Trump campaigned as a protector of free speech. Critics say his actions as president threaten it

A protester chants during a demonstration in support of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, Monday, March 10, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

DENVER — When U.S. President Donald Trump gave his joint address to Congress last week, he boasted that in his first few weeks back in the White House he had “brought free speech back to America.”

But First Amendment advocates say they’ve never seen freedom of speech under attack the way it has been in Trump’s second term.

Trump’s Republican administration has threatened Democratic members of Congress with investigation for criticizing conservatives, pulled federal grants that include language it opposes, sanctioned law firms that represent Trump’s political opponents and arrested the organizer of student protests that Trump criticized as “anti-Semitic, anti-American.”

“Your right to say something depends on what the administration thinks of it, which is no free speech at all,” said Will Creeley, legal director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonpartisan First Amendment group.

Trump on Monday took credit for the arrest by immigration agents of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student and legal permanent resident who helped lead pro-Palestinian protests there. Khalil’s lawyers say the government is targeting him for his activism and to “discriminate against particular viewpoints.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that the administration will revoke the visas or green cards of supporters of Hamas, which the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization and denied that the policy threatened the First Amendment.

“This is not about free speech,” Rubio told reporters in Shannon, Ireland. “This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with. No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card.”

A federal judge earlier this week ordered immigration officials not to remove Khalil from the country while his case is sorted out.

“This is the first arrest of many to come. We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” Trump wrote.

Targeting universities over language and demonstrations

Even some Trump allies were uncomfortable with that approach: “There’s almost no one I don’t want to deport,” wrote conservative commentator Ann Coulter on X, “but, unless they’ve committed a crime, isn’t this a violation of the first amendment?”

On the other end of the political spectrum, activists who organized to protest the war in Gaza were aghast at the administration’s move.

“We learn about our First Amendment rights since we’re children,” said German Rafael Gonzalez, a member of Stanford University’s Students for Justice in Palestine. “But that is very much a myth. It’s not the reality we live in right now. And it’s scary.”

Prior to the arrest of Khalil over the weekend, the administration pressured Columbia University to crack down on anti-Israel activism among students and faculty, and Trump has threatened to go after any college that supports protests he deems “illegal.”

He also issued an order forbidding federal funding of what his administration labels diversity, equity and inclusion, which led to a freeze on federal grants as the administration reviews them for forbidden words such as “gender.”

Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors, which sued the Trump administration over its DEI ban and won an injunction against it from a federal judge, said the administration is pulling funding from projects that have prohibited words, yanking grants from research into such areas as crop diversity or differences in infant mortality in urban and rural areas.

“Nobody really wants Big Brother telling you what you can research,” Wolfson said. “These are questions our country needs to know the answers to.”

`The most serious of threats' to free speech

Republicans for several years have been the party complaining about infringements on the First Amendment, from complaints about “woke” colleges canceling conservative speakers to bashing social media companies they accuse of censoring conservative viewpoints, including cutting Trump off after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol. GOP-controlled Florida and Texas even drew up laws to limit how social media firms regulate content, though the U.S. Supreme Court kept them on hold last year because of possible First Amendment violations.

Last year, Trump positioned himself as a champion of the First Amendment during his campaign, and he signed an executive order just hours after being sworn into office prohibiting anyone in the federal government from interfering with Americans' free speech rights. But he also made pledges that signaled he might oppose some of the First Amendment’s fundamental protections, such as deporting foreign students who protested Israel or outlawing flag-burning, which the Supreme Court has ruled is protected free speech.

Creeley, of the individual rights foundation, said he tried to be optimistic before Trump took office that the new president would fix some First Amendment issues. Instead, he said, it’s gotten worse.

“I cannot recall anything like this,” Creeley said. “I’ve been defending First Amendment rights since 2006, and this is the most serious of threats I can recall.”

Actions against media and lawyers to chill dissent

The Trump administration also has gone after the news media.

The president has sued several outlets for coverage he dislikes, and his appointees at the Federal Communications Commission have helped pressure those media companies. Meanwhile, Trump’s FCC is opening investigations of other media companies with which Trump has feuded, and the administration has barred The Associated Press from the White House press pool because it won’t use Trump’s preferred name for the Gulf of Mexico. The AP is suing to restore its access on First Amendment grounds.

The administration also has targeted law firms for their affiliations with Democrats or the previous administration. It stripped security clearances for lawyers at a private firm who provided legal services for special counsel Jack Smith, who investigated Trump during President Joe Biden’s term, and Perkins Coie, a longtime Democratic firm that Trump blames for the investigation into his campaign’s relationship with Russia during his first term. On Tuesday, Perkins Coie sued the administration to reverse the action, saying it violated the First Amendment and other constitutional guarantees.

Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia, said the attacks on the law firms have scared some high-profile attorneys out of taking cases that challenge the administration, which, he contended, is the point.

“There’s a long tradition of lawyers taking on controversial clients, sometimes against our government,” Jaffer said. “The Trump administration has made it clear it will retaliate against lawyers.”

Jaffer said attacks on free speech and association are intended to chill dissent by convincing people in the opposition that they could become targets.

“All of us are able to participate in government by engaging in protest,” Jaffer said. “When the government shuts down that kind of speech, it’s shutting down democracy.”

`I will not be silenced'

The Trump administration has even targeted members of Congress.

Trump appointed Ed Martin, a defense attorney who represented some of those charged in the Jan. 6 attack, as acting U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia. Martin wrote to Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader and one of the nation’s top Democrats, telling him that a comment he made in 2020 warning conservative Supreme Court judges they would “pay the price” for overturning the right to abortion could be seen as a threat. Schumer has since apologized for the statement.

Martin also wrote to Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California, warning him that comments he made about Trump adviser Elon Musk could be seen as a threat. Garcia had said Democrats should “bring actual weapons to this bar fight.”

“Members of Congress must have the right to forcefully oppose the Trump Administration,” Garcia replied on Musk’s X platform. “I will not be silenced.”

Nicholas Riccardi and Christine Fernando, The Associated Press

Fernando reported from Chicago. Matt Lee in Shannon, Ireland contributed to this report.