The Trump Administration's Chilling Efforts to Punish Free Speech (NYT)

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/opinion/trump-freedom-of-speech-crackdown-kimmel.html

https://archive.ph/dTtFg

The Trump Administration’s Chilling Efforts to Punish Free Speech
Sept. 19, 2025
By The Editorial Board

A founding principle of the United States, enshrined in the Constitution’s opening amendment, is that our republic depends on citizens’ freedom to disagree with one another. They need to be able to do so intensely, on matters of life and death, including war and divisive modern issues like abortion, gun safety and health insurance. There are limits to free speech, yes, but they involve edge cases, like shouting fire in a theater or inciting an imminent act of violence. If the American ideal of freedom means anything, it is that Americans can engage in an extremely wide range of political speech, including the tasteless and the offensive.

President Trump is himself a purveyor of tasteless and even threatening language, speaking in ways that no previous president did. Yet his own exercise of his First Amendment rights has not stopped him from encroaching on those of others. He has punished universities, immigrants, law firms, federal prosecutors, military leaders, national security officials and others for voicing opinions with which he disagrees.

Now he is taking his campaign against free speech to a new level by using the assassination of Charlie Kirk as a justification to promise the repression of groups that he describes as liberal. Mr. Trump’s aides are drafting an executive order that could come as soon as this week, The Times reported, and it will most likely target left-leaning organizations. On Monday, Vice President JD Vance mentioned both the Ford Foundation and George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, saying that they benefited from a “generous tax treatment,” the same tax treatment that benefits nonprofit groups like religious charities and the National Rifle Association Foundation.

The intimidation campaign is already having an effect. Federal officials have urged companies to fire workers who have criticized Mr. Kirk, and some have done so. In a direct exercise of government influence, Brendan Carr, the chairman of the F.C.C., threatened Disney for remarks that Jimmy Kimmel made on his late-night ABC show. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Mr. Carr said. He also urged television stations to stop broadcasting the show. Two major station owners quickly did so, and ABC has suspended the show indefinitely.

...

[comradebillyboy]

1. Good to see the Times finally noticed. Better late

than never.