The Multi-Pronged Authoritarian Attack on the Right to Dissent
By Jake Silverman, first-year law student at UCLA School of Law
This guest post does not necessarily reflect the views or expertise of Human Rights First. It is part of a partnership between UCLA Law and Human Rights First, where UCLA Law students use the new Democracy Watch tracker to analyze legislative threats to democracy.
The Supreme Court seems primed to weigh in on President Trump’s attempted deployment of National Guard forces in the near future. Court battles in California, Oregon, Illinois, Washington, DC, and elsewhere have delayed the deployments, and President Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to empower federal troops to carry out domestic law enforcement activities if the Court rules against him. This is in conjunction with increasing federal efforts to criminalize protests against the Trump Administration’s actions. A man was charged with a federal felony for providing face shields to people lawfully protesting in Los Angeles. At least five elected officials have been arrested or confronted while exercising lawful oversight duties or legally protesting. The September 22 Executive Order targeting “antifa” —which is not an organization— as a “domestic terrorist organization,” a term that holds no legal meaning, further underscores this pattern.The designation is so broad that it seems designed to justify the criminalization and targeting of anyone or any organization opposed to the Trump Administration’s policies. The accompanying National Security Presidential Memorandum makes this explicit, , authorizing action against individuals who they deem to be “obstructing the operations of the Federal Government,” explicitly citing opposition to ICE tactics. To drive this point home, when House Oversight Committee Democratic Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-CA) unveiled an online tracker to document abuses and civil rights violations by ICE agents, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem tweeted a not-particularly-subtle threat that anyone who supports any sort of accountability for ICE misconduct will be prosecuted.
The right and freedom to dissent is fundamental to stemming the growth of authoritarianism. The ability to freely express opposition and disagreement with the actions of a government is a critical aspect of a functional democracy. Conversely, attempts to suppress dissent and the free exercise of protests is a hallmark of authoritarianism. Such attempts to inhibit or chill speech can include the use of militarized law enforcement in places with large protests, as well as political and legal attacks on people who exercise their right to protest or criticize the government or its actions.
And They Have Friends In the Legislative Branch
This criminalization of protest and dissent is not solely a top-down effort: the Trump Administration has allies in Congress and in State Legislatures around the country proposing and passing new laws designed to make it easier to prosecute protesters. Human Rights First’s Democracy Watch Tracker has identified 20 federal and 65 state-level bills from 2025 alone that, if passed, would curtail the right to protest and assemble in some form. Donald Trump has attempted to deploy National Guard troops to many cities that are most active in exercising their right to protest and assemble, namely Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Memphis, Portland, and Chicago, with additional or rumored deployments pending in San Francisco, St. Louis, Baltimore, New Orleans, and New York. Many of the bills Human Rights First has tracked are coming from the very states that are actively protesting, and the Trump Administration is targeting.
Federal legislators from Tennessee have introduced the Protecting Law Enforcement from Doxxing Act, , which would make publishing the name of an ICE agent a felony punishable by up to five years in prison— reinforcing their push to criminalize opposition to ICE tactics.. Notably, this bill does not apply the existing legal definitions of doxxing, codified at 18 USC 119, which prohibit the disclosure of Social Security numbers, home addresses, home and mobile phone numbers, personal emails, or home fax numbers. Instead, this bill criminalizes disclosing only the names of federal law enforcement officials.
Other bills are attempting to criminalize protestors by making it a federal crime to bloc public roads. Tennessee and Louisiana Senators support the Safe and Open Streets Act which would make obstructing or delaying commerce on a public road a federal crime, similarly punishable by up to five years in prison. California, New York, and Tennessee Members of Congress support the Safe Passage on Interstates Act to make obstructing or delaying commerce on a federal interstate highway a federal crime punishable by up to fifteen years in prison — an extremely harsh penalty clearly designed to discourage protests and dissent.
Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt, who represents St. Louis (where Trump has mused about sending guardsmen) sent a letter strongly supporting the investigations and crackdown on “antifa,” a term meaning “anti fascist” that is often used to imply the existence of an organized group that does not in fact exist. This rhetoric is an example of a dog-whistle that has been increasingly used to discredit and target protestors and political dissent by linking them to this nonexistent entity, and to justify increased law enforcement actions against lawful protest.
Around the country, similar legislation, especially related to blocking streets, has been introduced in several states either currently or prospectively facing National Guard deployments. In Oregon, House Bill 2534 makes impeding traffic a Class C felony under the riot statute (as above, a five-year prison sentence). In Illinois, H.B. 2357 makes blocking roadways a felony, and goes further by allowing the local sheriff where a planned protest is occurring to limit the size of the gathering at their discretion, while also prohibiting local jurisdictions from exercising Home Rule rights to permit protests. And in Tennessee, both H.B. 0729 and S.B 0672 go even further still: they increase the penalties for obstructing sidewalks, railways, elevators, aisles, or hallways to a felony punishable by up to six years in prison, while increasing the penalties for obstructing a highway or street to a maximum of 12 years in prison.
Louisiana’s S.B. 15 is taken straight from the Trump Administration’s playbook of viewing any opposition to ICE’s actions as illegitimate. Enacted into law on June 20th, 2025, it expanded Louisiana’s obstruction of justice statute to include civil immigration proceedings and any act intended to “hinder” or “interfere” with federal immigration enforcement efforts, an extremely broad category that could be plausibly invoked against anyone protesting ICE’s actions in Louisiana or distributing Know Your Rights information to immigrants. It further requires that, upon request, an individual must be released into federal custody if federal immigration officials allege “that the person to be released either illegally entered or unlawfully remained in the United States.” There is no requirement in the law that federal officials offer any proof of their allegations nor reason for wanting to detain the person.
The movement to target, suppress, and chill dissent is not just a Trump Administration effort. Federal and State legislators from around the country are not just supportive of the Administration’s criminalization of free speech and protest; they are working to enshrine these measures into law. From all levels of government, there is a coordinated authoritarian effort to suppress dissent and criminalize anyone who speaks out or opposes the Trump Administration’s policies. Empowering ICE to act anonymously and with impunity naturally leads to protests against such abuses of power. Legislatures are responding by attempting to criminalize those who protest and oppose that abuse of power, and the Trump Administration is using selective prosecution and the mobilization of the National Guard to make it clear that this Administration will respond to the exercise of constitutional rights with the authoritarian whip of state violence.
