Up First from NPR - The State of Free Speech in America

Episode Date: April 13, 2025

The first amendment is a cornerstone of American democracy. This week on The Sunday Story, we hear from people who feel their right to free speech might be changing under the Trump Administration. NPR's Morning Edition co-host Leila Fadel joins Ayesha Rascoe to share what she learned when she talked to teachers and students, pastors and scientists, and others about whether they feel emboldened or silenced in America today.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Ayesha Roscoe and you're listening to The Sunday Story, where we go beyond the news to bring you one big story. In a recent address to Congress, President Trump made a big claim about free speech. I've stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America. It's back. Days later, immigration agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident and Palestinian graduate student at Columbia University, for his participation in campus protests against Israel's war in Gaza. More international students who are here legally have been arrested since and face the possibility of deportation. Some First Amendment experts have observed these detentions with concern.

Insofar as the government is going after this person Khalil because of ideas that he expressed, we have a direct collision with the First Amendment. My colleague, Morning Edition co-host, Leila Fadl, wanted to take a closer look at how the right to free speech might be changing for different people in the US right now. She wanted to hear from people who feel more freedom to speak at this moment. I don't think that conservatives are just, in general,

much more willing to speak their mind. As well as those who feel they're being forced into silence They just sort of shut down the conversation by saying I'm putting you on a list. It's somewhat intimidating This past week Layla and her team at morning edition aired a series of conversations with educators and students Scientists and advocacy groups and others. After the break, she joins me to talk about some of what she learned about the current state of free speech in America. We'll be right back.

We're back with a Sunday story. Hi, Layla. Hi. Welcome. We're both in the same place for once. So, you know, the right to free speech is enshrined in the first Amendment of the Constitution. And I think most Americans would consider it untouchable. Why is this an important moment to take a closer look at the First Amendment?

Yeah, well, you're right, Ayesha. The First Amendment is enshrined in the Constitution. But throughout US history, there have been moments in which that right to free speech has really been threatened. People talk about the Red Scare, the McCarthy era, even John Adams in 1798 when he passed laws that he then used to prosecute journalists and dissidents who criticized him. So we started looking into this in recent months since Trump's inauguration and his long list of executive orders because the issue of free speech was coming up in so many conversations about immigration, scientific research, education, the role of the press.

And so we just wanted to get a sense of who was feeling silenced and why, and who was feeling really emboldened and empowered in this moment. And so we put a call out to our listeners and we got responses. And when we would reach back out to many of the people, what we noticed was a lot of them seemed really nervous to talk with us. Would you be comfortable with us using your full name? I'd rather not. Can we just use my first initial? I'm definitely worried about getting reported.

And these are teachers, researchers, pastors, you know, regular Americans who are in our communities. And that was really, at least for me, really surprising to hear in the US. It seems like there's a lot of fear in the air. Obviously there are deep political divisions in the US, but it seems like the ground has really shifted recently. And not that long ago during the Biden administration, it seemed like accusations of censorship

mostly came from people on the right. Right. People would talk about quote unquote wokeism as a tool for censorship, the idea that they could be cancelled and socially ostracized for having the wrong views or politically incorrect views. So how did you try to find some clarity on this moment in history? Yeah, I mean, the first thing we did was reach out to two First Amendment legal scholars, who really both are seen as advocates for that amendment

and for free speech, but they come from different perspectives. One is Lee Bollinger, and he's the former president of Columbia University, and we all know what's happening with Columbia University right now. They've had their funding threatened. They've made major overhauls of their security and protestor rules to try to comply with the Trump administration's guidance to get that funding back. And they

also agreed to the Trump administration's demand that they appoint a provost to provide oversight now over departments that teach about the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. By the way, none of those areas of study are the ones that were getting the federal funding. And Bollinger is seen as one of the foremost scholars on the First Amendment and free speech in this country. I always say, you know, nobody is born believing in the First Amendment. You know, we have to learn that. And so it's a continual effort by a democracy. And then we also reached out to Jonathan Turley. He's another very respected legal scholar on the First Amendment. He's often on Fox News as a commentator. And he recently wrote

a book called The Indispensable Right, Free Speech in an Age of Rage. Arguably the most revolutionary moment of the American Revolution came with the First Amendment. What was done in the First Amendment had never been done before and today it remains revolutionary. And they really had different perspectives on when they have felt that speech is threatened in this modern time. So in Bollinger's view, the danger is clearly right now. I'm very alarmed by efforts to get media, major media, to become more silent. I'm worried about intrusions into university decision-making, traditional doctrines of academic freedom.

I'm worried about threats of prosecution and other types of means of quelling dissent. He talked about how there's a moment like every 20, 30 years where the First Amendment free speech is really threatened. And he says the US is going in that direction now. You're really using the enormous power of the federal government to force people not to talk in certain ways and to think in certain ways. All of that has a chilling effect, it's called, on speech and on independent institutions in the society.

Now Turley, he argues it was actually the Biden administration that was anti-free speech. And he points to something we hear a lot from Republicans and Trump allies that on social media, conservative voices were being censored. And they say there was collusion with the government to make sure these voices were shut out or sidelined in academia, on social media. What happened during the Biden administration is that you had a level of cooperation, coordination

between the government and these other entities, that the effect was that thousands were censored. Now, Layla, this charge of censorship on social media platforms, that's something we've heard a lot from Republicans and Trump allies. But a Supreme Court decision last year on procedural grounds rejected a lower court's broad assertion that social media companies were making censorship decisions at the behest of the government, though they did acknowledge that the government played a role in at least some of the platform's moderation choices. What else

did Turley say? The other thing that Turley said is he sees Trump as a possible ally in free speech. Our greatest allies tend to be people who were subject to censorship. Trump is an example of that. He was banned from social media. But he is still withholding judgment about where this administration will land on free speech. Well, it's too early to tell whether the Trump administration will make free speech truly part of its legacy in the second term.

So you heard there very different perspectives from Bollinger and Turley about when free speech has been threatened, under which administrations. But there was a topic where they really kind of agreed. And that is the topic that you mentioned, the students that we've seen on visas or green card holders who are being detained and possibly deported, having their visas revoked over what it seems like is their choice to protest or express a point of view about the Gaza war.

These students, including these permanent residents, are allowed to protest in favor of Palestine, to criticize Israel. That's part of the core protections that define us as a people. Insofar as the government is going after this person, Khalil, because of ideas that he expressed, we have a direct collision with the First Amendment. And so if that's the case, if it really is about what they expressed, what their viewpoint is, that would be a violation of the First Amendment. So they're watching for that. So I should say the administration is saying actually the reason these students are having their visas revoked or possibly their green cards revoked is because the Secretary of State

can do that if they deem someone's presence in this country a threat to US foreign policy a threat to national security and The administration accuses many of them of being aligned with Hamas, which is a US designated terrorist organization. These students have all denied being connected to Hamas, and none of them have been charged with a crime. And we keep hearing contradictory statements. And so we've tried to get clarity from the administration with some direct asks, and so far haven't heard back. So you got these two experts who have different perspectives

but agree that they're concerned about these recent detentions. Yeah. But you also talk to people who feel emboldened to speak right now. And who are those people who feel emboldened? And I guess what were their fears before about like what would happen to them

if they were speaking out? Yeah, I mean, we spoke to college Republicans at UC Berkeley and you know this is known as a very liberal campus it has that reputation and I spoke to Miguel Muñiz. He's a leader of the college Republicans at the University and he described other students reaction to their presence on campus as not exactly welcoming. So I'd say there's varying degrees of physical harassment, right?

You're not always going to have someone pushing you. But as far as like coming up, grabbing signs out of people's hands, taking them away, I'd say if we have four people tabling, it happens to one person every day we table. And he says nowadays they feel like, okay, it's shifting a little bit. They can go out, they can give out their flyers more openly.

They still get harassed. They said it's not a sea change, but there's been a spike in enrollment in not just their club, but there's also been a spike at other campuses across California. And this is another student leader of the college Republicans, Martin Bertaio.

I can speak for the vast majority of my members when I say that. People are generally more, feel more free speaking their beliefs. I also spoke to members of another group that feel freer now, Moms for Liberty, which is an organization that describes itself as a parental rights organization. It's also been described by groups like Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups as extremist. They push for things like book bannings

and most of the books that have been pushed to be banned are by authors of color or LGBTQ authors. They're also seen as anti-inclusion for students who are from more marginalized communities. These are all labels the group rejects. And I spoke to Tina Descovich, she's a co-founder of Moms for Liberty. And she said there were multiple attacks

on their organization during Biden's presidency. And that started on social media. We were shut down on Facebook, our Twitter account was frozen. And then shortly after that, PayPal froze all of our money. Moms for Liberty came to be at the height of the pandemic when parents were really frustrated with masking policies, with school closures.

And it was also a time where there are a heightened amount of threats of violence against school board members. And so this group has also framed the FBI's previous investigations into those types of violent threats against school board members as a politically motivated campaign to silence parents and organizations like theirs. Parents were just showing up, trying to voice their opinions,

sometimes not really that nice to school board members. They were angry about things that were going on with their children, but in no way, shape, or form should they have had the DOJ, the federal government coming after them. But things are very different now. There were representatives from Moms for Liberty in the White House when the president signed

an executive order that aims at eliminating the Department of Education, another executive order that banned transgender athletes from playing on women's and girls' sports teams. And they endorsed an announcement from the Department of Education recently announcing the NDEI portal. And that's a portal where pretty much anyone in your community or beyond can go on this website and report educators if they see instances of diversity, equity, inclusion lessons in the school. And this is part of a larger effort by the Trump administration to just root it out. You know, they've threatened federal funding to schools

that they think are doing these types of programs. Well, it seems like a lot of this is playing out in education, in schools. Obviously, there's been talks for the past few years about how you teach about race in the classroom. So what is that atmosphere in public school classrooms? Yeah, I mean, when I was speaking to a teacher who was afraid of the NDEI portal that I just mentioned, she found out about it and she thought,

oh my gosh, what if I get reported and what are the consequences? Does it mean I just lose, you know, I can't teach anymore? Will I lose my job? And so she found herself censoring herself in her social studies class where she teaches history. I have to be very careful with the time I allow students to speak, what I'm allowing them to say, when to shut things down because it's going to get too controversial.

And so when her kids started making connections or saying things that might be not positive about the administration, she would just shut it down. There are times where I just have to tell them, we have to stop talking about this now. We can't continue on with this conversation or I just have to change the subject so that we can move into something else. She just didn't want to feel like she was running a rye of these very vague guidelines. And she didn't want to use even her first running a rye of these very vague guidelines. And she didn't want to use even her first name with us because she was so scared of what repercussions

might exist. She asked us only to identify her with her first initial E. Now, we reached out to the Department of Education, of course, about the intentions of this end DEI portal and about what would happen. You know, if somebody gets reported, what's the process look like? And what are the possible penalties for that? And we so far haven't gotten a response to those repeated requests. We spoke to another teacher in Idaho.

Her name's Sarah Inama, she teaches sixth grade. And she had a sign up in her classroom and it said, everyone is welcome here. And the letters were multi-colored and there were hands up with little hearts in the middle She had a sign up in her classroom and it said, everyone is welcome here. And the letters were multicolored and there were hands up with little hearts in the middle and each hand was a different skin tone. She'd had it up for years in her classroom and one day the principal and vice principal were going through the hallway looking for things that might not comply with new parameters

and they decided it was controversial. No parents had complained, nothing like that, and they told her you need to take it down. And so she did, she took the sign down. I've lost sleep over this, I can't stop thinking about it. It's just so wrong, I just felt so gross feeling complacent in it. She told me, I just don't want my students to think

that I no longer believe in what that sign said, that they're all welcome here, no matter what their background is. So you put the poster back up. Yeah, I did. I just feel like if you don't stand up for what you really, truly believe to your core, what is more important than that. I just fundamentally felt like this was just like there was no other option for me. So we did ask the school district what happened.

They pretty much confirmed I-Nama's account of the way things happened and they said it wasn't the words everyone is welcome here on the sign that they found problematic. It was the different colors of the letters and the different skin tones of the hands. They said it could be, quote, determined to potentially express viewpoints regarding specific identity groups. This is quite a statement.

Did that teacher keep her job? Yeah, she's still teaching. She's gotten a lot of support from the community, and that sign is still up. I guess my thought is, well, how can these different views coexist where everyone can feel heard, right? Did anyone you talked to have a view for how these things can coexist?

How can you have moms for Liberty and moms for DEI and them both be able to talk as much as they want? Yeah, I mean, I think that's these fundamental questions, right? You know, I went back to Tina Deskovic from Moms for Liberty, which is the group that endorsed this portal and is anti-DEI in schools. And I asked her, what about the people who feel silenced by things like the NDEI portal? And she told me, you know, they should fight for their right, legally fight for their right

that they have to free speech, just like we fought for our First Amendment right. If anyone in America is being silenced in the way that we were silenced the last several years, they need to do the things that we do. They need to organize. They need to petition their government. We have filed lawsuits. If they feel like the government's being weaponized against them, they absolutely should stand up and they should use their voice.

After the break, where else are people feeling silenced? And how are they responding? Stay with us. We're back with the Sunday story. So Layla, we've talked about some of the dynamics shifting on college campuses and in public education, but what are some of the other areas and places where people have felt this silencing or have felt concerns about their speech? I talked to this pastor in Florida and everybody knows him as Maynard.

He's retired. He's another person who didn't want me to use his full name because he said he didn't want to endanger his family or members of the churches he preaches at. He's somebody who kind of fills in now since he's retired, still gives a sermon here or there when pastors are on vacation. And he said, now, when he goes and gives sermons, if a person doesn't like what he said, how he's interpreted the Bible, the message he's giving that day, they'll walk up to him and say, I'm gonna put you on a list.

I have no clue what that means, but it's intimidating when someone comes up to you and they're clearly not agreeing with something you've talked about, whether it's showing compassion to refugees or to homeless people or to migrant workers. And they just sort of shut down the conversation by saying, I'm putting you on a list. And when I get put on a list, is that going to endanger me or my family? And then another day, he was preaching a sermon around the idea that, you know, you love your neighbor as you love yourself, and you even love your enemy, which is a very, very difficult thing to do. And that was his sermon that day.

So I gave some examples of how we can at least begin to show respect and dignity to people who profess themselves to be our enemies. And at the end of the service, this little old lady came up to me and said, nowhere in the Bible does it teach her to love our enemies, and she wasn't going to do it. And I had to present to her the fact that I had just read from scripture before the sermon that we are indeed called to this challenge, difficult challenge to love our enemies. And her response, much to my surprise, she just spat at me and she got me right in smacking the face.

Oh my gosh. What is it? What type of church is this? I mean, with the churches, the church I've been in, you don't even play with no pastor like that. You don't even come up on the pastor like that. Yeah. Not allowed.

Yeah. I mean, he was very, it was, it was very illuminating. He'd never had this experience in his life, but in this climate, that happens to him. We also talk to lawyers, including the lawyers that are representing people in many of these immigration cases who worry about sanctions for the fact that they are taking up cases against the government at a time law firms are making deals with the Trump administration so they won't deal with any retribution or ramifications for cases they took up that Trump saw as against him.

I mean, Aisha, also it's the media, the press, the job that we do every day is to serve our listeners and ask the hard questions of those in power and reflect the nation as it is. And so we've seen moves that seem threatening to the press. NPR, the New York Times, Politico and others were kicked out of their Pentagon offices and replaced. And then for the first time, the president is picking the pool of reporters that cover his activities rather than the press picking them.

So that could lead to him being like, oh, I'm going to pick these four people because they cover me in the way that I like, which would go against a free press. And you know, President Trump has made it pretty clear that he will go after the media or perceived political enemies if he feels that they're treating him unfairly. He spoke on the floor of the Justice Department saying that he thinks what CNN and MSNBC are doing is illegal or should be illegal. And he's saying that inside the Justice Department.

And so there are big questions about the media as well and our role in this moment. I guess like, can we talk about the stakes here? Yeah. Because it does seem like when we were talking about cancel culture, that was serious. People, some people lost their jobs or people lost income. Certainly everyone will say threats go all over the place,

especially online. But what are, what is at stake at this moment? And what are the consequences that people are facing? Yeah, I mean, I think it's really important not to minimize what happens when somebody gets quote unquote canceled over speech, the larger public has decided is unacceptable, right? I mean, people are barred from certain social media accounts

maybe, they maybe lose their job, maybe lose friends, are completely sidelined. But what I'm hearing from a lot of people now who feel the chilling is not that the pushback is coming from the public. This is coming from the government. It isn't that they're getting canceled. It's that they're being told if you use these words, if you cancelled, it's that they're being told if you use these words, if you have this viewpoint, if you use this speech, you're not going to get federal funding. You're going to face retribution. So, how are people reacting to these threats? You know, what we heard a lot of was self-censorship. Like before you even figure out what the consequences are,

just try to get in line. So, oh, it looks like this executive order is saying all of this type of language would probably be unacceptable. Let me take climate change out of my report. Let me take any mention of woman, of non-binary. Equity. Equity, inclusion, diversity, you know, things that they feel they need to have in their research in order to continue it.

You know, we spoke to one researcher who said, you know, if I can't look at the inequities, I can't do the work. And so, she- But maybe that's the point. Maybe that's the point. And there was one woman who wouldn't even let us tape her. You know, first she was like, well, maybe you can distort my voice. And then she didn't want even that. And she said, I'm sitting here trying to get this FEMA grant. And I'm going through with a thesaurus, trying to look for a different way to say ecologist, trying to look for a different way to say, to talk about tribes because they work with

native tribes. And then she was like, I don't want to go on tribes because they work with native tribes. And then she was like, I don't want to go on tape because I'm a dual citizen. And so I'm worried that if I say something and I'm coming back from Canada, she's a dual US and Canadian citizen, there could be some problem because of what I'm seeing happening with visa revocations. Of course, she's a citizen, but she's still worried. And so I think it's a lot of sort of getting in line before there are consequences.

So when NPR reached out to the White House for comment on accusations of censorship and using federal funding to control what scientists research, they responded with a statement pointing out that President Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office, protecting free speech, and they said,

he will continue to fight against censorship while evaluating all federal spending to identify waste, fraud, and abuse. But then we found some people who were like, nope, I'm gonna stand up. The more I thought about it, the more outraged I became. We spoke to this woman, Karen Ortiz. She's an administrative judge

at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. So, you know, she would be who you would go to if you had a problem at work. Maybe you faced discrimination and you wanted it redressed. You would go to somebody like Karen Ortiz. And on his first day in office, Trump signed this executive order that declared that the US government now only recognizes

two sexes, male, female. And about a week after that executive order, Ortiz says she received this directive from her direct supervisor to pause all their LGBTQ cases in New York and send them to Washington for further review. I was seething. And so she decided to stand up and say no, and she, you know, hit reply all, sent an email back to her boss and the entire agency. The subject line was, this is not normal in all caps. And I said, we are federal employees answerable to the people of the United States, not Elon

Musk. Please resist. Do not comply with their illegal mandates. I will not stand idly by ringing my hands when we have really important work to do for the American people. I know I risk a lot personally by even just sending this email,

but I deeply care for all of you and the American public. It's time for us to embody the civil rights work we were hired to do and honor the oath to the constitution that we all took. And are you still in your job? I am. I am. I'm still standing and I make it a point to be in the office as much as possible

to show my face, to be on Zooms or Teams meetings with my face so my colleagues can see I'm still standing and it's and it's our duty to uphold these laws. And when people in leadership are cowering and too scared to say anything, it's okay for rank and file to speak up. Leila, you've spent many years of your career reporting from other countries. Are you hearing any echoes from

your reporting abroad? I mean, in the US, we've always said, you know, it's a free country. You know, it's a free country. You can say whatever you want. Yeah, like, but are you seeing some maybe echoes of what you've seen in other countries? Yeah, I've worked in countries where the consequences are extremely severe for criticizing governments, right? In Syria, you were actually disappeared. Nobody knew where you went, and you showed up often dead or never. We saw mass graves from that regime.

In Egypt, same thing. You could end up in house arrest. Anybody could file a suit against you, and the prosecutor will pick it up if it's something critical of the government, and you could end up in house arrest. Anybody could file a suit against you and the prosecutor will pick it up if it's something critical of the government and you could end up in jail for a speech. Free press. There was no thriving free press. There was a demonization of civil society organizations that were working on critical work that documented human rights abuses. And what I will say is when we did this call out to our listeners saying, how do you feel? Do you feel free to speak in this moment? Do you feel less free to speak?

I was so shocked, our entire team was so shocked to read through all of these responses and see how many people didn't feel safe saying this is my full name and this is what I do. That is something new in the United States. I've worked here for a long time, I've worked abroad for a long time, and that is something familiar to me in countries

where I did live. And the other thing that is familiar is often when the governments couldn't deal with the consequences, the social consequences from the republic that they served, they would scapegoat and demonize the organizations or the press that reported on what was happening.

I remember doing an interview in Egypt and there had been so much time spent on demonizing the foreign press as people who wanted to destroy the country and they were anti-Egyptian and they didn't love Egypt, that I would have people grab my notebook out of my hand or scream at me because they believed that it wasn't me trying to find facts and information

and share that with the world, it was me trying to destroy Egypt. And that feels familiar. Well, thank you for this illuminating series and conversation. You know, it's not an overstatement to say that this is one of the most critical and important questions of this moment and of this time.

And thank you for doing the work on it. Thank you so much for having me. If you want to spend more time thinking about the nuances of free speech in America, our colleagues at NPR's Through Line podcast have an episode that gets at the question, what exactly is free speech? The answer to that question has changed over the course of American history. It's a story that travels through world wars and culture wars from the highest courts to the Ku Klux Klan. Dig into the history of the First Amendment on NPR's Throughline podcast,

wherever you listen to podcasts. This episode of The Sunday Story was produced by Justine Yan with help from Taylor Haney and Kyle Gajago-Mackie. It was edited by Liana Simstrom and Arzu Resvani. Audio engineering by James Willett. The Sunday Story team includes Andrew Mambo and our senior editor Jenny Schmidt. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. Up first is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your

week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend. Wanna hear this podcast without sponsor breaks? Amazon Prime members can listen to Up First sponsor free through Amazon Music. Or you can also support NPR's vital journalism and get Up First Plus at plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org.