They Will Not Stop at Columbia

(NEW YORK, NY) – Universities are the enemy of this administration, that is not my accusation, or my criticism, but instead what Vice President JD Vance has been quoted as saying in public. They have acted on these threats, arresting former students for their speech, cancelling billions of dollars of research funding, and attempting to compel universities to compile a list of students “sympathetic to Hamas.” Make no mistake, they will not stop at targeting Mahmoud Kahlil and Ranjani Srinivasan, they will not stop at withholding funding from Columbia and Johns Hopkins, they will not stop at revoking green cards. 

Donald Trump wants to, for all intents and purposes, rescind the Constitution and replace it with an open interpretation of loyalty to the “King” and the advocacy of himself. He has already launched an all-out assault on the rights and protections of the first amendment, claiming that the political speech of lawful permanent residents is both supporting terrorism (something Trump may be familiar with) and somehow un-American. The real un-American, pro-terrorist actors in American politics are the Administration who has pardoned violent insurrectionists and is actively working to dismantle the rights and liberties the Constitution provides us. 

Make no mistake, this is one of many steps that the Trump administration is taking down the long and unthinkable road to dictatorship. Trump and his thugs have made a mockery of the Constitution, and they very well might get away with it if the Supreme Court bends to their will (as they did before Trump even assumed office.) Americans have, for a very long time, taken the rights and freedoms that we enjoy for granted, insisting that authoritarianism and dictatorship could never wash up on our shores, that Americans wouldn’t accept it, that Democrats were being self-servingly hyperbolic when calling Trump a Fascist. Yet, here we are, on the long and winding path down to, dare I say it, Fascism. 

It is important to note that it has been under two months since Donald Trump retook the office of the Presidency, and the backsliding to autocracy has already rapidly developed within America. We may have thought inaccurately that it could never happen here, that people would make noise and fight back, we were wrong. Protests are sporadic and largely located within Columbia’s campus. There is no popular uprising fighting our descent to authoritarianism, nor will there be. The American people are tired of fighting back, and for that we will lose much of the rights that we barely possessed before. 

But it isn’t over yet, both students detained by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) haven’t yet been deported, and there is still time to protest and disrupt the plans of the Trump administration. As we saw on Friday, Democrats in Congress will not fight for our rights as much as they claim to do, so it’s up to you, yes, you dear reader, to contact local organizations and volunteer if you have the time and donate if you have the money. We may not win, but it is our duty to fight.