President Trump instructed a broad swath of government agencies on Thursday to end collective bargaining with federal unions, a major escalation in his effort to assert more control over the federal work force.
Mr. Trump framed the order as critical to protect national security. But it targets agencies across the government, including the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, State, Treasury and Energy, most of the Justice Department, and parts of the Departments of Commerce, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services.
The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal workers union, estimated that the order would strip labor protections from hundreds of thousands of civil servants, and said it was preparing legal action.
“This administration’s bullying tactics represent a clear threat not just to federal employees and their unions, but to every American who values democracy and the freedoms of speech and association,” Everett Kelley, the union’s president, said in a statement. “Trump’s threat to unions and working people across America is clear: fall in line or else.”
Unions have been a major obstacle in Mr. Trump’s effort to slash the size of the federal work force and reshape the government to put it more directly under his control. They have repeatedly sued over his blizzard of executive actions, winning at least temporary reprieves for some fired federal workers and blocking efforts to dismantle portions of the government.
To claim authority to cancel the union contracts under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, Mr. Trump expanded the list of agencies exempt from provisions of laws governing federal labor relations for national security reasons. In doing so, he adopted an expansive view of national security, one that encompasses agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. International Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission.
The American Federation of Government Employees said Mr. Trump’s order was illegal.
Three noted scholars of history, philosophy, and fascism at Yale University announced that they are moving to a university in Canada. One, Jason Stanley, made clear that he was leaving because of his fear that the U.S. was dangerously close to becoming fascist under Trump.
Three prominent critics of President Donald Trump are leaving Yale’s faculty — and the United States — amid attacks on higher education to take up positions at the University of Toronto in fall 2025.
Philosophy professor Jason Stanley announced this week that he will leave Yale, while history professors Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore, who are married, decided to leave around the November elections. The three professors will work at Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
Stanley wrote to the Daily Nous that his decision to leave was “entirely because of the political climate in the United States.” On Wednesday, he told the Guardian that he chose to move after seeing how Columbia University handled political attacks from Trump.
After the Trump administration threatened to deport two student protesters at Columbia and revoked $400 million in research funding from the school, Columbia agreed on Friday to concede to a series of demands from the Trump administration that included overhauling its protest policies and imposing external oversight on the school’s Middle Eastern studies department.
“When I saw Columbia completely capitulate, and I saw this vocabulary of, well, we’re going to work behind the scenes because we’re not going to get targeted — that whole way of thinking presupposes that some universities will get targeted, and you don’t want to be one of those universities, and that’s just a losing strategy,” Stanley told the Guardian…
Yale has not released a statement addressing the revocation of Columbia’s funding. Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis has told the News that he does not anticipate any changes in Yale’s free expression and protest policies. University President Maurie McInnis previously said that she is prioritizing lobbying for Yale’s interests in Washington over issuing public pronouncements.
Shore wrote that the Munk School had long attempted to recruit her and Snyder and that the couple had seriously considered the offers “for the past two years.” Shore wrote that the couple decided to take the positions after the November 2024 elections. However, a spokesperson for Snyder told Inside Higher Ed that Snyder’s decision was made before the elections, was largely personal and came amid “difficult family matters.” The spokesperson also said that he had “no desire” to leave the United States.
Shore wrote that her and Snyder’s children were factors in the couple’s decision.
Snyder and Shore both specialize in Eastern European history and each has drawn parallels between the fascist regimes they have studied and the current Trump administration. Stanley, a philosopher, has also published books on fascism and propaganda, including the popular book “How Fascism Works.”
In 2021, Stanley and Snyder co-taught a course at Yale titled “Mass Incarceration in the Soviet Union and the United States.” Earlier this week, Stanley and Shore joined nearly 3,000 Jewish faculty across the U.S. to sign a letter denouncing the arrest of a Columbia student protester and urging their respective institutions to resist the Trump administration’s policies targeting colleges.
In an email, he writes that “the decision was entirely because of the political climate in the United States.” He had had an offer from Toronto, and decided to accept it last Friday night after Columbia’s capitulation to the Trump administration’s demands…
Stanley writes that he has been “very happy at Yale, with the department and the university,” but that he wants “to raise my kids in a country that is not tilting towards a fascist dictatorship.”
A Yale professor who studies fascism is leaving the US to work at a Canadian university because of the current US political climate, which he worries is putting the US at risk of becoming a “fascist dictatorship…”
He said in an interview that Columbia University’s recent actions moved him to accept the offer. Last Friday, Columbia gave in to the Trump administration by agreeing to a series of demands in order to restore $400m in federal funding. These changes include crackdowns on protests, increased security power and “internal reviews” of some academic programs, like the Middle Eastern studies department.
“When I saw Columbia completely capitulate, and I saw this vocabulary of, well, we’re going to work behind the scenes because we’re not going to get targeted – that whole way of thinking pre-supposes that some universities will get targeted, and you don’t want to be one of those universities, and that’s just a losing strategy,” he said.
Stanley added: “You’ve got to just band together and say an attack on one university is an attack on all universities. And maybe you lose that fight, but you’re certainly going to lose this one if you give up before you fight.
“Columbia was just such a warning,” he said. “I just became very worried because I didn’t see a strong enough reaction in other universities to side with Columbia. I see Yale trying not to be a target. And as I said, that’s a losing strategy.”
Stanley said he wasn’t concerned about his ability to continue his scholarship at Yale, but the broader climate against universities played a role. He praised other faculty at Yale for standing up against the attacks on their profession and said he wished he could stay and fight with them.
“But how could you speak out loudly if you’re not an American citizen?” he questioned. “And if you can’t speak out loudly if you’re not an American citizen, when will they come for the American citizens? It’s inevitable.”
Social media posts spread on Wednesday, noting the alarm sounded by a scholar of fascism leaving the country over its political climate. Nikole Hannah-Jones, the journalist and creator of the 1619 Project, wrote on the social media platform Bluesky: “When scholars of authoritarianism and fascism leave US universities because of the deteriorating political situation here, we should really worry.”
In a statement, Yale said it remains a “home to world-class faculty members who are dedicated to excellence in scholarship and teaching”.
“Yale is proud of its global faculty community which includes faculty who may no longer work at the institution, or whose contributions to academia may continue at a different home institution,” the university said. “Faculty members make decisions about their careers for a variety of reasons and the university respects all such decisions.”skip past newsletter promotion
Stanley recently wrote for the Guardian about a new Department of Education directive that said teaching about systemic racism and other topics could be grounds for a civil rights violation, according to the Trump administration’s legal interpretations. Stanley said this order sets the country “on a path to educational authoritarianism”.
He said he considered leaving the US in 2017, but that the second Trump administration has “definitely” proved worse than the first. Stanley’s profile has also risen since then after the publication of several books on propaganda and fascism. The Munk school is building a program with the view that there’s an “international struggle against democracy” and provides a “very exciting intellectual opportunity”, he said.
“I don’t see it as fleeing at all,” he said. “I see it as joining Canada, which is a target of Trump, just like Yale is a target of Trump.”
What does it say that a scholar of fascism is leaving the US right now? Said Stanley: “Part of it is you’re leaving because ultimately, it is like leaving Germany in 1932, 33, 34. There’s resonance: my grandmother left Berlin with my father in 1939. So it’s a family tradition.”
President Trump and Vice President Vance berate President Zelensky at the White House, February 28, 2025 (OSV News photo/Brian Snyder, Reuters)
John Connelly is a historian of East Central Europe at the University of California at Berkeley. This essay appeared in Conmonweal. I urge you to subscribe. How I wish someone would read this essay out loud to Donald Trump. Among other things, it demonstrates the importance of learning history and the dangers of historical ignorance.
Connelly writes:
For decades pundits have been urging us to do something about this or that dictator because he was “Hitler.” A quarter century ago, David Brooks was equating Saddam Hussein with the Nazi leader, and a quarter century before that, newspapers portrayed Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro as their day’s equivalent of the Führer. The historical episode these writers had in mind was the 1938 Munich Agreement, when Chamberlain and Daladier surrendered Czechoslovakia’s fortified border areas in return for “peace.” Half a year later, Hitler helped himself to the rest of that undefended country, until then the last surviving democracy east of the Rhine. The lesson was that we must not appease dictators: it only encourages them.
In 2022, history finally produced an actual parallel to the attack on Czechoslovakia when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, a functioning East European democracy. Yet, in contrast to 1938, this time the democracy fought back, and the West stood in united support—that is, until the pusillanimous and unprincipled acts of the Trump administration. The U.S. president has already gone far beyond anything Chamberlain might have dreamed of. Trump has not only appeased a dictator but adopted the dictator’s own language and reasoning, and he seems willing to award Putin vast Ukrainian territories before peace negotiations have even begun. As if all this weren’t strange enough, he also sent Vice President J. D. Vance to a conference in Munich to berate our allies for their allegedly undemocratic behavior. He then met with the leader of a party that has downplayed the importance of Hitler to German and world history and who opposes support of Ukraine.
The explosive exchange between President Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office prompted commentators to look for other historical parallels. Bartosz T. Wieliński, who writes for Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza, recalled that the evening before Hitler sent his armies to seize Prague in March 1939, he summoned Czech president Emil Hácha to Berlin and threatened to lay waste to the Czech capital if Hácha did not accept “peace” on German terms. Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring stood by nodding, nearly causing old Hácha to collapse. By contrast, writes Wieliński, president Zelensky has stood firm.
But an even more apt parallel occurred a few months later, in August 1939, when Hitler and Stalin decided to divide Poland and treat themselves to the spoils, including the country’s grain and oil. Careful historians could list many differences between now and then, but the underlying intention to expropriate a small country’s resources has a familiar ring, as does the imperial attitude behind it. Stalin’s transactional mentality continued after World War II, when he insisted that Poles repay the USSR for having cleared their lands of German troops by awarding it Polish oil and coal.
The United States of that period, led by men committed to defending freedom, behaved very differently. With much of Eastern Europe occupied by the Red Army, it invested huge sums (most in outright aid) to get Western Europe back on its feet and to sustain its democratic governments. The investments served the interests of peace because democratic states seldom go to war with each other.
The current administration relegates such thinking to the past, with Trump likening international affairs to a card game, with some holding stronger “hands” than others. Yet card games at least have rules, while what imperial powers do is help themselves to new cards as they see fit and knock over the card table whenever fair play displeases them. The best-known advocate of such behavior is the Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt, who wrote that different rules apply to great powers; he might be the only serious thinker who would justify Trump’s ambitions to seize Greenland or the Panama Canal.
The Trump team’s imperial attitude was on full display in the Oval Office meeting with Zelensky. Vice President Vance badgered Ukraine’s president to express more gratitude to the United States, even though he has done so profusely for years. What Vance seemed to expect was the sort of self-abasement that vassals once rendered to their lords. As long as humans can think and write freely, that fiasco will go down as a special disgrace for the United States, a low point in meanness and absence of compassion. It is we who should be grateful to Ukrainians—the same way we’re grateful to the men who landed in Normandy in June 1944 or to the soldiers of George Washington’s army. Like those heroes of yesteryear, today’s Ukrainians are putting their lives on the line for the sake of freedom.
That sort of argument may mystify the American right, but it also surprises some people on the left. I’ve heard colleagues in Berkeley denigrate the Ukrainian struggle as one driven by “nationalism” fueled by ancient ethnic chauvinism. In the midst of the Bosnian war, even the well-read and well-meaning Bill Clinton expressed frustration with such “Old World” nationalism, saying, “until those people over there get tired of killing one another, bad things will continue to happen.” Trump himself shows some of this impatience, portraying Zelensky as yet another Eastern European closed to reason.
But what’s happening in Ukraine is not difficult to understand. What we have been witnessing, in the years since 2014, is an East European democratic revolution much like our own, if not more dramatic. The colonists who took up arms in the 1770s were responding to everyday colonialism, of living under an empire that left them little voice in their own affairs and blithely exploited their lives and treasures. At some point, those Americans decided freedom was a cause worth dying for.
This was the sentiment an audience in Berkeley heard last September from Taras Dobko, the rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University. A missile had recently struck an apartment house in Lviv, wiping out a whole family, including Daria Bazylevych, a second-year cultural-studies major. For years, students and professors have been going off to fight and sometimes die, and now the hundreds of mourners at Daria’s funeral Mass recognized a consensus that has strengthened over time: human life is precious, but some things are more important than simple survival.
The Trump team’s imperial attitude was on full display in the Oval Office meeting with Zelensky.
The comparisons I have been invoking are approximate. The imperial aggressors Ukrainians face are endlessly more sinister than George III’s forces. But the similarities are nevertheless striking. Recall the early images from three years ago, just after Russian troops had crossed Ukraine’s borders. All kinds of people sought to repel the invaders—the young, the old, the tough, the nerdy, workers, students. The real issue was not territory on a map but how human beings on any territory are allowed to live their lives. These human beings were desperate not to fall under a regime of lawlessness, where human life is for sale and dignity is trampled by tyranny. Today’s Ukrainian patriotism is not about ethnicity. Many of the troops defending Ukraine are Russian-speaking; the religious communities represented among these troops range from Greek Catholic (Uniate) to atheist.
In the summer of 2022, President Zelensky, who is Jewish, demonstrated his acute historical vision by calling his country a “new nation.” Technically, the claim is wrong. Sources referred to a Ukrainian nation back in the seventeenth century. But the nation Zelensky means transcends that past. He is placing Ukraine in the small company of nations that define their identities by looking forward and not backward. The new Ukraine is a place and a people that seeks to create a future free from tyranny.
Here, Ukraine’s democratic revolution has precedents in European history, but they are few. There was 1789, when the French people walked onto the historical stage with the novel insistence that they had a right to self-rule. There was 1848, when peoples across Europe tried to follow the French example, but that movement soon came apart in ethnic bickering. And then there were the revolutions of 1989, when Europeans between France and Russia rose up against the Soviet empire. In world history, the closest parallel is indeed 1776, when North American colonists rebelled regardless of language and creed and dated their nation from the moment they determined to live freely.
But our day’s Americans can have short memories, a fact that frustrated Zelensky when he visited the Oval Office. For Trump and Vance, the indiscriminate torture and killing of hundreds of civilians committed by Putin’s soldiers just three years ago at Bucha are irrelevant to the challenges of “peace making.” Accusing Zelensky of “hating” Putin, as Trump did, is a bit like criticizing the Czechs or Poles for their animosity toward Hitler. Putin belongs to a small group of strongmen—including Pol Pot and Slobodan Milošević—who have presided over genocidal acts. Of course, sometimes one has to engage in diplomacy with such men, but the reports of U.S. diplomats becoming chummy over shared meals with Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, evoke disgust. Neville Chamberlain at least had the decency to appear uncomfortable in the presence of cynical despots.
American ignorance of the past can extend beyond facts to a misunderstanding of what America is about. Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine is, deep down, a betrayal of the United States. Last summer, Vance said that his ancestors are buried in Kentucky, and he hoped that seven generations of his family would find their final resting places there as well: even if they “would die fighting to protect it. That is the source of America’s greatness.” In fact, where our ancestors lie is irrelevant for our identities as Americans; their graves may be anywhere in the world. We are not a community of soil and blood.
But the sentiment Vance expressed is not unknown elsewhere. In 1984, I went on a field trip to eastern Poland with historians from Jagiellonian University in Krakow. My roommate on the trip, a young instructor, explained to me why Poles could not forget the territories that had once belonged to Poland yet now lay in Ukraine: “Remember, our graves are there.” Fortunately, when their country became free in 1989, the better angels in Polish society prevailed. As Timothy Snyder explained in The Reconstruction of Nations, émigré intellectuals determined that Poland needed peace and not more land. Eastern Europeans have suffered from territorial disputes for centuries, and that moment was a time to look forward and consign destructive bickering to history.
Hence the extraordinary incomprehension with which Poles and other Europeans view the Trump regime, which seems more intent on expanding America’s borders than on protecting existing ones in Europe. Washington now joins Moscow in calling Zelensky a “dictator.” That is why Europeans insist upon security guarantees for Ukrainians: as long as pernicious and demonstrably false ideas about Ukraine are taught as dogma to tens of millions of Russians, there can be no return to normal. An expansionist state backed by an aggressive ideology cannot be appeased; it can only be stopped.
Ukraine’s democratic revolution has precedents in European history, but they are few.
Today’s Ukrainian fighters live in trenches. They spend weeks in puddles of cold water, unable to rest properly, subsisting on terrible food. Like the men of D-Day or those who accompanied Washington to fight in wintry Princeton, they face not only death but discomforts that are difficult to imagine and usually forgotten in history books. Soldiers then and now have suffered these things so that their fellow citizens can say what they want in public, so that journalists can report without fear of retribution from civil authorities, so that teachers can speak freely in their classrooms without having to worry about being reported for indoctrinating their students with “Western ideology.” Growing threats to civil liberties under the Trump regime are of a piece with his admiration for Putin and with Vance’s meeting with neo-fascists in Munich. We are letting our freedoms slip away, and it’s not clear why.
Our founders, despite the checks and balances they built into the new republic, had gloomy forebodings. No matter how brilliantly conceived, they knew a constitution alone could not guarantee civic virtue. Perhaps Benjamin Franklin was right that the demos would one day succumb to corruption, but what would he say about voters who abandoned their God-given critical faculties and supported a man who, just four years earlier, had whipped up a mob to storm the Capitol to prevent the peaceful transfer of power? Video images show the attackers beating police with flagpoles.
For decades, I have been teaching students about interwar Germany’s last free elections in 1932, and when class is over we leave the lecture hall with pained incomprehension at those strange people back then. No longer. Germans of that time faced unemployment, destitution, street violence; they had suffered more in a war than we can imagine. Still, that July, far fewer than half of them voted for the radical right (37.2 percent). The numbers went down to 32 percent in November. His party in decline, Hitler was considering suicide when a coterie of conservatives schemed to bring him to power.
In November 2024, the United States was enjoying high employment, steady growth, and decreasing inflation, yet more than half of us voted for our own brand of right-wing populism. Yes, I am aware there are deep problems with housing, health care, and education, but that is no justification for casting a ballot that jeopardizes democracy. There was no reason to think that a second Trump administration would address those basic problems.
Is it not a kind of civic corruption for a nation to be blessed with abundant resources and fortuitous geography and not appreciate it? (Zelensky, ever the keen student of history, gently tried to remind Vance and Trump that Americans were protected by an ocean—a lesson that did not go over well.) Our conspicuously pious vice president might consider thanking the Almighty that we have peace-loving, democratic Canada on our northern border and not, like the Ukrainians, a rapacious, occasionally genocidal empire three times our size.
We are not in the 1930s. Our European allies have drawn lessons that make a return to Munich unlikely if not impossible. Unlike Czechoslovakia, Ukraine is not isolated, but an object of genuine neighborly concern. In Poland, France, and Austria, centrist forces have rallied to keep the far right out of power. The German elections suggest that when Elon Musk and J. D. Vance promote right-wing extremists abroad, it only drives Europe’s democrats closer together. Europeans display a wariness of neo-fascism that we, who have been spared direct experience of totalitarian rule, evidently lack.
Against the background of an Eastern Europe where nationhood has usually been about ethnicity, Ukraine’s brand of civic nationhood is a world-historical miracle. We don’t know what mysterious pool of ingredients permits democracies to arise and thrive, we know only that, unlike so many places where the United States has involved itself militarily, democracy has taken root in Ukraine. Unlike in 1938, when Czechs hoped that the West would sacrifice blood for their democracy, all that Ukrainians ask of other democracies is military aid, which in our case amounts to about four percent of the defense budget.
But even more important than our material support is their own faith: that some things, like freedom, are worth dying for, as Dobko reminded us in Berkeley. That belief can fade, and when it does, the effect can be contagious. In 1938, Czechs witnessed allies unwilling to stand for shared principles, and after World War II, Czechoslovakia—once the lone democracy east of the Rhine—became the sole European country to submit willingly to totalitarianism. Soviet troops left Czechoslovakian territory in December 1945, yet Czechs streamed into the Communist Party and the final seizure of power in 1948 was generated from below. It took democracy decades to recover.
Who would have thought an American president would make Neville Chamberlain look good? In 1938, the British PM sought peace to avert millions of deaths, while Trump seeks peace to advance “U.S. interests,” which he understands in purely material terms. Peace not for the sake of people, but of mineral rights. All talk of values like freedom or solidarity is anathema, and if “democracy” is invoked, it is only to aid its enemies. History writers of the future will pay close attention to what the United States does now. Far less is asked of us than was asked of the Western powers in 1938, and unless we change course, those historians will judge us far more severely than the men who once tried to appease Hitler.
John Connellyteaches the history of East Central Europe at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of From Peoples into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe(Princeton, 2020).
ICE has become the American Gestapo. They are snatching foreign students on American campuses and whisking them away, often to undisclosed locations, with no hearings, no due process.
The latest snatch-and-grab occurred yesterday at Tufts University in Massachusetts.
The Trump administration’s campaign against pro-Palestinian activists reached the Boston area Tuesday evening when an international PhD student at Tufts was arrested by masked federal immigration agents on a residential street and sent to a detention facility in Louisiana, according to federal immigration records and the student’s attorney.
Plainclothes officers handcuffed Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old Turkish nationalin the US on a student visa, and loaded her into an unmarked SUV with tinted windows as she pleaded for explanations, according to video of the arrest. She was transferred to Louisiana despite a federal judge ordering US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tuesday night not to remove Ozturk from Massachusetts without prior notice.
The precise timing of Ozturk’s transfer to Louisiana and the issuance of the judge’s order was unclear.
It was also unclear why the government targeted Ozturk, who is doctoral candidate at Tufts department of child study and human development. She had voiced support for the pro-Palestinian movement at Tufts, but was not known as a prominent leader. Her lawyer said she is not aware of any charges against her.
“I don’t understand why it took the government nearly 24 hours to let me know her whereabouts,” her lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai, said. ”Why she was transferred to Louisiana despite the court’s order is beyond me. Rumeysa should immediately be brought back to Massachusetts, released, and allowed to return to complete her PhD program.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security asserted Ozturk “engaged in support of Hamas,” a US-designated terror group behind the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that led to Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza, but did not provide evidence of that claim.
“A visa is a privilege not a right. Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be terminated,” the spokesperson said.
A screen grab from a video shows Tufts graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk, in white coat, being approached by federal immigration authorities before being detained on Tuesday, March 25 in Somerville.
Ozturk is the latest international student arrested by the Trump administration, which has vowed to deport non-citizen pro-Palestinian activists whom it accuses of engaging in antisemitic or illegal protests. That campaign is part of Trump’s wider crackdown on elite universities, including funding cuts, bans on diversity programs, and investigations over schools’ alleged inaction on antisemitism.
Earlier in March, Trump’s antisemitism task force canceled $400 million of federal funding for Columbia University. The administration also arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia graduate and Algerian citizen who was a leader of the school’s pro-Palestinian movement. Officials are trying to deport him, too, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared his continued presence in the United States was detrimental to US foreign policy.
Ozturk’s lawyer said information about her client was recently added to Canary Mission, a website that compiles information about pro-Palestinian students and professors, and which activists say has led to harassment and doxxing. The website noted Ozturk co-wrote an op-ed in the Tufts student newspaper last year criticizing the university’s response to the pro-Palestinian movement,urging Tufts to “end its complicity with Israel insofar as it is oppressing the Palestinian people and denying their right to self-determination.”
Pro-Palestinian activists and free speech advocates have decried the arrests as unconstitutional repression of political speech.
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell called the footage of the arrest “disturbing.”
“Based on what we now know, it is alarming that the federal administration chose to ambush and detain her, apparently targeting a law-abiding individual because of her political views. This isn’t public safety. It’s intimidation that will, and should, be closely scrutinized in court,” Campbell said.
Ozturk’s arrest took place slightly after 5 p.m. Tuesday on Mason Street in Somerville near Tufts, according to a resident who witnessed the arrest and spoke with the Globe on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation by the government, as well as security camera footage obtained by the Globe.
While walking his dog, the witness said, he saw a woman screaming outside a house. Half a dozen officers in plainclothes and wearing masks surrounded her, he said. As they handcuffed her, she cried and said, “OK, OK, but I’m a student,” he recalled.
Then they placed her in an unmarked SUV with tinted windows….
Reyyan Bilge, an assistant teaching professor in psychology at Northeastern University, told the Globe she has known Ozturk for more than a decade since Bilge taught Ozturk at Şehir University in Istanbul. Ozturk came to the United States to get her master’s degree at Columbia as a Fulbright scholar, Bilge said.
She graduated in 2020 from the developmental psychology program at Columbia Teacher’s College, according to a 2021 social media post by the school.
Bilge described Ozturk as soft-spoken andkind. “If you were to actually have a chat with her for about five minutes, you would understand how kind and how decent a person she is,” she said….
Tufts University president Sunil Kumar disclosed the arrest in a campus-wide message Tuesday night.
The university “had no pre-knowledge” of the arrest, he said, and Tufts did not share information with authorities, adding that the location of the arrest was not affiliated with the university.
The university was told Ozturk’svisa status was “terminated,” Kumar said in the email.
“We realize that tonight’s news will be distressing to some members of our community, particularly the members of our international community,” he said.
In a three-page order issued Tuesday, federal Judge Indira Talwani ordered ICE to submit a written explanation for relocating Ozturk and notify the court 48 hours before any effort takes place to allow the judge time to review the added information.
Ozturk’s lawyer filed a habeas petition in court on Tuesday asking for her release. Talwani also directed ICE officials to respond to the petition by Friday.
All of Ozturk’s family is in Turkey, and she only has friends here in the United States, Bilge said.
Bilge said Ozturk would never say anything to hurt anyone. “She’s not antisemitic,” Bilge said. But like many other Muslims, Bilge said, Ozturk is concerned about the human rights of Palestinian people. “But that’s freedom of speech,” Bilge said. “That’s just being human.”
On Wednesday evening, more than 2,000 people rallied insupport ofOzturk at a park near Powder House Square and the Tufts campus. Among them were students from Tufts and Harvard, as well as residents from the surrounding neighborhoods. Some wore keffiyehs, a patterned scarf associated with Palestinian nationalism. Others wore yarmulkes, the Jewish skullcap. “Stand up, fight back!” they chanted.
As I read this frightening post by Thom Hartmann, I was reminded of the many times in first term that he longed for protestors or suspects to be roughed up. He spoke to police officers in New York and urged them not to be so gentle when they apprehended suspects. He encouraged his audience to beat up troublemakers and send him their legal bills. He has a strange love of violence, though he himself dodged the draft five times.
Hartmann describes the freedom of ICE to arrest and detain anyone without a warrant, without any due process. Where is this going?
Imagine stepping off a plane in the United States, fully expecting to enter the country without issue, only to be surrounded by armed agents, handcuffed, and thrown into a freezing detention center. No trial. No lawyer. No contact with the outside world.
In Trump’s America, you are no longer guaranteed your rights or freedom—because now, it takes nothing more than an ICE agent’s “suspicion” to make you disappear.
This isn’t a mistake. It’s part of an expanding system of cruelty, where ICE—once an agency tasked with immigration enforcement—is now operating like an unchecked police force, targeting legal residents, visitors, and even US citizens with impunity.
People who follow every rule, complete all the required paperwork, and obey every regulation are still finding themselves locked away, held in horrific conditions, and stripped of their rights—all based on the whims of an agent who doesn’t even need evidence to justify an arrest.
A U.S. citizen from Chicago was among 22 people recently subjected to unlawful arrests and detention by ICE. The U.S. Government Accountability Office found that during Trump’s first term, immigration authorities asked to hold approximately 600 likely citizens and actually deported about 70 likely citizens.
But now, in part because of the Laken Riley Act, it’s getting worse. Forty-two Democrats in the House and fourteen in the Senate voted to pass this execrable GOP bill last month; it was named after a young woman murdered by an undocumented alien whose story was relentlessly promoted by Fox “News” and other rightwing hate media.
That law, recently signed by Trump, says that ICE now has the authority to detain anybody — anybody — for an indefinite period of time — no time limit whatsoever — if an ICE agent simply says that he or she “suspects” the person is in the country illegally or without documentation.
Fabian Schmidt, a German-born engineer, has lived in the United States for nearly two decades, legally working, paying taxes, and contributing to his community. None of that mattered when he returned home from a trip abroad. As soon as he landed at Logan Airport in Boston, ICE agents pulled him aside. His green card renewal was “flagged” for some unknown reason—no explanation, no opportunity to clarify, just a red mark in a government system.
That was all it took. ICE stripped him of his clothes, subjected him to hours of aggressive questioning, and locked him in a detention center. They threw him into an ice-cold shower and left him shivering on the concrete floor, humiliated and terrified.
For days, his mother, Astrid, desperately tried to find him. She called ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and any agency that might give her an answer. They either ignored her or outright lied, claiming they had no record of her son. When she finally learned where he was, Fabian was barely holding himself together. “They treat us like animals,” he told her.
And why was he there? Because of a supposed “bureaucratic error.” ICE used a minor paperwork issue as an excuse to detain a legal resident of the United States without due process, a tactic that’s becoming frighteningly common.
For Jessica Brösche, a German tattoo artist, her visit to the United States was supposed to be brief—just a trip to see friends and enjoy the country. She had a valid passport, a return ticket, and legal permission to enter under the Visa Waiver Program. Yet, ICE decided that she might try to work while visiting, a baseless assumption that required no proof and no justification.
Just “suspicion.” That was enough to detain her indefinitely.
Once inside, the nightmare deepened. They threw her into a cell with no bed and no access to legal assistance. For eight straight days, they kept her in solitary confinement. The lights never dimmed, and the sounds of other detainees screaming in despair echoed through the walls. She started hallucinating, her grip on reality slipping. Desperate to feel something, anything real, she punched the walls until her knuckles bled.
Meanwhile, her best friend, Amelia, searched frantically for her. ICE refused to confirm her location or even acknowledge that they had detained her. No charges, no trial, no legal recourse—just silence.
Jessica’s case isn’t unique. People who follow all immigration rules are being detained under vague suspicions, often disappearing into a bureaucratic black hole. And once they’re inside the system, their rights mean nothing.
Consider Jasmine Mooney, the actor who starred in the American Pie franchise anda Canadian businesswoman who played by the rules. She secured a job offer, completed all visa paperwork, and followed every U.S. immigration law to the letter. But that didn’t stop ICE from shackling her, chaining her wrists, ankles, and waist as if she were a violent offender.
For days, she was trapped in a brutal private, for-profit detention facility, laying on the bare floor with nothing but a crinkled foil sheet for warmth. Then, in the dead of night, ICE dragged her from her cell, bound her in chains again, and forced her onto a bus with dozens of other women. They drove for hours, denying them food, water, or bathroom breaks. By the time she arrived at another facility, she had been awake for 24 hours and was too weak to stand.
To this day, ICE refuses to explain why she was detained. And why would they? They don’t have to. The agency operates with absolute power, detaining people for as long as they want, answering to no one.
Moody tells her horrifying story to The Guardian, writing:
“I was then placed in a real jail unit: two levels of cells surrounding a common area, just like in the movies. I was put in a tiny cell alone with a bunk bed and a toilet. …
“There were around 140 of us in our unit. Many women had lived and worked in the US legally for years but had overstayed their visas – often after reapplying and being denied. They had all been detained without warning.”
These aren’t isolated cases. ICE has transformed itself into an authoritarian force that detains people indefinitely on suspicion alone. No evidence? No trial? No problem.
And the for-profit prison industry that’s holding many if not most of them has no incentive to help these people; the more they detail and the longer they stay, the more money the prison companies make (which they then share as campaign donations with Republican politicians).
ICE agents don’t need proof. They only need the power to act—and Trump has given it to them.
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I am a historian of education. I started the blog in 2012 to draw attention to the nefarious push for privatization. The privatization movement was and is well-funded by billionaires and highly coordinated. Its leaders attacked public schools as “failing,” they railed against teachers, and they advocated for charter schools. And of course, they hate unions. They pushed the idea that “school choice” would inevitably lead to better education, as parents would of course choose the best schools. Competition would produce better schools.
But the idea they really pushed was that schools are a consumer choice, not a public good. Charter schools were a step on the road to vouchers. Vouchers completely destroy the fundamental idea that public schools are a civic responsibility that all of us pay for because all of us benefit, whether or not we have children in public schools.
I wrote three books to spread the word about the hoax of the privatization movement. It directed public money to Walmart-style chains, grifters and entrepreneurs.
But since the re-election of grifter Trump, I have written far more about Trump than about education.
You deserve an explanation.
Trump is a threat to our democracy.
He has turned control of the government over to Elon Musk, a man lacking in understanding of government and lacking in empathy. Musk is ransacking every part of the federal government, ruthlessly firing civil servants and cutting contracts but leaving untouched the billions he receives every year.
Trump has upended the world by insulting our allies and praising authoritarians.
He attacks NATO and the EU. He scorns Ukraine, which was ruthlessly invaded by Russia. He sides with Putin. He opens a tariff war with our neighbors.
I have lived a long life and I have never been more afraid for the survival of the country I love than I am now. We are led by fools and scoundrels.
Trump and Musk are trying to dismantle the federal government. The damage they are inflicting will take years to repair. Valuable agencies like USAID and the Department of Education have been closed without bothering to get approval from Congress. Thousands of civil servants have been fired with no due process or evaluation of their significance.
And we are only two months into his term.
The survival of our public schools depends on the survival of our society.
Trump hates public schools. He wants to fund vouchers everywhere so that children may be indoctrinated in religious schools, so that parents can be paid for home schooling, so that rich parents can be subsidized.
We are in a terrible place.
Trump is a puppet of Putin. He has never said anything critical of Putin, although he is fast to insult everyone else. Why? What does Putin have over Trump?
He has appointed the least qualified people to head every department, with the possible exception of Marco Rubio, who has abandoned his core beliefs to serve Trump.
Of course, I am worried about the survival of public schools.
I’m even more concerned about the survival of our democracy.
Carol Kocivar is former President of the California State PTA. She has worked as an attorney, journalist, and ombudsperson and is the parent to two children who graduated from the San Francisco public schools
Scary as this may seem, it is time to talk with your children about how our democracy is threatened.
I know. I know. Those are strong words. I certainly am not suggesting that we ask first graders whether the president should have more power than the Congress or the Supreme Court. But I am looking at this through the lens of history– with the knowledge that Hitler and Mussolini strengthened their hold through the indoctrination of youth.
Our children are not born with democracy in their DNA. It is our responsibility to ensure that each generation has the knowledge and skills to support and preserve our democracy.
Political outreach to children is already underway. Below is an example of a Kid’s Guide on the internet.
“With the triumphant return of President Trump to the White House, Americans everywhere are celebrating his return and what it means for our nation. And, as our kids are the future of our country, it’s important for them to understand how Trump will make America great again. That’s why we created The Kids Guide to President Trump, and right now we’re giving it away for FREE!”
Kids are taught about the Constitution in school In elementary school, students should already have some basic knowledge about how our government is supposed to work. By the time they have completed the 8th grade, they should know the basics of our constitutional democracy. For example, the California History/ Social Science frameworks provides that 8th graders should be taught about separation of powers, checks and balances, the nature and purpose of majority rule, and the ways in which the American idea of constitutionalism preserves individual rights.
They should know, for example, that the president is not a king.
They should know that the Congress passes laws, not the president.
They should know that the President and his staff cannot refuse to follow court orders.
They should know the president does not have the right to refuse to implement spending decisions of Congress.
They should know their rights include freedom of speech.
What can parents do?
In age appropriate language, discuss current events with them. I was going to say discuss it at the dinner table but you probably have a better shot at their attention as you drive to and from sports events.
Seek out incidents that challenge the basic principles of our democracy and discuss them.
What do they think? How does that square with what they know about the constitution?
Explain why you think it is important that they understand what is happening in the country.
Discuss money for schools. Does their public school need more or less money? What do they think about cutting funding for their school?
Talk about the importance of voting. Can voting change public policy?
Ask what would help them become more involved in issues that affect their school? Their community? Their country?
It’s up to us to preserve democracy for our children.
New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman smells a rat in the bilateral talks between Trump and Putin about the war in Ukraine. He’s been watching both of them for years, and he knows they are both lying. Putin is using Trump for his own ends. Trump wants to please Putin.
Ever since President Trump returned to office and began trying to make good on his boast about ending the Ukraine war in days, thanks to his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, I’ve had this gnawing concern that something was lost in translation in the bromance between Vlad and Don.
When the interpreter tells Trump that Putin says he’s ready to do anything for “peace” in Ukraine, I’m pretty sure what Putin really said was he’s ready to do anything for a “piece” of Ukraine.
You know those homophones — they can really get you in a lot of trouble if you’re not listening carefully. Or if you’re only hearing what you want to hear.
The Times reported that in his two-and-a-half-hour phone call with Trump on Tuesday, Putin agreed to halt strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, according to the Kremlin, but Putin made clear that he would not agree to the general 30-day cease-fire that the United States and Ukraine had agreed upon and proposed to Russia.
The Kremlin also said that Putin’s “key condition” for ending the conflict was a “complete cessation” of foreign military and intelligence assistance to Kyiv — in other words, stripping Ukraine naked of any ability to resist a full Russian takeover of Ukraine. More proof, if anyone needed it, that Putin is not, as Trump foolishly believed, looking for peace with Ukraine; he’s looking to own Ukraine.
All that said, you will pardon me, but I do not trust a single word that Trump and Putin say about their private conversations on Ukraine — including the words “and” and “the,” as the writer Mary McCarthy famously said about the veracity of her rival Lillian Hellman. Because something has not smelled right from the start with this whole Trump-Putin deal-making on Ukraine.
I just have too many unanswered questions. Let me count the ways.
For starters, it took Secretary of State Henry Kissinger over a month of intense shuttle diplomacy to produce the disengagement agreements between Israel and Egypt and Israel and Syria that ended the 1973 war — and all of those parties wanted a deal. Are you telling me that two meetings between Trump’s pal Steve Witkoff and Putin in Moscow and a couple of phone calls between Putin and Trump are enough to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine on reasonable terms for Kyiv?
Trump couldn’t sell a hotel that quickly — unless he was giving it away.
Wait, wait — unless he was giving it away. …
Lord, I hope that is not what we’re watching here. Message to President Trump and Vice President JD Vance: If you sell out Ukraine to Putin, you will forever carry a mark of Cain on your foreheads as traitors to a core value that has animated U.S. foreign policy for 250 years — the defense of liberty against tyranny.
Our nation has never so brazenly sold out a country struggling to be free, which we and our allies had been supporting for three years. If Trump and Vance do that, the mark of Cain will never wash off. They will go down in history as “Neville Trump” and “Benedict Vance.” Likewise Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and national security adviser Michael Waltz.
Why else am I suspicious? Because Trump keeps saying that all he wants to do is end “the killing” in Ukraine. I am with that. But the easiest and quickest way to end the killing would be for the side that started the killing, the side whose army invaded Ukraine for utterly fabricated reasons, to get out of Ukraine. Presto — killing over.
Putin needs to enlist Trump’s help only if he wants something more than an end to the killing. I get that Ukraine will have to cede something to Putin. The question is how much. I also get that the only way for Putin to get the extra-large slice that he wants and the postwar restrictions that he wants imposed on Ukraine — without more warfighting — is by enlisting Trump to get them for him.
Why else am I suspicious? Because Trump has left all our European allies on the sidelines when he negotiates with Putin. Excuse me, but our European allies have contributed billions of dollars in military equipment, economic aid and refugee assistance to Ukraine — more combined than the United States, which Trump lies about — and they have made clear that they are now ready to do even more to prevent Putin from overrunning Ukraine and coming for them next.
So why would Trump enter negotiations with Putin and not bring our best leverage — our allies — with him? And why would he visibly turn U.S. military and intelligence aid to Ukraine off and then on — after shamefully calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “a dictator”?
Sorry, that doesn’t smell right to me, either. What made Kissinger and Secretary of State James Baker particularly effective negotiators is that they knew how to leverage our allies to amplify U.S. power. Trump foolishly gives the back of his hand to our allies, while extending an open hand to Putin. That’s how you give up leverage.
Leveraging allies — the biggest asset that we have that Putin does not — “is what smart statecraft is all about,” Dennis Ross, the longtime Middle East adviser to U.S. presidents, told me.
“The key to good statecraft is knowing how to use the leverage that you have — how to marry your means to your objectives. The irony is that Trump believes in leverage — but has not used all the means that he has” in Ukraine, said Ross, the author of the timely, and just published, “Statecraft 2.0: What America Needs to Lead in a Multipolar World.”
What also smells wrong to me is that Trump appears to have no clue why Putin is so nice to him. As a Russian foreign policy analyst in Moscow put it to me recently: “Trump does not get that Putin is merely manipulating him to score Putin’s principal goal: diminish the U.S. international position, destroy its network of security alliances — most importantly in Europe — and destabilize the U.S. internally, thus making the world safe for Putin and Xi.”
Trump refuses to understand, this analyst added, that Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping both want to see America boxed in to the Western Hemisphere rather than messing around with either of them in Europe or Asia/Pacific — and they see Trump as their pawn to deliver that.
Finally, and pretty much summing up all of the above, it smells to me that Trump has never made clear what concessions, sacrifices and guarantees he is demanding from Russia to get a peace deal on Ukraine. And who goes into a negotiation without a very clear, unwavering bottom line in terms of core American interests?
There are sustainable ways to end a war and keep it ended and there are unsustainable ways. It all depends on the bottom line — and if our bottom line departs fundamentally from that of Ukraine’s and our allies’, I don’t think they are going to just roll over for the Trump-Putin bromance.
Putin wants a Ukraine with a government that is basically the same as his neighboring vassal Belarus, not a Ukraine that is independent like neighboring Poland — a free-market democracy anchored in the European Union.
What kind of Ukraine does Trump want? The Belorussian version or the Polish version?
I have absolutely no doubt which one is in Ukraine’s interest, America’s interest and our European allies’ interest. The thing that gnaws at me is that I don’t know what Donald Trump thinks is in his personal interest — and that is all that matters now in Trump’s Washington.
Until it’s clear that Trump’s bottom line is what should be America’s bottom line — no formal surrendering of Ukrainian territory to Putin, but simply a cease-fire; no membership for Ukraine in NATO, but membership in the European Union; and an international peacekeeping force on the ground, backed up with intelligence and material support from the U.S. — color me very, very skeptical of every word Trump and Putin say on Ukraine — including “and” and “the.”
It is clear to Friedman that Trump sides with Putin. But why? Why is he eager to satisfy Putin? Why does he behave like the wimpy little brother when he talks to Putin?
A protest letter is circulating among Jewish faculty and students in response to the Trump administration’s attacks on American universities. The specific complaint is that the attacks are cloaked as an effort to “fight anti-Semitism.” The first assault was the federal government’s suspension of $400 million in research grants to Columbia Unicersity on the grounds that the university has failed to root out and punish anti-Semitism. More than 500 Jewish academics have signed a petition denouncing this action as a fraud.
Trump’s war on higher education is not intended to curb anti-Semitism. If anything, it will encourage anti-Semitism by making Jews responsible for the hostile behavior of the Trump administration. Make no mistake: this president responded to an anti-Semitic riot in Charlottesville by saying that there were “very fine people on both sides.” The marchers chanted “Jews will not replace us.” Trump rallies have attracted people wearing swastikas and festooned with Nazi paraphernalia. Trump has attracted the allegiance of Nazis and neo-Nazis. His co-president, Elon Musk, gave the Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration–not once but twice; right hand on heart, then arm thrust out. Musk has encouraged the rise of car-right and neo-Nazi parties in Europe.
Most Jewish scholars support everything Trump opposes: freedom of the press, academic freedom, freedom to teach, freedom to learn, freedom of speech, and freedom to study diversity, equity, and inclusion in all its forms.
I gladly signed the petition #398). The Trump administration is boldly trying to control the curriculum of higher education and boldly asserting control of intellectual freedom at both public and private universities. Not in my name.
If Trump wants to tamp down anti-Semitism, he could start by denouncing the Nazis and neo-Nazis who are in his MAGA movement. Clean his own Augean stables.
Open letter in response to federal funding cuts at Columbia
On March 7th, the Trump administration announced the immediate cancellation of approximately $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University. This includes funding from the Department of Justice, the Department of Education, and the Department of Health and Human Services, which suggests cuts to funding for scholarship and research in law, education, and healthcare. The university was told that these funds were being withheld because they had not done enough to suppress antisemitism, and the same rationale has been since used to propose further cuts to other universities and colleges across the U.S. In other words, the federal government claims it is taking these extraordinary measures in order to protect Jewish students from discrimination.
We are Jewish faculty, scholars, and students at U.S. universities — representative of the community that this administration purports to be protecting from antisemitism on campuses. Let us be clear: These actions do not protect us.
There are many issues on which we, as a group, disagree. We have diverse views on Israel and Gaza, on American politics, and on the Trump administration. We have diverse views on the administration of Columbia University, and on the way it has responded to protests. What unites us is that we refuse to let our Jewish identities be used as a pretext for destroying institutions that have long made America great – American universities and the research and knowledge they produce.
Together, we say: Not on our behalf. Harming U.S. Universities does not protect Jewish people. Cutting funding for research does not protect Jewish people. Punishing researchers and scholars does not protect Jewish people. These actions do, however, limit opportunities for students and scholars – within the Jewish community and beyond – to receive training, conduct research, and engage in free expression.
In fact, harming universities makes everyone less safe, including Jews. History teaches us that the loss of individual rights and freedoms for any group often begins with silencing scientists and scholars, people who devote their lives to the pursuit of knowledge — a pursuit that is core to Jewish culture. Moreover, destroying universities in the name of Jews risks making Jews in particular less safe by setting them up to be scapegoats. Once it becomes clear how much knowledge, and how much human potential, has been lost in the name of combating antisemitism, Jews may be blamed.
U.S. universities have partnered with the U.S. government since 1941, when university research began receiving federal funding and was integral to winning the Second World War. By expanding this partnership after the war, the U.S. has created the best research infrastructure in the world, which has, in turn, enabled the most scientific and technological progress in human history. Do not dismantle this partnership, especially not on the pretense of protecting Jewish people.
In the U.S., the law requires due process and a presumption of innocence. The Trump administration bypassed the rule of law so they could create the illusion of a crackdown on dangerous immigrants.
The Miami Herald said:
The day after he was arrested while working at a restaurant in Texas, Mervin Jose Yamarte Fernandez climbed out of a plane in shackles in El Salvador, bound for the largest mega-prison in Latin America. His sister, Jare, recognized him in a video shared on social media. As masked guards shaved detainees’ heads and led them into cells at the maximum-security complex,
Yamarte Fernandez turned his gaze slowly to the camera. “He was asking for help. And that help didn’t come from the lips. It came from the soul,” said Jare, who asked to be identified by her nickname because she fears for her family’s safety and who added her brother has no previous criminal record. “You know when someone has their soul broken.”
Yamarte Fernandez, 29, is among 238 Venezuelans the Trump administration accused of being gang members without providing public evidence and sent over the weekend to El Salvador’s Terrorist Confinement Center, a prison about 45 miles from the capital designed to hold up to 40,000 people as part of a crackdown on gangs. They will be jailed for at least one year, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said in a statement on X, following a deal brokered between the two countries in February.
His sister identified him in a video shared on social media by the Salvadoran government. “He shouldn’t be imprisoned in El Salvador, let alone in a dangerous prison like the one where the Mara Salvatruchas are held,” his sister told the Miami Herald.
“These heinous monsters were extracted and removed to El Salvador where they will no longer be able to pose any threat to the American people,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
But families of three men who appear to have been deported and imprisoned in El Salvador told the Miami Herald that their relatives have no gang affiliation – and two said their relatives had never been charged with a crime in the U.S. or elsewhere. One has been previously accused by the U.S. government of ties to the feared Tren de Aragua gang, but his family denies any connection.
Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor Immigration and Customs Enforcement responded to Miami Herald questions about what criteria was used to select detainees sent to El Salvador, what the plan is for detainees incarcerated abroad, and whether the government had defied a federal judge’s orders to send them there.
Diane Ravitch's blog 