Are We Losing Our Free Speech Rights?

Our Constitutional rights are being threatened, if not revoked, by the Trump administration. His goals, articulated before the 2024 election in a document called Project 2025, are filtering down to state and local Republican leaders including in West Virginia.

Watch what they do, not what they say is a common warning made about autocratic leaders and those seeking to become autocrats. They make grandiose claims and threats, but don’t always act on them, knowing that some of them are illegal and some are fantasy. For instance, on the first day of his 2nd term, Trump ignored the Constitutional guarantee of citizenship to anyone born in the United States, signing an executive order declaring exceptions. Thankfully, the courts have stepped in to halt implementation until it can be fully argued in court.

Trump has threatened and in many cases revoked Congressional funding ending grants and contracts from universities, health systems, and law firms, and questioned mergers by media companies and their licenses over criticism of him or his complaints that they unfairly support partisan causes or cultural issues he opposes. He and his administration have sought the arrest and deportation of individuals opposing Israel’s war in Gaza, which the UN has now deemed a genocide. These actions impinge on free speech and other rights guaranteed in our Constitution. 

Both Trump’s administration and Governor Morrisey’s have taken action to loosen or restrict vaccine regulations for religious or health reasons claimed by conspiracy theorists, which puts healthy people at risk of infections by diseases long considered controlled or virtually eliminated. This impinges on the right of the people to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness promised in the Declaration of Independence.

I thought it highly unlikely I would ever feel the direct effect of these actions. On Thursday, September 18, Governor Morrisey held a memorial open to the public at the WV Capitol for right wing activist Charlie Kirk who was murdered while speaking publicly at a college campus in Utah. While I know little about Kirk and am shocked that he became a victim of gun violence, most likely for a political reason, one thing I have learned about him is that he was a fierce advocate of free speech and held public dialogues with people he disagreed with. In fact, during Thursday’s event, Governor Morrisey reportedly urged West Virginians to follow Kirk’s example by “celebrating free speech…even among people we disagree with.” But apparently he did not let the Capitol Police know that that was his wish. Watch what they do, not what they say.

I tried to attend that event where I intended to hold a sign saying, “Free Speech, Strict Gun Laws.” As I walked toward the gathering, at the corner of Greenbrier and Kanawha Boulevard, two Capitol Police officers stopped me and told me I could go no farther or would be arrested for disrupting a solemn event. I said I was going to stand across the street from the gathering and silently hold my sign, and yet they repeated the threat. 

I’m ashamed to say, I capitulated and stood on the opposite corner and held my sign to show passersby. 

West Virginia is one of only a few states where Trump maintains a positive approval rating as his popularity drops due to his failure to improve the economy and cost of living and his flagrant attacks against beloved institutions like public broadcasting, public education, universities, comedians, and the Constitution. 

I hope West Virginians will watch what Trump and Morrisey and their party’s representatives do in the coming months and years and elect people who will protect our precious rights and freedoms with their actions, not just their words.