Attacks on freedom of speech? We’ve been down this road before.

In 1800, James Callender, a political journalist who wrote against the Federalist Party and figures like Alexander Hamilton and President John Adams, published The Prospects Before Us, a pamphlet attacking President Adams, which was considered a violation of the Sedition Act. He was prosecuted under the law, and after a trial presided over by a Federalist judge, he was convicted of sedition. Callender was sentenced to nine months in jail and ordered to pay a fine of $200, a substantial sum in 1800.

What exactly did Callender say about Adams that landed him in the slammer? He dredged up the pro-monarchy charges that always dogged Adams. Callender then accused the president of being “mentally deranged,” planning to crown himself king, and grooming John Quincy as his heir to the throne. Adams was a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” It was indeed character assassination, but was it “seditious?” The Federalist thought so.

The Sedition Act was passed in 1798 under John Adams and the Federalist-controlled Congress. This law criminalized “false, scandalous, and malicious writing” against the government. Dozens of arrests and prosecutions followed—often of journalists aligned with Jeffersonian Republicans. Formal state power was used to silence people like Congressman Matthew Lyon, who was fined and jailed for criticizing Adams.

The boundaries of speech were enforced by law, with courts and jails as punishment. Fast forward to Thursday, September 18. President Donald Trump floated the possibility that TV broadcasters could lose their federal licenses over what he perceives as negative coverage of him, a day after Disney’s ABC yanked “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air. He didn’t threaten them with jail time, but the loss of livelihood, reputation, and business fortune.

The House Democratic leadership team was quick to respond, “Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s war on the First Amendment is blatantly inconsistent with American values. The censoring of artists and cancellation of shows is an act of cowardice.”

Yep!…. We’ve been here before.

In the 1790s, during the nation’s infancy, freedoms in the Bill of Rights were still just hot off the press. There was little case law around freedom of speech or freedom of the media. James Callender would test those boundaries with ferocity.

Callender was the new republic’s most notorious scandalmonger. During the 1790s, Callender published vicious attacks on George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and other leading political figures. Today, he is best known as the journalist who first published the story that Thomas Jefferson had a decades-long affair with one of his slaves.

If only Callender had had a late-night talk show!

Born in Scotland in 1758, Callender was an early advocate of Scottish independence from Britain. After being indicted for sedition by Britain, he fled to Philadelphia in 1793, where he supported himself as a journalist and political propagandist. In 1797, he published evidence that Alexander Hamilton had an adulterous extramarital affair with a woman named Maria Reynolds. Callender also accused Hamilton of misusing government funds.

Attacked by his critics as a “traitorous and truculent scoundrel,” Callender defended himself on strikingly modern grounds: that the public had a right to know the moral character of people it elected to public office.

Imagine that…the public has a right to know the moral character of the people they elect. And just where are those Epstein files?

Although he was often dismissed as a “pen for hire,” willing to defame anyone, Callender was much more important than that. His life underscored one of the most radical consequences of the American Revolution—the people’s right to criticize political leaders publicly.

This was new and untested in history. A nation that enshrined the rights of the people in its Constitution would have to operationalize those freedoms in the real world of speech and press filled with satire, criticism, and disparaging remarks.

In 1798, a Federalist-controlled Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which sought to muzzle political criticism of the government. The Second President, John Adams, happily signed it into law. Ironically, John Adams had been the lawyer who had defended British troops a few decades before during a trial accusing them of killing unarmed Bostonians during the Boston Massacre.

Adams believed strongly in due process, but free speech was another matter. Especially if he was the object of such speech.

By 1798, the United States was engaged in a “Quasi-War” with France, and the Federalists showed more desire to align with the former British colonial overlords, the British. Adams was now more concerned about silencing his critics, whom he perceived wanted to destroy the country. In 1798, censorship was overtly coercive, involving laws and imprisonment.

Like James Callender, Jimmy Kimmel has faced backlash for past sketches and political jokes. His “cancellation” isn’t the government arresting him and throwing him in jail; it’s the public, network sponsors, and networks deciding whether his speech is tolerable in the current cultural climate. But make no mistake, it only happened because of pressure from the President of the United States. It is state-sponsored censorship.

Both cases reflect a society unable to tolerate certain forms of speech and an eagerness to punish transgressors. Both reveal that “free speech” in America has always been a negotiation between power, public morality, and the risks of speaking out. Both cases show just how fragile freedom of speech and the press really are, as are all our freedoms.

Today, freedom of speech and the press are on trial like never before. Donald Trump’s fragile ego has caused him to launch a full broadside on freedom of the press. He has interfered with the editorial mechanisms of several networks and has sued some of them. These attacks include a $1.1 billion cut in public broadcasting funds to NPR and PBS stations, as well as a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal.

By the way, the lawsuit against the WSJ was issued after they published a story on a 2003 letter sent from Trump to Jeffrey Epstein on his birthday. Trump denied that he had written the letter, but the attack on a fellow conservative newspaper shows his near panic and desperation to keep his name out of the Epstein case. Trump will destroy freedom of the press to do so.

Where are the Epstein files again?

The US government tried in 1918 to squelch free speech again. The Sedition Act of 1918 was passed during World War I, building upon the Espionage Act of 1917. It severely restricted freedom of speech and the press by criminalizing disloyal, abusive, or scurrilous language against the U.S. government, flag, or military. The act was a key part of the government’s efforts to suppress dissent and maintain domestic support for the war, and it remained in effect until it was repealed by Congress in 1920.

The law made it criminal to “utter, print, or publish disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the U.S. government, the Constitution, or the military.” Or “Willfully make false reports or statements intended to interfere with the success of the military or promote the success of the nation’s enemies.” And it was designed to “Discourage enlistment or incite disloyalty or mutiny in the military.”

However, it was completely unconstitutional.

The most notable case that came out of the arrests and prosecutions under the 1918 law was that of Eugene V. Debs. The socialist leader was sentenced to ten years in prison for delivering anti-war speeches. The act was repealed in 1921; its use was seen as a significant suppression of civil liberties and a violation of free speech protections.

However, here we are again.

In 1798 and in 1918, censorship was nakedly coercive; it included laws and prisons. In Kimmel’s case, it’s market-driven and reputational, which defenders call “accountability” and critics call “mob justice.” No matter what you call it, freedom of speech and the press are at stake.

The remedy? As happened in the elections following each of the earlier examples of government-sponsored censorship, both incumbent parties were soundly defeated in the ensuing elections. In 1800, the Federalists and John Adams were overwhelmingly defeated by Thomas Jefferson and the so-called Democratic-Republicans. In 1920, the Democrats under Woodrow Wilson were resoundingly defeated by Republicans and Warren Harding.

That is how you end the tyranny of authoritarian presidents who believe they are above the law and can restrict your free speech. You vote them OUT.

A word for my Republican friends. You ought to think twice before supporting Trump’s efforts to curtail free speech in a supposedly free society. If you are only interested in suppressing speech you don’t like, wait until the next person decides they don’t like your speech.

Protecting free speech is not a partisan issue…Every American has the rights enumerated in the First Amendment. If you want to retain them for you, your children, and grandchildren, then by all means, with all your energy, vote MAGA out in 2026.