Despite media portrayals, virtually every constitutional question has at the core a conflict where different rights or different parts of the constitution confl

Despite media portrayals, virtually every constitutional question has at the core a conflict where different rights or different parts of the constitution conflict. In that case you can't absolutely follow every constitutional dictum because they are mutually exclusive. To some extent legal principals can be used to resolved these conflicts, but they provide huge maneuvering space for political machinations. In this case, there's a conflict between the first amendment on one side and the congressional power to regulate foreign relations and largely judicially constructed executive powers around national security. Of course there's a very strong legal argument you can make that the first amendment clearly trump the congressional power, and the national security powers are (to me) obvious bullshit from the outset. But this is largely irrelevant because it's much more convenient for all branches of government to pretend that this it's a gray area and decide it how they wish.