Thursday, March 13, 2025
Judges raise concerns about threats to independence amid criticism of decisions, calls for impeachment
Judges raise concerns about threats to independence amid criticism of decisions, calls for impeachment
“The article describes concerns raised by federal judges about threats to their independence. The judges express worry about the increasing number of threats against judges and the erosion of public trust in the judiciary. They emphasize the importance of protecting judges from threats and criticisms that undermine their ability to act independently.
Judges Jeffrey Sutton and Richard Sullivan, who sit on the federal appeals courts, raised concerns about the increase in threats against judges in a call with reporters hosted by the Judicial Conference, the policymaking body for the federal judiciary.
Sullivan, who chairs the committee on judicial security, said the protection of judges and federal courthouses around the country is a top priority for the judiciary and recent cuts to the U.S. Marshals Service's budget is a concern. The agency provides security for federal courts and judges.
"Our system of government is premised on three independent branches and a judiciary that can function independently," he said. "That's what makes it work, and so it's crucial that people understand that."
Sutton, meanwhile, said that while the types of threats against judges have evolved over time, they arise directly from the fact that they're doing their jobs.
"We're supposed to say what the law means, and there's 1,000 federal judges out there, we each take that responsibility seriously," he said, adding that judges take an oath to interpret the law neutrally and dispassionately. "It's a shame to see people attacking judges simply for doing their level best to do their job."
Sutton and Sullivan both noted that the justice system allows the losing party to appeal an adverse decision from the trial court to an appeals court and then the Supreme Court.
"We allocate disappointment to half the people that come before us," Sutton said. "Criticism is no surprise. It's part of the job. But I do think when it gets to the level of a threat, it really is about attacking judicial independence, and that's just not good for the system or the country."
Sutton is the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, and Sullivan sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. Sutton was appointed by President George W. Bush, and Sullivan was named to the appeals court by President Trump during his first term.
The concerns from the two GOP-appointed judges come as Musk and allies of Mr. Trump have attacked judges who have issued preliminary rulings against the administration. Musk, who the president said is leading the White House's Department of Government Efficiency, has called some members of the judiciary "evil" and said they should be "fired."
In a post last month to X, the social media company he owns, Musk claimed the country is witnessing "an attempted coup of American democracy by radical left activists posing as judges" and said in another post that there "need to be some repercussions above zero for judges who make truly terrible decisions."
Republicans in the House have also introduced impeachment resolutionsagainst U.S. District Judges Paul Engelmayer, Amir Ali and John Bates because of decisions they dislike, which were issued in the early stages of legal challenges to Mr. Trump's policies.
The impeachment efforts are unlikely to succeed. Just 15 federal judges have been impeached by the House and eight were convicted by the Senate and removed from office, according to the Federal Judicial Center.
"Threats to judges are threats to judicial independence. They've been around for a long time. There's lots of different mechanisms. Threats of impeachment — this is not the first time this has happened," Sutton said. "One thing worth keeping in mind is if we dilute the standards for impeachment, that's not just a problem for judges, that's a problem for all three branches of government."
Sullivan said that amid the evolving threat landscape, and as there are more threats to judges, public officials must be responsible in their comments about the system of justice.
"The reality is that there are a lot of folks who will respond and react perhaps inappropriately based on something they heard or read, and so, I just think it's important for everyone to be responsible in what they say about our process," he said.
Chief Justice John Roberts separately spoke of the importance of preserving judicial independence in his year-end report closing out 2024. He highlighted four areas that he said threatened the independence of judges: violence, intimidation, disinformation and threats to defy lawfully entered judgments.
When it comes to protecting judges from threats, the federal judiciary's Vulnerability Management Program provided services to more than 1,700 judges, 114 retired judges and 235 family members last year, according to the Judicial Conference's annual report, released Tuesday.
The program was established after Congress passed legislation responding to the 2020 killing of the son of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas at her home in New Jersey. The gunman found the judge's address, pictures of her house and vehicle information online.
The measure, signed into law by former President Joe Biden in 2022, aims to make it more difficult to find judges' personal information on the internet.
Melissa Quinn is a politics reporter for CBSNews.com. She has written for outlets including the Washington Examiner, Daily Signal and Alexandria Times. Melissa covers U.S. politics, with a focus on the Supreme Court and federal courts”
Trump Firings Gut Education Department’s Civil Rights Division - The New York Times
Trump Firings Gut Education Department’s Civil Rights Division
"Many of the office’s cases over the decades have served as a catalyst for broader policy change and social reforms.
Decades ago, Congress guaranteed all students an equal opportunity to an education. But now the office created to enforce that promise has been decimated.
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights was slashed in half on Tuesday as part of President Trump’s aggressive push to dismantle the agency, which he has called a “con job.” The firings eliminated the entire investigative staff in seven of the office’s 12 regional branches, including in Boston, Cleveland, Dallas and San Francisco, and left thousands of pending cases in limbo.
The layoffs struck every corner of the department, which manages federal loans for college, tracks student achievement and supports programs for students with disabilities. But education policy experts and student advocates were particularly distressed about the gutting of the civil rights office, which fielded more than 22,600 complaints from parents and students last year, an increase of more than 200 percent from five years earlier.
Some voiced particular concern about what could happen to students with special needs, whose access to education is often left to the federal government to enforce. Many questioned how the Trump administration would be able to handle the office’s case load moving forward — or if it would at all.
“The move to gut this office and leave only a shell means the federal government has turned its back on civil rights in schools,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, who led the office as assistant secretary for civil rights in both the Obama and Biden administrations. “I am scared for my kids and I am scared for every mother with kids in school.”
The Office for Civil Rights, established by Congress, opened along with the rest of the Education Department in 1980. One of the office’s first leaders was Clarence Thomas, now a Supreme Court justice. It is relatively inexpensive compared with other agency programs, with a cost of about $140 million in the department’s $80 billion discretionary budget.
The majority of civil rights complaints typically involve students with disabilities, followed by allegations of racial and sex-based discrimination. Many of the disability cases involve complaints that schools are failing to provide accommodations for students or that schools are separating disabled students from their peers in violation of federal law.
Mr. Trump and the education secretary, Linda McMahon, have maintained that staffing cuts at the department will not disrupt services for the 50 million pupils in elementary and secondary schools or 20 million college students.
But the only preparation the Trump administration announced before the layoffs was that the department’s Washington-based headquarters would be closed on Wednesday as a security precaution.
“We’ll see how it all works out,” Mr. Trump said of the layoffs while speaking to reporters at the White House.
Madi Biedermann, the Education Department’s deputy assistant for communications, said changes were underway in the civil rights office to process cases and praised the remaining staff members for their commitment and years of experience.
“We are confident that the dedicated staff of O.C.R. will deliver on its statutory responsibilities,” she said.
One civil rights investigator wept in an interview on Wednesday as she spoke about the abrupt firings and what they would mean for parents fighting for fairness for their children.
This investigator, who requested anonymity out of fear of retribution, had talked to parents on Tuesday morning about a possible resolution to a yearslong push to have their disabled son’s needs met at school.
In the afternoon, the investigator prepared a new case about a school retaliating against a Black student who had complained about racial slurs from classmates and reviewed an offer from another school to resolve a complaint from a student whose wheelchair had been repeatedly stuck — and occasionally tipped over — from crumbling walkways on campus.
In the evening, the investigator was fired. With work access cut off, there was no way to follow up with any of the parents she had spoken with that day, or to contact the witnesses she was scheduled to interview on Wednesday about a college student’s discrimination complaint.
“I was really trying to help, and now I can’t even talk to them, and I’m so sorry,” the investigator said. “I would never treat anyone like this. I would never just not show up or stop talking to someone, but I have no way to reschedule or let them know what’s going on.”
Disability rights advocates said that any impediment to the department’s ability to enforce civil rights laws would cause widespread harm to the nation’s education system.
Zoe Gross, the director of advocacy for the Autism Self Advocacy Network, said that she was particularly concerned about what might happen to the office’s data collection efforts, which have been used to spot potential red flags and identify trends.
For example, when some states reported zero instances of disabled students who had been restrained or separated from their peers, O.C.R. investigated and found that cases were not being reported because school officials had misinterpreted rules for disabled students. The federal government then intervened.
“All of these kinds of things you need the department to do and help with,” Ms. Gross said. “And without the Department of Education and the Office for Civil Rights, we’re going to see basically states left on their own to navigate that.”
Many of the office’s past cases have served as catalysts for broader change.
During the Obama administration, the office’s investigations into sexual assault and harassment identified more than 100 colleges and universities that were inadequately reporting and responding to allegations.
As a result, many schools adopted internal enforcement policies that have made it easier for students who have been sexually assaulted to receive large damage awards. These investigations have also been routinely referred to as validation for the collegiate #MeToo movement.
Sex-based cases also include harassment involving gender identity, an issue that fueled Mr. Trump’s campaign last year and motivated executive orders early in his administration aimed at preventing schools from recognizing transgender identities, barring transgender girls and women from competing on girls’ and women’s sports teams and terminating programs that promote “gender ideology.”
Restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic led to their own genre of discrimination complaints as schools closed, struggled to carry out online learning and then were slow to reopen.
Department officials said they still intend to pursue civil rights complaints and have discussed relying more on mediations as a way to quicken the pace of investigations, as well as other available legal tools to rapidly resolve cases.
The office had already moved to align with Mr. Trump’s priorities. It paused ongoing investigations into complaints of schools banning books and dismissed 11 pending cases involving schools that had removed books from their libraries. The cases primarily delved into issues of gender and racial identity.
Under the Biden administration, the office vigorously investigated complaints of racial discrimination amid the so-called racial reckoning in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd. Some complaints reflected the debate about schools’ roles in addressing systemic racism or charged that certain programming was exclusionary of non-minorities. Several longstanding diversity and inclusion efforts — which Mr. Trump has now ordered “illegal” and “harmful” — came under a microscope.
The civil rights office has also seen a rise in allegations of antisemitism, particularly on college campuses, and other religious-based discrimination. The Trump administration has supported those investigations, which they have used to strip federal funding from one university and threaten dozens more with similar consequences.
Before firing 1,315 employees on Tuesday, the Trump administration had already encouraged 572 workers to quit or retire early and had let go 63 employees who did not have union protections.
Taken together, 47 percent of the department’s work force had been eliminated in the first 50 days of Mr. Trump’s return to the White House.
Erica L. Green contributed reporting.
Michael C. Bender is a Times political correspondent covering Donald J. Trump, the Make America Great Again movement and other federal and state elections. More about Michael C. Bender"
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
Calls for release of Palestinian activist detained by ICE
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Federal judge orders Doge to release internal records for transparency | Trump administration | The Guardian
Federal judge orders Doge to release internal records for transparency
"Musk said social media posts were sufficient documentation for agency that is changing face of government
A federal judge has ruled that Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) must comply with transparency laws and release its internal documents, finding the secretive operation exercises “substantial independent authority” that cannot be shielded from public scrutiny.
In a 37-page opinion issued on Monday, US district judge Christopher Cooper ordered Doge – which took over what used to be the White House’s US Digital Service (USDS) – to begin a “rolling” production of records within weeks, rejecting the Trump administration’s attempts to position it beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act.
“The authority exercised by USDS across the federal government and the dramatic cuts it has apparently made with no congressional input appear to be unprecedented,” Cooper wrote in his decision on a lawsuit brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew).
The ruling undercuts both Musk’s claims about the operation’s transparency and the White House’s characterisation of the billionaire as merely a presidential adviser with limited decision-making power. Cooper cited evidence that Doge has terminated government employees, dismantled the US Agency for International Development (USAid) and granted outsiders access to sensitive government databases.
Musk is himself a “special government employee” – meaning that he was not vetted or appointed for a position which the White House has said requires no financial public disclosure. While Musk defends the Doge operation by saying it posts its receipts on social media, the Trump ally has gone to great lengths to conceal his employees, calling for a Wall Street Journal reporter who linked a Doge staffer to anonymous racist remarks to be fired, and banning an X user who posted the contact information for dozens of others.
The judge’s decision could still face appeal but stands as a significant setback to the administration’s efforts to limit public visibility into how decisions affecting federal agencies and employees are being made.
The court criticised the administration’s legal approach, noting government lawyers provided virtually no evidence and took inconsistent positions on Doge’s status. “[It] becomes, on defendants’ view, a Goldilocks entity – not an agency when it is burdensome but an agency when it is convenient,” Cooper wrote.
The decision comes as Musk has signalled that federal benefit programmes, including social security, could soon be the next targets in his efficiency crusade. In a Fox Business Network interview on Monday, Musk claimed between $500bn and $700bn in waste needed to be eliminated, focusing on entitlements.
“Most of the federal spending is entitlements. That’s the big one to eliminate,” Musk said, making claims that far exceed official figures. The Social Security Administration’s inspector general previously reported $71.8bn in improper payments from 2015 to 2022 – less than 1% of benefits paid during that period.
Although the judge stopped short of ordering an immediate document release before Congress considers an upcoming spending bill to avert a government shutdown, he said that lawmakers and voters need timely access to information about Doge’s activities.
“The information will only be useful to the electorate so long as [Doge] remains a topic of current national importance,” Cooper wrote. “Information released years down the road would come too late.”
The government was ordered to file a status report by 20 March based off the document requests from Crew."
Opinion | Pardons and Paybacks Are Trump’s Two Modes of Justice - The New York Times
The Two Modes of Justice of Donald Trump
By Jeffrey Toobin
"Mr. Toobin is a contributing Opinion writer and the author of “The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy.”
Payback and projection have long been two of President Trump’s touchstones. He settles scores in return for every perceived slight and accuses his targets of what he has done himself. In his second term, that approach has bled into the law, with perilous consequences.
More than most other areas of presidential authority, the Justice Department gives Mr. Trump a way to settle scores — and to help friends. Of course, no one can be convicted without a guilty verdict, but simply by launching an investigation, the federal government can impose ruinous reputational and financial costs.
At the same time, the Trump administration has essentially unlimited discretion to look away from criminality by allies: to halt ongoing D.O.J. investigations, end existing prosecutions and even overturn settled cases. And the Constitution imposes no limit on the president’s power to pardon anyone at any time.
For decades, at least since the aftermath of Watergate, the custom at the Justice Department has been to establish a measure of independence from the political interests of the president. This tradition was especially strong among lower-level federal prosecutors and law enforcement agents, whose careers have been allowed to continue seamlessly from one administration to the next. From Day 1, President Trump and his allies shattered this unwritten but real understanding.
On Jan. 20, the president issued an executive order purporting to address the “unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power” during the administration of President Joe Biden. Mr. Trump directed the attorney general, Pam Bondi, who had yet to be confirmed, to correct her department’s actions against “perceived political opponents,” especially several Jan. 6 rioters at the Capitol, whom the president pardoned the same day.
Weaponization can work two ways: by punishing adversaries or rewarding supporters. Notwithstanding the executive order, the Trump administration has been doing both.
Ms. Bondi’s Justice Department moved quickly to purge the lawyers and some of the F.B.I. agents who led the prosecutions of the Jan. 6 defendants. These career government employees were punished not because they had engaged in misconduct or because their prosecutions lacked merit — their cases passed muster with federal judges — but for the simple reason that they had offended the president, which was, it turned out, a firing offense.
The main instrument for Mr. Trump’s revenge has been Ed Martin, whom Mr. Trump initially chose as the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, the nation’s biggest office of federal prosecutors, which Mr. Martin called “President Trump’s lawyers.” (In fact, government lawyers don’t represent the president as an individual but rather the Constitution and laws of the United States.) Not only has Mr. Martin fired or demoted prosecutors who brought Jan. 6 cases — including some in which Mr. Martin himself, then in private practice, represented the defendants — but he’s also investigating, on dubious grounds, other Biden-era initiatives.
Denise Cheung, a veteran prosecutor in the office, resigned rather than follow instructions from Mr. Martin to try to rescind $20 billion in grants awarded by the Biden administration for environmental projects. Mr. Martin has also threatened to prosecute the Democratic legislators Chuck Schumer and Robert Garcia for speeches that allegedly threatened Mr. Trump’s allies. In addition, Mr. Martin informed Georgetown University Law Center that his office would no longer hire students from that distinguished institution, or any law school or university “that continues to teach and utilize D.E.I.” — diversity, equity and inclusion. (As the dean of Georgetown’s law school aptly replied, Mr. Martin’s threat is an “attack on the university’s mission as a Jesuit and Catholic institution,” and likely unconstitutional.) In spite of these affronts to the rule of law, or more likely because of his views, Mr. Trump has nominated Mr. Martin for a full term as U.S. attorney.
In a broader step against perceived enemies, Mr. Trump began an unprecedented offensiveagainst law firms that have represented clients whom the president despises. So far the president’s targets have included Covington & Burling, a major Washington firm which has done pro bono legal work for Jack Smith, the special counsel who investigated and prosecuted Mr. Trump, after the president’s congressional allies began examining Mr. Smith’s conduct, and Perkins Coie, another firm with a big Washington presence, which represented Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats.
These lawyers did nothing wrong; indeed, representing clients whose interests conflict with those in power ranks among the most honorable traditions of the bar. In response, though, the president ordered the federal government to “terminate” any engagement with either firm, revoked their lawyers’ security clearances and even directed that Perkins personnel be denied access to federal buildings.
The president’s actions are existential threats to the firms — which is their point. His goal is to make both firms so toxic that their clients will flee, which would represent catastrophic blows. The larger message is clear: Mr. Trump is keeping track of anyone who has offended or opposed him, and he will use the power of the presidency to extract maximum consequences.
But the president understands the value of the carrot as well as the stick. The presidency, and especially Mr. Trump’s command of the Justice Department, is well situated for Mr. Trump to reward his supporters. This is most obvious in the case of Mayor Eric Adams of New York. After being indicted on charges of bribery and other crimes in the last months of the Biden administration, Mr. Adams began a charm offensive directed at the new president, visiting Mr. Trump in Florida and attending his inauguration.
The mayor’s ministrations paid off, because Mr. Trump’s Justice Department moved to dismiss the case against Mr. Adams. In doing so, the government did not cite any defect in the evidence against the mayor or any misconduct by the prosecutors in Manhattan, but simply said the case “unduly restricted Mayor Adams’s ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that escalated under the policies of the prior administration.” (Several prosecutors in the Adams case, including the interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan, resigned in protest.)
Moreover, the fact that the Justice Department asked the case be dismissed “without prejudice” — meaning that the prosecution could be reinstituted if Mr. Adams displeases the administration in Washington — suggests that the strategy is meant to keep Mr. Adams in line. (The judge has not yet ruled on the government’s motion to dismiss the case.)
The Justice Department seems to be scouring the country to find ways to reward its supporters. Last year, Tina Peters, a former county clerk in Colorado, was convicted on state criminal charges of tampering with voting machines in a failed effort to prove that they had been rigged against Mr. Trump in the 2020 election. The Justice Department rarely inserts itself into state prosecutions, but last week Yaakov M. Roth, the acting assistant attorney general for the civil division, filed a brief joining Ms. Peters’s federal court challenge to her state conviction. In his statement to the court, Mr. Roth said he was acting pursuant to President Trump’s executive order on “weaponization” of the government under President Biden.
In an even more direct application of presidential power to reward allies, Mr. Trump is using the pardon power in unprecedented ways. Of course, it’s well known that the president began his second term by pardoning nearly all of the 1,600 or so rioters who had been charged with crimes at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But he has kept up a steady pace of pardons, all of them aligned with his political agenda.
Mr. Trump has pardoned 23 anti-abortion protesters who invaded and blockaded clinics; Ross Ulbricht, a hero of the crypto movement who was serving a life sentence for running an underground marketplace used by drug dealers; and Rod Blagojevich, who became a Trump supporter after he was convicted of corruption-related crimes as governor of Illinois. The president also plans a posthumous pardon for Pete Rose, the disgraced baseball star who remains a hero in much of red-state America.
Unlike recent presidents who saved up controversial pardons for the end of their terms and granted very few at the beginning, Mr. Trump’s early pardon offensive suggests that he plans to use this power throughout his second term. In this way, the president can guarantee himself a steady stream of supplicants eager to be forgiven for crimes they committed when other men were in the Oval Office.
There’s an important difference between the president’s law enforcement payback agenda and other controversial initiatives of his second term, including the government efficiency efforts led by Elon Musk. Mr. Trump’s imposition of spending cuts has been vigorously challenged in the courts, with some success, even in the Supreme Court. The court may thwart Trump’s plans.
But there are few checks and balances on a president’s authority to enforce, or decline to enforce, the law. And there are no limits at all on whom Mr. Trump may pardon. The courts and Congress have little, if any, role in these matters. Only the norms of history and the customs of decency constrain a president — or, as in this case, they don’t.
Jeffrey Toobin is a former assistant U.S. attorney who writes about the intersection of law and politics. He is the author of “The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court,” “The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy” and other books."
The U.S. Is Trying to Deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Legal Resident. Here’s What to Know. - The New York Times
The U.S. Is Trying to Deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Legal Resident. Here’s What to Know.
"Mr. Khalil, who helped lead protests at Columbia University against high civilian casualties in Gaza, was arrested by immigration officers and sent to a detention center in Louisiana.
The Trump administration invoked an obscure statute over the weekend in moving to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent legal resident of the United States who recently graduated from Columbia University, where he helped lead campus protests against high civilian casualties in Gaza during Israel’s campaign against Hamas.
Mr. Khalil was arrested by immigration officers on Saturday and then sent to a detention center in Louisiana. On Monday, a federal judge in New York, Jesse M. Furman, ordered the federal government not to deport Mr. Khalil while he reviewed a petition challenging the legality of the detention.
Here’s what to know about the administration’s attempt to deport Mr. Khalil.
Who is the Columbia graduate?
Mr. Khalil, 30, earned a master’s degree from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in December. He has Palestinian heritage and is married to an American citizen who is eight months pregnant.
At Columbia last spring, Mr. Khalil assumed a major role in student-led protests on campus against Israel’s war efforts in Gaza. He described his position as a negotiator and spokesman for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a pro-Palestinian group.
What’s the legal basis for his arrest?
The Trump administration did not publicly lay out the legal authority for the arrest. But two people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations, said Secretary of State Marco Rubio relied on a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that gives him sweeping power to expel foreigners.
The provision says that any “alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.”
What is Mr. Khalil being accused of?
That is not very clear.
Mr. Rubio reposted a Homeland Security Department statement that accused Mr. Khalil of having “led activities aligned to Hamas.” But officials have not accused him of having any contact with the terrorist group, taking direction from it or providing material support to it.
Rather, the administration’s rationale is that the protests that Mr. Khalil played a key part in were antisemitic and created a hostile environment for Jewish students at Columbia, the people with knowledge of the matter said. Mr. Rubio’s argument, they said, is that the United States’ foreign policy includes combating antisemitism across the globe and that Mr. Khali’s residency in the nation undermines that policy objective.
Could this happen to more visa or green card holders?
President Trump said Mr. Khalil’s case was “the first arrest of many to come.”
But a lawful permanent resident, or green card holder, is protected by the Constitution, which includes First Amendment free-speech rights and Fifth Amendment due-process rights. The Trump administration’s efforts to deport Mr. Khalil under the I.N.A. provision are likely to face a constitutional challenge, several legal experts said.
What happens next?
There is little precedent for deporting a legal permanent resident based on the provision of the 1952 law that gives the State Secretary a broad power to do so on foreign-policy grounds.
A lawyer for Mr. Khalil, Amy Greer, said her client would “vigorously” challenge the Trump administration’s actions in court. On Monday, Judge Furman, of the Federal District Court in Manhattan, scheduled a hearing for two days later after barring the Trump administration from deporting Mr. Khalil “to preserve the court’s jurisdiction.”
What has President Trump said about pro-Palestinian protesters?
Since 2023, Mr. Trump has repeatedly vowed to revoke visas of international students who participate in pro-Palestinian protests and criticize Israel’s war efforts.
At a rally in Iowa on Oct. 16, 2023, Mr. Trump declared that “in the wake of the attacks on Israel, Americans have been disgusted to see the open support for terrorists among the legions of foreign nationals on college campuses. They’re teaching your children hate.”
He added: “Under the Trump administration, we will revoke the student visas of radical, anti-American and antisemitic foreigners at our colleges and universities, and we will send them straight back home.”
At a speech in Las Vegas on Oct. 28 of that year, Mr. Trump said that “we’ll 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.” And at a Nov. 8, 2023, campaign stop in Florida, he said he would “quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism.”