Profs & Pints DC: Trump Versus Free Speech

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Trump Versus Free Speech,” on the current administration’s efforts to impose orthodoxy and stifle dissent, with Stephen Vladeck, professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center and nationally recognized expert on constitutional law and the federal courts.

In his first 100 days in office, President Trump has taken a host of actions that have advocates of free speech concerned. Among such moves, he has punished law firms for representing former government officials who were involved in Trump-related investigations. He has cut off federal funding from universities and other entities for supporting causes to which he objects. He has shut down government programs simply for using terminology he doesn’t like. And he has reassigned or even terminated federal employees for no other reason than because they hold different political views.

Many, if not most, of these initiatives are called into question by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and its guarantee of the right to freedom of speech. As Justice Robert Jackson wrote for the Supreme Court in 1943, “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

Be on hand for a discussion of such actions—and what they mean for our right to speak out—with Stephen Vladeck, nationally recognized expert on constitutional law and the federal courts, Supreme Court analyst for CNN, editor and author of the One First weekly newsletter, and author of the New York Times bestseller The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic.

Professor Vladeck will discuss the Trump administration’s efforts to impose orthodoxy and why and how they’re inconsistent with the First Amendment and with constitutional limits on the government’s ability to impose conditions on recipients of federal funds.

He’ll also talk about the role that the courts have played so far—and are likely to play in the future—in pushing back against such measures. And he’ll examine a much broader problem, the extent to which the Trump administration’s actions seem intended to (and likely will) chill the exercise of one of our most important constitutional rights: the right to object. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image from Canva.