# Freedom of speech in the US **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Tags:** magazines-newspapers\ **Created:** [February 26, 2025, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833 "2025-02-26T16:23:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2025, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833/21 "2025-02-27T09:42:30Z")
Bezos is just doing his part to stop the press from being Enemies of the People, as TFG has been calling them for most of a decade. Would you like to know more? /Starship Troopers ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2025, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833/22 "2025-02-27T13:19:03Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > Would you like to know more? /Starship Troopers Between the Cybertruck, an inept demagogue who somehow managed to get reelected _after_ openly engaging in an attempted insurrection, a hype-promoting tycoon with dreams of going to Mars hijacking the government, and the media turning into a cheering section for a comedically stupid autocracy, I’m pretty certain we are living in a Paul Verhoeven film. All that is needed to round it out is an ingénue sex worker, a malfunctioning battle droid, a memory implant gone wrong, and an invasion by insectoid aliens shooting blue goo out of their butts. If I wake up with no memory of the last few hours and the doctor from _China Beach_ telling me “You’re in a Johnny Cab!” I’m taking the fucking pill and going home with Sharon Stone even though I actually prefer the brunette. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2025, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833/23 "2025-02-27T13:30:07Z")
That was awesome! Thanks. I think we all needed a good laugh. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2025, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833/24 "2025-02-27T13:42:57Z")
It’s all included in the package but gratuities are appreciated. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2025, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833/25 "2025-02-27T14:13:27Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > and an invasion by insectoid aliens shooting blue goo out of their butts. No, you’d have to have Trump invade the bug planet. The humans were the aggressors. And if he could find one, I would not put it past him. ---
**Author:** ![Chad\_Sudan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chad_sudan/32/4509_2.png) [@Chad\_Sudan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chad_Sudan)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2025, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833/26 "2025-02-28T20:46:02Z")
_Post_ columnist Dana Milbank says that to truly support “free markets and personal liberties,” “we must fight to keep Trump from destroying them.” ([This _Post_ link](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/28/free-markets-personal-liberties-trump-threat/) may or may not be paywalled) ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2025, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833/27 "2025-03-01T00:43:49Z")
So the Associated Press, Reuters and others cannot cover events in the oval office, such as today’s attack on zelensky. But apparently a “journalist” from Russian state media “somehow” got entry. > **[AP, Reuters, two others denied access to covering Trump in Oval Office](https://gazettengr.com/ap-reuters-two-others-denied-access-to-covering-trump-in-oval-office/)** > > The Trump administration earlier announced that the White House would determine which media outlets would cover the president in smaller spaces, such as the Oval Office. [https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/28/tass-oval-office-trump-zelenskyy-00206739/](https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/28/tass-oval-office-trump-zelenskyy-00206739/) ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2025, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833/28 "2025-03-01T22:30:14Z")
There is a difference between “stories” and “opinion pages”. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2025, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833/29 "2025-03-01T23:51:18Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > The humans were the aggressors. The bugs but Earth with asteroids first. Don’t ask me how. > [@Mijin](#): > > But apparently a “journalist” from Russian state media “somehow” got entry. Of course. He has to give preference to his home country. (He may have been born here, but clearly he wants here to be there.) ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2025, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833/30 "2025-03-02T02:11:06Z")
> [@Chad\_Sudan](#): > > _Post_ columnist Dana Milbank says that to truly support “free markets and personal liberties,” “we must fight to keep Trump from destroying them.” Milbank tried, in that column, to say that he meets the criteria to keep his job. I suppose he qualifies on the personal liberties side, but Milbank is not really a free market guy. He’s for regulated markets. We’ll see how long he lasts. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833/31 "2025-03-06T14:23:50Z")
Despite “free speech” and “ending censorship” being some of the themes of Trump’s SotU address\*, it should be noted that he has now banned “illegal protests”. Colleges which allow such protests will have their funding cut, and participants in these protests will be arrested. Trump’s tweet doesn’t mention what is meant by illegal protests, but the action is being brought by the “Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism”. > **[Trump says any school that "allows illegal protests" will lose funding as...](https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/trump-columbia-university-federal-funding/)** > > Trump says any school that "allows illegal protests" will lose federal funds, as his administration launches a review of Columbia University. \* Quiet, pedants! ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833/32 "2025-03-06T14:52:30Z")
ANY anti-Trump protest will be deemed illegal. If we want to see which direction speech issues are drifting, the Tennessee legislature is a good early window. Democrats are barely allowed to speak without the looming threat of being frogmarched out for expressing contrary views. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833/33 "2025-03-06T17:27:15Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > it should be noted that he has now banned “illegal protests”. This is how fascism does it. Protesting is fine… as long as it isn’t “illegal.” Any protest can be called “illegal” if you pick and choose your laws, after all. ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833/34 "2025-03-06T17:33:30Z")
Lawrence Britt – “Fascism, Anybody? --” again: > **11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts**. Intellectuals and the inherent freedom of ideas and expression associated with them were anathema to these regimes. Intellectual and academic freedom were considered subversive to national security and the patriotic ideal. Universities were tightly controlled; politically unreliable faculty harassed or eliminated. Unorthodox ideas or expressions of dissent were strongly attacked, silenced, or crushed. To these regimes, art and literature should serve the national interest or they had no right to exist. [**SOURCE**](https://secularhumanism.org/2003/03/fascism-anyone/) Britt wrote this paper in the Spring of 2003, when most of us had barely even heard of Donald Trump. This isn’t Monday Morning Quarterbacking. It’s based on his in-depth analysis of “the following regimes: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia.” ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2025, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833/35 "2025-03-07T19:27:58Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Colleges which allow such protests will have their funding cut, and participants in these protests will be arrested. > **[Trump administration cancels $400 million in grants for Columbia University](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump-administration-cancels-400-million-grants-columbia-university-rcna195373)** > > The move comes shortly after the administration notified Columbia University that it was conducting a "comprehensive review" of its federal grants and contracts. But Columbia did call in the police: > **[2024 Columbia University pro-Palestinian campus occupations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Columbia_University_pro-Palestinian_campus_occupations)** > > This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. > > Pro-Palestinian groups: > Gaza Solidarity Encampment: ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2025, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833/36 "2025-03-07T20:59:31Z")
Trump is going to cut funding to universities regardless because this is what autocrats do to inhibit free speech and independent thought (never mind what universities have been doing for decades to their own faculty and staff to limit those qualities). Stranger ---
**Author:** ![BayLeaves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c67d28/32.png) [@BayLeaves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BayLeaves)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2025, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833/37 "2025-03-18T05:27:18Z")
The only freedom I care about is intellectual freedom. That includes the freedom to criticize capitalism. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2025, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833/38 "2025-03-22T16:08:22Z")
[Gift link](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/nyregion/trump-columbia-university-400-million.html?unlocked_article_code=1.504.iiqD.YBM3sZFKeMmn&smid=url-share) to a recent New York Times article that the $400 million in federal funding that Trump is threatening to withhold from Columbia University is coincidentally about what he thought the university should pay him for some land near Lincoln Center he was promoting to them for their campus expansion. (In the end, the university chose to expand adjacent to its existing campus.) In short, the man holds a grudge for years and when he can, gets vengeance. (And this is the man we elected to be the leader of this once-great nation.) ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2025, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833/39 "2025-03-22T16:38:11Z")
Columbia accedes to Trump [Columbia University caves to Trump’s list of demands](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/columbia-university-caves-to-trump-s-list-of-demands/ar-AA1Bs4IT?ocid=BingNewsSerp) According to Google, Columbia has an endowment of $14 billion, so it seems like they could have told Trump to go pound sand, but caved instead. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2025, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833/40 "2025-03-22T18:27:18Z")
If you put $14 billion into the safest possible holdings, like 4% treasure bonds, it would return far more than $400 million per year. So it’s not the money, it’s the other threats than Trump made. > **[The US government has sent Columbia University a ransom note | Sheldon Pollock](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/19/government-trump-columbia-university)** > > Like a mob boss, the government threatens to cut off two of the university’s fingers: academic freedom and faculty governance > Oddly, one of the specific targets identified in the letter was Columbia’s department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (Mesaas), a small humanities department devoted to studying the languages, cultures and history of those regions. The government demanded the Mesaas department be put into “receivership” – basically, be taken over by the university – as a precondition to further negotiations. … > > Why has the government chosen to single out this department? > > The answer is clear: because its faculty have not voiced steadfast support for the state of Israel in their scholarship. The US government stands almost alone in the world in its unwavering ideological and financial support for the violence of the state of Israel against the people of Palestine. Most recently it has provided the consent, the justification and the arms for Israel’s destruction of Gaza. (Just this week, the [destruction was relaunched](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/18/why-has-israel-resumed-large-scale-airstrikes-on-gaza), to condemnation from around the world but not from Washington, which alone gave its support.) The federal funding issue was to get the attention of other universities. Mostly Trump wants to cut off all protest against Israel, especially at “work” campuses, both from students and professors. And he’s willing to go outside the law to do so. That doesn’t make for an easy decision. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedom-of-speech-in-the-us/1014833.md?page=3)