Trump’s ‘Free Speech Agenda: Siccing the FBI on Critics, Barring Reporters, and Threatening Broadcasters

During his family trip to England last year, Vice President J.D. Vance lectured the European Union on its approach to free speech. Lacking the equivalent of the United States’ First Amendment, European nations—and Great Britain in particular—have admittedly embraced speech policies that most Americans should find creepy.

“Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There’s no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don’t,” Vance said, as he blasted German political parties for refusing to work with the far-right AfD party. He also criticized British police for arresting anti-abortion protesters and for their nasty habit of monitoring internet speech.

It’s hard to take issue with Vance’s point about Europe, although it’s always easiest to remove the speck from someone else’s eye than it is to remove the plank from one’s own. As Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi noted shortly after Vance’s tirade, the vice president may be a “raging hypocrite”—but he deserved grudging credit given that more than 30 Brits a day are arrested for online speech. That number keeps growing.

By Vance’s own standards, the MAGA movement and the Republican Party (although that’s admittedly redundant, as it’s one and the same) simply do not uphold the principle of free speech—no matter how often they claim to be free-speech absolutists. They insist on being able to say whatever they choose, but are more than happy to clamp down on those who don’t agree.

In the past couple of years, we’ve seen multiple reports of FBI agents showing up at Americans’ doors based on internet posts. The feds admit that they do this, although they insist it is only about keeping Americans “safe.” As Fox News reported in 2024, “FBI agents allegedly told an Oklahoma woman that the agency spends ‘every day, all day long’ questioning people about their social media posts when they arrived at her house to ask about posts she made online.”

As The New York Times reported in September, “A federal judge this week ruled that the Trump administration appeared to have violated the First Amendment rights of a Rochester, N.Y., man by threatening him with prosecution after he sent a scathing email to a top immigration official.” Masked ICE agents have frequently violated our Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights, so this shouldn’t be a surprise—but we shouldn’t become desensitized to constitutional abuses.

Most recently, Donald Trump banned three media outlets from the White House. The president’s consigliere, Attorney General Todd Blanche, referred to media access as a “privilege,” not a right. But the administration is wrong here, as it defends its snowflake behavior.

A federal judge on September 24 temporarily rejected Trump’s argument that allowing media access was a threat to national security, especially since Trump made it clear on social media that it was about viewpoint discrimination. He said media outlets ought not to be allowed to report “FICTION and LIES!”

The tussle continues, but it’s clear that Republicans view “fiction and lies” as any reporting that challenges Trump’s tender ego. Other presidents have been hostile to the media, but as the Free Speech Center explains: “No president has ever mounted such an unrelenting and angry attack on a free press. From declaring any article that questions his performance as ‘fake news’ and calling journalists ‘the enemy of the people,’ Trump has orchestrated a government campaign to undermine the First Amendment role of reporters to hold the powerful accountable.”

Barring reporters isn’t the worst of it. As the ACLU noted, “in Portland, Oregon in 2020, federal agents deliberately attacked protestors and journalists—who were visibly identified as members of the press—by shooting them with rubber bullets, spraying their faces with pepper spray, beating them with batons, throwing flash-bang grenades at them, and arresting them.”

Trump has issued executive orders targeting law firms that represent clients he doesn’t like. He has turned the already-problematic FCC into a dangerously politicized agency that attempts to silence broadcast outlets that deviate from the government line. He called for an early review of ABC’s licenses and even for the revocation of licenses over his concerns about alleged Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies. Whatever one’s views of DEI, having the Dear Leader threaten to shut down private news outlets over their editorial policies is chilling.

Trump has threatened to pull licenses from other broadcast outlets over their coverage of the Iran War, which intimidates feckless news organizations into only broadcasting administration talking points. The president also has announced the creation of Trump TV, which is an official White House media outlet that seems indistinguishable from state-run TV in totalitarian nations run by the despots whom the president seems to admire.

There are many more examples, but I’ll conclude by paraphrasing Vance: You either support the First Amendment, or you don’t. And Republicans clearly don’t.

This column was first published in The Orange County Register.