The assault on freedom of expression in the United States entered a new alarming phase this week, and not only in the repression of the Trump administration about the comments about the murder of Charlie Kirk.
Something else happened this week: President Trump filed a lawsuit, as an individual, against the New York Times, Four journalists who work there and the largest publishing house in the world. Enraged by a handful of articles and a book: “Lucky loser: how Donald Trump wasted his father's fortune and created the illusion of success,” written by two of the four journalists, Trump is looking for astronomical damage of $ 15 billion. (A judge already dismissed the case, starting Friday, but told the president that he can refile).
Trump is not alien to presenting defamation costumes, or threatening them, and in this demand it is clear that the main approach of his anger is the New York Times, which he has demanded before. (He lost that case and it was forced to pay the legal costs of the newspaper.) But there is a risk at this time that we miss the importance of a acting president that demands Penguin Random House, the largest commercial book editor in the world and two authors to publish a book.
Since Trump assumed the position in January, his administration has addressed independent institutions and voices that have traditionally spoken the truth to power, making examples of high profile objectives to cool entire sectors. When going after higher education, he faced Harvard, Columbia and UCLA; When attacking the media, he left after “60 minutes” of CNN and CBS. For newspapers, it has been the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. And now, in the editorial industry, it is Penguin Random House.
Looking through these sectors, it is clear that the ultimate goal is to obtain control over information, narratives and culture, and in the bje of independent voices, through a combination of action and regulatory litigation, either brought by Trump as an individual or by his administration, against some, and intimidation and implicit threats against others. Tactics are not surprising; They follow a play book by Viktor Orban in Hungary and Vladimir Putin in Russia, among others.
This particular demand is frivolous and almost certainly will not remain in court, if it becomes and is allowed to proceed. But the point here is not to gain legal cases, it is to rent and load the attacked, make them twist and press them to settle (what CBS and others have seemed too willing to do), and establish a broader example that will leave other institutions fearful of publishing any article or book that may enliven the president of the President. This is how authoritarianism works: it does not have to imprison all dissidents; You do not have to sue all newspapers or publishers. You simply do enough so that everyone else is censored without having to be asked.
As an organization that defends writers who face legal threats and imprisonment for their writing worldwide, in Pen America we see a president of the United States who presents a lawsuit claiming that a book is “malicious, defamatory and derogatory” as a serious warning. We are at risk of losing one of our most precious freedoms: the freedom to write.
Writers are often in the first line of attacks against free expression and democracy. And the books are already under assault in the United States, with almost 16,000 prohibited in public schools throughout the country in the last four years. This administration has already tried to tell us What words can we not use – 350 and counting – and just ordered information about slavery and the native Americans stripped of national parks. These efforts to rewrite historical narration, critics of silence, the prohibition of books and restriction discourse are a multipolized assault on freedom of expression and a free society.
For registration, another president once sued a newspaper. But only after leaving office. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt sued a Michigan newspaper of small town, the Iron Mineral Ishpeming, for defamation after he published an article that suggests that he was a great drinker during his failed campaign for a third mandate. In a story that seems deliciously picturesque today, Roosevelt called for enough witnesses to testify his sobriety that the editor withdrew his statements about the stand, and Roosevelt, saying that he was “happy”, he gladly accepted nominal damage of six cents.
No elected official in the world should be as capable and willing to resist public criticism as president of the United States. Authoritarian leaders are notoriously thin skin. Although US presidents have not always launched the blows, it has largely been a recognition of both parties that criticism comes with work, and that political discourse without restrictions is in the heart of democratic traditions. The freedom to criticize, satirize or simply simulate and insult the president is as American as the apple cake.
There is a reason why the first amendment protects both speech and press; The expression is not so powerful without distribution. Together with the media, book editors allow us to have the powerful to account. They communicate independent thinking to great audiences. And in doing so, they ensure that our democracy survives. The demand against Penguin Random House may have been frivolous, but it makes no sense. Words on a page are always important.
Summer López is interim ce-zo and director of programs for free expression in Pen America.
