The crackdown on free speech continues in America as Edward Martin doubles down on using the DOJ to punish news organizations for refusing to tow the presidents line.
The longstanding efforts from far right extremists to silence any speech they personally disagree with continues to be front and centre. Recently, there has been efforts by Trump hire, Edward Martin, to push to weaponize the Department of Justice (DOJ) to crack down on speech far right extremists disagree with. This effort followed American supreme leader, Donald Trump, silencing the Associated Press for properly calling it the “Gulf of Mexico”.
Today, we are learning that Martin is doubling down on his efforts to weaponize the DOJ to go after anyone who refuses to continually shower praise onto the thin-skinned president. Martin specifically cited the Associated Press as the kind of news organizations he is hoping to punish for not being loyal enough to the president. From TechDirt:
As President Trumps’ lawyers, we are proud to fight to protect his leadership as our President and we are vigilant in standing against entities like the AP that refuse to put America first.
There are so many problems in so few words. First of all, there’s the grammatical error. Saying that he’s “President Trumps’ lawyers” suggests there are multiple President Trumps that he works for.
But the more alarming issue is Martin’s fundamental misunderstanding — or deliberate misrepresentation — of his role. As US Attorney, he serves not as the President’s personal counsel, but as a representative of the American people, bound by oath to defend the Constitution rather than any individual officeholder.
His tweet isn’t just grammatically incorrect — it’s constitutionally incoherent. By explicitly threatening the AP for “refusing to put America first,” Martin has essentially provided written confirmation that the Justice Department intends to use its power to punish protected speech. Even while his office defends White House officials in this case, their mandate remains defending the Constitution — not “protecting the leadership” or targeting news organizations for their editorial choices.
Indeed, a news organization’s job isn’t to act as a mouthpiece for the president. It is to report the facts and hold power to account among other things. This inherently brings about an adversarial relationship with government which benefits society. For Trump and his sycophants, the intention has been quite clear for some time to shut this side of accountability down and turn news organizations into government propaganda outlets. The fact that the current leadership is seeking to drop a nuclear warhead on free speech now that they are in power speaks volumes about how they are seeking to dismantle the country altogether.
Obviously, this push to crack down on free speech in the US isn’t just tied to one individual. It is part of an already long-running pattern that includes Trump himself. Trump, after all, even before getting elected, called for journalists to be thrown in jail. Trump’s team doubled down by issuing a legal threat against the New York Time and Penguin Randomhouse for the crime of publishing something they personally disagree with.
The Heritage Foundation, a far right organization that wrote Project 2025 which is the policy handbook for the current extremist government, put together a plan to dox Wikipedian’s for the crime of posting content the organization personally disagree with.
Jim Jordan and Elon Musk also pushed plans to weaponize government to silence critics. Musk later went further by doubling down on the call to jail reporters for the crime of publishing something the president personally disagrees with.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is in the process of working with the private sector to scour the internet for government criticism and cracking down on those posting those criticisms.
So, the governments push to crack down on thought crimes against the government has been going on for quite some time. While it will no doubt take time to put together a speech police system, the Trump regime is certainly working quickly to make that a reality. Either way, the breaking down of America is certainly happening at quite the breakneck pace that even took a number of Trump critics by surprise. We’ll continue to monitor these terrifying developments as they unfold.
