By Frank F Islam & Ed Crego, April 3, 2025 (Image credits: Tom de Boor, DALL-E 4, et al)

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
— Harry S. Truman

President Truman’s somber warning issued in 1950 is prescient and chilling in 2025. (For information on the context for Truman’s comment, click here).

That’s due to the fact that since Donald Trump took residence in the Oval Office, his administration has been implementing a “repressive” campaign directed at “silencing the voice of opposition.”

Trump’s campaign is not aimed at a single voice, however. It is broad and sweeping, encompassing those organizations, groups, and individuals who for whatever reason annoy or don’t side with Trump. There are many in that category and as a result Trump is engaged in silencing multiple voices of America.

The voices being silenced — or in the process of being made much more silent — include:

• American media internationally
• Legacy news media
• Congress and the federal judiciary
• Civil rights
• Citizens

We examine the nature and consequences of that silencing in this blog.

Silencing America’s Voice Internationally

Trump’s silencing is not only going on within the boundaries of these United States it is silencing America’s voice around the world. As the Washington Post reports, on March 14 Trump ordered the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, and terminated funding for organizations it oversees: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Voice of America, Middle East Broadcast Networks and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting which runs Radio and Television Marti.

While these media outlets are not well known here in the U.S., they have been vehicles for communicating important American messages and news outside the U.S. The mission of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM or Agency) is/was “to inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy.”

The Voice of America (VOA) is the entity that is probably most recognized by U.S. citizens. This is due to the fact that VOA traces its history back to World War II, when it was launched in 1942 as a means for combatting Nazi and Japanese propaganda. In 1976, President Gerald Ford signed a public charter to protect the integrity and independence of VOA programming.

The USAGM evolved from VOA, and has been funded through the President’s budget and overseen by six bipartisan committees from the House and Senate. The Agency and its entities have been committed to “editorial independence and the highest standards of professional journalism.” In order to ensure that, AGM broadcasters, journalists, and staff operated behind a firewall to protect them from political and other influence or interference.

This lack of control by the President, along with criticism of Trump in some of its coverage, may very well be why President Trump axed USAGM. What can be said with certainty is that Russia was ecstatic. His shutting down of these agencies was referred to on Russian State TV as an “awesome decision.”

Silencing the Voice of the Legacy News Media

Trump’s silencing of USAGM was somewhat unexpected. His efforts to silence the traditional or legacy news media is not.

He has a long-standing dislike and distrust for the news media because of his inability to influence or change its unfavorable coverage of him or to get it to spread his mis- and disinformation as the truth.

As we wrote in the Washington Monthly, during his first term as President, Trump attacked the news media repeatedly referring to it as “fake, fake, disgusting news”, calling journalists “unpatriotic”, and telling people at various times not “to believe what they are reading.” He continued those attacks while he was out of office.

Now that he is in his second term, Trump continues to attack the traditional media verbally, by saying things such as NBC is “one of the worst networks on TV.” More importantly, he decides who can cover and report on him.

He has excluded the Associated Press from attending his press conferences because it refuses to use the renamed term “Gulf of America,” as opposed to the Gulf of Mexico. And he has increased the spots available at those conferences, and on his plane trips, for representatives from the very conservative and Trump-favorable press.

These are indeed dismal times for freedom of speech and expression in these United States. It is important to remember that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states “Congress shall make no law …abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

In 1786, Thomas Jefferson wrote:

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost.

Through the years, our news media has been called the fourth branch of government or the fourth estate because of the watchdog role it plays on our government and those in power. Donald Trump would not only silence that watchdog. He would make it go blind.

Silencing the Voices of Congress and the Federal Judiciary

The U.S. Constitution established three equal branches of government: Article 1 — Congress. Article II — Executive. Article III — Judicial. These branches were to serve as a system of checks and balance with none of the branches being more powerful than the other.

Interestingly, even though the Congress comes first in the Constitution, in today’s America, Donald Trump comes first.

The Constitution charges Congress with responsibility for proposing and passing laws to address the needs of their constituents and the country. With a slim Republican majority in the House, Donald Trump has eliminated that role for them. With a fear of being primaried and losing their seats, those representatives work for him and do his bidding.

He tells them what he wants and they do it. This year he wanted “one big beautiful bill” incorporating his legislative agenda into a seven-month continuing resolution, and they gave it to him with only one dissenting Republican vote.

Trump does not have the same level of almost absolute control over the judicial system. But his administration chooses to ignore or prolong responding to decisions in the federal courts contrary to their actions. And in typical Trump fashion, he shouts out in a demeaning and dishonest fashion at the judges who rule against him.

A prime example of this was the failure to stop or turn around the planes headed to El Salvador with Venezuelans — some of whom were criminals and gang members — after being ordered to do so and providing “woefully insufficient information” on those flights requested by federal district court judge James Boasberg. Followed by President Trump calling for the impeachment of Boasberg, labeling him a “left-wing lunatic radical” and a “Marxist.”

Then there is the Supreme Court, over which Trump reigns supreme because of the three appointments of Republican judges he made during his first term as president, and the Court’s ruling that gave a president broad and nearly absolute immunity from criminal liability, as well as the ability to use the Department of Justice for fraudulent purposes.

With Pam Bondi as U.S. Attorney General and head of the Justice Department, it is now Trump’s Department and does his bidding, rather than fulfilling its mission “to uphold the rule of law, keep our country safe, and protect civil rights”

Silencing the Voices for Civil Rights

None of Trump’s silencing of our American voices may be more egregious than his silencing of the voices for civil rights. His full-out war on DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) is wrong-headed, mean-spirited and regressive. As we noted in a blog posted in March:

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave birth to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, intended to correct past discriminations and bring the “blessings of liberty” to all.

Seven decades later in 2025, President Trump wants to reverse-engineer civil rights by saying that the need is not to bring the blessing of liberty to all, but to eliminate “dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences” for those such as people of color, women, and the handicapped.

The President would have us believe that in the United States of America today, we live in a country in which there is no discrimination and everyone is treated equally. He would have us convert civil rights into civil wrongs. He would make civil wrongs the law of the land.

The arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence of this full-out assault on DEI is demonstrated by the fact that words and pages were removed and programs, people, policies were eliminated based upon keyword analysis implemented by members of the DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) team and others. Some of the many words or phrases that led to potential expungement included: disadvantaged, marginalized, underserved, social justice, and prejudice.

As a result of this unbridled attack on DEI content at the Pentagon, under the leadership of Peter Hegseth, actions were taken such as removing web pages celebrating: African American hero Jackie Robinson’s service in the military; Native American Ira Hayes — one of the five soldiers in the historic picture of the flag raising at Iwo Jima, and the 442 regimental combat team, a Japanese-American unit of soldiers who fought in World War II.

Over the nearly two and one-half centuries of this great nation, slow and begrudging progress has been made toward creating the “more perfect union” envisioned by our founders by bringing equal rights to those who did not have those rights when the United States of America was established in 1776.

To reverse that progress today and replace it with a white-washed revisionist version of history is un-American and puts our democracy at risk. To modify a saying from George Santayana, “Those who only want to remember, or go back to a past the way that it wasn’t, are condemned to no future.”

Silencing the Citizens’ Voices

Donald Trump tried to silence our citizens’ voices after he lost the presidential election to Joe Biden in 2020, illegitimately claiming he had won the election, and trying to have it overturned. He lost his battles on this claim in court after court, and again on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, when his insurrectionist-supporters failed to derail the confirmation of those election results.

Trump did not toil in silence after that. He continued to perpetuate the Big Lie, rallied his ardent supporters, and persuaded enough citizens to vote for him that he managed to get re-elected in November 2024.

After that win, president-elect Trump had the opportunity to listen to voices other than his own, and to the voices of citizens who did not vote for him in order to develop and implement a unifying agenda for our nation.

But in his inaugural address, filled with hyperbole, self-compliments, and criticism of the outgoing administration, he demonstrated that was not — and would not — be his intent.

That address scared many Americans into silence. His blizzard of executive orders, joint address to Congress, and unregulated and intimidating actions since then have brought fear to many more.

There are citizens and groups who are speaking against Trump. USA Today reports that there were 2000 protests in February. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), along with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), drew tens of thousands to their anti-Trump rallies. Vox reports that as of March 21, there were 132 lawsuits against allegedly illegal actions of the Trump administration.

In spite of those numbers, there are tens of millions of disenfranchised voices that will most probably remain silent and not be heard until the mid-term elections of 2026 or the presidential election of 2028. The questions become: what will happen in those elections, and will Trump abide by the election results?

The Need to Break the Silencing

There are no easy answers to those questions but there is an absolute need to break the silencing. This is the case because that silencing could lead to the end of our democratic republic.

Benjamin Franklin advised, during the founding years of this country, that “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” That subduing is underway today.

That is why it is critical for concerned citizens to speak out both individually and collectively to protect the future of this democracy and our country. This is our responsibility as patriotic citizens.

The key documents that formed our democratic republic at its establishment were the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights (the first ten Amendments to the Constitution).

These documents make it clear that the diverse voices of the citizens of America should be elevated as the most important voices in the U.S., and that the federal system of checks and balances should ensure that no monarch or dictator would control this nation. The Trump campaign of repression and regression rejects these founding principles and values, elevating Trump’s voice above all others, and his executive power over everything and everyone.

It is doing this by silencing the voices of America. It is doing this by positioning Trump to be not only be “a dictator on day one” as he promised, but for his entire tenure in office.

The goal of the Trump presidency is not to make government more efficient but to convert our democratic republic into a dictatorship. We will have more to say on this in our next blog which will be posted on April 10.

Till then, we end this blog as we began it, with a relevant quote from President Harry S. Truman:

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.