Free Speech

A Liberal Think Tank and an Air Force Major Are Trump's Latest Targets for Speech Policing

Trump threatened the Center for American Progress with a defamation lawsuit, while Jason Watson faces a court martial for offending the president.

Joe Lancaster | 8.31.2026 3:36 PM

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(Illustration: Fatima Ruiz/Midjourney)

"Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society," according to a January 2025 executive order that President Donald Trump signed on his first day back in office. "It is the policy of the United States to…secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech."

That's an admirable sentiment. Of course, Trump has consistently behaved—both before and since—completely at odds with it. Just in recent days, we can add a progressive think tank and an Air Force major to the list of examples in which the president is threatening his critics with legal action simply for expressing opinions contrary to his own.

In August 2025, Trump declared a "crime emergency" in Washington, D.C., deploying U.S. National Guard troops to the nation's capital. Within 48 hours, Trump declared, "you see a big change and people are feeling safer already." But the numbers didn't bear out any major shift: An influx of nearly 2,000 federal troops netted fewer than 400 arrests, mostly for nonviolent crimes, in the first 10 days.

Trump also deployed federal officers to other cities, including Los Angeles, Charlotte, and Minneapolis, where immigration officers shot and killed two protesters in January.

Earlier this month, Reason's Autumn Billings wrote that after a year, D.C. crime is indeed down, though it's commensurate with a similar drop nationwide, raising questions "about why the $55 million-per-month show of force is necessary at all."

The Center for American Progress (CAP), a progressive think tank, reached a similar conclusion in July. "New CAP analysis reveals the Trump administration's costly National Guard deployments have failed to reduce violent crime despite its claims of success," wrote Chandler Hall. "Moreover, if these deployments are extended and continue through the end of 2026, they could cost American taxpayers more than $1.7........

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