“Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society,” a January 2025 executive order signed by President Donald Trump on returning to power proclaims. “It is the policy of the United States to…secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech.”
That sentiment is commendable. Yet Trump has consistently behaved, both before and after, in ways that contradict it. In recent days, we can point to a progressive think tank and an Air Force officer as examples of the president threatening critics with legal action simply for voicing views opposed to his own.
In August 2025, Trump declared a “crime emergency” in Washington, D.C., and dispatched U.S. National Guard units to the capital. Within 48 hours, he claimed, “you see a big change and people are feeling safer already.” However, the data did not show a broad shift: the 2,000 federal troops deployed yielded fewer than 400 arrests in the first ten days, mostly nonviolent offenses.
Beyond D.C., Trump sent federal agents to other cities, including Los Angeles, Charlotte, and Minneapolis, where immigration officers shot and killed two protesters in January.
Earlier this month, Reason‘s Autumn Billings noted that crime in D.C. is down after a year, but at a rate similar to the national drop, prompting questions about “why the $55 million-per-month display of force is necessary at all.”
The Center for American Progress (CAP), a left-leaning think tank, reached a related verdict in July. “New CAP analysis reveals the Trump administration’s costly National Guard deployments have failed to curb violent crime despite its claims of success,” wrote Chandler Hall. “Moreover, if these deployments are extended through the end of 2026, they could cost American taxpayers more than $1.7 billion.”
“The primary objective was never crime reduction,” Hall concluded, but rather “a dangerous power grab by the Trump administration.”
“The report is just another Radical Left SCAM,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This will be met with a lawsuit, which is being drawn now.”
The New York Times reported earlier this month that Trump’s personal attorney, Alejandro Brito, sent a letter threatening a $5 billion defamation suit if CAP did not retract the report, apologize to Trump, and compensate him.
According to The Times, the letter closed with the unmistakably Trumpian sign-off, “PLEASE GOVERN YOURSELVES ACCORDINGLY.”
“This threatened suit’s assault on facts and evidence is groundless,” CAP President and CEO Neera Tanden said in a statement. “A fundamental protection of the First Amendment is the publication of facts and analysis that run counter to the positions of any administration. A lawsuit is a transparent attempt to silence us. We will neither cower nor bend in the face of it.”
Indeed, the specifics of Trump’s demand imply there’s little more to it than hurt feelings.
For one thing, just as facts can be contested, expressions of opinion are not defamatory. And while it may fit his pattern of demanding gargantuan figures, there is no basis for claiming that a single mildly critical report harmed Trump’s reputation to the extent of $5 billion.
Moreover, it is difficult to frame the claim as defamatory of Trump personally for criticizing federal policies, rather than a critique of the government as a whole. “The alleged defamation…isn’t about Trump’s private conduct prior to the presidency,” wrote Caitlin Vogus of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. “It’s about whether his government’s policies live up to the administration’s assertions.”
In the 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan, the U.S. Supreme Court held that public figures must show “actual malice” to prove defamation, not mere mistakes. But Vogus notes that Sullivan also established that the government itself cannot sue for defamation, and it underscored that public officials can’t bypass that rule by suing in their own name.
“It is hard to understand CAP’s claim that the administration is seeking credit for a crime-rate decline as defamatory (everyone knows politicians and political entities seek credit for outcomes all the time),” wrote Dan Greenberg, a senior legal fellow at the Cato Institute, last week. “It is hard to interpret CAP’s assertion about the timeline of falling crime rates as harming Donald Trump’s reputation (it appears to describe the nation, not the president). And it is impossible to view an accusation that Trump’s policies are unpopular, ineffective, and expensive as anything other than a protected expression of opinion.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s government has also taken aim at a servicemember for speaking out against the president.
“A U.S. airman who was arrested twice—once on the steps of the U.S. Capitol while calling for President Donald Trump’s impeachment—was formally charged Monday with criminal offenses for his remarks,” CNN reported last week. Jason Watson, a U.S. Air Force major, faces ten counts under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), including three counts under Article 88, which bars “contemptuous words” against federal officials such as the president, vice president, or cabinet members and can lead to a court-martial.
Watson first urged impeachment in July while protesting on the Capitol steps. He was arrested by Capitol Police for “crowding, obstructing, or incommoding…the entrance of any public or private building or enclosure,” and was later released.
Then, earlier this month, in a televised interview, Watson reiterated his call for impeachment, telling CNN’s Erin Burnett, “Not only is he a failure as president, he is flagrantly violating the Constitution, breaking the law, engaging in rampant corruption and is killing Americans. And that is unacceptable to me and it should be unacceptable to all of us.”
That seemed enough for the administration to arrest Watson and place him in pre-trial detention.
“If convicted on all counts, according to military-law experts, the 17-year veteran could lose his retirement pay and benefits and face time in a military prison,” Dan Morse wrote in The Washington Post. “Three veteran military-law attorneys said he could face up to ten years in prison, though sentencing would likely fall between 90 days and three years, given guidelines.”
Article 88 is a particularly potent tool in the hands of a determined administration. “Article 88 is one of the punitive provisions of the UCMJ that creates military crimes,” notes a March 2026 Just Security piece. The Manual for Courts-Martial states, “It is immaterial whether the words are used against the official in an official or private capacity.”
Article 88 even extends to retired officers, who can be recalled to active duty to stand trial if they ever criticize the president. “Under current law this restriction on your freedom and the threat of court-martial remains in force for you until the day you die,” wrote George Acree, a retired U.S. Army colonel, in 2024.
“According to Watson’s lawyers, he is believed to be among the first officers of his rank in U.S. history to be charged under Article 88,” CBS News reported. “The charges mark a rare instance of the military pursuing punishment in an open court rather than behind closed doors.”
Granted, it seems reasonable that Watson could expect to lose his job: not many employers tolerate an employee criticizing their boss on national television. In 2010, then-President Barack Obama famously fired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the Afghanistan commander, after McChrystal disparaged Obama in an interview with Rolling Stone.
But threatening someone with legal or financial retaliation, including possible prison time, for voicing an opinion about the president is an entirely different matter.
Trump began his second term declaring that government censorship was finished. He has since weaponized it against his opponents. The Center for American Progress and Jason Watson are the latest targets in this campaign.
