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Testimony Highlights Trump Regime First Amendment Violations [1]
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Date: 2025-07-09
As reported by Politico, testimony in a case challenging the Trump Regime’s arrests and attempts to deport Palestinian scholars has revealed how sweeping Trump’s efforts to curtail Constitutionally protected speech are. Acting Chief of the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, John Armstrong’s deposition testimony gave examples of statements that, if you are a foreign student, could land you in American concentration camp. These statements included:
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
A call to boycott Israel.
Support for an arms embargo on Israel.
Calling Israel an “apartheid state.”
Saying that Americans are fat and evil.
I do not agree with the sentiment expressed in “from the river to the sea,” or for that matter the other speech listed. I generally support Israel. However, I recognize that the words, notwithstanding my distaste for them, are protected speech under the United States Constitution.
Armstrong said the words, “from the river to the sea,” are disqualifying because they could be viewed as a call for the destruction of Israel. “Could be” or could not be viewed that way. Could also be viewed as a call for a political solution reaching something like that vague stated aspiration. It could also be viewed as just generalized support for the independence of the Palestinian people.
Even assuming the expression might maybe possibly suggest the destruction of Israel, so what? I support the existence of Israel, but our Constitution mandates that others be allowed to disagree with me without being subject arrest and confinement without due process. What makes Israel uniquely protected from such sentiments? Stating support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could be viewed as a call for the destruction of Ukraine. Does that justify jailing a student who expresses such sentiments? If an Israeli student calls for the destruction of Iran, will that make him or her subject to instant imprisonment?
The same analysis can be applied to calls for arms embargoes, or economic boycotts. People in this country do that sort of thing all the time. Our Constitution certainly confers no special exceptions for speech critical of Israel.
Of course one claim is that speech against Israel is antisemitic. While I disagree, even if it is, so what? As repugnant as I find antisemitism, in America antisemitic speech is protected to the same degree as anti-Islamic speech. Would a Jewish Israeli student be confined and subject to deportation for saying something offensive about Mohammed? Or for that matter, Iran? After all, if one can’t criticize Israel because it is a Jewish state then how can our Constitution allow criticism of Iran when it is an Islamic state?
But what of speech that could be promoting violence? Donald Trump posted the parody song “Bomb Iran.” Lyrics include “went to a mosque, gonna throw some rocks.” Can a Palestinian student post a song whose lyrics generally glorify throwing rocks at a synagogue?
Finally, how can insulting Americans, by calling them “fat and evil” be grounds to arrest and imprison someone? It’s even at least partially true. Some Americans are fat, some Americans are evil, and at least some Americans are both. Some even “could be” president.
Certain speech is not Constitutionally protected. For purposes of this discussion, the relevant test is that articulated by the United States Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio. In that case, a member of the KKK openly advocated violence against blacks and Jews. Under the Brandenburg test even such openly hateful and violence advocating speech is protected unless it is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”
Perhaps standing before an angry mob and directing them to march on the Capitol based on the lie that their election been stolen, satisfies that standard, particularly when the same mob then violently overruns the Capitol. However, calls for boycotts, arms embargoes, (non-violent acts) and insulting Americans as fat lazy does not.
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