Trump directs federal agencies to attack his political opponents

• Trump targets ActBlue, the major fundraising platform used by Democratic candidates and many liberal organizations. Trump’s DOJ will investigate made up allegations of straw donations and foreign contributions. An investigation could severely limit political speech by crippling the party’s financial infrastructure and grassroots operations.

• Trump is invading the privacy of Americans by assembling a database of personal information taken illegally from a myriad of federal agencies. As a writer summarized about Trump building the foundation for a surveillance state, “Over the past 100 days, DOGE teams have grabbed personal data about U.S. residents from dozens of federal databases and are reportedly merging it all into a master database at the Department of Homeland Security.”  These actions violate the Federal Privacy Act of 1974.

Trump moves to deport protestors and activists 

• Trump has moved to deport  international university students who have protested U.S. policies in Gaza. A Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil was arrested in his university housing despite being a legal permanent resident,  over his peaceful protests against Israel's war in Gaza.

• A Turkish graduate student Rumeysa Öztürk was detained by masked agents in plainclothes as she walked to meet friends for dinner, over an op-ed about Gaza that she wrote in the Tufts University student newspaper. After several weeks being held by ICE, a federal judge ordered her immediate release, saying that  Ozturk had made significant claims of due process violations and that “Her continued detention cannot stand.”

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he has revoked more than 300 visas and has defended the decisions to international students who participated in protests of U.S. policy.  But in a major reversal, Trump reversed the order after a wave of court challenges. 

• A federal judge ordered the release of another Columbia student, Mohsen Mahdawi, who was arrested by immigration authorities because he participated in protesting around Gaza. 

• Trump’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is screening immigrants’ social media accounts for antisemitic content as grounds to deny visa and green-card applications.  This will allow the government to target political speech it dislikes.

Trump freezes billions of dollars from universities over free speech policies

• Trump has frozen or threatened to freeze several billion dollars in federal grants and funding to universities based on his disagreement with their handling of protests on campus around U.S. policy in Gaza. This includes $1billion at Cornell, $790 million at Northwestern. Other universities whose funds have been frozen or threatened include  Other schools that have had funds threatened include Brown, Columbia, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton.

• Trump warned 60 universities of potential enforcement actions over investigations into allegations of antisemitism. Each school also has investigations pending into accusations of racial discrimination.

• Trump’s Education Secretary explicitly said that the administration is focusing on elite universities, which Trump has criticized as bastions of left-wing thought.

• To avoid the threatened  loss of $400 million in federal funds Columbia University agreed to overhaul its protest policies, security practices and Middle Eastern studies department.  

• But other universities are resisting. Trump froze $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard after the University refused to go along with Trump’s demands. And then Trump asked the IRS to revoke Harvard’s charitable status, an action that is clearly illegal. The President of Princeton said “Academic freedom is a fundamental principle of universities — it has to be protected. And so I have concerns if universities make concessions about that. And I think that once you make concessions once, it’s hard not to make them again.”

Trump attacks law firms that challenged him in court

• Trump has issued executive orders denying security clearances and ending federal contracts with law firms  that challenged him in court.  These include firms that represented Hillary Clinton, firms who have employed lawyers who participated in government investigations of Trump and law firms who provide free representation to groups that Trump disagrees with. 

• Some law firms are going to court to resist Trump’s orders. One federal judge blocked an order calling the portion of the executive order that criticizes the pro bono legal work the firm does for organizations “disturbing” and “troubling.” They have challenged the orders as violating constitutional rights, including the rights to speech, to freely associate, to petition the government, to have a lawyer, and to get due process. A federal judge permanently blocked Trump’s executive order against the firm Perkins Coie.

• Two other big law firms gave into Trump’s demands, agreeing to provide $140 million in pro bono representation to causes Trump supports. 

Trump denies White House Access to Associated Press over Gulf of Mexico name and goes after press freedom on other fronts 

• Trump denied the Associated Press access from being among the small group of journalists to cover Trump in the Oval Office or aboard Air Force One, with sporadic ability to cover him at events in the East Room. Trump’s action, on February 11,  came after AP refused to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America as Trump ordered. 

• Trump was ordered by a federal judge on April 8 to grant the AP full access to cover presidential events, affirming on First Amendment grounds that the government cannot punish the news organization for the content of its speech. Trump has appealed the decision. 

• Trump is attacking freedom of the press on other fronts, as the AP reports: “The Federal Communications Commission has open lawsuits against  ABC, CBS and NBC News. The administration has sought to cut off funding for government-run news services like Voice of America. 

• Trump ordered the Voice of America to carry news from right-wing One America News. Trump fired some 600 VoA employees and put up the building that houses the news agency for sale, flouting  a court ruling last month that ordered the federal government to maintain robust news programming at the network. 

• Trump cut funding for Sesame Street and other children’s programs, ordering the Department of Education to terminate a grant program that provides PBS and NPR with money for children’s programming. Trump wants Congress to take back more than $billion in funding for NPR and PBS. 

Trump's Escalating War on Free Expression

• Trump suppresses scientific, educational, and political discourse—silencing voices across government, academia, and the private sector.

• Trump ordered federal health agencies to halt public messaging, leading the CDC to withhold a critical flu-season morbidity and mortality report—the first such blackout since 1952—leaving Americans uninformed during a deadly health season.

• Trump buried key studies on bird flu transmission, endangering both national and international public health.

• Trump barred the Energy Department and other scientific agencies from sharing research data, even internally, crippling coordination and transparency.

• Trump directed federal employees to report colleagues who endorse DEI initiatives, creating a culture of surveillance and fear within public institutions.

• Trump pressured companies like Costco to drop their DEI commitments, threatening business autonomy and workforce inclusion.

• Trump prohibited federal contractors from allowing employees to include pronouns in email signatures, suppressing LGBTQ+ visibility and inclusion in the workplace.

• Trump forced major news and tech companies—including ABC News, Meta, and Paramount—to settle defamation-related cases, sending a chilling message to journalists and editors nationwide.

Trump targets the Smithsonian

• Trump issued an executive order aimed at reshaping US Smithsonian Institution for “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” at the world’s largest set of museums, educational and research entities grouped under one institutional umbrella.

• Trump called for Vice President Vance, who serves on the Smithsonian Board of Regents, “to work to eliminate improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology from the Smithsonian and its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo.”

Trump aims to let disinformation flourish

• Trump’s first day executive order pretended to be about free speech but it turns out to be a green light for hate and disinformation online. 

• As the New York Times reported, Trump canceled “ scores of scientific research grants at universities across the country. The grants funded research into topics like ways to evade censors in China. One grant at the Rochester Institute of Technology, for example, sought to design a tool to detect fabricated videos or photos generated by artificial intelligence. Another, at Kent State University in Ohio, studied how malign actors posing as ordinary users manipulate information on social media.”