University Concerns, Ukraine, USAID, & Uncovering X’s Hackers

March 12, 2025

Hello, readers – happy Wednesday! Today, we’ll be talking about college drama, Ukraine talks, what’s going on in Syria, Duterte’s arrest, Trump’s Tesla purchase, USAID drama, and X outages.

Here’s some good news: Doctors in London have successfully restored a sense of smell and taste in patients who lost it due to long Covid with a new surgery. In more surgery good news, a patient in Maryland became the first in the state to undergo an artificial heart valve replacement without the need for open-heart surgery.

“You aren’t learning anything when you’re talking.” – Lyndon B. Johnson

Free Speech Gets A Red Card

(Mahmoud Khalil during protests by Selcuk Acar via Getty Images)

We told you earlier this week that on Saturday night, ICE arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist attending Columbia University. Khalil is a green card holder who helped organize the pro-Palestine protests at Columbia last year.

Universities attacking students for protesting has already raised (some) eyebrows across the country. But with the federal government choosing to deport people for not agreeing with the White House’s unconditional backing of Israel, even some supporters of Israel are concerned about the government attacking free speech. “Any Jew who thinks this is going to start and stop with a few Palestinian activists is fooling themselves,” said one self-styled progressive Zionist. “Our community should not be used as an excuse to upend democracy & the rule of law.”

Luckily for anyone who values their right to speak out against the government, a federal judge stepped in to protect Khalil yesterday, at least temporarily. While the ruling provides him with a little bit of hope, Khalil has apparently been moved to a holding facility in Louisiana, and Trump has called his arrest “the first arrest of many to come” for students who participated in the “illegal protests.”

Setting Up A Plan In Saudi Arabia

Diplomats from the U.S. and Ukraine met in Saudi Arabia yesterday, making some important decisions that might spell the end to the Russia-Ukraine war. Following their trip to Jeddah, the delegates had a few important announcements. First and foremost, Washington and Kyiv are jointly calling for a 30-day ceasefire in the conflict, which will take hold if Russia accepts. In addition to calling for peace, the U.S. said it would “immediately lift” the freeze on its intelligence sharing program with Ukraine and also “resume security assistance to Ukraine,” according to a joint statement from the negotiators.

“Ukraine expressed readiness to accept the U.S. proposal to enact an immediate, interim 30-day ceasefire, which can be extended by mutual agreement of the parties, and which is subject to acceptance and concurrent implementation by the Russian Federation,” the statement added. “The United States will communicate to Russia that Russian reciprocity is the key to achieving peace.” As for that $500 billion mineral deal, Rubio said it was “not the subject of our talks today,” but promised that Trump would work with Zelenskyy “to bring to finality the signature of the deal.”

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Manila’s Manacled Man

(Rodrigo Duterte by Anthony Kwan via Getty Images)

Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, has been “forcibly taken” to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Duterte was arrested at the Manila International Airport yesterday after disembarking a flight from Hong Kong – he’s facing ICC charges of crimes against humanity, which allegedly took place during his administration’s deadly crackdowns on the drug trade.
According to official police data, over 6,000 people were killed during Duterte’s war on drugs, but human rights groups say that the real death toll is likely much higher. Human rights activists are unsurprisingly celebrating the former president’s arrest, but the public in the Philippines is split on the issue – according to one political analyst, many Duterte loyalists are “framing this as foreign interference and political persecution.”

The Kurds Kome To The Table

It looks like Syria’s Kurdish resistance forces are trading in their movement for a seat at the table. Yesterday, the U.S.-backed, north-eastern Syria-based, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced an agreement to integrate all of its military and civilian institutions into the new Syrian government. That includes the group’s military outposts, border posts, airport, and the vital oil and gas fields that the SDF uses to keep power over the northeastern third of the country.
The agreement with the new Syrian government will recognize Kurds as “an integral part of the Syrian state” and guarantees “the rights of all Syrians to representation and participation in the political process,” despite the interim government’s recent slaughter of Alawite minority groups along the country’s west coast. Druze militia groups in the south, which have been reluctant to join government talks until now, are expected to sign a similar agreement bringing them to the table soon.

More Mixed Nuts

Some Casual Presidential Price-Fixing

In recent weeks, demonstrators have taken to Tesla showrooms to protest Elon Musk’s company and the billionaire’s involvement in President Trump’s administration. The day after Tesla suffered its worst share price fall in nearly five years, Trump announced that he would be buying a “brand new Tesla” and blamed “Radical Left Lunatics” for “illegally” boycotting the company.
True to his word, Trump turned the White House into a Tesla showroom yesterday afternoon – Trump selected a red Model S, which he said he would pay for by check. During a press conference, one reporter said some people think the protesters “should be labeled domestic terrorists.” “I will do that. I’ll do that,” Trump said. “I’m going to put a stop to it. Because they’re harming a great American company.”

Shred, Baby, Shred!

The Guardian has seen an email sent by the acting USAID secretary Erica Y. Carr to staff instructing them to destroy classified documents at their headquarters in the Ronald Reagan building in Washington, D.C. “Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break,” Carr wrote in the email.
USAID is among the hardest hit of the federal agencies being slashed by Elon Musk’s DOGE. When federal agencies are dissolved or restructured, their records are typically transferred to successor agencies or the National Archives and Records Administration. Interestingly, USAID’s Office of the Inspector General initiated an investigation into agency oversight of Musk’s Starlink terminals being sent to and used by the government of Ukraine last year.

More Nuts In America

What X-actly Took Down X?

On Monday (while he lost billions of dollars in net worth as Tesla stock plummeted), Elon Musk announced that X (Twitter) was facing a large-scale cyberattack by “either a large, coordinated group and/or a country.” Soon after that tweet, Musk told Fox News that the cyberattack appeared to be coming from “IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area,” insinuating that it was some sort of retaliation by Kyiv for his recent clashes with Ukraine’s government.
“What Mr. Musk has said is wholly unconvincing based on the evidence so far. It’s pretty much garbage,” said Ciaran Martin, the former head of the U.K.’s cybersecurity agency. Musk suggested that the cyberattack was a type of distributed-denial-of-service attack (DDoS), which normally involves large networks of computers across the globe sending overwhelming amounts of traffic at a given website to bring its servers down.
Those computers are normally machines that have been infected by the perpetrator or another cyber attacker. “Some of them will be from Russia, some will be from Britain, from the U.S., South America, everywhere. It tells you absolutely nothing,” said Martin. You’d hope that a tech billionaire and social media mogul like Musk would know that.

More Loose Nuts