Authored by Bradley Smith via RealClearPolitics,
The reelection of President Donald Trump could serve as a historic turning point for free speech in America. President Trump has said he will investigate censorship practices by the federal government, end the rampant disrespect for First Amendment rights on our college campuses, and take on Big Tech’s Orwellian policing of speech on the Internet. If successful, these efforts would make the First Amendment stronger than ever before.
Yet President Trump’s opponents will not simply stand by and watch as he dismantles their carefully crafted censorship machine. Controlling who gets to speak and what can be said is essential to the left’s dominance over our institutions. They will not give up such an important source of their power without a fight.
To ensure the success of Trump’s free speech agenda, the right must anticipate and prepare for the left’s inevitable attacks. Fortunately, their methods are not hard to predict. In fact, Democrats tipped their hand during the campaign.
Back when the party’s out-of-touch leadership thought Kamala Harris would propel them to victory, they set about making plans to silence opposition to their agenda once in office. At the Democratic National Convention, Sen. Chuck Schumer promised sweeping changes to elections, voting, and campaign finance if Democrats won control of Congress and the White House. All of these efforts would slant the political playing field further in the left’s favor.
Among the bills was legislation that would strip Americans of their privacy when supporting nonprofit groups that speak out on hot button issues like abortion, crime, the border, or extreme gender politics. The importance of this provision should not be underestimated.
The left calls it “transparency” when they publicly expose a private citizen’s personal information, including their name and home address, but Americans know it better as doxxing. They also know the purpose is not good government, but power politics. Exposing donors allows the left to build enemies’ lists and harass anyone who backs the “wrong” cause.
Harris, who co-sponsored the DISCLOSE Act in the Senate, has her own long record of attacking conservative donors and journalists. As California Attorney General, her demand that nonprofits expose their confidential donor lists to her office led to lawsuits and a rebuke from the U.S. Supreme Court. The First Amendment protects the right to give privately, as the justices reminded her.
Now that the election is over, Democrats’ designs for regulating speech and exposing conservative donors may form the heart of their resistance strategy to splinter the Trump coalition. We have seen this movie before.
After the fight over Obamacare sparked a massive conservative movement known as the Tea Party, the left painted targets on the backs of the organizations and donors at its heart. IRS bureaucrats began grilling conservative groups about their activities and intentionally slow-walked their applications for nonprofit status. The massive targeting campaign succeeded in suppressing grassroots conservative activism in the run-up to the 2012 elections, where Democrats made gains.
Yet Democrats do not even need to control the White House to target conservative donors. Threats can arise from inside federal agencies like the IRS, or from state legislation or regulatory actions, or even from unscrupulous media aided by leaks and hacking of confidential donor data. President Trump himself saw his tax returns illegally leaked in a politically-motivated scheme.
Organizations that are successful in promoting conservative policies have also seen coordinated campaigns to bully their donors into ending their support. These harassment campaigns are one of the tactics that allowed the left to seize control of corporate America. Today, many companies pay a heavy price for any public association with the right.
America First organizations and citizens are more than familiar with this kind of discrimination. This time, however, they must not merely persist through it but fight back and defeat it. If not, the left’s control over our institutions will soon reemerge, strong as ever, despite our best efforts.
The solution is simple: Ensure every American can freely, safely, and privately support the organizations that represent their values and beliefs. We must end the ability of bureaucrats and political operatives to spy on donors and nonprofits.
If the Trump coalition can do this and protect its own, it can achieve its bold free speech agenda – and more.
Bradley Smith is chairman of the Institute for Free Speech, a former chairman of the FEC, and a professor of law at Capital University.
