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      Education department slashed in half after Trump administration mass firings

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      The Trump administration has decimated the US Department of Education, firing more than 1,300 employees in a single day in what looks to be the first step toward abolishing the agency entirely.The mass dismissal – delivered by email after most staff had left for the day on Tuesday – has slashed the department’s workforce by half. Along with voluntary departures and probationary firings, the agency that started 2025 with 4,133 staff now operates with an estimated 2,100 employees two months into Donald Trump’s presidency.“Today’s reduction in force reflects our commitment to efficiency,” Linda McMahon, the US education secretary, said in a statement on Tuesday, insisting that student loans, Pell grants and special education funding would continue uninterrupted. Department officials characterized the eliminated positions as unnecessary administrative roles.Civil rights enforcement has been particularly devastated, with regional offices in New York, San Francisco and Boston either closed entirely or stripped to minimal staffing. These units were already buried under backlogged discrimination investigations following campus protests last year.The cuts came just one day after the department warned 60 universities they face “potential enforcement actions” for alleged violations of federal civil rights laws protecting students from antisemitic discrimination – part of a broader push that recently saw the administration cancel $400m in funding to Columbia University over what it called “continued inaction” on harassment of Jewish students. A prominent Columbia student activist with a green card, Mahmoud Khalil, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) without charge over the weekend and now faces deportation for his role in last year’s pro-Palestinian demonstrations.“We will not stand by while this regime pulls the wool over the eyes of the American people,” Sheria Smith, the president of the government employees’ union representing department workers, said in a statement.Some school leaders across the country are also alarmed by the implications of the department’s downsizing. Alberto Carvalho, the Los Angeles unified school district superintendent, warned of “catastrophic harm” if the cuts affect federal funding streams.“We receive in excess of $750m earmarked for poor students, English-language learners, students with disabilities and connectivity investments,” Carvalho said in a video statement. The LA unified school district is estimated to be the second-largest in the country.Greg Casar, the Congressional Progressive caucus chair from Texas, meanwhile accused the administration of blatant class warfare.He told reporters: “Trump and Musk are stealing from our children to pay for tax cuts for billionaires.” He called for Senate Democrats to reject the government funding bill that they’ll be voting on this week.Responding to reporter questions on Wednesday, Trump attacked Department of Education employees. “Many of them don’t work at all. Many of them never showed up to work,” the president said in the Oval Office. “We want to cut, but we want to cut the people that aren’t working or not doing a good job. We’re keeping the best people.”The purge aligns with Trump’s campaign pledge to abolish the department entirely – a promise that resonated with the parents’ rights movement that emerged during pandemic school closures. Constitutional experts note that while Trump cannot unilaterally dissolve the agency without congressional approval, his administration appears to be rendering it functionally obsolete.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJust last week, McMahon confirmed on Fox News that Trump plans to sign an executive order targeting the department’s closure, despite polls showing roughly two-thirds of Americans oppose such a move.The administration is already preparing to scatter the department’s functions across the federal government. The New York Times reports that officials visited the treasury department on Monday to discuss transferring student loan operations, while McMahon has floated moving civil rights enforcement to the Department of Justice and disability services to the Department of Health and Human Services – mirroring recommendations from the conservative Project 2025 blueprint.The cuts bear the unmistakable influence of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who leads Trump’s so-called government efficiency initiative. McMahon acknowledged “regular meetings” with Musk’s team, praising them for identifying “waste” in the department.Department headquarters remained closed on Wednesday following the mass terminations, with officials citing security concerns. More

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      Trump official defending Doge filmed fashion influencer videos from office

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      The chief spokesperson for the agency overseeing mass firings as Donald Trump and Elon Musk slash the federal workforce used her office to record fashion influencer videos even as thousands of workers were losing their jobs.McLaurine Pinover, communications director at the US office of personnel management (OPM), posted several Instagram videos during business hours in which she posed in different outfits, CNN reported.One video was posted on 13 February, the day OPM reportedly directed several agencies to lay off thousands of employees with probationary status, including about 20 people on Pinover’s own team.Pinover has issued numerous statements backing moves to fire federal workers, including describing a controversial directive for all workers to list five things they achieve each week as “a commitment to an efficient and accountable federal workforce”.CNN said Pinover did not respond to questions but said she deleted her Instagram account minutes after being approached for comment. Pinover’s LinkedIn page appeared to have been taken down, too.Videos published by CNN showed Pinover in her office, showing herself wearing various clothing outfits with hashtags including “#dcstyle” and “#dcinfluencer” and the song Busy Woman by Sabrina Carpenter.One post was made on Tuesday, the day the Department of Education announced it was cutting half its workforce, CNN said.Pinover may have benefited from affiliate links to buy clothes in her videos, CNN said, though it noted that she only had approximately 800 followers to her account.Former OPM staffers told CNN the videos were filmed in the office of the communications director, across the hall from an annex used by workers for the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), Musk’s vehicle for imposing cuts.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOne unnamed former staffer said: “I saw it, and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me, that’s my office.’ She’s the spokesperson for the agency that is advocating for the firing based on performance and efficiency of the rest of the government workforce, and she’s using government property as a backdrop for her videos.”Jack Miller, Pinover’s predecessor as OPM communications director under Joe Biden, said: “Your number one job as a leader is to protect and support your people. So instead of fighting tooth and nail to keep your team, we’re posting fashion videos. It’s absurd.”Donald K Sherman, chief counsel for the watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told CNN: “It is highly problematic that while dedicated civil servants who want to work for the government are being fired for all manner of dubious reasons, or are being forced out by this administration, that someone at the agency leading that attack on the civil service is using their government job for private gain.” More

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      Is the US heading for a government shutdown? 5 essential reads to occupy the mind while we wait to find out

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      Brinkmanship, a political scramble to keep the lights on in Washington and finger-pointing over who is to the blame – we’ve been here before, right?

      The threat of government shutdowns seems to be a regular feature of modern American politics.

      And while this is not good for the nerves – or sleep patterns – of politicians, economists and a weary public, it does mean that The Conversation U.S. has a wealth of articles in the archive explaining what a shutdown is, why they happen and what the consequences are.

      So while we watch the process play out in Washington, D.C. – at the time of writing, a spending bill was heading to the U.S. Senate after being passed by the House – we have gathered a few essential reads on the subject of shutdowns.

      1. How a shutdown affects the economy

      Should Congress fail to pass a spending bill by the end of March 14, 2025, the government will fall into a shutdown – and not for the first time. There have been about 21 government shutdowns in the U.S. Three of these took place during the first Trump administration, the longest starting three days before Christmas in 2018 and lasting 34 days.

      But what is the economic cost of these shutdowns?

      Northwestern finance scholar Scott R. Baker examined the short- and long-term effects of a shutdown in 2013.

      Baker wrote that the most immediate impact of a shutdown is on the government’s day-to-day operations.

      “Many national museums and parks are closed, immigration hearings are being postponed, and the Food and Drug Administration isn’t doing routine inspections of domestic food-processing facilities,” Baker wrote.

      Whether a shutdown has a longer-term economic impact, Baker explained, depends on “how long the shutdown lasts and whether employees are paid their forgone wages after its conclusion.”

      Read more:
      How a government shutdown affects the economy

      2. Who bears the brunt?

      As a researcher who studies people’s wealth, Jay L. Zagorsky understands that the loss of a single paycheck can be devastating for many American families.

      During the 2019 partial shutdown, about 800,000 federal workers were either furloughed or working without pay.

      “Going without a paycheck for a few weeks is hard enough,” Zagorsky wrote. “If the shutdown lasts months or years, the situation could get very dire for the average government worker.”

      Zagorsky noted that there is a bit of good news.

      “Congress tends to give all affected workers back pay, regardless of whether they worked during the impasse,” he wrote.

      Read more:
      Federal workers begin to feel pain of shutdown as 800,000 lose their paychecks

      3. Federal workers’ morale must be rock bottom

      Of course, the current shutdown showdown comes as federal workers are already fretting over their job security thanks to President Donald Trump’s agenda of cutting down government.

      A 2023 article by Susannah Bruns Ali, assistant professor of public policy and administration at Florida International University, explains how a shutdown might actually make it a little easier for the new administration to trim the federal workforce – but that might not be so great for the public.

      “Shutdowns lead to more people being more likely to leave government employment – and higher workloads and lower motivation for those who remain,” Ali wrote. “These conditions may feed Republican political goals, but they harm the millions of Americans who depend on competent, timely assistance from the public servants on the government payroll. This ultimately leads to lower work performance and employee retention problems.”

      Read more:
      Government shutdowns hurt federal worker morale, long after paychecks resume − especially for those considered ‘nonessential’

      4. The harm to the public

      As Ali’s article alludes to, the harm of a shutdown is felt throughout the wider public. In a 2019 article, American University’s Morten Wendelbo expanded on one key area that’s affected: Americans’ health and safety.

      Wendelbo explained that shutdowns make it harder for key U.S. agencies to respond to and prepare for disasters – due to the effects of a pause in funding, but also due to the impact shutdowns have on the retention and recruitment of public servants.

      Writing on the impact of the then-ongoing 2019 shutdown, Wendelbo noted: “The shutdown weakens the government’s ability to foresee, prevent and respond to upcoming natural disasters. For example, hurricane modelers with NOAA, the agency chiefly responsible for storm forecasts, are furloughed.”

      Read more:
      The shutdown will harm the health and safety of Americans, even after it’s long over

      5. So why do shutdowns happen?

      Given the economic and societal risks of a government shutdown, why have they become a feature of modern politics?

      In a 2023 interview, Northwestern University political scientist Laurel Harbridge-Yong explained: “Since the 1970s, both the House and Senate have become much more polarized. Members of the two parties are more unified internally and further apart from the opposing party. You don’t have the overlap between parties now that existed 50 years ago.”

      In addition, electoral and congressional politics have shifted to increase the pressure on Republican lawmakers to appease a conservative base, “which has both individual and collective reasons to oppose a compromise.” Democrats, too, are less likely to compromise “both because they don’t want to gut programs that they put in place and also because they don’t want to make this look like a win for Republicans, who have been able to play chicken and get what they wanted,” Harbridge-Yong wrote.

      Read more:
      With government funding running out soon, expect more brinkmanship despite public dismay at political gridlock

      This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives and includes sections previously included in The Conversation articles. More

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      Trump is using Mahmoud Khalil to test his mass deportation plan | Heba Gowayed

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      On 8 March, Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia University, was apprehended from university housing by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents. Khalil, a Palestinian and student leader at the Columbia encampments last year, was told by the arresting officers that his green card had been “revoked”, an action that only an immigration judge can decide. It has since been revealed that he is in Ice custody in La Salle, Louisiana, a detention site notorious for abuse.On Truth Social, Donald Trump celebrated the apprehension of Khalil, whom he called “a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student” and bragged of more arrests to come.Khalil has not been accused, by anyone, of violating the law. Instead, his apprehension is a dangerous example of deportation as a retaliation for first amendment-protected speech. Simply put, Khalil was punished for protesting against US complicity in what is widely recognized as a genocide in Gaza. The Trump administration has exploited anti-Palestinian racism as a means to test its mass deportation goals: whitening the nation by eliminating immigrants and insisting that those who are here not challenge those in authority. Khalil’s arrest and detention reveals the fragility of our first amendment protections, of who does and does not have a voice in our nation.As a professor, I am troubled by the central role that academia, which in its ideal form is a bastion of free speech and critical thought, is playing in this assault on human rights. Universities and colleges have become consumed by a politics of consent, where to appease donors and politicians, leadership has collaborated in the targeting of their own students, and faculty largely remain silent in the face of assaults on them.As Israel began its bombardment of Gaza in October 2023, students across the nation set up encampments on their campuses, reminiscent of the anti-apartheid movement of decades past. The Gaza protests were overwhelmingly peaceful, with like-minded students from all backgrounds sharing meals and community.View image in fullscreenColumbia University administrators, for their part, called the the New York City police department to brutalize and arrest their students, criminalizing them. They have since sealed off the public spaces on their campus and restricted access to them, including illegally closing the 116th through street rather than risk any protest on the campus lawn. The brutality is ongoing: just last week, nine students from Barnard were arrested in a new escalation.Much has been written about the “Palestine exception” – the idea that advocating for Palestine is excluded from free speech protections. Well before 7 October 2023, people had been fired, sanctioned, or retaliated against for their writing and speech on issues related to the occupation of Palestine by Israel. Since then, the number has ballooned to thousands of cases as repression has intensified.In the lead-up to his arrest by Ice, Khalil reached out to Columbia twice asking for help, describing a “dehumanizing doxing campaign led by Columbia affiliates Shai Davidai and David Lederer” including a tweet by Davidai, a faculty member at Columbia, who called Khalil a “terror supporter” and tagged Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, to demand his deportation.Rubio deployed the racialized language of “terrorism” to announce that he would target international students for “visa denial or revocation, and deportation”. The announcement was applauded by Senator Tom Cotton and the House committee on foreign affairs, which tweeted from its official account: “Terrorist sympathizers are not welcome in the United States of America. Thank you @SecRubio and @POTUS for your leadership. Deport them all!”The campaign against Khalil, which White House officials admit is a blueprint for targeting other students, was successful. It was later reported that Rubio himself signed the warrant for his arrest, using a little-known provision in the law that allows the secretary of state to unilaterally determine whose presence is warranted in the nation. It means that the fate of Palestinians such as Khalil is being left to those who would dox a student, to those who want to ethnically cleanse Gaza.Democratic politicians came to Khalil’s defense even as they continued to condemn the protests that he was a part of, even as they saw it fitting to use the power of the federal government to sanction students for daring to speak out. In a statement criticizing the arrest, Hakeem Jeffries still felt compelled to describe Khalil exercising his right to protest as creating “an unacceptable hostile academic environment for Jewish students”.Columbia has not issued any statement of support for Khalil or for other immigrant students. Instead, the school updated its website stating that Ice could enter campus property without a judicial warrant in the case of “risk of imminent harm to people or property”. In other words, Columbia is endorsing that deportation – the torturous and forcible removal of a person from their life – is a fitting consequence for protest. It instructed its faculty to continue operating as “usual”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe implications of this are extraordinary and alarming. It means that as the country takes an authoritarian turn, as the laws become more McCarthyist, more draconian, this university and others are choosing to align themselves with that turn, to go above and beyond to apply the “law”, even if it means greenlighting the abduction of their students.To be sure, Columbia is not the only campus guilty of silencing pro-Palestinian voices. Last year I protested outside the City College of New York as my own students were loaded into police vans at the behest of chancellor of the City University of New York. In February, an advertisement for a Palestine studies position was removed from our hiring platform due to the intervention of the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, who deemed it to be “antisemitic” because it included the words “genocide” and “apartheid”.I am regularly in conversation with faculty who have lost their jobs, with students who have been expelled from their institutions for protest, with people across universities, across the country, who have been doxed and sanctioned and reprimanded for their voice.The tools of oppression, wielded against those students and faculty whose opinions run contrary to those who are in power, are now undermining the very foundations of this democracy. The freedom of Khalil – who is not a political symbol, but an expectant father – the freedom of everyone who raises their voice for Palestine, and the freedom of Palestinians themselves are tethered to all of our freedoms. Khalil’s safety is tied to that of every immigrant, whether on a student or an H1-B visa, or a permanent resident, or even a naturalized citizen. His freedom is tethered to everyone who cares about their right to free expression.As his case is adjudicated in the courts, which considers its legal dimensions, it is not just Mahmoud Khalil who is on trial, but the entirety of a nation teetering on the edge of authoritarianism. More

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      The US’s plutocrats and politicians want more, more, more. Matt LeBlanc shows us a better way | Arwa Mahdawi

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      ‘Nothing will come of nothing,” King Lear said. He was totally wrong, I’m afraid. The truth is, a lot can come from nothing. More specifically: great life satisfaction can come from doing very little.You know who is well aware of that? Matt LeBlanc (AKA Joey from Friends), the king of 90s primetime TV. A TikTok featuring resurfaced interviews in which LeBlanc extols the joys of sloth is generating enormous enthusiasm online. The TikTok pulls from a 2018 interview in which LeBlanc gushed about how much he enjoyed taking time off after Friends and then cuts to a 2017 interview in which he said: “I should be a professional nothing.” Speaking to Conan O’Brien, LeBlanc explained: “Because I think I would like to do not a fucking thing. That’s what I would like to do. Just nothing. Nothing. Zero.” (Same, Matt, same.)Why is this old clip getting so much new attention? Because in a world that fetishises productivity, it seems that people appreciate someone unapologetically enjoying being lazy. Perhaps more importantly, however, at a time when it seems as if the rich and powerful never have enough, but are constantly seeking more, more, more, it’s refreshing to see someone be content with what they have. Obviously, LeBlanc has millions and is a household name, so it’s not like he is making do. Still, having gazillions doesn’t seem to stop others from trying to claw their way to more, does it?Look at tech oligarchs such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, for example. They have more money than God and instead of quietly enjoying it they are throwing funds at Donald Trump so they can try to get even more influence over our daily lives. The one good tech multimillionaire seems to be Tom Anderson, the co-founder of Myspace. After he sold the site for bags of money, he quickly retired; now, he travels the world having fun. He hasn’t tried to set up some dystopian new venture or become a politician. He’s just enjoying life.And look at the US government, which is crammed with people well past the age of retirement who refuse to cede power. US gerontocracy is so absurd that, last year, the then 81-year-old Kay Granger, who had been a Republican congresswoman since 1997, was mysteriously absent from work for months. A reporter found Granger residing at a senior living facility while dealing with “dementia issues”. She could have retired decades before, but, like many of her colleagues, she seemed determined to continue working.The moral of all this? A lot of people leading the US should be more like Joey from Friends. Try to enjoy retirement, please! Just give it a go! Particularly you, Elon. Please try doing a lot, lot less. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Trump is using antisemitism as a pretext for a war on the first amendment | Judith Levine

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      On Saturday night, agents of the Department of Homeland Security arrested and detained the Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil. He is still in Ice custody in a remote Louisiana lockup known for extreme human rights violations, from denial of food and water to medical “care” verging on torture.Khalil, a Palestinian Syrian, emerged as a leader in Columbia’s Gaza solidarity encampment last year and a level-headed negotiator with university officials on behalf of the student protesters. Married to a US citizen, he holds a green card. Neither his American wife, who is eight months pregnant, nor his lawyers were warned of the arrest or told where he would be held.The importance of Khalil’s arrest cannot be overstated. The state entered the home of a legal US resident, seized and imprisoned him and are now trying to deport him on criminal charges of abetting terrorism – for exercising his constitutional right to free speech.This is not the first time in American history that immigrants have been deported or US citizens persecuted for nonviolent political expression deemed dangerous by the government. But it is the first such arrest by an authoritarian regime determined to eliminate its perceived enemies. It will not be the last.Khalil’s ordeal should come as no surprise. The Trump administration announced recently it would revoke the student visas and green cards of “Hamas sympathizers” – AKA supporters of Palestinian liberation.But Trump has long prepared for this moment. As one of his first acts as president in January 2017, he realized his campaign promise to impose “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” in a series of executive orders banning entrance of travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries and suspending the resettlement of Syrian refugees. The first two orders, both called “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States”, were struck down as unconstitutional; a third revision passed muster.At the same time, rightwing supporters of Israel were working to equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. And since criticism of Israel is equated with sympathy with its enemies, and Israel’s enemies are blanketly tarred as terrorists, antisemitism could also be elided with terrorism.In 2018, a bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Act (AAA) was introduced in the House with 51 co-sponsors. Its purpose: to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism in enforcing Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination by institutions receiving federal funding. The bill referred to the IHRA’s “contemporary examples of antisemitism” as potentially useful evidence of discriminatory intent. But it did not spell out its most politically useful example of antisemitism: that is, criticism of Israel.The AAA was not signed into law, but in December 2019 the White House issued Executive Order 13899, “Combating Anti-Semitism”, to carry it out. Looking back, the document looks almost cautious. As Congress did in its bill, the White House added a caveat: “Agencies shall not diminish or infringe upon any right protected under Federal law or under the First Amendment.”The 2019 order was a premonition; it didn’t see much use. Anyway, with his characterization of the Nazis marching it Charlottesville as “very fine people” fresh in mind, the president had little credibility with Jews. But now Trump is taking action. One of the executive orders to come off his desk just hours after inauguration was “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats”. The order both elaborates on the Muslim ban and defines the threats more vaguely – thus, more easily attacked.The US must institute “vigilant” vetting of visa applicants, the document says, as well as “aliens” already legally in the country, to ensure that they “do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles, and do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security”. The order also seeks to protect the US against foreigners “who preach . . . sectarian violence [or] the overthrow or replacement of the culture on which our constitutional Republic stands”. Aside from material support for terrorists, the rest is constitutionally protected speech.At the end of the month came “Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism” expanding EO 13899 in light of “an unprecedented wave of vile anti-Semitic discrimination, vandalism, and violence” since the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023. Homing in on schools and colleges, it instructs authorities to use “all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence”. Again, harassment and violence are not defined. And this time there is no mention of the first amendment.The president’s orders on antisemitism, like most of his orders, were also presaged by a plan from the Heritage Foundation: Project Esther, published on the first anniversary of 7 October, aims to vanquish the “virulently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-American ‘pro-Palestinian movement’” it calls the “Hamas Support Network”. The so-called “Hamas Support Network” is not only “trying to compel the US government to abandon” Israel; it is bent on no less than “the destruction of capitalism and democracy”.The detailed strategy touts a list of 856 professors at more than 240 universities in the US and Canada who have “openly advocated or supported up to 63 different HSOs [Hamas Support Organizations]”; it indicts, by name, the progressive lawmakers (some of them Jews) who belong to an “active cabal of Jew-haters, Israel-haters, and America-haters in Washington”. It itemizes the myriad “Hamas Support Organizations” from which it would wrest first amendment protection, including Jewish Voice for Peace.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionProject Esther’s methods are classically McCarthyist: “We must conduct legal, private research and investigation to uncover criminal wrongdoing. We must conduct audits, both academic and financial. We must conduct information campaigns that are designed to illuminate and expose – ‘name and shame’ – to undermine HSN and HSO members’ credibility.” The president’s cabinet can’t wait to start.We have been here long before Trump. The Alien Enemies Act of 1798, passed by a Congress fearful that noncitizens would take the enemy’s side in a war against the French, allowed the president to deport those deemed dangerous. The accompanying Sedition Act criminalized the publication – or utterance – of “any false, scandalous, and malicious writing” against the government.The Alien Registration Act (or Smith Act) of 1940 imposed sentences of up to 20 years for advocacy – as defined by the state – of the violent overthrow of the US government. It also required noncitizens – presumed proponents of violent overthrow – to register with the government. During the second world war, more than 5 million immigrants registered; 900,000 of them were deported as “enemy aliens”.Unless it is repealed, no law is dead. During the cold war, the FBI deployed a 1918 immigration law to imprison and deport foreign-born anarchists, communists, union organizers and pacifists. In his last days as Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, weakly flogged the Antisemitism Awareness Act, again without success. In February, when the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, announced that the agency would require immigrants to register so it could “track … and compel them to leave the country voluntarily”, she invoked the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. In his inaugural address, Trump vowed to revive the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. This week, he reinstated the Muslim ban.To be clear, the Trump administration is not interested in combating antisemitism.Elon Musk does Nazi salutes. The Pentagon’s new deputy press secretary, Kingsley Wilson, is accused of spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories. The health and human services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has claimed that Covid-19 was “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. The FBI has announced it will relax investigation of neo-Nazi terrorist cells, which have been regrouping since the president’s pardon of the January 6 insurrectionists, to focus on the surveillance of leftwing organizations including Black Lives Matter and the imaginary formation it calls Antifa.Antisemitism is the pretext for Trump’s interlocking multi-front wars on the first amendment, immigrants and higher education. Khalil is a well-known figure with good lawyers. He will hopefully be released. But his arrest is the opening act in a theatre of deportation that will become more and more real and real for unnumbered others who will disappear without petitions, support committees or press coverage.

      Judith Levine is a Brooklyn journalist and essayist, a contributing writer to the Intercept and the author of five books More

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      ‘We’re on the edge of chaos’: families with trans kids fight for care as bans take hold

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      Aryn Kavanaugh was sitting in her living room in South Carolina when her 17-year-old daughter came into the room and said: “I’m really scared. I think people are gonna die.” Katherine, who is using her middle name for her protection, told Kavanaugh that she thought transgender youth may be the target of violence due to the hate generated by Donald Trump’s recent action.On 28 January, Trump issued an executive order to ban access to gender-affirming care for youth under 19 years old. It directed federal agencies to deny funding to institutions that offer gender-affirming medical care including hormones and puberty blockers.“She just felt like the world was crumbling around her. So we talked it out and tried to stay super positive,” said Kavanaugh, a parent of two trans children. “I think she really feels like we’re on the edge of chaos.”In a victory for trans kids and their families, a federal judge in Maryland blocked the ban on 4 March. The preliminary injunction extended a mid-February restraining order that blocked Trump’s directive and will remain in effect until further order from the US district court for the district of Maryland. In the meantime, the order prohibits the government from withholding federal funding to healthcare facilities that provide treatment to trans youth.Still, the executive order sent parents, children and medical providers into a tailspin as they deciphered its impacts. Some hospitals immediately canceled appointments and turned away new patients to adhere to the directive. In early February, Katherine was dropped as a patient at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she received gender-affirming care after South Carolina banned hormone therapy, surgery and puberty blockers for trans youth last year. Some parents say that their children’s mental health severely declined in the weeks following the executive order. And as a result, families have gone to great lengths to ensure that their trans kids continue to receive care, including considering moving abroad or stocking up on puberty suppressants.“We have seen dozens of families affected across the United States, in many, many states that have been left and abandoned without care that they need,” said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, senior counsel and healthcare strategist at the LGBTQ+ civil rights organization Lambda Legal. “This is an unlawful executive order because it seeks to override the congressional mandate to condition federal financial assistance on non-discrimination, and this order seeks to require discrimination as a condition of federal funding.”The pause follows a lawsuit filed on 4 February by civil rights organizations including Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of transgender youth. ACLU staff told the Guardian that they anticipated that the preliminary injunction would remain through the court proceedings.Some hospitals that stopped providing care to trans youth after the January directive, such as Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Children’s Hospital of Richmond, lifted limits on surgeries or hormonal therapy in late February. Kavanaugh said she was “relieved and hopeful” about the preliminary injunction, though it does not roll back South Carolina’s ban on trans youth healthcare, which was signed into law last year.Her 18-year-old trans son Parker and Katherine received treatment at Medical University of South Carolina and then a private clinic in the state for several years until Henry McMaster, the governor of South Carolina, signed into law a ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors in May 2024. Parker is now old enough to receive his care in South Carolina, but the state ban means that the family has had to drive more than five hours each way to Virginia Commonwealth University for Katherine’s doctors’ appointments and medicine every few months.Being dropped as a patient due to the federal ban “puts us in a really tough spot because we’re already having to find care outside of South Carolina. And so that just limits our options,” Kavanaugh said. Katherine’s doctors connected her to a private medical practice in Fairfax, Virginia, that does not receive federal funding, so they were able to avoid a lapse in her care. While the change in providers did not cost more money, it stretched their commute to more than seven hours.In late February, Katherine’s puberty-blocker treatment at Virginia Commonwealth University resumed. In a statement, the hospital said that patients would continue medications, but that surgeries would remain suspended. Trans kids’ treatment remains in limbo as federal challenges wind through the court.‘A psychological toll’Studies have shown that gender-affirming medical care greatly improves trans people’s mental health and quality of life. A 2022 report published in the journal JAMA Network Open analyzed data from a study of 104 transgender and non-binary youth from ages 13 to 20 who received hormonal therapy or puberty blockers at the Seattle Children’s Gender Clinic for a year. Researchers found that 60% of participants reported lower rates of depression and 73% had less odds of suicidal ideation and self harm after receiving gender-affirming hormones and puberty blockers.Black transgender people, who experience the intersecting stigma of being gender diverse and racial minorities, are at even greater risk of poor mental health. A 2022 national survey of 33,993 LGBTQ+ young people by the Trevor Project, a non-profit, found that one in four Black transgender and nonbinary youth attempted suicide in the past year, more than double the rate of their cisgender counterparts.“It’s already difficult to access healthcare and treatment. It’s additionally difficult for folks who belong to other marginalized communities, especially families and children of color, as well as folks who are on various forms of state-funded insurance and may have difficulty selecting their providers to begin with,” Harper Seldin, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU, told the Guardian.“There is already a subset of gender clinics in this country who provide this care. When you lay over on top of that insurance and access based on family means, it’s particularly devastating for families who can’t just pick up and go somewhere else – to another city, state or other country – to get care.”While her trans daughter’s care hasn’t been directly affected by the executive order, Sarah, a Texas mother who asked that her last name not be used to protect her daughter’s privacy, said that her daughter Raven was devastated by the president’s directive. Raven, a 16-year-old Black trans girl in Texas who is using a pseudonym, dropped out of school last month due to her declining mental health, exacerbated by the federal ban. Sarah said that Raven had rarely got out of bed, and when she did, she would show her mom news reports of murdered Black trans girls and women.“She has told me that she’s afraid of being killed if she leaves the house,” Sarah said. “She really only will leave the house with me. But that’s very few and far between, because she’s just incredibly depressed.”Since dropping out of school, Sarah said that Raven’s depression and anxiety significantly decreased, and she plans to start GED test preparation classes over the summer.In November 2024, the LGBTQ+ non-profit Human Rights Campaign Foundation released a report that showed that half of the 36 transgender people killed in the last 12 months were Black trans women. That reality has made it terrifying for Raven to live as a Black trans girl, Sarah said.Raven’s medical providers have increased her antidepressants dosage, and she now checks in with her psychiatrist every three weeks. Since last year, Raven has had to fly to Colorado every six months to receive gender-affirming care due to a Texas ban on treatment for minors. She has received grants from the non-profit Campaign on Southern Equality to fund the travel for medical treatment, which has helped defer some of the exorbitant costs of seeking out-of-state care.Sarah said that she has researched living in other nations and would be willing to order medicine from Canada if Raven could no longer get medical treatment in Colorado. Gender-affirming care has drastically improved Raven’s life. “She feels more herself,” Sarah said. “If she didn’t have it, I don’t think she would choose to stay alive.”Navigating medical care restrictions has caused anxiety for parents who are shouldering the burden of the policies’ twists and turns for their children. A Georgia-based parent, Peter Isbister, said that he had chosen not to share the news of the executive order with his 11-year-old trans son Lev, who is using a pseudonym out of fear of harassment: “It’s taken a psychological toll on his parents, not on him.”An endocrinologist is currently monitoring Lev’s hormone levels to determine when he will be put on puberty blockers. Isbister, an attorney and founder of the peer support network Metro Atlanta TransParent, has to contend with the federal executive order and a looming ban on puberty blockers for minors in Georgia.“If the bill passes in Georgia, then we as a family are going to really have to study up more seriously on how it works to be an out-of-state person to get care in California, New Mexico, Massachusetts or wherever,” Isbister said. “And the more states that restrict access to care, the harder that’s going to be.”As a result of the federal and state policies, Isbister said that he has talked with an immigration attorney about acquiring Canadian citizenship for his son. But at least for now, Lev’s clinic continues to provide him care.While Isbister was “heartened” by the judge’s injunction on the executive order, he said that it is “wrenching and in my view unjust that my ability to provide my kid healthcare should be an issue for our federal courts”. More