The First Amendment’s free speech protection is under siege by the Trump administration and that should bother every American, including Republicans.

The First Amendment has been plenty misunderstood over the years about limiting speech. It’s not private actors like social media companies curbing comments or even what an individual can say, which has limits regarding time, place and manner.

The Constitution imposed a prohibition only on the government — federal, state, local — from barring speech based on content or compelling any sort of speech, with incredibly narrow exceptions. “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” That’s it, and it’s an incredibly important goal in its simplicity. It is, to a large extent, the right that undergirds all others, that allows our polity to function as people can push for their political preferences and organize as they freely choose.

While President Donald Trump outwardly declared himself a champion of the right to free expression, he has mounted a full-on assault on this right, hoping that the ferocity and multi-pronged nature of the attack will bring the First Amendment down altogether, under two months into his presidency.

Trump officials and Trump himself have explicitly declared that former Columbia grad student Mahmoud Khalil has been targeted for arrest exclusively as a result of speech that the administration found objectionable, and not for any criminal offense or violation of his status as a permanent resident green card holder.

As a result of this brazen detention, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism noncitizen students have been advised to stop covering sensitive issues like Gaza, Ukraine and their own former classmate’s case, while scrubbing social media of this new wrongthink. Jelani Cobb, the school’s dean, asserted that “nobody can protect you… these are dangerous times.”

Cobb is not wrong, though it takes a moment of stepping away to really digest what happened here: one of the most prestigious journalism programs in the country has advised its students to lay off the journalism, lest they be arrested by the regime, in the United States.

Justice Department lawyers were also in court defending Trump’s absurd executive order targeting Perkins Coie, a law firm that has often worked with Democratic clients and been a thorn in the side of the GOP, attempting to strip employees of security clearances and prevent government contractors from using the firm.

Trump’s action did not stem from any allegation that the firm had engaged in illegal or inappropriate behavior, but simply that it dared to act against Republicans’ political interests. A federal judge has now blocked parts of that order, but not before the firm lost an avalanche of business.

As activists target one of the only direct pressure points they have — Tesla, the car company that forms the basis for much of the wealth of Trump’s unelected prime minister Elon Musk — Trump has said he wants to charge demonstrators with domestic terrorism. Even if he doesn’t, even if Khalil is the only student he arrests and Perkins Coie the only law firm he targets, the damage is done. Free speech is in the crosshairs.

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