Caffeinated Politics

This past week was like every other one since Inauguration Day, in that the most absurd actions and dangerous attacks on democracy continued from the Donald Trump Administration. In the midst of headlines about the ludicrous gathering of our top military brass for a dressings down by clown-like figures behind a podium at Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virginia, or that Stephen Miller has taken a prominent role in the Trump administration’s strikes against suspected Venezuelan drug boats, sometimes exerting more influence than Secretary of State and national security adviser Marco Rubio, came a news story about how the guardrails of our democracy still hold tough.

In the midst of the madness it was uplifting to learn of a courageous federal judge who bluntly and powerfully issued a much-needed 161-page rebuke of Trump and his determined assault on the First Amendment. There was no mincing of words. “The president’s palpable misunderstanding that the government simply cannot seek retribution for speech he disdains poses a great threat to Americans’ freedom of speech.”

Judge William G. Young of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts correctly ruled that the Trump administration’s policy of arresting, detaining, and deporting noncitizen students and faculty members for their pro-Palestinian advocacy violates the First Amendment.  Ponder for a moment that we even needed to have a court case to make that point clear to the likes of Trump and his base.

The need for strong and laser-like precision in cutting to the core of constitutional clarity is an issue all in and of itself. That we are at a time when Trump’s political expediency and hostile intentions for our democracy demand rulings of the kind Young wrote should make us truly stop and reflect about the moment in which we find ourselves as a nation.

We actually needed a United States district judge to write that the First Amendment belongs to everyone present in this country, citizen or not. And it rebukes, with pure moral force that it is unconstitutional to weaponize immigration law against dissent about any issue in the public square.

Young, a Reagan appointee who has served nearly five decades on the bench, began his ruling with a handwritten note sent to his chambers: “Trump has pardons and tanks—what do you have?” His reply: “Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People of the United States—you and me—have our magnificent Constitution.” That note was the prologue to what he called “perhaps the most important case ever” to fall within his jurisdiction”.

The case centered on the administration’s effort to deport foreign-born students and academics for their pro-Palestinian speech. Young found that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, acting under Trump’s executive orders, “intentionally and in concert” targeted non-citizens for deportation “primarily on account of their First Amendment protected political speech” The goal, he wrote, was not mass removal but something more insidious: to “terrorize similarly situated non-citizen—and other—pro-Palestinians into silence because their views were unwelcome” .

What Trump and his ilk were doing, be they Washington insiders or yahoos around the nation who supported this unprincipled and unconstitutional move shows how far they would go at betraying an American promise grounded in the very fabric of this nation’s founding.

Trump and his kind need to understand that the First Amendment is not a partisan tool for his autocratic whims. It is not a privilege granted by the whims of power. It is a fundamental right. Inalienable. Indivisible> And in case Trump is not able to read the ruling from Young, let he paraphrase. Keep your ideological partisan tampering hands off of the First Amendment.

“No law means no law,” Young wrote, quoting the amendment itself. “The First Amendment does not draw President Trump’s invidious distinction and it is not to be found in our history or jurisprudence”. He did not write what he surely would have added for Trump’s benefit had he been able to do so. ‘So, bugger off’.

If I were a high school civics or history teacher, this ruling would have become a teachable moment. Trump’s administration has shown a disturbing tendency to treat speech as a threat when it challenges his worldview. But the Constitution is not his to bend. The First Amendment does not yield to executive retribution. It does not shrink in the face of tanks or pardons. It stands, as Judge Young reminds us, as the last and most vital guardrail of democracy.

This ruling is not just about pro-Palestinian speech. It is about the soul of the republic. It is about whether we still believe that liberty belongs to the unpopular, the foreign-born, the dissenting voice. It is about whether we still believe that “We the People” includes those who speak truth to power, even when power would rather, they be silent. And then deported.

Judge Young was more than just a jurist. He is a patriot. And his ruling is a call to our collective national conscience.