!).
@DHSgov
—but it's pretty clear he did, or the courtiers did it for him, after realizing
that Trump's mercenary force mowing down the Wall of Moms or the Wall of Vets
was not going to be a good look.
There also seems to be some alteration in the
planned withdrawal
of 12,000 US troops, about a third of the force, from Germany that Trump
ordered in June without telling the Germans about it, because he hates
Chancellor Merkel, or because he persists in believing Germany doesn't pay its
"fees", as if NATO were a golf club membership
"Germany's delinquent. They haven't paid their fees, they haven't paid
their NATO fees," Trump told Wednesday reporters outside the White House,
even though no such "fees" exist for members of NATO. "Germany owes
billions and billions of dollars to NATO. And why would we keep all of
those troops there?"
forcing Defense Secretary Mike Esper to invent a different reason
The Pentagon chief cast the decision to cut U.S. forces in Germany as the
result of a months-long review of American deployments in Europe aimed at
bolstering defense [Sure, Jan].
"These changes will achieve the core principles of enhancing U.S. and
NATO deterrence of Russia, strengthening NATO, reassuring allies and
improving U.S. strategic flexibility," Esper said, even as he made clear
that the repositioning of U.S. forces remains tentative. "I want to note
that this plan is subject to and likely will change to some degree as it
evolves over time."
Not so fast; literally, according to this morning's Security Brief from
Foreign Policy, from my email:
While the Pentagon has rushed to begin plans to draw down troops from
Germany at the president’s request, some U.S. service members stationed
there are being told that these moves will take years to carry out,
according to documents obtained by
Some units that are moving back to the United States, including the 2nd
Cavalry Regiment, based in Vilseck, Germany, have been told that the move
will “likely take months to plan and years to execute.”
It's clear, in fact, that they're walking it, very, very, very slowly, back.
Now he's saying in a pinned tweet that he'd like to delay the election
With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020
will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be
a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can
properly, securely and safely vote???
but without saying how he plans to take over functions that have been entirely
outside the control of the executive branch for 233 years. This is because, as
usual, he really has no idea how these things are arranged or who takes care of
them. (At top is the video documentation by Access Hollywood of what seems to
have been Trump's first attempt, at the age of 58, to vote, shepherded by Mr.
Billy Bush, in the 2004 election—he plainly didn't know that you are supposed to
register first.)
How exactly does he go about delaying elections? By issuing tweets announcing
that elections have been postponed? By convincing Barr and the OLC to put
together a case for postponing elections and try to convince Congress to
implement it? I suppose so, but the chances that Congress would comply are
nil.
And are we sure the Republicans won't just violate the law with impunity?
And Mike Pompeo, that grinning grease-faced fool, suggests that they will, but mainly reveals he hasn't read the Constitution in a long long time:
Secretary of State Pompeo this morning, in response to Senator Tim Kaine, on whether a President can delay a Presidential election: "In the end, the Department of Justice and others will make that legal determination."
Because where's the mechanism with which they'll do it?
We are not moving the date of the election. The resistance to this idea among Republicans is overwhelming. We must take all necessary steps to prevent election fraud - including stopping Democrat ballot harvesting - but we will not be delaying the election.
And a founder of The Federalist Society, Trump voter and impeachment opponent, Steven Calabresi, has turned up calling the idea "fascistic"—
“Until recently, I had taken as political hyperbole the Democrats’ assertion that President Trump is a fascist,” he said. “But this latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president’s immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate.”
But the main thing for me is, who does it? Barr writes a letter to 50 state secretaries of state and orders them to put the election on hold? Rapid Deployment Teams from DHS fan out to 3000-plus counties to bar the doors of the precincts?
One thing that seems certain to me: he really doesn't have the troops. He doesn't have the troops to do anything more than a demonstration of their impotence like Portland. He has the DHS's Protecting American Communities Task Force (PACT) created by Acting Secretary Chad Wolf on 1 July (with no advice in the official statement as to who's in it to safeguard "our nation’s historic monuments, memorials, statues, and federal facilities" and which can deploy Rapid Deployment Teams (RDT), with no advice to signal who's in them either, but apparently "made up of personnel from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Transportation Security Administration, the Coast Guard, and Customs and Border Protection", and maybe the US Marshals Service. My guess is that it doesn't really exist. Wolf and his trusty SOPDDSHS Cuccinelli may be able to requisition a few dozen guys to occupy a couple of blocks in Portland to rescue the federal courthouse from being "burned and beaten to the ground", but they can't put the nation under martial law. That thing is just a complete fraud (nasty as it may have been for the victims in Portland itself).
More generally, it seems to me that the real ongoing story is the dwindling of Trump's power as everybody inside and outside the administration loses belief in it, hidden, particularly hidden from him, by all these projects, from the Space Force (an inexpensive reshuffling of ongoing projects to make it look like a real thing) to the Durham investigation of the origins of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane, last in a series of desperate attempts in the inspectorate and DOJ and Senate committees to make it look as if McCabe and Mr. Mueller did something cripplingly wrong in investigating the Trump campaign's Russia connections, while Trump sits in his bed praising pizzeria owners for saying nice things about him.
150,000 dead from a pandemic, GDP down 9.5% for the quarter, millions out of work, no Senate rescue package in sight, and the president is promoting a pizza restaurant because its owner is praising him on TV.
There was a pretty funky smell, I thought, to the remarks on NPR of acting ICE director Mark Morgan on the subject of his agency's plan for a big sweep of some thousands of undocumented immigrant families starting Sunday:
"My duty is not to look at the political optics, or the will [of] the American people, that's for the politicians to decide," Morgan said. "What the American people should want us to do as law enforcement officials is to enforce the rule of law and maintain the integrity of that system."
Did he mean there was some special reason for enforcing the rule of law this weekend, as opposed to the rest of the time? Launched Monday by an out-of-the-blue presidential tweet (the night before he officially opened his reelection bid in Orlando)?
Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States. They will be removed as fast as they come in. Mexico, using their strong immigration laws, is doing a very good job of stopping people.......
So Eric Schmitt in the Times informs us that Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security, is barnstorming the ummah, working to get America's Muslim youth off the path of terrorism.
His aim is to build partnerships between the federal government and the local law enforcement, educational and community groups that are better positioned to detect potential militants in their midst and to derail those young men and women from the path of radicalization before they turn violent.
These efforts have been underway since the Sept. 11 attacks, but have often failed to gain traction, government officials acknowledge.
Hm, I wonder why. Maybe we could get an idea from community leaders at the Noor Islamic Cultural Center in Dublin, Ohio, where Johnson was visiting last week, who
