Free Speech

The Bottom Line

Every American must now come together to vehemently protect the First Amendment as if our democracy depends on it – because it does. Our First Amendment rights are everything, and our defense of them must transcend the political quagmire we have gotten ourselves into. We cannot be like that frog in the pot who, because the temperature is raised ever so slowly, doesn’t realize he is getting boiled to death until it’s too late. If we allow anyone to weaken our rights in any way, that’s the ball game. Game over.

As our hero, the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, said in his Plea for Free Speech in Boston: Free speech “of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down… Thrones, dominions, principalities and powers, founded in injustice and wrong are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason of righteousness, temperance, and of a judgment to come in their presence.”

The Holocaust Encyclopedia paints an even clearer picture: “When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the German constitution guaranteed freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Through decrees and laws, the Nazis abolished these civil rights and destroyed German democracy. Starting in 1934, it was illegal to criticize the Nazi government. Even telling a joke about Hitler was considered treachery. People in Nazi Germany could not say or write whatever they wanted.”

We believe the right to freedom of speech should have very few restrictions… and the U.S. Supreme Court backs us up on this. Although the highest court has ruled that free speech isn’t 100% guaranteed in America, it’s pretty darn close.

The exceptions are few but important. You can’t make false statements of fact that harms someone’s reputation (a.k.a. defamation); you can’t knowingly make false statements to gain money or material benefit (a.k.a. fraud); speech connected to illegal conduct, speech that violates intellectual property law, and commercial speech like advertising all have lesser or no protection; and there are no protections for child pornography or sexually explicit material on broadcast radio and television.

To this end, Miller v. California (1973) established “The Miller Test” to determine whether expression constitutes obscenity, which is not protected by law. For material to be deemed obscene, the work must lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value; the average person must find that the work appeals to a prurient interest (i.e., a shameful or morbid interest in sex); and the work must depict sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, as defined by applicable state law.

There are additional exceptions. Cox v. New Hampshire (1941) established the “time, place, and manner” doctrine, allowing governments to impose reasonable, content-neutral restrictions on speech and assembly, and Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) held that the government can punish speech as incitement only if it is likely to cause “imminent lawless action.” This comes into play on days like those before, during and after the January 6th Capitol riots and a few of the Israeli/Palestinian protests on college campuses in 2024.

In our minds, the Supreme Court has gotten it exactly right, and that means that, in a free country like America, it’s inevitable that even the vilest and most hateful speech is also protected. As Larry Flynt, the wise sage and owner of the porn magazine Hustler, once said, “No one understands that the First Amendment is only important if you are going to offend somebody. If you’re not going to offend somebody, you don’t need protection of the First Amendment.”

The Supreme Court doubled-down on free speech in the 1989 case of Texas v. Johnson, when they ruled that burning the U.S. flag as a form of protest is a constitutionally protected form of expression under the First Amendment – a decision that, though hard to swallow at times, is also the right one. As the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, “It was a five to four decision, and I made the fifth vote. Patriotic conservative that I am, I detest the burning of the nation’s flag. If I were king, I would make it a crime. But as I understand the First Amendment, it guarantees the right to express contempt for the government, Congress, Supreme Court, even the nation or the nation’s flag.”

But here’s the thing about free speech that many people seem to forget these days: It cuts both ways.

As the fabulous Winston Churchill once said, “Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.”

It’s true that, in America, every president, every member of the U.S. Congress, every late-night television host, and every American citizen has the right to say whatever they want to say, whenever they want to say it (if it doesn’t violate the “imminent lawless action” rule, of course). BUT everyone else has the right to react to what is said in any way they choose.

This point always reminds us of the band The Chicks (formally Dixie Chicks). In 2003, right before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, one of the Chicks, Natalie Maines, told a London audience that the band was against the war and “ashamed” that President George W. Bush was from Texas. Her comments led to an enormous backlash from their fans, corporate boycotts, and their music being dropped from thousands of radio stations across America. Almost two decades later, Natalie said that she thought her band was “one of the first to feel that ‘cancel culture.’”

We love The Chicks and, in this case, don’t believe the punishment fit the crime. But the fact remains that, while every American has a right to say whatever they want, everyone else has the right to their personal reaction to it. If Natalie’s fans were offended enough by her comments to stop buying her albums, then they had every right to be.

Someone yelling “Free Speech” after saying something controversial doesn’t immunize them from the repercussions that may come with what they said.

Okay, so all that covers one aspect of free speech. But now it’s time to discuss the most dangerous threat to the First Amendment this country has encountered in decades, if not ever: the Trump/Vance administration.

Even though President Trump promised to “immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America” during his second inaugural address – plus signed an Executive Order banning the government from “any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen” – he has since trampled all over the First Amendment, doing everything under the sun to silence his political rivals, quash any and all dissent, and punish those he perceives to have slighted him in any way.

Now, Charlie Kirk’s death has sent the Trump/Vance administration into censorship overdrive as they weaponize the tragedy, using it as an excuse to put the weight of the entire federal government behind a tyrannical crackdown on any communication they consider objectionable.

Right out of the gate – and making it all about himself, of course – President Trump threatened to revoke the licenses of broadcast television networks that are “against” him: “They give me only bad publicity, press. I mean, they’re getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away.”

Saying that broadcasters are “entirely different than people that use other forms of communication,” Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr claimed that “(broadcasters) have a license granted by us at the FCC that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest. I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.” He followed this up by saying, “We at the FCC are going to enforce the public interest obligation. If there’s broadcasters out there that don’t like it, they can turn their license in to the FCC. But that’s our job, and again we’re making some progress now.”

< Remember, we have defended the right of Corporate America to make their own business decisions. We would NEVER support the federal government interfering with those decisions or trying to bully companies into submission. >

At this point, practically everyone in the Trump/Vance administration piled on the anti-free speech train. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said, “There’s free speech, and then there’s hate speech. We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech” – revealing that the chief law enforcement officer in the United States didn’t understand that, in America, there is no delineation between “free” speech and “hate” speech. She also claimed she has the authority to investigate businesses that refused to print memorial vigil posters for Mr. Kirk.

Then there’s Vice President JD Vance. Even though, early on, he scolded our European allies for allowing free speech to “retreat” across Europe – while, at the same time, assuring them that “under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree” – Vance announced on Charlie Kirk’s podcast, which he hosted days after his death, that the Trump/Vance administration would be going “after the NGO (non-governmental organization) network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence.”

“We have to talk about this incredibly destructive movement of leftwing extremism that has grown up over the last few years and, I believe, is part of the reason why Charlie was killed by an assassin’s bullet,” the vice president said. He then suggested that the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundations, the nonprofit run by George Soros, would be great places to start, lamenting the “generous tax treatment” they receive. The only evidence he offered was a report in the Nation magazine, titled “Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Deserves No Mourning,” that he claimed tried to justify Kirk’s death and incite violence against conservatives.

Problem is, Bhaskar Sunkara, the president of the Nation, said unequivocally that the magazine had never received funds from the Open Society Foundations, and both the Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation said they do not currently fund the Nation.

VP Vance’s allegations were an obvious nod to President Trump’s earlier assertion that his “administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials and everyone else who brings order to our country.”

The President of the United States even threatened to target George Soros under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO): “We’re going to look into Soros because I think it’s a RICO case against him and other people because this is more than protests. This is real agitation; this is riots on the street – and we’re going to look into that.”

Open Society Foundations has been forced to repeatedly deny these – and worse – accusations for years, including in this statement in August 2025: “We do not pay people to protest or directly train or coordinate protestors. All Open Society grantees are required to comply with the law, and we expect our grantees to uphold our shared commitment to human rights, dignity, and nonviolence. The Open Society Foundations oppose all forms of violence, including violent protests.”

In September 2025, over 100 philanthropies and institutions – including the Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundations – issued a letter condemning “acts of political violence” and denounced the recent murders of Kirk and of Melissa Hortman in Minnesota, saying such acts “have no place in our democracy.” The letter said, in part, “Our country is built on the premise that everyone has the right to express themselves, even when others don’t agree with or like what they say. No one should fear for their safety simply for expressing their views… Organizations should not be attacked for carrying out their missions or expressing their values in support of the communities they serve. We reject attempts to exploit political violence to mischaracterize our good work or restrict our fundamental freedoms, like freedom of speech and the freedom to give. Attempts to silence speech, criminalize opposing viewpoints, and misrepresent and limit charitable giving undermine our democracy and harm all Americans.”

THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. Every American must now come together to vehemently protect the First Amendment as if our democracy depends on it – because it does.

Our First Amendment rights are everything and our defense of them must transcend the political quagmire we have gotten ourselves into. We cannot be like that frog in the pot who, because the temperature is raised ever so slowly, doesn’t realize he is getting boiled to death until it’s too late. If we allow anyone to weaken our rights in any way, that’s the ball game. Game over.