SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
civil rights
It's Well Beyond Time to Cut Ties With the Anti-Defamation League
While the ADL attacks and smears Palestinians and supporters of Palestinian justice, it gives cover to and helps legitimize (often antisemitic) right-wing politicians and others who back Israel.
Mar 16, 2026
The Anti-Defamation League, or ADL, is holding its annual summit in New York City this week. The ironically-named summit on “hate” features far-right MAGA pastors and politicians, billionaire CEOs, and conservative journalists among its speakers.
No longer putting on the pretense of opposing all forms of bigotry, the ADL has shown it's perfectly comfortable with Trump-era racism. In the year since the last summit, the ADL has withdrawn its criticism of white supremacist groups, denounced antiracist education as "radical," continued to loudly back Israel's genocide in Gaza, and cheered on Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportations of students and other noncitizens who have criticized Israel’s violence and stood in solidarity with the Palestinian people. In fact, the ADL endorsed the executive order issued by President Donald Trump in 2025 targeting critics of Israel and threatening those who aren't US citizens with deportation for protesting in support of Palestinian human rights.
The organization’s Islamophobia has also been front and center. Soon after the election, the ADL singled out New York City’s first Muslim mayor—and a supporter of Palestinian justice—and announced the “Mamdani Monitor: Holding the New Administration Accountable” to track his policies as well as his personnel appointments.
Far from opposing the ascendancy of the white nationalist right, the ADL has doubled down. While it may appear that the ADL’s recent visible displays of its reactionary agenda are the work of its CEO Jonathan Greenblatt alone, in fact, this agenda is not new. But the harm it’s causing is certainly getting worse. The organization’s reactionary political positions—evidenced by its ease in aligning with the likes of Trump and its behavior as an attack dog for Israel’s far-right government—were already clear in its long history of, among other things, Islamophobia and anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism.
The ADL’s disturbing positions and actions have become even more aggressive since the genocide in Gaza.
For decades, out of the public eye, the ADL has illegally surveilled Arab Americans, Muslims, social justice activists, members of Congress, and others, including Jews, who speak and act in support of Palestinian justice. It has smeared the groups it targets as “suspect,” using the language of hate, terror, and antisemitism—as when it circulated blacklists of “Arab propagandists” in the 1980s and endorsed the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil for leading protests against Israel’s atrocities. When the NYPD launched aggressive, unconstitutional surveillance of the Muslim community post-9/11, justifying it as part of the domestic and global “war on terror,” the ADL gave an award to the program’s commanding officer.
The ADL’s disturbing positions and actions have become even more aggressive since the genocide in Gaza. As law professor and legal scholar Sahar Aziz points out, the organization has attempted to “criminalize Muslim and Palestinian students, as well as Jewish, queer, and BIPOC students” for opposing Israel’s actions. It has continued to attack Muslim and Arab American groups like Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which have challenged the ADL’s anti-Muslim racism.
The organization has continually platformed Islamophobes and anti-Palestinian bigots. In 2024, more than 60 Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, and other organizations condemned the ADL for its consistent pattern of fostering anti-Palestinian hate and for giving a platform to anti-Muslim Pastor John Hagee. In 2025, ADL leaders elected to its board Johnnie Moore who was the executive chairman of the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” which was responsible for numerous massacres of starving Palestinians. And its summit this week features archconservative pastor Samuel Rodriguez, who has made hateful remarks against Muslims as well as LGBTQ people.
While the ADL attacks and smears Palestinians and supporters of Palestinian justice, it gives cover to and helps legitimize (often antisemitic) right-wing politicians and others who back Israel. Excusing Elon Musk’s notorious Nazi salute and ignoring Trump’s invoking of conspiracy theories are just two examples of its hypocrisy.
As aptly stated by Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), one of the hundreds of signatories on an open letter to progressives to #DroptheADL, “The focus of civil rights organizations should be on critiquing state power and not about targeting those who critique state power.”
As the ADL’s reactionary agenda becomes clearer for all to see, there is a growing groundswell of social justice activists, progressive Jewish groups, educational institutions, and members of every profession who are pressuring policymakers to stop cooperating with the organization. The urgency of educators, political leaders, organizations, and others breaking ties with the ADL in this deeply racist, repressive national climate can’t be overstated.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Jayapal Demands Kristi Noem 'Be Fired, Resign, or Be Impeached'—and DHS 'Dismantled'
“I gave her an opportunity to answer for her agents’ lawlessness,” Jayapal said of the secretary of homeland security. “Instead, what we heard from her was excuses, deflections, and flat-out lies.”
Mar 05, 2026
Surrounded by people who have accused the Department of Homeland Security of violating their civil rights, Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Wednesday demanded that Secretary Kristi Noem be removed from her role as head of the agency.
"Today in the House Judiciary Committee, I questioned Secretary Noem. I gave her an opportunity to answer for her agents' lawlessness and the trauma that her personnel have inflicted on immigrants and citizens alike," Jayapal (D-Wash.) said at a news conference outside the Capitol building. "Instead, what we heard from her was excuses, deflections, and flat-out lies."
Jayapal grilled Noem on Wednesday during her second day of testimony before Congress, accusing her agency of “unlawfully detaining US citizens in violation of the Fourth Amendment."
An investigation published by ProPublica in October found that at least 170 citizens had been arrested or detained by immigration agents, and many more have been reported since.
The congresswoman said that after months of denying, despite the mountain of evidence, that any US citizens had been detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Noem finally acknowledged the detention of 18 US citizens by ICE in a letter sent Tuesday.
Jayapal then revealed that four other citizens, "who were not even included" in Noem's letter, were in the hearing room.
She read the story of Patricia O'Keefe, who she said "was monitoring ICE agents when they deployed pepper spray into her car vent without provocation."
"They smashed her car windows, pulled her and her friend out, arrested them for 'obstruction,' and detained them," Jayapal explained. "Patricia saw an entire area dedicated to detaining US citizens."
"An ICE agent also said, 'You guys have to stop obstructing us. That's why that lesbian bitch is dead,' referring to Renee Good," who was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis in January. "ICE detained Patricia for over eight hours," Jayapal said.
She relayed the stories of the other citizens in the room, who she said had been detained for several hours for monitoring agents or peacefully protesting.
One was kept in leg irons for six hours after attempting to monitor agents from his car. Another was hit with a pepper ball while protesting and denied medical treatment or the ability to change out of clothes that were coated with dangerous chemicals. Another observer was chased down by agents and had firearms pointed at him before the situation was defused by local police, though he was detained for six hours.
Noting Noem's previous statements that ICE can arrest citizens if they are obstructing law enforcement or if there is "probable cause," Jayapal then asked the people she'd invited about the circumstances of their detention.
All of them responded that they were not charged with any crime after their encounters, that they were not questioned about their citizenship, and that they were all exercising their First Amendment rights.
Asked if she had anything to say to the four individuals or "the millions of American citizens across the country that are watching this and horrified at what your department is doing," Noem responded that “context is critical in each of these situations, to know the full range of what happened in each of these situations before and after the incident and their arrest.”
Jayapal reiterated: "Secretary, not a single one was charged with a crime, and they were detained."
Elsewhere during the hearing, Noem doubled down on her agency's most controversial tactics.
After Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) showed the secretary videos of citizens being violently dragged out of their homes and cars in arrests by agents without judicial warrants, Noem defended the agency’s practice, which experts have said violates the constitutional protection against unlawful search and seizure.
Other questions she evaded. When Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) asked her point-blank if she believed Good and Alex Pretti, whom ICE agents "shot in the face and killed," were "domestic terrorists" as Noem and others in the Trump administration claimed without evidence, the secretary repeatedly refused to correct the record, as ICE's acting director Todd Lyons did during a hearing last month.
Following Wednesday's hearing, Jayapal said Noem's responses "only further cemented my belief that she needs to resign, be fired, or be impeached."
"She refused to accept responsibility for the actions of ICE and [Customs and Border Protection], for the arrests of US citizens, for the deaths of 40 immigrants in ICE custody, for the kidnapping and the disappearances of children like Liam Ramos, and for the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in the streets of Minnesota," Jayapal said. "It is a terrible shame that she could not do any of that."
Noem's appearance on Capitol Hill comes as DHS has been partially shut down for nearly three weeks, with Democrats demanding reforms to the agency's conduct in exchange for full funding.
Republicans have thus far refused to budge on demands that agents obtain judicial warrants before entering homes and private spaces, stop wearing masks to conceal their identities, and rein in the practice of “roving patrols” that have often taken the form of indiscriminate arrests rife with racial profiling.
She said Noem's testimony also affirmed her belief that "DHS, ICE, and CBP need to be dismantled."
"There is no reason for them to operate in this way with zero accountability and no way to ensure that they actually protect our residents rather than terrorize them," Jayapal said. "That is why I have refused to give another cent to these agencies without significant reforms."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Pam Bondi's Blind Obedience
As Trump's attorney general, Bondi has undermined her integrity, defined her legacy, and destroyed the nation’s Justice Department.
Feb 26, 2026
Incompetence will be President Donald Trump’s undoing. The only question is whether he and his minions will undo the nation first. Today’s subject is Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Bondi’s Blunders and Bluster
In her first year, Bondi has established an unprecedented record of destruction in the service of Trump. Servitude is more apt. Here’s a small sample:
- Thousands of experienced attorneys have left the Justice Department. Bondi fired those she deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump. Others resigned in protest over her directives, such as investigating the partner of Renee Nicole Good—a US citizen whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minnesota killed—rather than scrutinizing the actions of her ICE killers.
- Bondi has decimated the department’s civil rights division, which historically investigated whether federal officers had used excessive force in killings like Good’s. As division head Harmeet Dhillon turned its mission upside down, more than 70% of its attorneys left. University of Chicago Law School Professor Craig Futterman explained that the Trump administration “is using a division that has a history of protecting the most vulnerable among us to wage an all-out assault on the civil rights of vulnerable people, including Black people, brown people, women, LGBTQIA folk.”
- Across the country, judges are chastising federal prosecutors for defying court orders and are wondering if the problem is incompetence, work overload, or the executive branch’s systematic attack on the judiciary. At least 35 times since August, federal judges have ordered the Trump administration to explain why it should not be punished for violating their orders in immigration cases: “Antiseptic judicial rhetoric cannot do justice to what is happening,” Judge Joseph R. Goodwin in West Virginia wrote, calling the warrantless arrest and imprisonment of thousands across the country “an assault on the constitutional order.”
- On Capitol Hill, Bondi refused to answer pointed questions and, instead, descended into bipartisan insults of the elected representatives who dared to challenge her. When ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a constitutional law professor, told her not to filibuster through his limited time for questioning, she snapped, “You don’t tell me anything, you washed up loser lawyer.” She called Republican Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) a “failed politician” who had “Trump derangement syndrome.”
- Bipartisan outrage grows over Bondi’s incompetent and incomplete production of the Justice Department’s infamous Jeffrey Epstein files. It took Rep. Massie and a handful of fellow Republicans in the House to overcome the opposition of Trump and his congressional allies in forcing legislation requiring full disclosure by December 19, 2025. That deadline came and went before Bondi’s department finally produced files that included victims’ identities. The public learned on February 24 that the Justice Department’s belated 3.5 million-page document dump excluded files relating to allegations that Trump sexually abused a minor, according to an NPR analysis and the New York Times.
Bondi’s Backstory
Understanding Bondi’s loyalty to Trump over her oath to uphold the Constitution requires a timeline:
- In November 2010, Bondi was elected Florida’s attorney general. From February 2008 to May 2011, her Office of Attorney General (OAG) received at least 22 complaints regarding Trump University, the Trump Institute, and related entities.
- In August 2013, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued Trump, Trump Entrepreneur Institute aka Trump University, and the former president of Trump University for “engaging in persistent fraudulent, illegal, and deceptive conduct.” The Florida OAG said it was looking at the allegations.
- In September 2013, the Donald J. Trump Foundation made a $25,000 contribution to “And Justice for All,” a political group backing Bondi’s reelection. The donation, illegal for a 501(c)(3) private foundation, was personally solicited by Bondi from Trump.
- In October 2013, the OAG said it would not act on the complaints against Trump University or join the lawsuit filed by New York’s attorney general.
- In March 2016, Bondi became the first big-name Republican in the state to endorse Trump in the Florida presidential primary. A week later, CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) filed a complaint against the Trump Foundation. Trump representatives admitted to the earlier illegal donation, blaming a series of clerical errors.
- In June 2016, Bondi’s spokesperson told the Associated Press that the attorney general was unaware of the 20+ complaints against Trump entities when she solicited the donation in 2013.
- In September 2016, the Washington Post discovered that Trump had paid a $2,500 IRS penalty for the illegal donation to Bondi.
- In December 2016, Trump announced that he was shutting down his foundation in response to the growing scandal, which now included claims of self-dealing.
- In March 2017, an attorney hired by the Florida Commission on Ethics found: “[I]t may raise suspicions that within a month after the New York Attorney General announced that New York would be filing a lawsuit against Trump University, Donald Trump contributed a total of $25,500.00 to [Bondi] or her organizations. However, in this case, there is no evidence that [she] was involved with the investigation or decisions regarding Trump University.”
- During Trump’s first impeachment trial in January 2020, Bondi was one of his defense lawyers.
Bondi’s Blind Obedience
Announcing Bondi as his choice for US attorney general to replace failed nominee Matt Gaetz, Trump said, “For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans—Not anymore. Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime and Making America Safe Again.”
To Bondi, that mission means slavish devotion to Trump and weaponizing the Justice Department against his enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey, NY Attorney General Letitia James, Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell, Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook, six Democratic lawmakers who recorded a message to troops about not following illegal orders, and on and on and on. In some cases, the only check on her abuse of power has been the refusal of grand juries—consisting of ordinary citizens—to issue indictments that she had sought against Trump’s targets.
Bondi has undermined her integrity, defined her legacy, and destroyed the nation’s Justice Department. As with many members of Trump’s cabinet, her incompetence is catching up with her, but it’s taking a toll on all of us.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular