OPINION: What First Amendment?

To paraphrase disgraced former President Richard Nixon, the GOP is making one thing perfectly clear: It doesn’t want to hear about problems you have with its elected or unelected officials, and it doesn’t want anyone else to hear about them, either.

The party’s been heading that way for years, but now the Musk-Trump, or Mump, administration is taking giant steps to stifle criticism of its cruelty, incompetence and authoritarianism.

For speaking out against our country’s unwavering support of Israel’s genocidal response to a terrorist attack, non-citizens who are here legally have been arrested and threatened with deportation.

Universities that haven’t cracked demonstrators’ heads or are too diverse, equitable and inclusive are under investigation.

CBS and the Des Moines Register are contending with frivolous lawsuits intended to scare all media outlets.

Perhaps most infamously, Ukraine temporarily lost U.S. military aid and intelligence-sharing, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy got a public spanking in the Oval Office after he asked for protection against his country’s invader and Donald Trump’s favorite dictator.

Hide and Seek with Meuser

Our own GOP Congressman Dan Meuser, who’s testing the waters for a run for governor when he’s not representing the Mump administration on the House floor and any TV show that will host him, takes a somewhat subtler approach.

Rather than resorting to threats, force or legal action to shut his critics up, he simply shuts them off.

Take Facebook. Meuser’s posts generally get comments, sometimes many, but few, if any, are visible. Maybe some are spam, but it’s highly unlikely that his staff is deleting any compliments that come his way.

I had thought a friend’s negative feedback somehow stayed up, but I was only half-right. It was “hidden,” leaving only the writer and her Facebook friends to view her statements while letting us think Meuser can handle public criticism after all.

To be fair, some members of Congress are thicker-skinned. You can see lots of harsh responses to posts from Pennsylvania’s two senators, GOP Dave McCormick and Democrat John Fetterman.

GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson advised his caucus earlier this month not to hold town halls because some were filled with constituents infuriated at his party’s support of quasi-President Elon Musk’s Department of Government “Efficiency.”

Johnson repeated Trump’s unfounded claim that these were “professional protesters.” (At least some attendees probably could have used the alleged handout, given how many essential programs and services are on the chopping block.)

With or without pay, my fellow progressives and I would gladly air our opinions at one of Meuser’s in-person town halls except that, as far as I know, he’s never held a public one in our district. (He did meet with Schuylkill Indivisible members in his office and online several years ago, and he’s done some highly orchestrated telephone town halls, where staffers screen the questions so that hard ones almost never get through. You could feel him squirming five years ago when someone brought up Trump’s habitual lying.)

The Philadelphia Story

It was quite a surprise to learn that we could have faced off with Meuser publicly several days ago – if we’d known about and traveled to the Philly town hall where he appeared.

Or so you’d think. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the event, which drew mostly Republicans, was a lot like his “phone-y” town halls, with questions selected from note cards collected from attendees. None of the four that Meuser eventually answered were about DO(D)GE.

His brief comments, which came after most people had already left, “had all the markings of a gubernatorial stump speech from an out-of-town congressman trying to appeal to Philadelphians,” the Inquirer reported.

Meuser did say he’d hold an in-person town hall in his district, but not just yet because he feared those mythical paid protesters would “turn it into a scene of havoc.”

Well, it’s probably not easy to defend DO(D)GE to people who depend on agencies that Mumpers are demolishing or to praise proposed tax cuts that would disproportionately benefit those who need them least.

Still, Meuser’s evasive tactics send the same message as the shots the Mump administration is firing at free speech: Regardless of the wrongs the GOP commits, it’s leaving less and less room for dissent. 

Lisa Von Ahn is an experienced columnist previously published in the Pottsville Republican Herald newspaper.

Canary note: Opinions expressed in any Op-Ed column appearing on this site are the views of the writer and are not necessarily the opinions of Coal Region Canary.

Want to be a columnist with Coal Region Canary? Contact us at newscanary@gmail.com.

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