The First Amendment, under constant attack by President Trump, is so fundamental to our democracy that it’s impossible to imagine America without its freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly and petition.
These are cherished freedoms. We are reminded daily never to take them for granted.
Trump isn’t the first president who could not stand criticism and wanted to jail journalists. John Adams actually did it, but he and his Federalist Party were wiped out in the bitter election of 1800 and never won the White House again.
‘Dangerous as hell’
There’s still a limit to what Americans will bear — a good thing. Corporate America heard the message this week. Whether Trump and Republicans in Congress did remains to be seen.
It was in that spirit of 1800 that public outrage — including boycotts — prompted Disney to put Jimmy Kimmel back on ABC Tuesday night. His suspension was appalling and entirely unjustified.
Trump’s FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, had exhausted even Ted Cruz’s indulgence when he threatened to take away the licenses of TV stations that didn’t silence Kimmel.
The Texas senator called it “dangerous as hell … for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying.”
Taken off the air? for what?
It shouldn’t matter what Kimmel said, but he criticized Trump and other MAGA figures, without naming them, for disclaiming Charlie Kirk’s accused murderer without evidence of his motives or his current politics. Trump, exploiting the tragedy, has threatened a nakedly unconstitutional assault on left-wing groups.
On Trump’s example, school boards and universities are firing teachers and professors for speaking their minds about Kirk — as if the First Amendment no longer applies to them.
The administration’s attack on the Bill of Rights is unrelenting.
Trump forced out a U.S. district attorney who refused to bring unfounded charges against some of his perceived enemies. He publicly demanded his servile attorney general, Pam Bondi, indict them “NOW!!!” Bondi has since announced that district attorney’s interim replacement — a personal lawyer of Trump’s with no prosecutorial experience.
Pentagon censorship
Trump’s defense secretary threatens to strip journalists’ credentials and bar them unless they sign an unconscionable pledge to report only what the Pentagon approves. It’s unconstitutional. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should be impeached if he carries out this threat.
Trump himself says broadcasters who criticize him should lose their licenses and critical protesters should be jailed. He still petulantly bars AP from the Oval Office and media pools over the trivial “Gulf of America” issue.
Trump and his lawyers attack press freedom with baseless lawsuits that are meant to be costly to defend, such as the $15 billion claim against the New York Times that a judge in Tampa dismissed last week for its sloppiness.
“A complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective — not a protected platform to rage against an adversary,” U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday wrote.
A unanimous Supreme Court decision last year should have put Trump and his FCC chairman on notice not to use federal licensing power to censor.
The court rightly rebuked a former New York state official for trying to force insurance companies to stop doing business with the National Rifle Association.
The First Amendment, wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, “prohibits government officials from wielding their power selectively to punish or suppress speech, directly or (as alleged here) through private intermediaries.”
It goes with the territory
Most presidents have sparred with a free press. That is how it’s supposed to work. But with few exceptions — Nixon, for one — they didn’t plot retaliation. The sturdy Abraham Lincoln shrugged it off.
“If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business,” Lincoln once said.
State-sanctioned censorship is a well-traveled road to perdition. Early in Hitler’s dictatorship, German editors and correspondents were ordered what to print by the Propaganda Ministry. Defiant newspapers were banned.
On the eve of World War II, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels banned five actors and cabaret emcees.
What probably bothered him most, the New York Times wrote from Berlin, “is that they deftly, but unmistakably, caricatured some gestures, poses and physical characteristics” of Nazi leaders, “sometimes with bon mots that made the rounds of the country.”
It’s the same role that Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and other late-night comics have filled so well.
Laughter is often the most potent medicine for what ails a nation. The best politicians can laugh at themselves. The worst of them tend to be humorless — and in this case, highly dangerous.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
