First Amendment Nonexistent Under Trump
Janeth Gomez ’29
Staff Writer
gomez96@lakeforest.edu
On a Wednesday, only nine months into Trump’s presidency, Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative youth activist organization Turning Point USA, took the stage to speak at a campus event at Utah Valley University.
Sitting under a tent, as he faced the Utah heat in early September, Kirk spoke to a crowd of 3,000 eager attendees. His attire for the event consisted of plain black pants and a white, short-sleeved shirt with the word “freedom” printed across the front. Less than twenty minutes after Kirk began his talk at the event, he was suddenly shot, then pronounced dead hours later.
The event came as a shock that rippled through the country, dividing it further. While some empathized with Kirk and his family over his death, many also brought attention to Kirk’s controversial history so as not to let his assassination overshadow his past. It has been less than two months since Kirk’s assassination, but its effects remain prevalent in this current sociopolitical climate.
On Oct. 8, the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon, on an order from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, investigated close to 300 Defense Department employees for online comments either criticizing Kirk’s past or condoning his assassination. This move by the Defense Secretary reflects a worrying trend of censorship and the infringement of the First Amendment by the Trump Administration.
This year has quickly become a turning point in American history. It has only been ten months into Trump’s presidency, and free speech has been infringed upon numerous times due to his administration. From Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show being pulled off the air due to a comment he made regarding the Make America Great Again movement and Kirk, to the Pentagon investigating workers for comments regarding Kirk, it is clear that the U.S. is teetering on a censorship crisis.
Seven days after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Kimmel’s show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was taken off the air after commenting on Kirk and MAGA. “We had some new lows over the weekend,” Kimmel said. “With the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
On Sept. 27, Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission chairman, went on a right-wing podcast called “The Benny Show” to speak on the comments made by Kimmel. During the podcast interview, Carr suggested that the agency could permanently pull the broadcast licenses of shows owned by Disney, and threatened that they could do things the “easy way or the hard way.”
It is not the FCC chairman’s job to threaten a late-night television show host over a satirical comment for television, and it was quite inappropriate for Carr to do so. The FCC is supposed to ensure that the public interest is served, but in this case, the FCC and its chairman were operating in the President’s and his administration’s best interest.
A precedent of censorship has been set with Hegseth’s investigation and Kimmel’s show being pulled off the air. In a social media post made on Sept. 14, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell wrote, “It’s a violation of the oath, it’s conduct unbecoming. It’s a betrayal of the Americans they’ve sworn to protect & dangerously incompatible with military service.”
Restricting what anyone can say, regardless of the position or role they have, is a betrayal of Americans and their First Amendment right to freedom of speech. As circumstances become more unclear due to actions from the Trump administration, Americans must continue to exercise their First Amendment rights, especially in times like these.
“A free and democratic society cannot silence comedians because the President doesn’t like what they say,” Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said in a response post on X (formerly Twitter). “This is an attack on free speech and cannot be allowed to stand.”