Democratic Party Leaders and “Free Speech” Warriors Shrug as Trump Deports Dissidents
While the Trump administration targets hundreds over their constitutionally protected right to political speech, Democratic leadership and influential media pundits have largely stayed quiet.
Adam Johnson and Sarah Lazare
President Trump’s unprecedented crackdown on constitutionally-protected speech has solicited crickets from key Democratic Party leaders and self-described “free speech” advocates in the U.S. media.
A review of public statements from influential pundits and Democratic Party leadership shows that while there has been a smattering of (heavily qualified) support for Mahmoud Khalil and other Palestine solidarity activists who are being deported or threatened with deportation, most have been muted as Trump continues his war on free speech. Particularly notable is the absence of meaningful criticism from major Democratic Party luminaries such as former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, former Secretary of State, former Democratic nominee for president — and Columbia lecturer — Hillary Clinton, none of whom have commented on the Khalil case or any of the other individuals the Trump administration is kidnapping off the streets.
The two most powerful Democrats in Congress – –Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) issued tepid demands for Trump to “produce facts and evidence of criminal activity” after ICE disappeared Khalil. But neither has used their considerable influence to target the deportation regime, and there is no apparent coordinated messaging around Trump’s escalation. On March 29, Jeffries issued a follow up press release on his website saying, “Donald Trump and his House Republican enablers have weaponized immigration enforcement to aggressively target students in a manner that appears wildly inconsistent with the United States Constitution.” But Jeffries didn’t share the statement in any of his social media channels, or use his leadership position to rally other Democrats for any meaningful pushback.
By way of comparison, Schumer and Jeffries have made dozens of public comments, floor speeches, social media posts and helped hold congressional hearings on the Yemen-Signal chat controversy. Obviously, administration officials using unsecured channels to discuss sensitive war planning is objectively an important story (though not nearly as important as the war crimes being discussed). But effectively ending the First Amendment and kidnapping or deporting hundreds students for political speech will almost certainly have worse long-term effects. Yet all one is getting from leadership is box-checking statements of concern drowning in libelous condemnations of the very people being abducted. Before getting to his criticism of Trump in his March 11 statement, for example, Sen. Schumer not one, but twice, heavily implied Khalil was guilty of promoting anti-semitism and harassing and menacing Jewish students — a claim without a shred of evidence.
The response from the free speech crowd has been mixed to nakedly cowardly. PEN America and the ACLU have issued statements and filed lawsuits on behalf of the deported activists. But high-profile “free speech” advocates such as Bari Weiss, Jonathan Haidt, David Brooks, David Frum, John McWhorter, and Malcolm Gladwell have either remained silent or championed the arrests. A review of the signatories of the now-infamous 2020 Harper’s Letter shows that of those who could issue statements (those who are still alive and not retired from public life), only 24 percent who put their name on the letter defending “Open Debate” have come out in opposition to Trump’s war on campus free speech. Some, like Harvard’s Steven Pinker, have aggressively spoken out about Trump’s withdrawing of funding from higher education, but have been notably quiet on the kidnapping of international students for the supposed crime of political speech.
This silence persists even as the Trump administration’s ideological motives are out in the open. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed on March 27 that since taking office he has signed approximately 300 letters revoking visas for students and others, with the goal of expelling them from the United States. Rubio says he is retaliating against them for their political positions. “If they’re taking activities that are counter to our foreign, to our national interest, to our foreign policy, we’ll revoke the visa,” he told reporters aboard an Air Force passenger jet.
That same day, speaking in Guyana, he said, “At some point I hope we run out because we’ve gotten rid of all of them. But we’re looking every day for these lunatics that are tearing things up.” He continued, “I encourage every country to do that, by the way, because I think it’s crazy to invite students into your country that are coming onto your campus and destabilizing it.”
There is reportedly now an internal directive from the Trump State Department to ideologically screen international students. Journalist Ken Klippenstein reported on March 28 that he obtained a leaked directive in which Rubio instructed State Department staff to review the social media histories of students who apply for new or returning visas to look for any “terrorist” connections. “Specific reference is made to students seeking to participate ‘in pro-Hamas events,’ which is how the Trump administration has characterized student protests against the war in Gaza,” Klippenstein writes. This crackdown represents an alarming intensification of Trump’s promise to “root out” any political opponents, making the lack of meaningful pushback from Democratic leadership all the more jarring.
This doesn’t mean all Democrats are asleep at the wheel, however. On March 14, 103 members of Congress, led by U.S. Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.), published a letter “demanding answers” about “the detention of Mahmoud Khalil and the stripping of his Green Card.” Their letter stated: “This maneuver evokes the Alien and Sedition Acts and McCarthyism. It is the playbook of authoritarians, not of elected officials in a democratic society who claim to be champions of free speech.” Of course, any statement calling attention to this injustice is a good thing, but to have legs, the luminaries and top leadership in the Democratic Party must make this cause a priority — which they have repeatedly refused to do.
While some abductions of students have been captured on camera, and garnered public outrage for their brutality, these cases may represent a small fraction of those impacted by the use of deportations to criminalize dissent. The Times of India reported on March 29 that “hundreds of international students in the US are getting an email from the US Department of State asking them to self-deport owing to campus activism.” According to the Times of India, the email being sent to students states, “Persons being deported may be sent to countries other than their countries of origin.” This could be a threat to deport them to places like a maximum security prison in El Salvador, where the Trump administration has sent some migrants without due process, in defiance of a U.S. federal judge.
Zeteo’s Prem Thakker reported on March 29 that ICE is targeting even more students than previously realized, manually revoking their immigration status, according to three university officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. Thakker writes that “some students and universities are not even being made aware of those revocations — setting students up to be taken by immigration agents without even knowing it was coming.”
There is opposition to this anti-democratic behavior, but it is coming from the bottom up — not from elites. First and foremost are the abducted themselves. On March 18, Mahmoud Khalil dictated a letter over the phone from the ICE detention center in Louisiana where he has been held since he was arrested on March 8. “In the weeks ahead,” the letter states, “students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.”
People have taken to the streets across the country to oppose the ICE abductions, and over 100 protesters in New York were arrested at a sit-in organized by Jewish Voice for Peace on March 13 at the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City, calling for the freeing of Khalil. “The American government executed my grandparents during a similar time of fear-mongering and political repression,” Rachel Meeropol, granddaughter of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were targeted in the Red Scare, said in a press statement about the action. “I honor their memory by refusing to be silent in the face of the abduction of Mahmoud Khalil.”
Condemning the abductions is a low bar, but still a significant action, and many organizations have met it. The National Labor Network for Ceasefire represents seven national unions and more than 200 local unions that together represent more than 9 million members. The coalition released a statement this month proclaiming solidarity with Khalil, “and all students and workers who are the targets of this new McCarthyism.” “From what I can tell, Mahmoud Khalil has moral courage of the type Eugene Debs spoke about more than a century ago in a speech that he was unjustly arrested for,” wrote Jimmy Williams Jr., president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, in an In These Times article published March 18. The American Association of University Professors has vocally condemned “the targeting by Immigration and Customs Enforcement of Columbia students and alumni involved in pro-Palestine protests.” And graduate student unions have mobilized quickly, from GLU-UE Local 1105 at the University of Minnesota to UAW Local 2710 at Columbia, where the union’s president, Grant Miner, was expelled and fired one day before contract negotiations were set to begin.
Mainstream human rights and civil liberties organizations, too, have issued condemnations, including Amnesty International and a host of UN experts.
But many center-left elites have either failed to meet the urgency of the moment or – – as is likely the case in many of these examples – – simply agree with Trump, and like that he’s taking care of their ideological dirty work. The Democratic Party establishment, after all, has spent the past year and a half helping to demagogue migrants and Palestine solidarity protesters in equal measure.
But it’s not just those in overtly political positions. Chief among the cowards are university presidents and deans, who, after their students keep being snatched up for the crime of speech, issue the same boilerplate non-statements. No doubt filtered through layers of legal and PR swiss cheese, these statements largely follow the same formula: feigning Deep Concern, ensuring they had nothing to do with the arrests in order to wash their hands of them, refusing to condemn the kidnapping of their students as such, making no call to action, and recommending “mental health support” for the students they have no plan or will to protect. A perfect distillation of climber liberalism: speak in the language of care, support, and racial justice, but when Black and Brown international students under their charge disappear, offer nothing but a sigh and “good luck.”
We live in a time of unprecedented cowardice. The response from many in elite circles to Trump’s crackdown ranges from quiet agreement to careerist ass-covering, but the net effect — wherever one falls on the compliance spectrum — is the same. Too many powerful people are watching their back, laying low until it “blows over,” hoping their number doesn’t come up. Even those issuing mild statements of concern can’t help but front-load their polite chiding of the White House with pointless, preening condemnations of the target of Trump’s arrests and harassment regime, so they signal to everyone watching: “Don’t Worry, I Agree With the Premise, and Think Trump’s Target is a Piece of Shit, But Have Process Concerns.”
What this moment calls for is solidarity, moral clarity and unqualified condemnations of Trump’s brazen and open crackdown on political speech — not triangulation, fake “nuance” and process critiques around the margins. It’s incumbent upon those in power charged with opposing Trump’s powergrab — Democratic Party elites, high-status pundits, and those who hold institutional power in the university system — to speak out in clear and moral terms, not split hairs, cover their ass and keep their head low. So far, too many charged with this profoundly important responsibility seem either unwilling or unable to do so.
Adam H. Johnson is a media analyst and co-host of the Citations Needed podcast.
Sarah Lazare is the editor of Workday Magazine and a contributing editor for In These Times. She tweets at @sarahlazare.
