Mahmoud Khalil is suing the Trump administration for $20 million. The 30-year-old Columbia University graduate and green card holder, whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement took as a political prisoner in March, gained his freedom just last month.

On March 8, plainclothes agents ripped Khalil from his Manhattan apartment and his wife, who was then eight months pregnant, and sent him to an ICE detention center in Louisiana.

Khalil remained there for over three months. All the while, the Trump administration taunted and baselessly smeared him as “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, [and] anti-American,” while admitting outright that it was seeking to deport him solely for his beliefs. Still, the Trump administration continues its vendetta, alleging that Khalil improperly filled out his green card application, a claim his attorneys challenge and are seeking to dismiss.

Having returned to his wife and newborn son, Khalil is seeking damages for the ordeal the Trump administration subjected him to. Khalil’s attorneys on Thursday filed a claim for $20 million that names the departments of State and Homeland Security and ICE.

According to the Associated Press, the filing takes the administration to task for its campaign to “terrorize him and his family,” including having “effectively kidnapped him,” before sending him to a remote prison “deliberately concealed” from his family and lawyers, where he endured harsh conditions, was denied his medication, and lost 15 pounds due to being fed “nearly inedible” food.

Regarding the possibility of a settlement, Khalil said he would share the money with other pro-Palestinian advocates Trump is attempting to silence, but would also accept an apology from his administration and a change to its deportation policy.

In light of the news, the Trump administration remains steadfast in its harassment campaign against Khalil, telling the AP that his claim is “absurd” and accusing him of “hateful behavior and rhetoric.”

Former Washington Post writer Joe Davidson made sure to make his disdain for Post owner Jeff Bezos known in a scathing resignation letter.

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Davidson stated that he was stepping down from his position as the “Federal Insider” columnist, a position he held since 2008, because the paper had pulled one of his columns for being too critical of Donald Trump.

“For me, the cost became too great when a Federal Insider column I wrote was killed because it was deemed too opinionated under an unwritten and inconsistently enforced policy, which I had not heard of previously,” Davidson wrote.

“Blocking my column because it was too opinionated was a shock. I’ve authored many pieces over my 17 years writing the Federal Diary (renamed the Federal Insider in 2016), that were at least if not more opinionated as the now dead one. In that piece, I argued that ‘one hallmark of President Donald Trump’s first three, turbulent months in office is his widespread, ominous attack on thought, belief and speech.’ The piece contained specific examples, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s alarming memo supporting deportation of Columbia University pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil. Rubio said Khalil could be expelled for ‘expected beliefs … that are otherwise lawful.’ What immigrants might believe in the future now can make them federal law enforcement targets.”

Davidson went on to mention that his article covered the DHS kidnapping of Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk for writing a pro-Palestinian op-ed, a “terrifying sight” reminiscent of “George Orwell’s dystopian and cautionary tale against totalitarianism and thought police in [his] novel ‘1984.’”

“Killing that column was a death blow to my life as a Washington Post columnist. But I wrote two more articles to see if I could cope with the restrictions. That’s when I learned just how severe the policy is. In my next piece, I was not allowed to describe a potential pay raise for federal employees as ‘well-deserved’ because of Post policy,” Davidson continued.

“As a columnist, I can’t live with that level of constraint. A column without commentary made me a columnist without a column. I also was troubled by significant inconsistencies in the implementation of the policy. During this period, The Post allowed stronger, opinionated language by other staffers, including the words ‘viciousness,’ ‘cruelty’ and ‘meanness’ to describe Trump’s actions.”

There has been an alarming amount of capitulation to Trump from the media in this first year of his second term. Earlier this month, CBS settled with Trump for $16 million in a defamation lawsuit.

“I’m gone from The Post, but only as a journalist. Many people understandably have canceled subscriptions to protest Bezos’s actions that have damaged the news organization’s integrity,” Davidson wrote. “I still subscribe, and read and support the enduring fine work of Post journalists in the newspaper and digitally.”

A new report from The Atlantic’s Nick Miroff finds morale at Immigration and Customs Enforcement is suffering as the agency, under the direction of President Trump and Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller, targets undocumented immigrants who haven’t committed crimes.

While the Trump administration may claim its deportation campaign prioritizes violent criminals and gang members, in reality, it has focused on arresting noncriminals, evidently to hit........

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