Last month, a Times headline proclaimed Donald Trump a “feminist hero” after he signed a presidential executive order entitled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports”. The 5th February order was among a handful that focussed on transgender rights. Some feminists who might describe themselves as gender-critical or sex-realist argued that Trump deserved recognition for supporting a policy with which they agreed.
Not everyone thinks that way. Trans rights, as anyone familiar with the impasse in British feminism will know, are a matter of virulent disagreement. But regardless, the extent of the praise for Trump was jarring. After all, this is a president whom a civil court found liable for rape, who has stuffed his cabinet with people accused of committing or enabling sexual assault, and who has described the decimation of the abortion rights in America, something in which he has played an outsized role, as a “miracle”.
I was reminded of the myopic appraisal of that Times headline after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained the Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil on Saturday 8th March as he and his wife, a US citizen who is eight months pregnant, were coming home from dinner. Khalil, a Syrian national of Palestinian descent who is in the US as a permanent resident and Green Card holder, played a leading role in protests against the Gaza war on the university’s campus last year. He is now miles away from his home, in a detention centre in Louisiana.
The arrest was “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism”, the Department of Homeland Security told CBS News, alleging that Khalil “led activities aligned to Hamas”. To make it extra-clear that this was somehow about antisemitism, on 10th March the White House posted Khalil’s picture on X, with the words “Shalom Mahmoud” superimposed on his face. (Trump had also used the Hebrew word, which means “hello”, “goodbye” and “peace”, in a message to Hamas on Instagram five days earlier).
Of course, just as Trump’s various executive orders targeting trans people have little to do with helping women, Khalil’s detention for activism and political speech on no actual charges is more about shutting down opposition than protecting Jews. Transgender people and pro-Palestinian activists are convenient targets for a government keen to showcase the terrible power of the state. A White House official told right-wing Substack outlet the Free Press that Khalil is a “threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States” and that “the allegation here is not that he was breaking the law”. The Free Press reports that the White House is using the Khalil case “as a blueprint for investigations against other students”. The government has also cited the 1952 Immigration and Security Act as grounds for action against Khalil.
When the campus pro-Palestine protests erupted following Hamas’ 7th October 2023 attack on Israel and the ensuing Gaza war, some said they were intimidating for Jewish students, and even that they contained antisemitic elements. The US Jewish newspaper the Forward has detailed how some pro-Israel Jewish groups targeted Khalil after he participated in a pro-Palestinian protest earlier this month at Barnard College, part of Columbia University. One pressure group, called Documenting Jew Hatred on Campus, posted about Khalil on X with the hashtag #DeportMahmoudKhalil”.
Since his detention was first reported, many Jews have spoken out against the targeting of Khalil ostensibly on their behalf (see, for instance, this open letter signed, at the time of writing, by 2,029 US Jewish academics), while others argue his alleged support for Hamas somehow justifies his detention. But Khalil’s views are immaterial: what matters is the American government’s utter disrespect for due process and the rule of law. If someone like Khalil can be deported, then surely anyone can be deported.
The administration has also cut $400m in funding to Columbia, on the pretext that the institution failed to act against antisemitism. “Like many autocrats before him,” write Ryan D Enos and Steven Levitsky in the Harvard Crimson, “Donald Trump has launched what could be a devastating attack on universities.” On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Face the Nation that Kahlil is “going to leave, and so are others… We’re going to keep doing it.”
At the time of writing Khalil is still in Louisiana, after a federal judge ruled that he must stay in the US “to preserve the court’s jurisdiction”. Since his 8th March detention, other events have added to a frightening picture of a country where no one is protected from the excesses of the state: a Lebanese doctor working legally in the US was deported, in violation of a court order; a German Green Card holder was reportedly held for days and “violently interrogated” at an airport, after flying back from Europe; 200 Venezuelan alleged gang members were deported to a prison in El Salvador, even though a judge had ordered a 14-day halt to the deportations; a bill introduced in Texas would reportedly “police” universities in the state.
In the most recent edition of Prospect, Aman Sethi, editor-in-chief of openDemocracy, articulated the condition of living under authoritarianism: “Some days feel interminable,” he wrote, “and the only respite is an ever-shrinking circle of conversations that begin: ‘Did you see what they just did? Did you hear about what just happened? Did you know…’”
Reduced to catching up with the latest unbelievable act of an illiberal government, one is rendered defenceless. A generous reading of those who would excuse, even praise, Trump’s targeting of one minority on the basis that it might protect others is that they are latching on to tiny slivers of activity you could consider positive because that’s easier than seeing a full picture too awful to believe. With every new bit of societal vandalism, from detaining Khalil, to enacting policy that amounts to a visa ban on transgender people, to dismantling USAID or the Voice of America, we are left aghast.
Everyone is a potential victim of government by Steve Bannon’s strategy “to flood the zone with shit”. Feminists and anyone who truly wishes to protect Jews from violence and hate need to see the shit for what it is. And always remember: the autocrat, Trump in this case, is not your friend—even if he purports to want to protect you; even if he hurts those you have proclaimed your enemies.
