Gaza First Amendment Alert

Mahmoud Khalil Receives Partial Victory, Rubio Pauses Student Visas, Cynical Exploitation of Embassy Attack, MIT Bars Class President from Commencement, Ms. Rachel Attacked for Supporting Gazan Kids

Mahmoud Khalil Receives Partial Victory

On Wednesday May 25, 2025, U.S. District Judge Michael E. Farbiarz made a ruling on Mahmoud Khalil’s request for a preliminary injunction. As part of Khalil’s federal habeas petition arguing his detention is illegal, Khalil requested a preliminary injunction releasing him from custody, voiding Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s determination that he poses adverse consequences for U.S. foreign policy, and preventing the Trump administration from “enforcing their Policy of arresting, detaining, and removing noncitizens who engage in speech in the United States supporting Palestinian rights or critical of Israel.”

Farbiarz ruled that Khalil is likely to prevail on his claim that the Immigration and Naturalization Act’s provision allowing the Secretary of State to expel someone if their presence poses consequences for U.S. foreign policy is unconstitutional as applied to him. Farbiarz believes no reasonable person would believe the once-rarely used Cold War relic applies to domestic political speech.

However, Farbiarz ruled Khalil is unlikely to prevail on his claim that the Trump administration's charges that his application for a green card was misleading is retaliatory for his First Amendment-protected views. As Farbiarz noted, the immigration judge has declined to rule on this charge, making the implications of this part of the ruling highly unclear. Khalil’s lawyers have offered evidence refuting the charge, but the immigration judge refused to hear it, noting her ruling that Khalil was “removable” was based solely on the foreign policy determination.

While being likely to prevail on a claim is the first step to winning a preliminary injunction, Farbiarz claims he needs more information before making a final ruling.

For a longer write-up of Farbiarz’s ruling and where Khalil’s case stands, see Gaza First Amendment Alert editor Chip Gibbon’s latest article, “Mahmoud Khalil’s Case Is About the Future of Free Speech” in Jacobin.

Citing Trump’s Executive Orders Targeting Palestine Protesters, Rubio Pauses Student Visas

Just one day after Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a Congressional hearing he would continue to revoke student visas, the State Department paused all new student visa appointments until it could expand its social media vetting. According to Politico, the cable announcing the vetting alluded to Trump Executive Orders on “antisemitism” and “terrorism.”

These orders are believed to be behind the Trump administration's policy of arresting, detaining, and attempting to deport noncitizens for criticizing Israel or supporting Palestinian human rights. These orders were also cited by the U.S. Citizens and Immigration Services when announcing a new policy to screen aliens’ social media for “antisemitism” when weighing their immigration benefit requests, including lawful permanent residency status and student visas.

Defending Rights & Dissent has filed multiple FOIAs with the State Department, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Department of Justice, and Department of Homeland Security to learn more about these executive orders.

Anti-Palestinian Politicians and Groups Seek to Cynically Exploit Embassy Attack to Curtail Free Speech

On May 21, 2025, two employees of the Israeli embassy, Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, were killed by a gunman while attending a “Young Diplomats Reception” organized by the American Jewish Committee. Police have accused Elias Rodriguez of being the shooter. When arrested, Rodriguez is reported to have shouted, “Free, free Palestine” and said, “I did it for Palestine.” According to a manifesto allegedly written by Rodriguez, he viewed his act as retaliation for Israeli policies in Gaza.

While many supporters of Palestinian rights immediately condemned the act of political violence, opponents of Palestinian rights tried to lay blame for the shooter’s action on the entire movement for Palestine.

A little over 12 hours after the shooting, the CEO of the Anti Defamation League. Jonathan Greenblatt, sent an email implying campus protesters were engaged in the antisemitic targeting of Jewish students and had helped set the stage for the killing. Greenblatt also appeared on CNN that day and used his opportunity to discuss the shooting to attack the New York Times for publishing a profile on Twitch streamer Hasan Piker. Piker has criticized Israel’s genocide in Gaza and was recently stopped at the border as a result.

CNN anchor Dana Bash had Deborah Lipstadt on as a guest. Bash stated that we hear the chant ‘Free Palestine’ in “the streets” and on college campuses and asked Lipstadt if it was a call for violence. Lipstadt said that it was a call for violence and said, “not violence against Israelis, which is wrong, but violence against Jews and anyone who tries to separate the two, and try say ‘oh I am just against Israel’s policies in Palestine or in Gaza and I am not antisemitic,’ [the killing of two Israeli embassy employees] was antisemitism pure and simple.”

Lipstadt was appointed by Biden to serve as the United States Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism. In that role, she participated in a disinformation campaign targeting former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters. Prior to her appointment by Biden, she criticized former President Jimmy Carter for deploying “antisemitic canards” and for “soft-core” Holocaust denial for giving what she considered insufficient attention to the Holocaust in his book Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid. Since leaving the State Department, Lipstadt has expressed support for the Trump administration’s deportation of students and attacks on Columbia University.

The New York Times responded to the shooting by publishing an article entitled “Pro-Palestinian Movement Faces an Uncertain Path After D.C. Attack.” Published just two days after the killings, the article conceded, “the ties of Elias Rodriguez, the suspect, to the wider pro-Palestinian movement remain unclear” and the “the vast majority of [supporters] do not engage in violence.” But it quoted the ADL as claiming the “ecosystem” created by “groups strongly opposed to Israel” set the stage for the killing. Though it included CAIR and Jewish Voice for Peace’s opposition to the killing, the piece also stated that “among at least some of those hard-line groups, there was some hint of acceptance about the killing of the embassy workers.” It also framed the fight about whether Palestinian activism is antisemitic as being between “many Jews” and “many in the pro-Palestinian movement.”

While much of the media refused to cover the alleged shooter’s manifesto, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein wrote about it and shared it on his Substack. After doing so, FBI agents visited Klippenstein. When he refused to speak to them without his lawyer Beth Bourdon, the agents called Bourdon. The visit was condemned by Defending Rights & Dissent and Freedom of the Press Foundation as a clear attempt at intimidating a journalist.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Bars Class President from Commencement

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) barred senior class president Megha Vemuri from attending her class graduation. The day before graduation, Vemuri spoke at a commencement event. Wearing a keffiyeh over her gown, she called for an arms embargo on Israel and for MIT to cut ties with Israel. MIT, claiming Vemuri deviated from the approved speech, forbade the class president from walking across the stage the next day. She still received her degree.

Anti-Palestinian Group Targets Children’s Entertainer Over Support for Gaza Children

A private McCarthyite blacklisting group has formally urged Trump’s Justice Department to investigate Rachel Accurso, a beloved and widely popular children’s entertainer known as Ms. Rachel on YouTube, who has been speaking out about the mass killing of Palestinian children by Israel in Gaza.

Accurso, who has more than 14 million subscribers on YouTube, has drawn the ire of supporters of Israel’s genocide in Gaza as she has increasingly used her platform to express empathy for the thousands of children who have been killed, left parentless, or maimed in Palestine. Last month, she met with a 3-year-old Palestinian girl named Rahaf, who lost her legs in an Israeli airstrike on her home. Ms. Rachel then had a doll made which was modeled after the young girl, with prosthetic legs, which she gave to Rahaf.

Last week, Ms Rachel said world leaders should be “ashamed of [their] silence,” particularly those who “normally speak out for children & human rights, but won’t now because they are Palestinian.”

An intense backlash to Ms. Rachel’s advocacy for children in Gaza began to mount among supporters of Israel, suggesting she must be getting paid for speaking out. Fox News host Laura Ingraham and her guest criticized Ms. Rachel for becoming an “activist,” claiming by contrast that the longtime children’s entertainer Mr. Rogers would never have used his platform for advocacy. (Mr. Rogers in fact did use his public television show to support civil rights and integration).

The New York Times even contributed to the hysteria surrounding Ms. Rachel in a May 17 profile, in which it was revealed that the Times actually asked Accurso if she had “received money from Hamas.” Her response: “This accusation is not only absurd, it’s patently false.”

Critics intensified their criticisms of Accurso for condemning the maiming and killing of children en mass, and it reached a fever pitch when the pro-Israel blacklisting group ‘StopAntisemitism’ wrote to the DOJ calling for an investigation into whether Ms. Rachel is “being remunerated to disseminate Hamas-aligned propaganda to her millions of followers.” The group has previously targeted climate activist Greta Thunberg, rapper Macklemore, and other leading figures who have spoken out against the genocide, and it frequently doxes students and other activists protesting around the country.

While it remains yet to be seen if the DOJ will investigate Ms. Rachel, the government has used blacklists from similar private surveillance groups to target individual protesters for arrest and immigration enforcement, like Mahmoud Khalil or Rumyesa Ozturk.

Defending Rights & Dissent is investigating these groups and the nature and extent of their collaboration with the Trump administration, with a series of FOIA requests aimed at exposing the government-wide ‘Catch & Revoke’ program.

That’s all for this Gaza First Amendment Alert. Sign up for future updates here.

Chip Gibbons is the editor of the Gaza First Amendment Alert. Nathan Fuller contributed reporting, research, and analysis.