They were the Alien and Sedition Acts, enacted by John Adams. Among other things, parts of the Acts violated the 1st Amendment because it made it illegal to give 'bad press' to a public official (like John Adams, himself, a constant and merciless target of ridicule and insult masterminded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison on the Democratic-Republican side and Alexander Hamilton (among others) on the Federalist side). One would want to search query the Acts to find out everything about them.