The harsh cost of ignorance

Posted on March 25, 2025 by Joe Weber

Did Columbia fail a promising student now facing foreign exile?

Yunseo Chung, source: The New York Times

Unquestionably, Yunseo Chung is one bright student, the sort most professors would love to teach. Sadly for her, however, the limits of her education at Columbia University are cruelly becoming all too apparent. They may get her tossed out of the country.

The Columbia junior is carrying a 3.99 grade point average, has made Dean’s List every semester since she enrolled, and she’s been involved with the college literary magazine, Quarto, and the undergrad law review. Apparently aiming for a legal career, Chung has also pursued internships at The Urban Justice Center, The Innocence Project and Federal Defenders of New York.

But, thanks to shortcomings in her schooling about the Middle East and, probably, post-adolescent naivete, the Korean-born Chung now is getting a legal tutorial of a sort she could never have wanted. The Trump Administration is eager to deport Chung, who came to the U.S. as a 7-year-old, brought here by a graduate-student father.

Barnard protests on March 6, source: The Guardian

“Yunseo Chung has engaged in concerning conduct, including when she was arrested by NYPD during a pro-Hamas protest at Barnard College,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told CNN. “Chung will have an opportunity to present her case before an immigration judge.”

The spokesperson said Chung, 21, “is being sought for removal proceedings under the immigration laws.”

The Trump Administration is chasing after Chung, a legal permanent resident of the U.S., because she took part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the university last spring and in protests of related student expulsions more recently. She appears to be in hiding.

Her lawyers have brought suit against Trump to enable her to stay in school and in the U.S., which the court papers call her “one and only home.” The suit adds, “Her immediate family lives here, her friends are here, and her plans for the future all include living in the United States.”

Like so many idealistic naifs who took part in the nationwide campus uprising against the Gaza War, Chung appears to be a victim both of Trump’s overreach and political and historical ignorance that abounds among college students. An English and women’s studies major, Chung seems likely to have been driven by an understandable horror at the bloodshed in the Middle East. Her compassion for at least some of the innocent victims is unsurprising, especially for a seemingly sensitive college student.

When she hasn’t been planning to help low-income New Yorkers through the justice center or to free unjustly convicted innocents, she has been dabbling in poetry, fiction and art at the school magazine. If she has had much political or historical schooling at the university, it isn’t apparent.

As with the other protestors, it is likely that Chung’s sensibility has been terribly misinformed, her compassion misdirected.

Recall that some departments at Columbia are hotbeds of anti-Zionism. Has Chung’s coursework has been influenced by that? One can only speculate for now. But one must also wonder whether things would be different if the university had required her – and other protestors – to take coursework that would better inform them about Middle East history. Columbia’s vaunted core curriculum could benefit from some of that.

If Chung were required to take truly fair and balanced studies as the price of returning to classes this year, might she be better off now? If she knew more of the long history of Israel’s victimization by terrorists, of the long legacy of Palestinian failures to respond to peace efforts, would she look differently at things? If she grasped the broader context in which the barbarities of Oct. 7, 2023, are just one horrific part, would she have protested against Hamas, not Israel?

Since the student uprisings, Columbia has been probing the depth of antisemitism on the campus. Just recently, in response to Trump Administration pressure, the school agreed to review its course offerings to make sure there is fairness and balance in them about the Mideast.

Regrettably for Chung, that review is coming too late. She now seems fated to become a poster child for Trumpian excesses in treating student protestors. As her lawsuit argues, “officials at the highest echelons of government are attempting to use immigration enforcement as a bludgeon to suppress speech that they dislike.”

Certainly, there’s no shortage of evidence for that claim. At a Las Vegas rally in October 2023, then-candidate Trump pledged to “terminate the visas of all of those Hamas sympathizers, and we’ll get them off our college campuses, out of our cities, and get them the hell out of our country.”In response to last spring’s Gaza Solidarity Encampments, Trump said: “One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave.”

Chung doesn’t dispute her activity in the demonstrations.

“Since 2023, along with hundreds of her peers, Ms. Chung has also participated in some student protests and demonstrations on Columbia University’s campus related to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and the devastating toll it has taken on Palestinian civilians,” Chung’s lawsuit says.

As a result of those demonstrations, Chung has run afoul of Trump’s promises to target “leftist, anti-American colleges and universities,” the document says. It cited White House statements that the president was fulfilling a campaign promise to deport Hamas sympathizers and send a message to “resident aliens who participated in pro-jihadist protests” that the feds “will find you … and deport you.”

Under Trump’s orders, authorities have pursued several high profile cases, at Columbia and elsewhere, along with Chung’s.

Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia graduate student and green-card holder who is married to an American, was arrested by ICE about two weeks ago and detained in Louisiana, as The Washington Post reported. One other graduate student, Ranjani Srinivasan, self-deported to Canada after the State Department revoked her visa. A third reportedly former student protestor, Leqaa Kordea, was arrested and moved to Prairieland, Texas.

People at Columbia aren’t the only ones under the gun. Indian national Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University on a J-1 temporary visa, was detained by ICE last week over social media posts and because his wife, a U.S. citizen, is the daughter of a former Hamas adviser, according to the newspaper. The State Department also revoked the student visa for Momodou Taal, a doctoral student in Africana Studies at Cornell University and pro-Palestinian activist.

And Brown University assistant professor and kidney transplant specialist Rasha Alawieh, was deported to Lebanon on March 14, despite a restraining order to keep her in the country. She admitted to attending the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah on a recent family visit.

To be sure, Chung seems to have been a follower, not a leader, in the Columbia and Barnard protests. Like many others, she is a sheep, not a shepherd.

She visited a campus encampment numerous times in April. Later, in May, she was accused by the school of vandalism for posting flyers on campus saying that trustees were “Wanted for Complicity in Genocide.” But the school dropped the poster matter.

Then this year, when Columbia expelled three Barnard College students – two for disrupting a class in January and one for taking part in a building occupation last spring – Chung was among students who early in March protested the expulsions. She and others were arrested, ticketed and released. Two days after the university suspended her, federal agents knocked on her parents’ door looking for her, and a few days later agents came to her dorm at night to search it.

Alerted by the university that she was being sought, she managed to avoid being caught. So far, she has stayed ahead in a tortuous cat and mouse game. At one point, an agent with Homeland Security Investigations texted her, writing: “Hi, Yunseo. This is Audrey from the police. My job is to reach out to you and see if you have any questions about your recent arrest and the process going forward. When are [sic] available for a phone call?”

According to her lawsuit, Chung’s role in the protests didn’t go much further than running with her peers. The idea that she might compromise U.S. foreign policy interests – a claim in the case against Khalil – seems absurd on its face.

“Ms. Chung has not made public statements to the press or otherwise assumed a high-profile role in these protests,” the suit says. “She was, rather, one of a large group of college students raising, expressing, and discussing shared concerns.”

But it’s clear that Trump is determined to pound an iron fist on protestors, particularly at Columbia. He seems to have a particular loathing for the university, which recently acquiesced to a host of demands he made after cutting $400 million in federal funding from the school.

The government’s actions are sure to sit poorly among many academics. They already are generating heat among some.

“The Trump administration is now trying to deport a permanent resident who has been in the US since she was 7 for what appears to be only a very minor role in pro-Palestinian demonstrations,” ethics and economics Associate Professor Itai Sher of the University of Massachusetts Amherst said on X. “Absolutely chilling to free speech.”

And, even as he has defended the rights of protestors to speak out, the Massachusetts professor has no use for antisemitism. A few weeks after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas atrocities in Israel, Sher posted: “It is not antisemitic to go to a protest in support of Palestinians or to be harshly critical of the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza. However I can never recall seeing the level of antisemitism that I am seeing now.”

An adjunct professor of criminology at Australia’s University of the Sunshine Coast weighed in, too. “This is frightening,” Kerry Carrington said on X. “Pro-Palestinian Student residents of US born elsewhere targeted for deportation. #2025=1984 Orwell’s dystopia.”

The dean at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, Joel Hellman, added his voice in discussing the Suri detention.

“As Dean, I am deeply troubled by the chilling effect such events could have on freedom of expression on this campus, which is, of course, at the very core of our mission,” Hellman wrote in a note to faculty and staff. “Our commitment to fostering open inquiry, deliberation and debate has not always made for a comfortable campus, but I believe that time has shown that it has played a key role in maintaining our University values. This has allowed SFS to stay true to its commitment to promote diplomacy and understanding in an increasingly polarized world. We expect that the legal system will adjudicate this case fairly.”

Will the system do so in that case and the others?

Soon enough, Chung will have to surface to face the full might of Trump’s government. If the university had truly educated her – and so many others – perhaps she would not be feeling the weight of that crushing burden. One can only hope that she faces an immigration judge who respects free speech and understands idealistic, if uninformed, young people. And, if change can come to Columbia, others may not have to bear such weight in coming years.

An academic leader now wears a Scarlet Letter

Posted on March 22, 2025 by Joe Weber

Columbia’s genuflection to Trump may haunt it, even as some good will come

In “The Scarlet Letter,” Hawthorne’s masterpiece, Hester Prynne publicly acknowledges her sin and wears the red “A” as a gesture of defiance and pride. It soon becomes a symbol of strength and compassion. Compelled by outsiders to accept the humiliating label, she does the right thing for the wrong reasons.

Dr. Katrina Armstrong, interim president of Columbia University, seems to be in Hester’s shoes at the moment. Her sin is not adultery, of course, but rather it is capitulating to a vindictive, petty tyrant who is just at the beginning of a war on higher education. Armstrong has become both a casualty of that struggle and a contributor to it.

Certainly, there can be little argument that some of the gestures Armstrong is making are long overdue – and, indeed, had been under way before Trump’s meddling. In essence, the good doctor is doing some right things for the wrong reasons.

Recall that Armstrong has succumbed to Trump’s $400 million extortion effort. Trump cut that amount of money from a reported $5 billion in federal funds that goes to the private Ivy League school, but then said he might restore the money if the school knuckled under to a string of demands.

Significantly, these demands included putting a particular Middle Eastern studies department into “receivership,” i.e., taking control of it away from departmental faculty and putting it under another university administrator. Typically, this is done when the department is judged to be dysfunctional, usually paralyzed by in-fighting or other problems that render it unable to function.

It’s not done, generally, for political or intellectual reasons.

But the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department (MESAAS), the one Trump targeted, is an interdisciplinary unit that has long been a hotbed of anti-Zionism. One professor there, Joseph Massad, referred to Hamas’s barbarities on Oct. 7, 2023, as “awesome” and “stunning,” for instance, and he waxed poetic that they could lead to the destruction of Israel, as former Columbia graduate student Liel Liebovitz, an editor at Tablet, put it.

In turning the Middle Eastern studies program into a “bastion of anti-Semitic propaganda,” Massad is hardly alone, Liebovitz reported. There are many profs like him. Consider just one other, Hamid Dabashi, who over the last 20 years has attacked “rich and powerful” Zionists who he said controlled the American government. In a 2014 article for Al Jazeera, Dabashi compared Gaza with Auschwitz and Israelis with Nazis, according to Leibovitz. The two academics have been active in anti-Israel campus activities, including moderating events by Students for Justice in Palestine, a group the university suspended for inciting violence against Jewish students.

For more about Hamas enthusiasts at Columbia, see here.

Disgusted by the likes of Massad, a longtime adjunct professor at Columbia’s School International and Public Affairs, Lawrence “Muzzy” Rosenblatt, went so far as to quit the university last December. He was revolted that Massad was slated to teach a class on Zionism and Israel.

“This would be akin to having a White Nationalist teach about the U.S. Civil Rights movement and the struggle for Black equality, or having a climate denier teach about the impact of global warming, or a misogynist teach about Feminism,” Rosenblatt wrote in his resignation letter. “While Massad has a right to think what he thinks, and speak what he believes, Columbia has a responsibility to teach objectively and fairly. At best perhaps one could tolerate a class on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict co-taught from the many diverse Israeli and Palestinian perspectives, though not by someone who advocates for the eradication of a group of people.”

“Columbia has lost not only its moral compass, but its intellectual one,” Rosenblatt wrote.

So, now Armstrong has agreed to put an array of departments that deal with Middle Eastern studies, including MESAAS, under control of a new Senior Vice Provost. That is a “receivership” in all but name.

The SVP will review course offerings at MESAAS, the Center for Palestine Studies, the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies (IIJS), the Middle East Institute. the Tel Aviv and Amman global hubs, the School of International and Public Affairs Middle East Policy major and other University programs focused on the Middle East “to ensure the educational offerings are comprehensive and balanced.” The SVP will recommend changes, as needed, to top administrators.

As detailed in a university statement, Columbia will also review coursework in other departments to assure “excellence and fairness in Middle East studies.” Even before Trump’s extortion effort, the university had reviews under way in the Arts & Sciences curriculum for classes dealing with the history of Israel and Zionism. Columbia also has invited visiting faculty and postdoctoral fellows at the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies to extend their teaching until new tenure-line faculty are hired, part of an effort to expand intellectual diversity among the faculty.

Armstrong also agreed to accept a definition of antisemitism recommended last August by a university task force. This refers to “prejudice, discrimination, hate, or violence directed at Jews, including Jewish Israelis. Antisemitism can manifest in a range of ways, including as ethnic slurs, epithets, and caricatures; stereotypes; antisemitic tropes and symbols; Holocaust denial; targeting Jews or Israelis for violence or celebrating violence against them; exclusion or discrimination based on Jewish identity or ancestry or real or perceived ties to Israel; and certain double standards applied to Israel.”

Presumably, students and faculty can be disciplined for antisemitism, as defined above. Indeed, the university did expel and in other ways take action against an undetermined number of students for some actions in last spring’s demonstrations.

Some critics take issue with the Columbia definition. An official of the free-speech organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, for instance, derided it as “vague and sweeping enough that it will imperil speech otherwise protected by the First Amendment.” He added that the federal government “shouldn’t pressure any college, private or public, to censor speech critical of any country.”

Whether one accepts the definition or not, these are appropriate efforts on Columbia’s part and some of them preceded Trump’s demands and exceed them. Even as she is doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, some good will come out of Armstrong’s surrender.

Other points on which she has yielded, however, are more problematic. Is the requirement that student demonstrators be required to shun masks an intolerable interference with free speech? Is a review of admission policies, ostensibly with an eye toward not favoring some groups over others, really just a fig leaf for reducing diversity efforts? Is the adoption of “institutional neutrality” really just a refusal to publicly take stances on controversial matters for fear of offending Trump or others?

Beyond those details, there is a larger question: should a private university be brought to heel by a thin-skinned, grudge-bearing authoritarian who seems to be acting more out of personal animus than any commitment to intellectual fairness or real hostility to antisemitism? How petty is he, you might ask?

Consider the magic figure has been $400 million that Trump ordered cut. That figure seems like a number plucked from the air.

Certainly, it doesn’t reflect the value of grants and other federal funds the university gets. That tally, if the White House can be believed, is closer to $5 billion. So why didn’t Trump cancel $1 billion or more, something closer to the full amount? He named no specific programs for slashing and didn’t identify any particular cuts he wanted that would have added up to $400 million.

And why would the former middling New York real estate developer and failed casino magnate single out the New York school for such special treatment? Beyond the pro-Palestinian demonstrations of last year – an upheaval that has been largely resolved — what about Columbia put it in his gunsights in his national assault on higher education – a war in which he can now claim quite the high-profile scalp?

The New York Times, in a bit of smart reporting, has provided some answers.

Back around 2000, Trump tried to sell Columbia a parcel of land a couple miles away from the main campus, a parcel between Lincoln Center and the Hudson River, the newspaper reported. His asking price for what he called “Columbia Prime” was $400 million. The university had Goldman Sachs look over the deal. The firm’s valuation: $65 million to $90 million.

Outraged, Trump stormed out of a meeting with trustees. When Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger opted to expand elsewhere, Trump publicly labeled Bollinger – a lawyer who had clerked for a Supreme Court Justice and who went on to run Columbia for two decades — “a dummy” and “a total moron.” Ever the self-aggrandizer, Trump – who had been a disappointing student at the University of Pennsylvania for a couple years — wrote in a letter to a pair of Columbia student journalists: “Columbia Prime was a great idea thought of by a great man, which ultimately fizzled due to poor leadership at Columbia,” scribbling on it “Bollinger is terrible!”

Now, one key question is whether Trump has wrung all his vengeance out of Columbia. Recall that his administration called agreement to his demands just a “precondition” for negotiations about the $400 million. Will there be more demands, especially now that he has forced Columbia to roll over?

An Atlantic piece suggests Trump will just be emboldened. “Surrendering to Donald Trump, however, would be a serious error,” writer David A. Graham argued. “The first impact would be on Columbia itself, which would be granting control to an administration that has been frank about its desire to knock universities down a few notches.” He noted that Armstrong’s predecessor, Minouche Shafik, sought to placate GOP critics last spring, satisfying no one and losing her job in the process. In addition, he wrote, Trump’s pattern is to turn on both those who criticize as well as appease him.

“We are appeasing an angry king,” journalist Andrew Sullivan wrote about Trump in 2019. “And the usual result of appeasement is that the angry king banks every concession and, empowered and emboldened by his success, gets more aggressive and more power hungry.”

Moreover, while combatting entrenched antisemitism among some Columbia faculty members is overdue and appropriate, the precedent created by bowing to Trump’s meddling is alarming. As the president of Princeton, Christopher Eisgruber wrote in The Atlantic, the government’s “recent attack” on Columbia presents “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s” and urged universities to speak up in defense of their rights.

“Every citizen and officeholder who cares about the strength of our country must also care about free speech, self-governing thought, and the untrammeled quest for knowledge,” Eisgruber wrote. “They, too, should demand a stop to the government’s unwarranted intrusion on academic freedom at Columbia.”

And, as FIRE attorney Tyler Coward contended: “The federal government abandoned its existing process to brow-beat Columbia — and Columbia folded. Higher education reform shouldn’t resemble a shakedown. Colleges and universities shouldn’t be bullied into accepting speech-restrictive demands because the government dangles a $400 million check over an institution’s head …. Shaking under government pressure, Columbia crumbled. If Columbia — with its immense resources and influence — can’t stand up to government demands that threaten free speech, what are other colleges to do?”

For better or worse, Armstrong will now forever wear an academic scarlet “A.” It will not represent defiance, but genuflection, not standing up for academic independence, but kowtowing to a bully. And, for all the needed good that her mandated changes will do, the letter will not be something she can wear with pride.

Getting the bum’s rush

Posted on March 18, 2025 by Joe Weber

Trump seeks to deport those who offend him

Bartolomeo Vanzetti, left, and Nicola Sacco, source: Boston Public Library

In the 1920s, many Americans had little use for Italian immigrants and less use for anarchists. When two men who checked off both boxes — Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti – were charged with murder and robbery at a shoe company in Braintree, Massachusetts, they were swiftly convicted.

Seven years and many appeals later, they were executed.

Before their deaths, however, the men became global causes célebres. Writers, artists and academics claimed they were found guilty on thin evidence and were really victims of political sentiment and anti-immigrant feelings. Harvard law professor Felix Frankfurter, later a Supreme Court Justice, argued for their innocence in a book, “The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti: A Critical Analysis for Lawyers and Laymen.”

Are we seeing a similar railroading now in the deportation cases of Mahmoud Khalil and Dr. Rasha Alawieh? Are they being given the bum’s rush because of political sentiments and anti-immigrant feelings?

Certainly, the stakes are not as high in the case of the former Columbia University pro-Palestinian demonstrator, Khalil, and the Lebanese physician, Alawieh, a devotee of a dead Hezbollah leader. Deportation is a far cry from execution and murder isn’t on the table here.

But are there troubling parallels? Are we seeing a miscarriage of justice that threatens such cherished principles as free speech and free thought? Unlike Sacco and Vanzetti, there has been no trial for either Khalil or Alawieh, but nonetheless they are high-profile targets of enforcement arms that seem to run on presumptions of guilt and little or no need for proof of wrongdoing.

So far, the two are not accused of much more than speaking their minds or just having noxious views. Neither has been charged with any crime. Neither has been alleged to have given “material support” to terrorists, one standard for a criminal charge (this was a key finding in cases I wrote about in a book about Somali-American terrorists, “Divided Loyalties.”)

But both have views offensive to President Trump and his administration and, inarguably, to many other Americans. For what it’s worth, count me among those who find Khalil’s stance on Israel repugnant, and I hold no brief for Hezbollah leaders or any who support them. But, as Americans, we all have the right to take umbrage at differing views, even as we defend the rights of others to hold them.

Consider the attitude of an ardent Zionist, Wesleyan University President Michael S. Roth, as he told Politico:

“I was really shocked that someone in the United States would be arrested for having participated in a lawful demonstration,” Roth said. “I assumed there were some other justifications, I thought there would be some crime that had been committed for which the individual was being held accountable. But as I learned more about it, I saw that this was part of this broader attempt to intimidate people from protesting in ways that the White House doesn’t like.”

The Wesleyan president went still further, lambasting the McCarthyesque atmosphere the Trump Administration is creating.

“People are really afraid to be targeted by the government, whose powers are extraordinary, and when they’re willing to arrest or detain someone without charge and threaten to deport him without charges, that’s very frightening,” he said.

To get specific, Khalil was a graduate student a Columbia last spring and rose to prominence as a spokesman and negotiator for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a student coalition protesting the Gaza War. As The New York Times reported, he was videotaped shouting “Free Palestine” in a campus demonstration.

While Khalil became the face and voice of the protestors, and he often criticized Israel, it’s not clear that he ever said anything supporting Hamas. He was involved with a protest in the Barnard library at which fliers promoted the terrorist group, but so far there is no proof he had anything to do with the leaflets.

“It remains unclear what exactly Mr. Khalil is believed to have done,” the Times reported. “He is accused by the White House and others of organizing protests, such as the one in the Barnard library, where participants distributed fliers promoting Hamas. A flier that was shown in online postings from the library said it had been produced by the ‘Hamas Media Office.’ It was titled ‘Our Narrative’ and listed Hamas’s code name for the Oct. 7 attacks, with an image of fighters standing on a tank.”

But a friend of Khalil told the paper “he did not touch those fliers.”

Khalil is legally a permanent resident but not a citizen of the United States. Based on that status, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has cited a law that lets the government deport a noncitizen if his presence is deemed adversarial to American foreign policy interests. That is an “extraordinary attestation” consistent with an “emergency-happy administration” whose “broad aim is clearly to curtail or nullify constitutional protections under cover of unreviewable authority,” writes former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman.

And it’s very likely that Khalil’s case will test whether Trump and Rubio will have the right to toss out anyone whose views on just about anything offend them, according to Georgetown University law professor Stephen I. Vladeck.

Vladeck, editor and author of the Supreme Court newsletter “One First,” points to a Trump social media post in which the president says “This is the first arrest of many to come.” To Trump, Vladeck said, “Khalil’s is not a special case.”

Trump in his post also said: “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. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”

To the law professor, that suggests a big muzzle that Trump plans to affix on noncitizens and license for him to deport at will.

“And that, to me, is the scariest part—for it suggests that the government intends to use these rarely invoked removal authorities in enough cases to seek to deter non-citizens of any immigration status from speaking out about sensitive political issues, even in contexts in which the First Amendment does, or at least should, clearly protect their right to do so,” Vladeck writes.

He concludes: “If anything is anti-American, it’s threatening non-citizens who are in this country legally and have committed no crimes with the specter of being arrested, detained, and removed for doing nothing more than speaking up on behalf of unpopular causes—even, if not especially, unpopular causes with which many of us may well disagree.”

Khalil’s case will be especially notable, too, because the administration appears to have venue shopped it. Khalil was hustled off to Louisiana from New York City, where he had been living in a Columbia University apartment building. Trump appears to count on getting a more sympathetic hearing from judges in Louisiana, especially on appeal.

Stephen I. Vladeck, source: The Federalist Society

“The Fifth Circuit is the court I’d least want to be in if I were Khalil,” Vladeck told The New York Times. “It is a court where immigrants in general have a historically poor track record, and it’s a court in which judges are going to be most sympathetic to the government’s ability to point at someone and say, ‘You supported Hamas.’”

Recall, moreover, that Trump seems to have a particular animus toward Columbia. His administration is imposing $400 million in federal funding cuts on the university, much of which is imperiling medical research. He’s blaming what his minions in a Department of Education release call “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.”

Never mind that the Anti-Defamation League has praised many of the university’s efforts to battle antisemitism, even while contending it has a ways to go. Or that critics such as Times of Israel blogger Ethan Brown argue that the administration action “targets the wrong institution, disrupts critical research in climate science, technology, and medicine, and does nothing to protect Jewish students.” He argues: “We deserve real protection from harassment on campus, not a political stunt that exploits our community to attack our values.”

As a rabbi of my acquaintance put it in a personal note regarding both Khalil and the funding cut: “I’m really angry that all of this is supposedly being done for the sake of Jews. Deporting a green card-holder for organizing campus protests — no matter how much I disagreed with the protests and their antisemitic rhetoric — won’t make Jews any safer, it will just erode free speech rights for everyone … Columbia has one of the highest proportions of Jewish students AND Jewish professors — all of whom are losing a massive amount of research funding supposedly to protect Jews.”

Dr. Rasha Alawieh, source: The Patriot Ledger

As for Alawieh, her offense appears to be a matter of holding unsavory views. On a two-week trip home to see her parents in Lebanon in February, she attended a funeral for Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, killed last fall in an Israeli air attack. She also was accused of having photos of him and “fighters and martyrs” on her phone that she deleted to avoid running afoul of border protection agents in returning to Boston.

“According to Dr. Alawieh, she follows [Nasrallah] for his religious and spiritual teachings and not his politics,” court documents in her case stated.

Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist in the U.S. under a visa that let her to work as an assistant professor at Brown University, was detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel at Logan Airport on March 13 and then deported the following day.

When relatives went to court on March 14 to keep her in the U.S., a federal judge set a hearing for March 17 and ordered that she stay in Massachusetts. By then, however, she was on a plane bound for Paris, the initial stop on the way to Lebanon. The judge cancelled the Monday hearing, though he has scheduled others in coming weeks.

“A visa is a privilege not a right—glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied. This is commonsense security,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

Alawieh, who had been in the U.S. since 2018 on an H-1B visa, was not known to be politically active. A demonstration supporting her drew some 200 people to the Rhode Island State House on March 17, including several doctors wearing their scrubs. Signs there read “Hands off our colleagues. Hands off our patients. Abolish ICE.”

Dr. Paul Morrissey, center, source: The Boston Globe

Among those on hand were Dr. Paul Morrissey, surgical director of organ transplant division at Brown University Health. He told The Boston Globe that Alawieh works on getting people in Rhode Island on the list for a kidney transplants, a crucial job at a time of acute need for the organs.

“It’s an unfortunate set of circumstances,” Morrissey said. “It’s putting a strain on our office. Her work has been exceptional.”

Dr. George Bayliss, who directs the organ transplant division at Rhode Island Hospital, also condemned the deportation. Alawieh had been part of the transplant service at the hospital.

“This is outrageous,” Bayliss told the Globe. “This is a person who is legally entitled to be in the U.S., who is stopped from re-entering the country for reasons no one knows. It’s depriving her patients of a good physician.”

He added: “She’s really a very humble and able person … She takes care of her patients. She is talented and thoughtful and a great addition to our division.”

Sacco and Vanzetti had plenty of people speaking up for them in their day. In the end, it made no difference. Will that be the case for Khalil and Alawieh? And will they just be the first of many to come?

“All of Germany hears the Fuhrer”

Posted on March 16, 2025 by Joe Weber

Trump’s war on the press has antecedents

German poster promoting the People’s Receiver. It reads “All of Germany hears the Führer with the People’s Receiver.” Source: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Germany in the early 1930s was a global leader in mass communications. It had more newspapers than other European nations and an influential film industry, one of the world’s largest. But, as we all know, Adolf Hitler soon trampled on all that.

“Within months of Hitler becoming chancellor, his regime destroyed the country’s free press,” historians at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum report. “It shut down hundreds of opposition newspapers. The propaganda ministry issued daily orders dictating what could be published. Oversight of radio, film, newsreels, theater, and music likewise fell under its rule… After 1933, the Nazi regime broadcast propaganda over the radio to homes, factories, and even city streets.”

Hitler’s propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, made his intentions clear in a speech at the Reich Broadcasting Co. on March 25, 1933. “We make no secret of it: broadcasting belongs to us, no one else,” he said. “And we will place broadcasting in the service of our ideas, and no other idea will be given a chance to speak.”

Are we seeing a similar effort now in Donald J. Trump’s Washington? Recall that the president made attacking the press a pillar of both his presidential campaigns and a hallmark of his first term in office. To Trump, the media are “truly the enemy of the people.” And, certainly, he now is doing his best to stifle American journalism, both domestically and abroad.

Internationally, Trump has just all but shuttered the Voice of America, using an executive order to put on leave some 1,300 journalists there. All full-time staffers at the VOA and the Office for Cuba Broadcasting, which runs Radio and Television Martí, were affected, as NPR reported. The move followed a late Friday night edict from President Trump that the VOA’s parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, must eliminate all activities that are not required by law (it’s a minor inconvenience for Trump that Congress chartered the agency).

VOA delivers news coverage to countries where a free press is threatened or nonexistent, according to The Washington Post. “At its start, VOA told stories about democracy to people in Nazi Germany,” the paper reported. “VOA and affiliates such as Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia are designed as a form of soft diplomacy, a way to tout the United States’ free-press values in countries where antidemocratic forces prevail.”

The service’s impact, has been huge. In effect, it has carried America’s pro-democratic and free-press values to some 420 million people in 63 languages and more than 100 countries each week.

“VOA promotes freedom and democracy around the world by telling America’s story and by providing objective and balanced news and information, especially for those living under tyranny,” the now-suspended VOA director Michael Abramowitz, wrote in a post on social media. “For more than 80 years, Voice of America has been a priceless asset for the United States, playing an essential role in the fight against communism, fascism, and oppression, and in the fight for freedom and democracy around the world.”

But as it has covered antidemocratic regimes that Trump admires, such as those in Russia and Hungary, the service appears to have offended the president. “It is another chilling sign of Trump’s desire to upend the U.S.’s relationship with the world, press freedom advocates say — and to eliminate the flow of information he doesn’t like,” The Washington Post reported.

Of course, Trump can’t directly control what America’s independent media say about him — but he’s doing his best.

He has barred the Associated Press and Reuters from some White House events, for instance. His White House substituted two Trump-friendly outlets, Newsmax and Blaze Media, in the small group of correspondents who have access to the Oval Office for some press conferences. The press office ousted HuffPost from the group after one of its reporters posed a critical question to Trump on Air Force One.

He’s also using his bully pulpit to bludgeon critical outlets, habitually singling out some for verbal whippings. In his recent Justice Department speech, he said: “I believe that CNN and MSDNC, who literally write 97.6% bad about me, are political arms of the Democrat Party. And in my opinion, they are really corrupt and they are illegal. What they do is illegal.” Of course, he meant MSNBC, using his trademark — and juvenile — slur style for it.

But, as Just Security has recounted, Trump has also moved far beyond words. His Federal Communications Commission reinstated previously dismissed complaints against CBS, NBC, and ABC relating to Trump’s claims of unfair pre-election coverage. FCC chief Brendan Carr, who wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the commission, also launched an investigation into National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), following up on Trump’s repeated calls to yank broadcasting licenses of outlets he disdains.

NPR, in particular, is facing an assault by Trump minion (or, perhaps, puppetmaster) Elon Musk “Defund NPR,” Musk wrote on X. “It should survive on its own.” Carr’s FCC probe is attacking the legality of the radio network’s underwriting. And in petty slights, the Department of Defense ordered NPR, The Washington Post, CNN and The Hill to give up their offices at the Pentagon. Trump-friendly Breitbart News will fill NPR’s space, while Newsmax replaces CNN and The Free Press replaces The Hill.

Earlier, Trump brought a $20 billion lawsuit against CBS for its “60 Minutes” pre-election show, alleging “partisan and unlawful acts of voter interference.” He took umbrage at an October 2024 interview with then Vice-President Kamala Harris. Even as it has pursued a settlement, CBS-parent Paramount is seeking dismissal of the suit. Meanwhile, Trump sicced his FCC on the network with an investigation. The stakes are high for Paramount, as it depends on Washington for a proposed merger with Skydance Media.

Before taking control of various levers of power in Washington, Trump sued a slew of publishers, broadcasters, and platforms including Meta, ABC, CBS, and Gannett’s Des Moines Register. As Just Security reported, Meta settled with Trump for $25 million, Disney parent ABC settled for $15 million. Both had business and legal reasons – not journalistic ones — for settling. Meta chief Marc Zuckerberg has been cozying up to the president, perhaps hoping that he will quash a multistate lawsuit against Meta that the Federal Trade Commission, for now, is leading. And Disney could have faced a hostile jury in Florida.

Trump has also cowed Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post who triggered an exodus among subscribers and several editorial page departures by forcing the paper’s editorial page to be less critical of Trump. Let’s remember that in 2018, Trump threatened to punish Bezos’s Amazon, possibly by changing its tax treatment.

To be sure, the Trump onslaught has ignited some pushback — although it’s an open question about how effective statements of protest can be against someone who wields the power of Washington.

Some 40 media organizations on Feb. 21 issued a joint statement condemning his efforts in barring AP from the White House press pool. “When leaders try to silence reporters through intimidation, legal threats and denial of access, they are not protecting the country; they are protecting themselves from scrutiny,” the statement said. “This is how authoritarian regimes operate — by crushing dissent, punishing those who expose inconvenient facts and replacing truth with propaganda.”

Recall that Trump imperiously barred AP from the press pool because he was offended that it refused to refer to the “Gulf of Mexico” as the “Gulf of America,” as he unilaterally coined it. AP is continuing to pursuit a lawsuit in the matter. And, fortunately, the judge handling the case has suggested that Trump might lose that fight, saying: “It might be a good idea for the White House to think about whether what they’re doing is really appropriate given the case law.”

There’s even more to be concerned about than the exclusion of reporters. The Trump Administration is training its guns on what has been reliable government information. Its efforts could mask the economic effects of Trump’s antigovernment and economy-dampening measures, such as tariffs.

Trump’s Commerce Department Secretary, Howard Lutnick, wants statisticians to remove government spending from reports of gross domestic product. Federal government spending accounts for about 6.5% of GDP and it contributed 0.25 percentage point to the economy’s 2.3% annualized growth rate in the fourth quarter, according to Reuters.

The Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, a nationwide group of business journalists, warned that this “raises the possibility that GDP and other economic data will be distorted, particularly if the Bureau of Economic Analysis eliminates the government accounts from its releases.” In other words, Lutnick wants to monkey with the data to put a happier face on a likely economic slowdown in the coming year, a contraction that may top 2 percent in the opening quarter, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

“We don’t think it is a coincidence that the administration has curbed access to the White House for Bloomberg, Reuters and the Associated Press while simultaneously suggesting it may want to obscure the effect of its cost-cutting measures on the overall economy,” SABEW said. “There is the potential for long-term damage to the public’s right to know what’s going on with the economy – and the ability to make sound decisions based on accurate, complete data.”

Cooking the books has some history with Trump. Recall that the Trump Organization was convicted in 2022 on 17 counts of criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records. His chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, was jailed for five months in connection with lying for his boss. And separately Trump personally was convicted last year on 34 felony counts based on falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to a porn star.

After Hitler came to power, he used the might of the state to crush dissent. Is it overwrought to contend that Trump is doing the same now, albeit by more subtle means than seizing the media outright? Trump’s approach seems more akin to that of Hungarian despot Viktor Orbán, who has used media buyouts by government-friendly oligarchs to control the messages Hungarians hear.

“He’s a very great leader, very strong man,” Trump has said of Orbán, who has held power as Hungary’s prime minister since 2010, with a prior four-year stint from 1998-2002. “Some people don’t like him ’cause he’s too strong.”

Of course, Trump sees himself in the same mold. Trump, whom critics see as delusional on many fronts, has also cast himself as akin to another strong leader, Britain’s Sir Winston Churchill.

But, before going into politics, Churchill worked as a journalist. As a part-time war correspondent, he traveled to Cuba, Afghanistan, Egypt and South Africa. And, while he insisted on wartime censorship for military reasons, he also defended the press.

“A free Press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that free man prize; it is the most dangerous foe of tyranny,” Churchill reportedly said in 1949. “Where men have the habit of liberty the Press will continue to be the vigilant guardian of the rights of the ordinary citizen.”

By contrast, Trump has nothing but loathing for the liberty of the Press.

Echoes of the ugly past

Posted on March 14, 2025 by Joe Weber

Trump’s jackboots are making a mark on universities

Nazis barring Jews from the University of Vienna, 1938. Source: Holocaust Encyclopedia

In 1933, the Nazis imposed a Civil Service law that excluded Jews and political opponents from positions in universities, among other places. At the liberal Frankfurt University, a Nazi commissar told a faculty meeting that Jews were forbidden on campus and launched into an abusive tirade, pointing his finger at one department chairman after another and saying, “You either do what I tell you or we’ll put you into a concentration camp.”

The war on education was on. Hitler’s minions were determined “to root out any dissent to their policies and ideology that remained in German higher education,” as Facing History & Ourselves described it.

Are we hearing echoes today in Donald J. Trump’s siege on universities? Is it overwrought to make such a comparison? Maybe not.

Certainly, it’s clear that Trump’s Republican Party is determined to bring higher education to heel ideologically. In the process, it is instilling fear among students, faculty and administrators as it attacks everything from diversity programs to medical and scientific research and global outreach efforts.

At Columbia University, for instance, Trump’s administration is cutting $400 million in federal support, the details of which are just now emerging. To point to one example, hundreds of researchers at the school’s Irving Medical Center have lost 232 grants for scientific research. These amount to about a quarter of the center’s research portfolio, according to Dr. Joshua Gordon, the chair of psychiatry at Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

And Trump’s reason for this – a bizarre inversion of the Nazi tack — is that the school has failed to protect its Jewish students. Never mind that Columbia’s administration last spring squelched the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that had riled the campus and inarguably spawned a hostile environment for Jews. That was last year’s news, but apparently Trump hasn’t paid attention to extensive changes on the campus.

“Unlike some universities that have ignored or downplayed campus antisemitism, Columbia has been strengthening its policies and taking action, even earning praise from watchdog groups like the ADL,” blogger Ethan Brown wrote in the Times of Israel. “If the government truly wanted to support Jewish students, they would be encouraging these efforts, not singling out an institution making progress while leaving worse antisemitism offenders untouched.”

Brown added: “Addressing campus antisemitism required a scalpel. Instead, Trump used a sledgehammer. Jews celebrating this tactic miss the bigger picture — it targets the wrong institution, disrupts critical research in climate science, technology, and medicine, and does nothing to protect Jewish students. We deserve real protection from harassment on campus, not a political stunt that exploits our community to attack our values.”

Johns Hopkins, source: The Baltimore Sun

And then there’s the even bigger financial blow Trump is delivering to Johns Hopkins University, with cuts starting at $800 million. That effort, led largely by Elon Musk, has led to staff eliminations of at least 2,000 people so far, most of whom have worked in USAID-related Hopkins programs overseas.

These cuts will end projects ranging from breast-feeding support efforts in Baltimore to a range of global efforts, according to The Wall Street Journal. Among them are a nearly complete eight-year effort aimed at convincing people in more than 50 countries to adopt behaviors such as sleeping under mosquito nets in Mozambique and using contraception in Nigeria. One dead project involved providing chlorine tablets and soapy water and messages about hygiene to prevent diarrhea deaths in Bangladesh.

“We are, more than any other American university, deeply tethered to the compact between our sector and the federal government,” Hopkins President Ronald Daniels wrote last week, as The Washington Post reported. “The breadth and depth of this historic relationship means that cuts to federal research will affect research faculty, students, and staff and will ripple through our university.”

Nearly half the university’s total incoming money, he wrote, came from federal funds last year.

But the administration efforts are even worse at the Baltimore school. Hopkins, which spends more than any other U.S. university on research — some $3 billion — stands to lose at least another $200 million under a Trump plan to cut National Institutes of Health grants for so-called indirect costs. Last month, Hopkins and a dozen other schools who would lose money sued, and those NIH cuts are on pause while the legal challenges move forward.

Remember that scientists at Johns Hopkins University have done extraordinary things. Some invented cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Others confirmed the authenticity of the Dead Sea Scrolls. And still others introduced the rubber glove to surgery and, much later, others landed the first spacecraft on an asteroid. Twenty-nine people associated with Hopkins have won Nobel Prizes.

With Trump, that legacy is under assault. Similarly, schools nationwide are under the gun.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln, source: Princeton Review

As reported by Inside Higher Ed, those that have paused hiring or trimmed budgets because of funding cuts include Brown, Duke, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Washington, Emory University, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Vermont.

Trump’s plans to eliminate the federal Department of Education, moreover, are threatening student loan programs. By fiat, he and his education chief, Linda McMahon, have already cut the department’s staff in half. And Trump has said that the main task for McMahon – whose main claim to fame is cofounding and running the WWE wrestling outfit – is to put herself out of a job.

As the Associated Press reported, Trump has vowed to cut off federal money for schools that push “critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content” and to reward states and schools that end teacher tenure and support universal school choice programs.

Academic freedom? Intellectual independence? Fuhggedaboutit.

Diversity programs have been a particular target of the administration and of Republican-dominated state legislatures across the country. As reported by Inside Higher Ed, presidential “[e]xecutive orders denounced ‘dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences,’ and the Department of Justice promised to investigate ‘illegal DEI’ activities.” Claiming that universities have “toxically indoctrinated students” with ideas about “systemic and structural racism,” McMahon’s Education Department launched an “End DEI Portal.” And more than 30 states have considered or enacted laws curtailing DEI.

The attacks have cast universities into disarray. Some have canceled and then reinstated cultural events, as Inside Higher and others have reported. Some have scrubbed DEI websites and canceled race-focused events. Others have vowed to “resist.” More than 60 higher education organizations called on the department to rescind its DEI Dear Colleague letter, and one lawsuit seeks to block the DCL and another has won a preliminary injunction regarding the executive orders.

So far, however, Trump and his allies have been succeeding in cowing many schools, sometimes with efforts that go far beyond financial pressure. Even as it has triggered new protests, for instance, ICE’s arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian who was active in Columbia demonstrations, has cast a chill on longstanding academic commitments to free speech.

Wesleyan President Michael S. Roth; source: The Chronicle of Higher Education

“I was really shocked that someone in the United States would be arrested for having participated in a lawful demonstration,” Wesleyan president Michael S. Roth told Politico. “… I thought there would be some crime that had been committed for which the individual was being held accountable. But as I learned more about it, I saw that this was part of this broader attempt to intimidate people from protesting in ways that the White House doesn’t like.”

Many students and faculty members, Roth added, “are reeling … this is the greatest fear in civil society, including in the higher education system, since the McCarthy era. People are really afraid to be targeted by the government, whose powers are extraordinary, and when they’re willing to arrest or detain someone without charge and threaten to deport him without charges, that’s very frightening.”

Along with Khalil, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is seeking to arrest a second so-far-unnamed person — who, like Khalil, is a legal permanent resident — in connection with campus protests, according to The Atlantic. Trump has said on social media that Khalil’s is “the first arrest of many to come.”

Amid the fearful atmosphere, many university administrators are holding back on commenting on national matters, apparently trying to avoid drawing Trump’s ire. In Roth’s terms, “the infatuation with institutional neutrality is making cowardice into a policy.”

Roth, one must note, is an ardent defender of Israel, but also advocates free speech and academic freedom. “You have to respect the rights of people with whom you disagree, and I think presidents, deans and professors, we should model that as best we can,” he said.

Largely an academic disappointment in his two years at Wharton himself, Trump runs into most of his opposition from well-schooled folks. And his supporters are dominated by the undereducated. So, his attacks on education are not all that surprising. They resonate among people who are either envious of those with more schooling or feel left behind by them.

Still, the assaults are troublingly effective. Schools may have some success in fighting the president’s efforts in the courts, but with Congress and the Senate mostly behind him, their battle will be uphill. At least until the midterm elections, they are in for far too much grief. The Nazis would have been proud.

The price of ignorance

Posted on March 12, 2025 by Joe Weber

If buyer’s remorse isn’t afflicting Trump backers, it should be

Ray Bradbury was onto something in “Fahrenheit 451.” He gave us a protagonist, Guy Montag, who was a fireman – but hardly in the conventional sense. Montag’s job was to set fire to homes that housed books. The reason: ignorance was essential to dominating society.

That seems to be something Donald J. Trump understands quite well.

When Trump was elected, some readers were irked at a column in this space that suggested that economic ignorance among his supporters helped drive his victory. The piece argued that Trump’s backers didn’t understand the causes and remedies for inflation, didn’t grasp the dangers of tariff threats, and didn’t understand how chaos in the Oval Office could put our country under a cloud.

Trump was happy to exploit that ignorance, as he promised to quash rising prices, enrich the country through tariffs and kill the “deep state” that he contended was holding America down.

Well, might some of those Trumpers be having just a bit of buyer’s remorse now?

After all, the stock market under Trump has reflected anything but optimism. As of the market close on March 11, the much-watched S&P 500 index had dropped nearly 6.4 percent since Trump was inaugurated. The tech-heavy NASDAQ composite index had plunged even more, some 11 percent, and the Dow had lost 3.6 percent. On March 12, NASDAQ index eked out a 1.2 percent gain for the day and the S&P 500 index bounced up nearly a half point, but the Dow slipped another 0.2 percent.

What’s more, inflation has hardly been tamed. Beyond the avian-flu-related price of eggs, the inflation rate turned upward a half-percentage point in January and another 0.2 percent in February. Also, there’s precious little to crow about in job-creation, with a weaker-than-expected jobs report in February that helped nudge the unemployment rate up to 4.1 percent, as labor force participation slipped.

And dour outlooks seem to be spreading. Consumer sentiment has tumbled to a 15-month low, as layoff announcements shot up to a 4.5-year high, as Forbes reported.

That all means the Federal Reserve, fearful of contributing to more inflation, is standing pat on interest rates, with its repeated rate cuts of last year now very much in the rearview window. In the dry language of the folks at J.P. Morgan, “The Fed is likely to hold off on further decreases in interest rates in the near-term as it assesses the strength of the U.S. economy within the backdrop of heightened fiscal policy uncertainty.”

Uncertainty, indeed. So much so that people are using the “R word.” Talk of recession is in the air.

“The economy will likely suffer a downturn if the Trump administration follows through on the tariff increases it has announced and maintains those tariffs for more than a few months,” Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, posted on X. And Jonathan Millar, senior economist at Barclay’s told USA Today that if Trump imposes all his planned tariffs, “then we’ll probably get a recession.”

Even Trump refuses to rule out the possibility that his policies – especially his on-again off-again threats of tariffs against allies and adversaries alike – could plunge the United States into a downturn. In fact, he seems to be softening up Americans for a rough road by saying the country is in a “period of transition” and his earlier comment that Americans could feel “some pain” from his burgeoning trade wars.

It’s no wonder that investors – who, after all, put down markers on the future with every stock buy or sell – are heading for the exits. And it’s no wonder that forecasters are getting more jittery than they’ve been in months.

Zandi told ABC News that his firm raised its gauge of the probability of a recession to 35 percent. “That’s uncomfortably high — and it’s rising,” Zandi said.

And Goldman Sachs boosted the odds of a recession in the coming 12 months up from 15 percent to 20 percent. More pessimistically, J.P. Morgan Chase economists pegged the chances of a recession this year at 40 percent – up from 30 percent at the opening of the year — citing “extreme U.S. policies,” Bloomberg reported.

To be sure, many such forecasters have proven to be Chicken Littles in the past. In the halcyon days of Biden’s term, during the summer of 2023, Goldman’s crystal ball signaled a more than 30 percent chance of a recession, according to Forbes. That was just before the U.S. “ripped off seven consecutive quarters of more than 1.5% GDP growth and the stock market surged, even as monetary policy remained restrictive.”

Moreover, economists such as Paul Krugman are arguing that talk of a “Trumpcession” is premature. The data so far don’t suggest that, he holds, even while he warns of “a palpable sense of disappointment in the Trump economy.”

Nonetheless, a slowdown – if not a full-blown recession – seems very much on the horizon. Even before the latest Trump-induced tumult, the Congressional Budget Office, for instance, was expecting a meager 1.9 percent gain in GDP this year and 1.8 percent the following year, down from 2.3 percent last year. And The Conference Board sees decelerating growth throughout the year, ending with the economy eking out a 1.7 percent gain in the closing quarter.

The problem is not so much ignorance among Trumpers – who, perhaps, can be forgiven for that, given the state of economic education in our schools. Instead, the problem is ignorance in the Trump Administration that is driving its growth-threatening policies.

As the president stubbornly clings to his tariff policies – imposing a 25 percent levy on Canadian steel and aluminum, even while backing down from a threat to double that figure – do he and his advisers not really appreciate the market disruption they are causing? Are they blind to the declines Trump is spawning in the retirement kitties of millions of Americans?

Certainly, he doesn’t seem to care much.

“Markets are going to go up and they’re going to go down. But you know what? We have to rebuild our country,” Trump told reporters, according to USA Today. He made the comment as he promoted Tesla vehicles alongside Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and the guy driving widespread government layoffs.

Can both men be so dense? As soon as legislators oblige him, Trump plans to kill a $7,500 federal tax incentive for electric cars. So, it’s no surprise that investors are giving the stink eye to Tesla, one of the leading makers of such cars, paring its share price from above $424 a share on Inauguration Day to below $231 recently.

And is it helping to “rebuild our country” to lay off tens of thousands of federal workers, with at least 62,530 of them dismissed in the opening two months of this year alone, by one recent count? And that doesn’t include the just-announced nearly 50 percent cut in the staff of the Department of Education, bringing that unit down to fewer than 2,200 people. That department provides money, such as Pell Grants, to students to attend college and funds elementary and secondary schools nationwide.

Is it helping when Trump imposes tariffs that are triggering retaliation from around the world against American farmers and other producers? The trade war he has launched promises to be costly for everyone, companies and consumers alike.

Canada, the largest steel supplier to the U.S., will slap 25 percent reciprocal tariffs on American steel products and raise taxes on tools, computers and servers, display monitors, sports equipment, and cast-iron products, for instance. The European Union, similarly responding to Trump’s measures, will raise tariffs on American beef, poultry, bourbon and motorcycles, peanut butter and jeans.

Prices will rise across the world. “We deeply regret this measure,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “Tariffs are taxes. They are bad for business, and even worse for consumers.”

So much for the battle against inflation.

The U.S. last endured a brief recession during Trump’s first term, with the downturn lasting from February to April 2020. The economy at that point was slammed by the dawn of the Covid epidemic.

Now it seems the economy is taking body blows from tariffs, federal workforce reductions and a decline in consumer attitudes. If a “Trumpcession” isn’t imminent, is it unavoidable over time under such pressures? Unless Trump and his minions get a crash course in economic sanity, they might find out the hard way. That may give his supporters plenty of reason for doubt.

Prelude to disaster?

Posted on March 1, 2025 by Joe Weber

The Zelenskyy Oval Office brawl marks a turning point

Chamberlain and Hitler in Munich, 1938; source: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

In September 1938 the leaders of Germany, Britain, France and Italy signed the Munich Agreement, allowing Adolf Hitler to annex an area of Czechoslovakia largely inhabited by Germans, the Sudetenland Region. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain praised the pact for delivering “peace for our time.”

Of course, we all know the rest. By March of the following year, Nazi forces overran the whole country and, by that fall, the globe was aflame.

So much for appeasing a dictator. But, now, will a similar fate soon unfold for Ukraine, as U.S. President Donald J. Trump seeks to placate — even reward — Vladimir Putin? Will Trump’s disastrous Oval Office meeting on Feb. 28 with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy prove to be a steppingstone toward a Munich-like unraveling?

If the Russian despot first carves up and then, in time, sweeps through Ukraine, will his appetite for other nearby lands — Moldova, Georgia and the Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — merely be whetted? And will NATO — with or without the United States — roll over, now and going forward, as leaders strive to avoid a wider war?

Such questions may seem premature. After all, European leaders vow to stand by Ukraine, perhaps even if Trump abandons the country. As the BBC reported, Germany’s outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote that “no one wants peace more than the citizens of Ukraine,” for instance, with his replacement-in-waiting Friedrich Merz adding that “we stand with Ukraine” and “we must never confuse aggressor and victim in this terrible war.” A bevy of other world leaders similarly offered support.

Still, almost half of the military backing for Ukraine comes from the United States. Even Zelenskyy admits that American backing is vital, saying in an X post: “It’s crucial for us to have President Trump’s support. He wants to end the war, but no one wants peace more than we do.”

But peace at what price? Will Trump force Ukraine to yield parts of the country Russia now holds? Will Putin demand and get still more, perhaps enough to help him run through the whole vast country?

Four maps showing how the situation has changed on the ground since Russia's invasion: from Russian separatists holding territory in Donbass, to Russia taking territory in the north of Ukraine in the first days following the invasion, before being pushed out of the country and restricted to slow territorial gains in the southeast.

Already — without negotiations — the Trump Administration is making Sudetenland-like concessions. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, for instance, told European leaders that it’s “unrealistic” for Ukraine to seek a return of lands Russia took over in 2014, including Crimea. He similarly shot down hopes for the country to join NATO, even as U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer insisted that Ukraine was on an “irreversible path to NATO”— which would make for a breach with the U.S.

Trump, moreover, has refused Ukraine security guarantees designed to prevent a wholesale Russian takeover. “We’re going to have Europe do that,” Trump said in advance of his on-camera brawl with Zelenskyy. The Ukrainian had sought such guarantees as part of a deal to give the U.S. access to vital minerals in his country — a deal that fell apart in the meeting’s wake.

After years of U.S. and global support, though, it’s difficult to understand Trump’s willingness to sell out Ukraine.

Yes, the ever-vengeful Trump has likely has nursed a deep grudge since his first term, when a phone call between him and Zelenskyy led to his first impeachment. Recall that before the 2020 U.S. election Trump demanded that the president investigate alleged Ukrainian election interference and supposed corruption by then-candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter. Trump went so far as to condition U.S. weapons deliveries on Hunter’s fate, prompting the House to impeach the president.

The House Intelligence Committee in 2019 reported that “President Trump … solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit his reelection. …President Trump conditioned official acts on a public announcement by the new Ukrainian president…of politically-motivated investigations, including one into Joe Biden, one of Trump’s domestic political opponents.”

Trump and former wife Ivana in Russia, 1987; source: Daily Mail

And, yes, Trump’s relationship with Russia and particularly with Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel, has long been a mystery. Some have even speculated that Trump may have been compromised by Russian intelligence in a 1987 visit, though no hard evidence of a “honey trap” or a bribery snare has emerged.

Others have pointed to how Putin, a brilliant manipulator, knows all too well how to flatter and win over Trump, who has long been prey to such indulgences.

“He thinks he and Putin are friends,” former Trump national security adviser John Bolton told The Wall Street Journal. “He has no clue that Putin is exploiting him.”

Trump has admired Putin because he is “strong” and has total control over his country, a former senior administration official told the newspaper. The ex-official added that Trump likes authoritarian leaders better than others because they are “tough” and don’t face criticism and strictures from Congress and the courts.

But Trump’s global vision — if he has one — may go beyond all that. As the WSJ noted, in post-inauguration policy statements “Trump seemed to agree with Putin’s broader worldview—that big powers have the right to spheres of influence in their own neighborhood, including the right to invade or annex their neighbors.”

Recall Trump’s designs on Canada, Greenland and Panama. Are they all that different from Putin’s ambitions to reconstruct the Soviet empire, perhaps beginning with Ukraine?

“Putin sees Trump’s language of extraterritorial ambitions as justifying his own claims,” Gabrielius Landsbergis, who served until recently as Lithuania’s foreign minister, told the WSJ. “They both see a world redivided and borders drawn anew. A scary new imperial reality is being born.”

Many have suggested that Trump is determined to remake the world order that has stood since at least the end of World War II.

“We are in a new era where, by and large, international relations aren’t going to be determined by rules and multilateral institutions,” Alex Younger, a former chief of Britain’s foreign intelligence service MI6, said recently on “Newsnight” on the BBC. “They’re going to be determined by strongmen and deals … That’s Donald Trump’s mindset, certainly [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s mindset. It’s [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s mindset.”

Stewart Patrick, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argued that Trump’s “ambition is to replace the international rule of law with the law of the jungle. Rather than a global order that constrains great power privilege, he envisions a regionalized one in which powerful nations pursue spheres of influence and throw their weight around, browbeating lesser actors (like Denmark and Panama, say)… [E]very interaction is an opportunity for one-sided bargaining to improve America’s relative position against all others.”

If he’s right, Ukraine’s demise — should that happen — would just be one unpleasant step on a broad road Trump seems to want to follow. Certainly, fraying America’s longstanding global partnerships would add a few strides.

“America’s alliances are now in danger, and should be: Trump is openly, and gleefully, betraying everything America has tried to defend since the defeat of the Axis 80 years ago,” argued Tom Nichols in The Atlantic. “The entire international order of peace and security is now in danger, as Russian autocrats, after slaughtering innocent people for three years, look forward to enjoying the spoils of their invasion instead of standing trial for their crimes.”

Some Trump critics have called on the president to pull back from dumping Ukraine, arguing it is vital for both Trump and the U.S. to continue to stand up to Putin.

“The U.S. interest in Ukraine is shutting down Mr. Putin’s imperial project of reassembling a lost Soviet empire without U.S. soldiers ever having to fire a shot,” Wall Street Journal editorialists contended. “Turning Ukraine over to Mr. Putin would be catastrophic for that country and Europe, but it would be a political calamity for Mr. Trump too. The U.S. President can’t simply walk away from that conflict, much as he would like to.”

But does Trump see things that way? If not, the ugly meeting in the White House may go down in history in much the same way as sessions leading to the Munich Agreement have. It could prove to be a prelude to disaster.

The Big Picture

Monthly Archives: March 2025