U.S. President Donald Trump attends a bilateral meeting with the President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, on the sidelines of the G7 summit, in Evian-les-Bains, France, June 16, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
“It was a bright cold day in April, the clocks were striking thirteen, and the powers in charge of (a State) public university system have declared the State has unfettered authority to muzzle its professors in the name of ‘freedom’….”
So begins a federal court order striking Trump’s Third Reich-inspired “Stop WOKE” Act in Florida, variations of which have spread through the US like a nasty airborne disease.
Invoking George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Walker slammed Stop WOKE, the authoritarian movement afoot in many US states to forcibly impose the tenets of far right, white nationalism on classrooms, universities, and corporate boardrooms. Since then, a total of 14 states have successfully passed 20 anti-DEI laws, part of Trump’s broader nationwide push; over 80 anti-DEI bills and hundreds of educational gag orders have been introduced across the country since 2023.
What’s this 1st Amendment you speak of?
In addition to book banning, Trump’s anti-WOKE initiatives impose state mandates on speech, dictating how certain topics must be discussed in academic and employment settings as well as in national parks.
In education, anti-WOKE laws impose state control over classroom instruction about gender and race, including America’s history of slavery, the Jim Crow era and its aftermath, and other systems originating in an assumption of racial inferiority long since passed. In employment, stop WOKE laws prohibit corporations from conducting diversity training, seminars, or discussions to promote equality.
Stop WOKE laws in the corporate setting do not just denigrate affirmative action, they endorse white male superiority by banning discussion of any counter-narrative. All such initiatives will be struck down, nationwide, wherever they are challenged, by long standing First Amendment jurisprudence.
Trump’s shameful national park initiative
In national parks, a federal judge just ordered the Trump administration to restore all national park signs that were altered or removed under Trump’s directive aimed at purging "woke" historical and scientific content. In a ruling issued by U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley, the court gave the Department of the Interior until July 3, 2026, to reinstall the original materials.
Criticizing the administration's actions as censorship that shared a "limited history" through "half-truths,” the judge didn’t hold back, writing that:
- Trump tried to use a "white-out pen” in an attempt "to rewrite the Nation's history” into a fake narrative perpetuated throughout the nation’s vast national park system.
- Trump tried to promote half-truths, by sharing a "limited history" that removed park signage, educational materials and displays that did not align with Trump’s made-up history reflecting his false, preferred narrative.
- Trump tried excluding vital experiences of women, native Americans, enslaved people, and minorities, erasing entire communities whose contributions, struggles, and achievements form an important part of our Nation's story.
It is difficult to conceive of more ominous state controls than mandates on how history must be taught in national parks and schools, or how corporate trainings must be conducted, contingent entirely on how words could make listeners feel.
Mandating hatred won’t end well
All children of normal empath feel some level of anguish, or some level of distress, when they learn about the worst and most violent episodes from our past. Our nation was borne from a violent and bloody revolution from which oppressive systems emerged. It is a fact, and it is our history, just as it is of many great nations. Teaching complexity instead of avoiding it should be any educator’s goal. Pity the parents (and neighbors) of any child- black, white, or other- who learns about cruelty and violence without feeling any kind of empathic response; a child who learns about the horrors of slavery or the Trail of Tears with noemotional reflection whatsoever should be kept away from pets and small animals.
Trump’s doublespeak for “Freedom”
Anti-WOKE laws also target the LGBTQ community, relentlessly. Despite the fact that no known public K-3rd classroom has ever taught sex education or ‘gender identity,’ intentionally vague ‘Parental Rights’ laws spawned by Trump are proliferating. These laws prohibit K-3 teachers from acknowledging the very existence of gay people, by prohibiting teachers from saying anything about gender or sexuality in any manner that could be deemed not “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with (ambiguous, amorphous, undefined) state standards.”
So what happens when a second grade student finger paints a picture of his family complete with two siblings, two dogs, and two mommies? If his teacher comforts him, protects him from bullies, acknowledges his family positively or says anything that could be construed as affirming that kid as he is, the teacher faces state investigation and could be sued and/or terminated. Small wonder there is such an acute teacher shortage.
Trump is the chief architect of vicious culture wars now infecting the country. Governors under his thumb force women to give birth against their will, control parents’ medical decisions if their minor child seeks gender care, suppress and arrest black voters, villify gays, and controls the speech of college professors, state-wide.
As Judge Walker ruled, “The law officially bans professors from expressing disfavored viewpoints in university classrooms while permitting unfettered expression of the opposite viewpoints. Republicans argue that, under these Acts, professors enjoy “academic freedom” so long as they express only those viewpoints of which the State approves. This (position) is positively dystopian.”
A pall of orthodoxy
First Amendment scholars recognize the danger of a president and republican governors who would dictate state-mandated speech in schools, corporations, and national parks, while using state power to silence detractors for daring to disagree.
Supreme Court rulings have long shielded academic freedom and corporate speech from similar government encroachments. SCOTUS has consistently blocked state attempts to “cast a pall of orthodoxy” over classroom instruction since at least 1967. As long as the First Amendment stands, a state cannot “muzzle its university professors, impose its own orthodoxy of viewpoints, and cast us all into the dark.”
Stop WOKE efforts, Judge Walker observed, are “like the thirteenth chime of a clock: you not only know it’s wrong, but it causes you to wonder about everything you heard before.”
Sabrina Haake is a political analyst and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.