This doesn't really have anything to do with constitutional "free speech". This is a government agency, not the personal research blog of a private citizen.
Government agencies don't have "free speech".
That said, it's a shame this is happening. Maybe a future administration will reopen it.
Future administration?
You can take them up on polymarket.
If I can buy, say, low probability insurance that that will give me a squad of mercenaries and a jet to a bunker somewhere safe, I’d be far more apt to put my money where my mouth is.
It’s not a bad bet. It’s just a dumb bet. The payout doesn’t match the risk.
We’ll see how ICE at select polling places and iffy federal-run voter role purges go in 2026. Should set the tone for how far they try to go in 2028.
India can do it. They had a caste system and yet conduct fair and honest. We can do it too.
It’s not like they didn’t already use both covert and overt means to try to overturn an election, and get caught red-handed on both (I mean, one was televised live, so…) Much cleaner to put in the effort on Election Day itself.
My understanding is that, in many ways, government agencies are more constitutionally protected speech-wise than private entities, precisely because any hierarchical attempt to punish them for their speech would be coming from the government rather than private entities. IANAL (or even American) though so grain of salt.
In any case, a lot of the right-wing hypocrisy around free speech that was being called out by OP didn't have much to do with constitutionally protected freedom of speech either - it was complaining about things like private companies (e.g. Twitter) shadowbanning people.
"The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." U.S. Const., Art. II, Sec. 1, cl. 1.
(There are so-called independent agencies, but the constitutionality of true independence is in question in the Trump v. Slaughter case. You can read about it at https://www.oyez.org/cases/2025/25-332 or https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/12/court-seems-likely-to-sid... or https://reason.com/volokh/2025/12/17/trump-v-slaughter-was-t... or https://reason.com/volokh/2025/12/09/some-answers-to-justice... )
That's government employees.
If an employee of a normal company goes to a bar after work and trash-talks their boss, they can get fired for it.
If an employee of the government does the same, they (probably) can't.
This only covers speech that's not the of the job, and only things that are of "public concern" whatever that means.
Speech is important. Scientific speech more important. A government right now is using its power to selectively defund and wipe out big chunks of scientific research and communications that ultimately exist to protect your future. You should be livid and working to inform people how dangerous this is, not making poor excuses.
Yes. They were motivated by private individuals losing their livelihood, rather than by organizations losing government funding that was not a priori owed to them.
> You should be livid and working to inform people how dangerous this is, not making poor excuses.
Or you could fund it.
This is the significant point. The govt is defunding yet another scientific research institute. To me it seems more productive to get more specific and more substantive from there: How much of the research presently carried out at NCAR will continue? Are there alternative institutes or sources of funding that might save some of it? What are the likely tangible implications? Is the whole place even closing down or just some of it?
Going in the other direction, less specific, more amorphous abstraction about whether or not this is a free speech issue risks derailing the conversation into semantics.
There are interesting questions about wider meaning of free speech than what's protected by the first amendment, but getting moralistic because someone doesn't consider this a free speech issue, while you both agree that it's government defunding a research institute, and that it's bad, seems unnecessarily fractious