Marshall Helmberger

Freedom of conscience. That’s been one of the guiding principles of life in America since its founding— a recognition that we all have a right to our own views, our own religion, or our own politics, without having to fear we’ll lose our rights or freedoms as Americans.
But that principle is threatened today by an administration that prefers that those rights and freedoms we have taken for granted these past 249 years should be conditional, provided only for those willing to sing the praises of our current president.
Let me illustrate with a very recent example that suggests where we are headed. A good friend of ours, a former girlfriend of our son Max, was visiting us in late June. She’s finishing up her PhD in cultural anthropology at Trinity University in Dublin, Ireland, and had a bit of free time before beginning her thesis work on the Chernobyl nuclear accident (she has a master’s degree in nuclear chemistry). She’s expecting to be in Ukraine by the time you read this.
I’m going to refrain from providing her name because in today’s America, retaliation is a very real fear for many and legitimately so. Suffice it to say she’s an American citizen, half Native American, in fact, who was born and grew up in the U.S. Southwest.
On her way back to the states for her visit here, she went through U.S. Customs at the Dublin airport. She had done this a few times since she went to Ireland for school and the process had always been quick and easy, barely an afterthought.
Not anymore. Now, I don’t have an objection if the Customs and Border Patrol want to engage in a more thorough check of luggage or other relevant screening. But that’s not what happened here.
“Who did you vote for?” was just one of the questions that the CBP officials had for her this time, a question that shocked her and which she declined to answer. She was asked about a conference in London where she had presented a paper a few weeks earlier as well as her views on antisemitism. She was asked why she wasn’t living in the United States since she was an American, as if studying abroad is now a source of suspicion.
They took her phone and appeared to clone it, which left our friend relieved she spends little time and posts even less on social media. They then confiscated eight small boxes of her favorite gluten free pasta which she was bringing as a gift to my wife Jodi. There’s no prohibition against the pasta, of course. They told her she might be planning to retail it without paying the tariff, a notion that the CBP officials obviously knew was ridiculous. But it was just their way of signaling that times have changed, and that they can make our lives difficult if they so choose, the level of difficulty likely determined by the answers we give to their inappropriate questions. It was a reminder that, under the current administration, the old rules, like the freedom of conscience we have considered to be our birthright as Americans is on thin ice and there are federal law enforcement officials more than willing to press what boundaries still exist.
We don’t need to guess where this is heading. First, they question your political views, and once that becomes normalized, your answers could well determine whether you make your plane on time. Or get home at all.
I know there will be some who support the president’s policies who will dismiss this with the assumption that they won’t suffer negative consequences from these violations of the constitution because they’ll be able to give the right answers if they’re ever questioned while trying to re-enter the country. That may be. Even in the most totalitarian of countries, the natives enjoy full freedom to sing the praises and wave the flags of Dear Leader.
But if we accept these questions today, they could easily change tomorrow, and any one of us could find ourselves suddenly on the outside looking in. Just ask Elon Musk, or Thom Tillis, the North Carolina senator who, like several GOP politicians before him, had to abandon his re-election bid to vote his conscience on the misleadingly named One Big Beautiful Bill.
Today, fealty to one man is the only litmus test for political survival for a Republican politician. Tomorrow, it may well be the litmus test for living free in the United States of America.