New Case Against Khalil

Plus: Sanders supports deportations, tariff tracker, Panama's Jewish enclave, and more...

Did Mahmoud Khalil fail to disclose relevant information when applying for his green card? The government has stealthily added some new allegations in its case against Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, who is in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention in Louisiana for his role in pro-Palestine protests at the Ivy League school.

The government now claims "he had willfully failed to disclose his membership in several organizations, including a United Nations agency that helps Palestinian refugees, when he applied to become a permanent U.S. resident last March," reports The New York Times. "The government also said that Mr. Khalil failed to list his continuing employment with the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, after 2022." If these allegations are true, they may put the deportation on firmer footing: It is easier for the authorities to argue that the First Amendment isn't a relevant factor when the issue is whether Khalil disclosed relevant information during a green card application.

But even if that is true, the Justice Department has shown its true motivation, even if it may be able to weasel out of the hole it's dug. Since it told The Free Press that "the allegation here is not that he was breaking the law" and suggested that "he was mobilizing support for Hamas and spreading antisemitism in a way that is contrary to the foreign policy of the U.S.," it sure seems obvious that it was Khalil's role in the Columbia protests that attracted ICE agents initially. If officials can now find a better pretense to deport him, that may pass more legal muster, but they already made clear that this is retribution for protest. This will have a chilling effect on speech. And if they legitimately believed he was a threat, they should have actually spent the time to substantiate this.

As for what actually happens to Khalil, it's not clear these new allegations will make much of a difference: "In order to deport Mr. Khalil on the basis of the new allegations, the government would have to convince an immigration judge that any failure to disclose the relevant information was willful, and that it would have made a difference in his chances of receiving legal permanent residency status," reports the Times. 

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Scenes from Pedasi: Was surfing in Panama and came across this:

Did not realize how large of a Jewish population exists in Panama, and specifically Pedasi--a surfing area along the southern coast. Here's a 10/7 memorial we spotted in this remote enclave in the jungle. pic.twitter.com/gncKa6jbP6

— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) March 24, 2025

More background here, from Forward. 

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QUICK HITS

• Is Donald Trump's weak dollar plan actually working?
• Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) has come out in support of President Donald Trump's deportation crackdown. This is essentially a return to the position he held a decade ago. "Open borders? No, that's a Koch brothers proposal," he told Vox back in 2015. "It would make everybody in America poorer—you're doing away with the concept of a nation state." ("What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy," Sanders continued. "Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create millions of jobs.")

Bernie Sanders now saying publicly that he supports Trump's stance against illegal immigration. Rather stunning how the Democrats have moved strongly to ape the Republicans on this. pic.twitter.com/nvWOPR4fUU

— Phillips P. OBrien (@PhillipsPOBrien) March 23, 2025

• Ro Khanna ascendant?
• Finland, Denmark, and Germany have issued travel warnings to their trans and nonbinary citizens, cautioning them that they must now state either "male" or "female" on official travel documents if attempting to come to the U.S.
• A weird consequence of an expected Trump travel ban: Cuban and Venezuelan pro baseball players (P-1 visa holders) might no longer be allowed to exit/enter our borders.
• An excellent thread from recent Just Asking Questions guest Kelsey Piper on how American abundance is out of reach because our politicians and bureaucrats make it illegal to build. And here's that JAQ episode; if Piper's not on your radar, you're missing out.

• "If Mahmoud Khalil is charged and convicted of an actual crime he should be deported," writes Eli Lake on X. "If his 'crime' is just the expression of support for a terrorist organization, then this pageant is grotesque. And yes I realize that [Columbia University Apartheid Divest's] harassment of Jews, destruction of property etc. is not protected speech. But the legal argument thus far amounts to saying permanent legal residents can't say anything that the Secretary of State believes undermines US foreign policy. That's a horrendous violation of free speech. And as much as I despise campus solidarity with baby stranglers, I love American values more." I agree: The specifics of what Khalil did to "support" Hamas—beyond speech—really matter. The government doesn't seem to have a very good case here.
• Bloomberg has an awesome tracker tool where you can look at how every single Trump tariff—or threat of tariff, or suspended tariff—has affected the economy.
• Important to ban cell phones in schools says Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr….but it's because of "electromagnetic radiation." You were so close, RFK Jr.! You almost had me! Most reasonable people probably agree that phone use in school is bad—kids need to be learning, not scrolling social media. But you just couldn't stick the landing, ya big ole kooky bear-dumper.
• Bad omen:

This week, a math professor at MIT told me that incoming students are, on average, noticeably worse at math than they used to be.

Harvard, of course, just added a remedial math class, Math MA5, "aimed at rectifying a lack of foundational algebra skills among students". https://t.co/crqrw1jw78

— Patrick Collison (@patrickc) March 23, 2025