Good morning 🫡

This sentence, typed in her dissent, should scare the living fuck out of everyone in this country. "This Supreme Court is an existential threat to the rule of law." – Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

Thousands of people marching through Lower Manhattan now demanding ICE get out of New York City.

Rest in peace Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...

during katrina universities admitted students from new orleans and the surrounding areas—at columbia at least they were allowed to stay and complete their degrees if they wanted—universities should be taking columbia students in, especially those in middle east studies. they won’t but they should.

I am disgusted by the ways that Columbia has caved and in the process weakened academic freedom for us all. History will not look on the Columbia university administration and trustees kindly. Conceding to authoritarianism opens up all of higher education to a horrific future.

Decades Ago, Columbia Refused to Pay Trump $400 Million. Note That Number. A quarter century ago, the university was looking to expand. It considered, and rejected, property owned by Donald Trump. He did not forget it. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/n... By Matthew Haag and Katherine Rosman

Another academic is detained by the Trump administration for his freedom of thought and expression.

SCOOP: Hooded ICE agents snatched Indian-born Georgetown postdoc Badar Suri from Rosslyn street Monday, per court filing. Like Khalil, linked to pro-Palestinian views & Rubio 'foreign policy' power, lawyer says. Then whisked to Louisiana. w/ @kyledcheney www.politico.com/news/2025/03...

In the face of relentless attacks on trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people, these young activists are not running away — they’re organizing. 19thnews.org/2025/02/tran...

Detained, stripped naked, denied medication. This is one more way that the current administration is a fascist dictatorship. If this is happening to European green card holders, think of what is happening to undocumented immigrants, to people of color, to women, to trans people detained.

Let’s be clear. Trump does not give a crap about antisemitism. He has in fact praised and collaborated with Nazis. Rather this is a way to suppress legitimate protest and free expression, extend his plans of extralegal detention, and attack higher education and academic freedom all at once.

I don't take a back seat to anyone on the subject of anti-semitism. Jews are being used here as a fig leaf to advance a broader attack on universities and higher learning. Trump wants to bring Universities to heel and obedience. Jews are just a convenient cudgel here and just as disposable.

Right now there is clear, overwhelming opposition to Mahmoud Khalil’s abduction across the moderate, liberal, progressive & left spectrum. This kind of loud unity is what authoritarians are afraid of. To keep it up we need every institution & public leader to join the chorus.

BREAKING: DHS Detains Lead Negotiator of Columbia Gaza Solidarity Encampment After Online Campaign by Pro-Israel Groups. Part of Trump’s sweeping attack on the First Amendment. Also, Mahmoud Khalil is a Green Card holder and his wife is 8 months pregnant. www.dropsitenews.com/p/dhs-detain...

Huge news, a preliminary injunction was just granted in the PFLAG v Trump case enjoining the administration from enforcing the executive order ban on gender affirming care for trans youth. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

I’m both dismayed and frankly terrified by the number of well informed and smart people who are witnessing the Nazi-billionaire fascist takeover of their own country yet unable or unwilling to say literally any of these words and call a thing a thing.

I want to spell out the basic reason it’s so dangerous for Elon to have control of the U.S. payments system. It may seem like a technical matter, but the dynamics are simple. 1/x

NEW: Sources tell my office that Treasury Secretary Bessent has granted DOGE *full* access to this system. Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk's own companies. All of it.

All DNS records for www.usaid.gov have been deleted.

Local friends! Come to Mount Holyoke on Monday at 6pm for our panel “Trans Healthcare is a Human Right.” An incredible group of panelists will be discussing US vs Skrmetti and how we safeguard gender affirming care in the aftermath.

no money for you if you don’t do a jim crow

Remembering when students, faculty, and staff working in institutions all over the country were prevented from re-entering the US in January 2017, and this will be much worse.

At Mount Holyoke College on December 3, 7pm. Local folks, please come to this important talk!