Throughout its history, the United States has characteristically remained a country of two things: a country of immigrants, and a country of unmatched religious diversity. And yet when compared with the rest of the world – where these two very factors alone have so often engendered horrible religious wars and decades of enduring conflict – the history of religious conflict in the United States seems almost nonexistent.
That is not to say the United States has been immune to its share of conflict explicitly rooted in religion. This paper explores the various manifestations of religious conflict throughout the history of the United States, from the Revolutionary War to the attacks of September 11th and their fallout. A distinction is drawn between religious intolerance, which is not the focus of this paper, and outright religious persecution or violence. Similarly, the paper reflects efforts made to de-conflate religious conflict from ethnic and racial conflict, which has been much more prominent throughout the history of the United States. In examining the history of religious violence, intolerance, discrimination, and persecution in the United States, we arrive at some possible explanations for why the United States has seen such minimal religious conflict despite being so religiously diverse.
The Revolution
It has been said that the United States is a nation founded on religious conflict. The colonies were settled by those escaping religious persecution in Europe. There is even some evidence that religion played a major role in the American Revolution and that revolutionaries believed it was willed by God for the Americans to wage war against the British.[1]
As the Church of England was striving to establish one, uniform religion across the kingdom, colonial America was divided, each of the colonies being dominated by their own brand of Christianity. Due to the distance from England and the room in the colonies, many religions were able to establish themselves in America, colony by colony. For example, Anglicans, who conformed to the Church of England, populated Virginia. Massachusetts was home to the Puritans. Pennsylvania was full of Quakers. Baptists ruled in Rhode Island. And Roman Catholics found a haven in Maryland, where they could establish themselves amid the other colonists’ protestant majority. Each of these colonies maintained a distinct religious character and favored one religious denomination’s power.
The American colonists saw the revolution not only as a war for political independence, but to protect the religious diversity of the thirteen colonies. Put in other terms, it was a war for religious independence and freedom. To sever ties with Mother England would be to ensure that the various Christian denominations could co-exist on the American continent. The conflict was, in part, a conflict that pitted the various American religious denominations against the Church of England, who wanted to impose a uniform, Anglican religion on the colonies.
Early Religious Persecution
The period after the Revolutionary War saw a lot of infighting between the various states and Christian denominations. Virginia, which was home to the largest portion of Anglicans loyal to the Church of England, was the scene of notorious acts of religious persecution against Baptists and Presbyterians. Anglicans physically assaulted Baptists, bearing theological and social animosity. In 1771, a local Virginia sheriff yanked a Baptist preacher from the stage at his parish and beat him to the ground outside, where he also delivered twenty lashes with a horsewhip. Similarly, in 1778, Baptist ministers David Barrow and Edward Mintz were conducting services at the Mill Swamp Baptist Church in Portsmouth, Virginia.[2] As soon as the hymn was given out, a gang of men rushed the stage and grabbed the two ministers, took them to the nearby Nansemond River swamp, and dunked and held their heads in the mud until they nearly drowned to death.
The period during and soon after the Revolutionary War also saw abundant political manifestations of religious conflict. At the time, some states abolished churches, while supporting others, issued preaching licenses, and collected tax money to fund and establish state churches. Each state constitution differed in its policy on religious establishment, or state-supported religion. It would not be until well after the adoption of the Constitution of 1789 and the First Amendment religion clauses that the disestablishment for which the United States is so recognized became the de facto practice.
1800s
The early part of the 19th Century was relatively quiet in terms of religious conflict in America. The religious conflict that stands out in this period involves tensions between Catholics and Protestants, culminating in violence directed at Irish Catholic immigrants. The surge in immigration from Europe during the 19th Century coincided with and influx of Catholics and the rise of activist Protestantism in the U.S. As strong Protestant values permeated the country, immigrants who were Catholic also became viewed as outsiders and undemocratic. These views are separate from, but on top of, the harsh anti-Irish sentiment that also spread during the period.
In the 1830s and 1840s, anti-Catholic violence broke out in the Northeast and elsewhere. In 1835, one incident was ignited by a speaking tour by Lyman Beecher, who published Plea for the West, a book about a Catholic plot to take over the U.S. and impose Catholic rule. After Beecher’s speaking tour passed through Charlestown, Massachusetts, a mob set fire to the Ursuline convent and school.[3] In Philadelphia in 1844, pitched gun battles broke out between “native” Americans and mostly Irish Catholics. Martial law had to be declared in order to end the violence.[4]
The Mormon War, the Utah War
Around the same time as anti-Catholic violence broke out in the Northeast, another religious group was being chased out of the same area. The Mormons, who emerged after the 1830 discovery of The Book of Mormon, were a religious community chased out of New York, out of Ohio, out of Missouri, and out of Illinois, to Utah, where they finally settled.
In Illinois in 1839, the Mormons settled Nauvoo and built a thriving Mormon town there, complete with a large Mormon temple. In the short period of three years, the Mormons prospered, announced the doctrine of polygamy, and founder Joseph Smith announced his candidacy for president of the United States. Locals were intimidated and envious. Smith and his brother Hyrum were arrested on morals charges and held in jail. On June 27, 1844, an anti-Mormon mob attacked Nauvoo and burned it to the ground.[5] They also invaded the jail cells where Smith and his brother were being held, and executed them.
Shortly after the sacking of Nauvoo, Brigham Young announced his leadership of the Mormons and led them to Utah, where they flourished. In 1857, fears of a religious state of Mormons grew and the president ordered federal troops to enforce the installation of federal judges and a new non-Mormon governor. At some point in the interim, this is still a subject of debate, the infamous Mountain Meadow Massacre happened – in which local Mormons slaughtered a group of 120 California-bound pioneers who were openly hostile toward their religion and making threats to return from California to attack them.[6]
The massacre only fueled anti-Mormon sentiment. Tensions escalated. The Mormon army, also known as the Nauvoo Legion, was called out to respond to the imminent arrival of 2,000 U.S. Army troops. Salt Lake City was evacuated on standing orders to burn the city should an invasion occur. No violence was to break out, as attention was diverted to the Civil War.
As the federal government focused its energies on fighting the Civil War, legal sanctions and political oppression of the Mormons continued that virtually dissolved the church by 1887. It wasn’t until the 1890s, when the Mormons ended the practice of polygamy, that Utah finally achieved statehood in 1896.[7]
The Jewish Experience
At the end of the 1890s, the U.S. began seeing the first wave of anti-Semitism, just as the federal government began restricting immigration from Europe. While concentrations of Jews have lived in America since colonial times, they were largely tolerated and discriminated against in localized incidents. By the 1920s, immigration quotas had taken effect and limits on the basis of national origin. These quotas were not repealed during the Holocaust, even as Jewish refugees were fleeing Hitler’s Europe.
Between 1933 and 1939, the period of the Great Depression, anti-Semitic fervor reached heights never before seen or later seen in entire the history of the Jewish experience in America. In urban areas such as New York and Boston, Jews were violently attacked.[8] Most anti-Jewish sentiment was manifested in social and political discrimination. Assaults, propaganda and intimidation were mostly carried out by special societies, such as the Silver Shirts or the Ku Klux Klan.
Overall, the experience of Jews in America has been encouragingly free from the violent persecution seen elsewhere in the world. Indeed, racial and social intolerance persisted since the colonial days until the 1950s, as Jews were not allowed membership in country clubs, excluded from colleges, banned from practicing medicine, and from holding political office in many states. However, religious conflict rooted in anti-Semitism has been largely non-violent.
Hate Crimes as Religious Conflict
The incidents of violence against individual Jews that characterized the anti-Semitism of the Great Depression would have fallen under the category of religious hate crimes if the FBI, then known as the Bureau of Investigation, were collecting those statistics at the time. Despite the diversity of the United States, in all aspects such as race, national origin, religion and sexual orientation, the federal government (by way of the FBI) did not start keeping tabs on hate crimes until 1992. Religiously speaking, anti-Semitic hate crimes have always dominated the national hate crime statistics gathered by the FBI for the past ten years. However, the current numbers paint a changing landscape.
According to the ACLU, the U.S. is home to more than 1,500 religions and 360,000 religious centers.[9] Christianity has long dominated the country’s religious make-up, followed by Judaism. According to the latest statistics released by the Harvard University Religious Pluralism Project, Islam has surpassed Judaism and is the country’s Number Two religion.[10]
Following the terrorist attacks of September 11th, the FBI found that anti-Muslim sentiments spiked and verifiable, religiously motivated hate crimes against Muslims in the U.S. increased 1,600 percent in 2001 from the prior year.[11]
In fact, the FBI, which has tracked hate crimes since 1992, reports that Anti-Muslim hate crimes had previously been the second-least reported. But in 2001, they became the second-highest reported, second only to anti-Jewish hate crimes. It should be noted that these statistics are separate from crimes motivated against race, national origin or ethnicity – these are crimes against person and property in which religion was a motivating negative factor.
Conclusion
The U.S. has been fortunate in that it has not witnessed religious war and conflict of the scale seen in the Middle East and Europe. Although the number of different religions in the U.S. has steadily grown over the decades, this diversity has not let to conflict. Some propositions for why this may be:
The United States as a country of immigrants
This factor defuses historical and religious claims to territory, which are not as strong as they are in places such as the West Bank and Ireland. It also may explain a greater likelihood for a system of conflict to eventually resolve itself in favor of tolerance rather than further conflict, as each new group of immigrants to America has generally shared a story of persecution.
Constitutional protections and religious disestablishment
The American tradition of the separation of church and state cannot be overlooked in mediating and possibly preventing religious conflict to erupt. In many other parts of the world, religion is still highly influential and, in some cases, sponsored by the state. However, in a country with such religious diversity, religious disestablishment has proved necessary so that the government could not take sides in a religious conflict.
Diversity creates tolerance
The argument also exists that the immense diversity in and of itself has promoted tolerance among religions. Religious pluralism inspires attitudes that homogeneity is a natural part of the religious environment and that there is room for each religion to exist in America.
As the United States enters the 21st Century, these important factors will prove to be influential in the face of catastrophic events, and economic, social and political changes that challenge the level of religious tolerance the nation has maintained for over two centuries.
Since returning to office, Donald Trump’s personal wealth has nearly doubled, from $3.9 billion in 2024 to $7.3 billion this past September, which includes $2 billion from his cryptocurrency ventures that no one had been buying into prior to his reelection. Donald Trump Jr. is now worth six times what he was in 2024, also due in part to the family crypto scam.
But did you hear? Zohran Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji, wore some cute boots to his inauguration like a common Imelda Marcos! Quelle horreur!
Their “affordability” agenda got off on the wrong foot.
New York City’s first ladyRama Duwaji appeared to wear $630 “artisan” leather boots from a high-end designer to her Democratic socialist husband Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral swearing-in ceremony — a luxury look that flew in the face of the politician’s “everyman” image, eagle-eyed critics said Thursday.
Duwaji, a 28-year-old artist, gave more socialite than socialist on New Year’s Day as she apparently rocked one of the fashion house Miista’s pricey boot designs — one which is said to be crafted from “vegetable tan cow leather” and feature an “ultra-cushioned memory foam insole.”
Not “vegetable tan cow leather”! NOT A MEMORY FOAM INSOLE!
Not that it matters, really, but $630 for boots is not “luxury.” I mean that technically. Obviously $630 is a good amount of money, but it’s not luxury. It’s what’s called “bridge” — meaning that it’s high quality and expensive, but not at the same level as actual luxury brands, which cost at least twice that. It’s not Chanel or Versace or Alexander McQueen or Louis.
Rama wore a vintage Balenciaga coat from Albright Fashion Library and archival earrings from New York Vintage, both rented during a single marathon day spent diving into the racks and cupboards of the city’s best small, circular fashion businesses. […]
C’mon formal shorts!! Those are from The Frankie Shop, and the boots are *ON LOAN* from Miista.
I’m just going to have to get comfortable with the fact that people on the internet do not understand what being lent a SAMPLE that has been borrowed before and will be borrowed again means but, you know what, that’s okay.
This is a big part of what stylists do. Most of the time, when you see a celebrity wearing something fancy on the red carpet or at an event like this, it’s not something from their own closet, it’s on loan from a designer (because cheap advertising) or something like the Albright Fashion Library. This is also how a lot of wardrobing for television and movies works.
But even if they weren’t on loan, the idea that “it’s hypocrisy for a Democratic socialist or even a regular liberal to wear nice boots!” is absurd. It only seems like “hypocrisy” to people who think socialism means everyone should be poor and miserable and standing in bread lines all day wearing cardboard boxes on their feet instead of shoes.
The reality is … that’s capitalism. Like, for most people, that is capitalism, except you don’t even get any free bread out of it. Indeed, most of the people in the comments on the Post’s tweet for the article were talking about how they, the proud capitalists that capitalism is definitely working out really well for, only spend $40 on boots at Walmart or Amazon. Actually, buying shoes that will only last a season (and will fuck up your feet) because that’s all you can afford, instead of boots that cost a lot up front but last forever, is a perfect example of why it costs more to be poor than it does to be rich. (This is not to say that you can’t get decent boots for a not-crazy price — I do very well at Nordstrom Rack and Marshalls, thank you very much — but you get my point.)
What we want is for people to not have to spend $2,000 a month on health insurance or on rent so that they can have nice things, so that they can buy a nice pair of boots or a warm winter coat. So that they can go out to dinner sometimes without worrying about breaking the bank. That is the whole damn point! That’s the “hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses too” of it all.
Right now, 60 percent of Americans cannot afford $1,000 for an emergency expense. That’s not socialism that did that, that’s capitalism as practiced in the United States of America. Our economy literally has poverty built into the system. We literally cannot function without people to work the kind of jobs that currently do not pay enough for survival. Austerity is a way of life for a very large percentage of us, which also means that those whose income is dependent on other people having expendable income are also screwed.
New NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s affordability plans don’t just benefit the poor, they benefit everyone. If people aren’t taking certain jobs because transportation costs too much to make it worth their while or they can’t afford to live in the city, everyone’s quality of life goes down. A city where only rich people can afford to live is a city where rich people have absolutely nothing to do, which kind of defeats the whole point of being rich in the first place.
The commenters complaining about all the people they could supposedly feed with the $630 those boots cost are also missing the point. Besides clearly not being how socialism is supposed to work, caring for the poor by way of charity and philanthropy is lovely, but it’s not the most effective and efficient way of doing so. Taxes are. Social programs are. GoFundMe raises about $650 million a year for medical causes, with some people getting far more than they could ever need and others getting nothing. That is a stupid way of doing things. You want to spend less on healthcare? Make the entire United States one giant insurance group with a shit ton of leverage and bulk buying power, make medical school free and invest tax money into creating more internship programs. That is how you take care of people, not by not buying a pair of shoes.
Capitalists want philanthropy to replace taxation. Right-wing libertarians frequently argue that if you just didn’t tax the rich, they would happily give huge chunks of their fortunes away to the poor, which is patently ridiculous (and, again, not effective or efficient even if things did shake out that way).
Champagne socialists are good, actually. Why on earth would it be better to be a miserly rich person than a rich person who actually believes they should be taxed at a fair rate because they want to see everyone living well? The idea that the Left wants a world in which everyone lives like they’ve taken a vow of poverty and no one gets to be “successful” is a fantasy created by rich assholes who don’t want to share and don’t care if they live in a society where everyone has at least their basic needs met.
We actually love success, which is why we want more of it for more people, rather than just one percent of one percent of people. We love people, which is why we want a safety net that keeps them from falling so far they can’t get back up again. We love ingenuity, which is why we want people to be able to go into business for themselves without having to worry about what will happen to their kids if they can’t afford good health insurance on their own right away. We want their kids to feel like it’s not hopeless to try their best in school because they don’t think they’ll be able to afford to go to college without being in debt the rest of their lives. We don’t think it’s enough that people can “dream” of being billionaires but factually never be able to afford their own home.
And yes, we even want some people to be able to afford to actually buy $630 shoes, so that other people can get paid a fair wage for designing, making and selling those $630 shoes.
What is Donald Trump running away from so hard? Is it the fifth anniversary of his January 6 insurrection, which we will mark on Tuesday? It should be.
It could be Jack Smith’s newly released testimony, which is damning and damaging—and we haven’t even gotten the release date of Volume II of his special counsel report, due sometime in February unless Trump manages to hang it up in court. On balance, Congressman Jim Jordan’s “Weaponization” work is backfiring.
It could also be the Epstein Files. DOJ missed its reporting date to Congress over the weekend, and the full release of the files is still nowhere in sight.
Donald Trump has a lot to try to hide from. It could be all of the above, and it’s all closing in on him this week. In the past, he has always been able to delay or distract just long enough for the public to forget. But this week, the past seems to be catching up with the lame duck president.
That may be at least a partial explanation for Trump’s strike on Venezuela—distract, distract, distract. It’s a better explanation than Trump as a committed warrior against narcoterrorism. That one doesn’t work particularly well for Donald Trump, who pardoned Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández, a man who former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in our Substack Live on Sunday morning, “personally trafficked tons of cocaine into the United States and actually said at one point he wanted to shove cocaine up the noses of the gringos.” When Trump pardoned Hernández, he said, “If somebody sells drugs in that country, that doesn’t mean you arrest the president and put him in jail for the rest of his life.” As Jake pointed out, and I agree, “the drugs excuse holds no water.”
This week, we’ll be watching Congress—and watching Trump watch Congress, which has been showing a few signs of life lately. I don’t want to oversell that, but this is definitely a week that warrants paying attention, particularly with the privileged War Powers Resolution I mentioned in last night’s post coming to the Senate floor this week. The ball is in Congress’ court.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, as well as to “make rules concerning captures on land and water.” Presidents before and including Trump, as experts at the Brennan Center explain, have tried to claim some of that authority for themselves, using “outdated and overstretched war authorizations like the 2001 and 2002 authorizations for use of military force.” Multiple presidents have also “asserted an inherent authority to undertake airstrikes, raids, and other military interventions without prior congressional authorization. When Congress has authorized conflict, such as the War in Afghanistan and Iraq War, presidents have overread Congress’s approval and expanded U.S. military involvement into countries that Congress never contemplated. Compounding the problem, presidents often fail to give Congress the information it needs to oversee these conflicts.” This is not a Trump problem—presidents since at least George H.W. Bush have claimed a share of Congress’ power. But Trump, who is uniquely interested in amassing presidential power, has the potential to move on from Venezuela and keep going, if Congress doesn’t step in and assert itself.
It’s possible for two things to be true at once: it’s possible that Maduro was a corrupt, dangerous leader and also, that our Constitution and the separation of powers demand preserving. Our country does not, and indeed cannot, remove every dangerous leader around the globe from office with in-country strikes. We could strengthen local populations with stability-enhancing programs like USAID (which the Trump administration, of course, has cut) to increase the ability of local populations to act on their own impulses. We can engage in vigorous law enforcement, like the prosecution of Honduras’ former president. But we can do so without permitting our president to freelance as a warlord, especially one with dubious motives. So don’t buy into the false equivalency that says the smash and grab in Venezuela that resulted in Maduro’s arrest was a righteous exercise of the president’s power.
The constitutional prescription for fixing this problem of presidential overreach is Congress. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker had something to say about that over the weekend, in light of the Trump administration’s strike on Venezuela.
Cory Booker@CoryBooker
Today, many leaders will rightly condemn President Donald Trump’s unlawful and unjust actions in Venezuela, and I join them. But just as glaring, and far more damning, is Congress’ ongoing abdication of its constitutional duty. For almost a year now, the legislative branch has
4:40 PM · Jan 3, 2026 · 70.8K Views
415 Replies · 523 Reposts · 1.93K Likes
“Today,” he wrote, “many leaders will rightly condemn President Donald Trump’s unlawful and unjust actions in Venezuela, and I join them.
But then, Senator Booker put the blame precisely where it is due. He continued, “just as glaring, and far more damning, is Congress’ ongoing abdication of its constitutional duty. For almost a year now, the legislative branch has failed to check a president who repeatedly violates his oath, disregards the law, and endangers American interests at home and abroad.”
He called out the Republican-led Congress for choosing “spineless complicity over its sworn responsibilities.” He condemned its inaction in the face of Signalgate, with Trump’s “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth escaping any censure for “the reckless leaking of classified information that put American troops at risk.” The senator also pointed to the “stunning absence of accountability” for the administration’s “illegal use of military force destroying vessels and killing people in the Caribbean and the Pacific without congressional authorization.”
Booker cited a litany of Congressional failures:
No hearings. No serious investigations. No enforcement of checks and balances. No accountability.
He called Congress cowardly and submissive.
We are long past due for someone to speak so plainly to the country about the Republican-led Congress’ failure to do its constitutional duty. The question is, who is listening, and will it lead to action this week? As my good friend Norm Eisen like to say, I am not optimistic, but I am hopeful.
Booker writes that “Republicans in Congress own this corrosive collapse of our constitutional order” and that their submission to Trump’s will “now stands as one of the greatest dangers to our nation and to the global order America claims to defend.” The fact that Maduro is “a brutal dictator who has committed grave abuses” does not, Booker concludes, suspend the Constitution. And so, he drives home the point of what must come next:
“The Constitution is unambiguous: Congress has the power and responsibility to authorize the use of military force and declare war. Congress has a duty of oversight. Congress must serve as a check, not a rubber stamp, to the President.”
“We face an authoritarian-minded president who acts with dangerous growing impunity. He has shown a willingness to defy court orders, violate the law, ignore congressional intent, and shred basic norms of decency and democracy. This pattern will continue unless the Article I branch of government, especially Republican congressional leadership, finds the courage to act.”
“What happened today [in Venezuela] is wrong. Congressional Republicans would say so immediately if a Democratic president had done the same. Their silence is surrender. And in that surrender lie the seeds of our democratic unraveling.”
“Enough is enough,” Booker concludes. With three years left in this administration, it’s time to stop the (constitutional) bleeding.
Senator Booker wrote at length at a time when many Americans have lost the will or the ability to take in an argument laid out like this. For some people, it’s easier to ignore common sense and stay in the fold of the cult. But Booker’s words are well worth our time and well worth sharing with others. His argument is not subtle or nuanced, and it’s accessible to anyone who has taken a fourth-grade civics class: Congress should do its job, not Donald Trump’s bidding. The future of the Republic depends upon it. They would demand it if a Democratic president had done what Donald Trump did—something that has been true over and over, but is all the more poignant with the anniversary of January 6 staring us in the face. Maybe Congress will remember what that day felt like and how they reacted. Maybe enough of them can muster some courage—if for no other reason than that the history books, and likely voters at the midterms, will condemn them if they don’t.
Make sure you share Senator Booker’s message with your elected officials this week. They need to hear it. They need to know you heard it.
A final note: a development we won’t be following this week, because it won’t be happening, is the federal criminal trial of former FBI Director Jim Comey, which was slated to start on Monday. This trial will not take place because the case was dismissed, in a serious blow to the credibility of Pam Bondi’s Justice Department. There are, in fact, some guardrails that remain in place. And this year, we’re going to rebuild more of them. Get ready to vote.
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Imran Ahmed, the founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), giving evidence to joint committee seeking views on how to improve the draft Online Safety Bill designed to tackle social media abuse. Credit: House of Commons – PA Images / Contributor | PA Images
Imran Ahmed’s biggest thorn in his side used to be Elon Musk, who made the hate speech researcher one of his earliest legal foes during his Twitter takeover.
Now, it’s the Trump administration, which planned to deport Ahmed, a legal permanent resident, just before Christmas. It would then ban him from returning to the United States, where he lives with his wife and young child, both US citizens.
After suing US officials to block any attempted arrest or deportation, Ahmed was quickly granted a temporary restraining order on Christmas Day. Ahmed had successfully argued that he risked irreparable harm without the order, alleging that Trump officials continue “to abuse the immigration system to punish and punitively detain noncitizens for protected speech and silence viewpoints with which it disagrees” and confirming that his speech had been chilled.
US officials are attempting to sanction Ahmed seemingly due to his work as the founder of a British-American non-governmental organization, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).
“An egregious act of government censorship”
In a shocking announcement last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that five individuals—described as “radical activists” and leaders of “weaponized NGOs”—would face US visa bans since “their entry, presence, or activities in the United States have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the US.
Nobody was named in that release, but Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, Sarah Rogers, later identified the targets in an X post she currently has pinned to the top of her feed.
Alongside Ahmed, sanctioned individuals included former European commissioner for the internal market, Thierry Breton; the leader of UK-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI), Clare Melford; and co-leaders of Germany-based HateAid, Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon. A GDI spokesperson told The Guardian that the visa bans are “an authoritarian attack on free speech and an egregious act of government censorship.”
While all targets were scrutinized for supporting some of the European Union’s strictest tech regulations, including the Digital Services Act (DSA), Ahmed was further accused of serving as a “key collaborator with the Biden Administration’s effort to weaponize the government against US citizens.” As evidence of Ahmed’s supposed threat to US foreign policy, Rogers cited a CCDH report flagging Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. among the so-called “disinformation dozen” driving the most vaccine hoaxes on social media.
Neither official has really made it clear what exact threat these individuals pose if operating from within the US, as opposed to from anywhere else in the world. Echoing Rubio’s press release, Rogers wrote that the sanctions would reinforce a “red line,” supposedly ending “extraterritorial censorship of Americans” by targeting the “censorship-NGO ecosystem.”
For Ahmed’s group, specifically, she pointed to Musk’s failed lawsuit, which accused CCDH of illegally scraping Twitter—supposedly, it offered evidence of extraterritorial censorship. That lawsuit surfaced “leaked documents” allegedly showing that CCDH planned to “kill Twitter” by sharing research that could be used to justify big fines under the DSA or the UK’s Online Safety Act. Following that logic, seemingly any group monitoring misinformation or sharing research that lawmakers weigh when implementing new policies could be maligned as seeking mechanisms to censor platforms.
Notably, CCDH won its legal fight with Musk after a judge mocked X’s legal argument as “vapid” and dismissed the lawsuit as an obvious attempt to punish CCDH for exercising free speech that Musk didn’t like.
In his complaint last week, Ahmed alleged that US officials were similarly encroaching on his First Amendment rights by unconstitutionally wielding immigration law as “a tool to punish noncitizen speakers who express views disfavored by the current administration.”
Both Rubio and Rogers are named as defendants in the suit, as well as Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and Acting Director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons. In a loss, officials would potentially not only be forced to vacate Rubio’s actions implementing visa bans, but also possibly stop furthering a larger alleged Trump administration pattern of “targeting noncitizens for removal based on First Amendment protected speech.”
Lawsuit may force Rubio to justify visa bans
For Ahmed, securing the temporary restraining order was urgent, as he was apparently the only target currently located in the US when Rubio’s announcement dropped. In a statement provided to Ars, Ahmed’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, suggested that the order was granted “so quickly because it is so obvious that Marco Rubio and the other defendants’ actions were blatantly unconstitutional.”
Ahmed founded CCDH in 2019, hoping to “call attention to the enormous problem of digitally driven disinformation and hate online.” According to the suit, he became particularly concerned about antisemitism online while living in the United Kingdom in 2016, having watched “the far-right party, Britain First,” launching “the dangerous conspiracy theory that the EU was attempting to import Muslims and Black people to ‘destroy’ white citizens.” That year, a Member of Parliament and Ahmed’s colleague, Jo Cox, was “shot and stabbed in a brutal politically motivated murder, committed by a man who screamed ‘Britain First’” during the attack. That tragedy motivated Ahmed to start CCDH.
He moved to the US in 2021 and was granted a green card in 2024, starting his family and continuing to lead CCDH efforts monitoring not just Twitter/X, but also Meta platforms, TikTok, and, more recently, AI chatbots. In addition to supporting the DSA and UK’s Online Safety Act, his group has supported US online safety laws and Section 230 reforms intended to protect kids online.
“Mr. Ahmed studies and engages in civic discourse about the content moderation policies of major social media companies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union,” his lawsuit said. “There is no conceivable foreign policy impact from his speech acts whatsoever.”
In his complaint, Ahmed alleged that Rubio has so far provided no evidence that Ahmed poses such a great threat that he must be removed. He argued that “applicable statutes expressly prohibit removal based on a noncitizen’s ‘past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations.’”
According to DHS guidance from 2021 cited in the suit, “A noncitizen’ s exercise of their First Amendment rights … should never be a factor in deciding to take enforcement action.”
To prevent deportation based solely on viewpoints, Rubio was supposed to notify chairs of the House Foreign Affairs, Senate Foreign Relations, and House and Senate Judiciary Committees, to explain what “compelling US foreign policy interest” would be compromised if Ahmed or others targeted with visa bans were to enter the US. But there’s no evidence Rubio took those steps, Ahmed alleged.
“The government has no power to punish Mr. Ahmed for his research, protected speech, and advocacy, and Defendants cannot evade those constitutional limitations by simply claiming that Mr. Ahmed’s presence or activities have ‘potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States,’” a press release from his legal team said. “There is no credible argument for Mr. Ahmed’s immigration detention, away from his wife and young child.”
X lawsuit offers clues to Trump officials’ defense
To some critics, it looks like the Trump administration is going after CCDH in order to take up the fight that Musk already lost. In his lawsuit against CCDH, Musk’s X echoed US Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) by suggesting that CCDH was a “foreign dark money group” that allowed “foreign interests” to attempt to “influence American democracy.” It seems likely that US officials will put forward similar arguments in their CCDH fight.
Rogers’ X post offers some clues that the State Department will be mining Musk’s failed litigation to support claims of what it calls a “global censorship-industrial complex.” What she detailed suggested that the Trump administration plans to argue that NGOs like CCDH support strict tech laws, then conduct research bent on using said laws to censor platforms. That logic seems to ignore the reality that NGOs cannot control what laws get passed or enforced, Breton suggested in his first TV interview after his visa ban was announced.
Breton, whom Rogers villainized as the “mastermind” behind the DSA, urged EU officials to do more now defend their tough tech regulations—which Le Monde noted passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and very little far-right resistance—and fight the visa bans, Bloomberg reported.
“They cannot force us to change laws that we voted for democratically just to please [US tech companies],” Breton said. “No, we must stand up.”
While EU officials seemingly drag their feet, Ahmed is hoping that a judge will declare that all the visa bans that Rubio announced are unconstitutional. The temporary restraining order indicates there will be a court hearing Monday at which Ahmed will learn precisely “what steps Defendants have taken to impose visa restrictions and initiate removal proceedings against” him and any others. Until then, Ahmed remains in the dark on why Rubio deemed him as having “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” if he stayed in the US.
Ahmed, who argued that X’s lawsuit sought to chill CCDH’s research and alleged that the US attack seeks to do the same, seems confident that he can beat the visa bans.
“America is a great nation built on laws, with checks and balances to ensure power can never attain the unfettered primacy that leads to tyranny,” Ahmed said. “The law, clear-eyed in understanding right and wrong, will stand in the way of those who seek to silence the truth and empower the bold who stand up to power. I believe in this system, and I am proud to call this country my home. I will not be bullied away from my life’s work of fighting to keep children safe from social media’s harm and stopping antisemitism online. Onward.”
Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.
Everyone in tRump’s admin can see him failing and each one is pushing hard to get their personal desire / goal / profit done before he gets so bad the public can see he is not really making the decisions. This is one of these. Plus tRump is driven to put his name on every thing, every building, every aspect of government because he is terrified that people will realize how failing / stupid / bad / and scared he is of being forgotten because he never really accomplished anything naming worthy. But we have to remember that each member of his cabinet and inner circle have their own goals and things they want to do under tRump’s name. They realize they are fast running out of time. Hugs
The Trump administration is extending its wrecking ball to yet more historic buildings in Washington as the president’s pet projects — including his golden ballroom and triumphal arch — press forward.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem appears before the House Committee on Homeland Security on Capitol Hill on Dec. 11, 2025.Mark Schiefelbein / AP Photo
The Trump administration is looking to tear down more historic buildings in Washington as the president, nearly a year into his final term, looks for ways to leave his mark on the District of Columbia.
This includes the destruction of the East Wing of the White House to make way for the president’s grand ballroom, which he now says will cost some $400 million, as well as a massive so-called arc de Trump.
But a memo uncovered by The Washington Post on Tuesday shows the administration using a new justification (that is, other than Trump’s vanity) to explain its latest effort to raze a part of D.C.’s history: a so-called emergency.
The Post reports Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose agency has engaged in some rather lavish spending on her behalf this year, issued a memo earlier this month “seeking to fast-track the demolition of more than a dozen historic buildings at St. Elizabeths in Southeast Washington,” which officials have been converting into a sprawling headquarters for DHS over more than a decade in accordance with historic preservation of treasured landmarks.
Per The Post:
‘Demolition is the only permanent measure that resolves the emergency conditions,’ Noem wrote in the memo. A risk assessment report undertaken by her agency ‘supports immediate corrective action,’ she wrote. The assessment report, which Noem included with her memo, concludes the vacant buildings ‘may be accessed by unauthorized individuals seeking to cause harm to personnel.’ The structures ‘provide a tactical advantage for carrying out small arms or active shooter scenarios,’ the report states.
MS NOW has not independently confirmed the memo. A spokesperson for the General Services Administration, which is overseeing development of the St. Elizabeths campus, confirmed to The Post that the agency had been alerted by the DHS about “a present security risk to life and property” at the campus “that may require us to demolish buildings.”
The report notes the push is being opposed by multiple preservationist groups, including the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which has also sought to thwart Trump’s ballroom project.
It’s yet to be seen whether there’s any true risk in need of being resolved by Trump’s demolition of yet more historic buildings. But if past is prologue, there’s certainly reason to doubt the administration’s “emergency” claims here: namely, the president’s obvious desire to remake the nation’s capital and his administration’s tendency to use claims of “emergencies” to impose a slew of radical policies.
Another more than $200 million in medical debt has been wiped out for Arizonans.
And the recipients are going to know who to thank: Gov. Katie Hobbs.
The new figure was announced Monday by Allison Sasso. She’s the president and CEO of Undue Medical Debt, a company that agreed earlier this year to use some $10 million in state American Rescue Plan COVID relief dollars to buy up medical debt from hospitals and doctors for a few pennies on the dollar, eliminating a negative mark on the credit reports of those who racked up the bills.
All totaled, according to the governor’s office, the program has so far erased $642 million owed by more than 485,000 Arizonans.
And under a deal the state cut with Undue Medical, the beneficiaries all get letters crediting not just United Medical but also the governor.
What’s behind all this is a program that United Medical has been offering across the nation.
Established in 2014, it uses government funds and private donations to acquire portfolios of medical debt from health care providers or debt buyers.
What makes the money go farther, according to company officials, is the debt has reached the point where those holding the rights are willing to sell them for pennies on the dollar.
People can’t actually apply. Instead, Undue Medical has to find them. It starts with eligibility.
The program is aimed at those whose medical debt whose income is less than 400% of the federal poverty level. That is currently $128,600 for a family of four.Also eligible are those whose debt is 5% or more of their annual income. That would aid those who have higher income levels than the cutoff—but much higher debt than they may be able to handle.
Undue Medical works with a credit reporting agency, buying what it calls “relevant income data” from them. That’s how it gets the names of individuals who owe money.
That is then compared with the information it gets from medical providers and others who are the holders of past-due debts.
Once the bills have been paid off, the patient gets a letter in an Undue Medical envelope informing for the first time that the obligation has been wiped out and the credit bureau has been notified.
But the recipients do get some inkling at that time of who to credit.
The deal Hobbs cut with the charity when she first signed the deal in 2024 requires that beneficiaries know that the financial relief is happening because governor’s action: It spells out that any fliers, advertisements, press releases or other marketing materials to include “logos or insignia as required by the governor’s office and approved by the governor’s office before publication.”
Gubernatorial press aide Christian Slater, in defending that provision when the program was announced in July, said that is appropriate. He said the letters are designed to tell people not just that their medical debt was relieved but “how it happened.”
And why do they need to know that the governor gets credit?
“The medical debt relief would not be possible without the governor’s leadership and focus on lowering costs and delivering economic opportunity for every Arizonan,” Slater said.
Undue Medical said what’s also crucial is that the patient starts from scratch.
Generally speaking, when a debt is forgiven, it can be considered income for tax purposes. But Courtney Story, the charity’s vice president of government initiatives, said in July that doesn’t apply when the money comes from a “disinterested third party.”
“Because we’re a nonprofit, we’re not part of the health care system, we count as a disinterested third party, as does the government,” she said.
Ditto, Story said, with private donors, though they have the option of remaining anonymous or disclosing their names to recipients.
In the press release Monday, Hobbs included the anonymous comments of three Arizonans who said they were thankful that the debt had been wiped out.
She got them because the contract the state has with Undue Medical said that “patient stories and related insights shall be shared with the governor’s office on a regular basis.”
As to what the governor can do with those testimonials, a company spokesman said when the program was announced that, “to my knowledge, there isn’t a restriction on how they can be used.”
In unveiling the plan in 2024, Hobbs insisted that there’s nothing illegal about the state using money it has received from the federal government to pay off the medical debts of private Arizonans.
A provision of the Arizona Constitution makes it illegal to “make any donation or grant, by subsidy or otherwise, to any individual, association or corporation.”
“I can assure you we would not be taking this action if we weren’t fully confident in the legality of it,” Hobbs said.
Anyway, she said, Arizona wouldn’t be the first jurisdiction to use COVID dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act in this way.
Undue Medical has provided press releases from other jurisdictions that have taken advantage of the program, with recent press releases from Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer, Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, and one from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for a local program.
Scottie's Playtime 