Incidentally, I use Redbubble for my t-shirts and other merch. Last week, I uploaded this cartoon (below) to my collection, because it was very popular and I thought it would make a good T-shirt.

Less than 24 hours later, I received this email from Redbubble:

Hi Nick,
We’re sorry, but we had to remove some of your artwork from the Redbubble marketplace because it may contain material that violates someone’s rights. We identified this material in your artwork based on guidance provided to us by the owner of those rights.
More information:
Rights holder: Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.
Subject matter: Donald J. Trump for President
Affected artwork:
The Trump Cult: https://www.redbubble.com/people/andertoon2/works/48156343-the-trump-cult
What you can do next:

1. Do nothing
Your artwork will not be reinstated, and you may not upload it again. In most cases, this brings the matter to a close.

2. Get more information
(Links to FAQs)

3. Dispute the removal
(More links)
Thank you,
The Redbubble Marketplace Integrity Team

“Integrity team??”

Naturally, I disputed the removal. I can only surmise that the Trump campaign is suggesting that the “MAGA” hats are a Trademark violation. This, of course, is absurd. The First Amendment and Supreme Court case law clearly protects Trademark and and/or Copyright “infringements” if it the material in question is being satirized.

It has been six days, and I have gotten no response from Redbubble. Given how quickly my work was detected and taken down, it is clear that the Trump campaign has some aggressive techniques for spotting this kind of content and attempting to take it down.

This raises some troubling issues. The Trump campaign appears to be aggressively and successfully suppressing content on commercial sites that it doesn’t like, and some of them are apparently rolling over pretty quickly.

--Nick Anderson