The First Amendment states that “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.” This is arguably the most important right that we have as Americans. Without freedom of speech, we would not be able to publicly complain or protest when the government violated our other rights. Unfortunately, it does not appear that the administration under President Donald Trump feels the same way. In the past three months, the administration has taken actions that would limit or deny these rights to those who criticise him.
By now, most of us have heard about Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University graduate student and Fulbright scholar who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) because of an op-ed that she co-authored in The Tufts Daily, the student newspaper at Tufts. Her op-ed piece encouraged the president of Tufts to listen to resolutions passed by the student senate. Secretary of State Marco Rubio terminated her visa and claimed that she supports Hamas. There is no evidence to support his claim. She was surrounded by federal agents in plain clothes who were hiding their faces under masks and forced into an unmarked vehicle. To any neutral observer, what happened to Ozturk was a kidnapping.
Mahmoud Khalil was a U.S. green card holder and a Columbia alum. He is married to an American citizen. While he was a student at Columbia, he helped organize some of the pro-Palestinian protests that occurred on that campus last spring. Federal agents, also in plain clothes, raided his apartment and arrested him while his pregnant wife called a lawyer. Marco Rubio announced that he was terminating Khalil’s green card and deporting him. Ozturk and Khalil are not unique cases. Rubio announced last month that he is canceling the visas of more than 300 students who were involved in pro-Palestine activity, whom he had labeled “lunatics.”
Although the case is not about free speech, I would like to mention the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Garcia is an undocumented immigrant who was deported to El Salvador earlier this year. The problem with this is that an immigration judge had ordered that he could not be deported to that country, citing concerns that his life would be in danger should he be forced to return. The Trump administration has even admitted that they deported him “in error.” Despite this admission, the government is refusing to even attempt to bring him back to the U.S. despite being ordered to do so by a federal judge. He is currently being held in an El Salvadoran prison with some of the worst prison conditions in the world. Prisoners are only allowed to leave their cells for 30 minutes per day, and some of the cells have no light. There is no regular access to drinking water.
There are two reasons why I mention this case. Firstly, it shows this administration’s refusal to obey orders from federal courts. The administration violated both the initial order of the immigration judge to not deport Garcia as well as the order to return him to the country. Trump has threatened to ignore judges in other cases and called for judges who rule against him to be impeached. If Trump is willing to defy the courts in this case, what stops him from ignoring them in other cases?
Secondly, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor points out, the government is putting itself in a position to deport U.S. citizens and then claim that they cannot bring them back. In her dissenting opinion in the case of Venezuelan migrants that the government deported to the same El Salvador prison, she wrote “The implication of the Government’s position is that not only noncitizens but also United States citizens could be taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for redress if judicial review is denied unlawfully before removal. History is no stranger to such lawless regimes, but this Nation’s system of laws is designed to prevent, not enable, their rise.” It is no longer hard to imagine a situation where ICE sends critics of this administration to the gulag in El Salvador for exercising their first amendment rights.
The attacks on free speech by the Trump administration are not limited to the speech of immigrants. Recently, there have been protests outside of Tesla dealerships because of CEO Elon Musk’s role within the Trump administration. While there have been a few instances of vandalism, the vast majority of the protests are peaceful. The damage from these cases has been exclusively to property; nobody has been hurt by these protests. This has not stopped Attorney General Pam Bondi from labeling the protests as “domestic terrorism” and seeking 20-year sentences for vandalism, a misdemeanor that normally carries a maximum of just one year in jail.
The administration’s attacks on the first amendment also extend to the freedom of the press. In February, the Associated Press (AP) was kicked out of the White House press pool for refusing to say that the Gulf of Mexico was “the Gulf of America.” While AP was not allowed into the press pool, Russian state-controlled media was given access to the Oval Office for a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky. During the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly called for networks that provide critical coverage of him to lose their broadcast licenses. In October, he called for CBS to lose its license for “editing” an interview to make his opponent, Kamala Harris, look better in her response to an interview question about Israel-Palestine. He repeated this message in February after suing CBS for $20billion late last year. CBS denies that accusation. He called for CNN and NBC to lose their licenses for choosing not to air his victory speech after the Iowa caucuses. It is worth noting that cable networks like CNN do not even need licenses to operate. During his first term, he urged the United States Postal Service (USPS) to raise rates on Amazon, whose CEO Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post.
Needless to say, functioning democracies with strong free speech protections do not revoke access or licenses to press networks that the president does not like. Even though Trump’s unhinged remarks have not become a reality, they create a chilling effect that leads to more networks providing Trump with the coverage that he likes. The Washington Post did not publish an editorial endorsing Harris after Bezos stepped in to block it. Bezos, despite the fact that his company was directly targeted by Trump during the first term, also donated a million dollars to Trump’s inauguration. ABC News parent company Disney settled a legally baseless lawsuit filed by Trump for $15 million. The lawsuit involved an interview where host George Stephanopoulos asked his guest whether she could support Trump despite the fact that he was found “liable for rape.” Trump was found liable for sexual abuse, which is different than rape under New York law, and ordered to pay five million dollars in damages. In libel cases filed by a public official, the plaintiff must prove “actual malice” was behind the false statement. Needless to say, mixing up the specific legal difference between sexual abuse and rape is not malice, but ABC decided to pay Trump off anyway.
The latest way that the Trump administration is attacking free speech is one that affects us here at Brandeis directly. The Trump administration is cutting funding from universities that Donald Trump does not like. Trump started with Columbia University, freezing $400 million in funding until they met his demands. Columbia complied with most of the demands, including placing their Middle Eastern Studies department into a sort of receivership program and hiring security officers that are allowed to arrest and remove students. Of course, that did not work out too well for Columbia, as Trump canceled all NIH grants to the school anyway.
While Columbia was the first university targeted, they were not the last. The University of Pennsylvania lost $175 million in funding for allowing a transgender athlete to participate on the swim team. Brown University is set to lose $510 million in funding for refusing to end diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The administration sent a letter to Harvard threatening to revoke nine billion dollars in funding if they did not capitulate to Trump’s demands.
Academic freedom is a vital part of free speech because it protects the right of scholars, educators and students to research, teach and express ideas without fear of censorship or political pressure. It ensures that education promotes critical thinking rather than indoctrination, and allows the pursuit of truth—even when findings challenge powerful interests or popular beliefs. By fostering open inquiry and protecting dissenting voices, academic freedom supports a vibrant, democratic society and acts as a safeguard against authoritarian control. Attacks on academic freedom by the administration threaten to change our universities from places of open debate and the free exchange of ideas to places of indoctrination where dissent is not tolerated.
In a healthy democracy, the First Amendment must be more than just words on paper—it must be a living guarantee that protects the rights of all people, not just supporters of those in power. The Trump administration’s pattern of targeting critics, restricting academic freedom, punishing protest and undermining the press represents a direct challenge to the foundational principles of free expression. These actions go beyond partisan politics; they strike at the heart of what it means to live in a free society. If we allow the government to silence voices of dissent—whether through deportations, censorship, or politically motivated funding cuts—we risk losing the very freedoms that define and protect our democracy. Now more than ever, it is our responsibility to defend the First Amendment and ensure that every individual, regardless of their background or beliefs, has the right to speak, protest and learn without fear.
