RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/mahmoud-khalil-columbia-campus-protest-hamas

Mahmoud Khalil—the green-card holder and Columbia-based Hamas sympathizer whom ICE detained last week—has overnight become a martyr for free speech. Advocates for his release, from Rep. Gerry Nadler and Sen. Chris Murphy to academic nonprofits, have framed Khalil’s detention as a violation of his speech rights. In this version of the story, he is an innocent campus protester caught up in the Trump administration’s crackdown on dissent.

These arguments don’t stand on firm First Amendment footing. As even the most Khalil-sympathetic legal scholars have acknowledged, the relevance of free-speech law in the case is at best unclear. Rather, as litigator Erielle Azerrad has explained, the case for Khalil’s deportation rests squarely on black-letter federal immigration law, and on the plausible threat that he posed to America’s foreign policy interests.

But Khalil’s defenders are not interested in the particulars of either his actions or the law. Many appear to be following a straightforward syllogism: Khalil protested on campus; thus, he is participating in the grand tradition of campus protests and deserves not only protection, but celebration.

The notion that campus protests are intrinsically noble has been advanced by baby boomers since their college days. That assumption has provided cover for many heinous acts since the 1960s. While students do enjoy First Amendment protections, the uncritical veneration of campus protest often serves to protect dangerous radicals like Khalil. We can’t—and shouldn’t—change the Constitution to regulate campus protests, but we should regard them with far more suspicion than we do.

The campus protest paints a powerful picture in our collective imagination. Since the 1960s, marching, carrying signs, and sitting in have been perceived as a college kid’s rite of passage. We dismiss their excesses as the excesses of youth.

In Khalil’s case, the actual content of Columbia’s protests is wildly at odds with this benign picture. Students called routinely for “intifada, revolution,” invoking the violence in Israel that left more than 4,000 dead. Columbia University Apartheid Divest—the group that Khalil helped lead—identified with militants from the global South and called itself part of an insurgency. And multiple student radicals occupied the school’s Hamilton Hall.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/mahmoud-khalil-columbia-hamas-speech-ramzi-kassem

As it unfurls, the saga of Mahmoud Khalil—the Columbia agitator picked up by immigration enforcement last week—looks less like a complicated immigration-law dispute and more like something out of a John le Carré novel.

But inspect the details, and Khalil’s case gives us a glimpse a well-established network linking American universities, international progressive NGOs, and government agencies. This network places ideologues like Khalil in positions of power and influence and promoting radical policies that challenge both the will of American voters and our national-security interests.

As always in such shady tales, the simplest questions are the hardest to answer. To start: Who, exactly, is Mahmoud Khalil? According to the Guardian, he was born in Syria in 1995 to Palestinian refugees, then fled at 18 to settle in Lebanon. After his detention, however, the U.S. government reported that he was a citizen of Algeria. How did he end up there?

His professional history is equally convoluted. The Guardian claims he worked for various international NGOs, then landed a job with Britain’s Foreign Office, where he helped administer the prestigious Chevening Scholarship program. (The Telegraph, to make an intricate story even more complicated, reported that Khalil worked for the embassy, not the Foreign Office per se). Then it was on to the UN, where Khalil interned for UNRWA—the organization’s agency for Arab Palestinian refugees that, as a recent lawsuit claims, is a major source of staffing and funding for Hamas. How did a Syrian refugee end up in these positions?

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/03/20/newsom-s-answer-to-californias-business-exodus-is-a-free-burner-phone/

Whenever someone gets around to cataloging the most lame-brained political idea, Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to pass out free burner phones to CEOs in the state will forever top the list.

Newsom has so far sent roughly 100 cellphones – with his direct line programmed in – to CEOs with a message that “if you ever need anything, I’m a phone call away.”

“This was the governor’s idea to connect more directly with business leaders in the state,” spokesperson Izzy Gardon said.

More accurately, it’s Newsom’s attempt to keep still more corporations from joining the well over 350 companies who’ve left the state since 2018, and the million-plus Californians who followed them out the door.

Well, we looked into it, and we couldn’t find a single corporate executive – or individual – who said they would have stayed put if only they had a Newsom burner phone.

Instead, they said things like “taxes are too high,” or “regulations are too stringent,” or “the cost-of-living is punishing,” or “the schools suck,” or “I’m tired of being robbed.” The state’s criminal wildfire negligence hasn’t helped either.

When Stanford University’s Hoover Institution looked into why so many companies were leaving the state, they found that “several economic factors that have led to these departures by raising business costs, reducing productivity, and reducing profitability, including tax policies, regulatory policies, labor costs, litigation costs, energy and utility costs, and concerns about a declining quality of life within the state.”

Indeed, by almost any ranking of business friendliness, California is at or near the bottom of the list.