The Socialist Equality Party in the UK is hosting public meetings in London and Sheffield, providing a vital opportunity to discuss President Donald Trump’s war on constitutionally enshrined democratic rights.

Trump is seeking to establish a presidential dictatorship, mobilising the full force of the state to crush political dissent and to carry out sweeping attacks on the working class, including mass firings by the Department of Government Efficiency headed by Elon Musk.

ICE and Homeland Security agents are targeting hundreds of immigrants for deportation to concentration camps in El Salvador, abducting legal residents in broad daylight, denying them due process or contact with lawyers and family in defiance of court orders. He has declared his intention to do the same to “homegrown” US citizens.

Students and academics face dismissal and overseas students deportation for opposing the Gaza genocide. Even a judge, Hannah Dugan from Wisconsin, was arrested for defending an immigrant.

Trump now declares that he has no obligation to uphold his oath of office to protect the constitution of the United States, openly declaring that the American people will no longer have any of the rights they have won over generations of struggle spanning 250 years.

Our speakers will pose and answer the question, “Is America going fascist?” They will explain that Trump’s regime poses a threat to the working class all over the world. They will place his offensive in the context of his threats to annex Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal and Mexico, including by military force, while colluding with Israel’s plans to complete the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and his turn to trade war measures targeting China that are driving humanity ever closer to a new world war.

The meeting will outline a strategy on which the working class in America and internationally can mobilise to defeat not just Trump but the turn by capitalist governments the world over to state repression, savage austerity and military violence. They will also explain why it is that Starmer’s Labour government in the UK has emerged as the chief accomplice of Trump’s repression of anti-genocide protests.

Momodou Taal, who will speak in London, is a British-Gambian dual citizen, whose student visa was revoked while completing his PhD at Cornell University. He was one of hundreds of international students facing imprisonment and deportation for exercising their First Amendment right to free speech by opposing Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. Taal’s F-1 student visa was revoked after he filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Trump’s executive orders criminalising protest against Israel’s assault on Gaza. He took the decision to leave the US after concluding that the courts offered no protection against his arrest and deportation.

Eric Lee, an attorney specialising in US immigration and civil rights cases, represented Taal in his struggle against deportation. In 2024, Lee argued before the US Supreme Court on behalf of a wife unable to live with her husband for nine years due to a consular official denying him a visa because of his tattoos. He is uniquely placed to discuss the Trump administration’s unconstitutional assault on free speech targeting student activists and educators, and the arbitrary detention, deportation and incarceration of migrants.

David North, is the chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (US) and of the World Socialist Web Site’s International Editorial Board. He is the author of essential works on socialist politics, history and philosophy. Active in socialist politics for over 50 years, North brings his vast political experience to bear in appraising the rise of Trump to power, which he has described as “the violent realignment of the American political superstructure to correspond with the real social relations that exist in the United States.”

Tickets are available online at Eventbrite and are strictly limited. Register early to secure your seat. Ticket price: waged £10 | unwaged £5 | solidarity price £20

LONDON

Saturday May 31, 12.30pm
Crowne Plaza, Kings Cross — Bloomsbury Suite
1 Kings Cross Road, London, England, WC1X 9HX
(15-minute walk from Kings Cross-St Pancras railway station)

Buy your ticket at Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/trumps-war-on-free-speech-the-case-of-momodou-taal-tickets-1355443390669

SHEFFIELD
Sunday June 1, 1.00pm
Cantor Theatre, Cantor Building
Sheffield Hallam University
City Campus, 153 Arundel Street, Sheffield, S1 2NU
(5-minute walk from Sheffield railway station)

Buy your ticket at Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/trumps-war-on-free-speech-the-case-of-momodou-taal-tickets-1357137919049

Both venues have disabled access. HEPA filters will be operating at the venue, and we encourage masking to make the event as safe as possible for the medically vulnerable.