Yesterday, I spent a little time on this account writing about the Trump regime, Project Esther, and the fascist American right's plan to use anti-terrorism laws to crush their political opposition. Unfortunately, I ran out of room to say everything I wanted to say so last night I expanded my thoughts over on NIDC and did the sourcing legwork.

https://www.ninaillingworth.com/2025/05/27/nina-bytes-trumps-cointelpro-looms-into-focus/

Nina-Bytes: Trump’s COINTELPRO Looms Into Focus

"This then brings us to the ominous reality so very few observers in the media seem to be grasping, namely that targeting the anti-genocide, pro-Palestine movement is merely the tip of the fascist spear in the Trump regime’s war on dissent and political opposition. The rhetoric, suppression techniques, and legal arguments that are being deployed against foreign anti-genocide student protestors as we speak are easy to replicate while targeting more or less the entire oppositional left in America, including milquetoast NGOs, aid groups, and likely even “liberal” political organizations like the Democratic Party. The broad and extremely vague nature of our terrorism laws leaves room for the Trump regime to label almost anyone a member of a terrorist organization, and define material support for that organization in any way they please. The authors of Project Esther are very clear that they consider opposition to capitalism, or the American state as embodied by the Trump administration, to be valid targets for those designations. If anti-genocide protest is “materially supporting Hamas,” then funding migrant support work is probably “materially supporting narco-terrorist gangs,” and speaking out against the US government can be “materially supporting” any group of “bad guys” around the globe that do the same. The possibilities for targeted, legalized repression are quite literally endless."

#Fascism #Trump #USPol #Gaza #Genocide #Israel #PoliceState #HeritageFoundation #ProjectEsther #Project2025 #GOP #Palestinians #StudentProtests #CivilRights #McCarthyism #COINTELPRO #WarOnTerror #Counterterrorism

'The #Trump administration’s crackdowns on pro-Palestinian #activism look eerily similar to a conservative proposal to target universities and international students it claims are part of a “terrorist support network”.

'Who is behind the plan, and what will its impact be?'

guest: Tariq Kenney-Shawa, AJ+ producer and US policy fellow, Al-Shabaka

https://omny.fm/shows/the-take/usa-projectesther

#ProjectEsther #USpol #HeritageFoundation #stateRepression #studentProtests #civilRights #PalestineSolidarity @palestine

"Claire Shipman, the acting president of Columbia University, was met with a chorus of boos on Wednesday from some of the 12,000 graduates at the school’s main commencement ceremony as she took the podium to deliver remarks": https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/nyregion/columbia-president-booed-commencement.html #politics #StudentProtests

may many more colleges and universities follow.

King's College - one of the University of Cambridge, UK's largest - has decided to divest from the arms industry and companies complicit in "the occupation of Ukraine and Palestinian territories", following months of student protests.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/kings-college-cambridge-divest-millions-occupation-and-arms-industry

#Gaza #Ukraine #StudentProtests

Interview: "Project Esther": Project 2025's plan to rebrand "All Critics of Israel as Hamas Supporters"

Project Esther lays out plans for surveilling, silencing & punishing pro-Palestinian activists, including deporting non-U.S. citizens & withholding funds from universities.

All critics of Israel are rebranded as "providing material support for terrorism."

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/5/19/project_esther

#projectesther #project2025 #heritagefoundation #uspol #studentprotests #racism .

Report: "New Video of Mahmoud Khalil’s Arrest Shows Trump Admin is Lying in Court"

"The new footage of ICE’s warrantless arrest shows the Palestinian student fully cooperated with federal agents & was not a flight risk, as the government continues to falsely claim."

https://zeteo.com/p/new-video-mahmoud-khalils-arrest-trump-lie

#MahmoudKhalil #trumplies #studentprotests #palestine #uspol .

Report: "New Video of Mahmoud Khalil’s Arrest Shows Trump Admin is Lying in Court"

"The new footage of ICE’s warrantless arrest shows the Palestinian student fully cooperated with federal agents & was not a flight risk, as the government continues to falsely claim."

https://zeteo.com/p/new-video-mahmoud-khalils-arrest-trump-lie

#MahmoudKhalil #trumplies #studentprotests #palestine #uspol .

Interview: "Project Esther": Project 2025's plan to rebrand "All Critics of Israel as Hamas Supporters"

Project Esther lays out plans for surveilling, silencing & punishing pro-Palestinian activists, including deporting non-U.S. citizens & withholding funds from universities.

All critics of Israel are rebranded as "providing material support for terrorism."

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/5/19/project_esther

#projectesther #project2025 #heritagefoundation #uspol #studentprotests #racism .

Report: "New Video of Mahmoud Khalil’s Arrest Shows Trump Admin is Lying in Court"

"The new footage of ICE’s warrantless arrest shows the Palestinian student fully cooperated with federal agents & was not a flight risk, as the government continues to falsely claim."

https://zeteo.com/p/new-video-mahmoud-khalils-arrest-trump-lie

#MahmoudKhalil #trumplies #studentprotests #palestine #uspol .

Marva Johnson Named 13th President-Elect of Florida A&M University Amid Backlash https://shinemycrown.com/marva-johnson-named-13th-president-elect-of-florida-am-university-amid-backlash/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #FloridaAandM #MarvaJohnson #HigherEducation #StudentProtests #FAMU

Interview: "They Want to Silence Me”

Mohsen Mahdawi, Palestinian activist & Columbia University student recently released from ICE detention.

Federal judge Geoffrey Crawford also determined that Mahdawi can attend his graduation ceremony at Columbia, begin his Master's degree classes, & attend events, including protests.

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/5/16/mohsen_mahdawi_columbia_university

#uspol #resistfascism #studentprotests #columbiau #MohsenMahdawi #palestine .

“The Encampments” and the American College Student

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.newyorker.com/culture/critics-notebook/the-encampments-and-the-american-college-student

Interview: "They Want to Silence Me”

Mohsen Mahdawi, Palestinian activist & Columbia University student recently released from ICE detention.

Federal judge Geoffrey Crawford also determined that Mahdawi can attend his graduation ceremony at Columbia, begin his Master's degree classes, & attend events, including protests.

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/5/16/mohsen_mahdawi_columbia_university

#uspol #resistfascism #studentprotests #columbiau #MohsenMahdawi #palestine .

Interview: "They Want to Silence Me”

Mohsen Mahdawi, Palestinian activist & Columbia University student recently released from ICE detention.

Federal judge Geoffrey Crawford also determined that Mahdawi can attend his graduation ceremony at Columbia, begin his Master's degree classes, & attend events, including protests.

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/5/16/mohsen_mahdawi_columbia_university

#uspol #resistfascism #studentprotests #columbiau #MohsenMahdawi #palestine .

#Jadaliyya's screening/streaming of the #documentary #ThePalestineException followed by its co-director, Jennifer Ruth, in conversation with Bassam Haddad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gg5CLZp57o

#Gaza #Palestine #PalestineSolidarity #GazaSolidarity #StudentProtests #USpol #USpolitics #stateRepression #censorship #activism #campusActivism #peaceActivism #cinema @palestine @film

Report: "Georgetown Scholar to be Released From ICE Detention"

Badar Khan Suri's release "is in the public interest to disrupt the chilling effect on protected speech, Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles said at a hearing in the US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia."

"The release is another blow to the Trump administration following the release of Mohsen Mahdawi & Rumeysa Ozturk."

https://zeteo.com/p/breaking-georgetown-scholar-badar

#ice #studentprotests #resistfascism #trump #uspol #racism #freespeech #palestine .

Student Actions for Palestine Continue Across the US

On Wednesday May 7 demonstrators rushed through Butler Library’s security gate at Colombia University in New York at about 3:00 p.m., hanging banners, tagging shelves with graffiti, chanting pro-Palestine slogans, and renaming it the “Basel Al-Araj Popular University,” a reference to the Palestinian writer who was killed by the Israeli army in 2017.

The Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) released a statement criticizing the school’s treatment of student activists and explaining the occupation.

“Despite Columbia’s transformation of the university into a dystopian site of surveillance through its carceral expansion of cameras, wifi and ID tracking, externally contracted security, disciplinary processes, and arresting power for Public Safety officers, it still failed to quell the student movement,” it reads. “The Students outsmarted the university, exposing the cracks in their broken system. In the spirit of our martyr Basel al-Araj, the Popular University will educate our comrades towards revolutionary consciousness—taking back our university to practice a liberated, demilitarized education. Students know that resisting genocide is their moral imperative, and history is on their side.”

Students at Brooklyn College in Brooklyn, New York launched a demonstration at their campus the same day.

Students at Johns Hopkins University launched an encampment on the same night as the Columbia occupation, but say they shut it down after police “caused multiple injuries” on campus.

Earlier this week, University of Washington (UW) protestors occupied a campus engineering building on May 5. The Students United for Palestinian Equality and Return (SUPER) organized the action to demand that the school sever its ties to Boeing over the company’s connections to Israel. The group demanded the university cut ties with Boeing due to the company’s military contracts with Israel.

“WE DEMAND: UW will no longer be complicit in genocide. WE DEMAND: that our tuition money and our research not be used to fund and fuel genocide,” read a statement from the group. “Students have occupied the Interdisciplinary Engineering Building and declared that this building, renamed the Shaban al-Dalou Building will not be used to fund genocide, but to meet the needs of students and community.”

In a clear show of their intent, the new Interdisciplinary Engineering Building, which was funded in part by Boeing, sustained $1 million in damages.

Also on May 5th, seven students from California State University, Long Beach, launched a hunger strike as part of an organized protest across four CSU campuses: San Francisco, Sacramento, and San Jose State. In total, twenty-five students are striking for Gaza. They join a wave of nationwide protests demanding an immediate end to the United States’ arming and facilitating a genocide in Gaza by Israel.

The seven strikers announced on the campus their commitment to refuse food until their institution divests from companies that supply weapons, military equipment, and surveillance technology, among other demands, to Israel’s military. In addition, they call on their campus administration to pressure other CSU presidents and the Board of Trustees to do the same.

“This is part of a larger student movement to ensure that California State Students’ tuition, and Universities’ investments, are not complicit in the genocide of the Palestinian people,” read the statement by the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at CSULB.

Similar hunger strikes and encampments have spread to campuses in the Los Angeles area. Thirty miles north in Eagle Rock, ten Occidental College students began their hunger strike protest in April. Like the students in Long Beach, their demands included protecting students from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and providing a Sanctuary Campus for non-citizen students.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=19022

#BrooklynCollege #columbiaUniversity #CSU #gaza #JohnHopkins #palestine #studentProtests

"Tufts Student Rümeysa Öztürk Released From ICE Detention"

"The decision is another blow to the Trump administration’s effort to detain & deport international students for their speech."

She was "imprisoned all these days for simply writing an op-ed that called for human rights & dignity for the people in Palestine,"

https://zeteo.com/p/breaking-tufts-student-rumeysa-ozturk

#RümeysaÖztürk #uspol #trump #resistfascism #palestine #studentprotests .

Video: Mohsen Mahdawi explains why he refuses to be afraid:

“If you have love and if you are rooted in your beliefs, no fear can shake you.” Palestinian peace activist Mohsen Mahdawi recounted his arrest and imprisonment".

https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2025/5/9/mohsen-mahdawi-tells-al-jazeera-why-he-refuses-to-be-afraid

#MohsenMahdawi #trump #resistfascism #uspol #palestine #bds #studentprotests .

"Tufts Student Rümeysa Öztürk Released From ICE Detention"

"The decision is another blow to the Trump administration’s effort to detain & deport international students for their speech."

She was "imprisoned all these days for simply writing an op-ed that called for human rights & dignity for the people in Palestine,"

https://zeteo.com/p/breaking-tufts-student-rumeysa-ozturk

#RümeysaÖztürk #uspol #trump #resistfascism #palestine #studentprotests .