This Free Press report examines the Trump administration’s hostile relationship with dissent and free expression in 2025. It analyzes how President Trump and his political enablers have worked to undermine and chill the most basic freedoms protected under the First Amendment. While the U.S. government has made efforts throughout this nation’s history to censor people’s expression and association — be it the exercise of freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress — the Trump administration’s incessant attacks on even the most tentatively oppositional speech are uniquely aggressive, pervasive and escalating.
Attacks on dissent have unfolded as a daily barrage of headlines. These come in countless forms: violent physical attacks on reporters covering protests against ICE, law enforcement targeting and detaining foreign students for months due to their political speech, the White House firing and the Justice Department prosecuting government servants who refuse to comply with Trump’s personal vendettas. While each attack is noteworthy and often an unprecedented show of censorship, the sheer volume of chilling attacks has helped ensure that even the most egregious assaults quickly fall out of the news cycle and public consciousness.
The administration’s censorial tactics are spurring tremendous resistance across political and geographic lines, with a majority of people worried about the government’s attacks on free speech. Anti-democratic figures in and around the White House face growing public opposition to their authoritarian campaign and are doubling down to muzzle criticism, suppress dissenting voices and weaken scrutiny of their own legally questionable defiance of constitutional safeguards. And despite Trump’s claims that he’s protecting people and defending free speech, his aggressive attacks on dissent say otherwise.
To create this report, Free Press examined original reporting on more than 500 actions — including verbal threats, arrests, lawsuits, regulatory actions and military deployments — by Trump, the Trump White House, Trump-appointed federal regulators, the National Guard, law-enforcement agencies and other branches of government. We focus exclusively on federal actions that implicate the First Amendment, with such examples becoming nearly all-encompassing as Trump seeks to silence dissent. We reviewed commentary and interviewed constitutional lawyers, civil-society leaders and historians. We have catalogued nearly 200 of the most potent examples of the federal government’s attacks on the First Amendment in our Timeline of Attacks.
We have observed related anti-democratic attacks at the federal level as well as state and local actions that compound the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine broad democratic principles. Each threat scenario deserves rigorous scrutiny in its own right. Due to the overwhelming volume of threats to and attacks on the First Amendment since Trump took office, this report captures and reveals the repeatingpatterns of censorship and analyzes the hallmarks of this administration’s censorial campaign.
Free Press identifies five key findings:
1. Trump’s tyrannical playbook has infected the entire administration with an ethos of retaliation, targeting free speech that contradicts him.
At the most fundamental level, Trump obsesses over his image and routinely lies to protect it. He sows chaos to distort reality and confuse the public. In his quest to control the message, Trump has installed a bench of loyalists to do his bidding at once-independent agencies. These sycophants — like Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — are all too willing to translate his threats against perceived critics into penalties.
2. No one is safe from attack in Trump’s quest to control the message, though the administration targets the press most of all.
We identified six sectors subject to consistent attacks from the Trump administration: the media; civil society; government workers and institutions; academia; the legal and judicial sector; and the corporate sector. Although Trump’s censorship regime has targeted nearly every part of society, the media have been subject to physical, presidential, regulatory and law-enforcement attacks at a scale and pace no other sector has experienced.
3. The modes of attack are erratic, but they are also extensive and relentless.
We identify five recurring methods the Trump administration employs to undermine free expression and dissent:
I. Making Threats of Retribution Against Would-Be Opponents II. Emboldening Regulators to Exact Penalties III. Supercharging the Militarized Police State IV. Leveraging Heavyweight Corporate Capitulation V. Ignoring Facts, Removing Information, Rewriting History, Lying on the Record
4. While this chilling campaign is vastly unpopular and often loses in court, its speed and scale are unprecedented in U.S. history.
Just shy of a year into the presidential term, the White House has undermined free speech using myriad actions and threats. The attacks largely fail judicial scrutiny and have roused significant and wide-ranging public opposition. Yet the administration continues to actively disregard existing law, violate court orders it dislikes and lie in official proceedings to concoct arguments that support Trump’s censorship agenda. The government’s assault on core First Amendment principles is an active, protean threat that’s symptomatic of broader democratic erosion.
5. Collective resistance has blunted Trump’s censorship campaign and must be sustained.
Coordinated resistance has proven successful at blunting the potency of Trump’s censorship campaign, mirroring the power collective resistance has had throughout modern U.S. history to move society forward. While the United States is sliding into authoritarianism, we still have relatively free and fair elections, a largely independent press, and the ability for millions of people to show up in the streets to protest. Sustained and systemic resistance will be essential in the months and years ahead as a bulwark against tyranny.
Every sector has faced multiple forms of attack by the federal government, often involving compounding efforts to erode freedom and dissent. This chart lays out the targets of attack and methods the Trump administration has used to chill free speech.
Together, these findings show that an undeniable, repressive movement is underway. A cabal of those with the most power and wealth in the United States is helping the administration place a chokehold on dissenting voices. The net effect is to weaken scrutiny that might otherwise prevent legally questionable and blatantly unconstitutional acts.
This report lays out recommendations to reverse the resulting democratic backsliding and repair broken constitutional promises for public engagement, advance a framework for informational and societal health, and prioritize people over profits. Such solutions are essential to safeguarding all of our democratic freedoms, including our core First Amendment rights.
Timeline of Attacks on the First Amendment in 2025
Below is a timeline of nearly 200 of the Trump administration’s worst assaults on the First Amendment in 2025. We focus exclusively on federal actions that implicate the First Amendment.
To create this list, Free Press examined original reporting on hundreds of actions — including verbal threats, arrests, lawsuits, regulatory actions and military deployments — by Trump, the Trump White House, Trump-appointed federal regulators, the National Guard, law-enforcement agencies and other branches of government. Free Press consulted an array of civil-society trackers and research reports analyzing aspects of this issue.
January
1.President Trump signed the executive order “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” The White House inverted First Amendment principles, casting prior public-health and election-integrity efforts as “federal censorship.” The order issued a directive to “restore freedom of speech” by constraining government interactions with platforms and civil society on mis/disinformation. The order urged the attorney general to investigate the Biden administration in the context of free speech, and to seek remedial actions, leaving vague what these actions may be. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-freedom-of-speech-and-ending-federal-censorship/
Target of Attack: CIVIL SOCIETY; GOVERNMENT Method of Attack: THREATS; IGNORING, REMOVING, REWRITING, LYING
2. President Trump signed the executive order “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid.” The White House froze funding for programs run by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), including programs designed to empower civil-society and human-rights groups, journalists and others responding to digital repression and internet shutdowns. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/reevaluating-and-realigning-united-states-foreign-aid/
Target of Attack: MEDIA; CIVIL SOCIETY Method of Attack: THREATS; REGULATOR; IGNORING, REMOVING, REWRITING, LYING
3. President Trump signed the executive order “Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism.” The White House outlined a broad crackdown on what Trump called “the explosion of antisemitism” on U.S. college campuses. The order falsely claimed that foreign students who are lawfully in the United States on visas do not enjoy the same free-speech or due-process rights as citizens. This was the political and legal origin of later attacks by the Department of Homeland Security, State Department and other agencies targeting foreign students and foreign journalists — and justifying increased surveillance of people’s on- and offline speech. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/additional-measures-to-combat-anti-semitism/
Target of Attack: ACADEMIA Method of Attack: THREATS; REGULATOR; IGNORING, REMOVING, REWRITING, LYING
4. President Trump signed an executive order with a blanket pardon for all defendants involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection, erasing criminal histories for at least 1,500 people. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjw4vjvlgxpo
Target of Attack: CIVIL SOCIETY Method of Attack: IGNORING, REMOVING, REWRITING, LYING
5. President Trump signed an executive order to re-weaponize the federal workforce for political loyalty by reinstating and expanding “Schedule F,” which strips civil-service protections from policy-influencing roles. Politicizing thousands of expert positions is not a speech policy per se, but it erodes rule-of-law guardrails and invites viewpoint-based enforcement across agencies that interface with media, culture and information flows. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-accountability-to-policy-influencing-positions-within-the-federal-workforce/
Target of Attack: GOVERNMENT Method of Attack: THREATS; REGULATOR; IGNORING, REMOVING, REWRITING, LYING
Target of Attack: GOVERNMENT Method of Attack: REMOVAL; IGNORING, REMOVING, REWRITING, LYING
7. President Trump signed an executive order requiring executive departments and agencies to terminate “all discriminatory and illegal preferences, mandates, policies, programs, activities, guidance, regulations, enforcement actions, consent orders and requirements.” This rescinded decades-long practices for federal contractors to develop and implement affirmative-action plans that identify and address underrepresentation based on sex or race. Any receipt of federal funding now requires the recipient to agree that its compliance with federal antidiscrimination laws is material to the government’s payment decisions under the False Claims Act. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-illegal-discrimination-and-restoring-merit-based-opportunity/; https://www.skadden.com/insights/publications/2025/02/the-informed-board/dei-under-siege
Target of Attack: CIVIL SOCIETY; GOVERNMENT; CORPORATE Medthod of Attack: THREATS; REGULATOR
Target of Attack: MEDIA Method of Attack: REGULATOR
March
28. President Trump delivered remarks to lawyers at the Department of Justice, urging them to find ways to criminalize independent media coverage. He tore into news outlets for their coverage of his administration. “These newspapers are really no different than a highly paid political operative. And it has to stop. It has to be illegal,” he said. https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lkegckscq42s
Target of Attack: MEDIA Method of Attack: THREATS; IGNORING, REMOVING, REWRITING, LYING
Target of Attack: CIVIL SOCIETY Method of Attack: THREATS
35. President Trump signed an executive order against Perkins Coie LLP, specifically directed to what he disparagingly described as “[t]he dishonest and dangerous activity of the law firm Perkins Coie LLP.” The central complaint was the role of Perkins Coie in hiring Fusion GPS, which, he alleged, had manufactured a “false ‘dossier’ designed to steal” the 2016 election. Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi and others to “suspend any active security clearances” of Coie employees and to “terminate any contract, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, including the Federal Acquisition Regulation, for which Perkins Coie has been hired to perform any service.” Such agencies were also largely to “refrain from hiring employees of Perkins Coie.” https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/addressing-risks-from-perkins-coie.llp/
Target of Attack: LEGAL & JUDICIAL Method of Attack: THREATS
Target of Attack: LEGAL & JUDICIAL Method of Attack: THREATS
38. Trump signed an executive order targeting Jenner & Block, saying it had undermined justice by engaging in “obvious partisan representations to achieve political ends.” The order specifically details the hiring of Andrew Weissmann after Weissman helped Robert Mueller, the special counsel in the Trump-Russia investigation. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/addressing-risks-from-jenner-block/
Target of Attack: LEGAL & JUDICIAL Method of Attack: THREATS
39. President Trump signed an order targeting another law firm, WilmerHale, as punishment for its connections with Mueller, who worked at the firm before and after he was special counsel in the Trump-Russia investigation. As with the other orders, Trump moved to terminate all government contracts with the law firm, suspended any security clearances, barred the firm’s lawyers from federal buildings and prohibited federal government employees from “engaging with” them. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/addressing-risks-from-wilmerhale/
Target of Attack: LEGAL & JUDICIAL Method of Attack: THREATS
Target of Attack: LEGAL & JUDICIAL Method of Attack: THREATS
41. The New York Times reports that from January to March, hundreds of terabytes of digital resources analyzing data were removed from government websites. “While in many cases the underlying data still exists, the tools that make it possible for the public and researchers to use that data have been removed.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/climate/government-websites-climate-environment-data.html
Target of Attack: GOVERNMENT Method of Attack: IGNORING, REMOVING, REWRITING, LYING
Target of Attack: ACADEMIA; CIVIL SOCIETY Method of Attack: REGULATOR; THREATS
48. Trump signed the executive order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” calling for the Department of Interior to determine whether, since Jan. 1, 2020, any monuments, memorials, statues and markers within the department’s jurisdiction contain any descriptions, depictions or other content that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times).” Additionally, it ordered the reinstatement of any preexisting monuments, memorials, statues and markers that have been removed or changed to “perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.” https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/restoring-truth-and-sanity-to-american-history/
Target of Attack: CIVIL SOCIETY Method of Attack: IGNORING, REMOVING, REWRITING, LYING
Target of Attack: GOVERNMENT; ACADEMIA Method of Attack: IGNORING, REMOVING, REWRITING, LYING
62. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt accused Amazon of being “hostile and political” after a report from Punchbowl News said that the company would start displaying the exact cost of tariff-related price increases alongside all its products. Amazon hurried to issue a statement denying these policy changes and Trump praised Jeff Bezos. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/us/politics/trump-amazon-tariffs-prices.html
Target of Attack: CORPORATE Method of Attack: THREATS
Target of Attack: MEDIA; CIVIL SOCIETY Method of Attack: THREATS; REGULATOR
66. The Department of Homeland Security threatened Harvard and demanded records of “illegal and violent” activities of its foreign-student visa holders. The administration is threatening to ban the university from enrolling foreign students altogether. http://bbc.com/news/articles/c1egdy24v7po
Target of Attack: ACADEMIA Method of Attack: THREATS
Target of Attack: CIVIL SOCIETY Method of Attack: IGNORING, REMOVING, REWRITING, LYING
69. The Office of Special Counsel announced changes to the interpretation of the Hatch Act, devised to insulate the federal workforce from political influence or coercion. These changes weaken the independence of workers and allow partisan paraphernalia. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/us/politics/trump-hatch-act.html
Target of Attack: GOVERNMENT Method of Attack: THREATS
Target of Attack: ACADEMIA Method of Attack: THREATS; REGULATOR
77. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller announced that the White House is actively looking at ways to suspend habeas corpus, a fundamental legal tool for relief from constitutional violations that protects First Amendment and due-process rights afforded to everyone in the country. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5292820-white-house-miller-immigration-crackdown/
Target of Attack: CIVIL SOCIETY Method of Attack: THREATS; IGNORING, REMOVING, REWRITING, LYING
Target of Attack: CIVIL SOCIETY Method of Attack: THREATS; REGULATOR
81. Inspired by one of the president’s executive orders, several agencies cut grants funding misinformation studies, claiming to protect the First Amendment. Studying fake information, whether intentionally spread or by mistake, does not implicate the First Amendment, nor is it a censorship tactic researchers use. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/business/trump-online-misinformation-grants.html
Target of Attack: CIVIL SOCIETY; ACADEMIA Method of Attack: THREATS; REGULATOR
Target of Attack: MEDIA; CIVIL SOCIETY; GOVERNMENT Method of Attack: IGNORING, REMOVING, REWRITING, LYING
86. The Pentagon broadened book-banning efforts, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issuing a memo calling all military leaders, commands and academies to review all of the books in their libraries that address racism and sexism and to purge content related to diversity and inclusion. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/us/politics/pentagon-hegseth-dei-library-books.html
Target of Attack: GOVERNMENT Method of Attack: REGULATOR; IGNORING, REMOVING, REWRITING, LYING
Target of Attack: GOVERNMENT Method of Attack: REGULATOR; IGNORING, REMOVING, REWRITING, LYING
89. President Trump authorized the National Guard to deploy in Los Angeles, making false claims of violence. Later, this deployment was deemed in violation of the Constitution. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ylyd9lkkqo
Target of Attack: CIVIL SOCIETY Method of Attack: POLICE STATE
Target of Attack: LEGAL & JUDICIAL Method of Attack: THREATS
109. The FCC approved a merger between Paramount and Skydance, agreeing to transfer broadcast licenses for CBS stations to the new owners. This happened after CBS parent company Paramount paid $16 million to settle the baseless 60 Minutes lawsuit Trump brought alleging manipulative CBS editing. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/24/paramount-skydance-merger-fcc
Target of Attack: MEDIA Method of Attack: REGULATOR
Target of Attack: CIVIL SOCIETY; GOVERNMENT Method of Attack: IGNORING, REMOVING, REWRITING, LYING
117. The Department of Homeland Security said it didn’t keep text data after April 9. (Under the Federal Records Act, government agencies are required to preserve all documentation that officials and federal workers produce while executing their duties, and they have to make federal records available to the public under the Freedom of Information Act unless they fall under certain exemptions.) https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/us/politics/homeland-security-foia-text-messages.html
Target of Attack: GOVERNMENT Method of Attack: IGNORING, REMOVING, REWRITING, LYING
Target of Attack: CIVIL SOCIETY Method of Attack: THREATS
119. The president signed an executive order creating an authority for prosecution of individuals who burn the American flag, claiming this could incite riots or violence. This order runs contrary to longstanding Supreme Court precedent. The order encourages the State Department, Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security to refer cases to local authorities and to revoke immigration benefits to people charged. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/prosecuting-burning-of-the-american-flag/
Target of Attack: CIVIL SOCIETY Method of Attack: THREATS; REGULATOR
Target of Attack: CIVIL SOCIETY Method of Attack: REGULATOR; THREATS
139. Trump issued the memorandum “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” which broadly implied that it would treat speech as grounds for law-enforcement action if it tended toward “justifying” violence. That is not the legal requirement under the First Amendment. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/25/trump-presidential-memorandum-political-violence
Target of Attack: CIVIL SOCIETY Method of Attack: THREATS; REGULATOR; POLICE STATE
146. YouTube agreed to pay a $24.5 million settlement for suspending Trump’s account after Jan. 6, 2021. This comes after other platforms also settled and paid Trump for the same conduct. X settled for $10 million and Meta settled for $25 million. Some or all of these settlements will help pay for the ballroom Trump is building by bulldozing the East Wing of the White House. Some will support conservative trainings and other programs. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9dx46qgp1jo
Target of Attack: CORPORATE Method of Attack: CAPITULATION
