Midweek Links 03/12/2025
HHS is going to support research on the supposed relation between vaccines and autism (long since debunked). Kennedy is Trump’s Lysenko.
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1) Andrew Sullivan, who was one of the first-ever bloggers, is a stalwart defender of free speech, civil liberty, and the rule of law. What follows is a series of his posts on Substack concerning the very disturbing case of the Columbia student detained by ICE, despite being a green card holder and having been convicted of no crime. The true test for defenders of freedom is objecting to the unlawful treatment of those with whom one disagrees.
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"It is an incredibly tiresome tactic of those on the left to accuse free speech supporters of hypocrisy because they don’t jump immediately on every possible violation.
But the case of Mahmoud Khalil is an easy one. He was arrested by ICE, his lawyer says, because they believe they can detain and deport anyone who holds noxious views if they are still on a visa of some kind.
This is bad enough. Worse: Khalil is not on a visa; he is a green card holder. ICE has no right to detain him, neither does any part of any government, without charge. A Green Card holder is the equivalent of a citizen, as you may know from immigration control at airports.
So this is an administration seizing a citizen without charge because of his noxious views and morally questionable activism. It is a test case for consistency on the free speech right. It is a direct assault on the First Amendment. It must not stand another day.
Yet looking around the web today, so many of my usual free speech supporters are quiet. Even FIRE is mealy-mouthed. Give them time. But to say it’s disturbing to see one of the most fundamental rights being violated to such indifference is an understatement.
There really is a market for fascism in the US."
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"So it’s official: the First Amendment no longer applies to “Hamas supporters” even if they have committed no crime and are lawful permanent residents.
This is not an isolated error. It’s policy. And it’s terrifying. If you can do this to a permanent resident you can do it to a citizen."
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"I asked an extraordinarily gifted immigration lawyer about Mahmoud Khalil. This is his take:
“This is a shock to the immigration bar. No one can recall a prior example. ICE isn’t saying yet what the grounds are, but I suspect they deal with terrorists being inadmissible or other national security grounds.
I believe ICE will have to put him in removal proceedings and he will appear before an Immigration Judge. But knowing what we do about this administration, they may well try and end-run and try to remove him without further ado. I have been told that his lawyer has filed a habeas petition for him in NY, so we’ll see how this plays out.
In my experience the only green card holders whose status have been revoked involved allegations of fraud or concealment of material facts at the time of being granted LPR status. If he is a conditional LPR (based on marriage to a USC), that status can’t be revoked any differently than for a full, unrestricted LPR. “
That latter point about the conditional LPR (if that’s the case) removes any doubt about the grotesque implications of this. No Green Card holder has First Amendment rights any more."
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"Here it is: a president saying his administration has just begun a campaign of systematic destruction of the First Amendment. Everyone is on notice. The crime alleged is supporting a cause not approved by Trump.
DHS says Khalil’s crime is “activities that align with Hamas.” So broad, so sweeping, and so vague. This is a government assault on the First Amendment. And a creepy endorsement of lawless arrests and detentions.This. Is. Not. A. Drill."
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"Homan told Fox that a green card can lead to deportation if a green card holder commits a crime.
This is not true. A Green card holder cannot legally be deported by ICE for a crime irrelevant to their immigration petition. If they are charged and convicted of a crime by the regular police, they can be punished but still can’t be deported. Khalil, of course, has not even been charged with a specific crime at all. This administration has contempt for habeas corpus as well.
What Homan is saying is that the immigration laws are now irrelevant and that there is no difference between visa holders and permanent residents, and green card holders’ legal status gives them no more rights than an illegal immigrant. Even if he were correct, detaining people without charging them of specific crimes is still a violation of habeas corpus.
They don’t even consider the law here! They just want to seize anyone who demonstrates against Israel’s destruction of Gaza who can be deemed “aligned with” Hamas.
This is not a drill. All the top Trump officials favor it. Even on Substack, the comments are very gung-ho for seizing, detaining and deporting supporters of Hamas. The First Amendment is under siege from Trump and Vance."
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2) Having been an admirer of Elon Musk's entrepreneurial activities, it is with some regret that I have to agree with Richard Hanania that Musk's activities in the media and political spheres increasingly reflect a profound ignorance of the nature of social, economic, and political realities and a hostility to truth. They have become a danger to the fundamental institutional fabric of liberal democracy.
This evaluation of DOGE by Santi Ruiz is being justly touted on Substack as one of the fairest and most complete published so far.
Harvard business and law professor Mihir Desai examines the effects Musk's alliance with Trump is likely to have on his business empire. He also raises some very cogent questions about whether Musk, as a builder of businesses, should legitimately be put in the same league with Jobs, Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and the founders of Nvidia and Google.
3) Kevin Hassett, the new director of the National Economic Council, has been a respected figure among economists, but, as David Henderson explains, he's wandered far away from sound economic principles in his defense of Trump's trade policy.
Also lambasting Hassett for his massacre of the principles taught even in Econ 101 is Harvard's Greg Mankiw, author of one of the most-widely used textbooks used in such courses.
https://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2025/03/kevin-hassett-forgets-econ-101.html
Another leading Trump economist is Stephen Miran, chair of the Council of Economic Advisors and an outspoken advocate of tariffs. In a two-part essay, Steven Kamin explains where Miran gets things wrong in his understanding of how the global monetary system works, showing that the goal of lowering the value of the dollar and restoring U.S. manufacturing could not be accomplished without serious damage to the entire global economy, including the U.S.
4) A center-right member of the French Senate expressed his view of what the European members of NATO are going to have to do because, in his words, " Washington has become the Court of Nero: an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers, and a buffoon on ketamine tasked with purging the civil service."
One of the most serious consequences of Trump's realignment of global power relations will be that many countries previously willing to shelter under the U.S. nuclear umbrella will strike out on their own.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/nuclear-age-proliferation-trump-nato-gideon-rose
5) James Capretta explains the arcana of Congress's budgetary decision-making processes and why they have failed to prevent the huge growth in federal government debt that we have experienced in recent decades and that is forecasted to continue into the foreseeable future.
https://lawliberty.org/budgeting-for-fiscal-sanity/
6) Arnold Kling reviews a number of salient facts about the spread of AI in the business sector and explains why usage may not show up for a while in productivity growth statistics.
7) Thus far in the second Trump term, the Democratic opposition is looking weak, divided, and unsure of which way to go. Probably because its two main wings can't agree on what to do. David Friedman, extending the Median Voter Theorem (also known as the Hotelling Model), describes the two alternative strategies reformers of the party could use.
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