The Trump Administration Vs. The First Amendment.

The Trump administration wants to censor protest against funding Israel

Pictured Above: a pro-Palestine protest at Columbia University.

Despite their claim to “bring free-speech back”, the Trump administration is trying to shut down protests on University campuses.

In a recent “Truth Social” post, President Donald Trump said :

All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.

An announcement from Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s Department of Health and Human Services explained this further saying that the Trump administration will “Stop Work Orders for $51.4 million in contracts between Columbia University and the Federal Government” and “$5 billion in federal grant commitments to Columbia University” if they do not crack down on so-called “relentless harassment of Jewish students” (ie protests against Israel's mass murder campaign in Gaza)

Trump’s UN ambassador Elise Stefanik admitted that this order was created to stop “antisemitism and anti-Israel hate” explicitly admitting that they want to silence opposition and protest against Israel.

In this article, I will explain how this is a blatant violation of the first amendment and the Constitution and how it exposes the Trump administration’s free speech hypocrisy.

A Violation Of The First Amendment

This announcement from the Trump administration has set off alarm bells for many free-speech organizations.

FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), a non-profit focusing on civil liberties and free speech on college campuses, said “President Trump's message, combined with other recent executive orders threatening punishment for protected speech, is deeply chilling”

They noted that “the president can’t force institutions to expel students. Students are entitled to due process on public college campuses and, almost universally, on private ones, too.” and that “threatening schools with the loss of federal funding will result in a crackdown on lawful speech.”.

They also noted that “Today’s message will cast an impermissible chill on student protests about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”.

Some have defended this move, arguing that it is not a violation of the First Amendment given that the U.S. government is not obligated to give out funding and grants to Universities.

Glenn Greenwald, the journalist and former constitutional lawyer who focused on first amendment cases, expertly debunked this talking point.

Greenwald noted that while the U.S. government does not have to “prove a benefit” to Universities, once it decides it will “offer a benefit that’s an option, it cannot then condition receipt of this benefit on your expressing a particular political view”.

Greenwald cited case law, which shows this is the case.

One of the cases cited by Greenwald was the 1958 Spencer vs. Randall case. In this case, the government wanted to suspend tax exemptions for those who call to overthrow the U.S. government. The Supreme Court ruled against the government in this case with a 7-1 verdict “that a state cannot condition the receipt of a government benefit — in this case, a tax exemption for veterans — on the requirement that an individual demonstrate eligibility by swearing an oath not to advocate the overthrow of the government by unlawful means.”

Another case cited by Greenwald was the 1996 Supreme Court case around whether a government can end benefits to lawyers who challenge welfare reform laws. Again the Supreme Court “found unconstitutional a federal law enacted in 1996 that bars lawyers funded by the Legal Services Corporation (“LSC”) from making any “effort to amend or otherwise challenge existing law” in welfare reform cases. The Court’s decision affirms a lower court ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.”

The case law on this issue is clear, it is unconstitutional to stop federal funding for groups or people over political speech.

This means that the Trump administration’s call to stop funding of universities that do not crack down on pro-Palestinian protests is unconstitutional and a blatant violation of the First Amendment.

Free Speech For Me, Not For Thee

This proposal also shows the massive hypocrisy of the Trump administration’s free speech advocacy.

In Trump’s address to congress last night, he claimed that he “stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America”.

Yet earlier, he proposed the law to shut down pro-Palestine protests in college campuses, a blatant violation of the First Amendment and an obvious case of government censorship.

Perhaps the biggest hypocrite is the Health and Human services head Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long styled himself a free speech advocate, and is now spearheading this policy.

In 2023 RFK Jr. said “When people censor speech, when we look back in history, they're never the good guys” “Government abuses every power that it's given, and if government suddenly has the capacity to censor its critics, it has a license for any atrocity”.

Now he has changed his tune and is pushing to give the government power to censor speech on college campuses.

Given that he is trying to shut down protests against his government’s backing of Israel’s mass murder campaign in Gaza, which Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called a genocide and the ICC has called “crimes against humanity and war crimes” it seems that he is now the one that will not be the “good guy” when “we look back at history”.

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