The Official "Damned Trump" Thread: Phase II

[Rev. Rye]

The First Amendment has been terminated for immigrants.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has announced it will begin screening immigrants' social media for evidence of antisemitic activity as grounds for denying immigration benefit requests. The screenings will affect people applying for permanent residence status as well as foreigners affiliated with educational institutions. The policy will go into effect immediately.

The announcement comes following the highly publicized arrests and detentions of pro-Palestinian student activists such as Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, who the government alleges engaged in antisemitic activities. Their lawyers deny the allegations.

In a statement to NPR, Edward Ahmed Mitchell, the national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said: "The spirit of Joseph McCarthy is alive and well in the Trump administration, which has spent months dishonestly mischaracterizing legitimate criticism of the Israeli government's war crimes in Gaza as antisemitic, pursuing witch hunts into American colleges, and threatening the free speech rights of immigrants."

J-Street, a Washington group which describes itself as pro-Israel, pro-peace and pro-democracy, was quick to disavow the new policy.

"The Trump administration's own appointees have social media accounts riddled with antisemitism, demonstrating how insincere they are in claiming their totalitarian attacks on higher education and immigrants will make Jewish Americans safer and that they are motivated by genuine concern for our wellbeing."

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/09/g-s1-5914...mitism-dhs

In fairness, this probably wouldn’t be too big of a deal for me if this wasn’t the same administration that thinks statements like “Israel shouldn’t commit genocide on Gazan citizens” is anti-semitism.