We must fight back against the Trump administration’s attacks on free speech

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An old friend, a lawyer who lives in a very red southern state, recently sent me a bumper sticker reading: “DO EVERYTHING to resist. Do it now.”

My friend is an advocate, but he doesn’t advocate violence. He’s sounding the alarm and urging anyone who disagrees with the Trump administration’s efforts to suppress free expression to stand up and speak up while we still have the chance.

I believe in the power of words. I’ve been a journalist, a practicing lawyer and a university professor. I’ve run a nonprofit organization. I’ve been a Fulbright Scholar in Latvia. And I’ve received U.S. State Department grants from both Democratic and Republican administrations to deliver lectures on freedom of expression in many countries, from Azerbaijan to Thailand. My mission was to share the American perspective that the foundations of mature democracies are a free press, an independent judiciary, respect for the rule of law and robust protection for competing ideas. Those are universal values, embraced by all, regardless of political viewpoint. Or at least I thought they were.

Today, every single one of these principles has a target on its back. In a few short weeks, the Trump administration has launched relentless attacks on the news media, the judiciary, lawyers, universities and even the arts. We must speak up before we lose them all.

Let’s start with one institution that everyone loves to hate: the press. Complaining about the news media is as American as apple pie. Presidents are allowed to complain, too. But they are also supposed to respect the First Amendment. President Donald Trump has shown that he does not. A new report from the Pew Research Center found that few Americans realize his administration has taken its antagonistic relationship with the press to new extremes that are both vindictive and petty.

Because it has refused to adopt the president’s preferred nomenclature for the Gulf of Mexico (“the Gulf of America”), the Associated Press, the nonprofit news cooperative, has been banned from the White House press pool, the small group of reporters and photographers who are allowed access to certain presidential events in Washington, on Air Force One and elsewhere where space is limited, and who then share their coverage with other news organizations. The AP has challenged the ban in federal court, but so far, the presiding judge has refused to grant relief.

The White House claims it should be able to select which news outlets are permitted in the pool, which was established during the Eisenhower administration and previously administered by the independent White House Correspondents Association. Trump has directed that news outlets he prefers such as Newsmax and Axios should replace those he doesn’t like, and has made clear that AP’s exclusion is retribution for their editorial choices. “We’re going to keep them out until such time as they agree that it’s the Gulf of America,” he said in February. Even Fox News has described these as “short-sighted” decisions, undermining the ability of the press to operate independently in order to best serve the public interest, not the interests of government.

Coupled with lawsuits against the Des Moines Register and CBS which Trump launched before he took office, claiming that their reporting amounted to news distortion or election interference, as well as Federal Communications Commission investigations of Walt Disney (parent company of ABC) and Comcast (which owns NBC) over their DEI practices, the message is clear. The news media must toe the line or face the consequences. Some news organizations, including ABC, have separately settled with Trump rather than risk those consequences.

Meanwhile, both Trump and Elon Musk have called for the removal of federal judges who have thwarted them in court, earning a rare rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who reminded them that the remedy for an adverse ruling is to appeal, not to impeach. That assumes that the appeals courts survive as checks and balances rather than as rubber stamps.

But even the most independent judge can’t rule in a lawsuit that is never brought. The Constitution and the laws are not self-executing. Lawyers must take on unpopular cases and clients to ensure our right to challenge the government is protected. But the Trump administration is attacking law firms based on the causes they represent as well as the attorneys they employ, many of whom he considers his political enemies. He has stripped them of the security clearances they need to litigate cases against the government and threatened their corporate clients. Although some of these law firms are fighting back, others have capitulated, agreeing to provide millions of hours of pro bono assistance to advance causes that Trump supports.

Universities, too, including the University of Minnesota, are in the crosshairs, threatened with investigations and loss of funding if they fail to abide by an ever-changing list of requirements ostensibly designed to protect students, but in reality aimed at stifling dissenting speech. Few have resisted.

And not surprisingly, Trump is trying to control the arts, too, taking over the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., because “we didn’t like what they were showing,” and ordering the Smithsonian Institution museums, as well as the National Zoo, to eliminate “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from their exhibits. Although some are fighting back, others are capitulating.

Fighting back is hard. A lot of time and energy must be spent challenging actions that may be unconstitutional or unlawful. It’s death by a thousand cuts. It takes courage, perseverance and money. By contrast, the administration has almost unlimited ways to intimidate those who oppose it and has vast resources, paid for by taxpayers, to squelch dissenting viewpoints.

But consider this: Many of Trump’s supporters claimed that other administrations weaponized government against those who disagreed with them. If it was wrong then, it is wrong now. If you believe in free speech, and the rule of law, you must do everything to resist. Do it now.

Jane E. Kirtley is the Silha Professor of Media Ethics at the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication. She is also an affiliated faculty member at the Law School. She is the former executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.