The Trump Administration, Not College Students, Is The Greatest Threat to Our Foreign Policy and National Security

It's not immigrants or students but incompetent cabinet members of an aspiring authoritarian Trump regime who are the most active, dangerous threats to our democracy, freedoms, and foreign policy.

In 2025, America is disappearing and detaining brown-skinned immigrants with tattoos and pro-Palestinian college students because their opinions are deemed threats to foreign policy as the Trump Administration is literally sharing classified information and military strikes openly on an unsecured Signal chat with journalists.

What a time to be alive.

If you’re a Trump Cabinet member, you can post detailed military strikes that expose our troops’ safety in an unsecured social media app and accidentally invite The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to your chat group, who will then write articles about it and appear on numerous domestic and international news outlets to discuss the embarrassing mistake.

Afterwards, you can spend the week lying about your colossal blunder like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, pretend to be a lost deer in headlights like DNI Tulsi Gabbard and refer to the leak as “refreshing”, or suggest it’s all good like Director of CIA John Ratcliffe. If you have no shame, you can act out the classic Tim Robinson bit like National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and initially promise to find the person who created the mess and then finally take responsibility a day later for what was clearly your mistake.

Despite the profound implications of such a reckless, ignorant security breach - which, by the way, could be illegal - MAGA is trying real hard to sweep it under the rug as a simple “Whoopsie.” The same people who demanded prosecution for Hilary Clinton and “her emails” are the same actors who now plead ignorance and ask for clemency. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the least qualified person to hold the esteemed job, literally posted war plans on the Signal chat.

This was done after the Pentagon issued a warning that Signal was compromised and could be accessed by Russian hackers. To make matters worse, the German outlet Der Spiegel revealed today that it found senior U.S. security officials' private data and passwords online. Waltz, who allegedly created the Signal group, left sensitive info public on Venmo. (It bears reminding Matt Gaetz was also foiled by keeping his Venmo information public, revealing he sent over $10K in payments to two women who testified in a House probe.) Under oath, Gabbard was unable to recall which country she was in during this sensitive Signal conversation that discussed, in detail, military strikes against the Houthis in Yemen. Hopefully, she remembers her tweet from two weeks ago, where she warned that “any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such.”

I’m sure Gabbard and Trump Cabinet members will quickly call for accountability for this gross breach and security violation like they did for Clinton. Here are the receipts, courtesy of my America Unhinged producer, Mel.

Yeah, don’t hold your breath.

None of this is a “threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States,” according to Marco Rubio. Instead, he reserves those words for students who are here legally and peacefully protesting Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. For example, Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student, is now suffering in a Louisiana detention center without due process or any evidence of criminal wrongdoing simply because he was a vocal pro-Palestinian activist. Caving to the Trump Administration, Columbia University now says students can’t wear masks on campus, however, you can wear masks and abduct college students in broad daylight. That’s what happened to Tuft University student Rumeysa Ozturk, an international student from Turkey, who was just snatched off the street in Massachusetts by men in masks and transported to the Louisiana detention facility.

What is Ozturk’s alleged crime? According to the New York Times, “Ms. Ozturk was listed as one of several authors of an opinion essay published last March in the Tufts student newspaper. The essay criticized university leaders for their response to demands that Tufts ‘acknowledge the Palestinian genocide’ and divest itself from companies with ties to Israel.”

In the Trump regime, you can be snatched by masked men and flown thousands of miles away to a detention center if they don’t like essays you co-write in a college paper under the guise of a draconian law known as the Alien Enemies Act, which has only been evoked three times during congressionally declared wars - the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II. This is also the same Administration that allegedly fights for the First Amendment and freedoms and whose Vice President recently admonished Europe for not doing more to protect free speech. In America, you can fund, support, and cheerlead war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu as he violates a ceasefire and continues his genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. You can also participate in a violent insurrection against the United States, be pardoned for your crimes, and potentially receive compensation for trying to overthrow a free and fair election. Just don’t be a brown-skinned immigrant with tattoos walking in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s a big no-no. You will most likely join hundreds of immigrants kidnapped by ICE and then flown to El Salvador, where you’ll suffer in a foreign prison without due process. It doesn’t matter that you’re here legally and have zero connections to any violent gangs; your skin color and status are enough to convict and punish you.

This is what secret police do in authoritarian regimes in service to dictators. Words like Stasi, Gestapo, and Savak apply. This is what’s happening in the United States of America under Donald Trump, a convicted criminal who has already told us he’s not planning to leave after his term is over and who has promised to unleash the military against those he deems the “enemy from within.” As I wrote earlier this week, this is no longer relegated to Muslims, undocumented immigrants, and Palestinians. This regime is cracking down on anyone and everyone they deem a threat. This includes French researchers, Lebanese doctors, Filipinos who have been here for 50 years, and a white Canadian actress who was detained for two weeks.

We all need to stay vigilant, be informed, and raise hell anywhere and everywhere because this Trump Administration is playing for all the marbles without any concern for the rule of law. If they can do this to students and legal immigrants, that means they can and will come after you and your family as well. No one is safe from fascism.

America is currently being destroyed by the stupidest people on Earth. However, we still have a chance because we have the numbers, the majority, on our side. It’s time to start flexing with our voice, our pens, our bodies, and do what we can within our powers to resist and push back against the most incompetent, cruel, and corrupt Administration in modern history. Like Childish Gambino’s song, “This is America,” yes it is, but also Idiocracy.

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