Saturday Digest Vol. 2, Issue 8
Sifting through sources all week to deliver you real, interesting news. Curated by a professional journalist and delivered to your inbox every Saturday.
“My first instinct is to laugh, but then I remember that American history is filled with men and women who were as lethal as they were ridiculous.” — Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message
Today’s Digest features stories about a limited ceasefire in Russia and Ukraine, a Columbia University student named Mahmoud Khalil who was arrested and detained without charge by the U.S. government, and the risks posed to Rhode Island’s food banks by federal funding cuts to SNAP and other food security-related programs.
I went on Bill Bartholomew’s podcast on Tuesday, March 18 to discuss the Trump administration’s recent arrest and detention of multiple immigrants, including the aforementioned grad student Mahmoud Khalil as well as a doctor named Rasha Alawieh, a nephrologist (kidney specialist) who had been living in Rhode Island and working for Brown Medicine, the non-profit medical organization affiliated with Brown University’s medical school.
You can listen to the episode of Bartholomewtown here, or on any platform (i.e. Spotify) that hosts podcasts. The discussion is just under 30 minutes long.
Readers and sources can always contact me at wolfangwritingsolutions@gmail.com.
World
1. Trump and Putin agree to an immediate ceasefire for energy infrastructure in Ukraine conflict (AP)
“The White House described it as the first step in a “movement to peace” that it hopes will include a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea and eventually a full and lasting end to the fighting. But there was no indication that Putin has backed away from his conditions for a prospective peace deal, which are fiercely opposed by Kyiv. And shortly after the call ended, air raid alerts sounded in Kyiv, followed by explosions in the city. Local officials urged people to seek shelter.”
Aamer Madhani, Zeke Miller, and Vladimir Isachenkov of the Associated Press reported on March 18:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was seeking more details on what Putin and Trump agreed on, but rejected Putin’s demand for halting military aid and intelligence sharing to Ukraine, warning that such a move would weaken Ukraine.
“We need to understand what the conversation is about,” Zelenskyy said. “What are the details? And hopefully, we will be fully informed, and our partners will discuss everything with us.”
He added: “There are two sides in this war — Russia and Ukraine. Trying to negotiate without Ukraine, in my view, will not be productive.”
The AP reporting team also provided some context about President Trump’s negotiations with both Ukraine and Russia since he came back into office:
The Trump-Putin engagement is just the latest turn in dramatically shifting U.S.-Russia relations as Trump made quickly ending the conflict a top priority — even at the expense of straining ties with longtime American allies who want Putin to pay a price for the invasion.
Trump has at moments boasted of his relationship with Putin and blamed Ukraine for Russia’s unprovoked invasion, all while accusing Zelenskyy of unnecessarily prolonging the biggest land war in Europe since World War II.
Trump has said Washington and Moscow have already begun discussing “dividing up certain assets” between Ukraine and Russia as part of a deal to end the conflict.
He said before the call that control of land and power plants would be part of the conversation, which came on the anniversary of Russia annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula 11 years ago. That bold land grab by Russia set the stage for Russia to invade its neighbor in 2022.
But neither the White House nor Kremlin made any mention of land or power plants in their post-call statements.
National
1. “I Am a Political Prisoner” — Palestinian Activist Mahmoud Khalil Sends Letter from ICE Jail
In a letter dictated over the phone from an ICE jail in Jena, Louisiana, Khalil decried his arrest, anti-Palestinian racism by both the Biden and Trump administrations and the inhumane conditions faced by immigrant detainees in the United States.
here is the full text of Khalil’s open letter, published on March 18, 2025:
My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.
Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.
Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities. On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours — I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.
My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.
I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention — imprisonment without trial or charge — to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.
I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the U.S. has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.
While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns — based on racism and disinformation — to go unchecked.
Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration's latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students — some stripped of their B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation — and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.
If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change — leading the charge against the Vietnam War, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.
The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.
Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.
2. Inside Trump's Supreme plot on immigration (Axios)
The detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States with a valid green card who has not been accused of breaking any laws, is an incredibly important story. It is the opening gambit in the Trump administration’s strategy to severely reduce First Amendment rights and protections for everybody in the United States.
Mahmoud Khalil has not been accused of breaking any law; in fact, the Trump administration has clarified publicly that they do not believe Khalil has committed any crime.
A White House official told conservative-leaning outlet The Free Press that the basis for targeting Khalil is being used as a blueprint for investigations against other students:
Khalil is a “threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States,” said the official, noting that this calculation was the driving force behind the arrest. “The allegation here is not that he was breaking the law,” said the official.
“He was mobilizing support for Hamas and spreading antisemitism in a way that is contrary to the foreign policy of the U.S.,” said the official, noting the Trump administration reviewed intelligence that found Khalil was a national security risk.
The official suggested more arrests at other schools were coming. “I suspect we’ll have other schools roped into this,” said the official.
It is highly likely that Khalil’s case will eventually go to the Supreme Court.
In the meantime, a second Columbia student has been detained, as has a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University. A third Columbia student “voluntarily” returned to India after her student visa was revoked. All of the individuals targeted for visa revocation, detention, and deportation have publicly expressed support for the Palestinian people and/or criticism of the state of Israel at some point over the past two years.
Axios put together a good article explaining the Trump administration’s authoritarian strategy behind the Mahmoud Khalil case and other recent immigration-related actions:
"Our end game is all hands on deck, trying everything," an unnamed DOJ official told Axios. "Everything we're doing, we're gaming out how the Supreme Court gets to decide."
The DOJ official summarized the Trump administration's legal attack plan this way:
"We really do want to push the court — ultimately the Supreme Court — to take a stand. ... We're trying to get clarity. And we're not putting all eggs in one basket. It's why we're seeing all efforts to remove people."
And, the official said, "We have other plans."
One of those other plans could be a doozy: stripping U.S. citizenship from naturalized Americans.
"What's going to be on the horizon are denaturalization cases," said Mike Davis, a close White House ally and founder of the conservative Article III Project.
"You're going to have Hamas supporters who have been naturalized within the last 10 years, and they are eligible to lose their status as citizens and get deported," Davis said. "It's worth it."
Civil libertarians are horrified by what they see as a large-scale assault on free speech and due process by an administration that's bent on granting authoritarian-like powers to Trump.
The Trump administration has publicly stated that Khalil’s detention is directly related to his role as a lead organizer of Columbia University’s student protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which has been characterized by many institutions and individual experts as a genocide. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the arrest was “the first arrest of many to come.”
“We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” wrote Trump in the post.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration seeks to deport Khalil under an obscure provision of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, also known as the McCarran-Walter Act, which gives the secretary of state the power to deport a noncitizen on foreign policy grounds.
Section 237(a)(4)(C)(i) of the McCarran-Walter Act renders deportable “an alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
According to the Associated Press, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in Ireland that Khalil’s case is “not about free speech.”
“This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with. No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card,” Rubio said.
Rhode Island
1. The deportation of Rhode Island doctor Rasha Alawieh (Bartholomewtown podcast)
As I mentioned in the introduction to this newsletter, I joined Rhode Island journalist and musician Bill Bartholomew on his podcast for a half-hour discussion on the latest Trump administration immigration detentions. Please do give it a listen at the above link or wherever you consume your podcasts.
For some written context, here is an Associated Press article about the circumstances of Dr. Alawieh's deportation.
Three days after Alawieh was prevented from re-entering the United States at Boston’s Logan airport, Brown University officials advised international community members, including visa holders and permanent residents, to postpone travel outside the country.
“Potential changes in travel restrictions and travel bans, visa procedures and processing, re-entry requirements, and other travel-related delays may affect travelers’ ability to return to the U.S. as planned,” wrote Russell C. Carey, Brown’s executive president for planning and policy, in an email on Sunday that was obtained by The Boston Globe.
One thing a lot of people seem to be fixated on is that Alawieh, a Shi’ite Muslim from Lebanon, had some deleted photos on her phone related to the funeral of recently assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Setting aside the obvious fact that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution broadly protects people’s rights to have whatever photos and information they want on their personal devices, here is something for my fellow Rhode Islanders to chew on: the May 1978 issue of Rhode Island History, which contains fascinating details about the surprisingly robust historical presence of the Ku Klux Klan in Rhode Island.
Among the descriptions of Klan weddings, funerals, and rallies attended by thousands of Rhode Islanders, readers might find some of their own ancestors named in the ranks:
In spring 1928, Rhode Islanders were made aware that the Klan had been engaged in a devious scheme designed to improve its membership. The Providence Journal, in an exclusive story on 17 Match, revealed that nearly 200 officers and men in three companies of the First Light Infantry, Rhode Island Militia, were at the same time members of the Klan, and that recruiting for both organizations was reciprocal and concurrent…
Substantial early testimony was provided by Austin C. Barney, Klan member and cook in Troop G, Rhode Island National Guard. Barney spoke to the possibility of the scheme's being part of a national program, to the identity of two state senators on the Klan "secret" list, and to the current military membership in the Rhode Island Klan (more than 900). Senators Samuel Avery of Hopkinton and Charles Weaver of Richmond immediately issued denials of membership.
In terms of estimating the number of Klan members in Rhode Island, which saw somewhat regular gatherings of more than 5,000 Klan supporters at a time:
Klan recruitment in Rhode Island started during 1923, presumably aided by the striking success of Klan organizers elsewhere in new England. Althoughe estimates of Klan strength ranged as high as 37,000, this figure appears to be inflated...
A level of 2,500 -3,000 members by the time of the Klan hearings in 1928 applied only to the Roger Williams Klanton; continued activity in southern Rhode Island during the previous years suggests that almost as many again from that area still belonged to the organization.
I think this unpleasant reality of enthusiastic, somewhat widespread popular support for an infamous domestic terror organization here in our own state can and should be connected to the way some people are framing their thought process regarding Alawieh’s deportation.
If your conclusion is that Klan supporters hold beliefs you strongly disagree with and/or find morally reprehensible, but those people still deserve to be protected by the U.S. constitution…is that the same conclusion you arrive at when it comes to this Muslim woman possibly supporting or being connected to Hezbollah?
2. Rhode Island food banks anticipate more hungry residents due to federal funding cuts (Newport This Week)
I interviewed the leaders of the RI Community Food Bank in Providence and the MLK Center food pantry in Newport for this article about current and future federal funding cuts to SNAP and other food security-related programs.
This is really a statewide (and nationwide) issue, but the landing place for my article was Newport This Week, so the final version of what I submitted was shortened and tailored by the NTW editors to focus a bit more on Newport County.
Here is an excerpt of the rough draft I sent in to Newport This Week, which delves a bit more into the chain of relationships connecting the Trump administration’s decision to cut federal funding for programs including SNAP and local food pantries like the one at Newport’s MLK Center:
MLK Center executive director Heather Hole Strout explained that while only 3% of the MLK Center’s budget comes from government funding, including a small amount of support from some (but not all) of Newport County’s municipalities, 40% of its food donations come from the RI Community Food Bank.
RI Community Food Bank CEO Andrew Schiff explained the chain of relationships which connects federal funding for SNAP and other USDA programs to the RI Community Food Bank and ultimately to local food banks like the one at the MLK Center.
Schiff said, “We also don’t receive very much federal funding – but of the 18 million pounds of food we distribute each year, about one third of it [six million pounds of food] is from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)…We receive all of that USDA food for Rhode Island here, and then distribute it out to places like MLK.”
Schiff said he is anticipating cuts to the USDA Emergency Food Assistance Program which provides much of that food, particularly because Congress failed to come to an agreement on the annual Farm Bill last autumn. The Farm Bill is an omnibus, multiyear law that sets funding levels for USDA programs related to food and agriculture, including SNAP and several USDA programs which subsidize farmers to grow food for public schools and food banks.
Schiff said that after Congress failed to reach an agreement on the Farm Bill last year, the Biden administration made a special allocation of money and food to food banks through the USDA worth about $1.5 billion. However, several days ago the Trump administration canceled that appropriation. Rhode Island had been expecting the equivalent of about $3 million worth of food for its food banks, according to Schiff, but the cuts at the USDA occurred before most of that food could be disbursed.
“We wondered what was going on, but now it’s official,” he said. “Our hope is that the bigger overall provision of USDA food to food banks is going to continue through the Farm Bill and through the regular budget process. Obviously since it is a third of our food, we are depending on it.”
“We’re also worried about cuts to SNAP, because any significant cuts to SNAP will also increase demand on food banks,” said Schiff. “So you’re going to have the worst of both – this increase in demand for food assistance at the same time that there is less supply.”
I also spoke to Weayonnoh Nelson-Davies, the executive director of a nonpartisan research and policy organization in Rhode Island called the Economic Progress Institute (EPI). Because of the limitations inherent to the process of producing local journalism, I was unable to include any of Nelson-Davies’ valuable insights in my Newport This Week article.
Nelson-Davies said she and other experts who follow the federal budget process are anticipating a proposal from Congress to cut $230 billion over 10 years from federal SNAP funding, as well as a proposal to raise the threshold for public school districts to qualify for free breakfast and lunch.
Currently, if a district has 25% of households below a certain income level, it qualifies for federal funding to provide all of its students with free meals. Under the anticipated proposal, only districts with 60% or more of households classified as “low-income” would receive funding for free breakfast and lunch.
Nelson-Davies said EPI’s research indicates this elevated threshold would affect 73 schools across 16 districts, and take away free breakfast and lunch from approximately 36,000 Rhode Island public school students.
She also said about 144,000 Rhode Islanders currently receive SNAP benefits, and the state is slated to receive $340 million from the federal government in 2026 in order to fund those benefits. Under a possible new proposal where the state government would be required to fund a percentage of that cost, the state government would have to either come up with millions of dollars or tighten its eligibility requirements to disqualify thousands of people from receiving food assistance.
When asked if anybody in the state is devising a plan in anticipation of these cuts, Nelson-Davies said:
“I hope so…it has been a little bit ‘wait-and-see,’ which I don’t think is the right approach. We need to be proactive. Even without any cuts to federal funding, the state is facing a $220 - $300 million deficit.”
She advocated for increasing taxes on the state’s top earners, and pointed towards a campaign led by a coalition called Revenue for Rhode Islanders which proposes raising state revenue by adding a new 3% surtax for the top 1% in income – i.e. a 3% increase on top of the current top rate of 5.99% on taxable income above $625,000.
The proposal would have no effect on Rhode Islander filers whose taxable income is $625,000 or less, would impact an estimated 5,700 tax filers, and would generate an estimated $190 million in new revenue for the state.
“When you think about balancing the state budget, most people look to cut services rather than raise revenues. Facing a $200 million deficit…cutting food benefits to somebody getting only $90 per month for their groceries is no way to solve this,” said Nelson-Davies.
Book Recommendation
During my time in Egypt I read a book that was recently gifted to me called Pills, Teas, and Songs: Stories of Medicine around the World by Debbie Nguyen. Some of the chapters were excellent — while this was not the most brilliantly written book I have ever read, it made me think about, notice, and pay attention to things that aren’t normally on my radar. I always like a book that makes me observe the world around me in a fresh new way.
Nguyen’s book is written in such a way that the chapters can be read independently of each other as stand-alone units. Some chapters were better than others. Here is an excerpt from one of the most interesting chapters of the book, about Soviet AI-2 first aid kits.
Nguyen who decided to write the book after taking a Modern Art History course and researching the history of traditional medicine packaging designs, let her curiosity carry her to the fascinating history behind a product she kept seeing pop up on eBay:
I stumbled upon what seemed like hundreds of listings of little square first aid kits in the collectibles and antiques section, all shipped from Russia, Ukraine, or Latvia and mostly made in the 1970s and 1980s. On first sight, with the miniature size and vibrant colors, they looked like toys. Curious to why so many of these kits were for sale as vintage collectibles, I decided to dig deeper and was not disappointed with the story behind these little orange boxes.
The research Nguyen did for this chapter is great, and it is also a great example of how cool the internet can be as an open, worldwide collaborative forum; an online gaming community helped fill an information gap about the AI-2 first aid medicine kits in the English-language journalistic and academic worlds, and posts by users of a website called Reddit helped Nguyen figure out the full Cold War-era story behind them.
“Under the conditions of a total military conflict with the use of weapons of mass destruction,” the palm-sized kits were meant to be distributed by Soviet security and civil defense forces to civilian populations to treat wounds or lesions in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear explosion:
I was intrigued by the fact that no article or blog post in English about the story behind this medical kit exists online, yet Reddit has discussions on the topic and even annotated photos. As it turns out, the kit is featured as an item in the indie video game Escape From Tarkov, developed by the Russian studio Battlestate Games.
The video game is a massive online first-person shooter game set in a fictional region in northwestern Russia. While the game is fictional, its depiction of the AI-2 first aid kit is realistic, and the gaming community has taken interest in analyzing the kit’s components. Perhaps curiosity derived from the online game has spilled into real life, as some YouTube videos show people wandering into areas near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and discovering these bright orange kits scattered in old buildings.
One YouTube channel uploaded a video in 2014 exploring the old Pripyat School of Engineering, located in the now-abandoned city of Pripyat, the ninth nuclear city in the Soviet Union…Walking among rubble and broken tiles, the group in the video points to the numerous dusty AI-2 kits strewn on the floor. “These are pretty much personal pharmacy kits for soldiers…these kits still contain potassium iodine for thyroid blockage, different antibiotics, and an antipsychotic. But two of the drugs that used to be included are missing,” one person translates from what a Russian speaker was explaining.
“One of the things missing is a syringe with morphine, and what is missing besides morphine is a drug against poison gas which was unofficially called the Soviet LSD, because apparently if you take it without being poisoned, it gives you really strong and weird hallucinations.”
Nguyen goes on to find out the tiny medical kits contain nine items, and she lists in detail what they are and what they were intended to do when administered in the event of a nuclear catastrophe. You can find Pills, Teas, and Songs: Stories of Medicine around the World on Indiebound, which I try to use whenever possible in place of Amazon because it supports independent bookstores.
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