"Free speech and independent media are essential"

 

The FBI search of a Washington Post reporter’s home on Jan. 14, 2026, was a rare and intimidating move by an administration focused on repressing criticism and dissent. In its story about the search at Hannah Natanson’s home, at which FBI agents said they were searching for materials related to a federal government contractor, Washington Post reporter Perry Stein wrote that “it is highly unusual and aggressive for law enforcement to conduct a search on a reporter’s home.”

And Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told The New York Times the raid was “intensely concerning,” and could have a chilling effect “on legitimate journalistic activity.”

Free speech and independent media play a vital role in holding governments accountable by informing the public about government wrongdoing. This is precisely why autocrats like Russia’s Vladimir Putin have worked to silence independent media, eliminating checks on their power and extending their rule. In Russia, for example, public ignorance about Putin’s responsibility for military failures in the war on Ukraine has allowed state propaganda to shift blame to senior military officials instead.

While the United States remains institutionally far removed from countries like Russia, the Trump administration has taken troubling early steps toward autocracy by threatening – and in some cases implementing – restrictions on free speech and independent media.

Trump sued the New York Times in 2025 for $15 billion for what he called ‘malicious’ articles; a judge threw out the case. Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Public ignorance, free speech and independent media; ignorance about what public officials do exists in every political system. In democracies, citizens often remain uninformed because learning about politics takes time and effort, while one vote rarely changes an election. American economist Anthony Downs called this “rational ignorance,” and it is made worse by complex laws and bureaucracy that few people fully understand.

As a result, voters often lack the information needed to monitor politicians or hold them accountable, giving officials more room to act in their own interest. Free speech and independent media are essential for breaking this cycle. They allow citizens, journalists and opposition leaders to expose corruption and criticize those in power. Open debate helps people share grievances and organize collective action, from protests to campaigns.

Independent media also act as watchdogs, investigating wrongdoing and raising the political cost of abuse – making it harder for leaders to get away with corruption or incompetence. Public ignorance in autocracies: Autocrats strengthen their grip on power by undermining the institutions meant to keep them in check.

When free speech and independent journalism disappear, citizens are less likely to learn about government corruption or failures. Ignorance becomes the regime’s ally – it keeps people isolated and uninformed. By censoring information, autocrats create an information vacuum that prevents citizens from making informed choices or organizing protests.

This lack of reliable information also allows autocrats to spread propaganda and shape public opinion on major political and social issues.

Most modern autocrats have worked to silence free speech and crush independent media. When Putin came to power, he gradually shut down independent TV networks and censored opposition outlets. Journalists who exposed government corruption or brutality were harassed, prosecuted or even killed. New laws restricted protests and public criticism, while “foreign agent” rules made it nearly impossible for the few remaining independent media to operate.

At the same time, the Kremlin built a vast propaganda machine to shape public opinion. This control over information helped protect the regime during crises. As I noted in a recent article, many Russians were unaware of Putin’s responsibility for military failures in 2022. State media used propaganda to shift blame to the military leadership – preserving Putin’s popularity even as the war faltered.

The threat to independent media in the US: While the United States remains far from an autocracy, the Trump administration has taken steps that echo the behavior of authoritarian regimes. 

Consider the use of lawsuits to intimidate journalists. In Singapore, former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and his son, Lee Hsien Loong, routinely used civil defamation suits to silence reporters who exposed government repression or corruption. These tactics discouraged criticism and encouraged self-censorship.

President Donald Trump has taken a similar approach, seeking US$15 billion from The New York Times for publication of several allegedly “malicious” articles, and $10 billion from The Wall Street Journal. The latter suit concerns a story about a letter Trump reportedly signed in Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday book.

A court dismissed the lawsuit against The New York Times; that’s likely to happen with the Journal suit as well. But such lawsuits could deter reporting on government misconduct, reporting on the actions and statements of Trump’s political opponents, and the kind of criticism of an administration inherent in opinion journalism such as columns and editorials.

This problem is compounded by the fact that after the Jimmy Kimmel show was suspended following a threat from the Trump-aligned chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, the president suggested revoking the broadcast licenses of networks that air negative commentary about him.

Although the show was later reinstated, the episode revealed how the administration could use the autocratic technique of bureaucratic pressure to suppress speech it disagreed with. Combined with efforts to prosecute the president’s perceived enemies through the Justice Department, such actions inevitably encourage media self-censorship and deepen public ignorance.

The threat to free speech: Autocrats often invoke “national security” to pass laws restricting free speech. Russia’s “foreign agents” law, passed in 2012, forced nongovernmental organizations with foreign funding to label themselves as such, becoming a tool for silencing dissenting advocacy groups. Its 2022 revision broadened the definition, letting the Kremlin target anyone who criticized the government.

Similar laws have appeared in Hungary, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. Russia also uses vague “terrorist” and “extremist” designations to punish those who protest and dissent, all under the guise of “national security.”

After Charlie Kirk’s murder, the Trump administration took steps threatening free speech. It used the pretext of the “violence-inciting radical left” to call for a crackdown on what it designated as “hate speech,” threaten liberal groups, and designate antifa as a domestic terrorist organization.

The latter move is especially troubling, pushing the United States closer to the behavior characteristic of autocratic governments. The vagueness of the designation threatens to suppress free expression and opposition to the Trump administration.

Antifa is not an organization but a “decentralized collection of individual activists,” as scholar Stanislav Vysotsky describes it. The scope of those falling under the antifa label is widened by its identification with broad ideas, described in a national security memorandum issued by the Trump administration in the fall of 2025, like anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity. This gives the government leeway to prosecute an unprecedented number of individuals for their speech.

As scholar Melinda Haas writes, the memorandum “pushes the limits of presidential authority by targeting individuals and groups as potential domestic terrorists based on their beliefs rather than their actions.”

-Konstantin Zhukov, Assistant Professor of Economics, Indiana University, Institute for Humane Studies, from The Conversation

 

"No president can take [our Constitutional Rights] away from us" -ACLU

On September 25, Donald Trump signed a presidential order called NSPM-7 (National Security Presidential Memorandum), a sweeping attack on free speech that targets progressive organizations and individuals for prosecution for “domestic terrorism.” And now, the first arrests linked to NSPM-7 have begun, including multiple people attending a peaceful protest outside an ICE detention facility near Chicago.

Under NSPM-7, anyone who holds virtually any vaguely left-of-center political views is now considered a target for federal prosecution. Simply holding a protest sign or posting on Facebook could be enough to get a knock on the door from the FBI. This should be on the front page of every newspaper in the country, but other than the coverage of a few independent journalists, it’s almost totally flying under the radar. That stops now. Inequality Media Civic Action is sounding the alarm and urging Congress to take action now to stop implementation of NSPM-7, and I’m asking you to help power this campaign by making a monthly donation to Inequality Media Civic Action today.

-Robert Reich

From the ACLU:

What President Donald Trump’s latest memorandum targeting civil society does, does not, and cannot do:

Nonprofits, their donors, and activists striving for a more equal, just, and fair country and world are core components of American civil society. Yet on September 25, President Donald Trump issued a (NSPM-7) called “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” essentially adding them to an ever-growing list of what he calls the “Enemy Within.”

Civil society nonprofits and activists thus join segments of academia, the legal profession, public health professionals and scientists, and so many others President Trump sees as his political opponents and critics. For all of us seeking to uphold the Constitution, fundamental human rights, and civil liberties, it’s almost a badge of courage and honor.

On its face, NSPM-7 is chilling to read: If anyone needed proof that “terrorism” and “political violence” are slippery and fraught categories subject to political, ideological, and racial manipulation and bias—well, this is it.

Like the president’s investigation into the Open Society Foundations and his order purporting to designate “Antifa” as a “domestic terrorist organization,” which is not a thing!), NSPM-7 is a deliberate attempt to sow fear and intimidate and silence opposition to the president’s abuses. 

But true strength in this country comes not from political leaders engaged in fearmongering and political vendettas; it comes from our vibrant civil society, activists, and communities steadfastly pursuing the goals of equality, fairness, and democracy for all. We must not let ourselves be cowed.

We cannot predict exactly how the memo will be implemented or provide legal advice on the specific questions groups and individuals may have, but here, we lay out what the Memo does not do, what it aims to do, and what it cannot do.

The bottom line in cutting through the noise of reprehensible and irresponsible presidential rhetoric and actions is this: 

No president can rewrite the Constitution and the safeguards we have under it. These safeguards most emphatically include our First Amendment-protected freedoms of belief, speech, and association; our Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures; our Fifth Amendment right to due process; and our right to Equal Protection under the laws of this country. Under the 14th Amendment, these due process and equal protection rights apply equally to actions taken by federal and state agencies against tax-exempt nonprofits.

What NSPM-7 Does Not Do:

A key thing to know is that the presidential memorandum does not create any new federal powers or crimes.

When the president refers in the memo to “designation” of groups as “domestic terrorism organizations,” that rhetorical label is dangerously stigmatizing and harsh, but it does not in itself have legal force and the president does not cite any authority for it. That is because, unlike for “foreign terrorism,” there is no “domestic terrorism” labelling or designation regime. 

Congress has passed no law creating any such domestic [terrorism] designation regime, and for very good reason: it would inevitably sweep in First Amendment-protected beliefs, associations, and speech.* 

No matter where civil society groups and activists might fall across the ideological spectrum, from far left to far right, nonpartisan to partisan, religious or not, everyone’s First Amendment rights would be at risk. For that reason, there is also no standalone crime of “domestic terrorism.”

Put another way, any political, legal, or social definition of “terrorism” includes ideological motivation, and there are very serious First Amendment problems with attaching criminal or other sanctions to people or groups based on ideology or belief as opposed to actual, serious criminal conduct—which is already unlawful.

The fact remains: in this country, everyone is entitled to their beliefs and to act on them lawfully without fear of punishment, no matter how extreme or disfavored the government thinks those beliefs are.

*[The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects fundamental rights: freedom of religion, preventing government establishment of religion or prohibiting free exercise; freedom of speech, including symbolic speech and expression; freedom of the press, allowing for publication; the right to peaceably assemble, or gather; and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, ensuring citizens can voice concerns.]

What NSPM-7 Aims to Do:

The memo is a fever dream of conspiracies, outright falsehoods, and the president’s distorted equation of criticism of his policies by real or perceived political opponents with “criminal and terroristic conspiracies.” It stitches together a few disparate, serious acts of actual or attempted criminal conduct with First Amendment-protected beliefs and protests against the president and his policies and wrongly conflates them as “political violence.” 

It ignores what any responsible understanding of actual political violence would make clear: political violence does not fit into neat ideological buckets and while increasing in frequency, it remains rare. After all, the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by the president’s supporters is a paradigmatic example of actual political violence, but NSPM-7 pointedly fails even to mention it.

Perhaps the most chilling rhetorical move the president makes is to use vague, broad labels that, even if true—and there’s good reason to question the truth of virtually all of the memo’s assertions—encompass First Amendment-protected beliefs unconnected to any actual criminal conduct. These labels include: “Anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” “support for the overthrow of” the federal government, “extremism on migration, race, and gender,” and opposition to “traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” 

The president even bizarrely imagines that “support for law enforcement and border control” are “foundational American principles” that his political opponents paint as “fascist” to encourage violence. No wonder many in civil society see NSPM-7’s rhetoric as a threat to human rights, civil liberties, and democracy-building work.

Through the memo, the president instructs federal departments and law enforcement agencies to use authorities they already have and focus them on investigations of civil society groups — including nonprofits, activists, and donors—to “disrupt” and “prevent” the president’s fever-dream version of “terrorism” and “political violence.”

NSPM-7 Uses Already Vague, Overbroad, and Abused Federal “Domestic Terrorism” Powers:

To understand the fundamentals of these existing authorities—and how they are abused— it helps to know what is already on the books. When Congress passed the USA Patriot Act in 2001, it defined domestic terrorism as acts that are dangerous to human life and already criminal, which are intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or influence government policy or conduct. Again, this definition is not itself a “domestic terrorism” crime; federal agencies use it for investigative purposes.

As the ACLU and other rights groups have consistently criticized in the decades since 2001, federal agencies have used the Patriot Act “domestic terrorism” definition to claim expansive authorities to investigate and surveil people and groups with little or no factual, evidentiary basis, including those engaged in First Amendment-protected protest and other activities. 

Indeed, the Justice and Homeland Security Departments have for decades created categories of investigative priorities ostensibly focused on “violent extremists” with a variety of what the agencies describe as “ideological agendas”—ranging from “racially and ethnically motivated” to “anti-government/anti-authority” to “potential bias related to religion, gender, or sexual orientation,” and more. In other words, abusive use of “domestic terrorism” investigative authority is not a new problem, but it is a serious one.

One important, concrete thing we can do for ourselves and our communities is, therefore, to educate people about the variety of scenarios in which they may encounter federal agencies and their rights in those scenarios—particularly if questioned by law enforcement agencies and when exercising the rights to free speech and protest. And if, in fact, an individual or group is actually investigated, invoke the right to a lawyer.

NSPM-7 Instructs Joint Terrorism Task Forces to Conduct Investigations:

The memo instructs Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) to conduct investigations. Here, it helps to know what JTTFs are, the rights concerns they’ve long raised, and measures to help mitigate some of these issues.

JTTFs are FBI-operated task forces that are intended to work with state and local law enforcement agencies to conduct counterterrorism investigations. There are about 200 JTTFs throughout the country, including at least one in each of the FBI’s 56 field offices. They operate with little transparency or meaningful oversight and we have long raised serious red flags about their privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties violations.

JTTFs in major cities have monitored Black Lives Matter activists, targeted Muslims, journalists, and environmentalists for investigation, including with intimidating visits to their homes or workplaces and, in May 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr announced that JTTFs would be used in response to racial justice protests. It’s perhaps no surprise that President Trump would again use JTTFs to target real or perceived critics for surveillance and investigation.

The memo tells JTTFs to investigate “potential federal crimes relating to” “recruiting or radicalizing” people for what it describes as “political violence, terrorism, or conspiracy against rights” as well as investigations of funders and their leadership. It widens an already open door to politicized rights-violating enforcement. It also assigns to JTTFs investigation of violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), a law requiring individuals or groups who are defined broadly as acting as “agents” of foreign governments or political entities to register with the government and disclose extensive information about their associations and activities. 

Government enforcement of FARA, too, has raised constitutional issues virtually since it was passed. FARA’s terms are so broad and vague that they raise concern it could be read to apply to nonprofits, journalists, and others with some “agency” connection to foreign groups or entities. Its registration and disclosure requirements could chill a wide range of speech on issues of public concern. As with the memo’s approach writ large, the government could selectively target speakers for their viewpoints in violation of the First Amendment. Again, it’s important to know your rights if approached, questioned, or investigated by federal law enforcement agents—whether they are part of a JTTF or not.

NSPM-7 Tasks Other Federal Departments and Agencies with Problematic Investigations:

NSPM-7 also tasks other departments and agencies with investigations and actions that are already within their purview, and that could raise significant constitutional concerns depending on their implementation. We’ll be watching, for example, to see if NSPM-7’s instruction to the Justice Department to issue guidance on investigation of “politically-motivated” acts and “identification of any behaviors, fact patterns, recurrent motivations, or other indicia common to organizations and entities that coordinate these acts” results in investigations and retaliation for groups and people engaging in First Amendment-protected activities.

The memo also instructs the Treasury Department and IRS to pursue investigations using their existing authorities. It’s worth emphasizing that in a tax code provision aptly titled “Prohibition on Executive Branch Influence over Taxpayer Audits and Investigations,” Congress made it a felony for top officials, including the president, to use the IRS for politically motivated retaliatory investigation and actions. In any event, anticipating the harm to nonprofits and tax-exempt groups from unwarranted investigations, civil society groups have already issued guidance on compliance and preparation.

How State and Local Governments Can Help Protect Residents from Federal Abuses

States and local governments can also act to protect their residents and the nonprofit and tax-exempt groups in their states: They can end or limit their participation in JTTFs and other similar joint federal, state, and local law enforcement investigative and surveillance partnerships. They can prohibit or limit data-sharing with federal agencies through these partnerships. At a minimum, states and local governments must make agreements governing these partnerships with federal agencies public.

Indeed, police forces in some of the nation’s largest cities, including Atlanta, San Francisco, Oakland, and Portland, have chosen to leave or limit cooperation with JTTFs because of disputes with federal officials over transparency and accountability for abuses. 

That’s in part because these task forces are structured to deputize state and local law enforcement officers, so they act with the authority and immunities of federal agents—sometimes anywhere in the country. Because state and local laws may provide stronger protections for residents’ privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties than federal law, JTTFs can effectively function to shield state and local officers from accountability for violations of their own states’ laws.

In short, by withdrawing from or limiting participation in JTTFs and other federal-state task forces, state and local governments can both protect residents and ensure their own oversight over their law enforcement agencies.

Why NSPM-7 Cannot Rewrite Our Constitutional Rights:

The president cannot rewrite the Constitution by memo or otherwise. No matter what the president says or tries to do through NSPM-7, the First Amendment constrains what federal agencies can do when it comes to punishing groups and people for exercising their rights to free speech, peaceful protest, and supporting causes by making donations. It also safeguards against viewpoint-based government discrimination, coercion, and retaliation.

If any U.S. group or person is investigated or prosecuted, the Constitution guarantees the right to due process—requiring notice and a meaningful opportunity to challenge wrongful government conduct. And if, for example, a particular group or organization is targeted based on protected characteristics—race, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity—the right to equal protection under the laws and other rights would apply. Under the 14th Amendment, these due process and equal protection rights also apply to federal and state agencies’ actions against tax-exempt nonprofits.

In short, no president—of any party—should have the power to punish nonprofit organizations and activists simply because he disagrees with them. Sadly, however, the government using intimidation tactics against those standing up for human rights and civil liberties is not new in this country’s history. Extreme as the memo is, it echoes past and ongoing abuses of executive power.

For example, the president’s strategy “to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations” harkens straight back to the Civil Rights Era, when J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI launched a top-secret program “to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” Black leaders, civil rights groups, and protest, particularly when it was Black and student-led. 

That Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), grew to encompass also-discriminatory and unwarranted investigations of labor unions, and Native American, Latino, and other rights and social justice groups. Eventually, the massively rights-violating law enforcement abuses of the Civil Rights Era resulted in a landmark congressional investigation, called the Church Committee, and an overhaul of national security and intelligence agencies and their authorities that was intended to protect civil liberties and rights.

But in the post-9/11 era, presidents, agencies themselves, and Congress undid many of those post-Civil Rights Era national security and intelligence-agency reforms. And in many ways, the story of the last 20 years is a story of how Black, brown, and Muslim communities and groups bore the brunt of the resulting executive branch abuses. These abuses spread—as government abuses do—to AAPI communities, racial and social justice activists, environmental and animal rights movements, pro-Palestinian groups and activists, and so many others with beliefs the government have deemed unpopular or controversial.

Ultimately, we need another generational overhaul of federal agencies’ law enforcement and intelligence authority, which can only come from Congress, and pressure from all of us to achieve it. Until then, we can arm ourselves with knowledge and a recognition that chilling as NSPM-7 is, and painful and difficult though its implementation may well prove to be, it contains nothing that we have not seen before. Civil society groups and activists have worked hard to survive other similar moments in our history. We must do so again, in solidarity with nonprofit groups and leaders who are or will be unjustly and illegally targeted by the Trump administration. 

No president can take that away from us.

"Trump now forces the debate to center on our First Amendment"

 

Dictators always fear comedians. (It’s no coincidence Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was a comic before he was a political leader.) Autocrats, notoriously thin-skinned, cannot stand to be mocked. They demand obedience. When Donald Trump, a ridiculously thin-skinned despot, and his FCC lackey Brendan Carr pressured ABC to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air for commenting on MAGA Republicans’ desperation to assign baseless blame for the Charlie Kirk murder, we saw the clearest evidence yet that the First Amendment is in peril.

ABC, which already caved to Trump in delivering a $15M tribute in the form of a “settlement” of a frivolous case, should learn that you can never appease a dictator. Capitulation is just an invitation to further extortion.

Ironically, Trump now forces the debate to center on our First Amendment. Regardless of party, we can agree that government censorship is un-American. Hollywood unions and guilds can take collective action against Disney/ABC for folding; Americans can call local TV affiliate stations to demand ABC put Kimmel back on; Disney shareholders can reject quisling management; and House and Senate Democratic leaders can do something, such as demand Carr to be fired/step down. (They can also vow to impeach him if he is still around when they win back the House.)

Even before the Kimmel suspension, Trump, JD Vance, and the entire Trump regime launched a cynical, dangerous attack on their political enemies based on the lie that “the Left” was responsible for Kirk’s murder. So far, we have no concrete evidence of the killer’s political outlook (having a trans roommate does not make one a “leftist;” just as being raised by Republican parents does not make one a MAGA extremist)—or if the killer possesses a coherent political ideology.

Trump nevertheless declared “ANTIFA” (an amorphous, decentralized grab-bag of characters) a domestic terror organization, a move that opens the door to pursuing scores of groups he (baselessly) alleges have ties to “ANTIFA.” By Thursday he was brazenly declaring that networks that criticize him should lose their licenses. This is fascism in plain sight.

As Trump fully embraced his twisted self-image as a dictator, several Democrats stepped forward: Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y), Democratic Sens Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Tina Smith (D-Minn.), and Reps. Jason Crow (D-Col.), Greg Casar (D-Tex), and Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) announced introduction of the No Political Enemies (NOPE) Act, “To protect individuals and organizations, including non-profits, faith groups, media outlets, and educational institutions, from politically motivated targeting and prosecution by the federal government.” We thank them for governing.

The most robust leadership in the democracy fight is coming from governors, recently from Illinois Gov. JD Pritzker (on military occupation of cities) and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (on Trump’s effort to rig the 2026 elections through re-redistricting that diminishes primarily Black and Hispanic voting power). This week, another articulate Democratic governor stepped up, this time to address political violence.

With a solid record on public safety and personal experience with political violence, Pennsylvania’s Gov. Josh Shapiro was ideally suited to the task. Last year, when sitting at the Passover Seder table with his family, a man threw two Molotov cocktails into Shapiro’s home, igniting a fire. (Trump conveniently ignores the incident when reciting recent acts of political violence). His state was also the location of the worst mass murder of Jews in America (by a White nationalist) and of the first attempted assassination of Trump. Shapiro knows violence does not come from one ideological group.

He delivered remarks this week at the Eradicate Hate Global Summit. “I will not be deterred in my work for you, and I will not be silenced,” he declared. He then explained why violence is antithetical to democracy: “It tears at the fabric of American society, and the fundamental principles this nation was founded upon... A nation where civil disagreement should be welcome, because that discourse can lead to progress.”

He also rejected selective outrage. “Unfortunately, some—from the dark corners of the internet all the way to the Oval Office—want to cherry pick which instances of political violence they want to condemn,” he said, pointing out that such crass opportunism makes healing impossible.

Shapiro then made the critical point: “Censorship—using the long arm of government to silence people, businesses, and nonprofits and restrict their right to free speech—will not solve this problem.” He declared, “Prosecuting constitutionally protected speech will only erode our freedoms and deepen mistrust. That is un-American.”

The governor also argued that to stop violence, we need to fund law enforcement and help young people cope with violent extremism online that sucks them into to a dark world of nihilism, destruction, and performative violence. He pointed to his wife’s work on a “digital literacy toolkit that teachers and parents can use to help our kids navigate online.”

Refusing to adopt the legacy media framing reducing everything to right vs. left combat, Shapiro seized the opportunity to educate Americans about the prevalence of alienation and hopelessness, which leads to loss of confidence in institutions. Too many people, especially children and young adults, are left vulnerable to violent messengers who play on their profound loneliness.

“Frustrated by a lack of progress and consumed by a feeling of hopelessness, they find refuge, often in the dark corners of the internet where their righteous frustration is taken advantage of and used to foment hate,” Shapiro said. Government therefore must retain people’s trust and offer techniques to prevent violent radicalization. Moreover, all Americans must “see our common humanity” and “reject the forces that are trying to pull us apart.”

At a press conference, Shapiro insisted, according to the New York Times, “We need to be universal in our condemnation,” adding that Trump has once again failed the “leadership test, failed the morality test, and it makes us all less safe.”

The autocrat’s excuse for crushing civil liberties amounts to a false choice between free speech and public safety. The overwhelming number of elected Republicans have refused to denounce Trump’s crusade of vengeance and censorship. We find no better illustration of the depths to which the MAGA Republican Party has sunk.

Shapiro provided a model for addressing the issue: Condemn all violence. Denounce selective outrage. Zealously defend the First Amendment and call out censors. Give young people tools to guard against online radicalization. Also, show Americans that compassionate, sensible, and effective government can improve their lives.

We applaud Shapiro’s undaunted pursuit of sanity, decency, public safety, and First Amendment rights. These are times that demand fortitude from our leaders. All those exhibiting it deserve our acknowledgement, our gratitude, and our praise.

Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian is reader-supported. To join us in the battle to preserve our free speech and our democracy, please add your voice to our community by becoming a free or paid subscriber.

First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

 

The threatening of liberal foundations and nonprofits after Kirk’s death

 

What are the Trump administration’s allegations?

High-ranking members of the Trump administration, including Vice President JD Vance and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, are accusing certain progressive organizations of encouraging violence against right-wing public figures and suggesting they played a role in Kirk’s death. Miller, for example, has likened those groups to “a vast domestic terror movement.”

Vance has said the government will “go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence,” in a reference to nonprofits he alleges are supporting illegal activities.

President Donald Trump has blamed Kirk’s death on “a radical left group of lunatics” that doesn’t “play fair.” He has stated that they are “already under major investigation,” although no such probe has been disclosed to date. Trump has raised the possibility of criminal charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as the RICO statute, which is typically used to prosecute gangs and organized crime rings. But, to be clear, the Trump administration has not yet produced evidence to support any of its allegations of wrongdoing by nonprofits and their funders.

A video feed is displayed in the White House briefing room on Sept. 15, 2025, as U.S. Vice President JD Vance hosts a podcast episode of ‘The Charlie Kirk Show’ at the White House, following the assassination of the show’s namesake. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

What organizations are being targeted?

Some conservative media outlets and Trump administration members have singled out specific nonprofits and funders. Their targets include billionaire George Soros, whose Open Society Foundations are among the country’s largest philanthropies, and the Ford Foundation, another of the nation’s top grant makers. The outlets and officials claim that both foundations allegedly provided money to as-of-yet unnamed groups that “radicalized” Tyler Robinson and led to what the White House has called “organized agitation.”

Another target is the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that regularly reported comments Kirk made disparaging Black, LGBTQ and other people.

The Ford Foundation is among more than 100 funders that signed onto an open letter posted to the Medium platform on Sept. 17, in which they objected to these Trump administration’s attacks. Open Society Foundations also signed the letter, and, in a post on the X platform, it denied the specific allegations directed at it by the Trump administration. The Southern Poverty Law Center has posted its own denial on Facebook.

Most but not all of the organizations Trump and his officials have accused of wrongdoing are charitable nonprofits and foundations. These organizations operate in accordance with the rules spelled out in Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. tax code.

What can count as a charitable activity is defined very broadly due to the language that Congress approved over a century ago. It includes public policy advocacy, a limited amount of direct lobbying, social services and a broad range of other activities that include running nonprofit hospitals, theaters and universities. Churches and other houses of worship count as U.S. charities too.

The rights of nonprofits are also protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which entitles them to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and the right to assemble and “petition the government for a redress of grievances” – which cements their right to participate in public policy advocacy.

Obviously, institutions – including nonprofits – and the people who lead them can’t promote criminal activity or incite political violence without breaking the law. U.S. Supreme Court precedents have set the bar very high on what counts as an incitement to violence.

Are there any precedents for this?

The Republican Party has previously attempted, and failed, several times in the past few years to expand the executive branch’s power to deregister charities for partisan purposes. Most recently, GOP House members drafted an amendment that was cut from the final version of the big tax-and-spending bill Trump signed on July 4. But many nonprofit advocates remain concerned about the possibility of the Trump administration using other means to limit nonprofit political rights.

Are there precedents for the repression of US nonprofits and their funders?

Under the Bill of Rights, the U.S. has strong protections in place that shield nonprofits from partisan attacks. Still, there are some precedents for attempts to repress them. The Johnson Amendment to a tax bill passed in 1954 is a well-known example. This law ended the ability of 501(c)(3) charities, private foundations and religious organizations to interfere in political campaigns.

Despite strong support from the public and the nonprofit sector for keeping it in place, the Trump administration has attempted to repeal the Johnson Amendment. What is largely forgotten is that Lyndon B. Johnson, then a member of Congress, introduced the measure to silence two conservative charities in his Texas district that supported his political opponent.

The Republican Party has also claimed in recent years that conservatives have been victims of efforts to suppress their freedom to establish and operate charitable nonprofits. A notable case was the GOP’s accusation during the Obama administration that the Internal Revenue Service was unfairly targeting Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny. Following years of outrage over that alleged partisanship, however, it later turned out that the IRS had applied extra scrutiny to progressive groups as well.

Some political observers have suggested that the Trump administration’s inspiration for targeting certain nonprofits and their funders comes from what’s going on in other countries. Hungary, Russia, Turkey and other countries have punished the activities of their political opponents and nongovernmental organizations as crimes.

What do you think could ultimately be at stake?

The economic and political freedoms that are the bedrock of a true democracy rely on a diversity of ideas. The mechanism for implementing that ideal in the U.S. relies heavily on a long-standing Supreme Court doctrine that extends constitutional rights to individuals and organizations alike. Nonprofits, in other words, have constitutional rights.

What this means for American society is a much greater proliferation of nonprofit activity than you see in many other countries, with the inevitable result that many organizations espouse unpopular opinions or views that clash with public opinion or the goals of a major political party. That situation does not make their activities illegal.

Even Americans who disagree with the missions of Turning Point USA or the Southern Poverty Law Center should be able to agree that both institutions contribute to what Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas once called the “market place of ideas” necessary for an open democracy.

Is it easy to see what donors fund and what nonprofits do with their money?

This situation leaves open the question of whether the public has a right to know who is bankrolling a nonprofit’s activity. Following the money can be frustrating. Federal law is somewhat contradictory in how far it will go to apply democratic ideals of openness and transparency to nonprofit activity. A key example is the long-standing protection of donor privacy in U.S. law, a principle that conservatives generally favor.

The courts have established that making a charitable gift is a protected free speech activity that entitles donors to certain privacy rights. In fact, the most recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling related to charitable giving, handed down in 2021, upheld a conservative nonprofit’s right to strip donors’ names from reporting documents.

This privacy right extends to foundations: They can decide whether to disclose the names of their grant recipients. Still, all nonprofits except churches need to make some disclosures regarding their finances on a mandatory form filed annually.

Looking forward, organizations that advocate for the charitable sector as a whole, such as the National Council of Nonprofits, are closely following the efforts of the Trump administration. Their role is to remind the public that nonprofits on both the right and left side of the political spectrum have strong advocacy rights that don’t disappear when bad things happen.

 -Beth Gazley, Professor of Nonprofit Management and Policy, Indiana University, The Conversation

Kimmel Gone

 

ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air “indefinitely” on Wednesday, citing comments the comedian made during his Monday night monologue about the killing of Charlie Kirk. Nexstar Media Group—which is seeking Federal Communications Commission approval for a pending $6.2 billion merger with Tegna—said its ABC-affiliated stations would not run the show “for the foreseeable future.” 

Sinclair Broadcast Group, another large ABC affiliate owner, also suspended the show, demanding that Kimmel apologize to Kirk’s family and make a “meaningful personal donation” to them and his right-wing student activist group Turning Point USA. 

FCC Chair Brendan Carr appeared on political commentator Benny Johnson’s podcast earlier Wednesday, saying Kimmel’s remarks were “truly sick” and that there was a “strong case” for action against ABC and its parent company Disney. Trump celebrated the news on Truth Social, saying “That leaves Jimmy [Fallon] and Seth [Meyers], two total losers, on Fake News NBC.”

-The Morning Dispatch

"America's Homegrown Taliban"

This novel 1984, George Orwell warned, “Those who control the present control the past, and those who control the past control the future.” Today, Trump and the GOP have weaponized that prophecy, twisting it into the foundation of their crusade to Make America White Again.

What they are building is not a political movement but a parallel nation — a MAGAstan — where loyalty oaths replace truth, history is scrubbed clean of slavery and racism, and authoritarian obedience is demanded in the name of patriotism.

This is America’s homegrown Taliban, and they’re no longer pretending to hide their intentions.

When the Oklahoma Department of Education rolled out its new “America First” MAGA certification exam for teachers, designed with the help of a rightwing propaganda outlet, it wasn’t about improving education. It was about making sure that any teacher who dares to acknowledge the realities of race, gender, or American history is shut out of the profession.

Applicants from California or New York now must take a test that appears to demand perfect answers on questions about civics, chromosomes, religion, and so-called gender ideology. It’s not an exam, it’s a political loyalty test, and it fits neatly into the larger pattern we are seeing in Republican politics today. They aren’t hiding their racism or misogyny anymore. They’re reveling in it.

That reality was underscored by Donald Trump’s latest tantrum against the Smithsonian and other museums. On his Nazi-infested social media platform, Trump complained that our museums are “out of control” because they talk about “how bad slavery was,” racism, and the struggles of the downtrodden. He whined that there is “nothing about success, nothing about brightness, nothing about the future”

What he really means is that America should stop teaching about slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, and ongoing systemic racism and instead return to a whitewashed myth of national greatness that erases Black, Indigenous, and other marginalized voices.

His words are a plain translation of the GOP’s broader war on what they call “woke.” Being “anti-woke” is just a thinly veiled way of saying “we’re okay with racism and misogyny.”

And Trump is the perfect avatar for this reinvention of the Confederacy, as I detail in my newest book The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink.

Trump’s and his GOP’s pro-racism neofascist purges go far beyond education and museums; they’ve also gone after the federal workforce with a vengeance. They canceled the government’s annual employee survey, gutted DEI programs across every agency, and are mass-firing federal workers, particularly in agencies that employ large numbers of Black women.

The so-called Department of Government Efficiency — run by a Nazi-saluting white South African immigrant — put more than a quarter of a million jobs on the chopping block, devastating communities where civil service has long been the pathway into the middle class.

Black Americans, particularly Black women, have disproportionately relied on those jobs for stability and upward mobility. Taking them away isn’t about saving taxpayer money: it’s a targeted attack, designed to roll back decades of progress.

At the same time, groups aligned with Trump are publishing watchlists of federal workers they call “subversives,” lists overwhelmingly filled with women and people of color. Those people are now being hounded, relocated, or forced out altogether.

Senior women and Black leaders in the military are being fired or pushed into retirement. Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, NATO’s only woman on its military committee, was removed from her post. Army Lt. Gen. Telita Crosland, who had led military healthcare, was forced to resign after 32 years of service.

These purges are political, not professional. They’re designed to restore the military to a largely all-white, all-male leadership structure. And at the same time, Trump and his enablers are working to rename bases after Confederate generals and restore monuments dedicated to traitors who fought against democracy to preserve slavery.

And now Trump is claiming — against the statistics — that crime in Washington, DC is “out of control.” This is Nixon’s Southern Strategy — blame crime on Black people while turning the country into a police state — on steroids.

Racism is the thread that ties all of this together.

When five Republicans on the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, Republicans wasted no time enacting voter suppression laws that disproportionately disenfranchised Black voters. When Republicans on the Court blessed partisan gerrymandering in Rucho v. Common Cause, Republican-controlled states immediately redrew maps to diminish the power of Black communities.

This is about keeping power in the hands of white conservatives, no matter the cost to democracy.

And the cruelty isn’t limited to our own citizens. The Trump administration has begun deporting Afghan translators who risked their lives working alongside American troops, even as they continue to apply for legal protection through Special Immigrant Visa programs. ICE agents recently detained one such interpreter — someone who had helped U.S. soldiers survive the war — because the new GOP priority is to get as many brown people out of the country as possible.

This is not patriotism. It’s ethnic cleansing by bureaucracy.

I used to believe that maybe 20 percent of white Americans were openly racist. That was based on my experience growing up and on the way racism was often hidden behind polite code.

But looking at today’s voting patterns, at the cheering crowds for Trump’s open bigotry, it seems more like 55 to 60 percent. When a majority of white voters willingly support a party that strips voting rights from Black citizens, erases slavery from classrooms and museums, fires Black leaders from government, and deports brown allies, that’s not a fringe problem. That’s a national crisis.

This kind of “othering” of racial and gender minorities is a classic hallmark of fascism. It’s what we saw in Germany in the 1930s and what Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin are doing in Hungary and Russia today. You dehumanize groups of people, define them as enemies of the state, and then strip away their rights until they no longer have the power to resist.

Trump and the GOP are running this playbook right out in the open. And far too many in the media are still treating “anti-woke” rhetoric as a culture-war issue instead of what it really is: a naked declaration of racism, misogyny, and authoritarian intent.

Democrats and people of good conscience cannot let this language go unchallenged. Every time Republicans sneer about “woke,” it should be called what it is: they’re defending racism and misogyny. They’re trying to drag us back into a world where straight white men hold all the power and everyone else is erased. This is not just an ideological disagreement. It is an attack on the very idea of equality and democracy.

Woke people must stop playing defense and start organizing. We need mass mobilizations — marches, protests, and direct action — to show that Americans will not tolerate a return to white supremacy dressed up as patriotism.

We need to pressure Democrats to go on offense, to stop using mealy-mouthed language and start telling the truth: the GOP is running on racism, period. And we need to demand that the media stop laundering Republican talking points and call out this agenda for what it is: a fascist project to make racism great again.

The stakes are nothing less than the future of American democracy. If we fail to rise to this challenge, they won’t just win the next election; they’ll win the power to define who counts as an American, whose stories matter, and who has a right to belong.

This is the GOP’s vision of MAGAstan: a land where truth is outlawed, history is erased, dissent is punished, and democracy is reduced to a hollow slogan.

It’s not conservatism. It’s not patriotism. It is the same naked pursuit of power through racism, misogyny, and authoritarian rule that we’ve seen in one country after another throughout history.

And here’s the brutal truth: they’re telling us exactly who they are and exactly what kind of dictatorship they want. The only question left is whether the rest of us will stand by in silence while America is dragged into its darkest chapter or whether we will rise up, speak out, and refuse to let our country become the authoritarian nightmare Trump and the GOP are building in plain sight.

-Thom Hartmann

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Trump Seeks to Undo Press Protections

 

President Donald Trump is again attacking the American press – this time not with fiery rally speeches or by calling the media “the enemy of the people,” but through the courts.

Since the heat of the November 2024 election, and continuing into July, Trump has filed defamation lawsuits against “60 Minutes” broadcaster CBS News and The Wall Street Journal. He has also sued the Des Moines Register for publishing a poll just before the 2024 election that Trump alleges exaggerated support for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and thus constituted election interference and fraud.

These are in addition to other lawsuits Trump filed against the news media during his first term and during his years out of office between 2021 and 2025.

At the heart of Trump’s complaints is a familiar refrain: The media is not only biased, but dishonest, corrupt and dangerous.

The president isn’t just upset about reporting on him that he thinks is unfair. He wants to redefine what counts as libel and make it easier for public officials to sue for damages. A libel suit is a civil tort claim seeking damages when a person believes something false has been printed or broadcast about them and so harmed their reputation.

Redefining libel in this way would require overturning the Supreme Court’s 1964 ruling in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, one of the most important First Amendment legal rulings in American constitutional history

Trump made overturning Sullivan a talking point during his first campaign for president; his lawsuits now put that threat into action. And they raise the question: What happened in Sullivan, and why does it still matter?

President Donald Trump discusses U.S. libel laws on Jan. 10, 2018, calling them a ‘sham’ and a ‘disgrace’ during comments to reporters at the White House.

What Sullivan was about

As chair of a public policy institute devoted to strengthening deliberative democracy, I have written two books about the media and the presidency, and another about media ethics. My research traces how news institutions shape civic life and why healthy democracies rely on free expression.

In 1960, The New York Times published a full-page advertisement titled “Heed Their Rising Voices”. The ad, which included an appeal for readers to send money in support of Martin Luther King Jr. and the movement against Jim Crow, described brutal and unjust treatment of Black students and protesters in Montgomery, Alabama. It also emphasized episodes of police violence against peaceful demonstrations.

The ad was not entirely accurate in its description of the behavior of either protesters or the police.

It claimed, for instance, that activists had sung “My Country ’Tis of Thee” on the steps of the state capitol during a rally, when they actually had sung the national anthem. It said that “truckloads of police armed with shotguns and tear-gas” had “ringed” a college campus, when the police had only been deployed nearby. And it asserted that King had been arrested seven times in Alabama, when the real number was four.

Though the ad did not identify any individual public officials by name, it disparaged the behavior of Montgomery police.

That’s where L.B. Sullivan came in.

As Montgomery’s police commissioner, he oversaw the police department. Sullivan claimed that because the ad maligned the conduct of law enforcement, it had implicitly defamed him. In 1960 in Alabama, a primary defense against libel was truth. But since there were mistakes in the ad, a truth defense could not be raised. Sullivan sued for damages, and an Alabama jury awarded him US$500,000, equivalent to $5,450,000 in 2025.

The message to the press was clear: criticize Southern officials and risk being sued out of existence.

In fact, the Sullivan lawsuit was not an isolated incident, but part of a broader strategy. In addition to Sullivan, four other Montgomery officials filed suits against the Times.

In Birmingham, public officials filed seven libel lawsuits over Times reporter Harrison Salisbury’s trenchant reporting about racism in that city. The lawsuits helped push the Times to the edge of bankruptcy. Salisbury was even indicted for seditious libel  and faced up to 21 years in prison.

Alabama officials also sued CBS, The Associated Press, the Saturday Evening Post and Ladies’ Home Journal – all for reporting on civil rights and the South’s brutal response.

Montgomery, Ala., Police Commissioner L.B. Sullivan, second left, and his attorneys celebrate his $500,000 libel suit victory in a county court on Nov. 3, 1960. Bettman/Getty Images

The Supreme Court decision

The jury’s verdict in favor of Sullivan was unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court in 1964.

Writing for the court, Justice William Brennan held that public officials cannot prevail in defamation lawsuits merely by showing that statements are false. Instead, they must prove such statements are made with “actual malice”. Actual malice means a reporter or press outlet knew their story was false or else acted with reckless disregard for the truth.

The decision set a high bar.

Before the ruling, the First Amendment’s protections for speech and the press didn’t offer much help to the press in libel cases.

After it, public officials who wanted to sue the press would have to prove “actual malice” – real, purposeful untruths that caused harm. Honest mistakes weren’t enough to prevail in such lawsuits. The court held that errors are inevitable in public debate and that protecting those mistakes is essential to keeping debate open and free.

Nonviolent protest and the press

In essence, the court ruling blocked government officials from suing for libel with ulterior motives.

King and other civil rights leaders relied on a strategy of nonviolent protest to expose injustice through public, visible actions.

When protesters were arrested, beaten or hosed in the streets, their goal was not chaos – it was clarity. They wanted the nation to see what Southern oppression looked like. For that, they needed press coverage.

If Sullivan’s lawsuit had succeeded, it could have bullied the press away from covering civil rights altogether. The Supreme Court recognized this danger.

Public officials treated differently

Another key element of the court’s reasoning was its distinction between public officials and private citizens.

Elected leaders, the court said, can use mass media to defend themselves in ways ordinary people cannot.

“The public official certainly has equal if not greater access than most private citizens to media of communication,” Justice Brennan wrote in the Sullivan ruling.

Trump is a perfect example of this dynamic. He masterfully uses social media, rallies, televised interviews and impromptu remarks to push back. He doesn’t need the courts.

Giving public officials the power to sue over news stories they dislike could well create a chilling effect on the media that undermines government accountability and distorts public discourse.

“The theory of our Constitution is that every citizen may speak his mind and every newspaper express its view on matters of public concern and may not be barred from speaking or publishing because those in control of government think that what is said or written is unwise,” Brennan wrote.

“In a democratic society, one who assumes to act for the citizens in an executive, legislative, or judicial capacity must expect that his official acts will be commented upon and criticized.”

Why Sullivan still matters

The Sullivan ruling is more than a legal doctrine. It is a shared agreement about the kind of democracy Americans aspire to. It affirms a press duty to hold power to account, and a public right to hear facts and information that those in power want to suppress.

The ruling protects the right to criticize those in power and affirms that the press is not a nuisance, but an essential part of a functioning democracy. It ensures that political leaders cannot insulate themselves from scrutiny by silencing their critics through intimidation or litigation.

Trump’s lawsuits seek to undo these press protections. He presents himself as the victim of a dishonest press and hopes to use the legal system to punish those he perceives to be his detractors.

The decision in the Sullivan case reminds Americans that democracy doesn’t depend on leaders who feel comfortable. It depends on a public that is free to speak.

by Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin
-The Conversation