Dignity, humility, and decency. Watch El-Sayed’s victory speech here.

This is how to win over bigotry, racism, and hatred. Congratulations to Senator-elect, El-Sayed.

One thing for which I will give President Donald Trump credit is how masterfully he has woven a tapestry of incongruity when it comes to his obdurate anti-immigrant stance. For him, immigration policy is not merely a tool for turning away undocumented immigrants or limiting legal immigration. It runs deeper. It defines his identity and ensures legitimacy as president in the eyes of his supporters. Hence, he has taken a hardline position on the issue, even raising the possibility of denaturalization in some cases.

To be sure, many Americans are concerned about the unrestricted entry of immigrants overwhelming scarce national resources. But many immigrants have also contributed to the wealth of this country and helped make the United States a great global power. For a president who was himself born into an immigrant family — with a father from Germany and a mother from Scotland — this is remarkably ironic. Had many of the policies he advocates today existed before his birth, he might not have become president of the United States.

Consequently, it is truly hard to understand the president’s boundless anti-immigrant rhetoric — not just his policies, but the vitriolic language through which he seeks to rally support behind them. Is it delirious xenophobia, or is it a reasonable fear of immigration? Is it a deep loathing of all that is foreign, born in another country, built elsewhere, or sold by those who do not look familiar — or is it simply a desire to protect the familiar, the native-born, and those whom he represents? Is it spite, or is it civic devotion?

My Republican friend and ardent Trump supporter assures me that this rhetoric has nothing to do with prejudice or dislike toward people from other nations. “He is not xehophobic,” my friend insists. After all, the president wakes up every morning next to a woman who speaks English with an accent, possibly a heavier accent than the author of this article. As a real estate developer, hotel magnate, vineyard owner, and casino owner, he must have relied on foreign labor, particularly Latino workers. Trump must have been surrounded by people who spoke broken English — or no English at all — throughout much of his life.

Of course, none of this would necessarily free a person from resentment toward immigrants, let alone prejudice against them. It could be precisely this dependence on foreign-born labor that generates frustration over time — a yearning for the purely American.

If this is the case, it does not in itself create any contradiction. One may condemn or approve of such attitudes on moral grounds, depending on one’s political or ideological orientation, but one cannot condemn them merely because they are contradictory. What creates at least the appearance of incongruity is that Trump’s campaign for a second presidential term — which afforded him the platform from which he advanced a far more aggressive immigration policy — relied in part on the assistance of several foreign-born individuals or naturalized U.S. citizens.

1. Gavin McInnes, the founder of the Proud Boys. The president’s repeated allegation that the 2020 election was rigged against him was instrumental in his reelection effort four years later. Surveys consistently showed that 60 to 70 percent of Republicans believed the election had been stolen. This article does not concern itself with the legitimacy of that allegation. True or false, it helped galvanize millions of his supporters who voted for him in 2024. McInnes is a Canadian citizen who was born in Britain and founded the Proud Boys in the United States. While McInnes stepped down from the organization two years before the 2020 election, the group he founded participated in the January 6 riot and later aggressively promoted allegations of election fraud. This neither means that Donald Trump coordinated his campaign with the Proud Boys, nor that he could not have won reelection without them. It does suggest, however, that the organization contributed to a political atmosphere that benefited his campaign.
2. Nick Adams, the author of several conservative books, including Alpha Kings. Trump successfully galvanized many young male voters, and several conservative pundits and podcasters contributed to that effort. One of them was Adams, an Australian who immigrated to the United States in 2012 and later became a naturalized U.S. citizen. Adams became a close ally during Trump’s first term, when the president promoted one of his books in a 2017 tweet. In 2024, Adams published Alpha Kings, a book aimed at young men and featuring a foreword by Trump. In addition to his writings, Adams actively participated in Trump’s reelection effort and helped energize segments of the young male conservative electorate.
3. Elon Musk. Musk, who was born in Sourth Africa, donated millions of dollars to Trump’s reelection campaign. While Trump might still have won the 2024 election without Musk, some of Musk’s most visible support came after the election, when he spearheaded the newly created DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency) initiative. DOGE’s aggressive push to reduce public spending, including cuts to agencies such as USAID, and its efforts to uncover alleged waste and fraud initially helped reinforce Trump’s image as a president determined to act decisively. Furthermore, Musk also promoted the argument that Democrats favored illegal immigration because immigrants would overwhelmingly vote Democratic.

Of course, the preceding discussion does not mean that Trump could not have won the election without these individuals. It simply means that his campaign benefited from the efforts of several foreign-born individuals whose contributions were meaningful to his political success. If this is not a contradiction between Trump’s rhetoric and his actions, it is at the very least an irony — and a perplexing one.

Or perhaps the question we have to ask is: Do nationalist political movements often rely on ideologically aligned immigrants to legitimize anti-immigration politics? In other words, does the participation of such immigrants in nationalist movements provide a strategic buffer against accusations of xeonophobia?

The Immigrant Paradox of Trumpism was originally published in Questionality on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Founders framed the First Amendment not as a universal code of social behavior, but as a constitutional restraint on government power. Its text is explicit:

Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech.[i]

This government-focused framing has led to widespread public confusion about the scope of free speech rights. Surveys show that the First Amendment is widely misunderstood, as its protections constrain governmental action rather than the conduct of private entities. Nevertheless, the public often embraces a broader conception of free speech than that reflected in constitutional doctrine.

As social media platforms have increasingly become the de facto public square, replacing traditional forms of communication, many people have come to expect First Amendment protections in those spaces. Documented complaints about restrictions on social media platforms, lawsuits challenging private censorship, and the House Judiciary Committee’s letter to Facebook citing free speech concerns all testify to a public expectation of free expression across both public and private sectors, regardless of the legal distinctions.[ii]

Yet the courts have been inconsistent in recognizing such expectations.

In Murthy v. Missouri (2024), the lower and appellate courts found that the Biden administration’s efforts to pressure social media platforms into removing Covid-related content — labeled as misinformation — constituted unconstitutional government coercion in violation of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court, however, overturned those rulings, stating that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority, explained:

The plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that they suffered a concrete, particularized injury that was directly traceable to the conduct of federal officials.[iii]

As dissenting justices and numerous legal scholars have pointed out, the strict standing requirements established in Murthy set a troubling precedent for future challenges to covert government censorship.

If the roles had been reversed, and the government had sued citizens over harmful speech, it would have been reasonable to demand proof of injury on the part of the government. In cases in which members of the public sue the government, the deprivation of citizens’ right to speak freely should be considered enough of an injury to seek redress in the court.

Barrett further wrote:

It is a bedrock principle that a federal court cannot redress ‘injury that results from the independent action of some third party not before the court.’[iv] [emphasis added]

If citizens cannot challenge indirect censorship, who exactly can?

This reasoning effectively exonerates the government from responsibility for coercion, despite its vast power. Any time federal officials make a request to a private entity, non-compliance may be implicitly menacing, given the government’s enormous power.

If courts demand explicit, traceable evidence of coercion, then officials may continue engaging in de facto censorship via indirect pressure — through what Professor Ilya Somin of George Mason University describes as

“veiled threats” or “subtle communications whose meaning depends on context.”[v]

What private company can truly regard a federal demand as just another casual suggestion?

Barrett’s invocation of the term “independent” to describe the actions of third-party platforms wrongly suggests that those platforms acted autonomously, free from any government pressure. Government attorneys have argued that the administration was merely exercising its own First Amendment rights by speaking with social media companies. But equating the speech rights of private citizens with those of government actors reflects a fundamental misunderstanding.

When the Constitution was drafted, it delineated rights for the people and powers for the government. In a democracy, the people hold the rights and grant limited powers to the government — not the reverse. Citizens’ rights are generally considered inherent and enduring unless they infringe on others, while governmental powers are conditional and subject to public oversight and constitutional limits. The government cannot claim equivalent speech rights against the people whose rights it exists to protect. To frame the First Amendment rights of an administrative agency as comparable to those of individual citizens is to miss the point entirely.

The plaintiffs in Murthy were largely expressing personal views. In contrast, federal officials who engaged with social media companies were strictly acting in their official capacities. That distinction matters. The Court’s ruling in this case sets a dangerous precedent by shielding government actors from accountability for suppressing public discourse.

And if that does not alarm defenders of free expression, what would?

Conclusion

The Court’s ruling shields government actors from accountability. It opens the door to covert censorship. And it leaves millions of Americans confused about what free speech actually means — and who it protects.

The founders designed the First Amendment to constrain power, not to comfort the powerful. The Supreme Court just made that harder to enforce.

Notes

[i] U.S. Const. amend. I.

[ii] https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/political-communication/civics-knowledge-survey/

[iii] Murthy v. Missouri, №23–411, 603 U.S. ___ (2024).

[iv] Ibid

[v] https://reason.com/volokh/2024/06/26/the-supreme-courts-dangerous-standing-ruling-in-murthy-v-missouri/

The First Amendment Was Meant to Restrain Government was originally published in Questionality on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As America marks its semiquincentennial, the architecture of liberty is showing cracks that no anniversary parade can or should paper over.

This Fourth of July marks the 250th anniversary of the United States. There will be fireworks, speeches, flags, and sentimental tributes to liberty. But anniversaries are not just occasions for celebration. They are occasions for honesty.

And the truth is this: America was founded to resist concentrated power, yet today power is once again converging in dangerous ways. What is the point of commemorating independence if we ignore the conditions that make independence possible?

In previous essays, I traced the history of the First Amendment — that foundational guarantee of free expression without which every other right becomes negotiable. What that history reveals is both inspiring and deeply unsettling.

inspiring, because the arc of First Amendment jurisprudence has, on balance, bent toward greater freedom over the past century.

Unsettling, because that arc was never guaranteed. It bent because a handful of unelected individuals decided it should.

The history of the First Amendment makes this clear. Much of the freedom Americans now take for granted did not emerge automatically from parchment promises written in 1791. It was forged later — often narrowly — through decisions of the United States Supreme Court, where five votes from nine unelected justices can redefine the rights of more than 300 million people.

Five people can expand liberty. Five people can contract it — none of whom you voted for, and all of whom serve for life. How many citizens fully grasp that so much of public life can hinge on a single vote?

That is not a criticism of constitutional government; it is a reminder of how fragile freedom really is.

To be fair, the Court’s record on the First Amendment deserves qualified praise. Over the past century, the Court has often — though not always — moved in the direction of broader speech protections. That choice helped create modern democratic life: fierce journalism, political dissent, satire, protest movements, controversial books, unpopular opinions, and the daily cacophony of self-government.

But none of it was inevitable.

Had the Court chosen differently, America could have become a far quieter country — more obedient, more fearful, more deferential to authority. Would many of today’s certainties even exist if past justices had chosen silence over liberty?

Now the danger is no longer merely one court decision. It is institutional alignment. When the executive branch, Congress, and the judiciary are controlled by the same political faction, constitutional checks weaken. When leaders attack judges who rule against them, pressure independent agencies, demonize universities, and brand critical media as enemies, the message is unmistakable:

Submit, or be punished.

This is not a Democratic argument or a Republican one. Unchecked power is a threat to liberty, whether it arrives from the left or the right — the uniform it wears is beside the point.

A republic does not collapse only through tanks in the streets. It can erode through intimidation, loyalty tests, silence, and the slow normalization of unchecked power. How many warning signs must appear before citizens stop calling it politics as usual?

The founders understood something many modern citizens forget: liberty does not survive because leaders are virtuous. It survives because power is divided, challenged, and restrained.

So at 250, the real question is not whether America still celebrates freedom.

It is whether Americans still understand how easily freedom can be lost.

If courts fail, if legislators surrender, and if institutions choose comfort over courage, then the burden falls where it always has:

On citizens willing to say no.

Fireworks are easy.
Self-government is hard.
And freedom, once surrendered, is rarely returned intact.

250 Years In, Who Is Actually Guarding Your Freedom? was originally published in NEW LITERARY SOCIETY on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.