Free Speech, Chilled to Perfection [TEASER]

Hey everyone, this is Leon from Prologue Projects.

On this subscriber-only episode of 5-4,

Peter, Rhiannon, and Michael are talking about the latest battles over free speech in the Trump era.

Following the murder of Charlie Kirk, the Trump administration has seized the moment to target speech they don't approve of.

The vice president has urged the public to report anyone celebrating Kirk's death.

So, when you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out and help.

Call their employer.

Late night hosts have been threatened.

Colbert has no talent.

Fallon has no talent.

Kimmel has no talent.

They're next.

They're going to be going.

I hear they're going to be going.

And the administration has labeled Antifa, not a real organization, as a terrorist group.

This is the first time in American history that there is an all-of-government effort to dismantle left-wing terrorism, to dismantle Antifa, to dismantle the organizations that have been carrying out these acts of political violence and terrorism.

The Supreme Court says that speech is supposed to be broadly protected.

But as you'll hear, that only goes so far in practice.

This is 5-4, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court and the Trump administration suck.

Welcome to 5-4, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have shut down our civil liberties, like Congress shutting down the government.

I'm Peter.

I'm here with Rhiannon.

Hey, quick and simple.

Very easy.

Absolutely.

A to B analogy.

And Michael.

Hey, everybody.

Michael, live from a tin can.

Michael sounds weird, huh?

I am in the process of a move.

I'm between apartments or places or whatever, and I'm currently on my phone in a closet doing my best, okay?

He's doing his best.

Yeah, we would rather provide you with poor-sounding content than not provide you with content at all.

That's our commitment.

Most podcasts would have just canceled.

They would have said, well, wait until everyone has functional microphones, not us.

Actually, I think most podcasts do bad audio all the time.

That's actually true.

Yeah.

I shouldn't have talked about us like that.

We're actually incredibly professional.

That's right.

We give you such a quality product week in and week out, people.

Today, we are going to be talking about how you should be thinking about free speech under the new Trump administration.

I think the most common talking point I hear about like the law these days is just none of this matters anymore, right?

And we've talked about this.

We don't think that's correct.

I think it's sort of a stupid and counterproductive way to think about the law now because the law matters a lot.

The stakes are higher than they've been in the recent past.

So it's important to understand the nuances.

And given all the drama around the reaction to Charlie Kirk's murder with like widespread speech policing that ultimately included Jimmy Kimmel somehow, we thought it would be good to discuss the state of free speech in this country under Trump.

What does the law say?

What happens in practice, right?

What can you say?

What can't you say?

When does the law matter?

And when does it not?

I think in order to do this, we need to first talk about some key elements of free speech law.

Because lurking behind this discussion is the fact that a bunch of people got into trouble for speech that was perhaps either embracing violence overtly or maybe laughing about violence, things like that.

Maybe you got fired from your job because you made a joke about Charlie Kirk getting popped, right?

Yeah.

Or even just sharing kind of like your opinion about it, right?

That like.

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