Amid Trump’s Assault on Free Speech, Advocates Stay Busy

Jameel Jaffer, a civil rights litigator for more than 25 years, said there is no question that President Donald Trump’s assault on free speech is unprecedented in his lifetime. And while he noted there may be some rough comparisons to be made with the McCarthy era, it almost certainly has no parallel in the last 100 years.

But Jaffer, who now serves as executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, admitted that he didn’t predict such a contentious climate a year ago. In fact, he said, it wasn’t until about the 100th day of Trump’s second term that it set in how different the political landscape had become.

By that point, the Trump administration had already released multiple executive orders declaring certain types of curriculum unconstitutional, detained international students who spoke out against the Israeli government and terminated hundreds of government contracts with research organizations whose projects included words like “biases,” “racism” and “women.” Perhaps most notably, the president froze federal funding for Columbia University—the Ivy League institution where the Knight Institute is based—for the way officials allegedly mishandled campus protests and antisemitism complaints.

And while dozens of lawsuits were filed in an attempt to mitigate these brazen attacks on academic freedom, the Supreme Court had already overturned the first of what would become several lower court rulings concerning higher ed. Nothing appeared to be slowing the White House down.

“During the first Trump administration, there were lots of checks and balances that just aren’t operational right now,” Jaffer said. “I mean, there was resistance in Congress. There was resistance in the courts, including the Supreme Court. There were whistleblowers in basically every federal agency. There were lots of people, even inside the administration, the first time around, who served as constraints on what I would describe as the president’s most authoritarian impulses.”

Other nonprofit groups from across the political spectrum had started to recognize the same patterns, and none of them were comfortable with the direction in which things were going. Collectively, in a letter addressed to the “leaders of American institutions,” Knight and six other free speech advocacy organizations called on the country to “stand more resolutely” against Trump’s “multi-front assault on First Amendment freedoms.”

“A lot of Americans were still looking at all this through a partisan lens,” Jaffer said. “We wanted to get all of the major free speech organizations, including the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression—which is sometimes fairly or unfairly characterized as a conservative group—and the American Civil Liberties Union—which is fairly or unfairly characterized as a more progressive group—on the same letter, explaining why this moment was as perilous as we thought it was.”

Despite the letter, Trump’s attack on First Amendment rights only escalated, as he made further funding freezes, presented more sweeping demands to institutions and proposed an unprecedented compact for higher ed that officials say would give preferential financial treatment to institutions that acquiesced to the president’s agenda. (Knight and others have said the compact violates the First Amendment.)

“It’s definitely a lower point for First Amendment rights, at least in terms of people’s belief that they can exercise those rights without consequence,” said Esha Bhandari, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. “We still have those rights. That’s the important thing … [But] while some groups may be willing to go to court to vindicate their rights, litigation has a cost. And many people might think it’s simply easier to conform their speech to what the administration wants.”

As a result, Jaffer, Bhandari and other nonprofit leaders say their caseloads have only increased—but so has their motivation to continue their work to protect the First Amendment.

Since January, the Knight Institute has launched a dozen litigation and research projects, up 33 percent from last year. These include the lawsuit AAUP v. Rubio, in which a federal judge issued a “landmark decision” that international students and scholars are protected by the First Amendment regardless of citizenship; a 13-episode podcast about Trump and the First Amendment; and a slew of amicus briefs filed in support of law firms, universities and media organizations targeted by the Trump administration. (Jaffer noted that the number of projects doesn’t even begin to account for the amount of time put into each.)

The ACLU reported that it and its 557 lawyers have filed more than 180 Trump-related legal actions so far, putting them on pace to surpass the 400 they submitted the first time around. FIRE, which has about 120 employees, has filed nine lawsuits and 42 amicus briefs so far this year, compared to nine lawsuits and 13 amicus briefs during the same time frame in 2024.

Daniel Burnett, senior director of communications at FIRE, was more hesitant to attribute the increase to the Trump administration. Some of the increase, he said, could be due to FIRE expanding its staff midway through the Biden administration. But he also noted that the current climate for free speech across the country certainly has increased the speed and volume of attacks.

“There’s just a lot of challenges, regardless of who’s in the White House at any time,” he said. However, “there’s a lot happening, not only in and around the country, but also from the White House, that’s keeping free speech front of mind and top of mind … I would say we are busier now, especially with a lot of the rapid-response items that we’ve been putting out.”

From Burnett’s perspective, it’s always a critical moment for free speech, and just as Jaffer said, the response needs to be one that’s bipartisan.

“Free speech is not historically the norm. It’s very much the exception,” he said. “And so it’s critically important for organizations like FIRE to stand up and fight against those challenges, regardless of who’s in the White House at any particular time.”

Rising Support

But some advocates noted that standing resolute amid an assault on free speech comes with its challenges.

Burnett said that almost every time there’s a change in office, FIRE has lost donors from one side of the political aisle or the other due to the types of cases the organization starts taking on. When Trump is in office, that means conservatives are callous to the more liberal types of speech FIRE is defending. And when a Democrat is in office, it means progressive donors push back on FIRE representing Republican plaintiffs.

“Anytime we advocate on any of our issues, we get people who say, ‘You know what, I just can’t support that.’ And we lose support,” Burnett said. “We know that’s part of being an organization like this. We defend people who you may not like.”

Jaffer said he had been concerned about similar challenges, because “the work is very controversial and the risk of retaliation is real.” But so far, donors haven’t retreated. In fact, existing donors have stepped up their support and new ones have come to the table, leading to a 25 percent increase in the institute’s budget so far this year.

FIRE, despite some losses, saw donations go up from $17.7 million by the third quarter of 2024 to $24.6 million in the same time frame for 2025. The number of gifts also rose from 14,000 last year to 16,700 this year.

“We’re looking for our people, not fair-weather friends of the First Amendment,” Burnett said. “We want the ones who are going to defend free speech whether that censor has a D by their name or an R by their name. It’s the only way we can keep this thing going.”

Calling on ‘Ordinary Americans’

Moving forward, Jaffer said, he and his team will continue to celebrate their wins, like the recent ruling in AAUP v. Rubio, but they’re also aware that lower-court victories are just the beginning

“We still need to persuade [the district court judge] to issue a meaningful remedy, and then we’re going to have to hold on to that in the appeals court and before the Supreme Court,” he said. “And while I’m hopeful that we can do that, I don’t assume that we necessarily will.”

Ultimately, he added, much of what happens from here on out will depend on whether the courts are even willing to issue controversial decisions that go against the president’s agenda and, if they do, whether the Trump administration will honor their rulings.

Jaffer said the last 10 months have shown the limits of litigation. The justice system is only effective if judges feel comfortable ruling against Congress or the White House, and under the Trump administration and its “campaign of intimidation,” that may not always be the case, he said.

“The truth is, like, the Knight Institute is doing just fine. It’s our democracy that I’m more worried about,” Jaffer admitted. “At this point, ordinary Americans are going to have to defend their First Amendment freedoms, and they’re going to have to defend those freedoms by asserting them in court, by exercising them through public protest and by conveying to the political leaders that these freedoms are important to them.”