For the first time, a federal court has ruled that President Donald Trump is in violation of US citizens’ first amendment rights. Was it because he was silencing the media? Not for lack of trying, but no. Was it because he was handing down dictums from on high about whether football players should be able to kneel or not? Nope!
It’s because he blocks political dissent on his self-described favorite mode of communicating with the American public: Twitter.
Like many Americans who are mortified that we have an illegitimate, bumbling, shambolic mound as president, I often took it upon myself to let him know that I did not agree with him. Since most of his mewlings showed up on Twitter, that’s where I decided to let him know what I thought of him.
Sometimes, my replies to his tweets would be silly. But many times, I’d cite sources and articles that completely and accurately disputed what he was tweeting about, like in February 2017, when he insisted that the majority of the country supported his Muslim ban. It was patently and demonstrably false, and I replied to him with a link to an article to that effect.
In late May 2017, Trump blocked me for saying, “this is pretty much how the whole world sees you” accompanied by a gif of the pope rolling his eyes at Trump. Apparently, that was the last straw as far as he was concerned. I logged back in several hours later to find that not only was I blocked, but many of my Twitter pals had been blocked as well.
Twitter is as public a forum as a town hall meeting. By blocking people who disagree with him, he’s not only blocking our right to petition our government and access important information, but he distorts that public forum by purging critical voices. It’s like a senator throwing someone out of a town hall because they held up a “disagree” sign.
Imagine waking up one day to an inane tweet by the American president about, say, Tomi Lahren. You’d want to know if the American public agreed with the president’s assessment, right? When Trump blocks dissent, it appears as if the public agrees with him in lockstep. Every reply to him sounds the same: “Great job, Mr President! We trust you and believe in you!” What he’s doing is essentially curating content for public consumption. That’s not what we do here.
That tweet is rather silly, but the experience of being blocked by Trump means I’ve missed serious announcements about things like the firing of our secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, the nomination of Christopher Wray for the position of FBI director, the removal of the secretary of veterans affairs, David Shulkin, that the US government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in the military, and so much more. All of these decisions were announced exclusively on Twitter.
No matter how much Trump would like to think so, he’s not above the law. American democracy is based on the separation of powers, which a federal judge in New York made explicitly clear in her ruling on Wednesday. Immediately unblocking me would signal faith in American institutions, but since Trump’s self-described style is, “if I get hit, I hit back 10 times harder”, I’m not sure he’ll capitulate with this ruling right away.
If he doesn’t, there are further legal steps we will take to ensure that he does. No matter what happens going forward, the day of the judgment was a good day for the rule of law, which isn’t something we can say about many of the days in Trump’s administration.
- Holly Figueroa O’Reilly is the founder of Blue Wave Crowdsource, an organization that supports Democratic candidates by turning online activism into boots-on-the-ground campaign support