"Throughout his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump vowed vengeance on a Democratic Party he regularly called "the radical left" (or, on occasion, "communists") and accused of a treasonous conspiracy to turn over the country to criminal immigrants and America-hating globalist elites. Even as he has relentlessly pressed to expand his own powers to unprecedented levels, the 47th president has begun acting on his threats by deploying the machinery of justice against people, institutions, and ideas he dislikes."
"His top domestic policy adviser, Stephen Miller, has suggested anyone attributing authoritarian motives to the president may be illegally inciting violence. And most ominously, Trump's attorney general, Pam Bondi, tried to repudiate basic First Amendment doctrine by inventing a new category of "hate speech" that her Justice Department would prosecute (before ridicule from even conservative legal circles convinced her to walk it all back)."
Threats to free speech from MAGA-aligned actors echo the Red Scare and McCarthy-era tactics. Trump repeatedly labeled Democrats as "the radical left" or "communists" and accused them of conspiracies involving criminal immigrants and globalist elites. The president sought expanded powers and has begun using the justice system against disliked people, institutions, and ideas. Intimidation and shakedowns targeted academic institutions and law firms for hosting offensive viewpoints. After the assassination of an ally, Trump blamed the radical left without evidence. Advisers suggested critics could be inciting violence, and an attempt to create a prosecutable "hate speech" category was briefly proposed and then walked back.
Read at Intelligencer
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