Trump's unconstitutional jackboots have arrived

With ICE’s weekend arrest of a student who engaged in peaceful protests, Trump’s administration is flexing dangerously unconstitutional muscle and daring the nation to flinch. Based on our founders' mistrust of governmental power, the premier and most exalted amendment to the U.S. Constitution was crafted to protect against the government's “attempts to disfavor certain subjects or viewpoints,” and soundly “prohibits the government from restricting speech based on content of that speech,” as the court wrote in U.S. v. Playboy Entertainment Group. Trump using state power to silence political speech of students, protestors and critics has wider and more frightening implications than whether one agrees with his policies on Israel. Taking his cues from Russia’s Putin, known for arresting his critics in the night, Trump took to his rancid propaganda website to breast-beat, posting falsely that Khalil is an “anti-American terrorist:” This is the first arrest of many to come… We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it. Understanding that history, fully grasping what led desperate men to give their lives to to defend the right to criticize the government, is the only way to appreciate the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…" Revolutionary war heroes cry from the grave: America!