Former President Donald Trump may have promoted a protest that turned into a riot on Jan. 6, 2021, but his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), is right: The real long-term threat to democracy in the United States is the increasing willingness of Democratic Party leaders to use the power and leverage of the federal government to silence speech they don’t like. And their ignorance of Supreme Court precedent on the matter isn’t reassuring.

After Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), Democratic vice presidential candidate, called Trump “a threat to our democracy” during the first and only vice presidential debate, Vance retorted that, while “there were problems in 2020,” going forward, the bigger threat to democracy is, “Kamala Harris wants to use the power of government and big tech to silence people from speaking their minds.”