Constitutional Law
Sep. 29, 2025
Is Trumpism the new McCarthyism?
Seventy-five years after McCarthyism weaponized fear to silence dissent, President Trump's escalating campaign of political retribution -- culminating in the indictment of James Comey and a broader assault on critics in media, law, and academia -- marks the gravest threat to First Amendment freedoms in modern American history.
William Rothbard
Email: Rothbard@FTCAdLaw.com
William Rothbard also represents clients in federal and state deceptive advertising investigations and enforcement actions as well as consumer class actions and has litigated and settled scores of matters. He provides advertising-related transactional services, including contracts, trademarks, sweepstakes and contests. Bill writes and speaks often on advertising and marketing law topics. He has served as the Editor of Competition, an antitrust and trade regulation journal published by the California State Bar Antitrust and Trade Regulation Section, and is the author of the legal blog, FTCAdLaw Alert, which can be found on his firm website. He has served as an advertising law expert in FTC-related cases and serves as an expert within his field in the global expert consulting network of the Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG). Prior to entering private practice, Bill was an attorney with the FTC, holding positions as an advertising enforcement attorney, Deputy Assistant Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, and Attorney-Advisor to the FTC Chairman. He also served as Counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Antitrust, Monopolies and Business Rights. He is a graduate of UC Law San Francisco (formerly UC Hastings College of Law) and The University of Michigan. In his civic life, Bill is a past Chair of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, past President of Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, former Board Member of Bet Tzedek Legal Services, and a former candidate for the California Assembly.
Seventy-five years ago, a junior senator from Wisconsin became synonymous with the question: "Are you, or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" The lives of Americans, from the State Department to Hollywood, for whom the answer to that question was a presumed yes, were destroyed. This era stands as a deeply un-American moment in the American experiment of democracy, and an ugly betrayal of the First Amendment guarantees of free expression and association.
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