pretext

Instead it is using our nation’s foundational civil rights law as a pretext to coerce states into abandoning efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion through lawful programs and policies.”

Dehumanizing the targets of institutionalized mistreatment and torture proved to be both the pretext for and a product of the process.

Indeed, the point has been made: Donald Trump's agents are free to remove people from society on any pretext they like, or none at all.

It's instead employed as an empty pretext to wage war on foreign students.

Levitsky, who is Jewish, believes the administration is using anti-antisemitism “as a pretext,” and said that attacking academics is a classic tactic of strong men.