LEILA FADEL, HOST:
When President Trump returned to office, he touted one executive order in particular.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And I have stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America. It's back.
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FADEL: That commitment was tested almost immediately when international college students involved in Palestinian activism started getting detained and threatened with deportation.
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UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: Armed agents of the state who kidnapped her from outside of her home.
CORY BOOKER: Disappearing people off of American streets.
NOOR ABDALLA: The fact that you can kidnap someone basically from their home for going to a protest is terrifying.
FADEL: At the time, free speech advocates warned immigration enforcement was being used as a tool for censorship.
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ERIC LEE: Your citizenship won't save you. Your views will be next.
FADEL: So we here at MORNING EDITION examined the state of the First Amendment at the time, who felt more free to speak, who felt silenced and the way this right - from which all other rights flow - is shifting in America. It's a question that's come up again and again, most recently after the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. The administration is making it clear that some speech will have consequences. So we're resuming conversations on the First Amendment in the weeks ahead, starting with Hasan Piker, who's described himself as Kirk's counterpart on the ideologically opposite side. Piker is the most popular leftist streamer in North America on Twitch, where he streams nearly eight hours a day to an audience of millions. And he was livestreaming when he saw the video of Kirk's assassination.
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HASAN PIKER: Holy [expletive]. America is so absolutely [expletive].
FADEL: He was shocked by the murder of a public figure like him, but what happened in the weeks after scared him in a new way. The vice president encouraged people to call the employers of anyone celebrating Charlie Kirk's death. Dozens of teachers, professors, journalists were fired over personal social media posts or commentary. President Trump signed an executive order designating antifa - not a group but an ideology - a domestic terrorist organization. Federal Communications Chair Brendan Carr made a not-so-subtle threat against ABC over a comment Jimmy Kimmel made. ABC pulled him off the air. It got fierce backlash across the ideological spectrum from Republican Senator Ted Cruz...
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TED CRUZ: I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we're going to decide what speech we like and what we don't.
FADEL: ...To right-wing podcaster Candace Owens.
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CANDACE OWENS: Do you understand? We never, ever, ever should be applauding federal action when it comes to speech.
FADEL: Kimmel is back on the air, but questions around free speech are louder than ever. And Hasan Piker thinks Americans should have been alarmed a long time ago when the first student protester was detained by immigration agents.
PIKER: I kept warning people saying, look, it's not going to stop. They're using the immigration enforcement agenda as a vehicle.
FADEL: He's a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy, of Israel's war in Gaza, of Trump. And conservatives paint him as a radical extremist. During Kirk's memorial, Piker listened to Trump say he would go after influencers, to Trump's top adviser Stephen Miller threaten an undefined they.
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STEPHEN MILLER: They cannot imagine what they have awakened. They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen in all of us.
FADEL: So when we spoke, I asked what he sees taking shape.
PIKER: I think that they're trying to mobilize against all kinds of political dissidence. They want to stamp it out. That much is clear to me. The anti-fascism terrorism designation is both illegal and also intentionally vague to such a degree that if you actually organize any sort of protest against ICE or you demand identification from ICE agents, which is something within the confines of reasonability and totally legal to do - right? - then you could be considered a domestic terrorist, a designation that hasn't existed.
We're talking about a country where objectively the overwhelming majority of political violence, whether it be mass shootings or school shootings alike, are happening by right-wingers, like, far-right anti-government extremists. This is the ADL's own data. This is the Department of Justice's own data that has shown this reality.
FADEL: Right. Data that has now disappeared from their website.
PIKER: Yes, something that they deleted. But even from the perspective of, like, political violence, it's very obvious that the administration has decided that we live in a post-truth era and that they can simply say this was a leftist antifa shooter anytime there's any shooting. One of the most damaging aspects of this misinformation, I think, has been that people believe it. People now think that leftist violence is happening with regular frequency. And I think that this is presented in an environment where the administration is trying to, one, create this hysterical narrative and then, two, stamp out this kind of leftist violence that they have cultivated in their minds. It's a truly terrifying media environment, but it's a suppression that I'm familiar with, obviously.
FADEL: Familiar because he was detained and questioned by Customs and Border Protection on his way back into the country in May.
What were they asking you?
PIKER: They asked me how I feel about Donald Trump. They asked me about my opinions on Israel. They asked me my opinions on Hamas. But one of the most interesting questions that I got in that process was if I had actually interviewed anyone from a known, State Department-designated terrorist organization. That is not illegal. That's not only not illegal, but it's something that the media does all the time.
FADEL: Do you think differently at all about what you say online in the last couple weeks?
PIKER: I guess, but more so because I worry - and this is something that has always been at the back of my mind. I worry about the potential repercussions. It's not that I advocate for anything that I think is, like, unconscionable or violent or anything like that. But it's more so that things can always be weaponized and misconstrued - the utilization of metaphor, for example, or hyperbolic statements made amongst friends that can be reflected on years later in a very different light. These are things that happen all the time on the internet.
FADEL: Is it because you are worried that you could physically be silenced and killed the way that Charlie Kirk was, or is it because you don't want to have something misconstrued and somebody maybe act on those words in a way that you don't want them to? Or...
PIKER: Yeah. I'm worried about the administration taking action. That's always been a fear. If I let that kind of fear cause any sort of, like, editorial setbacks, I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing. If I let fear dictate my commentary, if I let fear dictate my life - fear of, like, violent repercussions coming from random people who want to take matters in their own hands - then I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing. I worry that the administration might take unprecedented action that is otherwise illegal against constitutionally protected speech.
FADEL: If we can't have conversations in this country and if having those conversations has possible consequences from the administration or others, what happens?
PIKER: We end up in an authoritarian nightmare where one of the last bastions of liberalism is eroded and there is no way to go against the wishes of this administration, no matter how violent they may be.
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FADEL: That's Hasan Piker, one of the leading voices in leftist political commentary, speaking on the state of free speech following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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