After more than a decade of liberal-driven censorship and cancel culture, Donald Trump’s second election win was meant to have, in his own words, “saved free speech in America,” starting with an executive order on day one to “stop all government censorship,” which is “intolerable in a free society.” Instead, Trump’s ascent to the presidency is so far seeing a dramatic, across-the-board clampdown on all kinds of First Amendment–protected speech, and a ramping up of government suppression of certain viewpoints.
We tend to associate this with pro-Palestinian activism, and there’s no doubt that’s the area that’s seen the most aggressive actions taken to chill political speech. The Trump administration has, without precedent, asserted the right to unilaterally revoke the legal status of permanent residents and deport them based purely on their criticisms of US foreign policy, have canceled reportedly hundreds of visas on this same basis, and are looking through the social media histories of visa applicants to find any pro-Palestinian speech. They have been assisted by private institutions like universities and businesses, which have sometimes assisted federal agents with making arrests or clamped down on pro-Palestinian speech themselves. This is a shocking assault on freedom of speech, and the Trump administration isn’t even pretending otherwise.
But this barely touches the surface. One visa holder, a French scientist here for a conference, was barred from entering the United States and sent back to France not because of anything pro-Palestine he said. Instead, authorities went through his phone and found private messages he had sent that were critical of Trump’s science policies.
The president had, on his first day in…
Auteur: Branko Marcetic
