How Each Pillar of the 1st Amendment is Under Attack

This report argues that the Trump administration is undermining all five pillars of the First Amendment by limiting petition rights (FOIA staff cuts, sanctions against litigants), discouraging assembly (threats to campus funding, visa revocations, and military/legal reshuffling), press freedom (lawsuits against media, FCC investigations, press access reshuffling), speech (banned terminology, data removals, funding freezes affecting civil society and open-source freedom tools), and religious freedom (reversing protections around churches and creating a task force critics say could justify discrimination). It highlights alleged use of Signal to avoid records, court pushback on certain orders, and parallels drawn to Hungary’s media and judicial consolidation.