The White House framed the move as a matter of national security. Senator Marco Rubio called Khalil a “foreign agitator.” The Department of Homeland Security called it enforcement. But civil rights attorneys called it what it was: punishment for protest.
In Gitlow’s day, the state claimed the right to suppress speech it feared might someday be dangerous. Now, it suppresses speech it simply dislikes—and cloaks the result in bureaucracy.
That same pattern played out again when the White House revoked press credentials from the Associated Press after the outlet refused to use the term “Gulf of America” in its reporting. When the AP pushed back, the administration leaned harder. Events were closed. Questions went unanswered. A federal judge eventually ordered the reinstatement of their access, citing First Amendment violations.
But the damage was already done.
“No official can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, or religion.” — Justice Robert H. Jackson
This isn’t new. The impulse to silence dissent has always found its way into power. After President McKinley was assassinated in 1901 by an anarchist, New York passed the very law that would later be used to convict Gitlow. It was designed to preempt violence—not punish acts, but ideas. By the time Gitlow’s manifesto reached print, the law was waiting.
The modern equivalent isn’t found in criminal anarchy statutes. It’s in executive orders and selective enforcement. In March, the administration signed an order barring the federal government from contracting with “politically compromised firms.” Within weeks, the law firm Perkins Coie—best known for its Democratic clients—was blacklisted. Their attorneys lost their security clearances. Their access to federal buildings was revoked. No trial. No hearing. Just silence.
“Every idea is an incitement.” — Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, dissenting in Gitlow v. New York
This is the part the Court got right. Because Gitlow’s real threat wasn’t what he wrote—it was that someone might read it.
The Trump administration doesn’t need to ban books to achieve the same effect. It just has to signal that certain ideas come with consequences. For students, it might mean deportation. For reporters, exclusion. For lawyers, professional exile. And for activists, surveillance and quiet intimidation.
What began as a conviction for publishing a pamphlet has become a template for something quieter and harder to fight: a system where power responds to opposition not with argument, but with removal.
Still, the echoes of Gitlow’s case matter for another reason.
The Court upheld his conviction, yes—but it also did something extraordinary. It recognized that freedom of speech is a “fundamental liberty” protected not just from federal overreach, but from state-level suppression. That line—almost a footnote in the decision—became the foundation for modern civil rights law. It cracked the door for every future case that extended constitutional protections to the states.
Which makes the present moment all the more dangerous. Because what Trump’s administration is doing now—incrementally, strategically—is closing that door again. Not through legislation, but through precedent. Through normalization.