US free-speech rights shredded despite Trump vow to be first-amendment champion

A cornerstone of the Maga movement during the Biden administration was to accuse a mixture of the so-called “woke left” and the justice department of forcing America into the grips of a free speech crisis.

Common complaints were that nobody “can say anything any more” without being canceled or arrested for extremism. In the same breath, Maga broadly described the January 6 insurrection, which killed a police officer, as peaceful, accusing the Democrats of a communist conspiracy.

Donald Trump vowed that when he returned to power, he would bring “retribution”. So far, he hasn’t disappointed, with unprecedented crackdowns on his perceived enemies.

But experts say the first amendment is measurably under attack in ways it has not been since the presidency of Richard Nixon. A double standard has also emerged: if you protest, criticize, or publicly object to the president’s agenda, you’re a target.

Katherine Jacobsen, the project coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists in the​​ US, Canada, and Caribbean region, said: “The thing with the first amendment and free speech in general is that you have to respect everyone’s rights to say and print what they think is appropriate, versus just cherrypicking opinions and views that you find to be supportive with your own world views.”

Cherrypicking is evidently at play, especially for individuals or institutions defying the Trump administration: Arresting and attempting to deport a Columbia University student who peacefully protested the Israeli war in Gaza and revoking the visas of foreign students who engaged in similar activism. Reversing a Biden-era protection prohibiting government officials from obtaining the confidential sourcework of the press. Denying billions in federal money to Harvard. Dismantling the education department and halting funds to schools practising diversity, equity, and inclusion.

“We’ve spent years listening to various elites crow about the threat that campuses and workplaces pose to conservative speech, only for them to suddenly lose their voices once campuses brought down the hammer on student protests against Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians,” Ed Ongweso Jr, a senior researcher at Security in Context, told the Guardian.

“Insofar as there is a real threat to free speech, it is from rightwingers interested in using this moment to purge critics and restructure the country and its institutions into forms more hospitable to the cruelty and greed at the heart of their politics.”

Nothing, though, has come under more public protest and scrutiny than Trump’s recent deployment of 2,000 national guard members and 700 marines to Los Angeles, claiming demonstrators marching against Ice raids there were out of control – even as the LAPD had described those same protests as law-abiding and mostly under control.

Running against those actions was one of Trump’s first acts in his second presidency – an executive order “restoring” the first amendment and “the right of the American people to speak freely in the public square without government interference”. But the current president has always and historically favored using the military to stifle public dissent: In 2020, he called on the national guard from multiple states to quell protesters in the Capitol against the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, while privately advising the military to “just shoot” them.

“It’s quite concerning to have a military deployed in being sent to, quote unquote, help with these protests, because they are not trained to work in US open environments to my knowledge and one can only imagine the way that type of situation could snowball very quickly, in a very scary way,” said Jacobsen about the continued deployment of US troops, trained for war, on American soil.

“Journalists aren’t going to be able to report more easily, protesters won’t be able to express their first amendment rights more easily.”

Ongweso agreed, describing the military missions as a ploy, part of a grander plan to silence “dissidents, journalists, and critics of the administration” to advance the ubiquity of Maga.

Among some of the president’s most ardent supporters, these protesters and other leftists are not subject to the same standards of freedom of expression. For example, congressman Jim Jordan criticized some of the protesters for waving Mexican flags in solidarity with the many foreign nationals coming from south of the border who are the targets of Ice arrests.

“We fly the American flag in America,” Jordan posted on X, inferring it was indicative of some kind of foreign invasion. But a community note quickly fact checked him: “Representative Jordan has an Israeli flag outside of his office door.” Other users also quipped that when the insurrectionists stormed the halls of the Capitol, one man was prominently seen carrying a Confederate flag.

“When it comes to what they’ve done domestically, here at home, this administration has been no friend to freedom of speech,” said Conor Fitzpatrick, the supervising senior attorney at the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

“We’ve seen the administration attempt to retaliate against major law firms for representing causes that the administration is against and we’ve seen the administration target universities on a seemingly ideological basis.”

Fitzpatrick continued: “So while they might talk the talk when it comes to free speech, they don’t walk the walk.”

On Sunday, Trump followed up after his controversial and ill-attended military parade in DC by offering his “unwavering support” to “ICE, FBI, DEA, ATF, the Patriots at Pentagon and the State Department” to expand their operations and deployments into New York and Chicago, among other American “Inner Cities”.

Fitzpatrick warned that Trump’s degrading protections on the first amendment and using new weapons against public assembly only serves to provide another president with the same powers. While Maga cheer on the national guard, the next Democrat in the White House might target them with the same means established by Trump.

“Every infringement on freedom of speech is a tool that the next administration that you don’t like can use in the opposite direction,” said Fitzpatrick.