... undergone a "rightward shift" in recent years and questioned why core American values, such as free speech, are being rebranded as "right-wing." ...

For starters, what MAGA calls "free-speech" seems to be more hatred towards others and violence-provoking speech.

So yeah, those types of speech have appeared to be owned by the right-wing of late.

But free speech?

Why is Pres Trump actively trying to silence those who express their free speech to disagree with him?

@#7 ... No, there's no 'hate speech' exception to the First Amendment reason.com The article also briefly covers the "fighting words" exception. ...

Thanks for that correction.

From the article you cite ...

... To be sure, there are some kinds of speech that are unprotected by the First Amendment. But those narrow exceptions have nothing to do with "hate speech" in any conventionally used sense of the term. For instance, there is an exception for "fighting words" - face-to-face personal insults addressed to a specific person, of the sort that are likely to start an immediate fight. But this exception isn't limited to racial or religious insults, nor does it cover all racially or religiously offensive statements. Indeed, when the City of St. Paul tried to specifically punish bigoted fighting words, the Supreme Court held that this selective prohibition was unconstitutional (R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992)), even though a broad ban on all fighting words would indeed be permissible. (And, notwithstanding CNN anchor Chris Cuomo's Tweet that "hate speech is excluded from protection," and his later claims that by "hate speech" he means "fighting words," the fighting words exception is not generally labeled a "hate speech" exception, and isn't coextensive with any established definition of "hate speech" that I know of.)

The same is true of the other narrow exceptions, such as for true threats of illegal conduct or incitement intended to and likely to produce imminent illegal conduct (i.e., illegal conduct in the next few hours or maybe days, as opposed to some illegal conduct some time in the future). Indeed, threatening to kill someone because he's black (or white), or intentionally inciting someone to a likely and immediate attack on someone because he's Muslim (or Christian or Jewish), can be made a crime. But this isn't because it's "hate speech"; it's because it's illegal to make true threats and incite imminent crimes against anyone and for any reason, for instance because they are police officers or capitalists or just someone who is sleeping with the speaker's ex-girlfriend. ...

In my view, the key is the phrase "narrow exceptions."

... The same is true of the other narrow exceptions, such as for true threats of illegal conduct or incitement intended to and likely to produce imminent illegal conduct (i.e., illegal conduct in the next few hours or maybe days, as opposed to some illegal conduct some time in the future). ...

thx again.