Donald Trump is very lucky that metaphorical idiomatic expressions are not literal, because a federal judge ripped him a new asshole yesterday.
US District Judge Bill Young performed the procedure with an amazing 161-page opinion in a lawsuit brought by university professors who argued that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and other top Trump administration officials had deliberately violated the First Amendment protections of international students with the goal of chilling free speech about Israel’s war in Gaza.
Young agreed with two professional organizations that, by trying to deport international students for expressing pro-Palestinian opinions, including Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk, the administration was attempting to “strike fear” into noncitizens legally in the US who might disagree with US policy, and to illegally prevent them from participating in political activity the administration doesn’t like.
The case, which Young wrote is “perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court,” turns on a very simple question: Do “non-citizens lawfully present here in United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us”? Young had no difficulty at all saying that the answer is “unequivocally ‘yes, they do.’”
When the Framers of the First Amendment said Congress “shall make no law” abridging the freedom of speech, they meant it, and they didn’t draw the “invidious distinction” between citizens and noncitizens that Trump did in a first-day executive order claiming free speech is for citizens only. The few limits on free speech that do exist, like civil libel laws, apply equally to everyone, too, Young wrote.
After a nine-day bench trial, Young found that Rubio, Noem, and their subordinates had “deliberately and with purposeful aforethought, did so concert their actions and those of their two departments intentionally to chill the rights to freedom of speech and peacefully to assemble” of the plaintiffs. The administration’s actions, he found, discriminated against the students’ viewpoints, thus violating the First Amendment.
Young will now hold hearings to determine what actions he will order to make sure the administration stops violating free speech rights. Regrettably, it doesn’t appear that locking Rubio and Noem in a room where they’d have to smell Trump 24/7 is an option, but he’ll figure something out.
Yr Dok Zoom has read the whole damn opinion — or at least the good parts, while skimming some of the repetitious stuff about how Rubio at State and Noem’s underlings at DHS tried to justify deporting people for their opinions — and while I am not a lawyer, I am a Doktor of Rhetoric, and I know a good argument when I read one.
In a really unusual framing for the opinion, Young begins by reproducing an angry postcard that was sent to his chambers by an anonymous citizen: “Trump has pardons and tanks, what do you have?”
Dear reader, we have to admit we got a little misty realizing that the entire opinion is an answer to the postcard:
Dear Mr. or Ms Anonymous:
Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People of the United States — you and me — have our magnificent Constitution.
Here’s how that works out in a specific case —
Young, originally appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan, flatly rejects the government’s claims that it can use “combating antisemitism” as a broad excuse for stomping all over people’s rights, an enterprise Young calls at one point a “full-throated assault on the First Amendment across the board.”
Young notes that the government’s definition of “antisemitism” is remarkably elastic, extending well past hating Jewish people and stretching to include things like Öztürk’s co-authoring an editorial calling on Tufts University to divest from investments in Israel. The State Department’s own guidance, Young notes, explains that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”
Young has little patience for Rubio’s frequently repeated claim that because foreigners studying in the US are guests, the government gets to decide, almost by whim, whether to allow them to be here. But those limits can’t extend, Young writes, to speech that would be legal for anyone else to express, not even if you throw in a claim that such speech amounts to “supporting Hamas.”
In a nation built on free speech, the government doesn’t get to say some speech is illegal, or grounds for excluding a visa or green card holder:
How we treat our guests is a question of constitutional scope, because who we are as a people and as a nation is an important part of how we must interpret the fundamental laws that constrain us. We are not, and we must not become, a nation that imprisons and deports people because we are afraid of what they have to tell us.
Goddamn, that’s good.
And then there’s the dubious process DHS and the State Department used to find students and academics to target. Depositions revealed that in many cases, immigration authorities relied on an anonymous pro-Israel website called “Canary Mission” that labeled academics as “antisemitic” on flimsy evidence, and the agencies didn’t bother with any independent investigation. Both Khalil and Öztürk first came to DHS’s attention because they were listed on the site. It really is impressive that our current swing to fascism isn’t merely stupid and hateful, but so fucking lazy.
In a 12-page section of the opinion that would surely enrage Donald Trump if he read it, the opinion castigates Trump’s willingness to ignore the Constitution in the pursuit of power. Young cites as his guide for this section an observation made by his wife, who said, “He seems to be winning. He ignores everything and keeps bullying ahead.” This is a preface to a discussion of “the problem this President has with the First Amendment,” which is Trump’s fixation with “retribution,” a motive for governing that’s wholly alien to the constitutional order.
Yet government retribution for speech (precisely what has happened here) is directly forbidden by the First Amendment. The President’s palpable misunderstanding that the government simply cannot seek retribution for speech he disdains poses a great threat to Americans’ freedom of speech.
Closing with a quote from Ronald Reagan about how “freedom is a fragile thing” that “must be fought for and defended constantly,” Young says he believes Donald Trump understood Reagan’s point perfectly well, but that
I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected.
Is he correct?
Like we say, pretty fiery stuff! We’re sure Trump will appeal, and the administration hurried yesterday to push back with its usual nastiness. White House spox Liz Huston called the opinion “an outrageous ruling that hampers the safety and security of our nation” and insisted that the administration will continue going after “foreign nationals who endanger America’s national security or imperil campus safety.”
DHS Propaganda Minister Tricia McLaughlin essentially accused Judge Young of inciting terrorism himself, claiming the opinion stoked “the embers of hatred” and encouraged attacks on ICE goons, the most oppressed people in the USA after Donald Trump himself.
“Less than a week after a terrorist attack at an ICE facility in Dallas, a craven Judge is smearing and demonizing federal law enforcement,” McLaughlin said. “Our federal law enforcement officers face a 1000% increase in assaults against them, unprecedented online doxing of our agents and their families, and they’re being stalked and pummeled by rocks and Molotov cocktails.”
No, Young didn’t do anything of the sort, but as we keep reminding you, we’re all terrorists now.
OPEN THREAD.
[AAUP v Rubio opinion / CNN / Politico / Democracy Docket]
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I'm gonna brag a little because I am high on dopamine and weed. I will probably drop off the list soon, I've been on it a couple times, usually only lasts a couple days. But it is fucking fun while it lasts. ziggy's stack is #47 on the Rising Bestsellers list in Art & Illustration. https://substack.com/leaderboard/art/rising
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