Jameel, talk about this two-day that the two of you put on symposium, the forever war and the First Amendment, as we move today after this 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks.

Sure.

First, Amy, thanks so much for having me on again.

So the symposium is about how the war on terror tested and transformed the First Amendment and the freedoms of speech in the press.

And as you know, those freedoms were tested right away in the days and weeks after 9-11 with the closure of immigration hearings, the Patriot Act, which expanded government surveillance powers.

eventually the expansion of the material support laws, which, you know, reached for the first time certain kinds of speech, the use of the Espionage Act against journalist sources.

And, you know, you've covered all those all those things.

And Jamil, I'm wondering if you can talk especially about the policy that developed of extraordinary rendition, where effectively the government in collusion with other governments around the world kidnapped and disappeared people into black hole sites and where that stands in terms of the legality as far as the Supreme Court is concerned.

Jamil, talk about this two-day that the two of you put on symposium, the forever war and the First Amendment, as we move today after this 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks.

Sure.

First, Amy, thanks so much for having me on again.

So the symposium is about how the war on terror tested and transformed the First Amendment and the freedoms of speech in the press.

And as you know, those freedoms were tested right away, you know, in the in the days and weeks after after 9-11, with the closure of immigration hearings, the Patriot Act, which expanded government surveillance powers.

eventually the expansion of the material support laws, which, you know, reached for the first time certain kinds of speech, the use of the Espionage Act against journalist sources.

And, you know, you've covered all of those all those things.

And Jamil, I'm wondering if you can talk especially about the policy that developed of extraordinary rendition, where effectively the government in collusion with other governments around the world kidnapped and disappeared people into black hole sites and where that stands in terms of the legality as far as the Supreme Court is concerned.

And to your point, one of the chief concerns I think people have expressed is how could this manipulate American thought? If these models are used, could they produce a result in any sort of assessment that that would sort of paint America as a country in decline with no hope of redemption, would just basically sour Americans on their own country or direct them to things that are otherwise not helpful to their goal in using the model.

Well, look, you know, Alyssa, we've seen a lot of evidence that the Chinese and other nations, but the Chinese and Russians in particular, are seeking to use the Internet, social media and the like to engage in foreign influence operations, to engage in efforts that would undermine American democracy and efforts to undermine American values and our collaboration with our allies.

We've seen this for the better part of a decade now.

We've seen that effort afoot.

And we've seen it through tools like TikTok.

We've seen it through other social media tools as well.

The Chinese government controls the algorithm that runs under TikTok, including today, including under the vaunted deal that allowed TikTok to remain in place in the United States, even after a ban by Congress.

Have you taken a look at that thing yet to see if that has any legs, if it's going to be helpful to the United States?

Right.

Yeah.

People are angry.

There's not-- I want, I need my, where's my cell phone tower, you know? Um, and so, um, look, there, there's no doubt that, that people have a, a sort of not in my backyard reaction to some data centers.

First of all, you know, northern Virginia, where I live, uh, not right in my neighborhood, but just a little ways away, about half an hour, forty minutes away, um, is probably the single largest concentration of data centers in the world.

You know, if you ever, if you ever wonder where the cloud is, right, the cloud's not up in the sky.

The cloud is literally in northern Virginia, um, uh, with these huge data centers, um, and with large footprints, um, you know, massive, uh, massive buildings.

[chuckles] What's your view? I mean, I know that's a lot of different debates, and we, we can't probably address all of them in a reasonable amount of time, but what do you think about all of that? A- and just in a general sense about the capability of our political and legal systems to, sort of to keep up.

But will Trump be able to keep him in line?

line?I mean, look, it doesn't look likely, right? I mean, as we've seen thus far, the president keeps saying, "Hey, I need this, this thing in Lebanon to quiet down." But Hezbollah keeps shooting missiles at Iran, uh, Israel, Israel keeps shooting back, right? This is not gonna stop because Iran doesn't want it to stop.

Iran is running Hezbollah, they're encouraging them to attack Israel, and Israel's doing what we would do.

They're responding in kind.

The idea that the prime minister's not gonna fight back is laughable, and the president shouldn't expect that.

The craziest thing the president said though wasn't even that.

At the G7 he was sitting there with the prime- with the Emir of Qatar, and he says, "You know what? I told Bibi, 'Don't worry about Hezbollah.

Mm-hmm

Jamil?

Or a giving up of the American position, and that's what I worry about.

What I worry is that we've essentially told the Iranians that we want the Strait of Hormuz open so badly, and we're so worried about gas prices, that we're essentially willing to concede almost anything.

That's a disaster for our negotiating position, right? The president talks about himself as the, as the best negotiator in the history of mankind, right? Great.

That means you gotta take your leverage and use it, and unfortunately, what we have seen thus far, and again, things may change in the next 60 days.

The president said, uh, just yesterday to your point that if he doesn't like the deal, he's gonna walk away from it, he'll go back to bombing the Iranians.

Okay, we'll see, right? But right now the Iranians don't think that's true.

Look at this Reuters reporting, uh, saying, "Israel's longest-serving prime minister is on a collision course with Trump as the US president seeks to extricate himself from the war, with both men's goals unmet and Israeli operations tied down in Lebanon." Uh, Jamil, is that a fair assessment?

Mm-hmm.

He wants all the enriched uranium out of Iran.

Iran's never conceded that.

They said they were gonna open the Strait of Hormuz as part of the ceasefire.

Strait of Hormuz has never been open.

So we keep negotiating with them.

We keep giving, they keep doing nothing.

I mean, if negotiations fail, is military escalation really the only next option?

For the permanent position.

Right, for the permanent position.

It's, it's, it's clear.

And so the question then is, what is he doing there? Look, the reality is the DNI's office probably does need reform, right? It does need to be slimmed down.

You know, Tulsi Gabbard was trying to cut it down.

She had ODNI 2.0, was gonna cut it by 40%.

Senator Cotton has talked about cutting it down to 650 FTE.

Or the timing.

It's a Trump administration thing for sure, but it's not his job.

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a Trump administration.

Uh, I mean, I think this is extremely cynical and dishonest.

Nobody who has spent any time paying attention to this can possibly think that this is a good faith effort to enforce the civil rights laws.

What's really going on is that the administration here and in many other contexts is weaponizing the civil rights laws to achieve the kinds of censorship that we've been, you know, talking about.

That's what's going on with universities around the country.

It's what's going on with the law firms too.

Jamil, that's an excellent argument.

Tell me, what do you think Trump believes the optics and the outcome will be?

Well, I think President Trump wants to see deals, and he's, he's thrilled that, that Boeing's gonna sell 200 jets to China.

He's thrilled that he brought in the American executives even though it wasn't a planned part of the meeting, and that, and that they were there to sort of be in the room with, with President Xi.

He sees an opportunity here to tone down the economic rhetoric, to find a path forward to show that his tariff policy on China worked, that he got some concessions, that he got the market opened up.

It's not that he thinks China will actually open up in a significant way.

He wants to see jobs back.

He literally said it.

Yeah.

So what does it mean for diplomatic efforts when their navy is, even as the president says it's decapitated, uh, Iran is quite capable of doing this.

Right.

What's, what's so crazy here is that Iran entered into a ceasefire with the United States with the premise being, "You stop bombing us, we'll open the strait." Guess what? They never opened the strait.

They've never complied, not for a single day, with the ceasefire.

Now we've kept it in place largely.

We've only shot back when they've shot at us, but they've been shooting at us a lot, and we've now imposed a blockade upon them, so they're, they're, we're trading these blockades.

But the real problem here is that they simply haven't done their part, not for a single day, and for us to continue to negotiate with them and talk to them about 20 years for no enrichment, I mean, remember the, the Obama deal that the president cr- so roundly and rightly criticized was a 15-year no enrichment deal.

Because the president says Iran wants this more than him, but he doesn't actually want to stick around for too much longer doing this.

Does it weaken the United States' suspicions with respect to China if it's, if that's the case? Was that part of the goal of the president?

Well, look, I certainly think it might, but I think the president is really in a, in a position here where if he wants to act, he can.

He has to make the call.

He made the call on Monday.

"I'm gonna reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

I'm gonna escort ships through." And Iran hawks like me cheered.

This is exactly what we want the president to do.

Mm.

Your perspective?

Well, look, every president, uh, to have operated under the War Powers Resolution has said, uh, that its constitutionality is questionable.

They've operated consistent with it, but not pursuant to it.

So it's not unusual for a president to say that, um, and to, and to act in a way, uh, that, that might be at times in tension with it.

We saw President Obama in Libya.

Uh, his ...

We saw his, his, uh, his secret legal advisor, Harold Koh, go to Congress and say that the seven, eight, nine-month conflict that we were in wasn't hostilities because they weren't shooting back.

Can Iranians endure another round?

I mean-

That's right.

But, but, but look, it's, it's hard to police against that.

It's hard to prevent anybody from coming into the hotel, but you gotta have a lot more security.

You gotta have defense in depth.

Ideally, there would've been security perimeter behind that initial perimeter.

Ideally, that perimeter would've been blocked off completely.

Okay.

Is he right in his assessment, though, here?

Well, I think the Iranians would disagree.

I think the Iranians would say they've got all the cards.

They forced the president to the table, they forced this negotiation in Pa- in Pakistan, they forced the world price of oil up and put the pressure on.

That being said, both parties really want a deal to get done here.

I agree with Alex that we want a deal here.

The US wants a deal to get oil prices down, get the economy back on track, end this conflict.

Mm-hmm.

Okay

...

On a case by case basis.

You can't wipe out a civilization.

That's not a thing you can do in war.

We've agreed to not do things like that.

Um, and so those statements are obviously problematic, uh, by the President of the United States publicly making them.

What role would they be having in the duration of this ceasefire or, of course, the negotiations going forward?

How do you see it?

Well, I think the challenge for Tulsi Gabbard is that she doesn't support this war.

That much has been clear from the jump.

She's trying to avoid saying what Joe Kent said, which is that he didn't think there was a cause for war here.

She thinks the same thing, but realizes she has to play with the White House and, and abide by the president's foot- viewpoint.

So she's saying, "Well, it's the president's choice to determine what threat is imminent." Now look, Iran has been killing Americans by the hundreds for dozens of years.

They have been going after us for years upon end.

And Jamil, what do you make of the fact that the president is suggesting that there was no advance notice that he was aware of Israel's plans to, to attack this natural gas field?

Jamil.

Well, look, I think that's exactly right.

I think that...

I, you know, respectfully I disagree with the ambassador.

I don't think Iran is about China.

Iran is about Iran.

Iran wants to get a nuclear program.

Yeah.

Will that fall on deaf ears? We're talking about Russia

RussiaWell, it's hard to know, right? We don't know what the president will do.

We've seen at times him get spicy with Vladimir Putin when Vladimir Putin didn't back off on, on Ukraine.

But in truth, in the long run, the president hasn't really pushed back, he hasn't really done anything in Ukraine, and I worry he won't, like Brad does, I think, they won't do anything here.

But China's even...

It's a big problem as well.

They've long been supplying the Iranians with weapons.

Mm-hmm

... uh, technical stuff, but there are other means for him to impose these tariffs, aren't there?

No, that's exactly right, and so s- you know, some of your viewers might be wondering, "Well, why didn't the president just go ahead and impose those up front?" One, uh, taking the view that they had of IEEPA, they...

I think they were thinking a couple things.

One, they could impose broad tariffs, move them around as they chose to, in part because Congress didn't put any bounds on this in theoretical authority in IEEPA.

They simply said, "The power to regulate, uh, i- imports," and so as a result, the president said, "Well, I can tax those imports.

I can impose tariffs.

That's a form of regulation.

And per our earlier discussion, Jamil, about restitution, um, how do you think we should think about the lack of consumer restitution? This is gonna be a corporate restitution story.

Why don't you explain to us what you understand happened on Wednesday morning when the FBI raided the home of a reporter?

Yeah, I mean, th- this is, you know, a reporter who's been covering the, the, the federal government, talking to government employees, publishing stories about her conversations with government employees, and, um, her home was raided by the FBI.

It's a very unusual thing, you know, extremely rare in this country that the FBI raids the home of a reporter or, or raids a newsroom.

Uh, thankfully, very rare, uh, in our recent history at least.

Uh, but that's what they did in this case, and they seized her, uh, electronic devices, including two laptops, one of which was issued by the, the, The Post, um, and a cell phone as well.

And not at all obvious to me why this search was necessary at all.

They had already searched the home of this contractor a week before and obtained, apparently, evidence that, um, he was sharing classified information, so they, you know, already had that evidence against him.

... of a journalist's home?

He said they are breaking the law.

Yeah.

I mean, let me start even before that by, by just stating the obvious.

This, uh, killing of Charlie Kirk, um, was a terrible, terrible thing, not just for Charlie Kirk's family and his supporters, uh, but for our society.

Uh, it is a terrible thing when somebody is killed because of their political views, and our democracy won't survive it if that becomes a pattern.

Um, now we see the Trump administration, um, using the killing as a pretext to further, uh, a crackdown on free speech that started, uh, you know, when President Trump took office in, in, in January.

And, uh, this latest statement, the, the one you just mentioned, Amy, that, where, where the president says, essentially, "It's illegal to criticize me," I mean, is just really, um, uh, revealing what we have already seen, uh, through the, the president's, you know, o- other policies.

... was asking about, and then what President Trump said.

Jamil?

Yeah, I mean, this is, this is exactly what the First Amendment was supposed to prevent.

Um, you know, if there's one thing that the First Amendment protects, it is speech critical of the president.

But that's precisely what the president is trying to, to shut down.

Um, you know, this latest, uh, instance involving ABC and Disney and Jimmy Kimmel, uh, shares the s- the structure of, um, many other instances in which the Trump administration has, you know, weaponized regulatory power of one kind or another to silence its enemies or attempt to silence its enemies, uh, and enforce a kind of ideological conformity.

We saw it with the universities, we saw it with law firms that were, you know, sanctioned and prevented from taking on the clients that they wanted to take on.

Um, we've seen it with cultural institutions, uh, and we've seen it with the media, not just in this instance, but, um, y- you know, with the, the kind of coerced settlements of these frivolous lawsuits that the Trump administration or President Trump filed against, um, ABC and CBS.

Uh, what do you think of that and is there a place here to fight this in the courts?

... as AAUP versus Rubio?

Yeah.

So, I know you've talked about the student cases many, many times.

Um, you know, there, there are, uh, you know, a dozen students at least who have been arrested, detained and threatened with deportation on the basis of their pro-Palestinian advocacy.

There are hundreds, uh, of others, uh, whose visas have been revoked, um, under the same, under the same policy.

Some of those students have filed suit.

Uh, some of them were held in detention and judges have now released them from detention.

It's your university, Jamil, where you run the Knight Institute.

Um, and yeah, yeah, what kind of social media screenings are we looking at?

Yeah, so, so this- this screening has been i- in- in place now for, um, uh, you know, it, it, a pilot version of it was put in place under the Obama administration.

Um, it's been expanded, um, since then, principally by the Trump Administration.

It applies now to, um, about 14 million people who apply for visas, um, every year are required to submit their social media handles to the State Department with their visa application.

And, uh, now the Trump Administration is proposing to expand it even, you know, even further.

The- the evidence we have is that this program has been entirely ineffective at, um, achieving the ends that the Trump Administration says it was designed to achieve.

The- the goal was to identify national security threats.

If you could elaborate?