Analysis: Trump’s first year back in office contradicts his ‘free speech’ commitments

By Brian Stelter, CNN

(CNN) — Nora Benavidez of the nonprofit advocacy group Free Press set out to catalog the Trump administration’s First Amendment infringements. She soon had a list of almost 200.

That list is part of a new report, previewed by CNN and out Monday, about President Trump and his administration’s “war on free speech.”

“While this chilling campaign is vastly unpopular and often loses in court, its speed and scale are unprecedented in U.S. history,” Benavidez wrote.

And the effect, she wrote, “is palpable as millions may think twice about core First Amendment and associational habits: speaking out, filming police, protesting, reporting, traveling abroad or even posting dissenting views online.”

Trump and his spokespeople have framed the first year of his second term very differently — as a triumphant restoration of free speech rights that were threatened by Democrats. One of his first executive orders was titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.”

But “his aggressive attacks on dissent” have sent a different message, the Free Press report asserted.

Free Press, not to be confused with the Bari Weiss startup called The Free Press, advocates against media consolidation and censorship.

Trump’s return to office has kept the group busy. Among the many flashpoints chronicled in Monday’s report: Reporters roughed up while covering protests, international students detained due to political speech, federal workers muzzled, universities pressured, government critics trolled and targeted online, TV stations threatened with revoked licenses.

But those examples tend to be covered in isolation, one at a time, and the sheer volume “has helped ensure that even the most egregious assaults quickly fall out of the news cycle and public consciousness,” Benavidez wrote.

Thus, the list. It shows how sectors like civil society and corporate America have faced constant challenges from the Trump administration. The media, she wrote, has been bombarded “at a scale and pace no other sector has experienced.”

Trump fans routinely cheer on his crusades against “fake news.” In his second term, words have often been matched by concrete actions.

Benavidez wrote that Trump’s “verbal threats” shape how his government appointees and allies operate. “This censorial doom loop allows a would-be authoritarian like Trump to make passing comments a chilling policy reality,” she wrote.

One key example cited: The brief suspension of ABC host Jimmy Kimmel, a longtime Trump foe, after FCC chairman Brendan Carr pressured the network and its affiliates to punish him.

ABC restored Kimmel’s show within a week, reportedly in part due to consumer backlash.

Collective resistance “has proven successful at blunting the potency of Trump’s censorship campaign,” Benavidez wrote, asserting that it “must be sustained.”

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