The Daily Reid: What are we becoming?
Our government essentially kidnapped a grad student. That's not even legal.
The question of whether American democracy is doomed is one that’s on the minds of many writers, thinkers and doom scrollers. Brian Klaas recently wrote a great piece considering the question. It opened like this:
A few weeks ago, as Donald Trump and Elon Musk ran roughshod over laws and the Constitution in their quest to take a literal chainsaw to the US government, a major political science democracy index was quietly updated.
The “Polity IV” index—which measures levels of democracy and authoritarianism in every country—decided to re-classify the United States as a non-democracy. The official notice read as follows: “The USA is no longer considered a democracy and lies at the cusp of autocracy.”
Around the same time, Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, leading scholars of democratic breakdown, wrote a chilling warning in Foreign Affairs, arguing that “democracy is in greater peril today than at any time in modern US history”; that “the country’s vaunted constitutional checks are failing”; and that “US democracy will likely break down during the second Trump administration.”1
Such discussions are no shock to those who have been paying attention to reality. American politics has, for the past decade, been dominated by a man who attacks the press, incites political violence, hires family members, cronies, and loyalists, scapegoats minorities, threatens to jail his political opponents, lies constantly, engages in blatant corruption, solicits bribery, and openly praises dictators and autocrats.
In short, it’s not looking good. Add to that, the apparent kidnapping of a Columbia University grad student by ICE, for the crime of protesting for Palestinian lives. From The New York Daily News:
A federal judge on Monday halted the deportation of Columbia University graduate student and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil as thousands of protesters flooded lower Manhattan, calling for his release.
Manhattan Federal Judge Jesse Furman, responding to a petition filed by Khalil’s lawyers Sunday challenging the lawfulness of his detention, scheduled a court hearing for Wednesday at 11:30 a.m.
He said Khalil “shall not be removed from the United States unless and until the Court orders otherwise.”
A green card holder who is legally in the U.S. as a permanent resident, Khalil, 30, is believed to be the first person targeted by the Trump administration in its pledge to deport international students who protested against Israel’s actions in Gaza.
On Monday, Trump threatened that the arrest was “the first of many to come.”
“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,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”
His Saturday arrest at his university-owned residence near the Morningside Heights campus came when Department of Homeland Security agents claimed the State Department had revoked his student visa.
His attorney, Amy Greer, told the agents by phone that he was a green card holder, and they said that would instead be revoked. Khalil’s wife, a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant, was also threatened.
Feel like you’re in Russia yet?
The university has not exactly been a bastion of courage. They long ago signaled that they were more than willing to kneel to the administration and congressional Republicans’ demands that they quash any pro-Palestinian protest activity, while somehow at the same time promoting … free speech … which per the Stephen Miller, Richard Spencer continuum, means letting far right speakers let off on campus without intervention, while shutting down any protest against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and marauding in the West Bank. Free speech means they get to speak, and you are free to listen to them while you shut the hell up.
From Zeteo News:
Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian who helped lead negotiations between Columbia University and student protesters, had appealed to the school for protection from harassment and possibly Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents one day before the Trump administration detained him on Saturday, emails obtained by Zeteo show.
The most recent among the leaked messages was an email Khalil, a green card holder, sent to Columbia interim president Katrina Armstrong on March 7. “Since yesterday, I have been subjected to a vicious, coordinated, and dehumanizing doxxing campaign led by Columbia affiliates Shai Davidai and David Lederer who, among others, have labeled me a security threat and called for my deportation,” he began.
“Their attacks have incited a wave of hate, including calls for my deportation and death threats. I have outlined the wider context below, yet Columbia has not provided any meaningful support or resources in response to this escalating threat,” he added.
“I haven’t been able to sleep, fearing that ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home. I urgently need legal support, and I urge you to intervene and provide the necessary protections to prevent further harm.”
The message was especially notable given several reports of ICE being spotted on campus throughout the week and Columbia’s own guidance published this weekend about “potential visits to campus” by ICE. In the memo, the school said faculty and staff “should not interfere” in “exigent circumstances” where ICE agents seek access to university buildings or people without a warrant.
Columbia University and Lederer did not immediately respond to Zeteo’s requests for comment.
Davidai, who had been suspended from campus last year over allegations he had harassed university staff, denied collaborating with the Trump administration to get Khalil deported. “Let me be absolutely clear: I have never had a direct line to the administration. Even if I did, I would never use such influence to target an individual. This is not who I am or what I stand for,” Davidai told Zeteo. “Like many, I’ve called out Khalil’s repeated legal violations and demanded accountability. But as I always remind my students, just because one event follows another doesn’t mean it caused it.”
In online posts, Davidai had called Khalil a “terrorist supporter” and suggested he should be deported, tagging Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
And Zeteo’s further reporting suggests Rubio heard his message and obeyed; personally signing off on Khalil’s deportation.
Marco Rubio personally signed off on the arrest of Palestinian Columbia University student protest negotiator Mahmoud Khalil, using a narrow, little-used authority given to the secretary of state, per two sources within the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.
The authority, a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), reads: “An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.”
In other words, the provision – section 237(a)(4)(C)(i) of the act – gives the secretary of state power to deport any person who is not a citizen or national of the US, if they meet the threshold for "reasonable ground” of belief that they may have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the nation. Interestingly, the “quotas and ideological litmus test” of the INA, enacted in 1952, “were widely understood at the time to target Eastern European Jewish Holocaust survivors suspected of being Soviet agents,” the Jewish publication the Forward pointed out this week.
The irony should not be lost on you. It is exactly what it looks like.
It’s the economy, stupid…
And while Trump and his #maga friends are busy turning the U.S. into the Union of Soviet Socialist Magadom, they’re also crashing the economy like a self-driving Tesla crashing into a tree and bursting into flames.
The stock market is in the toilet…
Trump’s crimey trade adviser is spazzing out at reporters…
And Trump has managed to take a solid and growing Biden economy to bust in just 20 days.
New YorkCNN — Just 20 days ago, the US stock market was sitting at all-time highs. The US economy appeared to be growing at a solid pace. And a recession was nowhere in sight.
Now, the R-word is seemingly everywhere.
Recession fears are rocking the stock market. GDP forecasts are getting slashed. President Donald Trump and his economic team are facing questions about a possible recession —and failing to ease mounting jitters about the economy.
US stocks retreated again on Tuesday, failing to rebound from Monday’s steep losses. The Dow dropped about 400 points (around 1%) and the Nasdaq dropped again after its worst day in two and a half years.
Selling accelerated after Trump announced plans to lob a 50% tariff on steel and aluminum imports from Canada – and warned more tariffs could be on the way.
It’s stunning how fast the mood has flipped. Investors who just a few months ago wondered if the economy was perhaps too strong are now bracing for real trouble ahead.
Even Cramer is getting antsy…
Meanwhile, Americans are getting crushed by Trumpflation, as everything from housing to food spikes in cost. And don’t count on shoppers to save the day. They’re increasingly maxed out…
American consumers and their credit cards have helped the U.S. economy weather many rough moments. Now, as recession fears resurface, the worry is that they might be maxed out.
The stock market’s recent plunge has been broad. But it has been sharper in a few sectors. Among the most notable is in consumer lending. Major lenders and card companies American Express AXP -2.27%decrease; red down pointing triangle, Capital One Financial COF 0.93%increase; green up pointing triangle, Discover Financial DFS 0.50%increase; green up pointing triangle and Synchrony Financial SYF -0.59%decrease; red down pointing triangle were all down more than 4% on Monday. So far this year those four are down an average of around 12%, compared with a 4.5% fall in the S&P 500.
This isn’t the first time consumer lenders’ stocks have borne the brunt of economic concerns. At several points in the past couple of years, surges in late payments or in banks’ charge-offs of consumer loans have sent consumer lenders’ shares tumbling; charge-offs are loans that have been written off as a loss. A big worry is that if Americans aren’t paying their debts, they won’t be able to spend like before—removing a critical pillar of the economy.
Welcome to Trumpflation. The poor are, of course, catching the most hell.
Small business owners who enthusiastically voted for Trump are now crying…
But the administration is laser focused … on taking over the Kennedy Center … losing a trade war … shutting down the Department of Education … deleting the memory of anything related to Black people, women or LGBTQ people … and stopping Social Security Administration workers from reading the news.
Oh, and saying boycotting Tesla is illegal. Maybe they’ll start arresting and deporting Tesla protesters, too.
UPDATE:
The reviews are in: Trump is out of his depth when it comes to Russia.
Trump’s commerce secretary Howard Lutnik (net worth $1.5 billion) says Trump’s tariffs are worth it, even if there’s a recession.
Even Peter Doocy is calling bullshit.
When you’ve lost a Doocy…
Keep it coming Joy.
I’m glad you’re here, Joy!