The Case for Open Discourse

President Trump and his MAGA allies portray themselves as champions of the First Amendment and warriors for freedom of expression. In his March 4, 2025, joint address to Congress, Trump claimed that since returning to office he had “stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America.” In practice, though, he has led a multipronged assault on free speech, open discourse, and the unfettered marketplace of ideas that are hallmarks of American democracy. 

The Trump administration’s conception of “free speech” involves pressing specific ideological viewpoints while penalizing institutions and individuals who dare defiance. This approach inverts the very meaning of free speech, and offers a ripe opportunity for principled pushback, including concrete steps by states to shore up protections defined by the Constitution.

Measures similar to Trump 2.0 restrictions have been enacted in red states, including legislative restrictions on school and college curricula, bans on books in schools and libraries, curbs on the right to protest, and media restrictions in statehouses. These efforts are stoked by right-wing Trump allies bent on asserting control over liberal institutions they regard as having been wrongfully captured by ideological antagonists. Such measures play to Trump voters who have come to see liberal orthodoxy, or “wokeness,” as a primary source of their discontent. 

The second Trump administration entered office on a mission to realign the nation ideologically by using government power to reshape institutions, silence and intimidate critics, and sideline disfavored ideas. Its efforts have been sweeping in scope. Trump has sued news organizations including ABC, CBS, and the Wall Street Journal to protest unfavorable coverage and send a message that even innocent errors may become grounds for intimidating lawsuits. Trump and other administration officials have also threatened broadcast licenses, including as part of an attack on late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel for satirical comments about the MAGA movement after the murder of Charlie Kirk. 

The White House has punished journalists, including kicking out the Associated Press from briefings because of the wire service’s refusal to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. The Pentagon has required journalists to sign a restrictive press policy in order to retain access to on-site briefings. The result is that scores of mainstream media outlets no longer report from within the building and have been replaced by right-wing publications friendly to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. 

The administration’s attacks on law firms and universities are motivated in part by a drive to punish and muzzle speech and advocacy. While several law firms have successfully fought back in court, others simply capitulated to the administration’s bullying, signing deals that traded away their independence as private partnerships. Harvard University prevailed in a First Amendment challenge to the Trump administration’s effort to withhold research funds; but daunted by the cost of litigation, other universities, including Brown, Columbia, and Cornell, cut deals that limit their autonomy in various ways 

Other steps taken by the Trump administration have compounded the damage to open, fact-based discourse. The defunding of PBS and National Public Radio has diminished access to credible journalism. The administration has targeted pro-Palestine activists on campus, relying entirely on their statements as grounds for their deportation (those efforts were blocked in court). After six senators issued a video urging U.S. servicemembers not to follow illegal orders, Trump deemed the message “punishable by death” and initiated an investigation of Arizona Senator Mark Kelly for alleged misconduct. The administration has issued lists of hundreds of words that are effectively banned from government websites and publications. The lists, which include words like activist, emissions, and COVID-19, are intended to scrub discussion of DEI and transgender identity, but also to curtail discourse on topics such as climate change and vaccination. 

There are growing signs of Americans’ discomfort with Trump’s repressive approach toward speech. An April 2025 survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) found that “many Americans are opposed to President Donald Trump’s speech-restrictive policies.” The 2025 Freedom Forum survey found that half of Americans fear Trump is a threat to their First Amendment freedoms, whereas fewer than one-third regard him as a protector of such rights. The same poll found that 9 out of 10 Americans view the First Amendment as “vital.” 

The disconnect between the Trump administration’s repeated infringements of First Amendment freedoms and the importance most Americans attach to such liberties offers an opening for free-speech advocates to take up the mantle. 

States have an opportunity to show leadership, and the defense of an open marketplace of ideas should rest on three pillars: press freedom, the freedom to teach and learn, and the right to dissent. Framed as a commitment to uphold First Amendment rights, which include the right to impart and receive information, state-led efforts to safeguard speech can form part of an affirmative agenda to strengthen democracy. In a pluralistic society, free speech is an essential engine to enable robust public debate, foster understanding across divides, promote transparency, and air out grievances so they do not fester.

Local news is a vital force for accountability, information flows, civic engagement, and the connective tissue that binds communities. In a January 2024 Pew survey, 85% of Americans said local news outlets are at least somewhat important to their community, including 44% who said they are extremely or very important. 

While some states have borrowed from the Trump playbook—by limiting journalists’ access to statehouses in Kansas, Iowa, Utah, and elsewhere, and politicizing the credentialing process—others have shored up the Fourth Estate as a force for knowledge and accountability. 

In April 2025 Idaho became the 41st state to enact a media shield law barring courts from compelling journalists to reveal confidential sources. In the past few years, Pennsylvania, New York, Minnesota, and other states have enacted or amended so-called anti-SLAPP laws, which bar “strategic litigation against public participation,” or lawsuits that are aimed to intimidate and deter hard-hitting journalism and advocacy on matters of public interest. 

In August 2025, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed SB 1181, amending the state’s weakened anti-SLAPP law to protect news organizations from retaliatory lawsuits. The reform was prompted in part by a defamation suit against the Chicago Sun-Times over its reporting on alleged misconduct by a state official—a case the Illinois Supreme Court had held was not covered under the old statute. The new law explicitly protects reporting on matters of public concern and pauses litigation while anti-SLAPP motions are resolved. Watertight anti-SLAPP legislation is essential when the president routinely encourages his supporters to “sue the hell out of” media outlets that criticize him.

A 2021 California law guarantees journalists access to demonstrations and protests, ensuring that law enforcement does not interfere with coverage of such events. The measure grew out of controversies relating to the media’s ability to document racial-justice protests in 2020. California and New York have also expanded laws that enable citizens and the media to hold police accountable, including by recording interactions and by gaining access to body-camera footage and the disciplinary records of law-enforcement officers. 

States have also taken steps to expand the rights of student journalists, helping to empower future cohorts of media workers and underscoring the importance of fact-based journalism to a rising generation. New Jersey’s New Voices law, signed in 2021, guarantees public school and college student journalists the right to exercise freedom of speech and of the press, limiting censorship to narrow categories (such as libel or language deemed “harassing, threatening, or intimidating”) and protecting advisers from retaliation. Hawaii’s Student Journalism Protection Act, enacted in 2022, similarly affirms that student journalists determine the content of school-sponsored media, shielding advisers who refuse to censor them. These laws provide a crucial counterweight, as some universities discipline students who publish unflattering coverage, and as national culture wars routinely spill onto campus.

America’s classrooms, lecture halls, and libraries have become ground zero for government censorship, with thousands of books banned in school districts across the country and scores of intrusive state laws dictating curriculum and hiring practices at schools and universities. These measures are happening not organically but as the product of an organized, right-wing movement that circulates lists of books considered objectionable, along with model legislation and ordinances aimed at restricting educational institutions. Since Trump’s return to office, the heavy hand of federal intrusion has reinforced such efforts through a wave of executive orders and related measures ostensibly targeting DEI and transgender identities while reaching deep into the workings of classrooms. 

Supporters of these measures insist they are merely correcting for decades of left-leaning domination. In their view, progressives exercised soft power to stigmatize conservative beliefs, leaving no alternative but to wield the hard power of the state to enforce a different orthodoxy. The goal is not to restore viewpoint neutrality, but to replace one perceived hegemony with another—this time backed by law enforcement, budgetary leverage, and regulatory muscle. 

A long line of Supreme Court precedents rejects such viewpoint-based discrimination in education. States have the opportunity to stand up for the principle that governments must not counter left-wing doctrinalism with the scorched-earth weapon of government censorship.

According to a 2024 Knight Foundation survey, two-thirds of Americans oppose restrictions on books in public schools. Illinois, Minnesota, and New Jersey have passed freedom-to-read laws, preempting book bans by linking library funding to the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights, which sets out strict criteria for book challenges. These laws codify the idea that access to ideas should not depend upon ideological litmus tests or be constrained by the loudest objectors. The Massachusetts State Senate recently passed a similar measure protecting school libraries.

When it comes to Trump’s attacks on universities, states have a role in playing defense, even when the targets are private institutions. Recognizing the indispensable role that universities play as employers, drivers of innovation, and incubators of skilled workers, states have an interest in ensuring the independence and integrity of institutions of higher education. Doing so does not mean shielding universities from criticism, nor does it require brushing off questions about how to achieve viewpoint diversity among faculty, how to ensure an inclusive campus while complying with antidiscrimination laws, or how to adjudicate when criticism of Israel veers into antisemitism. 

The Massachusetts Attorney General led a coalition of 21 states’ attorneys who filed a joint amicus curiae brief in support of Harvard’s challenge of the Trump administration’s $2 billion funding freeze targeting the university, arguing that the administration’s actions violated the First Amendment. Governor Maura Healey has also spoken out on behalf of Harvard, helping to cast the conflict as a fight for academic freedom, rather than simply an elite institution preserving its prerogatives. The state launched a $400 million research and innovation fund aimed at lessening the university’s dependence on federal funding. California has turned the tables on the federal government by insisting that any university to sign onto a Trump Administration “compact” dictating policy changes would lose its state funding. California Governor Gavin Newsom has also backed UCLA in its court challenges to federal-funding cutoffs. 

As protest movements mount and the country marches toward the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential elections, states can fortify their position as defenders of the core First Amendment freedoms of dissent and assembly. 

Whereas the Trump administration is known for its aggressive approach toward peaceful demonstrations, some states have taken affirmative measures to safeguard these liberties. New York State has introduced a measure that would, in the absence of credible suspicion, prevent law enforcement from searches based on geolocation or keywords. As of 2024, states including Colorado, Maryland, Maine, Montana, Utah, Virginia, and Washington have imposed limits (warrant requirements, serious-crime limits, and oversight) on police facial-recognition techniques, which are known to exact a chilling effect on protests. 

Several governors have vetoed proposed laws restricting expression. North Carolina Governor Josh Stein vetoed several bills in July 2025 that would have banned DEI training and programs in public institutions and imposed new penalties tied to school content and gender identity, calling them “mean-spirited” and warning they would marginalize vulnerable communities and chill inclusive education. Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed an “antisemitism curriculum” bill in 2025 that imposed heavy penalties on educators, arguing it would suppress open discussion and academic freedom in schools and universities. 

States have also enacted laws aimed at protecting election officials from interference in carrying out their duties. At least 22 states have passed measures to punish harassment, doxxing, and other attacks on election workers. In 2024, Georgia became the first state to require police to receive election-law training, which includes learning which activities near polling places are illegal, police obligations to prevent voter intimidation, and de-escalation tactics. Arizona and Washington have both enacted laws protecting a citizen’s right to post yard signs and related political expression. 

State officials can model a willingness to engage respectfully with dissenting views by convening town-hall meetings, engaging with critics, and defending their policies and positions on their merits, in contrast to President Trump’s propensity for ad hominem attacks.

First Amendment rights strike a deep chord among Americans, who recognize these broad liberties as fundamental to the society they know and love. By calling out the administration’s hypocritical and self-serving efforts to impose ideological controls and shield itself from criticism, state leaders can appeal to voters’ deep-seated sense of fairness. Concrete measures to shore up press freedom; the freedom to read, teach and learn; and the right to dissent offer opportunities to expand and safeguard citizens’ rights at a time when freedom is under threat.