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      US judge finds probable cause to hold Trump officials in contempt over alien act deportations

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      A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that there was probable cause to hold Trump officials in criminal contempt for violating his temporary injunction that barred the use of the Alien Enemies Act wartime power to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members.In a scathing 46-page opinion, James Boasberg, the chief US district judge for Washington, wrote that senior Trump officials could either return the people who were supposed to have been protected by his injunction, or face contempt proceedings.The judge also warned that if the administration tried to stonewall his contempt proceedings or instructed the justice department to decline to file contempt charges against the most responsible officials, he would appoint an independent prosecutor himself.“The court does not reach such conclusions lightly or hastily,” Boasberg wrote. “Indeed, it has given defendants ample opportunity to explain their actions. None of their responses have been satisfactory.”The threat of contempt proceedings marked a major escalation in the showdown over Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members, without normal due process, in his expansive interpretation of his executive power.It came one day after another federal judge, in a separate case involving the wrongful deportation of a man to El Salvador, said she would force the administration to detail what steps it had taken to comply with a US supreme court order compelling his return.In that case, US district judge Paula Xinis ordered the administration to answer questions in depositions and in writing about whether it had actually sought to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Ábrego García, who was protected from being sent to El Salvador.Taken together, the decisions represented a developing effort by the federal judiciary to hold the White House accountable for its apparent willingness to flout adverse court orders and test the limits of the legal system.At issue in the case overseen by Boasberg is the Trump administration’s apparent violation of his temporary restraining order last month blocking deportations under the Alien Enemies Act – and crucially to recall planes that had already departed.The administration never recalled the planes and argued, after the fact, that they did not follow Boasberg’s order to recall the planes because he gave that instruction verbally and it was not included in his later written order.In subsequent hearings, lawyers for the Trump administration also suggested that even if Boasberg had included the directive in his written order, by the time he had granted the temporary restraining order, the deportation flights were outside US airspace and therefore beyond the judge’s jurisdiction.Boasberg excoriated that excuse and others in his opinion, writing that under the so-called collateral-bar rule, if a party is charged with acting in contempt for disobeying a court order, it cannot raise the possible legal invalidity of the order as a defense.“If Defendants believed – correctly or not – that the Order encroached upon the President’s Article II powers, they had two options: they could seek judicial review of the injunction but not disobey it, or they could disobey it but forfeit any right to raise their legal argument as a defense,” Boasberg wrote.Boasberg also rejected the administration’s claim that his authority over the planes disappeared the moment they left US airspace, finding that federal courts regularly restrain executive branch conduct abroad, even when it touches on national security matters.“That courts can enjoin US officials’ overseas conduct simply reflects the fact that an injunction … binds the enjoined parties wherever they might be; the ‘situs of the [violation], whether within or without the United States, is of no importance,’” Boasberg wrote.Boasberg added he was unpersuaded by the Trump administration’s efforts to stonewall his attempts to date to establish whether it knew it had deliberately flouted his injunction, including by invoking the state secrets doctrine to withhold basic information about when and what times the planes departed.“The Court is skeptical that such information rises to the level of a state secret. As noted, the Government has widely publicized details of the flights through social media and official announcements thereby revealing snippets of the information the Court seeks,” Boasberg wrote. More

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      Trump administration shutters US office countering foreign disinformation

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      The Trump administration is shuttering the state department’s last remaining bastion to monitor foreign disinformation campaigns.Known as the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/Fimi) hub, the closure represents a huge victory for rightwing critics who had alleged that the office, despite only looking at foreign state-level disinformation attacks on other countries, was involved in censoring American conservative speech. It comes as part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to dismantle what it describes as government overreach in monitoring speech.“Over the last decade, Americans have been slandered, fired, charged, and even jailed for simply voicing their opinions,” the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, posted on X on Wednesday. “That ends today.”The move follows an executive order on “countering censorship and restoring freedom of speech” which characterizes previous efforts against misinformation as government infringement on constitutionally protected speech rights.Rubio – who said in his own confirmation hearing that countering Chinese disinformation was critical – disparaged the office, formerly known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC), saying it “cost taxpayers more than $50m per year and actively silenced and censored the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving”.The elimination of R/Fimi leaves the state department without any dedicated resources to counter increasingly sophisticated government disinformation campaigns. Russia reportedly spends approximately $1.5bn annually on foreign influence operations, Iran’s primary propaganda arm had a $1.26bn budget in 2022, and China invests “billions of dollars annually” according to GEC estimates.James Rubin, former special envoy and coordinator for the Global Engagement Center, said that the decision leaves the US vulnerable to foreign influence operations.“This is the functional equivalent of unilateral disarmament. If we remove our defenses against Russian and Chinese information warfare, it’s just to their advantage. That’s called unilateral disarmament.”Rubin, during his tenure as the last head of the GEC, spent considerable time on Capitol Hill talking with Republican skeptics about the office’s foreign-only mandate, ultimately to no avail.Acting undersecretary Darren Beattie reportedly informed staff that the office would be eliminated and all positions terminated. The approximately 40 employees will be placed on administrative leave and dismissed within 30 days, state department sources told MIT Technology Review.R/Fimi became the successor to the GEC, an Obama-era office that was defunded in December after Republicans in Congress blocked the reauthorization of its $61m budget.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDuring its existence, the GEC had developed AI models to detect deepfakes, exposed Russian propaganda efforts targeting Latin American public opinion on the Ukraine conflict, and published reports on Russian and Chinese disinformation operations. One of its most notable successes was exposing the Kremlin-backed “African initiative”, a plan to undermine US influence across Africa by spreading conspiracy theories about US-funded health programs.In September 2024, the justice department indicted two employees of RT, a Russian state-owned media outlet, after a scheme was unveiled that it had been operating a vast military procurement network supplying Russian forces in Ukraine through online crowdfunding platforms.Beattie, who is overseeing the closure, brings his own controversy to the role: he had been fired as a speechwriter during Trump’s first administration for attending a white nationalist conference and promoted theories suggesting FBI involvement in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. More

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      Who is Kilmar Ábrego García, the man wrongly deported to El Salvador?

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      The ongoing legal saga of Kilmar Ábrego García, a man wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, has become a flashpoint as Donald Trump tests the limits of his executive power and continues with his plans for mass deportations.On Tuesday, a federal judge sharply rebuked the Trump administration for taking no steps to secure Ábrego García’s release despite a supreme court order last week ordering the administration to facilitate his return to the US.The administration previously conceded Ábrego García’s deportation was an “administrative error”, but it has since refused to bring him back and dug in on its contention that it should not be responsible for his repatriation.Here’s what to know about the case.Who is Kilmar Ábrego García?Ábrego García, 29, is a Salvadorian immigrant who entered the US illegally around 2011 because he and his family were facing threats by local gangs.In 2019, he was detained by police outside a Home Depot in Maryland, with several other men, and asked about a murder. He denied knowledge of a crime and repeatedly denied that he was part of a gang.He was subsequently put in immigration proceedings, where officials argued they believed he was part of the MS-13 gang in New York based on his Chicago Bulls gear and on the word of a confidential informant.A US immigration judge granted him protection from deportation to El Salvador because he was likely to face gang persecution. He was released and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) did not appeal the decision or try to deport him to another country.Ábrego García was living in Maryland with his wife, a US citizen, and has had a work permit since 2019. The couple are parents to their son and her two children from a previous relationship.Why was he deported?Ábrego García was stopped and detained by Ice officers on 12 March and questioned about alleged gang affiliation.He was deported on 15 March on one of three high-profile deportation flights to El Salvador. That flight also included Venezuelans whom the government accuses of being gang members and assumed special powers to expel without a hearing.Ábrego García is currently being detained in the Center for Terrorism Confinement (Cecot), a controversial mega-prison in Tecoluca, El Salvador, known for its harsh conditions.The US is currently paying El Salvador $6m to house people who it alleges are members of the Tren de Aragua gang for a year.His wife, Jennifer Vásquez Sura, said she has not spoken to him since he was flown to El Salvador and imprisoned.What have the courts said?The US district judge Paula Xinis directed the Trump administration on 4 April to “facilitate and effectuate” the return of Ábrego García, in response to a lawsuit filed by the man and his family challenging the legality of his deportation.The supreme court unanimously upheld the directive on 10 April. In an unsigned decision, the court said the judge’s order “properly requires the government to ‘facilitate’ Ábrego García’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador”.However, the supreme court said the additional requirement to “effectuate” his return was unclear and may exceed the judge’s authority. It directed Xinis to clarify the directive “with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs”.Xinis admonished the government in a hearing on 11 April, saying it was “extremely troubling” that the administration had failed to comply with a court order to provide details on Ábrego García’s whereabouts and status.On Saturday, the Trump administration confirmed Ábrego García was alive and confined in El Salvador’s mega-prison, Cecot.Xinis once again, on Tuesday, criticized justice department officials for not complying with the supreme court’s order, saying “to date, nothing has been done”. She gave the government two weeks to produce details of their efforts to return Ábrego García to US soil.What has the US government said?The White House has cast Ábrego García as an MS-13 gang member and asserted that US courts lack jurisdiction over the matter because the Salvadoran national is no longer in the US.Earlier this month, the Trump administration acknowledged that Ábrego García was deported as a result of an “administrative error”. An immigration judge had previously prohibited the federal government from deporting him to El Salvador in 2019 regardless of whether he was a member of the MS-13 gang.The justice department has said it interpreted the court’s order to “facilitate” Ábrego García’s return as only requiring them to “remove any domestic obstacles that would otherwise impede the alien’s ability to return here”.The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, has characterized the court’s order as only requiring the administration to provide transportation to Ábrego García if released by El Salvador.“That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s up to them,” Bondi said. “The supreme court ruled that if El Salvador wants to return him, we would ‘facilitate’ it, meaning provide a plane.”Justice department lawyers have argued that asking El Salvador to return Ábrego García should be considered “foreign relations” and therefore outside the scope of the courts.But the administration’s argument that it lacks the power to return Ábrego García into US custody is undercut by the US paying El Salvador to detain deportees it sends to Cecot prison.What have his lawyers said?Ábrego García’s attorneys have said there is no evidence he was in MS-13. The allegation was based on a confidential informant’s claim in 2019 that Ábrego Garcia was a member of a chapter in New York, where he has never lived.Ábrego García had never been charged with or convicted of any crime, according to his lawyers. He had a permit from the Department of Homeland Security to legally work in the US, his attorneys said.The Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, traveled to El Salvador on Wednesday where he hopes to visit Ábrego García. He said the government of El Salvador had not responded to his request to visit Cecot.Van Hollen told the Guardian: “This is a Maryland man. His family’s in Maryland, and he’s been caught up in this absolutely outrageous situation where the Trump administration admitted in court that he was erroneously abducted from the United States and placed in this notorious prison in El Salvador in violation of all his due process rights.”What has El Salvador said?Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, has said that he would not order the return of Ábrego García because that would be tantamount to “smuggling” him into the US.During a meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Monday, Bukele was asked whether he would help to return Ábrego García. “The question is preposterous,” he replied.“How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I’m not going to do it.” He added that he would not release Ábrego García into El Salvador either. “I’m not very fond of releasing terrorists into the country.” More

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      The mysterious firing of a Chinese professor has Asian students on edge: ‘Brings chills to our spines’

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      When FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents descended recently on two homes owned by Xiaofeng Wang, a Chinese national and cybersecurity professor at Indiana University, many in the idyllic college town of Bloomington were shocked.In December, Wang had been questioned by his employers about allegedly receiving undisclosed funding from China on a project that also received US federal research grants. On the same day of the home raids, Wang was fired from his longstanding post at Indiana University over email – a move that goes against the university’s own policy.But Wang hasn’t been charged with any offence, and his lawyer says no criminal charges are pending.The incident has driven fear into the hearts of Bloomington’s Asian community of faculty and students who fear a political motivation.“I study at the computer science department, and I’ve overheard Chinese professors talking about how worried they are that something similar could happen them, too,” says a Chinese PhD student who came to Bloomington from Suzhou, Jiangsu province, last September and who asked not to be named given the sensitivity of the issue.During the first Trump administration, the Department of Justice created the China Initiative in an effort to find and prosecute spies for Beijing working in US research and development sectors. At the time, it was criticized by rights groups for fueling racial profiling and violence against Asian Americans, and a review by the Biden administration saw the effort ended in 2022.Now as before, Trump has made targeting universities whose leadership and faculty he believes run against his own agenda a key element of his second term.For the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Gang Chen, what happened to Wang “brings chills to our spines”.“What is particularly troubling in this case is that Indiana University fired him and his wife without due process, presuming guilt instead of innocence,” Chen says.Chen, who has US and Chinese nationality, found himself charged by the Department of Justice for allegedly failing to disclose links to Chinese organizations on a grant application for a federally funded project, with just weeks remaining in Trump’s first term, in January 2021.The charges were dismissed a year later.“The investigations on Professor Wang and his firing creates huge fear among researchers of Chinese descent, especially students and postdoctorates from China. It is clear that such events, together with legislation and hostile rhetoric, are driving out talents. I learned that many Chinese students and postdoctorates here are considering leaving the US.”More students from China come to the US to study and research at third-level institutions than from any other country.The fear of Chinese spies operating in the US isn’t completely unfounded.A report released recently by US intelligence agencies found that China remains the top cyber threat to America, and many politicians on the right believe smaller colleges in low-key parts of the country such as the midwest could be used as gateways into the US by the Chinese Communist party.In October, five Chinese students at a college in Michigan were charged with spying on a military training camp where Taiwanese soldiers participate. This month, information on several Chinese students at Purdue University, also in Indiana, was sought by members of Congress, claiming national security interests, though no charges have been brought.But the vast majority of the estimated 300,000 Chinese academics and students in the US today are in the country to legitimately contribute to research and to learn, say experts who fear that Trump’s targeting of colleges deemed to be antisemitic may now be shifting to the midwest.Last month, the Department of Education named Indiana University Bloomington among 60 colleges under investigation for alleged antisemitic discrimination, a move that could result in funding cuts.It’s not only Chinese academics and students who could be affected.Universities in Illinois, Indiana and other heartland states are home to some of the largest Chinese student populations in the country.Nearly half of Urbana-Champaign’s combined population of 130,000 people in neighboring Illinois is made up of college students and staff. Nearly six thousand are students from China.In Bloomington, which has a population of under 80,000 people, close to 50,000 are students, with nearly 10% coming from overseas.Midwestern colleges and the communities around them are keen to attract international students and rely heavily on the money they bring with them; about 2,000 Chinese students enroll at Indiana University every year. International undergrad students are charged an average of $42,000 in tuition and fees, alongside $14,000 in housing and food, bringing hundreds of millions of dollars into the college and town.Over the years, these and other small university towns have come to rely on international students to prop up their economies.A couple of blocks west of the University of Indiana Bloomington campus, a grouping of Chinese, Korean and Asian eateries cater to the college’s large Asian community. The sidewalk in front of the Longfei Chinese restaurant is dotted with food signs written in Mandarin. The restaurant’s manager, however, says he believes that the political problems between Washington and Beijing have seen the number of Chinese students coming to the US – and through his doors – fall in recent years.The Chinese PhD student, who one recent morning is here grabbing lunch, says his student visa status allows him to stay in the US for up to five years, but he and his Chinese colleagues are worried that the Trump administration may cut that short.“I’m concerned with President Trump’s hostility against China and this kind of hostility may affect Chinese students and professors, and the funding that we get,” he says.“I’m concerned about the impact on my life.”Faculty at the department where Wang worked for more than two decades have called for Indiana University to revoke his dismissal. His profile page on the University’s website has been removed and college authorities have not commented on his firing.“Neither Prof Wang nor Ms Ma [his wife, who worked as a library analyst at the same university] have been arrested … further, there are no pending criminal charges as far as we are aware,” says Jason Covert, a lawyer at Taft Stettinius & Hollister, a firm representing Wang and Ma.“They look forward to clearing their names and resuming their successful careers at the conclusion of this investigation.”Covert would not say whether Wang planned to remain in the US. More

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      A crack in the manosphere: Joe Rogan’s guests are revolting | Sam Wolfson

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      Sam Harris is the kind of guest Joe Rogan loves to have on his podcast: he dresses awkwardly in a sport coat with jeans; he undertook a PhD in neuroscience after a transformative experience with MDMA; his tone is accessible yet patronising; he has a sense of academic authority which belies a set of controversial views that include calling Islam “uniquely uncivil” and almost unfettered support for Israeli attacks on Gaza; he made an app called Waking Up, which promises to be “a new operating system for your mind”. Rogan has hosted Harris on his podcast many times and the pair call each other good friends.But even Harris seems perturbed by Rogan’s more wholehearted embrace of Musk and Maga. “He’s in over his head on so many topics of great consequence,” Harris told his listeners of his own podcast last week. “He’ll bring someone in to shoot the shit on ‘how the Holocaust is not what you think it was’ or ‘maybe Churchill was the bad guy in world war two’ … or he’ll talk to someone like Trump or Tucker Carlson, who lie as freely as they breathe, and doesn’t push back against any of their lies … It is irresponsible, and it’s directly harmful.”Joe Rogan’s podcast success has in large part been about building a community of regular guests from the worlds of comedy, wrestling, psychedelics and non-fiction publishing, a kind of Rogansphere that has begun to feel like a subculture. He hosts his favourite guests time after time, with many of them building entire careers off their appearances on the show.But recently, various members of the Rogansphere have started to turn against their leader. They can’t understand how the host of the most popular podcast in the world seems to have gone from examining both sides to defending Elon Musk at every turn and providing a platform for second world war revisionists.View image in fullscreenIn the past few months, Rogan has called people who thought Elon Musk’s hand gesture was a Nazi salute “dumb”, “crazy”, “illogical and weird” and defended it by saying it’s how Americans used to give the pledge of allegiance in the 1940s. Weeks later, he gave a very sympathetic interview to the podcaster Darryl Cooper, who has previously called Winston Churchill the main villain of the second world war and tweeted an image of Nazis in Paris, saying it was “infinitely preferable” to the drag “Last Supper” scene at the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony.Rogan wasn’t always like this. Over the past decade he has built his podcast into by far the most successful in the world, weathering numerous controversies. He spent much of his career being mislabelled as ideologically rightwing or misogynistic when in fact he’s more of a simpleton who agrees with almost everyone who comes on his show, even when the things they’re saying are contradictory. He has been a staunch believer “in just asking questions” but not so much in listening to or processing the answers. He has supported both Bernie Sanders and RFK Jr, and has taken conflicting views on everything from trans rights to Ye, sometimes hilariously so.The best thing you could say about Rogan is that he is distrustful of all mainstream narratives, in an indiscriminate way. That’s led to him promoting a number of conspiracy theories that fly in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence about vaccines and the climate crisis, but also vocally criticising the war in Gaza and the influence of lobbyists in Washington DC.But his outlook has shifted since Trump was elected for the second time, a victory many credit to a good performance on Rogan’s podcast and Rogan’s subsequent endorsement. On Saturday night at a UFC fight, Rogan ran into Trump, warmly embraced him and said: “I’m so happy for you sir.” Many of his biggest fans, those that discuss episodes in detail on Reddit and Discord, are complaining that he has become a shill for the elites he used to claim to distrust.Rogan has tended to brush off these critiques in the past, saying he’s just an interested comedian asking questions. But even Rogan’s comedy friends have started to bristle at his unwavering support for Musk. Rogan values comedy above all else, investing much of the riches from his podcast in the Austin comedy scene, buying up clubs and appearing regularly as a panellist on Kill Tony, the open-mic standup podcast that takes shots at perceived wokeism. Rogan has a regular cast of comedians on his podcast including Shane Gillis, Kyle Dunnigan and Tim Dillon. These comedians give Rogan his street credibility, and he in turn has given them a huge platform.While they haven’t turned on Rogan yet, they are incredibly disparaging about Musk. Dillon called Musk’s White House press conference “the grossest and cringiest shit anyone has seen for a long time … I disagree with close friends of mine who think Elon Musk is the new Jesus.” Gillis laughed about Musk’s salute on his podcast, and said he thought Musk was “psychotic” and “fucking weird” for lying about how good he is at video games.Rogan meanwhile has recently called Musk “a super genius that’s been fucked with” and “one of the smartest people alive”.This emerging divide between Rogan and his comedic milieu came to a head last month at the recording of Kill Tony’s first special for Netflix (filmed at Rogan’s Comedy Mothership club in Austin). Both Dunnigan and Rogan were on the panel together but Dunnigan was in character, hilariously, as Musk. It was a brilliant and vicious send-up of Musk’s bizarre humour and minimal intelligence that had everyone laughing except Rogan, who avoided making eye contact or saying almost anything for the entire episode. It seemed as though he didn’t want to give any impression to Musk that he was was mocking him.There are no simple ideological lines being drawn between Rogan and the guests that are turning on him. Douglas Murray, for example, is an incredibly conservative pro-Israel historian who supports the withdrawal of visas from students who demonstrated on college campuses last year and has said he wants to ban “all immigration into Europe from Muslim countries”. In many ways he is to the right of Rogan, and used much of his appearance losing a debate on the podcast with his fellow guest Dave Smith over Gaza. Yet he also used his time to admonish Rogan for having too many amateur and conspiracy theory-minded historians on the podcast. “I feel you’ve opened the door to quite a lot of people. You’ve now got a big platform and have been throwing out counter-historical stuff but a very dangerous kind.”Rogan had very little in the way of a meaningful defence. Defending why he had the conspiracy theorist and Pizzagate proponent Ian Carroll on his program, Rogan replied: “I just think I’d like to talk to this person … I brought him on because I want to find out, like, how does one get involved in the whole conspiracy theory business? Because his whole thing is just conspiracies.”There are no smart guys here; both Murray and Rogan have tendency to use circuitous straw man arguments that suit their specific brand of politics. But it does show cracks in the cultural wing of Trumpism.Rogan himself seems to be backing down from a full-throated endorsement of the president’s policies, calling the Venezuelan deportations “horrific” and “bad for the cause”, and calling Trump’s feud with Canada over tariffs “stupid”. Last month he said healthcare should “100% should be socially funded” and was celebrated by Bernie Sanders for doing so.Yet these acknowledgements of bad policies haven’t translated into a lack of enthusiasm for either Trump or Musk, yet. But with Rogan it only takes one convincing guest to change his mind.What’s more, Rogan’s main constituency of listeners, young men, appear to be feeling buyer’s remorse about Trump, with new polling suggesting the group is swinging away from the president. Where his audience go, Rogan tends to follow.On his podcast, Harris told his listeners: “Our society is as politically shattered as it is in part because of how Joe [Rogan] has interacted with information.” Rogan might revel in criticism from progressives, but barbs from his friends are likely to sting. How long Trump can count on Rogan’s cuddles and warm wishes might depend on whether his favourite guests begin to ostracize him. More

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      Trump’s expulsions are jaw-droppingly cruel. But they’re part of an American tradition | Steven Hahn

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      The recent expulsion of Kilmar Armando Ábrego García, a protected legal resident who had committed no offense, is only the latest example of the Trump administration’s unbounded efforts to detain and rapidly expel any immigrant, undocumented or not, who may come into its grasp.Although expulsions – often known as deportations – of undocumented men, women and children have been regular features of life under Democratic as well as Republican presidents in recent years, those of the new administration have been jaw-dropping in their cruelty and utter defiance of federal law and judicial due process, in their heralded scale and in the lust with which they have been carried out. And we would be mistaken to believe that immigrants will be the only victims of what is in effect a widening campaign of political expulsion. After all, Trump has just requested a sixfold increase in funding for detention facilities.Unprecedented as they may appear, the expulsive policies that Trump and his supporters relish, in truth, have a very long and worrisome history in this country. Indeed, they have been integral to political and cultural life since the colonizing settlement of the early 17th century, almost always expressing the will of a self-designated “community” against those accused of threatening its security and integrity. Puritans had barely established the colony of Massachusetts Bay before they expelled Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams for challenging their religious doctrine and civil authority. Others, of less notoriety, would follow them, not to mention the many women who suffered lethal expulsions owing to witchcraft accusations before the century was out.The enlightened republicanism of the 18th century offered little respite and, in some cases, further provocations. Thomas Jefferson expressed the belief that slavery could not be abolished unless the freed Black population, whom he regarded as inferior to the white, was expelled to some foreign territory. His perspective, soon sanitized as “colonization”, would be embraced by most white people in the antislavery movement, including Abraham Lincoln, until well into the civil war. During the revolutionary and constitutional periods, those holding objectionable political views could be treated to tar-and-featherings, ridings on the rail and other well-known rituals of humiliation and expulsion.The early republic and Jacksonian eras, when political democracy appeared to be on the march, were in fact awash with violence-laden expulsions. The targets included Catholics (long associated with “popery”), Mormons (not seen as Christian), abolitionists (accused of promoting miscegenation) and Masons (reviled for their political secrecy) as well as Native peoples who were subjected to the largest mass expulsion in all of our history, forcibly driven out of their homelands east of the Mississippi River to “Indian” territory in the west. Both Alexis de Tocqueville and Abraham Lincoln feared at the time that the tyranny of public opinion and the rule of the mob, found north and south, were eating at the vitals of the young United States, and threatened to turn the country into a despotism.Yet, over time, expulsions became more common and widespread, almost routine methods of resolving problems as communities – however large or small – saw them. For African Americans, expulsions came in the form of segregation, political disfranchisement, red-lining, the destruction of their settlements (think Greenwood, Oklahoma, and Rosewood, Florida), and the brutal treatment of those who attempted to find housing in white neighborhoods. For unwanted and politically radical immigrants, expulsions came in the form of deportations, vigilante violence and federal repression. And for the poor, expulsions have long come in the form of turning-outs, confinements to workhouses, the denial of political rights and housing, and arrests for vagrancy. At all events, expulsions depended on paramilitary enforcement, whether by armed patrols, the Ku Klux Klan, the American Legion, citizens’ associations or neighborhood watches.Mass incarceration is but the awful culmination of an expulsionism that has been at the heart of criminal punishment since the advent of the penitentiary in the early 19th century. Enlightenment-inspired social reformers had begun to insist that convicted offenders be removed from their communities rather than punished in public, apparently to the benefit of all. From the first, however, those incarcerated were disproportionately poor and Black (wherever they were held), and subject to close surveillance and coerced labor, even when slavery and involuntary servitude were under attack. Recall the “exception clause” of the 13th amendment, which allows for slavery or involuntary servitude as criminal punishment. Expulsive incarceration was deemed an appropriate solution to growing social disorder and was quickly embraced when racial unrest became of concern to politicians and policymakers, who then roused an easily frightened public with warnings about crime and demands for law and order. The expulsions were political as well as social, disenfranchising felons not only during their time of incarceration but often for years thereafter as they fulfilled parole requirements and attempted to repay debts contracted while they were locked up. The state of Florida now has nearly one million formerly incarcerated people who are still expelled from the arenas of American politics.Race-based gerrymandering, which denies the Black representation that a state’s population would have required, has enabled Republicans in some legislatures to in effect define themselves as a political community, set their own rules, establish rights that members could claim, and expel those who push back. In Tennessee, the general assembly recently expelled two duly elected Black legislators – and nearly expelled an “unruly” white female legislator – with some of the most explicitly racist language to be heard in public these days, clearly performances for their white Republican supporters. But they were only following politically expulsive traditions begun during the turbulent days of Reconstruction, when Black elected officials were expelled from their seats in legislatures, regularly run off after assuming local office, or murdered if they determined to stay in power.This long history helps us understand how easy it has been for Donald Trump to attract millions of supporters by offering expulsions – soon, perhaps, of political opponents as well – as a solution to their fears of economic decline, diminishing opportunities, racial replacement and social unrest. As was true in the past, Trump has described “communities” under siege from internal and external enemies alike, and has encouraged summary punishments for those who have “invaded”, either from within or without. And as was true in the past, these are ethnic and political cleansings that should warn us of the illiberal cast infusing our democracy and of the dangerous road to its possible collapse. First they came for those who could be declared “illegal” and were accused of “poisoning the blood of our country”. Then …It would be difficult to find a precedent for Trump’s expulsive policies in their potential reach and ambitions. Yet, frighteningly, in one form or another, they have happened before in America.

      Steven Hahn is professor of history at New York University and author, most recently, of Illiberal America: A History More

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      In Trumpland, ‘defending free speech’ means one thing: submission to the president | Rafael Behr

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      Compared with many countries around the world, the US is still a great democracy, but a much lesser one than it was four months ago. The constitution has not been rewritten. Checks and balances have not been dissolved. The difference is a president who ignores those constraints, and the impotence of the institutions that should enforce them.Which is the true US, the one enshrined in law or the one that smirks in contempt of law? If the latter, should Britain welcome its embrace as a kindred nation? That is an existential question lurking in the technical folds of a potential transatlantic trade agreement.If JD Vance is to be believed, the prospects of such a deal are looking up. The US vice-president reports that Donald Trump “really loves the United Kingdom”. The two countries are connected by a “real cultural affinity” that transcends business interests.This is a more emollient Vance than the one who earlier this year denounced Britain, alongside other European democracies, as a hotbed of anti-Christian prejudice and endemic censorship. In a speech to the Munich Security Conference in February, Vance told his audience that Europe’s greatest threat comes not from Russia or China, but “from within”. He saw a continent in retreat from the “values shared with the United States of America”. Vance returned to the theme when Keir Starmer visited the White House, rebuking the prime minister for “infringements on free speech that … affect American technology companies and, by extension, American citizens”.That was a swipe at the Online Safety Act, which makes social media companies, websites and search engines responsible for “harmful content” published on their platforms. The law had a tortuous genesis between 2022 and 2023. Its scope expanded and contracted depending on what was deemed enforceable and desirable under three different Conservative prime ministers.The version now on the statute book focuses on unambiguously nasty stuff – incitement to violence, terrorism, race hate, encouraging suicide, child abuse images. Technology companies are required to have systems for removing such content. Those mechanisms are assessed by the regulator, Ofcom. Inadequate enforcement is punishable with fines. Refusal to comply can result in criminal prosecutions.That was the theory. The question of how the law should be implemented in practice was deferred. The answer seems to be not much if Britain wants a trade deal with the US.Last month, Ofcom received a delegation from the US state department, which raised the Online Safety Act in line with the Trump administration’s mission “to affirm the US commitment to defending freedom of expression in Europe and around the world”. Last week, answering questions from the parliamentary liaison committee, Starmer confirmed that diluting digital regulation was on the table in trade talks when he acknowledged that “there are questions about how technology impacts free speech”. The prime minister also conceded that the UK’s digital services tax, which aims to clamp down on international tech companies avoiding tax by hiding their profits offshore, could be up for negotiation.These demands from the White House have been flagged well in advance. In February, Trump signed a “memorandum to defend US companies and innovators from extortion overseas”. The administration promised to take a dim view of any attempt to raise taxes from US tech companies and any use of “products and technology in ways that undermine free speech or foster censorship”.Regulation that impedes the operation of US digital behemoths – anything short of blanket permission to do as they please – will apparently be treated as a hostile act and an affront to human liberty.This is an imperial demand for market access cynically camouflaged in the language of universal rights. The equivalent trick is not available in other sectors of the economy. US farmers hate trade barriers that stop their products flooding European markets, but they don’t argue that their chlorine-washed chickens are being censored. (Not yet.)That isn’t to say digital communications can be subject to toxicity tests just like agricultural exports. There is wide scope for reasonable disagreement on what counts as intolerable content, and how it should be controlled. The boundaries are not easily defined. But it is also beyond doubt that thresholds exist. There is no free-speech case for child sexual abuse images. The most liberal jurisdictions recognise that the state has a duty to proscribe some material even if there is a market for it.The question of how online space should be policed is complex in principle and fiendishly difficult in practice, not least because the infrastructure we treat as a public arena is run by private commercial interests. Britain cannot let the terms of debate be dictated by a US administration that is locked in corrupting political intimacy with those interests.It is impossible to separate the commercial and ideological strands of Trump’s relationship with Silicon Valley oligarchs. They used their power and wealth to boost his candidacy and they want payback from his incumbency. There is not much coherence to the doctrine. “Free” speech is the kind that amplifies the president’s personal prejudices. Correcting his lies with verifiable facts is censorship.That warped frame extends beyond the shores of the US. It is shared by Kemi Badenoch, who considers Vance a friend. Asked about the vice-president’s Munich speech, the Conservative leader said she thought he was “dropping some truth bombs, quite frankly”. Badenoch’s own speeches consistently fret about the capture of Britain’s elite institutions, especially the Whitehall bureaucracy, by repressive woke dogma.There is a school of militant leftism that is tediously censorious, stretching liberal piety to illiberal extremes, and there always has been. But it is very far from power. Maybe Badenoch ramps up the menace to appeal to a fanatical audience on social media. Perhaps she radicalised herself by reading about it there. Either way, to fixate on campus protest politics as the main threat to western democracy when a tyrant sits in the Oval Office requires an act of mental contortion that, if not actually stupid, does a strong imitation of stupidity.Britain doesn’t have to take instruction on political freedom from a regime that suffocates media independence with bullying and vexatious litigation; that demands universities teach the ruling party’s orthodoxies; that courts dictatorships while sabotaging democratic alliances; that kidnaps and jails innocent people with no regard for due process, then ignores the court rulings that say they should be free.These are the “values” that Vance is talking about when he laments that Europe and the US are drifting apart. This is the model of “free speech” that a Trump trading partner is expected to endorse; to protect. Is that the stuff of “real cultural affinity” that earns Britain a deal? Let’s hope not.

      Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist More