Trump Attacks on Civil Society

Diana Moss reviews four recent examples of the Trump administration weaponizing antitrust and regulation to stifle opposing ideological and political viewpoints.

Member of the European Parliament Alexandra Geese writes that illiberal politicians and Big Tech social media platforms have abused the principle of freedom of speech to suppress ideas with which they do not agree and promote hate speech. She provides three recommendations for retaking speech from the social media platforms that constitute today’s public sphere.

Eleanor Fox argues that the leading law firms should have immediately and collectively resisted President Donald Trump’s attacks. Strong, timely collective resistance may have helped staunch democratic backsliding and prevented normalization of repeated, speech-chilling demands. Doing so, however, the firms would have faced the risk of violating the antitrust laws. This article assesses antitrust’s treatment of political action and argues that the space for protected political action needs to be enlarged.

Wendy Li writes that business leaders must rediscover past unity and put pressure on politicians to defend against President Donald Trump’s attacks on businesses and civil society and prevent democratic backsliding.