A Reagan-appointed judge has issued a scathing ruling rebuking the Trump administration’s targeting of pro-Palestine students. Judge William G. Young called the case AAUP v. Rubio “perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court” and ruled that contrary to the State Department’s claims, “non-citizens lawfully present here in [the] United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us.” For more, we’re joined by lawyer Alex Abdo, who worked on the case; Todd Wolfson, president of the plaintiff, the American Association of University Professors; and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, whose arrest and targeting by the Trump administration in March kicked off a heightened scrutiny of immigrants living and working on U.S. college campuses. “If free speech means anything in this country, it means masked government agents can’t pick you up off the street and throw you into jail because of what you’ve said,” explains Abdo. He adds that the ruling will help support Khalil against the Trump administration’s ongoing attempt to deport him. Details that emerged during the trial revealed that the Trump administration is continuing to target Khalil “to make an example out of me.”
  • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3·
    14 days ago

    And the hope is that a ruling like yesterday’s will break the spell, because the goal of this administration in all of these cases in which it is cracking down on political speech is to silence dissent. They’re not trying to win in court, because they can’t, because the legal theories they’re advancing are preposterous and in another era would have been shameful for DOJ lawyers to present in federal court. But we need to break the spell. We need more people like Judge Young, like Mahmoud Khalil, to call it for what it is, which is a concerted effort by the federal government to crack down on political speech. So, if this decision contributes in small part to breaking the spell, then I think it will have been a success.

    you have to know that the system is wrong when it can be destroyed in a single day on a whim, but takes years, money and time to rebuild.