The President’s Thin Skin Has Become ICE’s Thin Skin

    The Trump administration took office last January promising to reverse the speech-unfriendly policies of the Biden administration, which had pressured social media companies to censor inconvenient stories and ideas. The new White House, we were promised, would “ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.” Unfortunately, efforts to keep that promise are not going well, as we see from yet another incident of federal agents seeking to intimidate critics of government policies.

    A couple of weeks ago, two federal agents went to David Streever’s home in Rochester, New York, to warn him because of a strongly worded e-mail he sent to then-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) interim director Todd Lyons, according to Michelle Breidenbach of the Post-Standard.

    As such correspondences often do, Streever’s email evoked the Nazis, telling Lyons: “You are a monstrous human being and will go down in history as America’s Reinhard Heydrich, the butcher.” (We somehow always come back to the Nazis, don’t  we?) The e-mail goes on to verbally bury Lyons over the protesters killed by federal agents in Minnesota and predicts, “you will torment yourself until your last day on Earth.”

    The e-mail is undoubtedly harsh, if not, way, way over the top. But at no point is it threatening. From what I have read, it’s the sort of message that public figures of all sorts receive and discard every day. (Am I the only one who finds that sentence troubling? Anyway…) Except that federal officials seem to be emulating the childishly, thin-skinned, current president’s attitude towards criticism.

    Not to be outdone, recently there was a story from Syracuse, New York covering a warning that ICE agents issued to Paigelynne Gonyea. ICE's warning letter informed her that “it is unlawful to threaten to assault, kidnap, and/or murder a federal official” and it is likewise illegal to publicize “restricted personal information about a covered person” with the intent to threaten or intimidate.

    But the Instagram post Gonyea believes ICE objects to, and which they demanded she delete, reads: “BREAKING: The ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good in broad daylight has been identified as Jonathan Ross by the Minnesota Star Tribune. I think today is a great day for Jonathan to be indicted!”

    Again, the message contains no threats. And the only personal information is the name of Jonathan Ross, which, in any case, is perfectly legal to reveal and became a matter of public record when it was published months ago by the aforementioned Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

    “Free speech is the bedrock of a free society, and the First Amendment squarely prohibits ICE agents from intimidating Americans for nothing more than repeating information from a newspaper report,” commented Adam Steinbaugh, senior attorney for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

    But if the ability to criticize government officials is an expression of bedrock American values, Trump administration agencies dispatching agents to roust people who send nastygrams to federal officials has a precedent, too—just not one well-founded in this country.

    France’s “President Emmanuel Macron has initiated legal proceedings against people who have mocked him as a Hitler-like figure,” pointed out Jacob Mchangama, executive director of Vanderbilt University’s Future of Free Speech think tank, in a November 2025 column. “Trump is not improvising a uniquely American abuse of power; he is copying elements of the European playbook.”

    The irony is that Trump entered office vowing not just to reverse the Biden administration’s hostility to free speech, but also to battle the creeping censorship imposed by Europe’s increasingly authoritarian governments. All of which, by the way, is a good thing. The U.S. is right to oppose Europe over speech policies, Mchangama emphasizes. But when Trump administration officials are themselves the targets of harsh words, they behave not like tough American free speech warriors, but like pissy little Frenchmen who look to the “mommy state” to punish mean people.

    The most obvious example of the current president’s annoyingly thin skin and his desire to muzzle his critics is his repeated calls to strip broadcasters he believes have been so mean to him of their licenses.

    “Despite a very high popularity and, according to many, among the greatest 8 months in Presidential History, ABC & NBC FAKE NEWS, two of the worst and most biased networks in history, give me 97% BAD STORIES,” Trump complained last year. “IF THAT IS THE CASE, THEY ARE SIMPLY AN ARM OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY AND SHOULD, ACCORDING TO MANY, HAVE THEIR LICENSES REVOKED BY THE FCC. I would be totally in favor of that because they are so biased and untruthful, an actual threat to our Democracy!!!” He really is a jack-ass, isn’t he? That might be the most narcissistic paragraph any president has ever spoken and/or typed. 

    Since then, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has moved to review ABC’s broadcast station licenses. Frankly, FCC head Brendan Carr’s open hostility to media outlets that criticize the administration is an ongoing advertisement for stripping the government of broadcast licensing power.

    “Recent presidents have not used the FCC as abusively as FDR, JFK, and LBJ did. But the danger remained, and Trump is now exploiting it,” George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin commented last year. “The FCC should be abolished.” That would be interesting.

    Short of that, “the First Amendment continues to function as a critical obstacle to Trump’s ability to fully implement his most censorious policies,” as Mchangama points out. America’s constitutional protections for free speech thwart a president who once championed their value just as they stood in the way of his authoritarian predecessors.

    But it’s dangerous when government agents show up on people’s doorsteps to issue bogus warnings over nonexistent transgressions to people who have done nothing but exercise their right to criticize the powerful. Not everybody has Paigelynne Gonyea’s determination to keep her post up and tell the agents to kiss her ass. We may never know how many people succumb to pressure and quietly delete strongly worded posts or decide to never again voice their objections to government policy. Federal agents should be punished for trying to intimidate people who publish or send disapproving messages about government officials and their policies.

    Not every criticism directed at government officials is brilliantly written or well-considered. Nevertheless, people have the right to voice them so long as they avoid explicit threats. Officials who do not like receiving harsh messages do have one legitimate recourse beyond simply suffering nastygrams. If it’s too much for poor little government officials to tolerate in their Romper Room of so-called adults, they can always quit and take honest jobs at the local golf club or other private sector openings. 

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com