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Trump’s Free Speech Pledge Undermined by 75 Court Rulings · GNN Daily Breaking News

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  Speaker 1: When Donald Trump promised to bring free speech back, he
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  Speaker 1: cast himself as a defender of the First Amendment, Yet
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  Speaker 1: court records reveal a striking contradiction. Judges in at least
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  Speaker 1: seventy five cases have ruled that his administration's stifled free speech,
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  Speaker 1: often in ways that directly undermined constitutional protections. The rulings
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  Speaker 1: span a wide range of issues. In immigration, courts found
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  Speaker 1: that the administration illegally detained and deported foreign students and
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  Speaker 1: faculty for their pro Palestinian advocacy, effectively punishing political expression.
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  Speaker 1: In higher education, federal agencies terminated grants to institutions like
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  Speaker 1: Harvard when they refused to align with Trump's ideological agenda.
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  Speaker 1: Protesters also won judgments against excessive force, with judges concluding
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  Speaker 1: that government actions chilled lawful demonstrations. Even law firms faced
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  Speaker 1: retaliation based on their litigation positions, raising alarms about executive
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  Speaker 1: interference in legal advocacy. The judicial rebuke was bipartisan. While
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  Speaker 1: most rulings came from judges appointed by Democratic presidents, ten
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  Speaker 1: were issued by Republican appointees, under scoring broad concern. One
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  Speaker 1: of the most forceful critiques came from Judge William Young,
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  Speaker 1: a Reagan appointee, who warned that Trump's palpable misunderstanding that
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  Speaker 1: the government simply cannot seek retribution for speech he disdains
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  Speaker 1: poses a great threat to American's freedom of speech. The
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  Speaker 1: administration has appealed roughly two thirds of these adverse rulings,
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  Speaker 1: insisting that judges are overstepping their authority. White House spokeswoman
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  Speaker 1: Abigail Jackson dismissed the decisions as unlawful, claiming the judiciary
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  Speaker 1: was obstructing the will of the electorate. But legal scholars
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  Speaker 1: argue the sheer volume of cases reflects a pattern. The
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  Speaker 1: courts consistently found that Trump's policies crossed constitutional lines. Comparisons
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  Speaker 1: with the Biden administration are telling. Reuters identified only twenty
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  Speaker 1: seven First Amendment cases in which lower court judges weighed
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  Speaker 1: challenges to Biden's agenda, far fewer than Trump's tally. Analysts
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  Speaker 1: say this contrast highlights how Trump's approach to governance repeatedly
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  Speaker 1: collided with free speech protections. Ultimately, the rulings reveal a paradox.
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  Speaker 1: A president who vowed to champion free expression instead became
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  Speaker 1: one of its most frequent challengers in court. The judicial
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  Speaker 1: record suggests that Trump's legacy on free speech is defined
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  Speaker 1: less by his promises and more by this seventy five
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  Speaker 1: times judges ruled he violated them