In his address to Congress on Tuesday night, Donald Trump bragged that he’d “stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America.” Seemingly amazed by his accomplishment, he repeated, “It’s back.”
In reality, Trump has already been more brazenly hostile to free speech norms than any other recent president. He’s blustered about taking away the broadcast licenses of cable networks he feels are unfair to him and has filed a number of defamation lawsuits against them. He’s retaliated against the Associated Press for refusing to redesignate the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” in its reporting. He’s even floated a constitutional amendment that would make it so that people could be imprisoned for flag burning, saying that the punishment should be a year of incarceration.
But here’s the cherry on top: the very same day that he claimed to have resurrected free speech, Trump also took to Truth Social to threaten to pull federal funding from any university that doesn’t crack down hard enough on protests against Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza, writing:
All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests.
Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on…the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.
What the Trump administration means here by “illegal” protests is anyone’s guess. It could easily apply to the time-honored civil disobedience tactic of peaceful sit-ins. It could also apply to protesting without proper permits or outside college-designated “free speech zones.” Edge cases are…
Auteur: Ben Burgis
