The Trump administration has made its goal very clear — to support freedom of speech — when it works in their favor.
In one of her very first press conferences, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the Trump administration would now have control over deciding which journalists can and cannot be in the Oval Office, Air Force One and any other White House press events. This overturns almost a century of precedence where the White House Correspondents’ Association decided the press pool for the administration.
According to WHCA’s website, it is dedicated to ensuring our democracy through an independent press. Without this buffer, the press pool is decided on the whim of the Trump administration which has already proved it will remove journalists who do not comply with its agenda. For example, the Associated Press has been removed from the regular press pool in the White House because it referred to the Gulf of Mexico as such, instead of President Donald Trump’s new name for it. Although the naming of a body of water is not a major issue, the Trump administration banning AP, the industry-standard writing style journalists use, from the press pool because of this sets a dangerous precedent: The current administration will not allow any coverage of the White House that does not agree with them.
In addition to limiting the press coverage of the White House, the Trump administration has cut funding from most Ivy League universities, according to ABC. For example, $510 million of research funding was suspended from Brown University due to an investigation into pro-Palestine protests on campus that allegedly made Jewish students feel unsafe. According to Fox News, the Trump administration promised to be more aggressive in ending antisemitism, claiming that former president Joe Biden did not do enough. While antisemitism is a very serious issue in America, it is so clear to me that this is not an initiative to actually help Jewish Americans, but rather punish those who showed their support for Palestine.
And, as if these things did not make the president’s stance on freedom of speech clear, he and his administration have changed or taken down several web pages on government websites that refer to LGBTQ+ people, gender or diversity, according to AP. For example, the page titled “Supporting LGBTQ+ Youth” on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website has a banner across the top stating the page is being modified to comply with Trump’s executive orders. Ironically, it is not surprising to me that even though this is the candidate that ran on a “pro-life”platform, the Trump administration continuously holds no regard for the lives of anyone that is not a white, straight, cisgender man. Unfortunately, it is not surprising they are making moves to erase other people from American history. Additionally, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued an order to the military stating that time and federal funding will no longer be permitted to go towards the celebrations of any “identity months” such as Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month and several more. It truly takes a special kind of person with narcissistic tendencies, which all of these men in power seem to embody, to feel so threatened by the celebration of diversity to legislate it out of existence.
Also in compliance with Trump’s executive orders, the Department of State’s travel information website has renamed its formerly titled “LGBTQIA+ Travelers” page to “LBG Travelers.” This is yet another attack on the transgender community, following up on Trump’s “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” executive order from Jan. 20. In the order, Trump refers to transgender people as a “fundamental attack” on women and that they have a “corrosive impact” on the entire country.
Truthfully, Trump and his administration not only make me feel less safe than any transgender person I have ever met, but are also having a far more “corrosive” effect on the country they are claiming to “make great again.”
