How Defending Free Speech Can Unite Unlikely Allies

(Adam Fefer and Maria J. Stephan – Just Security) The Trump administration’s attacks on constitutional rights include those on free speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly that are protected by the First Amendment. Recent incidents illustrate the breadth of these actions. Last month, peaceful protestors, including a U.S. senator, were tear-gassed outside Delaney Hall, an ICE detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, that he and others have criticized for inhumane conditions. In April, FBI Director Kash Patel sued The Atlantic over reporting on behavior he exhibited that multiple colleagues deemed a threat to national security, and the FBI began investigating the reporter. Last week, ICE agents served a Syracuse poll worker a formal complaint for a social media post she made last January criticizing the ICE agent responsible for killing Reneé Good, which is protected free speech. These threats come at a time when the United States is undergoing the most pronounced democratic decline in its history, according to the Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem). At the same time, that very overreach by the Trump administration has inspired the emergence of a broad front defending free expression, one reaching across partisan and sectoral lines. These otherwise “unlikely allies” may strongly disagree on policy but recognize shared threats to constitutional freedoms. Republican Governors Phil Scott and Kevin Stitt in January shared with Democrats an abhorrence of the shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and expressed opposition to uncontrolled federal ICE and DHS deployments against immigrants. Businesses are viewing crackdowns on immigration and on peaceful protesters as disruptions to the economy. Libertarians and free speech absolutists share with left-leaning immigration activists a revulsion to masked federal officers detaining the administration’s critics. Even conservative outlets like Fox News and Newsmax refused to sign the Pentagon’s new restrictions on journalists covering the Defense Department. – How Defending Free Speech Can Unite Unlikely Allies