Tufts PhD Student Arrest Sparking Free Speech Concerns

Written By Guest User

Plus: Justice Department Does Not Plan To Investigate Signal Chat

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TGIF 🎉

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🚨 ONE IMPORTANT THING

Major Backlash After Turkish Student At Tufts Arrested By Masked Federal Agents

Dozens of Democratic lawmakers are demanding answers from the Department of Homeland Security about the latest high-profile arrest of an international student visa holder. They’re saying this arrest is different than the others — both in the way it was handled (see video below), and because the Tufts University PhD student, Rumeysa Ozturk, was not known to participate in disruptive campus protests.

  • Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday defended revoking Ozturk’s student's visa. “We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas,” Rubio said, noting that the total number of revoked visas “might be more than 300 at this point.”

  • In a letter to Rubio and others, Democrats make a distinction with Ozturk’s arrest: “The rationale for this arrest appears to be this student’s expression of her political views,” as opposed to any actions she took.

WHAT HAPPENED?
A home security camera captured federal agents arresting Turkish national Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts PhD student, on the sidewalk while she was leaving her home in a Boston suburb on Tuesday. At least six agents in plain clothes, some wearing face masks, exited unmarked vehicles before surrounding Ozturk on the sidewalk outside her home.

  • A spokesman for Homeland Security said on Wednesday that Ozturk had “engaged in activities in support of Hamas" as grounds for her student visa termination and arrest. They have not yet presented evidence to support those claims.

  • Ozturk co-wrote a piece in the Tufts Daily last year, calling on the university to engage with student demands to cut ties with Israel and "acknowledge the Palestinian genocide." The piece did not mention Hamas. Friends and colleagues of Ozturk say that was her only form of activism, and that she was not involved in pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel protests.

Tufts University said they had no advance knowledge of the arrest and were informed on Tuesday that Ozturk’s visa had been terminated.

WHY DEMS SAY THIS ONE’S DIFFERENT
Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told Mo News in an interview Friday that the Trump administration has crossed the line with arrests of international students who have expressed support for Palestinian rights, including Ozturk.

  • Himes suggests that future generations will look back on this period similarly to how people today view Sen. Joseph McCarthy's 1950s campaign against alleged communists as overreach.

  • “We have a line that is established by laws. So if you commit a crime, if you provide material support to Hamas, gone. If you commit a crime by breaking a window to get into a school building, gone,” said Himes. “But if your behavior is simply consistent with the cherished right…to believe what you want, no matter how absurd…you don't get kicked out. You don't get imprisoned in Louisiana. It's not hard.”

Like Himes, a number of legal experts broadly agree that visa holders in the U.S. legally have free speech rights. That said, the federal government has a lot of leeway when it comes to deporting non-citizens.

🚨 ONE THING STILL MAKING HEADLINES

White House Ready To Move On From Signal Chat, Judge & Dems Push Back

Screenshot from Signal chat. Via: The Atlantic

Attorney General Pam Bondi says she does not plan to investigate the Signal chat breach, where top Trump officials discussed military operations against the Houthis in Yemen in an unsecured group text that accidentally included Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg.

Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered the officials to preserve any message sent and received via Signal between March 11 to 15, given the encrypted app is designed to delete messages after a certain period of time — one of the reasons the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency actually recommended it for “secure communications” during the Biden administration.

  • 🚨 This incident has raised concerns that government officials could use “disappearing messaging” apps like Signal to skirt laws meant to preserve government records and hold officials accountable.

BEHIND THE JUDGE’S ORDER
Judge Boasberg’s order was in response to a lawsuit filed by American Oversight, a liberal watchdog group, accusing officials of violating the Federal Records Act.

  • A lawyer representing American Oversight told the judge that "these messages are in imminent danger of destruction" due to Signal settings that can be set to delete messages automatically. Trump officials have until Monday to provide a declaration that they’ve preserved them.

What are the odds? Trump began calling for Judge Boasberg’s impeachment after the judge temporarily blocked the administrations use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport hundreds of Venezuelan migrants without immigration hearings.

  • It seems the president also can’t believe the odds that the same judge was put on both these cases, calling it “statistically, IMPOSSIBLE” and calling for an investigation.

  • Reality Check: Judges are randomly assigned to cases based on a rotation system, their availability, or if they have a certain area of expertise. A spokesperson said Boasberg was given these cases based on the court’s random assignment process, which rotates between 20 Washington D.C. judges.

ISRAEL’S BONE TO PICK
Officials in Israel are privately expressing concern over the public release of these texts, saying the messages included Israeli intelligence that could compromise their sources on the ground.

  • National Security Adviser Michael Waltz messaged that a key Houthi missile expert was seen entering his girlfriend's destroyed building in Yemen after the attack – information that reportedly came from an Israel-linked human source.

  • Trump officials have maintained that “no locations,” “no sources,” and no classified information was shared in the chat.

Both Democrats and Republicans have commented on how fortunate the U.S. is that the chat was not seen by adversaries who could have shared the information with the Houthis and endangered American service members.

WHAT THE RIGHT IS SAYING
White House officials seem to be fed up with discussing so-called “Signalgate” and are increasingly pointing to the Biden administration's disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal amidst calls for accountability. Principal Deputy Press Secretary Harrison Fields told Mo News on Thursday that a mistake was made, but "it's not gonna happen again," and emphasized the success of the military mission in Yemen.

  • Quick pivot: Fields then pointed out that 13 U.S. service members were killed during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, saying that the Biden administration didn't fire anyone over that. Trump recently said that “every single one” of the generals involved in the withdrawal should be fired.

  • Fields added that, alternatively, no U.S. lives were lost in the attack on the Houthis earlier in March: “The only lives that were lost were people who don’t belong to be living on this earth, which are terrorists. And we’re moving forward.”

WHAT THE LEFT IS SAYING
Mo News also spoke with Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, about the controversy, just days after he grilled intelligence officials on their involvement in the chat. He says regardless of political party, the executive branch must be held accountable for its errors, especially when U.S. military lives are at risk.

  • He called the Afghanistan withdrawal a “catastrophe,” but says that doesn’t justify not properly scrutinizing the Signal breach. “If we go down a rabbit hole of saying any behavior is excusable because the other side does it too, that is the route to chaos.”

🎧 Check out the full interviews on the Mo News Podcast feed — available on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. 🎧

⏳ SPEED READ

🚨NATION

📌 Utah becomes first state to ban fluoride in public water (AP)

📌 Judges extend orders against deportation flights, including wartime act on violent Venezuelan gang members (FOX)

📌 Two more law firms targeted by Trump sue to block punishing executive order (POLITICO)

📌 U.S. Army says recovering 4 soldiers missing in Lithuania "will be a long and difficult" operation (CBS)

🌎 AROUND THE WORLD

📌 JD Vance blasts Denmark in visit to Greenland with wife Usha as Trump administration eyes territory (CBS)

📌 Powerful earthquake rocks Myanmar and Thailand and kills more than 150 people (MO NEWS)

📌 Intense wave of suspected US airstrikes hit Houthi-held cities, airport (TIMES OF ISRAEL)

📌 King Charles III’s brief hospital stay reminds UK that monarch is still a cancer patient (AP)

📱BUSINESS, SCIENCE & TECH

📌 Scientists discover weird Mongolian dinosaur that wielded 'sharp, huge' claws (NBC)

📌 Convicted of bilking investors, Nikola founder and Trump donor gets a presidential pardon (AP)

📌 Charlie Javice, founder of startup bought by JPMorgan, found guilty at fraud trial (YAHOO)

🎬 SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT

📌 Will Smith returns to his Oscar slap in new music (CNN)

📌 ChatGPT’s viral Studio Ghibli-style images highlight AI copyright concerns (AP)

ICYMI FROM THE 📲

In case you missed it… Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg did a recent interview wearing the same shirt that the actor who portrayed him in “The Social Network,” a movie about Facebook's creation, wore… Very meta!

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