The United States marked 250 years since the Declaration of Independence with the expected patriotic hardware: fireworks, tall ships and a French military flyover above New York City during the Sail4th 250 parade on July 4, according to Bloomberg imagery cited by The Verge. TC Sottek, a senior editor at The Verge, used the anniversary to argue that the more consequential birthday party belongs to the Constitution, and especially the First Amendment.
Sottek’s point is less ceremonial than legal. The First Amendment restrains government power: Congress may not establish religion, block religious exercise, curb speech or the press, stop peaceful assembly, or prevent petitions for redress. That mechanism is basic, and it is also the part people keep mangling. A private platform moderating a post is exercising its own editorial rights, Sottek wrote; government suppression of speech is censorship.
The essay ties current fights over speech to older failures. Sottek points to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, passed during John Adams’ presidency, which expanded federal power over foreigners and made it a crime to publish certain attacks on the government. He also cites the World War I-era Supreme Court decision associated with the much-abused line about shouting fire in a crowded theater. Trevor Timm wrote in The Atlantic that the case involved a socialist prosecuted under the Espionage Act for distributing anti-draft pamphlets, not the tidy public-safety parable that gets dragged into arguments by people who should know better.
Speech fights now run through police stops, schools and platforms
Sottek argues that confusion over free speech now shows up most visibly in confrontations with police. He describes the rise of “First Amendment auditors,” streamers and influencers who record in public to test whether officers understand the right to film and speak in public spaces. In some encounters, he wrote, supervisors correct officers. In others, people are detained or arrested for conduct he describes as protected.
The current federal government receives the sharpest criticism. Sottek says the Trump administration has sent poorly trained federal agents into cities and treated protected behavior as a threat. He attributes deaths, attacks on journalists and broader legal burdens on ordinary people to that posture, citing prior Verge coverage.
The criticism also reaches communications regulators and broadcasters. Sottek says the FCC is not supposed to police speech, but has become a vehicle for civil-rights suppression under Trump-aligned leadership. He links the disappearance of Stephen Colbert from The Late Show and Jimmy Kimmel being kicked off air to political pressure on broadcast owners, describing the administration’s system as patronage aimed at forcing compliance.
Social media companies sit in the same pressure field. Sottek notes that Donald Trump previously threatened Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg with life in prison and later hosted him at a White House event tied to a UFC fight show. He argues that even powerful platform owners court an administration that has shown hostility to their own speech rights.
The practical fight is local as much as national
Sottek’s prescription is ordinary civics, which is annoying because ordinary civics is the part that actually routes around a lot of institutional rot. He urges voting, contacting members of Congress, participating in local elections and paying attention to school board races, where book bans are being fought. He also asks readers to support newsrooms.
The through-line is plain: the First Amendment works only when courts, officials, companies and citizens understand who it binds. The government cannot force private publishers to carry speech they reject, and it cannot punish people for criticizing, reporting on or protesting the state.
This story draws on original reporting from The Verge.
