Trump Expels Israeli Jews from Harvard
Jewish students from around the world face deportation as part of Trump's war against antisemitism
May 23: DHS order would bar all international students from Harvard — including Israeli Jews! … Stupid fucking asshole said he murdered two Jews to help Gaza because yuh, big help, super, thanks for pitching in, maybe next time don’t … Supreme Court blocks religious public school in miracle ruling handed down from Heaven by His Lordship the Lord God and His Son Jesus who also got to vote … Trump’s top envoy amazingly and perfectly reveals that memecoins are “me-me” …
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The Department of Homeland [sic] Security (DHS) yesterday ordered Harvard University to expel Jewish Israeli students from the university and evict them from their homes. The academic pogrom was part of Pres. Donald Trump’s campaign against antisemitism which is part of his campaign against anyone not doing what he says.
According to Harvard’s website, 160 undergraduate and graduate students from Israel are currently being given safe haven at Harvard. But the DHS order also forces Harvard to expel Jewish students studying in the U.S. from any other country.
The order applies to students now finishing the academic year, and would bar all Israeli Jews starting their studies in the fall from the U.S., much as the U.S. turned away a shipload of Jewish refugees in 1939.
It’s not known how many of the 160 Israeli victims are Jewish, but Jews comprise about 75% of Israel’s population. It also wasn’t immediately clear how many Jewish students are studying at Harvard under visas from every other country in the world.
Although Trump portrays himself as a defender of Israel and Jews, he has a history of making antisemitic remarks about Jews he sees as disloyal to him. Jewish groups have warned that administration policies exacerbate antisemitism and aided Hamas.
Trump, for instance, blocked Israel from defending itself against Hamas and Team Trump has elevated and celebrated a string of antisemitic leaders ranging from neo-Nazis to fucking neo-Nazis.
The order came from DHS Obergruppenführer Kristi Noem, who earlier this week testified falsely and stupidly-cubed that habeas corpus is a presidential right to deport people. Which she would know was howling bullshit if she went to Harvard, or a good school, instead of South Dakota State University.
Noem said Harvard was being punished for failing to provide DHS with internal records about students.
Her letter demands that Harvard turn over every record it has on “dangerous” activity by international students. That’s pretty fuckin’ subjective and could cover everything from getting drunk to attending whatever classes made Harvard student Steve Bannon the way he is.
DHS alleges that Harvard is illegally “fostering violence [and] antisemitism,” which the administration insists be accomplished legally or at least through an executive order. Harvard is likely to challenge Noem in court, but it does have a history of tolerating criminality.
For instance, Harvard’s permissive culture has allowed for open drug-dealing by students such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (Although Trump didn’t attend Harvard, he is a convicted felon and has been credibly accused of rape by multiple women, one of whom had her claims vindicated by a civil jury.)
In keeping with Trump’s animus toward refugees who aren’t white people living under majority-Black rule, Noem’s order applies to all international students of all religions. So, basically, yeah, your point-making TFN decided to focus on the fact that Trump’s order includes Israeli Jews.
UPDATE: Jewish Telegraphic Agency unironic reporting non-satirically confirms.
Some Downer Thoughts on the Murder of Two Israeli Embassy Staff
Two Israeli diplomatic staffers — an American and an Israeli engaged to be married — were murdered Wednesday night. Their killer reportedly said "I did it. I did it for Gaza," and, “Free Palestine!”
The victims, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, were killed outside a networking event they were attending at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington.
Two days later, and so far it appears that murdering two people in Washington has failed to free Palestine. The murders do not seem to have led to an increased flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza or persuaded Israel to stop bombing it.
The event Lischinsky and Milgrim were attending and supporting was held by the American Jewish Committee. They both were reportedly advocates for peace and engagement. One organization involved in the event Wednesday was the Multifaith Alliance, which does humanitarian work in Gaza. In other words, “for Gaza.”
In March, the Multifaith Alliance reported supplying Gaza residents with more than 300 truckloads of food, hygiene supplies, and winter gear. “For Gaza.”
Killing Lischinsky and Milgrim was a profoundly evil action, but your humanistic TFN prefers explanations for evil acts that don’t rely on calling people evil. My concern is that this ends inquiry into how stochastic terrorism actually works.
Feelings of rage and impotence and hunger for “justice” — fueled by deep, deep stupidity and presumably other fucked up personal bullshit — lead to acts of insane violence.
Which, I’ve argued, is what the Israeli government succumbed to choosing the course it’s taken after Oct. 7: Evil actions we should seek to understand.
This is one reason it’s so, so fucking important to be clear what we are talking about. Antisemitism and anti-Zionism and anti-Israeli sentiment and opposition to the Israeli government overlap, of course, but they are four distinct things.
And I fear that the effort to conflate them all under an umbrella of antisemitism threatens to paint all Jews as complicit with the actions of the Israeli government. That’s why it’s not antisemitic to defend the right to protest against the Israeli government — it protects Jews from blowback against Israeli government atrocities. And from fucking moronic assholes like the stupid shit who killed Israeli and American supporters of peace Wednesday night.
Supreme Court Delays Second Coming by Blocking Religious Public Schools
In a split ruling yesterday, the Supreme Court’s theocratic faction failed to save an Oklahoma Catholic school’s effort to become a public school, which would violate the unholy fuck out of America’s holiest scripture, the U.S. Constitution.
To his credit, Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general smacked down an application by the St. Isidore of Seville school to become a taxpayer-funded charter school, because that would violate the Constitution’s First Amendment barring official respect for any establishment of religion, which a religious school is, as everyone learns in non-religious school.
Without a majority overturning the attorney general’s decision, the Catholic school’s application didn’t have a prayer. The reason the court was split was that Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself because of a tangential connection to the case.
The other reason the court was split was that Presidents Donald Trump, George Bush, and other George Bush all appointed religious zealots to the court. We don’t know the actual vote for each justice, but I have faith that Bush² appointees Justices Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas voted to make Jesus supernaturalintendent of schools. And conventional wisdom has it that it was Chief Justice John Roberts who betrayed Jesus — again — by voting with the three Satanic justices.
The school can only appeal after a waiting period consisting of The Tribulation and Jesus’s thousand-year reign on Earth.
Trump Distracts from Bill Fears with New Tariff Fears
Pres. Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act legislation is expected to become law statute by July Fourth, Independence (from Financial Stability) Day. Which gives Wall Street little more than a month to let Main Street know we’re about to have a nightmare on Elm Street. (The Senate hates it, too, so presumably they’ll pass it.)
Now, I almost never believe unsubstantiated claims that X did Y to distract from Z, as I have never once in my life done Y to distract from Z and generally don’t believe people work that way, especially those lacking impulse control, basic manners, or a shred of self-discipline.
So, your responsible TFN can’t say that Trump announced new tariffs intentionally to distract from Wall Street’s mounting panic over the ruinous House GOP bill act, but it didn’t hurt!
So, stock futures fell by 500 points on the Dow overnight after Trump threatened new tariffs on two of the world’s biggest economies: the European Union and Apple.
Specifically, Trump said he’ll put a 25% tariff on Apple products imported from anywhere. Meaning, while Trump has set up a system of tariffs that vary from country to country — and other companies are free to country-shop for their best supply-chain setups — Apple uniquely and alone will be punished with a 25% tariff for manufacturing its monopolistic crap anywhere but the U.S. (Which means Trump is forcing Apple to discriminate against, for instance, Israeli Jews.)
Your never-swearing Fucking News can’t swear to it, but I’m pretty sure America’s collectively waking up to the realization that Trump is going far beyond anything Democrats ever did when those Commies were accused of wanting government to run the private sector.
In short, Trump has:
Ordered price controls — telling companies to ignore the Invisible Hand, no matter how much supply or demand it’s holding.
Ordered companies to lie — telling corporations not to say prices are going up due to tariffs when they are, not to reveal how much tariffs are adding to prices, and even to violate federal securities laws by not revealing to investors in filings and earnings calls how much tariffs are costing.
Ordered companies to shape their supply chains to his liking — telling companies they’ll pay $X (or $X+Y% or $X-Z%) for buying shit from Country A or Uninhabited Empire Penguin Empire B.
Of course, to make up for it, Trump’s new bill has been found, authoritatively, to compensate all those poor rich people with money funneled to them personally from the poor poor people who’ll be robbed of government benefits and whose only financial benefit will come from their savings of not being able to afford to buy more stupid tariffed crap.
Like Godfathers Like Sons
It’s not just Donald Trump, Jr., trawling in the wake of corruption left by the vast freighter of paternal corruption. Pres. Donald Trump’s top diplomatic envoy — who never did that thing before, because he’s a Manhattan real-estate developer — also has a son. And the Wall Street Journal got curious about him!
According to the WSJ’s reporting, Trump aide Steve Witkoff went to the United Arab Emirates a month before Trump’s inauguration to discuss regional issues with a top official there, known as “the spy sheikh,” but also to attend a cryptocurrency conference. Witkoff is such an expert on crypto that until recently he was pronouncing memecoin as “me-me” coin. Which, in fairness, chef’s kiss.
In March, Witkoff’s son announced that the company he co-founded, World Liberty Financial — of which the Trump family owns 60% — had sold $2 billion of their new cryptocurrency to a company owned by…the spy sheikh.
Last week, Witkoff and the spy sheikh announced that after a long period of trying by the U.A.E., the Trump administration had agreed to let the monarchy buy advanced computer chips from the U.S. (You can read the whole tawdry tale here — gift link because fuck capitalism — actually, that’s a lie; you can read the part of the tawdry tale that the WSJ uncovered here. We’ll never know all the tawdry.)
Anyway, at this point we should demand that the next Democratic president just relocate the Treasury Department currency printing presses to Hunter Biden’s crack den.
Two Quickies
A federal judge yesterday ordered a temporary stop to Pres. Donald Trump’s shutdown of the Education Department. The judge schooled the Trump administration on its lies about “reorganizing” the department…out of existence. And the judge affirmed that department responsibilities mandated by Congress must be carried out, even if that means not laying people off.
Disney CEO Bob Iger and ABC News President Almin Karamehmedovic reportedly have told the co-hosts of The View to take it easy on politics. And the view of the co-hosts of The View was that by “politics” they meant Pres. Donald Trump. Karamehmedovic allegedly said something like, “Uh, so, um, hey, guy—girl—ladi—women, how about more celebrity interviews? Who doesn’t love Hugh Jackman? That Hugh Jackman, I tells ya, he acts, he sings, he dances!” I’m paraphrasing. Anyway, the point is, a paid subscription to TFN helps ensure that no one can ever force Hugh fucking Jackman on The Fucking News. And they never will. (Of course, TFN defers to no one in its love for Hugh Jackman, but it’s the principle of the thing.)
Recommended Reading
TFN somehow missed some new entries from my favorite guilty pleasure, Substacker Jim Earl, who is both. While I confess to wrestling with the use of the word “genocide,” Jim — a friend, former Daily Show writer, and former colleague — does not. He pulls no punches, because you’re allowed to punch when you’re not wrestling. On a more-funny note, Jim also hijacks Trump’s Qatar plane and crashes Trump’s visit with South Africa’s president. If TFN isn’t deeply wrong enough for you, get you some Jim Earl.
TCB
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ELECTIONS
June 10 — New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial primary.
June 17 — Virginia primaries
June 24 — New York City mayoral primary.
TAKING ACTION
June 14: No Kings rallies.
Sept. 21: Climate-action events for Sun Day.
Pre-Christmas: SaveChristmas.net.
The unknown future: Find upcoming events near you here.
Boycotts: Tesla, Target, El Salvador.
RESOURCES
Jim Earl channels your rage
Look up who your member of Congress is and their contact info
Mental reassurance that at least lawyers are fighting back on fill-in-the-blank.
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Go get ‘em, kids! It’s always Donaldest before the dawn…
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.
It's always a mistake to under-rate the ineptitude at play in all this kakistocracy.
The same logic that makes MAGA think it is unamerican to criticize Trump is working when they say it’s antisemitic to criticize the Israeli government.