This “backstory” is a part of a collection of articles that describes some of the obstacles that Seven Days reporters faced while pursuing Vermont news, events and people in 2025.
Journalism has been described as the “first rough draft of history.” Impressive as that may sound, it can feel like an overstatement to those who toil away in the ranks of local news. You mean to tell me that in 2125 someone will care about the latest budget proposal from the University of Vermont Medical Center?
Still, there are moments when the cliché rings true and we notebook toters feel less like extras in a low-budget movie and more like actual scribes, capturing moments that could be mentioned in history books a century later. (If books still exist by then.)
That’s how I felt standing outside the Burlington federal courthouse among a scrum of local and national reporters in April, waiting for Mohsen Mahdawi to emerge.
The 34-year-old Columbia University student had been arrested by federal immigration authorities for speaking out against Israel’s war in Gaza. The U.S. government wanted to keep him locked up while his immigration case proceeded, arguing that Mahdawi posed a risk and his release would undermine foreign policy interests. But Mahdawi’s attorneys maintained that his arrest and weeks-long detention were a gross violation of constitutional protections, and they asked a judge to set him free. Deeming the government’s evidence flimsy at best, Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford swiftly ruled to let Mahdawi go, noting that his prolonged imprisonment would have a chilling effect on protected speech.
As I jockeyed for position outside the courthouse afterward, I briefly reflected on the magnitude of the moment. Here was a ruling that could have major implications for the Trump administration’s controversial crackdown on student protesters, and it came in Vermont, of all places.
Loud cheers erupted as Mahdawi left the courthouse with a keffiyeh draped across the shoulders of his gray suit. He held up peace signs and hugged friends before taking a microphone to address the government that had imprisoned him for the past several weeks.
“I am not afraid of you,” he said, adding that Crawford’s “very brave decision” to let him walk free should give people hope that America’s justice system still works.
Several other high-profile detainees were released from prison in the following weeks. They included Rümeysa Öztürk, whose case also played out in Burlington.
In his written ruling, Crawford noted that this was not the first time America had seen “chilling action by the government intended to shut down debate.” He referenced the Red Scare and McCarthy era and wrote that court decisions played a role in bringing an end to the “moral panic that gripped the nation and its officials” during those periods.
“The wheel of history has come around again, but as before these times of excess will pass,” he wrote.
Eight months later, they haven’t; each new week seems to raise fresh existential questions for America’s democracy. But perhaps Crawford’s comments will one day seem prescient, and we will look back on the Mahdawi case as an important moment in this nation’s history — a moment I was gratefully there to witness.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Best View of History”
This article appears in Dec 24 2025 – Jan 6 2026.
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