Out-FM aired on Tues., July 8

Transgender Law Center's Anna Castro (l) & Natl. LGBTQ Task Force's Rae Leiner (r)

Resources:

Transgender Law Center Denounces SCOTUS Opinion in U.S. v. Skrmetti

National LGBTQ Task Force Responds to Supreme Court United States v. Skrmetti

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Lessons for Today's Deportation Cases from Margaret Randall's Battle in the 1980s

We will examine precedents for the case of Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian Columbia grad student and green-card holder now threatened with deportation under the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claims he "has reasonable ground to believe" that Khalil’s presence in this country "would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States." Specifically, Rubio alleged -- based on no evidence at all -- that Khalil had participated in "antisemitic protests" that "foster[ed] a hostile environment for Jewish students." Khalil, detained in Louisiana by ICE in March, was ordered by a federal judge to be released on bail on June 20th. This was a huge victory for the global movement to free Mahmoud Khalil which has sprouted since his arrest.

The case has eerie parallels to a similar one in the 1980s. At that time, internationally renowned Margaret Randall, a longtime North American feminist activist who had supported Latin American revolutions and spent years living in Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua, as well as being a prolific writer, poet, translator, and photographer, was facing deportation from the U.S. Although a U.S. citizen born in this country, when living in Mexico in the 1960s, where she married a man and had three children, the U.S. Consulate falsely told her she had automatically surrendered her U.S. citizenship when she acquired Mexican citizenship. 

It took a five year legal/political campaign -- with strong support from artists, intellectuals, and anti-intervention activists -- for Margaret to won her deportation case. Shortly afterward, she came out as a lesbian. 

Out-FM's Bob Lederer spoke with Margaret's attorney in that landmark case, David Cole. David is a former National Legal Director of the ACLU. Today he is Professor in Law and Public Policy at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington.

Resource:

The New Yorker article:

The Last Time Pro-Palestinian Activists Faced Deportation

Mahmoud Khalil’s case is eerily similar to that of the L.A. Eight, in which a group of students were targeted, not because of any criminal activity but because of their speech.
By David Cole
March 18, 2025

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Announcement: Join the Rollout of the Ida B. Wells Media Defense Network

Friday, July 11 from 7:00-9:00 PM Eastern

To register, click here, or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

We want to invite the listeners to an important Zoom discussion this Friday evening. It's an introduction to the new Ida B. Wells Media Defense Network, which several of us in Out-FM are participating in. We are an ad hoc group of Pacifica Radio program producers and other community media advocates who have been meeting since January via Zoom to define a strategy and structure to take on the attacks on press freedom and political expression by the Trump Administration and its allies. They have targeted media platforms where liberal, progressive, and anti-racist voices share information (newspapers, radio, television, college, and the growing prison press). We’re also outraged by the life-threatening attacks in this country on political speech denouncing the genocide of Palestinians.

Now we want to build a broad network to set up a Rapid Response Network and a Pledge of Resistance for those willing to speak out and take action against rising attacks on freedom of the press and the right to political expression. On Friday, in our first hour, we'll invite folks in our larger media and activist communities to talk about how you might want to get involved and contribute your ideas. During the second hour, we plan to show a new film called Gaza Journalists Under Fire, released by Brave New Films. That meeting is this Friday, July 11 from 7-9 PM. 

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