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March 2025

The Urgency Of Fighting For Our Rights While We Can

The repression of people who show support for Palestinian liberation has escalated. The Trump administration is using an antiquated immigration law and executive orders to target student activists, threatening them with deportation, and has gone so far as to kidnap students and professors. Clearing the FOG speaks with a Cornell University PhD student, Sriram Parasurama, who was suspended for participating in pro-Palestine demonstrations and is currently a plaintiff in a case challenging two of President Trump's executive orders and with Chip Gibbons, a lawyer with Defending Rights and Dissent and the author of an upcoming book on the FBI, surveillance and the national security state. Both explain the urgency of fighting violations of our Constitutional rights and how to do that, as well as the implications of not taking action.

Schools Are No Place For The ADL

Although the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has long portrayed itself as a champion of civil rights, this has been undermined by its unconditional support for Israel and its efforts to weaponize antisemitism against Israel’s critics. As those fighting racism increasingly embrace the cause for Palestinian human rights, the ADL has moved further away from its commitment to racial justice. As a former ADL education director Danielle Bryant wrote in the New York Daily News: I watched from the inside as the ADL erased racial justice from its civil rights priorities, caved to pressure from conservative media for being “too woke,” and quietly abandoned core education programs. The shift began with an internal pause on its use of the word “racism”. . . .

Alawites And Christians: Behind Syria’s Silent, Sectarian Slaughter

The massacres and repression of Alawites and Christians in Syria began immediately after the fall of Damascus and have continued for the past three and a half months. On 7 December 2024, the day after the capital city fell to Idlib-based militants, Israel began bombing Syrian territory and deployed tanks into the country's south. Yet the barrels of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its affiliated Salafi extremist groups – who had taken control of Damascus – were not pointed at Israel, but at Syria's Alawite population. What began as attacks on Alawite and Christian religious sites quickly turned into the systematic slaughter of Alawites.

Trump Administration Using ‘State Secrets Privilege’ As It Was Intended

President Donald Trump’s administration invoked the “state secrets privilege” to prevent a United States court from reviewing the abduction of immigrants, mostly Venezuelans, who were flown to El Salvador and Honduras. A number of explainers related to the Venezuelan migrants case have been written about the state secrets privilege. One in particular from CNN suggested that Trump had broken with “past practice.” Most of them gloss over or omit similarities between this case and the 1953 case known as U.S. v. Reynolds, which established the state secrets privilege.

Venezuela To Receive UN Assistance For Migrants Illegally Imprisoned In El Salvador

The United Nations secretary general and the UN high commissioner for human rights “expressed their commitment to activating all the available mechanisms to re-establish as soon as possible the flagrantly violated rights of the Venezuelan migrants” abducted in El Salvador. This was reported by the Foreign Affairs Ministry of Venezuela via a statement issued on Friday, March 28. This comes after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro held a telephone conversation with UN Secretary General António Guterres two days ago about the issue of the Venezuelan migrants deported from the US and illegally incarcerated in a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.

From Global Anti-Imperialism To The Dandelion Fighters

China is probably one of few states which flipped its diplomatic stance on the “Palestinian-Israeli conflict” in the most dramatic manner from the 1950s to 1970s. In only 20 years, the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s official foreign policy dramatically changed from almost establishing diplomatic relations with Israel in 1950 to denying any legitimacy of the Israeli state in the 1960s to 1970s. As I aim to demonstrate in this article, the Maoist era, especially from 1955 to 1976, established the foundation of China’s diplomatic support for the Palestinian liberation movement, and this legacy is still one of the main factors guiding China’s official stance on Palestine today.

Trump Moves To Rescind Union Rights Of Over One Million Federal Workers

Citing his national security authority, President Trump signed an executive order Thursday rescinding the collective bargaining rights of a massive swath of the federal workforce in a historic attack on public unions. The order strips workers from the right to union representation across the federal enterprise, including at the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Land Management.

Setting The Pace In Auto: Thinking Bigger Than Tariffs

President Donald Trump’s infatuation with tariffs dates back to the 1980s, when he first said tariff was “the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” On March 26 he announced “a 25 percent tariff on all cars not made in the U.S.,” but exempted auto parts that comply with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the successor to NAFTA. For those parts, and for the 25 percent of U.S.-sold vehicles that are assembled in Mexico and Canada, the tariffs will be applied partially at an undisclosed date to only the non-U.S. part of the vehicle’s value. Essentially, auto manufacturing is already so integrated across North America that the administration has left carve-outs for Mexico and Canada.

Minneapolis Parents And Teachers Protest Cuts To Special Education

Minneapolis, MN — Dozens of teachers and parents interrupted a school board meeting to demand the Minneapolis Public Schools not cut special education department staff or funding. As special education teachers are beginning to be laid off and the Minneapolis Public School district faces a $75M budget deficit with plans for wide cuts, protesters are calling for the most vulnerable students in the district not to be on the chopping block. With chants of “Who’s schools? Our schools,” and “inclusion is for everyone,” the large crowd of protesters interrupted the School Board meeting on Tuesday, March 25, by standing and chanting in unison before several speakers shared their stories.

Detroit Protest At ICE Slams Deportations

Detroit, MI – 50 protesters gathered at the Detroit ICE headquarters, March 29, in response to Trump’s racist attacks on immigrants and to demand Detroit be declared a sanctuary city. Over the past weeks, several families in the city, including victims of the flooding in the Southwest neighborhood, have been turned over to ICE by the Detroit Police Department. Opening the rally, Kassandra Rodriguez of Detroit Comité de Acción Comunitaria spoke on the need to end all deportations, saying, “As a second generation Latina, this fight hits very close to home. I have seen the direct harm ICE causes to our community.

Shirley DuBois And Scholars Of Color Resistance Efforts Parallel 2025 Visa Struggles

March 27, 2025, marked 48 years since the death of Shirley Graham DuBois, the prominent African American writer, scholar, and social activist. She was the widow of the prolific academic W.E.B. Du Bois. As her legacy as an advocate for racial equality, Pan-Africanism, and social justice continues, it’s important to reflect on her substantial role in the shaping of the political landscape, particularly her resisting the United States Justice Department, who on May 5, 1970 denied her entry into the country citing the McCarran-Walter Act.

As Federal Environmental Priorities Shift, Native American Nations Plan

Long before the large-scale Earth Day protests on April 22, 1970 – often credited with spurring significant environmental protection legislation – Native Americans stewarded the environment. As sovereign nations, Native Americans have been able to protect land, water and air, including well beyond their own boundaries. Their actions laid the groundwork for modern federal law and policy, including national legislation aimed at reducing pollution. Now the Trump administration is seeking to weaken some of those limits and eliminate programs aimed at improving the environments in which marginalized people live and work.

Fake ‘Populism’: Trump’s Billionaire Administration Serves The Rich

When Donald Trump campaigned to be US president in 2024, he promised he would help working-class Americans. He even did a photo op at a McDonald’s, pretending to be a fast food worker. When he returned to the White House, however, Trump made it clear that his policies would be serving a small handful of billionaire oligarchs, not the majority of the country. Trump appointed 13 billionaires as top officials in his administration. As Public Citizen reported, this means that the Trump administration represents not just the 1% richest Americans, but the 0.0001%.

Recording Reveals Social Security Head’s Thoughts On DOGE And Trump

Since the arrival of a team from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, Social Security is in a far more precarious place than has been widely understood, according to Leland Dudek, the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration. “I don’t want the system to collapse,” Dudek said in a closed-door meeting last week, according to a recording obtained by ProPublica. He also said that it “would be catastrophic for the people in our country” if DOGE were to make changes at his agency that were as sweeping as those at USAID, the Treasury Department and elsewhere.

Respect For The Law Is The Strongest Weapon Against Fascism

The well-prepared, abundantly funded Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025’s implementation overwhelms all that has come before. The ill-prepared, leaderless Democrats and opposition are stymied to stop it. No March on Washington like the 1963 March for civil and political rights or the 1967 March against the Vietnam War will slow down the Trump steamroll. Neither the high price of eggs nor Wall Street jitters have had any effect. What to do? Could courts be the deciding factor to halt the United States slide towards fascism? Rules are essential to any organized society.