THE FIRST AMENDMENT
When the government punishes speech, association, and the press.
Sources: Federal Court Orders · Judicial Opinions · FCC Records · White House Press Pool Records · DOJ Filings
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.— The First Amendment to the United States Constitution — ratified December 15, 1791
The Law Firm
Executive Orders
The Trump administration issued executive orders targeting four specific law firms — revoking their employees' security clearances, barring them from federal contracts, and directing agencies to sever ties. The stated reason: these firms had represented clients the administration opposed. Every court to review these orders found them unconstitutional.
The Trump administration did something no previous presidency had attempted: it used executive orders to punish private law firms for the clients they chose to represent. Four firms were targeted — Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, Jenner & Block, and Susman Godfrey — each singled out because it had represented parties the administration considered adversaries. The orders revoked employees' security clearances, barred the firms from federal contracts, and directed agencies to sever ties.
The constitutional principle at stake was foundational. The right of lawyers to represent unpopular clients is not a loophole — it is the mechanism that makes the adversarial legal system work. John Adams defended the British soldiers accused of the Boston Massacre. Thurgood Marshall represented clients many Americans despised. When the government can punish lawyers for their clients, every accused person's right to counsel is at risk.
Every court to review these orders reached the same conclusion. Judges appointed by presidents of both parties found them unconstitutional. The Department of Justice itself dropped its defense of all four orders — an extraordinary concession that the government's own lawyers found the orders indefensible.
"The Court finds this executive order unconstitutional from beginning to end.
— Judge Liman, U.S. District Judge, S.D.N.Y. — Ruling on Susman Godfrey executive order, 2025
The Judges
Respond
Federal judges — including appointees from both parties — struck down the law firm executive orders in unambiguous terms.
The executive order punishes a law firm for the clients it chose to represent. That is the definition of a First Amendment violation. (paraphrased from ruling)
The order revoked security clearances for firm employees and directed federal agencies to sever contracts. A federal court blocked the order, finding it punished the firm for constitutionally protected legal representation.
The executive order sought to punish the firm for Mueller's work investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election — work that resulted in 34 indictments, 7 guilty pleas, and 5 prison sentences. A federal court blocked the order.
The executive order penalized the firm for the content of its legal advocacy — a direct violation of the First Amendment right to petition the government. A federal court blocked the order.
The ruling noted that the entire purpose of the order was to punish lawyers for representing disfavored clients — which strikes at the heart of the adversarial legal system.
Attacking the
Press
The First Amendment protects freedom of the press for a reason — it is the primary mechanism by which citizens hold their government accountable. The Trump administration's actions against the press went beyond rhetoric to concrete government action.
The assault on press freedom followed an escalating trajectory. It began with the banning of the Associated Press from the White House press pool — a decision struck down by a Trump-appointed judge. It expanded to FCC threats against broadcast networks over editorial content, weaponizing licensing authority as a tool of political intimidation. And by March 2026, with the United States at war with Iran, the administration was threatening broadcasters over their wartime coverage — the most dangerous application of this pattern. And in September 2026 it returned to where it began, but larger: three news organizations banned at once, their hard passes confiscated the following morning, with none of the notice, hearing, or written decision the governing 1977 precedent requires. On September 21 the three outlets sued on due process and First Amendment grounds; the night before, the White House had pulled CNN from its turn as the television pool, and the other four networks declined to replace it. Before any ruling, Trump announced he would appeal, and that evening the White House launched its own 24-hour stream of past clips. On September 22 the Justice Department answered, arguing that White House access is a privilege rather than a right and asking the court to overrule the 1977 precedent outright; the same night the White House emailed each outlet an unsigned letter giving it until Friday to respond, which the government describes as sufficient process after the fact. At the September 23 hearing, Judge Timothy Kelly told the government that a district judge is bound by the precedents it was asking him to discard, said due process "wasn't followed here," and questioned whether a letter sent after the passes were taken could tell anyone what conduct to conform to. He took the motion under advisement without ruling. The same day, the Reporters Committee, the White House Correspondents' Association and 49 news organizations, Fox News among them, filed against the White House. In the early hours of September 24 he granted the order and directed the passes restored immediately, writing that the government's argument that the precedent was wrong changes nothing at his level: "Maybe—but this Court is bound by D.C. Circuit precedent, full stop." Journalists were turned away from the gate that morning anyway; the plaintiffs filed a notice of non-compliance, and the outlets were readmitted at midday.
The V-Dem Institute, the world's leading democracy-measurement project, confirmed the cumulative impact: US freedom of expression has fallen to its lowest level since the 1940s. The comparison to the 1940s is telling — that was wartime too. V-Dem cited attacks on press freedom as a central factor in downgrading the United States from a democracy to an "electoral autocracy."
The ban was challenged in court. A Trump-appointed judge struck it down, finding it violated the First Amendment. The ruling was notable precisely because of who issued it: a judge appointed by the president whose administration imposed the ban.
He named no article and no story, and said the ban could be lifted if the outlets 'could straighten themselves out.' Asked how it squared with his oath of office: 'Uh, because they're fake news. Uh, you get so tired of reading and seeing fake news.'
Sherrill v. Knight (D.C. Circuit, 1977) governs White House credentials: once the press facilities are opened, access cannot be denied based on the content of coverage, and any denial requires notice, a chance to respond, and a decision in writing. The reporters received none of the three. In the AP litigation, an appeals court had already said the White House cannot deny hard passes 'arbitrarily or based on the content of a journalist's speech.'
The objection crossed the spectrum. The White House Correspondents' Association, whose president is Fox News's senior White House correspondent, defended them. Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush's press secretary, granted the premise and rejected the remedy: 'Banning them from the WH is not the solution... Don't ban them. Or one day they'll ban us.'
On Sherrill v. Knight, the government does not argue that it complied. It argues the case was wrongly decided: 'that decision is wrong and should be overruled.' It says the same of the 2020 appeals-court decision built on it. It warns that an injunction would put the court on 'a collision course' with the president and that 'at the very least, no injunction may run against the President.'
The same night, the White House sent each outlet a letter. They are dated September 22, four days after the ban and one day after the suit; CNN's arrived at 10:30 p.m. Each accuses the outlet of 'trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security' and gives until 5 p.m. that Friday to reply by email. No individual signed them, and they are addressed to the organizations rather than to the reporters whose passes were taken. The government calls this 'sufficient post-deprivation process.'
Three of the stories the letters cite can be checked against the articles. The CNN story called false about an Iranian school reported the government's own preliminary finding. The 'top-secret' bunker phrase came from a White House official speaking on the record at a public meeting. The Politico story rested on a document handed to a room of Republican senators. Both sworn declarations filed with the brief are from Pentagon officials, and neither says any story by these outlets was classified; one argues that publication 'whether accurate, incorrect, or misleading' can risk national security.
The plaintiffs handed the judge a D.C. Circuit opinion issued that same day, Mahoney v. U.S. Capitol Police Board, written by Trump appointee Judge Neomi Rao, which held that even in a nonpublic forum the government cannot govern access by standardless discretion, and which cites the court's own White House precedent for exactly that point.
He opened by telling the government that a trial judge cannot do what its brief asked: "Maybe they were, maybe they weren't, but currently as a district judge I have to apply them." On the record before him, due process "wasn't followed here." On the letters emailed at 10:30 the night before: "I don't know [that] a letter they got after the pass was revoked could provide them with the kind of standards that they'd have to conform their conduct to." None of that is a ruling.
The day's most striking filing came from neither party. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the White House Correspondents' Association and 49 news organizations filed an unopposed brief asking the court to restore access. The signatories are the White House press corps itself: the AP, Reuters, Bloomberg, ABC, CBS, NBCUniversal, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Dow Jones, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic, Forbes, Hearst, Scripps, ProPublica, the Guardian US, the Financial Times and Fox News Network. The brief calls the stated reasons "transparently viewpoint discriminatory" and any viewpoint-based exclusion of reporters "constitutionally repugnant."
Two of the accusations came apart the same day. The AP reported that the anonymous-source item cited against Politico "appeared to reference a background briefing set up by the White House," under the White House's own ground rules. And MS NOW's bureau chief swore that of the three articles cited against the network, only one was written by a hard-pass holder, whose pass was renewed a week after the story now used against him; the other two were by journalists who hold no White House pass at all.
He found the only standard the White House offered, its letters' language about professionalism and decorum, "so vague it hardly does the trick," and noted the administration had renewed Betsy Klein's pass months after the reporting later cited against her. On the national-security rationale: "[N]othing in the record that predates this suit suggests that the revocation of Plaintiffs' hard passes was motivated by national security concerns." The two sworn declarations came from Pentagon officials "who have no direct knowledge of how reporters operate in the White House," and in most cases the reporters who wrote the cited stories did not even hold hard passes. Fourteen days, a $1.00 bond, no stay.
Then the morning happened. Journalists from all three outlets were turned away at the gate anyway. The plaintiffs filed an emergency notice: "Defendants have already repeatedly violated the Court's Order." The judge demanded an answer by 12:30 p.m.; the White House press operations director swore her team had been told shortly after 7 a.m. to switch the badges back on. CNN and MS NOW were admitted at noon, Politico that afternoon. A preliminary-injunction motion is due September 28.
The FCC's authority over broadcast licenses is meant to ensure technical compliance and public interest standards — not to police political content. Using licensing authority to pressure editorial decisions is a textbook prior restraint on speech.
While funding decisions are within Congress's authority, the defunding effort was explicitly framed as retaliation for editorial content the administration found unfavorable — transforming a budgetary decision into a First Amendment issue.
The FCC's message to broadcasters: cover the war favorably or face regulatory consequences. This happened during active military operations — when independent press coverage is most critical for democratic accountability.
Threatening broadcast licenses over wartime coverage is the most dangerous application of this pattern: silencing the press exactly when the public needs it most.
A New York Times exposé had revealed Trump was "badly played by Benjamin Netanyahu" and was disconnected from realities about the Strait of Hormuz. Trump angrily rebuked allied countries for refusing to help reopen the Strait.
The reaction crossed ideological lines: Reason magazine (libertarian) condemned the FCC threats. Fox News's Howard Kurtz covered the story. Democrats called the threats "totalitarian." CNBC reported bipartisan alarm at a president openly directing a regulatory agency to punish critical journalism during wartime.
The trigger: a five-day-old Kimmel monologue joking that Melania has 'the glow of an expectant widow' — a quip about the 31-year age gap. Trump and his Comms Director Steven Cheung publicly demanded Disney fire Kimmel immediately; Cheung said he should be 'shunned for the rest of his life.'
FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez (D): 'This is unprecedented, unlawful, and going nowhere. Companies should challenge it head-on. The First Amendment is on their side.' USC law professor Jeffrey Schneider: 'a purely political act meant to assuage the administration's supporters.' The official rationale — an ongoing 'diversity initiatives' probe Carr opened in 2024 — was widely viewed as pretext: the order arrived four days after the joke.
• Law firms punished for representing the wrong clients
• News organizations banned for critical coverage
• Three outlets banned at once and their credentials confiscated (September 18-19, 2026)
• Broadcast companies threatened over editorial decisions
• Broadcasters threatened over wartime coverage (March 2026)
• President openly directs FCC to act against critical outlets (March 15-16)
• Public media defunded in retaliation for content
• FCC orders early license review for ALL Disney TV stations after a Kimmel joke (April 28, 2026)
Each action targets a different medium — but the constitutional principle is the same: the government may not punish speech it dislikes. The V-Dem Institute confirmed the consequence: US freedom of expression is at its lowest level since the 1940s.
Silencing
Critics
Beyond institutional targets, the administration used government power against individual journalists, comedians, and commentators — turning regulatory agencies into instruments of political intimidation.
The targeting of individual voices revealed the personal dimension of the administration's assault on speech. Jimmy Kimmel was suspended after the FCC Chairman threatened ABC with the words "we can do this the easy way or the hard way." Stephen Colbert had an interview killed by CBS lawyers afraid of FCC retaliation. Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson had her home searched and laptops seized. Journalist Mario Guevara was detained while reporting and faced deportation proceedings despite his legal work status.
The chilling effect extended beyond the specific targets. When the government demonstrates it will use regulatory power against individuals who criticize it, self-censorship becomes the rational response. The threat does not need to be carried out against every critic — it only needs to be carried out against enough of them to change the calculation for everyone else.
Carr told a right-wing commentator: "We can do this the easy way or the hard way" and that ABC could face license review. He said Kimmel's comments could form "a strong case" for FCC action.
A bipartisan group of former FCC chairs petitioned the agency to repeal the "news distortion" policy invoked against Kimmel. Democracy Forward filed a FOIA lawsuit seeking records on the FCC threats.
The stated reason: fear that FCC Chairman Brendan Carr would invoke the "equal time" rule — after Carr had recently sent threatening letters to ABC about political appearances on The View. Colbert posted the interview to YouTube instead.
CBS denied it "prohibited" the interview. Colbert called that denial "crap." A Democratic FCC Commissioner called it censorship through intimidation.
No FCC order barred the interview. The decision was preemptive, made "out of consideration for our local stations, especially our ABC affiliates in Texas" — 20 of which had filed equal-time notices after Talarico's February appearance on The View. Kimmel noted he had interviewed candidates for 20 years, including Trump himself in 2015 and 2016, without objection. "In the America we live in right now, that is the best that we can do until November."
• Hannah Natanson (Washington Post): Federal investigators visited her home, searched it, and seized her laptops in a leak investigation
• Don Lemon: Arrested by federal agents in January 2026 at a Minneapolis church during an anti-ICE protest
• Mario Guevara: Detained while reporting on immigration raids in Atlanta — ICE began deportation proceedings despite his legal work status
• The Pentagon required journalists to pledge not to obtain unauthorized material, leading most major outlets to give up Pentagon access
Combined with the AP ban, FCC threats against broadcasters, and direct targeting of individual reporters, the pattern is clear: access to government information is being conditioned on favorable coverage.
Reporters Without Borders documented the erosion, finding the U.S. press freedom environment under Trump's second term increasingly aligned with the world's most repressive governments.
Testing the
Talking Points
The administration and its supporters offer specific justifications for these actions. Here is each claim, tested against the record.
"He's fighting bias — these firms and media outlets are against him."
The First Amendment exists precisely to protect speech the government doesn't like. The entire purpose of the amendment is to prevent the government from using its power to punish disfavored viewpoints.
Law firms have a constitutional right to represent any client — including those the government opposes. This right is foundational to the adversarial legal system. If lawyers can be punished for representing unpopular clients, then every accused person's right to counsel is at risk.
The press has a constitutional right to publish critical coverage. If the government can revoke access or threaten licenses over unfavorable reporting, then press freedom exists only at the pleasure of whoever holds power.
"These firms represented his enemies — they were part of the resistance."
Every person and organization in America has the right to legal representation. The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to counsel in criminal cases. The First Amendment protects the right to petition the government — which includes hiring lawyers to do so.
John Adams defended the British soldiers accused of the Boston Massacre. Thurgood Marshall represented clients that many Americans despised. The principle that lawyers must not be punished for their clients has been bedrock American law since the founding.
The DOJ's own decision to drop defense of all four orders confirms that there was no legitimate legal basis for targeting these firms. The government's own lawyers concluded the orders were indefensible.
"The AP was biased — they don't deserve White House access."
The Associated Press has operated as a nonpartisan news cooperative since 1846. It provides news to outlets across the political spectrum — from Fox News to MSNBC, from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times.
A Trump-appointed judge struck down the ban, finding it violated the First Amendment. When a president's own appointee rules that his actions violate the Constitution, the "bias" argument collapses.
White House press access has never been contingent on favorable coverage. If it were, no independent press could exist — only state media.
"Criticizing the war effort helps the enemy — the media wants us to lose."
This is the oldest authoritarian playbook: equating criticism with treason. It was used to justify the Sedition Act of 1798, which criminalized criticism of the government. That law is now universally regarded as one of the worst violations of the First Amendment in American history.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that wartime does not suspend the Constitution. In New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), the Court ruled that the government could not block publication of the Pentagon Papers — classified documents about the Vietnam War — because the First Amendment does not bend to government claims of national security.
Independent war reporting is not disloyalty — it is the mechanism that prevents government lies about wars. The Pentagon Papers exposed years of deception. Reporting from Iraq exposed Abu Ghraib. A free press during wartime is not a vulnerability — it is a safeguard against unchecked power.
When the V-Dem Institute found US freedom of expression at its lowest level since the 1940s, the comparison was telling: the 1940s were wartime too. The question is whether we learned the lesson — or are repeating the mistake.
Freedom of speech. Freedom of the press. The right to petition the government. The right to legal representation. 45 words in the Constitution — and 7+ federal judges who enforced them.