Donald Trump is gunning for the First Amendment next
It's getting harder and harder to ignore the fascist undertones
The news gets worse and worse every day.
This week, the First Amendment to the Constitution – the bedrock upon which American democracy rests – is in the crosshairs of the increasingly-fascistic Trump administration. Under the guise of combatting extremism and antisemitism on college campuses, Donald Trump has threatened to enact punishment on universities whose students exercise their First Amendment right to protest and speak out on whatever political issue they choose.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the ante was upped when the Trump administration took the truly draconian step of arresting and detaining indefinitely a Columbia University student for making pro-Hamas statements and protesting peacefully on campus. Mahmoud Khalil is a green card holder, meaning that, in a legal sense, he is indistinguishable from a United States citizen. He is protected under the law and guaranteed the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights, including the right to speak freely and assemble peacefully with others.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration has decided to go all-in on channeling fascist Europe circa 1938, and has detained Khalil merely for speaking freely on a political issue. They are trying to justify his illegal seizure by making various statements about national security, the usual haunt of autocrats working to justify their abuses of power. But, there is no legal justification, not under American law or tradition. What the Trump administration has done in seizing Khalil, and in threatening institutions of higher education based on the speech of their students, is not only illegal; it is also deeply un-American. These are acts straight out of a fascist playbook. It is the continued erosion of American constitutional democracy, something that many take for granted without realizing how much of their lives are shaped by the freedom and autonomy baked into our governing structures.
The right to free speech is the most basic of American freedoms. There is a reason James Madison included it as the very first Amendment in the Bill of Rights. It is a warrant for free expression unknown elsewhere in the world, which sets us apart as a country in a way that is unique and exceptional. It is a wonderful heritage that has led to an amazing bounty of ideas and innovation and intellectual churn, all of which have driven the primacy of America in the world in many ways.
And yes, at times, it has been a warrant for cruel or hateful or dangerous speech. That is the bargain we make, the trade-off. We allow ideas to flourish freely, trusting in the power of Truth and Goodness to expose idiocy and hate for what it is. Sometimes, this means allowing neo-Nazis to fly swastikas and chant hatefully. Sometimes, it means letting students declare their support for a terrorist organization like Hamas. The recklessness and distastefulness of these forms of speech are the edge cases that it is most important to defend, because the ability to say wild things opens the grounds for the rest of us to continue to say reasonable and truthful things. When we give the government the right to police even speech we all agree is extreme, we give them the right to start to define for us what is considered extreme – and that circle only gets smaller and smaller, when power is marshalled against speech. That is why the First Amendment is so important. And that is why dictators like Donald Trump and authoritarian kleptocrats like Elon Musk feel compelled to attack free speech and restrict it.
Most importantly, it’s why we, as Americans, must stand up for the rights of people like Mahmoud Khalil to speak freely. Today, it is him being whisked to Louisiana and illegally detained; tomorrow, it could be any of the rest of us, for speech that feels anodyne today, but could be ruled subversive or dangerous or even mildly annoying to the man we’ve ceded so much power to tomorrow.
I’ve been writing about the moves of this administration since the Inauguration, and every day I think things couldn’t possibly get more dystopian or chaotic. And every day, I am proved wrong. We are in dangerous and unprecedented waters, facing threats that America never has had to face before. I just wish more people, including more Trump voters, would wake up and realize the things they wanted and hoped for, the country they profess love for, is in real danger. I wish they would realize, it’s not too late to take a stand against this administration and its illegality. It’s not too late to defend democracy and freedom and speech. We have to do so. We are in a crucial time, and our way of life is at risk here. Stand with Mahmoud Khalil. Not because you agree with his politics. But because you agree with his right to speak his mind. There is nothing more American.