If Dems Want to Stand Up to Trump, They Must Stand With Palestine Protesters

Part of the Series

Democratic anti-Trump warriors are popular with the party base — and they know it. On Wednesday, May 7, Michigan’s Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel put out a strongly worded press release decrying the latest “appalling Supreme Court decision” in favor of President Donald Trump’s ban on trans people in the military. The previous day, Nessel’s office had announced it would join another in a string of lawsuits against the Republican administration over its abuse of presidential powers to override states and dismantle federal regulations.

This continues a steady drumbeat of opposition to Trump and the Republican administration that Nessel and other Democrats have been promoting — except when it comes to Palestine.

On Palestine, the Michigan attorney general has sung quite a different tune. Since 2024, Nessel’s office has been involved in deploying increasingly repressive tactics against pro-Palestine activists in Michigan, most recently supporting and collaborating with Trump’s FBI to raid several homes of pro-Palestinian protestors in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and Canton on April 23. Nessel joins Democrats across the country like New York City Mayor Eric Adams and former President Joe Biden in staking out a position on this form of dissent that is dangerously similar to Trump’s.

The self-professed resistance to Trump from Democrats is meaningless when they’re capitulating on Palestine and collaborating with police and federal law enforcement to shut down protests and frighten dissenters. This behavior, which predated the Trump administration, now places them squarely in Trump’s corner, makes them active collaborators in rising authoritarianism, and undermines trust with core constituencies who are the most likely to be criminalized and targeted by Trump: immigrants, Arab Americans, Muslims, Black people, and queer and trans people.

While Nessel’s office claimed the April raids involving multiple law enforcement agencies were unrelated to previous anti-genocide protests on the University of Michigan campus, the stated reason for the raids did not add up, either. The Attorney General’s Office said it was investigating acts of vandalism, but then confiscated electronics, interrogated activists and arrested no one. Nessel estimated $100,000 in damage from this supposed vandalism at unnamed locations — implying that her office has tallied the cost of all the pro-Palestine spray paint spread across Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and metro Detroit over the last year, and is using this tally to make a case for invading the homes of several grassroots anti-genocide activists. Tracking down taggers appears to be more of a pretense than an actual practice.

“Vandalism is a petty misdemeanor. Even if it is vandalism, why is the AG involved? Why is she not more concerned with a lot of the other issues that are unfolding in our country and in our state?” said a campus organizer who spoke to Truthout on condition of anonymity.

Nessel had already made her position known in September 2024 when she filed charges against encampment demonstrators at University of Michigan after being urged to do so by members of the university’s powerful Board of Regents. As The Guardian reported, her office took the very unusual step of bypassing local law enforcement who had either declined to bring charges against Gaza protesters or dropped charges after the fact. The Guardian’s investigation found extensive financial and personal ties between Nessel and several of the most pro-Israel regents on the University of Michigan board.

In yet another twist, on May 5, Nessel’s office dropped charges against 7 out of 11 demonstrators whom her office had charged over the May 2024 encampment at the university. That came just two days after a small plane flew in circles over the University of Michigan’s massive graduation ceremony, pulling a banner that said “No Universities Left in Gaza. Nessel Drop the Charges.” Nessel’s press release Monday claimed the charges were dismissed because of “distractions and ongoing delays” creating a “circus-like atmosphere.” Put another way: These political arrests backfired.

“All of us want to get to the bottom of how these charges happened in the first place,” said Drin MacKeen-Shapiro, one of the demonstrators whose charges were dropped. “The AG’s conduct in this has been thoroughly unethical, corrupt and solely designed to crush pro-Palestine speech in the state, specifically on the order of the University of Michigan regents.”

MacKeen-Shapiro, a 22-year-old who graduated from the University of Michigan last weekend, was put back in jail for four days in April on an alleged bond violation after a private security firm followed him between classes and “caught” him going outside of the strict limits he’s been given for being present on campus during his last days as a student. He was relieved that his charges were dropped, but unhappy to see Nessel continuing to target other protestors.

“The FBI raids demonstrate the total cooperation between Dana Nessel’s office and the Trump administration, who are united on this issue of crushing the anti-genocide movement across the country,” he told me. “Once again we see that Dems and Republicans are two sides of the same coin on this issue, particularly Trump and Dana Nessel.”

Another demonstrator whose felony charges were dropped, Sammie Lewis, says they are still worried about what’s next in this environment of escalating repression. They followed how dozens of #StopCopCity activists in Atlanta have been rounded up and charged under RICO (federal racketeering) laws, in that case by Republican State Attorney General Chris Carr.

“I’m thinking a lot about Atlanta and Stop Cop City and the ways that protesters have been grouped together by weird associations, and the case is not strong, but they charged a lot of people,” Lewis said. “I feel like I can’t let my guard down and enjoy this victory. It’s a battle won, but the war is still going. And of course, we’re still fighting for Palestinian liberation.”

Nessel, whose office did not respond to a request for comment from Truthout, provides an extreme example, but there is nothing unusual about her stance. Many Democrats are vocally opposed to authoritarian tactics unless the issue is Palestine. For example, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who pushed for Los Angeles to become a “sanctuary city,” has simultaneously been vocal in her support for hyperpolicing of Gaza protests in the city, even as the LAPD and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have escalated their violence against demonstrators.

This inconsistency reflects the larger hypocrisy of the many Democrats who are “progressive except for Palestine”: Even Cory Booker, recently championed for his 25-hour anti-Trump speech on the Senate floor, couldn’t bring himself to vote to stop billions in funding to the Israeli military in April.

Allowing and encouraging authoritarian repression around Palestine is not only a slippery slope but also an unpopular stance that protects power and position rather than the will of the people; polling in 2024 and early 2025 consistently showed a majority of voters and a supermajority of Democrats support a ceasefire and an arms embargo on Israel if that ceasefire was violated. To look back at the past for only a moment, the moral and political failure to stand with Gaza may have lost Democrats the national election. But looking forward, we can only hope Democrats will find a moral and political center that is not “oppose repression except on Palestine” or “support free speech except for Palestine.” This is weakness and hypocrisy when we need fearless leadership and solidarity.

The current Republican administration is dead set on using local police, the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to silence dissent, an intention they are making zero effort to hide. By approving these tactics when it comes to pro-Palestine protesters, Democrats have helped create the wedge that Republicans will now use to divide us all, cleaving off the most vulnerable and allowing them to be disappeared and deported even as politicians issue press releases “decrying” the administration. Attorney General Nessel and her supporters would do well to reverse course, drop all remaining charges against protesters and withdraw from all collaborations with Trump’s machine of criminalization.

Posted in Progressive Political News