It May be Time to Begin Planning a Farewell Party for Free Speech in America

by John Ellis

Many historians consider A. Mitchell Palmer the worst Cabinet member in US history.[1] Serving as Woodrow Wilson’s Attorney General during the final two years of his presidency, Palmer’s name is forever glued to the infamous Palmer Raids that saw over 6,000 people imprisoned and tortured, with many threatened with deportation, for daring to be dissenters of the Wilson administration and/or having the audacity to be connected to socialism.[2] Americans who are unfamiliar with the Palmer Raids may want to familiarize themselves with what is widely considered one of the darkest, most dangerous chapters in American history. Doing so, becoming acquainted with the Palmer Raids, will serve as a cartographer for what’s on the horizon during this chaotic, dangerous chapter of American history under the increasingly heavy-handedness of the Trump/Musk administration.

A few weeks ago, as Trump escalated the current trade war[3], cut off foreign aid[4], and began dismantling the federal government, my wife asked me what I believe comes next. I replied, “Free speech. Trump will likely began attacking free speech.” Unfortunately, I was right.[5] Just this week, a dystopian-tinged event has served to (unfortunately) demonstrate the veracity of my fear: the illegal arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil along with Trump’s promise to deport him.

Whether you agree with Mahmoud Khalil’s political stance or not should be irrelevant. Free speech for me but not for thee is a dangerous position, even for those currently on the side of “me” and not “thee.” During the summer of 1990, after my eighth-grade year, my family visited Washington D.C. One of the things that still stands out to me about that trip was my very conservative, very Republican mom’s response to protesters at the base of the Lincoln Memorial asking people to sign a petition calling for a Constitutional amendment making it illegal to burn the American flag. I assumed, incorrectly it turns out, that my parents would support such an obviously – obvious to my 14-year-old self – patriotic act. My mom’s palpable anger over the petition surprised me. After I urged her to sign the petition, she tersely lectured me through gritted teeth and sharp eyes that disagreeing with someone’s political position and even actions like burning the flag was not a justification for running roughshod over the First Amendment. “Taking away someone else’s freedom of expression will always come back on you,” she explained. And she was right.

In case you’re unfamiliar with Mahmoud Khalil, he’s a green card holder and is married to a US citizen. He and his wife live in New York City. Just this week, he was placed in handcuffs by ICE agents and transported to Louisiana to await his hearing on March 27. Trump and his administration “has determined that [Khalil’s] presence or activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio insists that Khalil’s arrest and detention do not have anything to do with the First Amendment, claiming instead that, “This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with.”

Possessing a green card means that Mahmoud Khalil does, in fact, have a right to be here. A sidenote to this is how this event exposes the lie that the anti-immigration stance of the Republican Party is about illegal immigration; it’s about making sure that only people who toe the MAGA line are allowed access to this country. Rubio is using newspeak to gaslight the American people.

You can find accounts of the arrest and detention – that was made without a warrant or a explanation of the charges against him – on pretty much ever news site across the web. I encourage you to do so. Again, though, this isn’t about whether you agree with Khalil’s political activity; this is about the Trump administration overstepping its Constitutional authority to squash speech it does not like. It’s deep shades of the Palmer Raids.

Not long into Palmer’s program of political arrests and prosecutions, he and President Wilson found themselves stymied by an aged civil servant. 70-year-old Louis Post,[6] through a series of events, found himself lifted from the third in charge in the Labor Department to serving as the acting Secretary of Labor in 1920. At the time, the Immigration Bureau was under the Labor Department. Appalled by the Palmer Raids, a principled Post ordered all deportation orders to be sent to his desk; orders he refused to sign. He then sent a like-minded colleague to inspect the Immigration Bureau’s prisons. Historian Adam Hochschild writes, “Conditions in these overcrowded jails were even worse than Post had expected, with signs of the Palmer Raids’ harshness visible everywhere.”[7] Post’s insubordination infuriated Palmer and a very young J. Edgar Hoover. The two men pushed the issue to a head, and Congress held hearings over Post’s refusal to further the administration’s agenda. That turned out to be a mistake for Palmer and Hoover because the erudite, charismatic, and witty Post who refused to be cowed by his opponents’ threats proved more than up to the task. The hearings prompted a public outcry and the publication of what’s referred to as the “Twelve Lawyer Report.”

Post didn’t stand alone. Scores of government officials, including US attorneys, had resigned rather than act on Palmer’s unconstitutional orders. Federal judge George W. Anderson freed thousands of the Justice Department’s political prisoners. Around the same time the “Twelve Lawyer Report,” signed by eminent judges and lawyers, was published, revealing the violent means that the Justice Department under Palmer and Hoover had stooped to achieve their goals. Democracy’s forgotten crisis, as Hochschild termed it, crashed against the wall that is (was) the checks and balances provided in the Constitution and the critical oversight provided by the press.

It’s not really true that history repeats itself. History does reveal patterns, but those patterns are shaped and guided by specific cultural and historical variables that are not usually common across history. I used the term cartography to describe the value found in Americans familiarizing themselves with the Palmer Raids. Sadly, a key difference between then and now is that I highly doubt that any principled Republicans will arise to act as a check to Trump and Musk. The Democrats in Congress, for their part, are impotent and are seemingly content with virtue signal handwringing. Importantly, the chaos created by DOGE’s slash and burn tactics in reshaping the federal government make it all the more unlikely that a Louis Post or George Anderson can act with any level of effectiveness. I’m afraid that outside of several prominent Republicans having a crisis of conscience AND growing a backbone, the arrest and likely deportation of Mahmoud Khalil serves as a canary in the coal mine of not only free speech but of any semblance of a free and democratic nation. One of the patterns of history is that every single aspiring dictator attacks free speech fairly early during their rise to totalitarianism.

Donald Trump has not been shy about casting himself as a king. Over the years, he has made statements that give credence to the warnings about his desire to be a dictator. He has repeatedly expressed the desire to imprison those who speak out against him. He has acted in ways that back up his stated belief that his authority exceeds the Constitution. At some point, those pooh-poohing those like me who are attempting to sound the warning will realize that Donald Trump does mean what he says and that his actions do reveal his agenda. Unfortunately, it will likely be too late at that point. For those, like me, who do take Trump at his word and don’t excuse or shrug off his actions, it’s time to begin planning a farewell party for free speech. We should probably have that party soon, though, because it’s going to be really hard to bake a cake inside the gulag.

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[1] My vote would be for James Buchanan’s Secretary of War John Floyd with Palmer coming in second. Harding’s Interior Secretary Albert Fall deserves a mention here, too.

[2] Several of the subsequent cases led to the First Amendment being incorporated against the states under the Fourteenth Amendment. Those cases also helped lay the legal foundation for our current understanding of free speech.

[3] Trump recently announced a tariff on aluminum. Setting aside the intricacies of bauxite mining and aluminum production that sees the US almost solely dependent on the importation of aluminum – Canada is the largest importer of aluminum to the US with almost 60% of this country’s aluminum coming from them – the impact of this tariff on beer producers reminds me of the Whiskey Rebellion. One of the larger motives for Alexander Hamilton’s duty (tariff) on whiskey was to allow the large whiskey distillers in the cities hugging the Atlantic Ocean the opportunity to push the small, independent farmers in the Appalachian and Alleghany regions out of the whiskey market. It was much more profitable for farmers to turn their grains into whiskey and transfer barrels of whiskey to the cities in the east than to transport large quantities of grain (for more on this, read historian William Hogeland’s book The Whiskey Rebellion). Flash forward to 2025 and large breweries will be better able to absorb the extra cost of aluminum while smaller breweries will be forced to pass that cost onto consumers. With already a small market share, many small, independent breweries will not be able to weather the effects on consumer spending prompted by the tariff which is a tax on consumers. Small, independent businesses pose a threat to want-to-be, quickly-becoming oligarch billionaires, if not outright tyrants.

[4] Last year, foreign aid accounted for a whopping 1.2% of the federal budget, and aid to Ukraine pushed that number higher than normal. The entire Education Department accounts for a mere 3% of the federal budget. Completely eliminating both amounts to a drop in the bucket in terms of saving. This is not AND never has been about fiscal responsibility. It’s about control/power.

[5] This isn’t the first time I have been unfortunately correct with my Donald Trump prognostication. For example, see my article on this blog titled “Trump’s Tariffs Will Likely Sink the Economy.” Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick can insist all he wants that only “silly people” believe that the economy is chaotic at the moment, and President Trump can attempt to blame Biden all he loudly as he can, but the real pain non-wealthy people in this country are beginning to feel and a pain that is going to worsen can be solely blamed on Trump’s policies, specifically his idiotic trade war.

[6] Post was a founding member of the NAACP

[7] Adam Hochschild, American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis (New York: Mariner Books, 2022), 307.