The First Amendment in America right now protects a citizen’s right to criticize the GOP candidate for president, President Donald Trump.

It also protects the right to criticize Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Tim Walz.

But what if the federal government suddenly said, in its opinion, criticizing Trump was fine, but no one would be allowed at any time going forward to say anything critical of the Biden-Harris-Walz triumvirate?

Not possible?

Actually, one of America’s top constitutional experts says that threat is very real.

“We are living through the most dangerous anti-free speech movement in American history. We have never before faced the current alliance of government, corporate, academic and media forces aligned against free speech. A Harris-Walz administration with a supportive Congress could make this right entirely dispensable,” explained Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

He’s not only testified before Congress as an expert on the Constitution but has represented members in disputes over the Constitution in court.

His comments were triggered by “the most chilling moment from the Vance-Walz debate when the Democratic nominee showed why he is part of the dream ticket for the anti-free speech movement.”

During that debate, Democrat Tim Walz responded to comments from GOP candidate JD Vance about Kamala Harris’ support for censorship.

“Walz proceeded to quote the line from a 1919 case in which Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said you do not have the right to falsely yell fire in a crowded theater. It is the favorite mantra of the anti-free speech movement. It also is fundamentally wrong,” Turley said.

He explained that while Walz misrepresented the opinion to affirm one can’t shout fire in a crowded theater, the actual opinion included two qualifications to that, that the shout is “false” and that it triggers a panic.

Holmes said, “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”

Turley called out Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., for being among those misunderstanding and misrepresenting the Holmes’ comment.

“For example, when I testified last year before Congress against a censorship system that has been described by one federal court as ‘similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth,” Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., interjected with the fire-in-a-theater question to say such censorship is needed and constitutional. In other words, the internet is now a huge crowded theater and those with opposing views are shouting fire,” Turley commented.

He added:

Goldman and Walz both cited a case in which socialists Charles Schenck and Elizabeth Baer were arrested and convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1917. Their “crime” was to pass out flyers in opposition to the military draft during World War I.

Schenck and Baer called on their fellow citizens not to “submit to intimidation” and to “assert your rights.” They argued, “If you do not assert and support your rights, you are helping to deny or disparage rights which it is the solemn duty of all citizens and residents of the United States to retain.” They also described the military draft as “involuntary servitude.”

Holmes used his “fire in a theater” line to justify the abusive conviction and incarceration. At the House hearing, when I was trying to explain that the justice later walked away from the line and Schenck was effectively overturned in 1969 in Brandenburg v. Ohio, Goldman cut me off and said, “We don’t need a law class here.”

But, he said, the debate showed Walz revealed that and he and other Democrats “most certainly do need a class in First Amendment law.”

He cited Harris as a “champion of censorship in an administration that supports targeting disinformation, misinformation and ‘malinformation.'”

And Walz has made clear his opposition to others’ free speech to MSNBC, where he said, “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy.”

That, of course, was the point of the First Amendment, to protect objectionable speech, as there are no disputes over speech everyone wants.

Turley called out Walz, explaining his statement is “entirely untrue and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the right called ‘indispensable’ by the Supreme Court. Even after some of us condemned his claim as ironically dangerous disinformation, Walz continues to repeat it.”

Turley warned, “Where President Joe Biden was viewed as supporting censorship out of political opportunism, Harris and Walz are viewed as true believers.”

He cited the movement already under way to destroy speech.

“University of Michigan Law School professor and MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade has said that free speech ‘can also be our Achilles’ heel.’ Columbia law professor Tim Wu, a former Biden White House aide, wrote a New York Times op-ed with the headline, ‘The First Amendment Is Out of Control.'”

There already have been instances of government speech control that creates great damage. For example, the FBI’s election interference during the 2020 election including falsely claiming that the Biden family scandals detailed in Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop were “disinformation.” Feds told media and tech corporations to suppress that and they did.

But the scandals were true, and later polling showed had that information been reported in an ordinary way to Americans, Joe Biden almost certainly would have lost the election, and his promotions of abortion and transgenderism, the more than 21% inflation Americans have endured, the world conflicts that erupted because of a weak American policy, may not have happened in exactly the same way.