Last updated: September 19, 2026. This page lists the most egregious violations. See also additional First Amendment violations and the attack on the education system.
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; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
| Date | Administration Action | Why does this violate the Constitution? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025–2026 | Required applicants for more than 70,000 federal job postings — civil service positions at GS-5 and above, including air traffic controllers and crane operators — to write an essay naming which of the president’s executive orders or policy initiatives were most “significant” to them and explaining how they would help implement them if hired. The requirement was part of the administration’s May 2025 merit hiring plan. | Conditioning government employment on an applicant’s political views is the kind of loyalty test the First Amendment forbids. On September 12, 2026 a federal judge ordered the question removed, finding it likely violated both the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act: “The plain language of Question Three calls for the applicant’s personal views on a political topic, and directly links that personal view to the duties of the desired civil service job.” | The suit was brought by the American Federation of Government Employees, AFSCME, and the National Association of Government Employees. The judge gave the Office of Personnel Management until the end of that week to strip the question and notify every agency. |
| August 2026 | Disney and ABC sued the Federal Communications Commission on August 18, 2026, alleging that Chairman Brendan Carr had waged a “retaliatory campaign” against the network over editorial and programming decisions the administration disliked, including by subjecting ABC’s station licenses to an unusually early renewal review. | Using the government’s licensing power to punish a broadcaster for the content of its programming is viewpoint-based retaliation barred by the First Amendment. Anna Gomez, the commission’s sole Democratic member, publicly agreed that the FCC has no lawful authority to threaten broadcast licenses over guest bookings or editorial choices. | The suit followed a year of FCC pressure on the network; see the September 2025 entry below on the commission’s threats over Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue. |
| July 2026 | The Justice Department secretly obtained court orders for New York Times reporters’ phone records in a leak investigation, plus a further order barring the phone company from telling the Times it had done so. After a federal judge questioned whether prosecutors had met the legal requirements for targeting the press, the department withdrew the subpoenas. | Seizing journalists’ call records to identify their sources burdens the newsgathering the First Amendment protects, and the secrecy order stripped the Times of any chance to contest the seizure. Prosecutors had not exhausted the less intrusive steps their own department’s press protocol requires. | Days later the department subpoenaed Times freelancer Matthew Cole for two years of contact records and refused to withdraw it. |
| February 2026 | The Defense Secretary designated the artificial-intelligence company Anthropic a “supply chain risk” to national security after it declined to remove safeguards that stop its products from being used for mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. The designation halted federal agencies’ use of the company’s products and directed military contractors not to do business with it. | On August 28, 2026 a federal judge held the measures were “unlawful retaliation in violation of the First Amendment”, that the company was denied the notice the Fifth Amendment requires, and that the designation was “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act. “The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” she wrote. | The judge noted the government remains free to choose its own vendors, but found the broad measures imposed “illegal and baseless”. An earlier order had temporarily blocked the ban in March 2026. |
| October 2025 | Required Pentagon reporters to pledge not to solicit or publish even unclassified information without approval, on pain of losing credentials. Virtually the entire Pentagon press corps — AP, Reuters, NYT, Washington Post, Fox, CNN, NBC, and more — surrendered their badges rather than sign. | In March 2026, a federal judge ruled the policy unconstitutional as a prior restraint on newsgathering and an unconstitutional condition on press access. | |
| October 2025 | Federally charged six activists (including a congressional candidate) over a protest outside the Broadview, Illinois ICE facility. | A federal judge reviewing grand jury transcripts found prosecutors vouched for guilt, excused grand jurors who disagreed with the government, and communicated improperly with jurors — saying she had never seen worse in her career — and found the defendants entitled to a hearing on prosecution in retaliation for protected protest. | In May 2026, the government dismissed all remaining charges with prejudice — a rare sanction — and dropped charges against other Chicago-area ICE protesters. |
| October 2025 | The State Department revoked the visas of six foreign nationals over social media posts mocking or criticizing Charlie Kirk after his assassination, publicly posting excerpts of their speech, while a senior official solicited public reports of foreigners’ posts. | This is viewpoint discrimination against core political speech: officials publicly punished named individuals purely for the content of their opinions. | After administration officials encouraged a mass-firing campaign over Kirk posts, fired public employees began winning First Amendment retaliation settlements by mid-2026. |
| September 2025 | After Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue about the reaction to Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the FCC chairman told broadcasters “we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” suggesting license consequences; within hours ABC suspended the show indefinitely, and two major station groups with deals pending before the FCC pulled it. | First Amendment scholars across the spectrum described it as textbook “jawboning” — government coercion of a private speaker over viewpoint. The chairman was called before a Senate committee over the threats. | Kimmel returned in late September 2025 amid nationwide backlash. Part of a pattern of FCC pressure on broadcasters, including the Paramount/“60 Minutes” settlement (see the Abuse of Power pages). |
| September 2025 | Signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, directing agencies to dismantle “antifa”-linked networks and their funders — listing “anti-capitalism,” “anti-Christianity,” and “extremism on migration, race, and gender” as terrorism indicators. The Justice Department then directed prosecutors in at least seven states to prepare investigations of a political opponent’s foundations. | The Brennan Center concluded the orders “aim to criminalize opposition,” and the ACLU’s analysis found the memorandum is “squarely directed at speech and nonviolent action… protected by the First Amendment.” | By 2026 the memorandum was being invoked in protest prosecutions, including the indictment of 15 Minneapolis anti-ICE protesters (see the additional actions page). |
| September 2025 | During Chicago’s “Operation Midway Blitz,” federal agents used tear gas, pepper balls, and physical force against protesters, journalists, and clergy documenting immigration raids. | In a 223-page November 2025 ruling, a federal judge found the use of force “shocks the conscience” and violated the First Amendment rights of speech, assembly, and religious exercise; the judge also found that agents had repeatedly lied about the events — some accounts contradicted by their own body cameras — and imposed strict use-of-force, body-camera, and identification requirements. | The same operation’s warrantless arrests, which violated a federal consent decree, are covered on the Fifth Amendment pages. |
| September 2025 | Operated a policy of arresting and deporting noncitizens over pro-Palestinian speech — the policy behind the Khalil, Öztürk, and Mahdawi arrests — using an AI-driven “Catch and Revoke” visa program. | After a full trial, a federal judge ruled that the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security “acted in concert to misuse the sweeping powers of their respective offices” to target noncitizens “primarily on account of their First Amendment protected political speech,” writing that lawfully present noncitizens “have the same free speech rights as the rest of us” — “‘No law’ means ‘no law.’” | In January 2026 the court declared the policy void. The government continued trying to deport Mahmoud Khalil for over a year after courts found the effort retaliatory; unsealed records showed officials internally admitted having no evidence against Rümeysa Öztürk before branding her a threat. |
| August 2025 | Signed an executive order directing the attorney general to “vigorously” prosecute flag burners and to revoke visas and immigration benefits of noncitizen flag burners. Days later, the Secret Service arrested a veteran who burned a flag in protest of the order. | The Supreme Court squarely held in Texas v. Johnson (1989) that flag burning is protected political speech; legal experts across the spectrum said the order defies binding precedent. | |
| May 2025 | Suspended federal funding to PBS and NPR for what he claims is “partisan news coverage.” | These are government-sponsored, non-partisan public media organizations with coverage that the president does not like. In March 2026, a federal judge ruled the executive order violates the First Amendment — the government may not use “the power of the purse ‘to punish or suppress disfavored expression’” — and permanently blocked it. | The ruling could not restore the $1.1 billion in public-broadcasting funds Congress separately rescinded in July 2025, which forced the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to wind down and local stations to close. This occurred roughly as the White House launched its own news-style website publishing exclusively positive coverage of the president. |
| April 2025 | A legal permanent resident for 10 years was arrested during his interview to finalize his U.S. citizenship and a month before he was set to graduate from college. | He was arrested for participating in protests over U.S. policy, a protected freedom under the First Amendment. The judge overseeing the case released him on the grounds that “Even if he were a firebrand, his conduct is protected by the First Amendment.” | In February 2026, an immigration judge dismissed his deportation case entirely; his First Amendment lawsuit continues. |
| March 2025 | Sent ultimatums to private colleges and universities to make broad changes to their curriculum, staff and student body regulations, and cede control of their departments to the federal government — backed by multi-billion-dollar funding freezes. | The Supreme Court has long held that academic freedom is an extension of the First Amendment, and pressuring a school to accept government control for political purposes violates the school’s right to set its own academic standards. Federal courts ruled the Harvard funding freeze and the UCLA pressure campaign unconstitutional First Amendment retaliation. | Click here for the full record, including court rulings and coerced settlements. |
| March 2025 | Signed an executive order that suspends the security clearance of employees of specific law firms and prohibits them from entering government buildings, getting government jobs, or receiving government contracts. | These law firms were targeted because of their or their employees’ previous work in cases opposed to President Trump or in support of his political rivals. The government cannot punish someone for their legal political work. This is a violation of the Constitution’s right to free expression and due process. | Other targeted firms include Covington and Burling, Perkins Coie, Paul Weiss, Jenner & Block, Wilmer Hale, and Susman Godfrey. All four challenged orders were struck down as unconstitutional retaliation in 2025; the government’s consolidated appeal was argued in May 2026, with all injunctions still in force. |
| February 2025 | The White House blocked the Associated Press from attending Oval Office and Air Force One press events because the outlet advised its journalists to retain the usage of “The Gulf of Mexico” rather than the president’s preferred “Gulf of America.” | The government cannot force an individual or group to use specific words. | A federal judge ruled that punishing the AP for its policy violates free speech, but an appeals panel stayed that ruling, holding the Oval Office is not a First Amendment forum; the ban has effectively continued, with the AP still excluded from the now White House-controlled press pool as of mid-2026. |