Trump's Attacks on Protesters in Los Angeles Show Need to Protect Free Speech

With Trump deploying the National Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles to crack down on protesters demonstrating against his administration’s cruel, illegal and inhumane deportations, we see once again the vindictive commander-in-chief and his allies viciously wielding their power against anyone who dares to hold them accountable.

But this isn’t only happening in L.A.: Every day the government is retaliating against the press, protesters and vulnerable communities seeking to exercise their basic rights. This administration is undermining our democratic norms and civic dialogue. It’s attempting to confuse us with misinformation and lies to distract us from the constant stream of criminality that is being perpetrated from this White House.

The dangerous actions of the second Trump administration threaten the future of an independent judiciary, the rule of law, and free and fair elections. In response, Free Press has created our Future of Freedom webinar series in which we bring experts, community members and lawmakers together to shed light on Trump’s attempted authoritarian takeover of our country — and to detangle truth from fiction to inform and engage people. We also provide actionable steps that we all must take to fight back and protect ourselves, our neighbors and our democracy.

Trump’s weapons of retaliation

In our June 5 webinar, “Free Speech in the Age of Retaliation: Trump 2.0 Attacks on Protest, the Press & Privacy,” Free Press’ Nora Benavidez moderated a panel featuring three experts: Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and one of Mahmoud Khalil’s lead attorneys; Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; and Wajahat Ali, editor of Left Hook and co-host of the podcast Democracy-ish. During the webinar, they discussed the shifting political landscape, the possible consequences for speaking out — and the surefire consequences of giving in.

“You are being gaslit into right-wing authoritarianism,” Ali said. “This is a white-supremacist authoritarian regime.” Right-wing Republicans, Ali noted, have been telling us exactly what they plan to do. “They’ve given you Project 2025. What we are witnessing is an entire Republican Party, which has been taken over by MAGA, and their avatar is Donald Trump.”

Trump is, of course, not acting alone. “Trump is the tip of the dirty poisonous spear,” Hewitt said, “but he’s not all of it: There’s a lot more.”

Hewitt broke down Trump’s bullying strategy, “[It’s] about knocking out the biggest institutions like the Harvards, Columbia … [and attacking] large law firms. The idea is not just to hurt those people or those firms, but to have chilling effects so they won’t engage in righteous civil-rights and racial-justice advocacy. This is the autocratic playbook. It’s to chill all means of dissent, to weaken infrastructure, and leverage remaining infrastructure as a sword, not a shield — not to protect anyone, but to hurt people. They are coming for everybody, and the least we can do is fight back.”

To be clear, we did not go from zero to a hundred: The United States has been building toward this crisis for decades. Baher Azmy explained that his first encounters with autocracy and forms of fascism occurred during the George W. Bush presidency “and the post 9/11 human-rights crisis they created.” Azmy said that the “soft authoritarianism” of the Bush administration has produced the “hard authoritarianism” of the Trump administration.

Bush fueled U.S. xenophobia and planted the alleged need to “protect the homeland” from foreigners. Trump has exploited this to deploy the police state and aggressive ICE raids against immigrant and Latino communities across the United States, including in Paramount, a suburb of Los Angeles. When protesters assembled to condemn these attacks, Trump ordered the illegal deployment of 2,000 National Guard soldiers and 700 Marines to L.A. to attack demonstrators and journalists attempting to report the truth. This is all a threat to everyone who refuses to fall in line and parrot Trump’s lies and white-supremacist narratives.

The difference between Bush and Trump, Azmy said, is that “the Bush administration abided by legal constraints in the courts, and the Trump administration is smashing all institutions that could constrain them.”

Azmy noted that Trump has embraced white supremacy and a “slaveocracy” mentality, rejecting international human rights, the possibility of asylum and civil rights. “Some of the most chilling disappearances, stuff you would expect from the Syrian secret police or Soviet secret police, happened [here] to a number of students, including Mahmoud Khalil.” Students like Khalil have been arrested and silenced for nothing more than their “outspoken and eloquent cries for justice in Palestine and the slaughter of their people and the ongoing genocide.”

Azmy underscored that “silencing and deporting critics of the United States is the hallmark of autocratic regimes.”

This administration is attempting to conflate freedom and terrorism. “This is a five-alarm fire,” Ali said. “If you think they’re not going to come after you, you haven’t paid attention.”

A call to resist Trump’s authoritarianism

All three panelists urged people to take action in the face of these threats.

“The good news is that there are more of us,” Ali said. We, the people, are the majority. We have to organize and fight back because when we do, we win. Ali highlighted a series of examples of people successfully pushing back.

The Tesla takedown protests tanked the company’s stock and made the brand toxic too. As a result of people spreading the word about the law firms that bent the knee to Trump, many corporations are taking their dollars away from these firms and going to the law firms that actually resisted. Meanwhile, mass protests across the country helped make the deportation and imprisonment in El Salvador of Kilmar Abrego Garcia the most unpopular topic for Trump. Ali noted that even some of Trump’s supporters reacted to the administration’s move to dismiss due process.

“The people have power, which is why autocrats want to control the narrative,” Ali said. “They want to confuse, shock, overwhelm and distract us to discourage us from organizing and fighting back. But we must not be deterred.”

Hewitt shared recommendations for resisting this authoritarian regime:

1) Do not capitulate.

2) Demand due process; do not just give up.

3) Solidarity wins; standing together matters.

4) It is important to feel a sense of agency in our everyday lives; the minute we think we don’t have agency, that’s a form of capitulation.

Do not give up

Our political environment has escalated into full-blown chaos, dotted with daily examples of retaliation and government reprisals against those who refuse to comply with Trump’s authoritarianism. As our panelists underscored, we need fighters. Everyone has a superpower, and we’ve got to start using them. We have to get organized.

“This is ultimately about people power,” Azmy said. “People need to be in the streets and in the press and mobilizing. And mobilizing is contagious. You cannot sit back and be hopeful. It is action that produces hope, not the other way around.”

We agree! Our Future of Freedom series focuses on learning about the stakes facing us, learning what we can do to challenge rising attacks on freedom, and taking action in solidarity. The goal is to give people a sense of community.

Join us by taking our pledge to defend free speech and sharing your thoughts on how Trump’s attacks on free expression and basic rights have impacted you and your community.

Watch our powerful webinar below, and donate to help Free Press keep fighting: