Don’t empower Trump to define terrorism
Sipa USA/Samuel Corum via AP
The government is determined to stamp out unpopular speech, including journalism, by falsely labeling it as support for terrorism.
The government is using claims of terrorism as an excuse to punish constitutionally protected speech.
Congress recently proposed stripping the nonprofit status of so-called “terrorist-supporting” organizations and revoking or withholding the passports of any American that the secretary of state unilaterally determines has provided “material support” to a terrorist organization. These bills give the government wide latitude to categorize protected speech as “terrorism-supporting,” and offer little or no ability to challenge those decisions. Recently, for example, officials have accused news outlets of supporting terrorism by simply reporting about terrorist attacks and organizations.
