Trustees at Nassau Community College are poised to file a lawsuit after the State University of New York’s Board of Trustees denied their presidential pick.
At a special meeting on Sunday, the Nassau Community College Board of Trustees unanimously voted to allow the board chair to file a lawsuit challenging the SUNY board’s decision, with one board member absent, Newsdayreported. Earlier this month, SUNY trustees voted unanimously, with three members absent, to reject Maria Conzatti, who has run the college as interim or acting president for almost four years. A SUNY official told Newsday it was the first time the system’s board disapproved a presidential nominee.
The resolution voted on asked that Conzatti’s appointment by Nassau Community College’s board be “disapproved” with no further explanation.
“SUNY is committed to excellent leadership for all of our campuses and the success of our students, and we will vigorously defend ourselves against any frivolous lawsuit,” a spokesperson for the system said in a statement to Inside Higher Ed.
The college’s Student Government Association also passed a measure on Monday expressing “gratitude and appreciation” for Conzatti while also acknowledging the SUNY board vote and encouraging the college to “conduct an equitable, transparent and expeditious search for a new permanent president.”
The conflict comes amid broader tensions between the college’s faculty union and the administration over the consolidation of academic departments and a union contract that expired in August, among other issues. The union sued the college last year arguing the elimination of 15 department chairs violated state regulations, but a judge dismissed the case. The union has since appealed.
Nassau has also reported less-than-optimal student outcomes in recent years. It has the lowest two-year graduation rate and second lowest three-year graduation rate among community colleges in the SUNY system, 9.4 percent and 23.6 percent respectively.
Imagine a fourth-grade classroom in which the teacher uses AI to generate a video of Ronald Reagan explaining his Cold War strategy. It’s history in living color, and the students lean in, captivated. Now imagine that same teacher facing thousands of dollars in damages under the proposed NO FAKES Act because the video looks too real.
That’s not sci-fi. It’s a risk baked into this bill. The NO FAKES Act, introduced this year in both the House and Senate, would create a new federal “digital replication right” letting people control the use of AI-generated versions of their voice or likeness. That means people can block others from sharing realistic, digitally created images of them. The right can extend for up to 70 years after the person’s death and is transferred to heirs. It also lets people sue those who share unauthorized “digital replicas,” as well as the companies that make such works possible.
A “digital replica” is defined as a newly created, highly realistic representation “readily identifiable” as a person’s voice or likeness. That includes fully virtual recreations and real images or recordings that are materially altered.
The bill bans unauthorized public use or distribution of “digital replicas.” But almost all of the covered “replicas” are fully protected by the First Amendment, meaning Congress cannot legislate their suppression.
Can someone own a voice? Breaking down the right of publicity.
What to do if a company makes a copy of your voice and profits from it without your permission.
The bill does list exceptions for “bona fide” news, documentaries, historical works, biographical works, commentary, scholarship, satire, or parody. But there’s a catch. News is exempt only if the replica is the subject of, or materially relevant to, the story. At best, this means any story relating to, say, political deepfakes must be reviewed by an attorney to decide if the story is “bona fide” news and the deepfake is sufficiently relevant to include in the story itself. At worst, this means politicians and other public figures will start suing journalists and others who talk about newsworthy replicas of them, if they don’t like what the person had to say.
Even worse, the documentary, historical, and biographical exceptions vanish if the work creates a false impression that it’s “an authentic [work] in which the person actually participated.” That swallows the exception and makes any realistic recreations, like the fourth-grade example above, legally radioactive.
The reach goes well beyond classrooms, too. Academics using recreated voices for research, documentarians patching gaps in archival footage, artists experimenting with digital media, or writers reenacting leaked authentic conversations could all face litigation. The exceptions are so narrowly drawn that they offer no real protection. And the risk doesn’t end with creators. Merely sharing a disputed clip can also invite a lawsuit.
That’s a digital heckler’s veto whereby one complaint can erase lawful speech.
The law also targets AI technology itself. Section 2(c)(2)(B) imposes liability on anyone who distributes a tool “primarily designed” to make digital replicas. That vague standard can easily ensnare open-source developers and small startups whose generative AI models sometimes output a voice or face that resembles a real person.
Then there’s the “notice-and-takedown” regime, modeled after the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The bill requires online platforms to promptly remove or disable access to any alleged unauthorized “digital replica” once they receive a complaint, or risk losing legal immunity and facing penalties. In other words, platforms that don’t yank flagged content fast enough can be on the hook, which means they’ll likely delete first and ask questions never. That’s a digital heckler’s veto whereby one complaint can erase lawful speech.
On paper, the NO FAKES Act just looks like a safeguard against misleading and nonconsensual deepfakes. In practice, it would give politicians, celebrities, and other public figures new leverage over how they’re portrayed in today’s media, and grant their families enduring control over how they can be portrayed in history.
And let’s not forget that existing law already applies to digital replicas. Most states already recognize a right of publicity to police commercial uses of a person’s name, image, or likeness. Traditionally, that protection has been limited to overtly commercial contexts, such as advertising or merchandising. The NO FAKES Act breaks that guardrail, turning a narrow protection into a broad property right that threatens the First Amendment.
Creativity cannot thrive under constant permission. New mediums shouldn’t mean new muzzles.
AI-generated expression, like all expression, can also be punished when it crosses into unprotected categories such as fraud or defamation. Beyond those limits, government restrictions on creative tools risks strangling the diversity of ideas and free speech makes possible.
Creativity cannot thrive under a constant need for permission. New mediums shouldn’t mean new muzzles.
President Donald Trump agreed to a critical minerals deal with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: Imago.
There has been much excitement since Australia signed a landmark agreement with the United States last month to expand cooperation on critical minerals and rare earth elements.
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FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is once again abusing his position to try to assert government control over public discourse, spuriously invoking the “public interest” standard to selectively target speech the government dislikes.
President Trump has recently called for the FCC to revoke ABC’s broadcast license because he does not like the way the network — and Jimmy Kimmel in particular — speaks about him. Just yesterday, Trump suggested to a reporter that Attorney General Pam Bondi’s statement about prosecuting “hate speech” might mean she will “go after” ABC “because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hate.”
Now, Carr is threatening ABC for comments about Charlie Kirk’s shooter that Kimmel made during his opening monologue on Monday, insinuating that the shooter was part of “the MAGA gang.”
The FCC has no authority to control what a late night TV host can say, and the First Amendment protects Americans’ right to speculate on current events even if those speculations later turn out to be incorrect. Subjecting broadcasters to regulatory liability when anyone on their network gets something wrong would turn the FCC into an arbiter of truth and cast an intolerable chill over the airwaves.
I will never forget the student who—upon being given 15 minutes at the end of class to get rolling on the writing assignment I’d just given—whipped out their phone and starting furiously typing away.
At first, I thought this was an act of defiance, a deliberate wasting of time I’d been generous enough to provide following a carefully constructed discussion activity that was meant to give students sufficient kindling to get the flames of the first draft flickering to life.
I said something about maybe texting people later and the student said that they were working on their draft, that they, in fact, first wrote everything on their phone. Not wanting to make a fuss in the moment, I shut up about it, but a week or so later in an individual conference I asked the student about their method, and they showed me the reams and reams of text in their phone’s Notes app.
The phone itself was a fright, the screen cracked, a particularly dense web of fractures at the bottom, but when I asked the student to show me how they used the app for writing, it became clear that they could type at a speed comparable or better to the average student on a computer keyboard.
I’d been teaching the writing process for my entire career, talking students through the steps and sequence to producing a satisfactory piece of work—prewriting, drafting, revision, editing, proofreading—with more detailed dives into each of those stages, but until that incident I didn’t fully appreciate that I shouldn’t be teaching the writing process per se, I should be giving students the kinds of challenges that allowed them to develop their own writing processes.
As I considered this distinction, I realized how truly idiosyncratic my own process is and how different it can be depending on the occasion and situation. An outside observer looking at how I put together a column or book or proposal would see all manner of inefficiency and declare my method … madness.
But the key thing about my method is that it’s mine, and I think I have sufficient proof that it works. It may continue to evolve over time, which I suppose we could equate with improvement, but it’s really just different.
My student’s strategy was rooted in resource constraints, both time and money. Typing on the phone had started as a way to get stuff done during brief in-between times when working as a bicycle delivery person for one of the downtown-Charleston sandwich shops. They’d capture a draft on the phone on the fly and then transfer it to a computer for further development. The phone text had notes like “put thing from that thing here” as place markers for sources or evidence.
I realized that this method required the student to fundamentally work from a place of their own thoughts and ideas, something that was actually at odds with some of their first-year writing classmates who had been conditioned to defer to their readings, seeing their job as students to prove that they’d read and (generally) understood the content, rather than building on that content with ideas of their own, as I’d been asking them to do.
At the time of the conference, the student didn’t even have a computer, having had theirs stolen and not having sufficient funds at the time to immediately replace it. The student had been using the terminals in the library computer lab for the nonphone work.
This conference also revealed the reason for the rather up-and-down nature of this student’s work that semester. This was a clearly curious and driven person who had a number of extra challenges at simply completing the work of college. The assignment we were working on at the time, an alternate history analysis where students had to take a past event, change some aspect of it and imagine a different future, was probably the most challenging experience of the semester, but according to my archives at least, it proved to be this student’s best work.
Writing the initial draft untethered from any sources or even being able to easily move between information online and the text on the screen required the student to think creatively and analytically in ways that unlocked interesting insights into their choice of subject. Because of fate and circumstance, and without me really planning it, this student was getting a high-level experience in how to harness their own mind.
I started thinking more deeply about the intersection between the affordances of the tools and the writing process. One of the biggest shifts in my method over the years was when I acquired an external monitor that allowed me to see two full pages of text simultaneously on screen. This was something I’d longed for for years but resisted because I’m cheap. I now have a hard time working without it.
This incident happened as I was also experimenting with approaches to alternative grading, so it became a natural fit to start asking students to reflect more purposefully on the literal mechanics of their writing process so they could identify missing needs that they might be able to fulfill.
At the time I hadn’t yet come up with my framework of the writer’s practice, but now I can see how integral asking students to be this mindful about their own process can be to the development of a practice.
It’s also a good route for introducing mindfulness into the choices they may make when it comes to using generative AI tools. If they understand their labor and its meaning, they will have the capacity to assess how using the tool may enhance or—what I think is more likely—distort their process. It is also a reminder to us to design challenges that encourage the kind of labor we want students to be doing.
Before we retreat to old technology that dodges these challenges, like blue books, I think we could do a lot of good by really leaning in to helping students see writing as an experience that will differ based on their unique intelligences, and that if they pay attention, if what they are doing matters, they can come to know themselves a bit better.
Across the country, Black fathers are too often seen as a threat when they speak up and advocate for their children. And it’s not just in courtrooms and on sidewalks — it’s happening in classrooms, daycares and schools.
I’ve spent my career in education and equity leadership, and I know this is part of a larger, troubling pattern. When Black parents — especially men — assert themselves in spaces not designed for them, they are too often perceived as “aggressive.”
Their advocacy is sometimes interpreted as “rude,” and their presence is framed as disruption rather than partnership, something that has played out in my own experience as a proud Black father of three.
This isn’t about one parent or teacher or even one moment. It’s about what happens when systems designed to support children carry embedded racial assumptions.
I’ll never forget picking my kids up from daycare during a lice outbreak. My wife and I had no experience dealing with lice, and I asked a few questions — just trying to understand what to expect. Instead of getting reassurance or guidance, I was met with suspicion, even subtle blame.
Or the time I raised a safety concern about an emotional child in my son’s class who had a pattern of throwing chairs. Rather than treating my concern as legitimate, it was brushed off — as if I were overreacting.
In both cases, my presence and voice weren’t welcomed. They were managed.
In a society in which Black men are still fighting to be seen as full participants in their children’s lives, we cannot ignore the role that bias plays in shaping who gets welcomed, who gets questioned and who gets believed. Daycares, schools, courts and society at large must actively affirm and restore the voices of Black fathers, rather than dismiss them.
Too often, Black men are portrayed as threats or criminals — rather than as nurturers and protectors. These images become mentally entrenched, shaping public attitudes and institutional responses. This persistent framing contributes to a cultural blind spot that brings confusion to the presence of Black fathers and negatively affects how they are treated in schools, courts and communities.
Despite this anti-Black bias, Black fathers defy stereotypes every day. Black dads, on average, are actually more involved in daily caregiving than fathers of other racial backgrounds, the National Health Statistics Reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes. Yet media representation has not caught up with this reality.
As a student pursuing a doctorate in education leadership and policy, I study how identity shapes access to opportunity. And I know that bias against Black men starts early — when we are boys. A 2016 Yale Child Study Center report found that preschool teachers, regardless of race, were more likely to monitor Black boys for misbehavior — even when no misbehavior was apparent.
And in Indiana, studies highlight that nearly four out of every five Black children in the state will be investigated for suspected maltreatment.
These are not just statistical disparities — they’re stories of fractured trust between families and the institutions meant to serve them.
I have explored the concept of “mega-threats” introduced by researchers Angelica Leigh and Shimul Melwani — high-profile, identity-relevant events that trigger lasting psychological stress for people who share that identity. Though typically used to describe major public tragedies, these threats can be individual and personal, too. When a Black father sees himself reduced to a stereotype — his parenting undercut, his words distorted — it becomes an embodied threat, one that lingers and works to fulfill the myth that Black fathers are absent. These corrosive interactions run counter to the heroic influence and legacy that Black men have within their communities as warm demanders — men who emphatically build relationships and uphold high expectations.
If we want to support children, we must support their families. That means ensuring that early childhood professionals are trained not just in child development but in cultural competence and anti-bias practices. It means separating assumptions from observations when writing reports.
And it means reflecting on how language like “rude” or “aggressive” can carry racial undertones that reinforce long-standing stereotypes.
In my work as an educator, leader and former coach, I’ve partnered with countless families across race and class lines. What all parents want — especially those from marginalized communities — is the assurance that when they show up, they’ll be heard, not judged. That their questions will be met with respect, not suspicion.
If we truly believe in family engagement, we must be honest about the ways our systems still punish the very people we say we want more of. Black fathers are showing up.
The question is: are we ready to see them clearly?
Craig Jordan is an educator and doctoral student at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College. A native of Gary, Indiana, he writes about equity, identity and systemic change in education. His work has been featured in IndyStar and Yahoo News.
This story about Black fathers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.
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Imperial College London, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge and UCL all maintain their places in the global top 10 and 17 of the total 90 UK universities ranked this year are in the top 100, two more than last year.
The University of Sheffield and The University of Nottingham have returned to the global top 100 for the first time since 2023 and 2024 respectively.
But despite improvements at the top end of the QS ranking, some 61% of ranked UK universities have dropped this year.
Overall, the 2026 ranking paints a picture of heightening global competition. A number of markets have been emerging as higher education hubs in recent decades – and the increased investment, attention and ambition in various places is apparent in this year’s iteration.
Saudi Arabia – whose government had set a target to have five institutions in the top 200 by 2030 – has seen its first entry into to top 100, with King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals soaring 34 places to rank 67th globally.
Vietnam, a country that is aiming for five of its universities to feature in the top 500 by the end of the decade, has seen its representation in the rankings leap from six last year to 10 in 2026.
China is still the third most represented location in the world in the QS World University Rankings with 72 institutions, behind only the US with 192 and the UK with 90. And yet, close to 80 institutions that are part of the Chinese Double First Class Universities initiative to build world-class universities still do not feature in the overall WUR.
Saudi Arabia currently has three institutions in the top 200, while Vietnam has one in the top 500. If these countries succeed in their ambitions, which universities will lose out among the globe’s top in five years’ time?
The financial pressure the UK higher education is facing is well documented. Universities UK (UUK) recently calculated that government policy decisions will result in a £1.4 billion reduction in funding to higher education providers in England in 2025/26. The Office for Students’s warning that 43% of England’s higher education institutions will be in deficit this academic year is often cited.
Some 19% UK university leaders say they have cut back on investment in research given the current financial climate, and an additional 79% are considering future reductions.
On a global scale, cuts like this will more than likely have a detrimental impact on the UK’s performance in the QS World University Ranking – the world’s most-consulted international university ranking and leading higher education benchmarking tool.
The 2026 QS World University Rankings already identify areas where UK universities are behind global competitors.
With a 39.2 average score in the Citations per Faculty area, measuring the intensity of research at universities, the UK is already far behind places such as Singapore, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Australia and Mainland China, all of which have average scores of at least 70.
In Faculty Student Ratio, analysing the number of lecturers compared to students, the UK (average score of 26.7) is behind the best performing locations such as Norway (73.7), Switzerland (63.8) and Sweden (61.8).
While Oxford, Cambridge and LSE all feature in the global top 15 in Employment Outcomes and 13 UK universities feature in the top 100 for reputation among employers, other universities across the world are improving at a faster rate than many UK universities.
While 74% of UK universities improved in the international student ratio indicator in 2022, the last few years have identified a weakening among UK institutions. In 2023, 54% of UK universities fell in this area, in 2024, 56% dropped and in 2025, 74% declined. And in 2026, 73% dropped.
The government in Westminster is already aware that every £1 it spends on R&D delivers £7 of economic benefits in the long term and, for that reason, it prioritised spending to rise to £22.6bn in 2029-30 from £20.4bn in 2025-26.
But without the financial stability at higher education institutions in question, universities will need more support going ahead beyond support for their research capabilities. Their role in developing graduates with the skills to propel the UK forward is being overlooked. The QS 2026 World University Ranking is already showing that global peers are forging ahead. UK universities will need the right backing to maintain their world-leading position.
American universities have long feared that the Chinese government will restrict its country’s students from attending institutions that cross Beijing’s sensitive political lines.
Universities still fear that consequence today, but the most immediate threat is no longer posed by the Chinese government. Now, as the latest punishment meted out to the Trump administration’s preeminent academic scapegoat shows, it’s our own government posing the threat.
In a May 22 letter, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced she revoked Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, meaning the university’s thousands of international students must transfer immediately or lose their legal status. Harvard can no longer enroll future international students either.
Noem cited Harvard’s failure to hand over international student disciplinary records in response to a prior letter and, disturbingly, the Trump administration’s desire to “root out the evils of anti-Americanism” on campus. Among the most alarming demands in this latest missive was that Harvard supply all video of “any protest activity” by any international student within the last five years.
Harvard immediately sued Noem and her department and other agencies, rightfully calling the revocation “a blatant violation of the First Amendment,” and within hours a judge issued a temporary restraining order against the revocation.
“Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country,” Noem wrote on X about the punishment. And on Tuesday, the administration halted interviews for all new student visas.
This is not how a free country treats its schools — or the international visitors who attend them.
Noem’s warning will, no doubt, be heard loud and clear. That’s because universities — which depend on international students’ tuition dollars — have already had reason to worry that they will lose access to international students for displeasing censorial government officials.
In 2010, Beijing revoked recognition of the University of Calgary’s accreditation in China, meaning Chinese students at the Canadian school suddenly risked paying for a degree worth little at home. The reason? The university’s granting of an honorary degree to the Dalai Lama the year before. “We have offended our Chinese partners by the very fact of bringing in the Dalai Lama, and we have work to resolve that issue,” a spokesperson said.
Beijing restored recognition over a year later, but many Chinese students had already left. Damage done.
Similarly, when UC San Diego hosted the Dalai Lama as commencement speaker in 2017, punishment followed. The China Scholarship Council suspended funding for academics intending to study at UCSD, and an article in the state media outlet Global Times recommended that Chinese authorities “not recognize diplomas or degree certificates issued by the university.”
This kind of direct punishment doesn’t happen very frequently. But the threat always exists, and it creates fear that administrators take into account when deciding how their universities operate.
American universities now must fear that they will suffer this penalty too, but at an even greater scale: revocation of access not just to students from China, but all international students. That’s a huge potential loss. At Harvard, for example, international students make up a whopping 27% of total enrollment.
FAQ: Responding to common questions about the fight between Harvard and the Trump administration
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Harvard vs. Trump isn’t just a headline, but a battle to decide whether the government can use funding to force ideological conformity. In this explainer, FIRE makes clear why not.
Whether they publicly acknowledge it or not, university leaders probably are considering whether they need to adjust their behavior to avoid seeing international student tuition funds dry up.
Will our colleges and universities increase censorship and surveillance of international students? Avoid inviting commencement speakers disfavored by the Trump administration? Pressure academic departments against hiring any professors whose social media comments or areas of research will catch the eye of mercurial government officials?
And, equally disturbing, will they be willing to admit that they are now making these calculations at all? Unlike direct punishments by the Trump administration or Beijing, this chilling effect is likely to be largely invisible.
Harvard might be able to survive without international students’ tuition. But a vast number of other universities could not. The nation as a whole would feel their loss too: In the 2023-24 academic year, international students contributed a record-breaking $43.8 billion to the American economy.
And these students — who have uprooted their lives for the promise of what American education offers — are the ones who will suffer the most, as they experience weeks or months of panic and upheaval while being used as pawns in this campaign to punish higher ed.
If the Trump administration is seeking to root out “anti-Americanism,” it can begin by surveying its own behavior in recent months. Freedom of expression is one of our country’s most cherished values. Censorship, surveillance, and punishment of government critics do not belong here.
In what legal experts are calling a landmark case for academic freedom, Harvard faculty and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging unconstitutional attempts to control campus speech and governance through threatened funding cuts.
The legal action, filed Friday, seeks to block the administration from withholding $8.7 billion in federal funding for Harvard University and its affiliated hospitals after demands that the university implement specific policy changes and restructure its operations.
According to court documents, the administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism issued a demand letter on April 3 outlining “immediate next steps” Harvard must take to maintain its “financial relationship with the United States government.” These demands reportedly extend far beyond addressing antisemitism, including new speech restrictions, elimination of all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and mandatory cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security.
“The First Amendment does not permit government officials to use the power of their office to silence critics and suppress speech they don’t like,” said Andrew Manuel Crespo, Morris Wasserstein Professor of Law at Harvard and general counsel of the AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter. “Harvard faculty have the constitutional right to speak, teach, and conduct research without fearing that the government will retaliate against their viewpoints by canceling grants.”
The lawsuit comes after the task force chair announced on Fox News in March that “the academic system in this country has been hijacked by the left, has been hijacked by the Marxists,” and threatened to “bankrupt these universities” by removing federal funding.
Harvard professors involved in the lawsuit claim the administration’s threats have already begun to impact academic freedom on campus.
“The research and teaching of Harvard faculty have already been chilled by the Trump administration’s attempt to coerce the university into changing its curriculum and governing structure,” said Dr. Kirsten Weld, professor of History and president of the AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter. “If Trump can threaten to withhold billions of dollars from our colleagues unless we stop teaching about diversity and inclusion, he can make the same threat to try and stop us from teaching about science, his critics, or anything else.”
The plaintiffs have requested an immediate temporary restraining order to prevent any funding cuts while the case proceeds.
The AAUP warns that allowing such governmental intrusion at Harvard could set a dangerous precedent for institutions nationwide.
“Our students and faculty members across the nation are terrified,” said Veena Dubal, AAUP General Counsel. “If the administration’s lawless and unconstitutional attempts to control speech and governance at Harvard are allowed to proceed, then any one of our institutions could be next.”
Dr. Todd Wolfson, president of the AAUP, characterized the administration’s actions as “an attack on democracy and economic mobility” with harms that “will be so irreparable that they will last generations.”
At the heart of the case is whether the federal government can legally condition billions in funding on compliance with policy demands that appear to target specific viewpoints and academic content.
Nikolas Bowie, Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law at Harvard and secretary-treasurer of the AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter, argues there is no legal basis for the administration’s actions.
“No law in this country permits President Trump to suspend billions of dollars from universities like Penn, Princeton, or Harvard simply because he doesn’t like their policies on transgender athletes, their research on climate change, or the constitutionally protected speech of their students and faculty.”
Legal experts note that the case could potentially reach the United States Supreme Court, given its significant First Amendment and separation of powers implications.
Given the Trump administration’s continued and varied assaults on the First Amendment, it is vital to monitor those attacks and then realize the gravity of the “sweeping and draconian sanctions” imposed by unconstitutional executive fiat. Vigilance is especially important, as New York Times investigative reporter Michael S. Schmidt has noted, because “Mr. Trump has employed tactics including lawsuits, executive orders, regulations, dismissals from government jobs, withdrawal of security details and public intimidation to take on a wide range of individuals and institutions he views as having unfairly pursued him or sought to block his agenda.”
Mindful of such matters, this installment of “Executive Watch” by professor Timothy Zick provides the most comprehensive and informed account of the current threats facing us up to now.
Of course, yet more posts are forthcoming. Meanwhile, it is worth heeding the sound advice recently offered by Dean Erwin Chemerinsky: “despite the risks of speaking out, silence itself comes at enormous cost.”
— rklc
My introductory post, which was published a little more than a month after Donald Trump took office for the second time, identified various areas in which his administration’s actions threatened First Amendment rights. At this point, even before the first 100 days of the second Trump administration have elapsed, we now have a much fuller picture of the nature and scope of the threat — and it’s even worse than we thought.
Media stories and commentary have covered a range of Trump administration policies and actions that threaten speech and press rights. Commentators have examined the attacks on media, law firms, government employees, and universities, among others. My last post discussed Trump’s abuse of the civil lawsuit to punish the media and others.
Considered in isolation, these actions raise troubling First Amendment concerns. But the whole threat to the First Amendment is far greater than the sum of its damaging parts. Combined, the administration’s actions represent a whole-of-government and whole-of-society effort to control whether and how Americans talk about certain ideas.
Trump 1.0 and the First Amendment
As it concerns the First Amendment, the fundamental difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0 is the extraordinary use of the levers of governmental power to suppress, dictate, and coerce viewpoints the president disfavors.
During the first administration, the threat to the First Amendment emanated primarily from the president’s own statements and threatened actions. Trump talked about “opening up” the libel laws to make it easier to sue media defendants. He waged a constant war on the press, which he referred to as “the enemy of the people.” He demanded loyalty, attacked those who disagreed with his views on patriotism and dissent, and threatened to punish media outlets by revoking their licenses. He also threatened to shut down social media platforms that fact-checked him.
Prof. Timothy Zick
During the 2016 presidential election, Trump called for de-naturalizing and jailing protesters who burned the U.S. flag. As president, he routinely denigrated protesters. During the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, Trump considered invoking the Insurrection Act to call up U.S. military personnel to quell protest-related civil unrest. He sent federal agents to Portland and other cities to police and quell protests. At one point during the demonstrations, Trump reportedly asked his then-secretary of defense why protesters couldn’t be shot. And, of course, after he lost the 2020 election he used his own speech to incite the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
It was clear during his first term that Trump had little or no tolerance for dissent, and a strong desire to impose his will on the media and other institutions. However, for the most part, he either didn’t or couldn’t effectuate that agenda. Perhaps this was because members of his administration talked him out of it, or perhaps because he was not yet familiar with the levers of power.
Trump 2.0 and executive orders
Trump 2.0 has been a vastly different story. Past presidents, including Trump, have used executive orders to exercise or augment their executive powers. They have set important agendas for the executive branch of government. However, no president has ever used executive orders to attempt to control what Americans can discuss, or how they speak about concepts regarding diversity, patriotism, anti-Semitism, gender, and other matters of public concern. And no president has been as successful at extending such an agenda across not just the federal bureaucracy but nearly every aspect of society.
Thus far, President Trump has issued eighteent Executive Orders, plus several accompanying “Fact Sheets,” that implicate First Amendment rights. Although some of the Orders are vague and/or thin on specifics, many target expression based on its viewpoint – a quintessential violation of the First Amendment.
Five of the Executive Orders target law firms based on their representation of clients and advocacy for causes the President disfavors.
Three Orders prohibit universities, companies, and others receiving federal funds from maintaining “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) policies and practices – including training, teaching, and supporting those ideas.
Trump’s Orders also target “anti-Semitic” speech by federal grantees and encourage universities to monitor “pro-jihadist protests” and campus “radicalism.”
An Executive Order requires that K-12 schools adopt “patriotic” curricula and further vows to withhold funding from any schools that teach that the United States is “fundamentally racist, sexist or otherwise discriminatory.”
Other Orders provide that resident aliens who express “hatred for America” or “bear hostile attitudes toward [American] citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles” are subject to deportation.
Two of Trump’s Executive Orders single out transgender individuals, banning them from military service and imposing restrictions on the genders they can use on U.S. passports. These Orders raise important equal protection concerns, but also bar individuals from communicating about their own gender identity.
Finally, the Administration’s cost-cutting and desire to control the flow of information have deeply affected the availability and distribution of information in the United States. Trump has ordered the disbanding of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, important outlets for furthering American interests abroad. Trump’s spending cuts have also decimated libraries, which are critical distributors of information. Trump recently issued an Executive Order that purports to remove “anti-American ideology” from the Smithsonian Museum.
TRUMP’S FIRST 80 DAYS Executive orders affecting free speech and press: 18 Federal agencies involved in enforcement: 20 Lawsuits raising First Amendment challenges: 30
The whole-of-government campaign
Standing alone, Trump’s executive orders represent a serious threat to the First Amendment. But the orders are backed by agency enforcement powers that drastically expand the danger.
Think of the executive orders as a general blueprint for an ideological and retributive campaign aimed at punishing enemies for speech, imposing governmental orthodoxy regarding race, gender, and other matters, and controlling the distribution of information. That blueprint is being enforced by all federal agencies under the president’s command. So far, that includes some twenty separate agencies, including:
Agencies across government are involved in enforcing Trump’s executive orders in areas ranging from private business to immigration. Ironically, the president’s ability to control and punish expression is due, in large part, to the size of the federal government he has targeted for downsizing or eradication.
The whole-of-society impact of the executive orders
Trump’s executive orders bind all federal agencies under his command. Agencies across regulatory areas have moved swiftly to scrub websites of offensive DEI language. Their efforts to comply with Trump’s directive have at times been comical. The Defense Department apparently removed material about the Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, because of its name. Agencies have also removed information about Jackie Robinson and other material that celebrates the accomplishments of black people and women. Taking a “chainsaw” approach to language in public-facing websites, agencies have removed information that does not comport with the president’s preferred terms and viewpoints.
“In a pre-election poll, respondents ranked ‘free speech’ among the top issues that were ‘very important’ in influencing their vote for president.”
FIRE/NORC poll of 1,022 Americans conducted Oct. 11-14, 2024
The federal government is an important source of information for issues relating to public health, the armed forces, employment, and other matters. Governments can determine what messages they want to communicate, including on websites they control, but those efforts can have harmful effects on the distribution of information to the public.
Trump’s orders have also limited the availability of information, both at home and abroad. They have silenced the nation’s voice in international spheres, cut off aid to libraries, and even demanded that museums change exhibits that convey “anti-American ideology.” Again, no president has ever used executive orders to so comprehensively control what can be seen, heard, or viewed.
Trump’s executive orders have also affected millions of individuals, entities, and institutions beyond federal agencies. Indeed, it is hard to overstate the breadth and depth of the activities covered by the existing executive orders — and they continue to be issued almost daily. The orders have already extended into every boardroom, classroom, breakroom, and laboratory in the United States. Businesses have shut down activities recognizing the value of a diverse workforce. Universities have scrubbed websites and materials of any references to the values of diversity in education. Legal counsel at some hospitals have even warned staff not to use “triggering” words like “vulnerable” or “diverse” to describe patients.
How Trump has expanded his power over expression
Four things account for the extraordinary scope and effect of the Trump administration’s campaign to control what Americans see, hear, and say regarding gender, race, and American history.
First, in contrast to Trump 1.0, the president has relied more extensively on executive orders as a means of governing. Trump’s more than 100 executive orders cover everything from the types of straws that can be used in federal buildings, the legitimate causes law firms can pursue, and the content of displays at the Smithsonian Museum.
“There . . . can be no question that the demands the administration is making of Harvard are intended to suppress protected expression, of various kinds. To avoid the loss of federal funds, Harvard will have to refrain from advocating for, or empowering others to advocate for, the viewpoint that diversity, equality, and inclusion are important educational and social values. It will have to change how it oversees faculty research and teaching, and what kinds of scholarly viewpoints it hires and promotes. And it will have to suppress student speech and association, including core political expression, more severely than it has chosen to do so far—or at least it will have to promise to do so.”
Second, the orders use the threat of lost federal funding as an enforcement mechanism. Federal funding touches nearly every aspect of American life. That includes education at all levels, health care, immigration, the practice of law, scientific research, and even farming.
Third, because the executive orders lack any meaningful specificity about concepts and ideas it targets, including “DEI” and “anti-Semitism,” no federal grantee can be sure which words, phrases, or ideas will result in a denial of critical funding. This lack of clarity has produced significant uncertainty at universities, hospitals, businesses, and other funding recipients. And that uncertainty has led to anticipatory compliance on a scale that federal anti-discrimination and other laws do not require.
Fourth, the administration has not provided the process required by federal law to deny or remove federal funding. This enhances the chill of agency enforcement by speeding up the denial of funds, leaving grantees with little recourse to contest allegations or charges prior to loss of funding.
Fifth, for many of the above reasons, the Orders have engendered a repressive fear in federal fund recipients — a fear, as Ronald Collins points out, that is “born of direct or veiled demands for loyalty” and the specter of punishment for dissent. Thus, words and phrases must be removed, lectures canceled, and “deals” inked that trade away law firms’ First Amendment rights for relief from facially retributive and unconstitutional Executive Orders.
To be sure, some will challenge these executive orders on First Amendment grounds. Indeed, nearly 30 lawsuits raising First Amendment claims have already been filed. But many more grantees will decide, as Columbia University and the Paul Weiss law firm recently have, to negotiate a settlement or comply with unlawful orders. Many others will comply in advance, lest they remain targets of the president’s ire and risk their funding and livelihoods.
This underscores just how widespread the effects on First Amendment rights and principles will turn out to be. By virtue of their breadth, vagueness, and procedural violations, Trump’s executive orders and threats of agency enforcement will produce far more suppression of speech than normal agency action — which is limited by, among other things, resource considerations and legal process requirements. Although lawsuits are an important check, the chilling and suppressive effects of the Trump administration’s campaign are much broader and deeper than courts alone can address or resolve.
The daily chaos of Trump 2.0 can readily distract us from the fuller picture in terms of threats to free speech. As Professor Stephen Vladeck has correctly observed, “it seems that chaos and disruption are themselves central to President Trump’s objective.” However courts ultimately rule after tiresome and delayed litigation, much damage will already be done, some of it even irreversible.
Make no mistake: What we have seen in the early days of Trump 2.0 is an unprecedented government-wide and society-wide broadside against fundamental First Amendment commitments. And there is no indication that the Trump administration’s campaign is going to end any time soon.
2024-2025 SCOTUS term: Free expression and related cases
Cases decided
Villarreal v. Alaniz(Petition granted. Judgment vacated and case remanded for further consideration in light of Gonzalez v. Trevino, 602 U. S. ___ (2024) (per curiam))
Murphy v. Schmitt (“The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for further consideration in light of Gonzalez v. Trevino, 602 U. S. ___ (2024) (per curiam).”)
TikTok Inc. and ByteDance Ltd v. Garland (The challenged provisions of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act do not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights.)
Review granted
Pending petitions
Petitions denied
Free speech related
Thompson v. United States (decided: 3-21-25/ 9-0 with special concurrences by Alito and Jackson) (interpretation of 18 U. S. C. §1014 re “false statements”)
This article is part of First Amendment News, an editorially independent publication edited by Ronald K. L. Collins and hosted by FIRE as part of our mission to educate the public about First Amendment issues. The opinions expressed are those of the article’s author(s) and may not reflect the opinions of FIRE or Mr. Collins.
