“the main opposition to including specific protections for the Bill of Rights came not from those who thought the document went too far, but from people who feared it didn’t go far enough.
James Madison, then a representative in Congress decades before his election to the White House, believed rights are natural and preexist any form of government. Man “has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person,” he commented in a 1792 newspaper column. “Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and unalienable right.” Protecting specific rights, he feared, might lead Americans to believe those were their only rights, and that they’re granted by government.
…
In an 1819 letter Jefferson wrote that “rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”
That was long after he’d prevailed upon Madison in their correspondence to consider that the new Constitution assigns significant authority to the federal legislative and executive branches and should “guard us against their abuses of power.”
“If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can” with a formal Bill of Rights, he continued. While such a document “is not absolutely efficacious under all circumstances, it is of great potency always, and rarely inefficacious.”
…
The Ninth Amendment addressed Madison’s concerns about protecting only some rights by embedding his natural rights ideas in the document. It states: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.””
The civil rights movement wasn’t just about getting blacks rights for the first time, but regaining rights that they had torn from them during segregation. We should remember that America has taken rights away before based on race, and it could do it again if we aren’t careful.
“The constitution doesn’t guarantee Kimmel a talk show, but it does guarantee that the government won’t quash his speech because of what he chooses to say.
…
The basic facts of Kimmel’s suspension are straightforward. The late-night host has been accused of mischaracterizing the motives of the alleged assassin of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, suggesting he may have hailed from the political right. On Wednesday, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, appeared on Benny Johnson’s podcast and described Kimmel’s remarks as part of a “concerted effort to lie to the American people.” The FCC, he said, has “remedies that we can look at.” He added: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way …. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
After Carr’s threat, Nexstar, an owner of many ABC affiliate stations, said that it wouldn’t run Kimmel’s program “for the foreseeable future” because of his Kirk comments. (Notably, Nexstar is planning to acquire a rival company, Tegna, in a $6.2 billion deal that will require FCC approval.)
Mere hours later, ABC had removed Kimmel from the air.
When the Supreme Court dismissed the Covid-social media suit against the Biden administration, it held that the plaintiffs lacked a legal right to sue — called standing — because they could not link anything the federal government did to the suppression of their speech. As Justice Amy Coney Barrett put it, the flaw in the case was a “lack of specific causation findings with respect to any discrete instance of content moderation.”
Here, by contrast, the evidence of “specific causation” is plain to see: Carr threatens ABC unless it sanctions Kimmel. ABC does as Carr asks. The FCC, to be sure, does not have authority to police the alleged truth of statements made on television. But that doesn’t mean that the agency can’t use its investigative powers to raise costs for targeted media outlets and it can clearly exert its influence on any potential acquisitions. And for all his recent talk about supporting free speech, this isn’t Carr’s first pressure campaign against a perceived antagonist of President Donald Trump. In July, he issued threats against Comcast, demanding more favorable coverage of Republicans from its NBC affiliates.
The Trump administration also has a clear model when it comes to leaning on media firms to silence speech it dislikes: The president’s executive orders punishing law firms for their association with disfavored clients and advocacy of out-of-season causes likewise deployed regulatory tools to try to achieve plainly impermissible censorship. Like Carr’s action this week, those executive orders in part worked through the economic pressure firms experienced, even as their First Amendment rights were being violated.
Although the Supreme Court did not ultimately decide the merits in the social media case, no justice doubted the clear-as-day First Amendment principle that, as Alito explained, “government officials may not coerce private entities to suppress speech.” Indeed, less than a month beforehand, the unanimous court held in a different case that the First Amendment “prohibits government officials from relying on the ‘threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion . . . to achieve the suppression’ of disfavored speech.”
In a separate opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch explained what a plaintiff needed to show to get into court: Could the government’s conduct, when “viewed in context,” be “reasonably understood to convey a threat of adverse government action in order to punish or suppress the plaintiff ’s speech?”
This principle is both simple and sound: The government can’t do indirectly, through shadowy threats and mafia-like intimidation, what it is barred from doing directly. Indeed, this is a principle that even Trump apparently believes in: In July 2021, he filed civil actions against Facebook, Twitter and YouTube alleging that unconstitutional government jaw-boning of those firms led to the take-down and shadow banning of his and others’ speech.
Kimmel may have contractual remedies against ABC. But he also has a powerful constitutional claim for prospective relief and damages against the federal government much like the one that Trump sought to vindicate in 2021. A principled consistency would require those who objected to the Biden administration’s engagement with social media firms to support Kimmel. (To be clear, I am not holding my breath.)”
President Trump literally arrested a legal resident based on his speech. This is a huge, massive infringement of basic democratic rights by a president who ran on free speech.
Because the man was educated, in custody, people getting deported would talk to him and ask him questions. A man who had been in the country for over 20 years and had four children under 11, was showing up to his immigration hearing when he was grabbed to be deported. Another person asked him what a paper he signed was. The paper said he was to be deported. Another 19-year old asked if it would be safe for his mom to visit him, the answer was no. The immigration detention center had a lot of crying people in it. These people were depicted as criminals by the administration when they were picked up at their immigration hearings and their jobs.
Khalil missed the birth of his child because Trump decided to arrest him based on speech. The justification required the Secretary of State to go along with it. Marco Rubio did, losing what little dignity he had left. Khalil requested to be temporarily let out for the birth of his child. HIs request was denied.
I disagree with a lot of what he says about Palestine and Israel, but his detention was an insult to the principles that democracy stands on.
“Under the Fifth Amendment, Boasberg notes, the government’s assertion that it infallibly identifies the guilty “does not suffice.” As the Supreme Court confirmed in Trump v. J.G.G., which addressed a temporary restraining order (TRO) that Boasberg issued during an earlier round of the ACLU’s litigation, “‘it is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law’ in the context of removal proceedings,” meaning “the detainees are entitled to notice and opportunity to be heard ‘appropriate to the nature of the case.'” Specifically, the justices said, “AEA detainees must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the Act. The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.””
JD Vance takes to Twitter to make false claims while advocating for taking away immigrants’ due process rights.
The right to due process is for all people on American soil. It doesn’t mean people suspected of being illegal immigrants get a full jury trial, but there is some appropriate process to decrease the possibility of penalizing, deporting, or sending them to a dictator who may kill them for opposing the authoritarian regime.
“The writ of habeas corpus, a right deeply rooted in English common law and recognized by the U.S. Constitution, allows people nabbed by the government to challenge their detention in court. That complicates President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Last month, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that foreign nationals who allegedly are subject to immediate deportation as “alien enemies” have a right to contest that designation by filing habeas petitions.”
…
“Although President Donald Trump views unauthorized immigration as an “invasion,” judges have been appropriately skeptical of that description. And while Trump might believe judicial review in this context is inconsistent with “the public safety,” that assessment is likewise controversial. Finally, the power to suspend habeas corpus has long been understood as belonging to Congress, not the president.”
“The Declaration of Independence referred to “certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The First Amendment strictly specifies that “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.” Both are rooted in the understanding that rights don’t come from government but are inherent in individuals. The government must respect our rights whether or not it agrees with how we exercise them so long as we, in turn, respect others’ equal rights.
In February, Eugene Volokh of the Hoover Institution and the UCLA School of Law wrote that “when it comes to aliens and immigration law, the First Amendment questions aren’t settled” in a discussion about the constitutionality of deporting noncitizens for their speech. That may still be true, but cases like American Association of University Professors v. Rubio show at least some federal judges viewing First Amendment protections as universally applicable, which squares with American history.
Campus radicals have the same free speech rights as we all possess, even if they’re just visiting.”