The detention of Mahmoud Khalil signals a significant escalation in the Trump administration’s promise to crack down on campus dissent. During the 2024 campaign, Trump promised to punish colleges and universities that allowed what he characterized as “illegal protests” against Israel’s conduct in Gaza, singling out Columbia University for special opprobrium.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Transportation Security Administration, announced March 7 that TSA employees no longer had the right to collective bargaining. That move could allow the government to fire the TSA’s 50,000 workers and to privatize the security screenings now done by them. Their union says it won’t submit.

Current national news have you feeling low? Imagine a disabled vet stopping a conversation about politics with a friend in order to lay on the floor and breathe to avoid a panic attack. Think what it must be like as a career federal employee, anxious to open their morning email for fear of another message from some unknown source describing how they could be fired. Are you wringing your hands? What must it do to someone in the LGBTQ community to worry that a co-worker might out them in order to save their own job.

The Trump administration’s assault on press freedom is multifaceted, targeting everything from interview editing to wire services that local papers depend on. But prosecutors in Lake County are inadvertently helping President Donald Trump advance two of his leading anti-press priorities — cracking down on media coverage both of protests and of his mass deportation agenda.

Matt Taibbi, once a populist writer who criticized big banks (Rolling Stone, 4/5/10; NPR, 11/6/10), has aligned himself with Texas Republican Sen.

Words matter. When wielded maliciously by the powerful, words can harm, even kill. That’s why Texas Republican Congressman Keith Self’s words chairing a recent House subcommittee hearing deserve special condemnation. Near the hearing’s end, Self recognized the committee’s newest, most junior member, Delaware Democratic Congressmember Sarah McBride, the first transgender person elected to Congress. Self purposefully misgendered her:

His arrest is a “five-alarm fire” for free speech, experts say, and possibly part of a broader campaign within the Trump administration to stamp out speech the government doesn’t agree with.

That’s because Columbia University protester Mahmoud Khalil was arrested over the weekend potentially for no other reason than that he supported Palestinian causes. Here’s what’s happening and why his case could be a big deal for free speech in America under President Donald Trump.

The Arthur J. Altmeyer Social Security Administration building Credit: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg/Getty Images

When No Other Land won this year’s Academy Award for best documentary feature, corporate media outlets didn’t exactly roll out the red carpet.

Enough already with the Democrats’ confused disarray in responding to Tyrant Trump’s vicious, illegal destruction of critical federal programs for all Americans so as to favor the insatiable greed and power of the Super-rich and giant corporations. The plutocrats are demanding more tax escapes, corporate welfare, and green lights for lawlessness.

Tents atop rubble in Jabalia in northern Gaza, February 18, 2025. Photo by OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP via Getty Images.

Since October 7, 2023, Soliman Hijjy, a 37-year-old freelance visual journalist, has regularly spent hours trekking through the bombed-out landscape of the Gaza Strip, carrying a black safe of hard drives.

In The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber and David Wengrow note that the Western notion of freedom derives from the Roman legal tradition, in which freedom was conceived as “the power of the male household head in ancient Rome, who could do whatever he liked with his chattels and possessions, including his children and slaves.”

Image Credit: Greg Nash

Elon Musk, billionaire CEO and head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is once again pushing right-wing disinformation—this time targeting Social Security. During a recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, Musk falsely claimed that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme” and suggested widespread fraud within the program.

Donald Trump is celebrating his administration’s move to ignore a law that targeted money laundering.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Oxon Hill, Md., on Feb. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Iowa’s Republican Governor Kim Reynolds signed into law a bill ending civil rights protections based on gender identity, becoming the first state to repeal civil rights protections for transgender people. Last week, protesters flooded the Iowa Capitol in Des Moines to defend trans rights as lawmakers voted to curtail them.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has invoked “emergency authorities” to bypass Congress and send $4 billion in weapons to Israel, the second time in a month that the Trump administration has skirted the process of congressional approval for sending arms to the country.

•  Trump and Zelensky: A meeting between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine turned into an angry shouting match at the Oval Office. Here are the key excerpts.

Chair Walberg, Ranking Member Scott, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today.

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios