{"id":453895,"date":"2025-09-26T23:09:17","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T23:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/453895\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T23:09:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T23:09:17","slug":"the-united-states-is-in-a-speech-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/453895\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe United States Is In a Speech War\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the end of another tumultuous week,<\/strong> we\u2019re discussing the indictment against Trump\u2019s longtime political foil James Comey, and the state of free speech in America. Plus:<\/p>\n

\"Shhhh<\/p>\n

In the debate over speech freedoms, we\u2019d do well to remember that any standard we apply might be applied to us.Illustration by Miguel Porlan<\/p>\n

David Remnick<\/strong>
Editor, The New Yorker<\/p>\n

Back in January,<\/strong> during his Inaugural Address, Donald Trump declared that \u201cafter years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression,\u201d he would issue an executive order \u201cto immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.\u201d There was, as always, reason to be skeptical. (In fact, his very next line was \u201cNever again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents,\u201d which, based on last night\u2019s indictment of James Comey, is especially striking.) The months that followed revealed the hollowness of this order, which was so clearly at odds with the President\u2019s own disposition. In recent months, the Trump Administration has engaged in a relentless attack against press outlets, law firms, universities, museums, and other institutions not to its liking. Others in the Party have taken his lead. Recently, Senator Cynthia Lummis, a Republican from Wyoming, responded to the F.C.C. chairman Brendan Carr\u2019s threats against Jimmy Kimmel and Disney, by telling Semafor, \u201cUnder normal times, in normal circumstances, I tend to think that the First Amendment should always be sort of the ultimate right. And that there should be almost no checks and balances on it. I don\u2019t feel that way anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States is in a speech war,\u201d Louis Menand writes in a remarkable new essay<\/a> for The New Yorker. Menand, a longtime staff writer at the magazine and a professor of English at Harvard, considers the arguments of two new books, which make very different but equally provocative claims: one suggests that college campuses are, despite their reputations, actually quite good at incubating free speech; the other argues that the unabridged American version of free speech, unique in the world, was a terrible mistake from the very start.<\/p>\n

These are big, thorny questions: How compatible are free speech and civility? How do we enforce norms of free expression that aren\u2019t clearly protected by law? Can the freedoms of speech ever really be distributed equally among people? And there is a more practical, and perhaps more pressing, question\u2014about our current moment. \u201cIf the Administration\u2019s actions are so blatantly unlawful,\u201d Menand asks, \u201cwhy does everyone seem to be caving?\u201d<\/p>\n

Read the story \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s Pick\"A<\/p>\n

Photograph by Carsten Koall \/ Getty<\/p>\n

The Flimsy, Dangerous Indictment of James Comey<\/p>\n

The charges against<\/strong> the former F.B.I. director look weak. But they may be just the start of Donald Trump\u2019s long-threatened drive to use the Justice Department to go after his enemies, Ruth Marcus argues. Read the story \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n

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Our Culture Picks<\/p>\n