Apr 01, 2025 23:00:00

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is under attack by the Trump Administration.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the establishment of a state religion and the making of any law which impedes the free exercise of religion, but with Donald Trump's inauguration as the 47th president of the United States, the First Amendment has come under unprecedented attack, according to security analyst Brian Krebs.

How Each Pillar of the 1st Amendment is Under Attack – Krebs on Security
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/03/how-each-pillar-of-the-1st-amendment-is-under-attack/

Krebs lists five pillars of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution: the right to petition, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion. Here is how the Trump administration is attacking these five pillars:

Right to Petition
The right to petition allows citizens to communicate with their government by airing grievances, demanding action, and sharing opinions without fear of retaliation, but Krebs argues that this right has been violated on multiple levels by the Trump administration.

First, many Republican lawmakers are following advice from their leadership and avoiding attending local town halls and other events to avoid the anger of constituents affected by the administration's budget and staffing cuts. President Trump is preventing journalists and citizens from requesting government records by firing the people who process government agency Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

Also, when petitioning the government, it is often necessary to challenge federal agencies in court, especially when the government ignores the request. But that becomes difficult as competent law firms start to avoid lawsuits that could go against the Trump administration. On March 22, 2025, President Trump issued a memorandum to the secretaries of the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security 'instructing them to seek sanctions against lawyers and law firms involved in unjust and nuisance litigation against the United States or cases brought before federal agencies.'

President Trump has also issued several

executive orders criticizing law firms that defend attorneys who have filed lawsuits against him.

Freedom of Assembly
President Trump has taken various steps to discourage lawful demonstrations on campuses, threatening to cut government funding to universities that support protests he deems 'unlawful.'

Shortly after taking office in January 2025, Trump outlined a broad federal crackdown on the 'explosion of anti-Semitism' on American college campuses and argued that foreign students who are in the U.S. legally on visas do not enjoy the same free speech and due process rights as American citizens.

In addition, on March 10, the Department of Education's (DOE) acting assistant secretary for civil rights sent a letter to 60 educational institutions, warning them that they could lose federal funding if they did not step up their anti-Semitism measures. President Trump subsequently closed the DOE.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have attempted to detain and

deport pro-Palestinian students who are legally in the U.S. The Trump administration has targeted students and scholars who have spoken out against the Gaza attacks or participated in campus protests against U.S. support for those attacks. At least 300 international students have had their visas revoked under the Trump administration, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Freedom of the Press
President Trump has sued several media outlets, including 60 Minutes, CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times, for 'falsely reporting.'

For example, President Trump has filed a $10 billion lawsuit against 60 Minutes and its parent company, Paramount, alleging that the company 'arbitrarily edited an interview with Kamala Harris, a candidate in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.' Paramount is reportedly considering settling the lawsuit , fearing that it may not be able to obtain government approval for its multi-billion dollar acquisition.

Freedom of Speech
The Trump administration has distributed a list of hundreds of words that government employees and agencies must not use in reports or communications.

And in a move to comply with the Trump administration's speech-censorship mandate, federal agencies have removed countless taxpayer-funded data sets from government websites, including data on crime, sexual orientation, gender, education, climate and global development, according to the Brookings Institution.

Various pages from government sites, including public data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, disappeared under President Trump's orders. What on earth disappeared? - GIGAZINE

Religious Freedom
The Trump administration has rescinded a decades-old policy that instructed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents not to conduct immigration enforcement actions in or near 'sensitive' or 'protected' locations, such as churches, schools and hospitals.

The directive was quickly challenged in lawsuits brought by Quaker, Baptist and Sikh groups, who said the policy shift was preventing people from attending religious services for fear of being arrested on civil immigration charges. In response, a federal judge on February 24, 2025, barred ICE officers from entering churches or targeting immigrants near them.

President Trump also announced the creation of a 'Task Force to Root Out Anti-Christian Bias,' headed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, while ignoring the fact that Christianity is the largest religion in the United States and that Christians are represented in large numbers in Congress. In response, Baptist pastor and president of the progressive Interfaith Alliance, Rev. Paul Brandeis Rauschenbusch, issued a statement condemning the hypocrisy of President Trump for claiming to defend religion by creating the task force.