Israeli military court sentences Palestinian journalist to 4 years for ‘incitement’
MEMO | September 9, 2026
An Israeli military court on Tuesday sentenced Palestinian journalist Mahmoud Fatafta to four years in prison on charges of so-called “incitement”, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate said.
The syndicate condemned the sentence in a statement, calling it “a new chapter in the targeting of Palestinian journalists and a systematic attempt to silence voices and suppress freedom of opinion and expression”.
The Israeli army arrested Fatafta on 30 May 2024 while he was passing through the Container checkpoint northeast of Bethlehem in the southern occupied West Bank.
The syndicate said prosecuting journalists in Israeli military courts over their journalistic work or expression of their views was “a flagrant violation of international law and international humanitarian law”. It said the military justice system was being used to punish and intimidate journalists and prevent them from carrying out their professional duties.
It added that the sentence against Fatafta came as part of an ongoing Israeli policy of pursuing, arresting and prosecuting Palestinian journalists in an attempt to “hide the Palestinian narrative and silence voices reporting the truth about what is happening on the ground”.
The syndicate said “incitement” charges had become a broad pretext used by Israeli authorities to pursue journalists, activists and people expressing their views, in violation of the right to freedom of expression and journalistic work.
Israeli Army Closes Tulkarem Zakat Committee Headquarters
IMEMC | September 8, 2026
Israeli forces invaded and closed the Tulkarem Central Zakat Committee headquarters in the northwestern West Bank before dawn Tuesday. After the soldiers withdrew, Palestinians found the body of Gaza Strip resident As’ad Mleiha inside.
Media sources said several Palestinian workers from the Gaza Strip had been living in part of the facility since October 7, 2023. When a large contingent of Israeli soldiers invaded the building, the soldiers forced the workers to leave.
Soldiers then abducted an unspecified number of workers and transported them by military truck to an undisclosed location.
The sources added that the soldiers vandalized the contents of the headquarters and then posted a notice at the entrance alleging that the committee was “illegal,” “supports terrorism,” and had been shut down.
During the invasion, Israeli soldiers fired concussion grenades and tear gas canisters at journalists covering the events and chased several reporters in the surrounding area. No injuries were reported.
Following the army’s withdrawal, Civil Defense and Palestinian Red Crescent Society crews recovered As’ad Mleiha’s body from inside the committee headquarters.
Civil Defense and Palestinian Red Crescent Society crews transferred the body to a hospital. The circumstances surrounding Mleiha’s death and how his body came to be inside the building remain unknown.
No information has been released regarding the fate of the Gaza workers abducted by Israeli forces during the invasion.
The closure of the committee comes amid ongoing Israeli military assaults throughout the Tulkarem governorate.
The Tulkarem Central Zakat Committee is a charitable institution affiliated with the Palestinian Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs.
The committee uses donations and zakat funds to provide humanitarian, social, educational, and financial assistance to families in need, orphans, and other vulnerable groups.
Once a refuge for Palestinians from Gaza stranded in the occupied West Bank after the since October 2023, the Tulkarm Central Zakat Committee headquarters has now become the scene of an Israeli military operation.
The development highlights the vulnerability of Gaza residents living in the West Bank, where ongoing Israeli invasions and abductions continue to expose them to heightened security and legal risks.
Massie And Burlison Introduce Bill To Defund Flock Surveillance Cameras
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | September 8, 2026
Two Republican members of Congress have introduced a bill that seeks to stop the federal government from funding surveillance cameras that are used to build mass vehicle and biometric location tracking systems.
Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Eric Burlison of Missouri introduced the Flock-Off Act, H.R. 10221, on September 2.
Massie and Burlison want to cut off the flow of federal money to local and state law enforcement that is used to purchase, maintain, and operate the controversial Flock Safety cameras, but also other similar systems, and any data they produce.
And the proposal seeks to stop federal funding of any cloud services that store data collected by Flock Safety and similar companies, as well as any data-sharing agreements involving these systems.
Massie and Burlison are joined by five other representatives as original cosponsors of the bill: Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Ro Khanna of California, Chip Roy of Texas, and Victoria Spartz of Indiana.
If it becomes law, the Flock-Off Act would represent a significant limitation on the ability of the federal government to help build and maintain surveillance systems that can track people’s movements and identify them through biometric data.
The bill covers automated license-plate readers, cameras that can identify or extract vehicle characteristics, and biometric surveillance cameras. Biometric data is defined as including facial recognition, voiceprints, iris or retinal scans, fingerprints, and gait recognition.
The bill would require federal agencies to decommission federally funded covered systems within 180 days, while state and local recipients would have to stop operating federally supported systems to continue receiving money under the relevant federal program. If they violate the spending prohibition, relevant program funds would be withheld until the improperly spent amount is repaid to the US Treasury.
There are some exceptions: the border, and toll roads. Federal funds could continue to be used for cameras located within one mile of the northern or southern US border, if they are used to detect or interdict “unlawful entry, human trafficking, or drug smuggling.” In addition, automated license-plate readers used solely to collect, administer, or enforce tolls would also be exempt.
Massie said the purpose of the bill is to stop the federal government from helping local police and cities that have “gone beyond the pale” by deploying mass surveillance systems that are reminiscent of those described in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.
“The federal government shouldn’t provide ‘security’ grants to cities and police departments that have gone beyond the pale and turned their communities into a version of 1984,” Massie said. “The Flock-Off Act withholds federal money from municipalities and police departments that deploy Flock cameras to surveil law-abiding citizens. Federal taxpayers should not be forced to fund the surveillance state.”
“Technology may change, but our constitutional rights do not,” Burlison said. “The Fourth Amendment protects Americans from unreasonable searches, and advances in surveillance technology should not come at the expense of our privacy and liberty.”
H.R. 10221 was referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
US Warns UK Against Forcing Platforms to Promote Preferred News
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 8, 2026
The US government has urged its British counterpart to give up on plans to make social media and video sharing platforms give more prominence to news from mainstream media outlets.
The US government’s objection is that this would amount to “mandating that platforms algorithmically amplify government-preferred media.”
The UK proposal was contained in a green paper published in June, titled “Watch This Space: A New Strategic Direction for UK Media.” The document said that the government will “explore legislative options to require social media to make news content from PSM providers, and potentially also national and local news publishers, prominent and easily discoverable.”
The US response to the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s consultation, which closed on August 31, argues that the idea of official judgments about which media outlets are trustworthy is dangerous because it can be used to suppress others and thus harm free expression and competition.
Unlike direct censorship, this would work by promoting government-preferred media, but the effect would be to make it even harder for others to be heard. This is because of the way recommendation algorithms work, and the limited space on a user’s feed – promoting some content means suppressing other content, and thus, speech.
The US government also warned that this policy would have “significant effects beyond UK borders” because of the global nature of the platforms that would be forced to implement it. This could lead to “extraterritorial censorship of protected speech by Americans online.”
The US Embassy and Consulates in the UK published the US government’s response. The British government’s preference is to have voluntary industry agreements. However, if these prove insufficient, the government says it is prepared to legislate.
The UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport reacted to the US criticism by saying that it “strongly believes” in free expression and fair competition, and that any future action will ensure those are protected.
This is not the first time the UK proposal has been criticized. Among those who previously spoke against it were House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, YouTube, and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.
The UK green paper cites countering “misinformation” during “crisis” or “unrest” as the reason to make sure that news from public service media providers is easily accessible and prominent. It does not set out a final test for deciding which national or local publishers might also qualify, but that is the crux of the US criticism, and the question remains unanswered.
Mark Levin Trashes the Constitution to Protect Violent West Bank Settlers
By Kurt Nimmo | Another Day in the Empire | September 8, 2026
Mark Levin is at it again. He is livid over a decision by the UK government to ban trade with violent illegal settlers in the West Bank. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said this week the UK will ban imports of all goods from settlements in the occupied West Bank, in addition to services including financing, construction, infrastructure, real estate, and advertising for settlements.
For Levin and the Zionists in Israel and the United States, a boycott of Kahanist settlers is antisemitism, the same as public criticism of Israel over its slaughter of Palestinians, most of whom are women and children, is hatred of Jews.
Levin considers himself a constitutional lawyer. However, his interpretation of the US Constitution is highly selective. As an ardent and outspoken Zionist and defender of apartheid and genocide, he believes a boycott of Israel is not protected by the First Amendment. The right to boycott was reaffirmed in 1982 with a Supreme Court ruling on NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. It held that nonviolent political boycotts are a form of protected speech. However, this is irrelevant when it comes to Israel.
The case centered around a civil-rights boycott of white-owned businesses in Mississippi. The Court upheld the right to peaceful advocacy, association, and political expression that were integral to the campaign.
In 2022, the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed Arkansas’ anti-boycott contracting legislation. The majority determined that the law governed commercial purchasing choices rather than safeguarding speech. In February 2023, the Supreme Court decided not to review an appeal.
However, court rulings in Texas, Arizona, and Arkansas have upheld the right to boycott as as a protected form of political expression under the First Amendment, challenging the legality of anti-BDS laws across the United States.
“Close to 40 states across the U.S. have laws that require ending contracts with and/or divesting from companies that engage in antisemitic boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel,” Levin posted to social media on September 7.
These states whose combined GDP is significant should publicly make clear to countries such as the UK that companies that engage in BDS because of their decisions will face consequences under state anti-BDS laws. By the way, Florida and Texas combined have a much larger GDP than the UK.
The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement is now illegal in 38 states. Congress has also considered anti-boycott legislation. In 2019, the Senate passed S.1, which contains anti-boycott provisions. In 2023, Republicans, including Marco Rubio, reintroduced the Combating BDS Act.
Most Americans oppose anti-BDS laws by a wide margin. 72% oppose laws penalizing people who boycott Israel while 22% supported such laws, according to the University of Maryland’s Critical Issues Poll.
Levin is not opposed to BDS if it focuses on the correct target. In 2021, for instance, he demanded a BDS-style boycott of big tech and major television networks in response to criticism of Israel. “He argues that the way to fight against distortions and false claims, and to counter the media censors, is take a page from the anti-Israel activists’ playbook,” reported the Jerusalem News Syndicate in 2021.
Does Levin disagree with the colonial protests against British goods in the 1760s and 1770s that led to the Boston Tea Party? Does he believe the Montgomery bus boycott in the mid-1950s was illegitimate? How about the United Farm Workers boycotts in the 1960s, or the NAACP Mississippi boycott of white-owned businesses, also in the 60s?
No, probably not. The only legitimate opposition to BDS concerns Israel. The Zionist state gets a pass and the Constitution is null and void when confronted with spurious accusations of antisemitism.
UK Police Arrested 62,199 People Over Online Speech In Five Years
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 8, 2026
Britain’s police arrested at least 62,199 people over five years under laws governing what people say online or over the phone.
That’s a busy period for the written word. And the number of those charged over the same period is 18,510, while 12,292 people were convicted.
The Big Brother Watch report, Britain’s Free Speech Problem: How Growing Restrictions Are Stifling Speech Online and Offline, covers the period between January 1, 2021, and December 31, 2025.
The laws are Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988, Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, and Section 179 of the Online Safety Act 2023.
What do they concern? Indecent or grossly offensive messages, electronic communications that are grossly offensive, indecent, obscene, or menacing, as well as the persistent use of a public network intended to cause annoyance, inconvenience, or needless anxiety.
That’s as well as sending a message that the sender knows to be false, without reasonable excuse, and with the intention of causing non-trivial physical or psychological harm to a likely
audience.
These are the “crimes” that the 62,199 people are suspected of committing, but the rate at which people are arrested under these laws varies greatly across the country. By as much as 43 times.
Cumbria Constabulary is leading the way with 25.7 people arrested per 10,000 residents. And at the other end of the spectrum is Staffordshire Police with 0.58.
That’s a 43-fold difference.
The report also details the case of Child A, a “vulnerable” teenager from the West Midlands. She viewed a TikTok post about a teacher, but did not create, share, or comment on it.
However, her school inspected her phone, found no account connected to the post, and then gave her name to the police.
Two officers then visited the family home and demanded that Child A hand over her devices. The family was told that she could either attend a voluntary interview or face arrest.
The family chose the former and Child A gave a written statement, after which the investigation was closed with no further action.
And then there’s the case of Anneka Svenska, an animal rights campaigner. Two Sussex Police officers visited her over a social media video in which she said that MBR Acres, a company that breeds beagles for research, sent “hundreds of kilograms of animal remains” to incinerators.
This happened in July 2026, and is therefore outside the five-year period covered by the report. But Svenska was offered a community resolution that included taking an “online thinking skills” course and an online “impact exercise,” or face arrest.
After her lawyer sent evidence supporting her claims to Cambridgeshire Police, the matter was reportedly dropped, in about 15 minutes, although the evidence had been available in the original video.
Svenska did not accept the community resolution.
In the five years covered by the report, there were 43-fold fewer arrests in some postcodes compared to others. But Big Brother Watch said that the Online Safety Act has already had a devastating effect on free speech, with some 300 small community forums closing or changing ownership in order to avoid the new law’s requirements.
And while the group doesn’t want all laws regulating communications to be scrapped – because some messages can indeed constitute crimes – the three laws in question are formulated in a broad and unclear manner, leading to their uneven application across the country, and investigations that are “avoidable.”
These investigations can be “punitive” even when no conviction follows, as people are subjected to police visits, demands to hand over their devices, interviews, arrests, and charges.
The group is now asking Prime Minister Andy Burnham to review what it calls “anti-free speech laws.”
Svenska, at least, escaped the online thinking skills course. It took the police about 15 minutes to catch up.
Anti-War Activists Are Getting ‘Debanked’ In The UK
The UK’s decent into authoritarianism continues
By Justin K.P. | The Dissident | September 5, 2026
The UK has been, for years, waging an all-out war on its own people, particularly on those who are anti-war and anti-Zionist.
Journalists like Richard Medhurst and Asa Winstanley have had their devices seized by UK “counterterrorism” authorities for their reporting on the Israeli genocide in Gaza, while thousands of peaceful activists have been arrested on terrorism charges for holding signs stating they support Palestine Action, a non-violent direct action group which was proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK government at the behest of the Zionist lobby.
The war on anti-war and anti-Zionist figures continues, with multiple anti-war figures recently losing their bank accounts within a short time period.
George Galloway, a former Labour MP, known for his staunch firebrand opposition to Zionism and empire, had his bank account closed without explanation, preventing him from receiving his parliamentary and old age pensions, which he paid into throughout his career.
On X, Galloway wrote: “39 years ago I opened a personal bank account with Bank of Scotland in Byres Rd, Glasgow. Yesterday, without explanation or notice, they closed my accounts. My parliamentary and old age pensions are paid into these accounts. The mortgage on our family home is paid out of them. The mortgage is with them. They haven’t heard the last of this.”
Shortly before Galloway was debanked, the independent news outlet The Canary reported that it had its Bank account closed for the second time within months, the first time being in July.
“This has meant that once again, some staff were not paid for August,” the outlet noted, adding that, like Galloway, it received no explanation for why it lost its Bank account.
Due to the debanking, the outlet was forced to “suspend operations” which “is a necessary step to protect what remains of the Canary and to give us the opportunity to rebuild on a stable foundation.”
It wrote that “recent events have created circumstances in which we have been left with no responsible alternative but to suspend the Canary’s operations with immediate effect,” adding that, “It is the direct consequence of the debanking of the Canary’s funds, the resulting financial disruption, and the serious internal consequences that followed.”
It seems clear that this is a coordinated effort, almost certainly spearheaded by the British state, to debank voices critical of Zionism and warmongering, in yet another attempt to shut them down.
Reporters Without Borders calls for EU to close loopholes allowing Europeans access to censored Russian media
RT | September 4, 2026
The EU- and US-funded press watchdog, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), has called for tighter controls on AI-based search technology, after discovering that chatbots bypass European censorship laws and present Russian media sources banned by in Western Europe to users.
The Paris-based RSF, which lists EU and the US National Endowment for Democracy among its backers, found that popular AI services can provide RT articles, links, excerpts, and news summaries to web users. “Public chatbots can access these websites and redistribute their content,” a statement by the organisation claimed on Wednesday.
The EU and UK have banned numerous Russian news outlets since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, including RT and Sputnik. Moscow has denounced the EU-wide ban as an attempt to silence coverage of the conflict that contradicts Brussels maximalist political stance.
The censoorship has since spread across virtually every publishing channel, including websites, apps, chats and social media. RT has been blocked and removed from practically all Western tech platforms, while RT France was forced to close in 2023 after its accounts were frozen and RT America suffered a similar fate in 2024.
Though VPN technology is used by a significant portion of netizens, making RT’s counter-mainstream reporting accessible to its loyal audience, in July, the EU’s top court ruled that even individuals running free, non-commercial websites can be found guilty of redistributing RT content.
RSF asked popular AI services to retrieve international news exclusively from sanctioned outlets, including RT, Sputnik, and RIA Novosti.
ChatGPT and Grok emerged as the “leading bots for circumventing EU sanctions,” retrieving headlines and providing links, excerpts and detailed summaries. ChatGPT complied “without reservation,” according to RSF, while Claude responded with “unfailing consistency.”
French AI-bot Vibe located the requested material on VKontakte (known as ‘Russia’s Facebook’) and through an app carrying Telegram posts. RSF praised its “remarkable ingenuity” and described the bot as a “resourceful sleuth.”
Gemini cited sanctions to refuse requests while Meta AI, whose parent company unilaterally banned RT from Facebook and Instagram in September 2024, was the only chatbot tested that “consistently refused” to provide the requested material.
RSF called on the European Commission to investigate ChatGPT under the EU’s Digital Services Act – a raft of legislation that allows the EU to manufacture consensus and alienate dissent from narratives it wishes to impose on its population. The RSF, which is funded by the bloc and the controversial US NED called for cases to be taken over other AI services capable of providing access to sanctioned Russian media.
Blair directed PA to eliminate mention of ‘Palestine’ from textbooks, former UK envoy reveals
Press TV – September 2, 2026
Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has been tasked by a body set up by US President Donald Trump to approach the Palestinian Authority (PA) and propose removing the term “Palestine” from school textbooks, replacing it with the Jewish name “Samaria.”
Jeremy Greenstock, who served as Britain’s ambassador to the UN from 1998 to 2003, said on Wednesday that Blair sought to influence the Palestinian Authority.
He stated that if the PA wished to be recognized by the so-called Board of Peace as a legitimate partner capable of negotiating a resolution with Israel to conclude the genocidal war in Gaza, the term “Palestine” should be removed from educational materials.
Greenstock said in an extensive interview on the David Hearst Podcast that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas rejected the request.
Greenstock further noted that his former superior was facing “challenges” in his new position managing the postwar administration of Gaza for the board.
“He recently, I understand, was asked by the Board of Peace to go to Ramallah and ask to remove from the Palestinian curriculum any mention of the word Palestine if they were to be treated by the Board of Peace as capable of coming to an agreement with Israel to end the current conflict that had stemmed from October 7 onwards,” Greenstock said, adding that the information was obtained from a source at the ministerial level.
“President Mahmoud Abbas said he would do no such thing,” he said.
“But the very fact that the Board of Peace could ask for that to be done in the Palestinian educational curriculum makes me wonder what principles the Board of Peace is working on, and what understanding they have of justice, of the sense of fairness, of the history of all of this,” Greenstock added.
A spokesperson for Blair refuted the claim that the former UK prime minister made such a request. “This is not true and a complete fabrication.”
Blair is known to have travelled to the Israeli-occupied territories in mid-August alongside Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Nickolay Mladenov, the high representative for the so-called Board of Peace.
The trio engaged in intense discussions with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has dismissed the proposed roadmap for Gaza. They then proceeded to Cairo, where they met with a Palestinian technocratic group expected to assume control of Gaza, along with representatives from the Hamas resistance movement.
During the interview, Greenstock was critical of Blair’s current role in the Board of Peace, saying he did not think Blair could engage with both sides with the same level of respect.
“Because of his record on Iraq and on Palestine since he left government, he will be seen as prejudiced. So I think he will have, and is having, difficulties.”
Greenstock, who left government service in March 2004, called the Board of Peace an “abstract and arbitrary committee” whose composition would not have any real effect on the ground with either Israel or the Arab side to the question of Palestine.
“I don’t think the Board of Peace is a strong enough construct to bear the weight of the difficult decisions that are going to have to be made about the future of the Palestinian territories.”
As part of an international campaign, Israel and its allies have been amplifying their endeavors to remove the word Palestine from educational materials and museums.
On Tuesday, Israeli authorities began imposing their curriculum on more than 45,000 Palestinian students in state-run schools in East al-Quds, as part of a wider crackdown on education in the occupied territory.
A revised curriculum is reported to be circulating privately for consultation in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Trump Censorship Machine Loses Again in Court
By James Bovard | Mises Wire | August 31, 2026
The Trump administration’s crusade to crush campus criticism took another wallop on Friday in a California courtroom. Federal judge Noël Wise ruled that the Trump administration’s “ideological-deportation policy” brazenly violated the US Constitution.
The Stanford Daily—one of the best-known college student newspapers in the nation—sued the Trump administration for changing its “immigration policy and pattern of enforcement, namely by arresting, detaining, and deporting students with F-1 visas when those students use their freedom of speech to express opinions that the government does not like.” It asserted that the Trump administration’s “actions have specifically impacted Stanford Daily by decreasing the quantity and diversity of opinion pieces The Stanford Daily is able to publish on the conflict between Israel and Palestine.” Foreign students who had written on the issue requested that their previous articles be deleted, and other foreign students were no longer willing to comment on hot issues.
The Trump administration claims unlimited discretion to silence foreign students by deporting those whose opinions it disapproves of. Judge Wise wrote, “The language of the [First] Amendment makes clear that it is not the government that gives freedom of speech to the people. Instead, that freedom is imbued in the people. . . . It is not the government’s to take.” This is a notion that conservatives instinctively understand when it comes to the Second Amendment and the right of self-defense. But many people fail to recognize the same right for freedom of speech. Conor Fitzpatrick—the chief supervising attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)—which represented the student newspaper, declared, “Today’s ruling proves that free speech isn’t a privilege, but the inalienable right of every man, woman, and child.” FIRE president Greg Lukianoff clarified the scope of the ruling:
This ruling does NOT say the government must admit anyone, issue anyone a visa, or grant anyone citizenship. It says that once a person is lawfully here, the government cannot deport them because they engaged in protected speech. The government cannot tell a legal immigrant: An American is free to say this, but if you say it, you’re out.
George Porteous—Editor in Chief of Stanford Daily—hailed the decision: “The reporters in our newsroom shouldn’t have to fear that writing a story will result in their deportation. Today’s victory means they won’t have to.” But it remains to be seen whether this latest judicial rebuff slows the Trump censorship juggernaut.
When former president Donald Trump was campaigning to get elected as president in 2024, he openly promised at a campaign event, “One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave.” This was a linchpin of the promise on Trump’s campaign website to “make our college campuses safe and patriotic again.”
Trump presumed that non-citizens have zero right to free speech and his appointees have enforced that policy with an iron fist. On March 25, 2025, masked ICE agents seized Rumeysa Ozturk—a Turkish graduate student—off the streets outside Boston. Ozturk was locked up for 45 days and her student visa covertly canceled because she co-authored an op-ed criticizing Tufts University for failing to divest from Israel in response to the genocide in Gaza. Secretary of State Marco Rubio vilified her as a “lunatic” and implied that the feds had ample evidence of her crimes and abuses. Rubio later justified targeting Ozturk because she met the standard of “people that are supportive of movements that run counter to the foreign policy of the United States.” (Ironically, a large majority of Americans now oppose Trump’s foreign policy regarding his war on Iran). A leak to the Washington Post revealed that the feds had nothing on her—except that op-ed. Federal Judge William Sessions ordered Ozturk released because her arrest “potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of people in this country who are not citizens.” But that was the whole point.
Last September, in a case similar to the Stanford Daily case, federal judge William Young ruled that the Trump’s administration’s implementation of the Executive Orders (on foreign students),
. . . was targeted intentionally at specific viewpoints in order to chill speech. The evidence presented at trial included the Public Officials’ many public statements suggesting that they wished to staunch public protest related to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, including the President’s campaign promise that he would put an end to the student protests on this issue by kicking out protestors.
A Trump Executive Order interpreted “support” for terrorists “to be centered on core First Amendment speech and expressive conduct, such as attending public protests, leading such protests, or even publishing op-eds.” Judge Young declared that he “saw virtually no evidence that anyone along the way [any Trump official] seriously questioned whether pure political speech in support of Palestine or against Israel could be construed as support for terrorism.” Instead, that was the self-evident truth driving the crackdown.
The Stanford Daily case vivified how far the Trump administration will go to snuff dissent. A New York Times headline captured the essence of the case: “Judge Rules Trump Unlawfully Targeted Foreign Students Who Criticized Israel.” If a foreign student engaged in violence at a protest, that would be sufficient to deport them regardless of their opinions. But the Trump administration cast a far wider net, relying heavily on a list of 5,000 foreign students provided by the Canary Mission, which, according to Wikipedia, is “an Israel-based anonymously-run doxing website established in 2014 that publishes the personal information of students, professors, and organizations that it describes as anti-Israel or antisemitic.”
Judge Wise’s decision included stunning examples of how far the Trump administration stretched its definition of terrorist support or antisemitism to justify deporting aliens. John Armstrong—the chief of the Department of State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs—carried out Secretary Rubio’s crackdown on non-citizens. During legal proceedings, Armstrong was asked if a “statement calling for limiting military aid to Israel could be covered” (i.e., sufficient to deport). He answered, “[i]n my opinion, yes.” When did foreign aid become sacred?
Judge Wise concluded her 90-page ruling by declaring that the strength of American democracy,
. . . is diminished when members of our society—citizens and noncitizens alike—must self-censor and “behave” or suffer the government’s retaliation. In March 2025, that retaliation was directed at those engaged in pro-Palestine and anti-Israel speech. In September 2025, caught in the government’s net were people critical of Charlie Kirk. In May 2026, it potentially included “weighing in on a peace deal that’s being negotiated” in Iran regarding the Strait of Hormuz. Tomorrow, or perhaps even today, targets may include anyone in the United States who exercises their freedom of speech to simply express opinions the government does not like.
That warning reverberates as the Trump administration further decimates the privacy of Americans returning from abroad, claiming the right to seize and copy all the contents on their cell phones. The Trump administration proposed that foreign visitors will have to surrender their social media passwords before getting a visa to visit here. How long will it be until the same policy is imposed on American citizens?
Judge Wise declared, “Free speech, including the freedom to criticize the government and its leaders, is not a sign of our democracy’s fragility. It is evidence of its strength.” But is that “strength” increasingly a mirage in the United States? And how many other illegal actions has the Trump administration taken to suppress dissent that Americans have not yet heard about?
Final question: Is the Trump administration seeking to vindicate every leftist stereotype about conservatives and Republicans being intolerant authoritarians?
James Bovard is an American libertarian author and lecturer whose political commentary targets examples of waste, failures, corruption, cronyism and abuses of power in government. He is a USA Today columnist and is a frequent contributor to The Hill.
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From the Archives
A short history of British torture
ICC | December 2005
When the House of Commons was debating how much to increase the time limit for detention without trial the question of torture came up. Officially this was limited to the nice considerations of whether it was all right to send people to places where torture is used and whether Britain can use information collected by the use of torture in other countries. This discussion gave an impression of democratic Britain as the home of civilised behaviour where the very idea of torture is repugnant to our legislators – unlike, say, the US with its secret CIA jails… In reality, the British state has a long history of using and developing a whole range of torture techniques. … continue
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- No Tricks Zone
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
- Climate Extremists Target, Attack Large-Scale Power Grid Infrastructure In Germany!
- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
- Fear Of Debate: Alarmist German Climate Scientist Calls On Mainstream Media To Discredit Skeptic Voices
- End-Of-August Arctic Sea Ice Extent Hasn’t Fallen In 20 Years, Official Data Show!
- News-Making Nepal Region Has Had As-Warm Or Warmer Periods Than The 2000s In The 1600s, 1700s, 1800s
- 2025 Study: ‘There Exists No Unequivocal Experimental Evidence For The CO2 Greenhouse Effect’
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