Free speech is being threatened

Threats to free speech in America became so serious in recent days that we find ourselves agreeing with Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. He weighed in on efforts by the FCC chair and President Donald Trump to potentially punish broadcasters for airing shows “against” the president.

“I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying,” said Republican Sen. Ted Cruz on his podcast “Verdict with Ted Cruz."

“It might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, yeah, but when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it,” Cruz said.

In Iowa, it’s been eight weeks since two University of Iowa employees were secretly recorded talking about ways to “operate around” a ban on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs pushed by Republican legislators.

Gov. Kim Reynolds called their remarks a “blatant disregard for the law and the will of the Legislature.” But in sharing thoughts in what they believed to be a private setting, did they break any laws? We still have not seen information as to who taped the employees and how the recordings were edited.

We were glad the employees weren’t fired immediately, as some GOP lawmakers wanted. Instead, there would be an investigation, and we hoped it would be fair and detached from the heated politics surrounding DEI programs.

“I want to assure people that have asked me about this and those that are following the situation that we are going to look into it fully and fairly, fairly get to the bottom of it, see what is going on, and then issue a public report so people can see what is happening,” said Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird.

However, a “fair” investigation is being led by the Virginia-based law firm Consovoy McCarthy. The conservative firm is in no way politically neutral.

It successfully challenged race-based admission policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. In another case with the same plaintiff, Consovoy McCarthy successfully gutted what’s left of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The firm succeeded in striking down President Biden’s plan to forgive student loans and represented President Trump when he refused to release his tax records.

So Consovoy is coming to Iowa with a clear political agenda. It’s the same agenda shared by the governor, the attorney general and the Republican-dominated Board of Regents. The notion that a neutral arbiter will decide the employees’ case is out the window.

Consovoy, which has been on the job since Sept. 3, is paid $625 per hour for its work with a total price tag of $700,000. It’s a reminder that there’s a cost in seeking to punish people for speech the government disagrees with.

We have little faith in promises of fairness. And although conservatives might feel good about pushing frightened university employees to watch what they say, a shortsighted, vindictive decision could come back to haunt them.

(319) 398-8262; editorial@thegazette.com