Recent protests against Don­ald Trump, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Chica­go, where he decid­ed to can­cel a ral­ly after pro­test­ers massed inside and out­side of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois-Chica­go, have led to a great deal of debate (and hand­wring­ing) by pro­gres­sives about free speech. Those debates are worth hav­ing, but they risk dis­tract­ing from a more impor­tant fact: Since he announced his cam­paign in June 2015, Don­ald Trump has been wag­ing a sub­tle war against the First Amendment.

Either while stumping or in campaign promises, Trump has infringed upon almost every right guaranteed in the First Amendment.

This bat­tle has evad­ed the atten­tion of a media that often seems more inter­est­ed in the size of the Donald’s hands than the dan­ger­ous con­tent of his words. Either while stump­ing or in cam­paign promis­es, Trump has infringed upon many of the righst guar­an­teed in the First Amend­ment. Here are four ways he has done it.

1 . He Doesn’t Respect the First Amendment’s Reli­gious Guarantees

One of Trump’s chief ene­mies in the Con­sti­tu­tion is the right to free exer­cise of reli­gion. This right clash­es with his anti-Mus­lim hatred, which he seeks to cod­i­fy by ban­ning Mus­lim immi­gra­tion, clos­ing mosques and reg­is­ter­ing all Mus­lim Amer­i­cans in a fed­er­al data­base. While some of this dis­crim­i­na­tion is more right­ly con­sid­ered a vio­la­tion of the 14 th Amend­ment — which pre­serves the fun­da­men­tal equal rights of all U.S. cit­i­zens regard­less of race, reli­gion, etc. — the threats to close mosques in par­tic­u­lar also rep­re­sent an infringe­ment of the right to free exercise.

As for estab­lish­ment of reli­gion, Trump has drawn on a good deal of right-wing evan­gel­i­cal rhetoric about the ​“War on Chris­tian­i­ty” on the few occa­sions he’s spo­ken about reli­gion, often issu­ing state­ments that smack of state reli­gion. He has stat­ed that he will appoint judges to repeal the Supreme Court’s June 2015 deci­sion mak­ing same-sex mar­riage the law of the land, and based this desire on his reli­gious sup­port for ​“tra­di­tion­al mar­riage.” He has also embraced Kim Davis’ refusal to issue same-sex mar­riage licens­es, itself an estab­lish­ment of reli­gion as law.

Four­ty-four per­cent of Repub­li­cans sup­port mak­ing Chris­tian­i­ty the offi­cial reli­gion of the Unit­ed States, and thiry-six per­cent think Islam should be ille­gal, accord­ing to a PPP poll, so it’s not sur­pris­ing that Trump is dip­ping into that rhetoric. Nonethe­less, any actu­al attempt to enforce Chris­tian­i­ty or dis­crim­i­nate against Mus­lims as law would be a bla­tant vio­la­tion of the First Amendment.

2 . Free Speech is a Rhetor­i­cal Tool for Him, Not a Right

Don­ald Trump is reg­u­lar­ly con­front­ed with speech that he doesn’t agree with, or even speech that chal­lenges his poli­cies and per­son­al­i­ties. In reac­tion, he has dis­played star­tling­ly author­i­tar­i­an ten­den­cies, com­ing down hard against those who would cri­tique him. Pro­tes­tors at his ral­lies are forced to leave — often with vio­lence incit­ed by Trump him­self. When­ev­er there is a chance that Trump’s speech will be chal­lenged, he flees. This was vis­i­ble in the case of his months-long refusal to speak to Fox News reporter Meg­yn Kel­ly after she crit­i­cized his sex­ism at the first GOP debate.

Many Trump sup­port­ers—and even mod­er­ate lib­er­als—have said that the oppo­site is also true, that Trump’s own free­dom of speech has been sup­pressed by protests. In fact, Trump’s deci­sion to can­cel his ral­ly in Chica­go was made sole­ly because he wasn’t will­ing to enter a space where he had total con­trol of the mes­sage. Despite his campaign’s asser­tion that the Chica­go police had rec­om­mend­ed the can­cel­la­tion on secu­ri­ty grounds, the police depart­ment issued a state­ment say­ing they had done no such thing. The Chica­go ral­ly was an exam­ple of Trump flee­ing oth­ers’ speech, not his own being suppressed.

As well, Trump promised dur­ing one debate that he’d look into ways to ​“close off the inter­net” in order to fight ter­ror­ism. While it’s unclear how such a thing would even be accom­plished, this is a strat­e­gy rem­i­nis­cent of that wield­ed by dic­ta­tors in Egypt, Libya and Syr­ia dur­ing the Arab Spring, when nation­wide inter­net shut­downs went into effect to quell protests. Rand Paul, among oth­ers, has crit­i­cized this as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and an obvi­ous breach of the first amend­ment right to free speech.

3 . He Restricts Press Freedom

Along­side free speech and free exer­cise of reli­gion, the free­dom of the press is no great friend of Trump either. He has attract­ed wide­spread con­dem­na­tion for keep­ing reporters at his ral­lies in a pen, on threat of pulling their press cre­den­tials. Time pho­tog­ra­ph­er Chris Mor­ris was choked and ​“vio­lent­ly thrown to the ground” for attempt­ing to leave the press pen in late February.

More recent­ly, Bre­it­bart reporter Michelle Fields was phys­i­cal­ly attacked by Trump’s cam­paign man­ag­er when she tried to ask the can­di­date a ques­tion. Trump him­self has made no secret of his antipa­thy for jour­nal­ists either, say­ing of them in Decem­ber: ​“Uh, let’s see. Eh, no, I wouldn’t. I would nev­er kill them. But I do hate ​’em, and some of them are such lying, dis­gust­ing peo­ple. It’s true.”

4 . He Doesn’t Believe in the Right to Protest

Last­ly, of course, Trump has fierce­ly attacked pro­tes­tors at his ral­lies. He has scorned them, the­o­rized they are oper­a­tives of ISIS, and had them evict­ed. This is, of course, his right, but it dis­plays a cal­lous dis­re­gard for ​“the right of the peo­ple peace­ably to assem­ble.” As well, Trump cross­es the line when he calls for vio­lence against pro­test­ers. Recent­ly, he not­ed that ​“In the good old days this doesn’t hap­pen, because they used to treat [pro­tes­tors] very, very rough. And when they protest­ed once, you know, they would not do it again so easily.”

Trump has been even more explic­it in the past. ​“You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be car­ried out on a stretch­er, folks,” he said at a ral­ly in Las Vegas, after also admit­ting, ​“I’d like to punch him in the face.” At sev­er­al ral­lies, he has even promised to cov­er the legal fees for sup­port­ers who assault protestors.

Giv­en that a Trump pres­i­den­cy would like­ly be met with mass demon­stra­tions on a scale not seen since the Bush years, his ten­den­cies towards author­i­tar­i­an crack­downs are very worrying.

Don­ald Trump is a man who has no respect for — or even much knowl­edge of — the doc­u­ment that found­ed the coun­try he wants to lead. His poli­cies and actions have indi­cat­ed that the First Amend­ment will be no imped­i­ment to his hate­ful reign. Maybe it won’t be long into his pres­i­den­cy before we see Don­ald Trump v. First Amend­ment in court.