In the detention of Mahmoud Khalil and the ensuing crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism by Donald Trump's administration, a recognizable model for governance is emerging. The model is from 2002. During that year, as American citizens were distracted by the aftermath of a recession and energized from a terrorist attack, the Geoge W. Bush administration and its allies took actions to mute opposition to its Global War on Terror. These moves provoked charges from a vocal minority of Americans that the administration was acting in an unconstitutional, even a fascistic, way; and that U.S....

In a recent report for the Libertarian Institute, I traced connections between the American and Saudi players rebuilding Gaza into a surveillance city-state—and building Saudi surveillance cities whose offshoots are finding their ways to America. Digging deeper into these links shows an even more troubling picture with sharper implications for American policy and even, disturbingly, some Americans’ daily lives. The connections begin with China’s infiltration of Saudi Arabia, but they don’t end there. They move across the Atlantic to America at the hands of Saudi-connected politicians backed...

The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil is one of those events that can divide a room, or an X space, just by being referenced. The facts are deceptively simple. A Palestinian student at an Ivy League University on a foreign visa who organized protests at which some participants disseminated “Death to America” pamphlets, intimidated fellow students, and illegally occupied a university building is threatened with deportation by a duly-elected president wielding the constitutional power of the executive branch. The executive has called him a threat to national security, apparently (so far) based on his...

President Donald Trump’s proposal for razing and rebuilding Gaza is being hailed by some America First conservatives as another in a line of bold moves which benefit our country, like incorporating Greenland and restoring the Panama Canal. To them, the proposal showcases American free-market can-do and know-how in the hands of a businessman who can succeed where deep state diplomats failed. Glenn Beck exuberantly predicted that, “Thanks to Trump, you could plan your honeymoon destination on the Gaza Strip.” Steve Bannon, while firmly and consistently stating that he wanted America to have...

President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza, relocating Palestinians and building the Riviera of the Middle East on the land where they lived, managed the rare trick of offending almost everyone. Objections fell along tracks worn into trenches by long warfare. Leftists called it a violation of international law and an insult to Palestinians who define their struggle as one of national self-determination. Conservatives asked for aid for East Palestine, Ohio before Palestine and warned President Trump about embracing neoconservative nation-building. Neoconservative sympathizers like Lindsay Graham,...

Detritus from Joe Biden's administration doesn’t just amount to the obvious—inflation and deficit spending, regulations and wars. There’s also been a more subtle shift off of these failures, affecting who has power in our country and how they’ll use it in the future. Nowhere is the shift less noticed or more definite than in the world of humanitarianism, which has been enriched these past three years by the previous administration’s proxy wars. Since 2022—when the Biden White House responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by neither escalating nor defusing but prolonging—a network of...