Trump’s next move to silence free speech is coming

How Trump will vilify and attack civil society

It was the first real constitutional crisis. As Jeffersonians emerged to challenge the early Federalist administration of John Adams, the president’s reaction was to quash dissent. Too young to have much experience with free speech and the right of citizens to question and even rally patriotically against the party in power, Congress passed and the president signed the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.

That package contained four statutes: The Naturalization Act, which made it harder to become a US citizen; The Alien Friends Act, which authorized the president to deport aliens he deemed dangerous (Adams feared many non-citizens would become Jeffersonians); The Alien Enemies Act, which authorized the president to imprison or deport aliens of hostile nations during wartime; and The Sedition Act, which criminalized criticism of the government.

Many drafters of the Constitution were horrified. James Madison wrote in response that:

The right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon… has ever been justly deemed, the only effectual guardian of every other right.

The American people sided with Madison’s view. Three of the statutes quickly expired or were repealed (only the Alien Enemies Act remains on the books today and has been invoked extremely rarely, by FDR to intern Japanese-Americans and recently by Donald Trump). The crisis over the Sedition Act set the foundation for 250 years of freedom in this country, in which we can not only criticize our government, but organize as citizens to hold our leaders accountable.

As a result, America has the most robust civil society in the world, in which citizens openly debate the issues of the day, organize with each other to contest policies, and form groups on all sides of public debates, from those that advocate for pro-life positions to those that litigate for voting rights to those that educate about environmental conservation to those that research ways to lower taxes.

Precisely because this robust right to free speech and civic organizing is such a bedrock of freedom, it’s what autocrats around the world typically attack first. Those attacks don’t begin with tanks in the streets. They start with something quieter: a smear campaign, a sudden tax audit, a whisper of investigation. Civil society becomes the target, and the justification is always the same: These groups are not truly patriotic. They are foreign-backed. Corrupt. Dangerous. Even “terrorists.”

This is how Prime Minister Viktor Orbán tightened his grip on Hungary, portraying independent NGOs as agents of George Soros and foreign interference. It is how Russia crippled dissenting voices, labeling groups as "foreign agents" and driving them out of public life. It is how Turkey, India, and countless others have methodically defanged the institutions that check government power.

If Donald Trump is truly following that same playbook, we can expect that script to come to the United States.

What the attacks on nonprofits will look like

If the administration’s actions of the past several weeks are a guide, we should expect it to come in the form of yet another executive order, this time targeting not law firms but civil society groups, and potentially the donors that fund them. If following the overseas playbook, it would accuse such groups of being anti-American, or of operating in bad faith under the guise of public service. It would likely direct the IRS to strip them of their tax-exempt status and instruct federal agencies to investigate them for vaguely defined wrongdoing.

This would not be a move designed to uphold the law. It would be designed to punish dissent. If it happens, it should be seen clearly for what it is: not a defense of democracy and free speech, but an attack on them.

If President Trump tries such an executive order, the intent will be to send a message: Criticize me or seek to hold me accountable — and I will destroy you. It would be a transparent abuse of power, one that echoes the worst tendencies of illiberal regimes across the globe.

Using the IRS to attack civil society would also be patently illegal. We don’t know precisely what form such an attack will take, but an order from the president directing the IRS to revoke the tax-exempt status of certain categories of non-profits because they focus on ideas that are disfavored by this administration — like climate change or democracy — would likely raise serious procedural and constitutional problems. And federal law is clear that:

It shall be unlawful for any applicable person to request, directly or indirectly, any officer or employee of the Internal Revenue Service to conduct or terminate an audit or other investigation of any particular taxpayer with respect to the tax liability of such taxpayer.

There is no gray area here. As Sam Brunson, a scholar of tax and nonprofit law notes, Congress was specifically worried about this possibility:

Now perhaps this won’t come to pass. Mr. Trump has long bristled at the suggestion that he harbors autocratic instincts. "My revenge will be success," he said on Fox News, insisting he is not interested in retribution. But his record — and his own words — tell a different story. He has issued executive orders against law firms and former government officials who he believes have wronged him, and has already directed the Justice Department and other agencies to take action against perceived critics. His administration has worked feverishly to purge career civil servants and replace them with loyalists. He continues to describe the press as the enemy of the people. And now the target could be civil society itself.

The United States has always benefited from a strong nonprofit sector. From civil rights to environmental protection, from legal aid to investigative journalism, these organizations do the work of active citizenship the First Amendment imagined and fill the gaps where government falters and where private enterprise cannot reach. They are not perfect. But they are essential.

Accusing them of undermining our nation is not a policy choice. It is a signal. It is the first step in criminalizing dissent. And it is an especially effective tactic because it cloaks itself in a veneer of legality — in audits, in investigations, in IRS code. But the language of legality is not the same as legitimacy.

If such an executive order is issued, expect it to follow a well-worn rhetorical path. The groups will be framed as foreign-influenced or part of an elite cabal. The language will suggest that they are weaponizing the law, when in fact the law is being weaponized against them. The justification will be national security, or election integrity, or "restoring faith" in institutions — phrases so vague they can mean whatever the speaker wants them to.

Trump will deny that it’s about revenge, even as the targets neatly match the list of those who have crossed him or oppose his policies. This, too, is from the playbook: Sow enough confusion, enough plausible deniability, that people no longer know what to believe.

Attacks on civil society come from fear, not strength

But we can believe this: When leaders attempt to silence civil society, it is not strength. It is fear. When they attack watchdogs, it is because they fear being watched. And when they preemptively accuse others of subversion, it is often to mask their own.

If such an order comes, it will arrive not as a revelation, but as confirmation. Confirmation that Mr. Trump is not interested in preserving democracy, but in bending it to his will. Confirmation that the accusations made by his critics — that he will use power to punish his enemies — were not exaggerations, but warnings.

And confirmation, perhaps most importantly, that those who still believe he can be restrained by norms or institutional guardrails must finally confront the evidence that he cannot.

This is not about left versus right, or liberal versus conservative. It is about whether the government can be used to punish those who dare to criticize it — a form of cancel culture so extreme that the framers explicitly forbid it in the First Amendment. If that happens and we allow it to stand, we reverse 250 years of freedom and send this great nation down a different path, one in which speech is no longer protected, and civic engagement is punishable if not to the liking of whoever happens to be in power. Eventually that comes for all of our rights.

That would not be a constitutional crisis so much as a constitutional funeral.