A federal judge ruled earlier today that the Trump administration would have to release Rumaisa Öztürk, a Tufts University student who was snatched up off the street and effectively disappeared for a day before anyone knew where she'd been taken, and she has been held for many weeks since then. [00:00:16] She will have to be released. It's actually possible that she's being released right now as we're discussing this, we're keeping tabs on that, but thankfully it's going to happen. That's good news. But also, the judge is very clear in the ruling how terrible this act actually was, saying the speech of the that doing the detention could chill the speech of [00:00:35] the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens. This is Judge William Sessions who says, I suggested to the government that they produce any additional information which would suggest that she posed a substantial risk. And that was three weeks ago, and there has been no evidence introduced [00:00:51] by the government other than the op ed. She wrote an op ed as a grad student. That literally is the case. There is no evidence here the court finds that Miss Ozturk has raised a substantial claim of a constitutional violation. And I want to remind everyone that while it would be great for her to be released [00:01:08] and hopefully that will happen today, she'll be able to be able to be returned to her home, to her school, be able to resume her doctorate, talk to her family. She has been in detention since March 25th. That's six weeks. Seven weeks. I'm not great at math necessarily, or time, but that is what worse than anything [00:01:27] that's ever happened to many of us. Sure. Deeply traumatic. Like you don't just bounce back from that being held in Ice detention for a month and a half for nothing because you wrote an op ed because you committed a thought crime. I mean, look, we throw terms around, like cancel culture and censorship [00:01:45] and everything, and it doesn't really get much darker than this. Thanks to Trump, it sometimes gets a little bit darker than this. She could have been sent to El Salvador, and that could still happen. But this is about as dark a cancel culture, a crusade against free speech as one can imagine. I'll remind everyone she was snatched up off the street and her family. [00:02:03] No one knew where she was for a day. She could be dead. She could be out of the country. I mean, so many people have been. That is horrifying. Not only for her, but for everyone that knows her. And Tufts University put out a statement saying, we look forward to welcoming her back to campus to resume her doctoral studies. [00:02:19] I hope that she's able to do that. I understand if she's not able to immediately integrate back into her life after what she experienced, but I also want to give a statement from one of her lawyers who said, when did speaking up against oppression become a crime? When did speaking up against genocide become something to be imprisoned for? [00:02:36] And again, that's all that they're saying she did, is she wrote an Op-Ed that was critical of the Israeli invasion of Gaza. But this kind of thing will have a chilling effect, won't it, John? I mean. - It's intended. - To. Exactly. I mean, if you only have to do this a few times, it's the reason the cruelty is [00:02:55] very much a part of the strategy with this administration. And this is this is part of just one more facet in a plan and a strategy that we've seen across the board. Everything from sweeping up these Venezuelans and sending them to El Salvador, many of whom may or may not have any ties. [00:03:10] We just don't know, because there was no due process to the sweeping up of the Russian scientist who was detained and then jailed, imprisoned because of those frog embryos that weren't declared on the on the declaration form, she was asked to bring them in by [00:03:26] the researcher with whom she was working. So these are all these are all flavors of a kind. And this administration and this cruelty will have a chilling effect on free speech. - It's already happening. - Yeah, yeah. And as you said, obviously, that that is the intent. [00:03:43] And I just I think back to like the years that we've done this program and oh man has the right love to talk about free speech and the First Amendment. Oh your rights. Oh they love you. I mean, mainly just the second one, but sometimes they pretend the first two and oh, they write books about it. [00:03:59] Oh, Dave Rubin with his book about censorship and everything. And oh, all of them are like, you're just constantly. You're the word police. You're cracking down on us. We're free speech radicals. Crusaders. If you didn't give a damn about this. About an op ed, by the way, I read the op ed. Okay? [00:04:15] It reads like an op ed written by a grad student. It's not some inflamed, passionate rhetorical crusade. It's. It's an op ed by grad students. That's all it is. And that's all it took to lock her up. And if you're one of these right wingers, you didn't give a damn about this. [00:04:32] Probably because her name is Rumaisa Öztürk. And you've seen a picture of her. You know that she's a muslim, so you don't care if the government can just disappear her for an op ed, because those words are so inherently threatening. Okay, let's start keeping tabs on forums. Let's keep tabs on social media. [00:04:51] Let's keep tabs on the Facebook groups and the telegram and signal groups of militias and things like that, because every day they're flooding the digital domains with far more threatening stuff, we can start disappearing then maybe if that's the direction we want to go in as a country. [00:05:06] I don't think that's the direction they want to go in. So maybe they can start to live their values. That freedom of expression is America the minute you take that away. I mean, it's just one more way in which I think sort of the underpinnings of this nation are being lost. So we still get the flag and the Pledge of Allegiance, but we get none of the stuff [00:05:24] that really made America great. The stuff that makes America great is the freedom of expression. This is a this is a huge, huge deal. And as you say, it can be wielded against anyone. They don't need to go to a forum or in any other way find evidence. Look, they didn't even the judge said they didn't really have any [00:05:40] evidence here to and sufficient cause. So they don't need cause always it. If they decide that you're an enemy of the state, they can disappear you. I mean, this is the new world we live in. Yeah, yeah. And as as we'll get into more on the other side of the next break. I mean, racing towards fascism. Obviously we knew that that was coming. [00:05:59] But also and I talked about this earlier with, with Donald Trump and the buck stopping somewhere over there or whatever, deeply unmanly that like she posted an op ed. I mean, I could like, I guess, try to counter what she said with an argument of my own. [00:06:14] But that's just that's that's difficult and really, really scary. So, no, I'm gonna lock her up. It's gonna disappear. Put her in a cell somewhere, like for people. Oh, my God, the movement. Not only the free speech stuff, but the debate. Me, bro. I'll debate you. I'll go on a podcast and we'll debate over it. You guys, you you you fell apart. You set fire to the Constitution. [00:06:34] Your values are gone because of an op ed, because the words were very, very scary. I don't know the adjectives, the adverbs. What was it, a conjugation? I don't know what scared you so much in that. Again, the right could desperately use some role model that can remind them of what a man is supposed to be like, [00:06:49] because there's none of it in the way they've treated so many of these different students. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets his wings. Totally not true, but it does keep you updated on our live shows.