This month, the Trump administration’s crackdown on free speech related to Israel-Palestine dramatically escalated when Department of Homeland Security agents arrested Columbia University student organizer Mahmoud Khalil.

Khalil is currently detained in an ICE jail in Louisiana, facing potential deportation. Khalil’s arrest is part of a broader crackdown now unfolding, with more arrests by the Trump administration sending a chilling message to others speaking out about the U.S.-backed Israeli assault on Gaza.

After years of complaints by conservatives about “safe spaces,” “cancel culture,” and attacks on free speech, the Trump administration is now engaging in brute legal measures and accusations of discrimination on campus to silence free speech entirely.

To discuss this topic, Drop Site’s Murtaza Hussain is joined by Jenin Younes, a civil liberties attorney and expert in First Amendment issues.

Listen above or on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts.

It has been 11 days since Department of Homeland Security agents working under the direction of the Trump White House detained Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, handcuffing him in the lobby of his apartment building. Khalil is a legal U.S. permanent resident and green card holder, and his wife, who is eight months pregnant, is a U.S. citizen. DHS quickly shipped him to Louisiana—a significantly less favorable jurisdiction. On Wednesday, a federal judge rebuked the Trump administration, ruling it could not move Khalil's case to Louisiana and sending it back to New Jersey.

One of the central tactics the Trump administration is deploying in its crusade against speech opposing Israel’s wars has been to cancel or withhold federal funding to Columbia and dozens of other colleges and universities. On March 7, the Trump administration announced it had canceled approximately $400M in federal grants to Columbia saying it had failed to “protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment.” The next day, Khalil was arrested.

After his detention, Khalil and several other anonymous students filed a federal lawsuit to block Columbia University and Barnard College from handing over private disciplinary records to the House Committee on Education and Workforce. On Wednesday, Khalil’s legal team is filing an amended complaint, expanding that suit to name Attorney General Pam Bondi, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, and others.

Jeremy Scahill speaks to Amy Greer, Khalil's attorney, about new developments in his case and the expansion of their lawsuit to more members of the Trump administration.

Mercenary groups were a major part of premodern history, before being largely replaced by standing national armies. But in the past few decades, armed mercenary companies have again become major players in conflicts around the world. The U.S. employed Blackwater mercenaries to carry out operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the United Arab Emirates used paid mercenaries to carry out assassinations in Yemen.

But in recent years, the most powerful example of a mercenary group has been Russia’s Wagner Group. Wagner fighters have conducted operations in Syria, the Central African Republic, Ukraine, and other parts of the world, leaving a trail of atrocities. As Drop Site News’s Murtaza Hussain says, Wagner is an example of how war may be organized in a globalized future characterized by weak states and ruthless capitalism.

Hussain is joined this week by John Lechner, a journalist and author of “Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare.” Hussain and Lechner discuss the history of mercenaries, the Wagner Group, and the operations they take part in around the world.

Listen above or on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts.

As Mahmoud Khalil is being held at a notorious ICE detention facility in Louisiana, we learned of another attack on the free speech of a pro-Palestine activist and scholar at another elite American institution. Yale University, whose federal funding is also under threat, has suspended the international law scholar and outspoken defender of Palestinian rights Dr. Helyeh Doutaghi. She served as the Deputy Director of the Law and Political Economy Project at Yale. On March 2, an AI-powered, far-right website called Jewish Onliner published a story accusing Doutaghi of being a member of the pro-Palestine advocacy organization Samidoun. In October 2024, the U.S. government placed Samidoun on a sanctions list, claiming it is a fundraising front for a designated terrorist organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The Jewish Onliner article characterized Doutaghi as a member of a terrorist organization and of promoting terrorist leaders and activities on social media.

Less than 24 hours after that article was published, Doutaghi says she was placed on leave by Yale’s law school, which revoked her email access and banned her from campus. Yale then launched an investigation into her activities. “This is not an individual case. This is about making sure that no one dares to talk, to challenge, the narratives in corporate media, in Western academia so that they maintain the hegemony and the domination of these narrative,” Doutaghi told Drop Site News. “This is not about me. It's not about Mahmoud Khalil. It really isn't about any of the individuals or the specificity of the cases and the individuals involved. It really is a very much coordinated attack on free speech and about how much the government is terrified of not being able to silence the voices that they've been trying to silence for so many years, but also especially in the past year and a half and they're failing to do so.”

Yale said on Tuesday it is investigating Doutaghi for ties to “potential unlawful conduct” and claimed: “Such an action is never initiated based on a person’s protected speech.” The Trump administration announced recently that Yale was among 60 schools that could lose federal funding if they do not obey the White House’s orders to crack down on what the administration describes as antisemitic behavior on campuses, a clear attack on first amendment rights.

In an exclusive interview with Jeremy Scahill, Doutaghi explains her political views and details the events surrounding Yale’s suspension of her and banning her from the campus.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s Special Envoy to Middle East Steve Witkoff arrived in Doha, Qatar for negotiations on extending the Gaza “ceasefire” and exchange of captives deal between Hamas and Israel. These talks come in the midst of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and as Israel has continued to violate the terms of the original agreement signed on January 19. This weekend Israel cut off electricity to the one remaining desalination plant in Gaza, which provided drinking water to some 500,000 Palestinians. Israel claims it is undertaking these actions in an effort to pressure Hamas, effectively admitting to carrying out an act of collective punishment on the civilian population.

Israel has maintained that it does not intend to move the ceasefire to a formal second phase, which would include the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and an enduring cessation of military hostilities. Instead, Israel is pushing for a 60-day extension of the ceasefire with no guarantee of its withdrawal or an end to the war. It wants Hamas to release ten living Israeli captives upon signing such a deal. Hamas has said that it is negotiating in good faith and wants the U.S. and regional mediators from Qatar and Egypt to pressure Israel to abide by the original three phase deal. Israel remains irked that the Trump administration’s envoy on hostages Adam Boehler met directly with Hamas.

In a wide-ranging discussion, Jeremy Scahill speaks to Dr. Sami Al-Arian, the director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Zaim University. In addition to discussing the Gaza negotiations, the strategies of Hamas, the U.S. and Israel, they also talk about the case of Palestinian organizer Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and green card holder who was snatched by federal agents on Saturday night and threatened with deportation.

Al-Arian himself was prosecuted by the U.S. government during the George W. Bush administration, though the government failed to win a conviction at trial on the 52 count indictment it brought against him. Facing ongoing threats of prosecution, Al-Arian agreed to a plea deal and to voluntarily leave the U.S. He was deported in 2015. “It's incredible how American values, the American Constitution, American cherished principles have been shredded by this administration and former administrations,” says Al-Arian.

With Phase 1 of the Gaza ceasefire deal set to expire Saturday with no agreement (yet) for its continuation, Jeremy Scahill and Sharif Abdel Kouddous discuss the recent developments with the negotiations, as well as Egypt’s role in possible Gaza reconstruction and governance paths. A forthcoming Arab League summit is expected to be centered around presenting an alternative plan to Trump’s threats to turn Gaza into a U.S.-owned “Middle East Riviera,” one which would not include the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians of Gaza.

Abdel Kouddous has just returned from Lebanon and discusses his reporting from the devastated south of the country in the wake of Israel’s withdrawal. Sharif also speaks with a leading political figure in Hezbollah and member of the Lebanese parliament Dr. Ibrahim al-Moussawi about Trump’s demand that Hezbollah be expelled from the Lebanese government and the pledge by Lebanon’s new president that he will impose a monopoly on the use of arms, which suggests a plan to disarm Hezbollah. They also discuss the future of Hezbollah in the wake of the assassination and funeral of the group’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah.

Listen above or on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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It has been three years since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, killing hundreds of thousands of people and destroying huge portions of the country. Now, the Trump administration has signaled that it wants to end the war in Ukraine, but there are significant questions and deep concerns about Trump’s plans for how to end the fighting.

The Trump administration has signaled it wants Ukraine to pay back the U.S. for American financial support of the war. But there are fears now that the U.S. will impose a diplomatic agreement onto Ukraine that results in crushing economic debts, damaging the country, while doing little to permanently ending the conflict.

Drop Site’s Murtaza Hussain is joined by Rajan Menon, an expert on Ukraine and a Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies.

Listen above or on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On Thursday morning in Gaza, Palestinian resistance factions handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross the bodies of four Israeli captives. According to Hamas, all four of the Israeli citizens were killed in Israeli airstrikes.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continued his efforts to sabotage the Gaza ceasefire and exchange of captives deal, Hamas has begun putting out substantive public proposals of its own. Hamas says it is prepared to negotiate a comprehensive deal for Phase 2 that would include the return of all Israeli captives held in Gaza “as one package,” rather than the staggered weekly releases that have marked Phase 1 of the deal. In return, Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups would require Israel to completely withdraw all of its forces from the Gaza Strip and for international mediators, including the U.S., to certify a permanent truce. 

Hamas also announced it would release all six living Israeli captives slated for exchange in Phase 1 on Saturday, saying it was evidence of the group’s flexibility and willingness to reach a viable deal.

On this episode of Drop Site News’s podcast, Palestinian analyst Abdaljawad Omar, an adjunct professor at Birzeit university and a writer based in Ramallah, joins Jeremy Scahill for a wide-ranging discussion on the state of the ongoing negotiations. They also analyze the recent meetings of a range of Palestinian political parties and factions aimed at creating a national unity committee that could administer the Gaza Strip if the ceasefire holds and reconstruction begins. Omar also discusses President Donald Trump’s threat to attempt to forcibly expel Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to build a U.S.-owned Middle East “Riviera.”

This week, during a press briefing alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Donald Trump floated an idea for the U.S. to take ownership of the Gaza Strip, while expelling the surviving Palestinian population from the territory.

While outlandish, Trump’s statement emboldened many on the Israeli right who continue to dream of eliminating the Palestinian population of the land through expulsions, siege, and mass killings.

On this new episode of Drop Site News's podcast, Pankaj Mishra joins Murtaza Hussain for a discussion on the genocide in Gaza, how various regions of the world have responded to the genocide, and the broad historical context. Mishra’s latest book, “The World After Gaza: A History,” is out now.

Listen above or on the Drop Site channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The official death toll in Gaza continues to rise every day with Israel engaging in sporadic attacks on Palestinians in Gaza, killing dozens since the “ceasefire” agreement came into effect on January 19. The death toll also climbs every day for two other reasons: bodies retrieved from the rubble, and people who die of their wounds. The health ministry puts the number of confirmed dead at over 47,500 — though it acknowledges this figure as a vast undercount as it only tallies the number of bodies brought to hospitals and morgues in Gaza that are recorded the ministry. The official number of wounded is over 111,000 and people in Gaza continue to die from those wounds every day.

The health care system in Gaza came under a severe and systematic attack by the Israeli military, with nearly all of Gaza’s hospitals completely destroyed or barely functioning. The World Health Organization says that an estimated 14,000 Palestinians need to be medically evacuated to receive treatment outside of Gaza, including 2,500 children who are at imminent risk of death.

To discuss the real death toll in Gaza, the complications around medical evacuations, the war’s effect on children, and the importance of bearing witness, Drop Site News journalists Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Murtaza Hussein speak with two doctors who traveled to Gaza multiple times on medical missions to provide emergency health care during the war: Dr. Mimi Sayed is an emergency medicine physician based in Olympia, Washington, who has completed two medical missions to Gaza, the last one ending on December 31. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is a general, trauma, and critical care surgeon based in California. He has provided medical care in conflict zones worldwide, including Palestine, Ukraine, Haiti, and Zimbabwe. He was last in Gaza in April and is returning in March.