March 26, 2025

by Mari Marks

When we say the First Amendment is under attack, we are not being dramatic. Most of the egregious actions happening right now in the U.S. government and in the state of Florida can all be linked back to suppression of speech.

Growing up in the United States one of the most important values we are taught is our gift of freedom of speech. We are taught this is a right we must hold onto with all our might. In fact, it is so vital, and so sought after around the world, that I never believed it would be under attack by our very own government.

For over 100 years people have come to this country seeking our freedoms. They have heard about our freedom of speech, and dreamed of the day they could criticize their leaders, their laws, without fear of persecution, imprisonment, and oppression.

In some countries people are disappeared if they criticize the government. In some countries journalists are imprisoned for writing the truth. In some countries you can be picked up off the streets for having an opposition viewpoint. In American schools we show documentaries about these dictatorships and authoritarian rules. Then we celebrate the fact that it would NEVER happen here… or so we thought.

In the last year what we never believed possible is happening at an escalating rate. It started with the government telling our schools and universities what they could and could not teach. Then protestors were disciplined. Journalists were fired. Boycotts ruled illegal by state governments.

Now we have American citizens and permanent residents being taken into custody and disappearing, being deported with no due process. It started with one. Now if a visitor criticizes Trump, they can be detained and sent back to their country.

If you criticize Israel, you can be imprisoned. If you boycott companies complicit in genocide, you lose contracts and right to do business. If you are a student who thinks Palestinians are human beings and say so, you lose your scholarships, can face expulsion, or have your degree removed.

The state of Florida is trying to change its election laws, its petition rules, its amendment thresholds, all to remove your right to the First Amendment.

Last year at CPAC, Salvadoran President Bukele convinced a room full of powerful campaign financers that the United States had been poisoned and it had to be rooted out by Trump. He was right on one count. A poison has seeped into the United States, but it isn’t what they claim.

It is an engineered poison that is stripping away our institutions of justice and rule of law. It is a poison destroying this country from the inside out, and the best way to do that? Take away all of our First Amendment rights.

Because when you have lost the freedom of speech, press, assembly, boycott, protest, expression, and academics, then only one remaining voice retains power. It is a system that instills fear, instead of safety.

When you can silence the masses through fear, you can do anything you want.

In the world of political science, we have a clear alarm system, or a path rather, that we watch for as authoritarian regimes rise.

1. Silencing of the media

2. Investigations of critics and rivals

3. Removal of oversight institutions

4. Control of the judiciary

5. Concentration of power to a few

6. Sowing lies to instill fear and coercion

7. Break-down of democracy by slowly taking away liberties

This is not all on Trump. It has been a slow boiling of a frog by extremist leaders that have given rise to people like DeSantis and Trump. It is on their voters, and it is on the Democrats who refused to stand for human rights. Trump doesn’t have power unless people willingly give it over to him.

What we are seeing now, is a slow erosion that was systematically, and masterfully planned.

American citizens may not like drawing comparisons to other dictatorships from history, but that is what the oligarchs are counting on.

And that poison… it is doing it’s job.