There’s no question that the threats to free speech that have emanated from MAGA-land lately are reminiscent of the Red Scare led by the right-wing demagogue and U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy in the late 1940s and 1950s. Throughout his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump vowed vengeance on a Democratic Party he regularly called “the radical left” (or, on occasion, “communists”) and accused of a treasonous conspiracy to turn over the country to criminal immigrants and America-hating globalist elites. Even as he has relentlessly pressed to expand his own powers to unprecedented levels, the 47th president has begun acting on his threats by deploying the machinery of justice against people, institutions, and ideas he dislikes. His acts of intimidation and shakedowns of academic institutions and law firms for fostering points of view he finds offensive have illustrated his underlying contempt for the First Amendment.

Trump’s hostility to free expression grew into full bloom after the assassination of his friend and ally Charlie Kirk, which he instantly blamed without evidence on “the radical left,” vowing to crush his and Kirk’s enemies definitively. His top domestic policy adviser, Stephen Miller, has suggested anyone attributing authoritarian motives to the president may be illegally inciting violence. And most ominously, Trump’s attorney general, Pam........

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