A round-up of the latest and best insight on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

Zach Greenberg: Pepperdine banned a professor who taught about a black Jesus

Christina Littlefield has taught at Pepperdine for 14 years and holds a Cambridge Ph.D. in divinity. She won’t be teaching this fall. At FIRE, Zach Greenberg reports that the private Christian university has put her on paid leave through August 2027 and barred her from campus, citing unprofessional speech and classroom conduct that left students uncomfortable.

Her offenses, per the disciplinary notice: assigning a chapter of American Jesus, a book surveying how Americans have reimagined Jesus over the centuries (including as a black messiah), which drew a 2024 parent complaint; and likening colleagues who supported censoring a campus art exhibition to fascist censors:

Pepperdine is a private Christian university, so the First Amendment does not require it to provide faculty the same speech protections they would receive from a public university. But the school has voluntarily made certain promises to its faculty.

Its Statement of Academic Freedom declares that “free inquiry and the pursuit of truth are indispensable conditions for the attainment of the goals of any university.” It promises professors “freedom of discussion in the classroom” and says faculty have a “basic duty to encourage freedom of inquiry in peers and in students.”

It properly recognizes faculty’s “freedom in teaching … must not be interpreted to discourage what is ‘controversial,’” adding that “Controversy is at the heart of the free academic inquiry, which this statement is designed to foster.”

Any professor teaching at Pepperdine would rightly believe the university has their back when it comes to complaints about subjectively “offensive” lecture content. They would reasonably feel safe to teach even provocative material to students, to challenge their assumptions and expand their worldviews.

Yet Pepperdine suspended Littlefield for more than a year for teaching about how other scholars discuss a black Jesus in her “Christianity and Culture” class, merely because that “made students feel uncomfortable.”

Read the rest.

C.J. Ciaramella: Miami Beach Can’t Dodge First Amendment Lawsuit After Police Questioned Woman Over Anti-Israel Facebook Post

In January, two Miami Beach police detectives knocked on Raquel Pacheco’s door to ask about a Facebook comment she’d left under a post by Mayor Steven Meiner, one claiming the mayor consistently calls for the death of all Palestinians. The officers warned that the comment could provoke someone into acting on it. Pacheco filmed the whole thing.

At Reason, C.J. Ciaramella reports that Chief U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga allowed parts of Pacheco’s First Amendment lawsuit to proceed, ruling that she had adequately alleged that her criticism of Israel motivated the mayor to send police to her home, and that the city had adopted a viewpoint-discriminatory policy against pro-Palestinian expression. The judge tossed several of her other claims:

“This is freedom of speech. This is America, right? I’m a veteran,” Pacheco told the officers.

“And I agree with you 100 percent,” one officer responded. “We’re just trying to see if it’s you, because if we’re not talking to the right person, we want to go see who the right person is.”

“We’re just trying to prevent someone else from getting agitated or agreeing with the statement,” one of the detectives told Pacheco. “We’re not saying it’s true or not.”

Pacheco refused to further answer the detectives’ questions.

After Pacheco’s video of the encounter went viral, Jones, the Miami Beach police chief, released a statement defending his decision to send the officers to her home, saying that “given the real, ongoing national and international concerns surrounding antisemitic attacks and recent rhetoric that has led to violence against political figures,” he had “serious concerns that her remarks could trigger physical action by others.”

However, there is a high First Amendment bar to clear to meet the legal standard for incitement. Under the test that the Supreme Court established in the landmark First Amendment case Brandenburg v. Ohio, the government must prove that the rhetoric incited violence or threats of violence and that the incitement was imminent, likely, and intentional.

Read it all.

Hugo Timms: Green ‘nutters’ and ‘lunatics’ want to ban the word ‘mother’

Ahead of this Saturday’s conference in Brighton, the Green Party of England and Wales has issued an inclusive-terminology guide for attendees. At spiked, Hugo Timms runs through the list: parents and carers in place of mothers and fathers; no gendered job titles like policeman or chairman; farewell to elderly, able-bodied, youngster, and homosexual; Even nutter and lunatic are out, on the grounds that they stigmatize mental illness:

This ‘inclusive’ guidance is, in reality, a list of banned words and phrases.

Read the whole thing.

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Speaking of Britain: John Cleese has been named in a referral to Prevent, the UK government’s counter-extremism program, over a series of posts about Islam. The referral was first reported by the British Muslim outlet 5Pillars, which has been sharply critical of Cleese. Cleese’s response:

Meanwhile, Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla have written to more than half a dozen tech executives demanding written answers, by October 15, on how their platforms will combat election misinformation and disinformation ahead of the midterms. When two senators send questions with a deadline attached, platforms tend to hear something other than a question.

Finally, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used his State of the Force address on Wednesday to declare that the American press makes Iranian state media look reasonable, per video posted by Aaron Rupar.

For the record, Iran’s regime just opened a criminal probe into a theater company because an actress rested her head on her co-star’s chest onstage. American reporters can say what they like about Hegseth. That’s rather the point.

Toby Young: Does Britain Have a Free Speech Problem?

When J.D. Vance raised British speech restrictions in the Oval Office last year, Keir Starmer waved the concern away. At the Daily Sceptic, Free Speech Union founder Toby Young answers with numbers instead of anecdotes. Citing a new Big Brother Watch report, he notes that 62,199 people were arrested on suspicion of three communications offenses between 2021 and 2025 — about 34 a day — and 12,292 were convicted:

That’s a shocking figure, but it’s an underestimate. Several police forces didn’t respond to Big Brother Watch’s Freedom of Information requests, including Police Scotland. Big Brother Watch estimates the true figure is 73,023. So on a conservative estimate, the police are arresting an average of 34 people a day for things they’ve said, the vast majority online, and the true figure is closer to 40 a day. Russia, incidentally, is thought to arrest around 400 people a year for similar offenses.

Of those 62,199 people, 18,520 were charged and 12,292 were convicted. That’s more than 12,000 people with criminal records for speech offenses in five years. And that number is likely to go up if the proposals to curtail the right to trial by jury, first put forward by David Lammy when he was Justice Secretary, become law.

Research by the Free Speech Union found that in the year to June 2025, 14% of people tried for speech offences in a magistrates’ court were acquitted, compared with 33% in the Crown Court, where the case was heard by a jury. Twelve ordinary men and women, it turns out, are less likely than a district judge to conclude that an intemperate tweet merits a criminal conviction. Leave the decision to them and more people will be convicted.

Read the whole thing.

Josh Pauzé: Texas Wants Free Speech on Campus—With Exceptions

After Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Texas leaders created select committees on campus free speech in his honor. At Reason, Josh Pauzé notes that Texas schools nonetheless averaged an F in FIRE’s new College Free Speech Rankings, which cite 25 controversies across the state — much of the censorship, he writes, coming from the right. Exhibit A: a UT Dallas student editor placed on a two-year deferred suspension after appending a disclaimer to a letter from the campus Hillel president. He’s now suing:

Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez was an editor of The Mercury, a student newspaper at the University of Texas at Dallas, before he was placed on a two-year deferred suspension after his school deemed that his editorial decisions constituted “discriminatory harassment.”

This all started when UT Dallas Hillel president Jade Steinberg sent The Mercury a letter about campus antisemitism and the Israel-Palestine conflict. Gutierrez thought the letter lacked credible sources, so he added a disclaimer to its publication stating that the letter “does not meet the journalistic standards of The Mercury“ and should be treated as opinion rather than news. A day after the piece went live, Steinberg complained, leading to Gutierrez’s suspension. Gutierrez filed a lawsuit last week, alleging that the school violated his First Amendment rights.

Gutierrez’s case is one of many free speech controversies at Texas universities. Texas schools received an average grade of F in the annual college free speech rankings recently published by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). The report cites 25 free speech controversies across the state’s universities, and 42 percent of students claim to have self-censored at least once a month.

The failing grades are a stark contrast to the state government’s recent attempt to support free speech on campus in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

Read the rest.

Robby Soave: Aaron Sorkin Accidentally Made Mark Zuckerberg the Hero of His Anti-Facebook Movie

Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning, is a sequel of sorts to 2010’s The Social Network. Robbie Soave argues the film meant to cast Jeremy Strong’s Zuckerberg as a cartoon villain. Then a newly released scene shows the Zuck character rebutting Bill Burr’s character with free speech arguments, and Soave caught himself cheering:

Sorkin—whose own politics seem to fall mostly in line with the sort of overly idealistic, bland do-something liberalism that typified The West Wing, his best known piece of entertainment—is a passionate detractor of Facebook and Zuckerberg. In 2019, Sorkin went so far as to write an open letter to Zuckerberg (in the form of a column for The New York Times, of course), in which he accused Facebook of “assaulting the truth.”

Over the course of the last two decades, from Network to Reckoning, Sorkin’s nuanced but mostly negative representation of social media and its impact on society has yielded to Jonathan Haidt-esque blind hatred; his forthcoming depiction of Zuckerberg (now portrayed by Jeremy Strong rather than Jesse Eisenberg) is intended as one-dimensional cartoon villainy.

Well, so much for those intentions. This certainly isn’t what Sorkin intended, but I found myself cheering Strong’s Zuckerberg in a recently released scene from the movie, in which the Facebook CEO marshals free speech arguments to rebut the histrionic apprehensions of Bill Burr’s character.

Read it all.

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Last Thursday, hours after Judge Timothy Kelly (a Trump appointee) ordered the White House to restore press passes for CNN, MS NOW and Politico, some of their reporters were still being turned away at the gate. Brit Hume observed that a White House that has generally avoided defying court orders appeared to have done exactly that. The reporters were let in around midday.

Two days later, Kaitlan Collins reported that the White House was barring CNN from flying on Air Force One for its TV pool duties on the president’s weekend trip to Tennessee. The court restored the passes; the plane, apparently, is another matter.

Finally, in India, activist Abhijeet Dipke accuses Meta of taking down hundreds of reels demanding the resignation of the country’s chief election commissioner, and banning accounts — reportedly at the government’s request. Burnham’s new information-defence centre, it’s worth noting, also plans to work with social media companies.

A round-up of the latest and best insight on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

Will Jones: Labour’s Pro-BBC Censorship Push is Not Based on Evidence

In the UK, Labour Party officials want social media platforms to boost “trustworthy” outlets like the BBC and demote everyone else, on the theory that opaque algorithms are radicalizing the public with misinformation.

At the Daily Sceptic, Will Jones highlights a new Free Speech Union report arguing the evidence for that premise is thin to nonexistent, because the government’s own review leans on citations that don’t survive scrutiny:

They justify each of their measures with the same freedom-chilling argument: that misinformation and disinformation, pumped out to innocent users by malevolent algorithms engineered to monetize extremism, division and hatred, now threaten democracy itself. The narrative has been repeated so often that it has acquired the status of fact. But the evidence suggests it is largely false.

…

In 2024, Nature issued an authoritative review by a team led from the University of Michigan. Its conclusions were the reverse of the Government’s premise. It found that exposure to misinformation and extremist content is low on average and heavily concentrated among a small fringe of users who actively seek it out, rather than coming across it by accident thanks to malign algorithms.

Read the rest.

Ashley McCully: Liberal Millionaires: Wait, What Is Free Speech Again?

Macklemore used his opening slot on Ed Sheeran’s tour to tell 80,000 fans at MetLife Stadium that he wanted to say “Free Palestine,” then performed a protest song referencing the war in Gaza. At PJ Media, Ashley McCully walks through the fallout: Patriots owner Robert Kraft barred Macklemore from Gillette Stadium, several other venues reportedly followed suit under similar pressure from Kraft (according to Macklemore’s account of events) and the tour’s remaining opening acts all quit in solidarity.

McCully’s core argument is a distinction a lot of the commentary around this story keeps skipping: the First Amendment protects Macklemore from government punishment for his speech, but it doesn’t obligate a private stadium owner to host it:

This case study in cause-and-effect has nothing to do with the government, so the First Amendment is not in question. Anyone who claims Kraft should have called for and accepted an apology before allowing Macklemore to take the stage neglects to remember that these are performers, and performers say and do things for money — they don't have to mean it to be convincing. A hollow statement written by a publicist and issued on social media? I'm with Kraft: no, thanks.

Read it all.

Josh Pauzé: The ‘Stop Nick Shirley Act’: Yet Another Anti-Doxxing Law That Chills Free Speech

Conservative YouTuber Nick Shirley built a following filming undercover investigations into alleged fraud at immigration nonprofits and daycare centers. California’s legislature responded with a law called the Safe at Work Act, dubbed by critics the “Stop Nick Shirley Act.”

The law allows “immigration support services” workers to demand takedowns of posts made with the specific intent to threaten or incite violence against them. Shirley is now suing to block it, arguing the timeline shows it was written specifically to target him.

At Reason, Josh Pauzé notes that an earlier draft would have let workers demand removal of nearly any post that merely “related to” them. Even so, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression warns the narrowed version could still chill lawful, constitutionally protected speech about immigration groups, and could invite frivolous takedown demands that never actually meet the legal bar for incitement:

Shirley outlined his argument in a recent YouTube video, claiming that the legislation is a blatant violation of the First Amendment created in response to him exposing fraud across California. In his suit, he also alleges that it discriminates based on the content and viewpoint of speech and is unconstitutionally “overbroad and vague.”

…

The law, which will go into effect on October 1, 2027, was signed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom last month. The California Legislature claims it’s a necessary measure to protect the immigrant community from increasing incidents of doxxing and harassment caused by the Trump administration’s anti-immigration agenda. However, some free speech groups are raising concerns about its constitutionality.

In April, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) warned that the legislation could limit “what regular people are allowed to post online about immigrants and the people who help them.” Specifically, under section 6218.19, which FIRE called “the most concerning part of the bill,” immigration service providers could “ban nearly anyone from posting their personal information on the internet.” As FIRE pointed out, “personal information” under the bill could include “anything that ‘relates to’ them.”

Posts can be banned regardless of whether or not they are protected by the First Amendment—they don’t have to incite threats or harassment, or have anything to do with immigration. “That means the provision could facilitate censorship of all kinds of speech the Constitution protects,” FIRE said.

Read the whole thing.

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The Free Speech Union isn’t buying the UK government’s “misinformation” panic, accusing it of trying to slip mass censorship past the public unnoticed.

Dearborn’s mayor turned the Macklemore saga into an offer: a free, city-sponsored concert for the rapper that stadium owners won’t host.

And AOC, not known as a champion of private property or free speech rights, says Robert Kraft declining to host a performer amounts to censorship.

A round-up of the latest and best insight on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

Pluribus: Suncor v Boulder: A backdoor assault on the First Amendment?

Next month, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, which grew out of a state lawsuit accusing the oil industry of lying about the climate risks of its products. Boulder wants billions in damages, and several dozen other jurisdictions have filed nearly identical suits.

Strictly speaking, the case isn’t a First Amendment dispute. But as we argue, it has profoundly important implications for free speech protections. If Boulder—and the dozens of state and local governments running copycat suits—get their way, companies could be punished for taking the “wrong” side of a scientific debate. Our takeaway:

Governments simply can’t be trusted to pick the correct conclusion in a scientific dispute.

Read the rest.

Meagan O’Rourke: Animal Advocates Say a Florida Sheriff’s Office Blocked Them Online. Free Speech Lawyers Are Fighting Back.

Turns out you don’t need a foreign policy dispute to run afoul of the First Amendment — a shelter’s euthanasia rate will do just fine. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) sent a letter this week to Florida’s Polk County Sheriff’s Office (PCSO), which oversees the county’s animal control department, arguing its social media bans amount to unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.

One critic, Vicky Quintanilla, says she was blocked two years ago after posting about the shelter’s high euthanasia rate.

The PCSO insists its accounts are merely “limited public forums” where moderators can restrict off-topic chatter but not viewpoints, a distinction its own policy doesn’t seem to respect, given its bans on “offensive” comments, “trolling” and anything that might “abuse.” The sheriff’s office said it had received FIRE’s letter but hadn’t yet reviewed it, though a spokesperson still offered this assurance:

[The PCSO does] “not engage in viewpoint or content discrimination.”

Read it all.

Toby Young: More Than 60,000 Arrested in Five Years for ‘Communications Offences’ in ‘Orwellian’ Policing Crackdown

Across the pond, a new Big Brother Watch report finds that at least 62,199 people were arrested in the UK for “communications offences” over the past five years. Some of that enforcement is defensible, like intervening on threatening messages in domestic violence cases. But the report’s complaint is about everything else swept up along the way. One case cited: West Midlands Police showed up at the home of a vulnerable teenage girl over a TikTok video she hadn’t even created, shared or commented on.

Writing in the Mail, Toby Young, director of the Free Speech Union, pointed out the obvious trade-off nobody in Whitehall seems to be making.

The police seem increasingly obsessed with catching thought criminals.

Read the whole thing.

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GB News shared former Conservative MP Louise Mensch’s reaction to the Big Brother Watch numbers. She didn’t mince words about how police discretion has been used.

FIRE also flagged its own letter to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office last week, warning that blocking constituents over policy complaints is the kind of thing that gets a government agency sued.

It’s not censorship, it’s just regulating the “information landscape.” Color us skeptical.

Can trial lawyers dictate what private companies are allowed to say? In light of the First Amendment, the obvious answer is “no”—nobody can control another’s speech. But an upcoming Supreme Court case could upend that Constitutional protection if the decision goes the wrong way.

Next month, the Court will hear oral arguments in Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County. The case stems from an earlier state-level lawsuit in which Boulder County claimed the energy industry lied about the global-warming potential of its oil and gas products. Because the industry allegedly suppressed evidence that its fossil fuels heat up the atmosphere, it owes the county (and several dozen other jurisdictions that filed copycat lawsuits) billions of dollars in damages for mitigating the harmful effects of climate change.

The case isn’t primarily a free-speech dispute, but the litigation centers the First Amendment in the way it mirrors the argument 46 states made against the tobacco industry in the 1990s. Not only is Boulder demanding a massive payout, as those earlier plaintiffs did, the county claims the energy industry’s mistake was disputing the inevitability of catastrophic climate change.

As it turns out, the industry was largely correct: human greenhouse emissions are shifting global temperatures, but experts now say the predictions of an imminent climate collapse were fatally flawed. That technical question aside, the case invites severe restrictions on free speech and threatens to hamper scientific progress by effectively punishing one side in a scientific debate—if the Court fails to protect the First Amendment.

Disagreement prohibited

Strip away the tort labels and Boulder’s theory boils down to one fundamental claim. The involved companies lose their free-speech protection the moment they take a side Boulder doesn’t like. An amicus brief from the Protect the First Foundation makes the point bluntly, noting that Boulder never sued renewable-energy advocates or climate nonprofits that made their own aggressive claims about warming—just the companies that disagreed with them. That’s viewpoint discrimination, a category the Court has long treated as “presumptively unconstitutional,” dressed up as consumer protection.

Boulder’s certainty is also doing work it hasn’t earned. The complaint leans on a “worst-case” emissions scenario the UN’s own climate panel has since retired as implausible, and the panel admits only “low confidence” that human activity drives many specific weather patterns Boulder blames on the industry.

This is a familiar problem to free-speech advocates since history is full of penalized dissenters, particularly in the sciences, who turned out to be right. Alfred Wegener, for example, was ridiculed for correctly proposing that continents drift, while two Australian researchers proved bacteria, not stress, cause most ulcers. Letting the courts silence the minority view in those instances would have protected the wrong answer at the expense of the right one, and the same applies to the present case. Governments simply can’t be trusted to pick the correct conclusion in a scientific dispute, which is why our First Amendment prohibits it.

Conflicting free speech restrictions

Boulder isn’t the only jurisdiction running this playbook. Several dozen states, cities and counties have filed nearly identical suits, and nothing requires any of them to agree on what counts as climate “misinformation.” An amicus brief from the legal group Neutral Principles warns that these cases could eventually produce diametrically opposed verdicts on the same scientific speech—one county’s jury punishing a statement that another county’s jury treats as accurate.

That’s not a hypothetical concern, as the COVID-era “misinformation” enforcement regime demonstrated. Official consensus shifted abruptly as claims that got social media posts labeled false—the lab-leak theory and natural immunity’s protective value among them—were later acknowledged as credible by the same authorities that had dismissed them. A patchwork of state juries empowered to punish speech about an unsettled scientific question guarantees the same whiplash, just with billion-dollar verdicts instead of a flagged tweet.

Compelling future speech

Other plaintiffs in this same wave of suits haven’t left the remedy in doubt. Minnesota and Connecticut each asked courts to order Exxon to fund a “corrective public education campaign” on climate change, run by an independent third party.

Boulder’s complaint doesn’t spell that out, but its catch-all demand for “abatement of the hazards” of climate change “by any other practical means” leaves the door open to similar court-ordered speech affirming the government’s preferred narrative on a contested scientific question. That’s compelled speech, and the Court has never treated it lightly. Since West Virginia v. Barnette, government cannot force citizens to espouse an official orthodoxy.

Conclusion: Stifling scientific progress

Science thrives on free inquiry and open dispute. Without this exchange of ideas and the peer review it entails, research progress grinds to a halt. The greatest scientific discoveries in history required challenging consensus.

As Supreme Court Justice Alito has observed, Americans debate the causes, extent and proper policy response to climate change every day, and the whole point of the First Amendment is to make sure every side of that debate gets heard. Boulder’s lawsuit inverts that principle: it treats one side’s advocacy as a tort simply because a jury might find it unpersuasive in hindsight.

If the Supreme Court lets that theory stand, it will hand every state and local government a template for punishing whichever side of a scientific argument currently displeases them. Companies, researchers and critics alike will learn to keep their doubts to themselves.

A round-up of the latest and best insight on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

John Coleman: By bullying Anthropic, the Pentagon is violating the First Amendment. Here’s why.

Back in February, War Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei three days to open up its AI models for unrestricted Pentagon use or face blacklisting and a possible seizure under the Defense Production Act.

Anthropic refused, so Trump ordered federal agencies to drop the company and Hegseth barred military contractors from doing business with it, and the Department of War formally branded Anthropic a “supply chain risk.”

At FIRE, legislative counsel John Coleman argues this a free-speech issue: the company’s design choices as protected expression, no different from a printed pamphlet:

“No software is neutral when its makers are not.”

Read the rest.

J.D. Tuccille: Surveillance Camera Saboteurs Are Getting Government Officials’ Attention

Automated license plate readers, “Flock cameras,” after the industry leader, scan every car that passes, feeding a nationwide database that police can query without a warrant. The Institute for Justice has documented well over 100 cases of abuse, from romantic stalking to wrongful detentions, plus plenty of outright misreads. Officials keep signing contracts anyway. So, increasingly, ordinary people are taking matters into their own hands.

“Subject to escalating snooping, some people respond by sabotaging surveillance cameras’ all-seeing eyes.”

At Reason, J.D. Tuccille catalogs the results: cameras shot, sawed down, foam-sealed, and spray-painted across at least 36 states. It’s vandalism, and people have been arrested for it, but it appears to be working. Pinal County’s sheriff cited Fourth Amendment concerns in canceling his office’s Flock contract, and DeFlock counts at least 135 communities that have rejected the technology outright. Years of privacy advocacy got an assist from a much blunter instrument: citizens with hacksaws and spray paint.

Read it all.

Silkie Carlo: Free speech under relentless attack in the UK

A new poll finds most Britons believe free speech deteriorated over Keir Starmer’s time as prime minister, and the numbers back up the public sentiment (Starmer has since been succeeded by Andy Burnham, who now inherits the problem).

“Police now arrest around 22 people a day for speech offences”

That’s compared to an estimated 16 for fraud. The piece walks through two arrests from the same day in May: a young couple handcuffed and held overnight for holding “F--- Islam, Christ is King” signs at a Tommy Robinson rally, and a 73-year-old in a Grim Reaper costume detained at a pro-Palestine protest over a face-covering technicality he’d already complied with.

Carlo’s sharper point is about tribalism: both the left and right have grown comfortable with these powers so long as they’re aimed at the other side, which is exactly how everyone ends up on the wrong end of them eventually.

Read the whole thing.

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A federal appeals court in New Hampshire just ruled that a school violated the First Amendment rights of parents it banned for silently protesting. Their offense? Wearing pink “XX” wristbands to protest policies that let boys compete in girls’ sports.

Reason’s own tweet promoting today’s camera-sabotage piece — “sometimes direct action is the only way to get politicians to consider civil liberties” — didn’t land well with everyone. Charles Fain Lehman called it an endorsement of vandalism and “deeply rotten, anarchistic stuff.”

Finally, Ghent University has confirmed that Nathan Cofnas remains under investigation, with his teaching suspended and his research restricted for three months, even as the university lets him keep 60% of his postdoc appointment. Progress, of a sort, but not exactly a clean vindication for academic freedom.

A round-up of the latest and best insight on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

Nathan Cofnas: How I Became the Scapegoat in the Jason Arday Affair

Philosopher Nathan Cofnas broke the story last month that Jason Arday — hired with great fanfare as the youngest Black professor in Cambridge’s history — had plagiarized extensively and fabricated much of his life story. Within weeks, Arday had resigned and ended his life. Now Cofnas says he’s the one being made to pay for it.

At the Wall Street Journal, Cofnas writes that Cambridge knew about the fabrications for years and chose to protect Arday rather than confront the problem, and that he’s since been flooded with death threats and denounced by name at a public vigil:

I have been smeared as a racist and threatened with violence. My university suspended me. All I did was tell the truth.

Cofnas argues the controversy was never really about Arday. It was about a DEI system that mismatches qualifications and position, and about who gets blamed when that system produces a tragedy: the institution that ran the cover-up, or the person who told the truth about it.

Read the rest.

Joe Murphy: Florida’s FWC Spied on Citizens Who Dared to Speak Up

Florida likes to call itself “the free state,” but its wildlife agency has spent years quietly treating its critics like suspects. Joe Murphy lays out how the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission repeatedly pulled the driving and vehicle records of citizens — retirees, teachers, documentary filmmakers — who showed up to public meetings and criticized the agency’s policies.

The searches ran through a restricted state database reserved for actual criminal investigations. Murphy’s read on what these people actually did:

They were treated as criminals.

Murphy’s bigger point is that accountability has to start at the top, not the middle — FWC’s leadership skipped the chance to address the scandal head-on at its own commission meeting, while line staff and officers take the reputational hit.

Read it all.

Sam Skove & Rishi Iyengar: State Department to Partner With Palantir, Anduril, Bitcoin Policy Institute on Free Speech Initiative

In the “who thought this was a good pairing” category: the State Department has launched the Freedom Tech Excellence Program, embedding private-sector staff from Palantir and Anduril — two firms best known for building government surveillance and defense infrastructure — to advise on “freedom of expression protections in the digital age” and “countering unlawful digital surveillance.”

Sam Skove and Rishi Iyengar report that the initiative, while short on specifics about what the partner companies will actually do, is:

raising eyebrows among some experts.

The irony writes itself: firms whose business model depends on surveillance and data aggregation are now formally tasked with helping the U.S. government think through how to protect people from surveillance online. The Bitcoin Policy Institute and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation round out the founding partners, giving the program a strange mix of crypto-libertarian and defense-contractor DNA.

Read the whole thing.

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Colin Wright thinks Ghent University might want to revisit its motto after the school suspended Nathan Cofnas over the backlash to his Cambridge reporting.

The Free Speech Union flags a warning from Alex Massie: free speech only means something if it applies to people you’d rather not hear from, and Britain’s growing hostility to an open press should worry anyone who claims to believe in it.

And Greg Lukianoff revisits the core idea behind The Coddling of the American Mind, that a free society depends on people who can tolerate being offended.

A round-up of the latest and best insight on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

C.J. Ciaramella: Virginia Man Argues His ‘FTP&ATF’ License Plate Is Free Speech. The Supreme Court Might Hear His Case.

Curtis Whateley paid ten dollars for a personalized Virginia plate reading “FTP&ATF” back in 2023, an acronym he’s been upfront means exactly what it looks like, aimed at police and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

He drove it for over a year without incident, until an anonymous complaint reached the DMV, which recalled the plate as vulgar and violence-promoting. Whateley sued, and a district court initially sided with the state, ruling that vanity plates are government speech and therefore exempt from ordinary First Amendment scrutiny.

The Fourth Circuit disagreed, unanimously. As the ACLU of Virginia’s Matt Callahan put it, the point is that

“the government cannot silence people for speech it does not agree with.”

Virginia isn’t taking the loss quietly: the state’s attorney general’s office says it will ask the Supreme Court to review the ruling, setting up a fight over whether the personalized combinations on nearly a million Virginia plates are private political speech or government-controlled real estate.

Read the rest.

Alex Williams: Mary Morello, Free Speech Activist and Rage Against the Machine’s Biggest Fan, Dies at 102

Mary Morello, the retired Libertyville, Illinois, history teacher who founded Parents for Rock and Rap in 1987 to counter Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Center, died July 12 at 102. She became one of rock’s most reliable hype women, introducing her son’s band, Rage Against the Machine, from stages for three decades, memorably declaring them

“the best f - - - ing band in the universe”

The introductions made her famous, but the activism is the more interesting résumé line: First Amendment Award for her two-decade fight against music censorship.

Read it all.

Charlie Drape: Why former Jackson mayoral candidate sued city over council meeting removal

Zach Servis has spent over a year turning Jackson City Council meetings into a running First Amendment seminar. It started in May 2025, when he approached the podium in a “Zach Servis for Mayor” shirt.

A councilwoman insisted campaign apparel wasn’t allowed because City Hall doubled as a polling place, and had him escorted out by a police officer after he flipped the shirt inside-out in her office without permission.

He kept coming back, and kept getting cut off, with one councilman warning him mid-comment:

“Mr. Servis, I can’t let you sit here and disparage a city employee.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sent the council a formal warning letter last October, arguing its ban on “personal, impertinent, or slanderous” public comment was textbook viewpoint discrimination.

Servis has now followed through on the lawsuit he’d been threatening since the day he was first hauled out of chambers.

Read the whole thing.

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Greg Lukianoff pushes back on the perennial “hate speech laws would have stopped the Nazis” line, pointing out the inconvenient fact that Weimar Germany already had them and failed to stop the Nazis.

Nico Perrino flags AP reporting that DHS officers infiltrated Minnesota community gatherings that were simply discussions of constitutionally protected protests. A useful reminder that surveillance overreach isn’t a one-party affliction.

Finally, the Free Speech Union highlights its Ian Mactaggart Programme, which funds debates, speaker events, and student journalism for young Britons pushing back against a campus culture where students and academics get “hounded off campus” for holding lawful views. A modest bright spot in an otherwise grim UK free-speech picture.

A round-up of the latest and best insight on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

Simon Tam: An Arizona business beat Jack Daniel’s. Free speech won too

VIP Products, the Scottsdale company behind the “Bad Spaniels” squeaky dog toy, has spent twelve years and a trip to the Supreme Court fighting off Jack Daniel’s. On Aug. 4, the Ninth Circuit sided with VIP again, reversing a permanent injunction and clearing the toy — “Old No. 2 on Your Tennessee Carpet,” “43% Poo By Vol.” and all — to keep squeaking.

At The Republic, Simon Tam says the result is fine, but the legal theory behind it deserves more scrutiny than it’s getting:

An Arizona company called VIP Products has been fighting Jack Daniel’s over a squeaky dog toy since 2014. The toy is shaped like a whiskey bottle and labeled “Bad Spaniels,” with taglines including “Old No. 2 on Your Tennessee Carpet” and “43% POO BY VOL.” The case went to the Supreme Court and back, and on Aug. 4, the Ninth Circuit ruled in VIP’s favor again.

The outcome is reasonable. The doctrine that enabled the lawsuit is worth chewing on.

Jack Daniel’s wasn’t claiming consumers were confused about who made the toy. It was pursuing a different theory: trademark dilution by tarnishment, which allows famous brands to suppress expression that merely associates their image with something unflattering, even when no one is confused about the product’s source. The Ninth Circuit reversed the tarnishment finding because Jack Daniel’s expert established only a generic negative association between feces and consumable products — not that the specific marks at issue would actually suffer reputational harm. The court also held that parody can factor into whether tarnishment occurred, even if it doesn’t trigger the statutory exception the Supreme Court blocked in 2023.

Read the rest.

Jay Weaver: Fired federal prosecutor sues DOJ over old blog posts critical of Trump

Will Rosenzweig spent five years as a well-regarded federal prosecutor in Miami, days away from trying a multimillion-dollar Medicare fraud case, when a conservative commentator dug up a blog he’d written years earlier — mostly about college basketball and travel, occasionally critical of Trump — and demanded he be fired.

Attorney General Pam Bondi obliged within three hours, by email, while Rosenzweig was observing Rosh Hashanah. He’s now suing the Justice Department, per the Miami Herald, arguing the firing punished him for constitutionally protected speech made years before he ever worked for the government:

A former federal prosecutor who was fired because he had made critical blog posts about Donald Trump during his first term as president has sued the top U.S. law-enforcement officials in the nation and South Florida, saying in a lawsuit filed Friday they violated his free-speech rights when he was summarily terminated last year.

Will Rosenzweig, 40, was fired by then-U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi last September after Trump supporters called for his firing in social-media posts after publicizing that the prosecutor had posted negative statements about the president when Rosenzweig was working as an attorney for a private law firm in Washington, D.C. — a few years before he was hired by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami.

Bondi fired Rosenzweig by email without giving a reason on Sept. 23, 2025, while he was observing the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, with his family — just two weeks before he was to be the lead prosecutor in a multimillion-dollar healthcare-fraud trial.

Read it all.

Julia Burns: Mystery ‘Free Speech Zone’ sign sparks debate in Brooklyn

Someone in Grand Army Plaza installed a sign, styled to match the city’s own street signage right down to the font and color, reading “ATTENTION: Free speech zone, First Amendment Rights in Effect.” The NYC Department of Transportation says it isn’t theirs, and city sources tell News 12 it’s illegal signage that will likely come down.

The sign’s true origin is still unknown, but its short life says something on its own: a guerrilla reminder of a constitutional default apparently needed enough reminding that someone thought it was worth the risk of an illegal-signage citation to say it out loud. One resident put it well — the fact that a fake street sign about free speech got an entire neighborhood talking about free speech is, in its own small way, the whole point:

Anywhere in America should be a free speech zone, right?

Read the whole thing.

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The UK’s Free Speech Union flags a Government Office for Science report that dresses up “misinformation” management in the language of “psychological inoculation” and “pre-bunking” — proposals FSU calls “truly sinister” for what they’d do to independent thought.

Greg Lukianoff argues that free speech is what lets us settle disagreement through persuasion instead of force. “If you don’t think America is exceptional,” he adds, “you don’t know much about history.”

Finally, The Free Press shares Dr. Karla Solheim’s account of her medical association silencing her views on gender-affirming treatment, arguing that when authorities insist ordinary people are wrong about something they can plainly see, it’s the authorities’ credibility that suffers, not the public’s judgment.

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Joe Saunders: Total Fraud: Adam Schiff Demands AI Political Parodies Be Banned, Forgets He Lied About Trump and Called It Parody in 2019

California Sen. Adam Schiff has unveiled two bills to police political speech in campaigns, including one that would extend an existing ban on candidate impersonation to AI-generated content.

The push follows a Los Angeles mayoral primary in which longshot candidate Spencer Pratt leaned on AI-generated attack videos against incumbent Karen Bass, and Tom Steyer’s paid use of social-media influencers in his failed gubernatorial run.

At The Western Journal, Joe Saunders isn’t buying the sudden concern for honesty:

Adam Schiff wants to ban AI parodies of political candidates. The irony runs deep.

Recall that when Schiff impeached President Donald Trump in 2019, he made up a fake version of Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelensky.

When Republicans complained that Schiff had misrepresented the actual conversation, which was the core of his charge against Trump, Schiff claimed it was just a “parody.” No one was laughing — but that was his excuse.

Now Schiff is introducing a bill that would ban “misrepresentation through the use of content generated in whole or in part with the use of artificial intelligence” in political campaign ads.

Read the rest.

Ashkhen Kazaryan and Jenna Leventoff: The FCC wants to be the speech police

The public comment period just closed on the FCC’s early review of eight ABC-owned stations — a review Chairman Brendan Carr opened the day after President Trump publicly called for ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel. More than 153,000 filings poured in, and nearly all of them said the same thing: leave the stations alone.

Writing in the Washington Examiner, the authors — a free-speech lawyer and an ACLU policy counsel — point out that the agency once refused this very role, memorably declining to become “a self-appointed, free-roving arbiter of truth in journalism”:

The FCC has made its goal clear: It wants to retaliate against broadcasters with a different political bent by burying them in baseless regulatory enforcement. Such a move sends a warning to other media that they should walk the administration’s preferred line or else. This is precisely the kind of regulatory pressure the Supreme Court has said the government may not put on a private speaker. The FCC is not the speech police, and the First Amendment dictates that it must stay out of our nation’s newsrooms, no matter how much it agrees or disagrees with coverage.

The government can say whatever it wants about the press and can certainly complain when it thinks coverage is unfair or biased. What it cannot do is reach for its regulatory tools to punish coverage it doesn’t like, require the media to air the government’s preferred coverage, or even threaten that it will do so. None of us should want an agency to have the power to decide what we can see on TV because any administration can abuse that authority, whether it’s this administration or the next one.

Read it all.

Robby Soave: What Anthony Fauci’s Defenders (and Critics) Get Wrong

Anthony Fauci took the Fifth Amendment this week rather than answer Sen. Rand Paul’s questions about COVID-19’s origins, shortly after diary entries surfaced showing he’d privately described U.S.-funded Wuhan research as “gain-of-function” — the very thing he told Congress wasn’t happening. At Reason, Robby Soave argues the bigger scandal isn’t just the dishonesty. It’s what that dishonesty made possible.

Soave traces how Fauci steered expert opinion toward the animal-spillover theory even as most scientists he privately consulted had serious doubts, giving social platforms cover to treat the lab-leak theory as dangerous misinformation:

The public is owed answers to fundamental questions about the origins of COVID-19. Entries from Fauci’s diary—published by Paul earlier this week, in advance of the hearing—reveal not-so-subtle discrepancies between Fauci’s public and private statements regarding the theory that COVID-19 escaped from a lab. His diary also suggests that Fauci himself had described the U.S.-funded experiments conducted in Wuhan, China as “gain of function.”

This matters, since Fauci had previously testified before Congress that the U.S. did not fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan—a vital sticking point, since some scientists believe the molecular composition of COVID-19 looks like something cooked up in a lab.

In fact, Fauci solicited opinions from 12 other scientists as to the possibility of COVID-19 having originated as a result of U.S.-supported, gain-of-function experiments in Wuhan, China. In his diary, he notes that 10 of the 12 had serious concerns. Even so, Fauci steered the expert consensus toward an embrace of the animal spillover theory, which prompted mainstream media to demonize the lab leak theory.

At one point, it was common for social media companies to proactively police pro-lab leak posts on Facebook and other platforms—a policy that seems utterly insane from the standpoint of 2026. Fauci’s malfeasance helped bring about that act of censorship.

Read the whole thing.

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FIRE makes the free-speech case for an unsympathetic defendant: a Minnesota jury convicted Shiloh Hendrix of disorderly conduct for hurling a racial slur at a bystander who filmed her — a verdict FIRE argues can’t survive the First Amendment, since courts haven’t upheld a “fighting words” conviction in eighty years.

Ricky Gervais, no stranger to controversy himself, offers what might as well be this week’s thesis statement: everyone loves free speech, until they hear something they don’t like (tweet slightly edited for our younger readers’ sake).

Meanwhile, MintPress News reports that a federal court has granted discovery in journalist Max Blumenthal’s Fourth Amendment lawsuit over DHS’s seizure of his devices, after he was detained at Dulles Airport returning from Ayatollah Khamenei’s funeral in Iran.

A round-up of the latest and best insight on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

Joe Holleman: Eric Schmitt joins Democrat senator to loosen Google’s grip on search engines

Missouri’s Sen. Eric Schmitt has been gunning for Google since his days as the state’s attorney general back in 2020, and now he’s found an unlikely ally: Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar.

The two have teamed up on legislation aimed at stopping large search engines from paying distributors like Apple to lock in default status — a practice they argue amounts to illegal monopoly maintenance. What’s notable is the framing. Schmitt isn’t just making an antitrust case; he’s making a censorship case:

The proposed law would prohibit large search companies from blocking smaller ones through the practice of paying distributors, such as Apple, to make Google the user’s default choice — a practice that both senators say violates antitrust laws by illegally maintaining a monopoly.

“Big Tech monopolies are shaping what information Americans see and censoring free speech,” Schmitt said in a statement.

Klobuchar noted in a statement that curbing the tech giants’ practices is something “that both the Biden and Trump Administrations have said are necessary.”

Read the rest.

James Rothwell: Inside the dystopian world of Germany’s free speech crackdown

Dr. Rainer Zitelmann has written some 30 books cataloguing the rise of fascism. So there’s a special irony in the fact that German police investigated him under a law banning Nazi symbolism: over a meme in which he compared Vladimir Putin to Hitler unfavorably.

At the Telegraph, James Rothwell surveys the wider crackdown that swept Zitelmann up, one that’s produced a string of cases too absurd to be satire: a pensioner investigated for calling the chancellor “Pinocchio,” another raided for calling a former vice-chancellor a “dummy,” a man fined €2,000 for calling Friedrich Merz a “lying Fritz.”

The 69-year-old found out the offending social media post was a meme about Adolf Hitler. But it was one in which he criticised the Nazi dictator and compared his invasion of Czechoslovakia to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“It was crystal clear the post was negative ... I was saying that Putin is so bad he is like Hitler,” he explains from his study in Berlin, surrounded by hundreds of books about the rise of fascism, including his own doctoral thesis. “The comparison only works if you think Hitler was evil.”

He lets out an ironic chuckle at the absurdity of it all: after decades of excoriating the Nazis in his books, a mere click of a mouse led to accusations of him being one.

Dr Zitelmann is one of thousands of Germans who have been threatened with fines or prison sentences for social media posts that fall foul of the country’s political speech laws, which are unusually stringent for an EU member state.

Read the whole thing.

Stephen Beslic: ‘Destroying free speech and American culture’ - Jason Whitlock blasts WNBA over Angel Reese controversy

Toronto Tempo coach Sandy Brondello called Angel Reese a “protected species” while venting about a foul call — a phrase some read as carrying a racial charge — and the league handed her a one-game suspension after she apologized. Brondello, an Australian, maintained the line was an emotional outburst rather than a targeted slight.

Sports columnist turned conservative commentator Jason Whitlock saw the whole episode as a case study in a much bigger problem: a culture that’s decided the correct response to an off-the-cuff remark is public contrition and league discipline.

Jason Whitlock criticized the WNBA and Angel Reese after Toronto Tempo head coach Sandy Brondello apologized for comments she made during Friday’s 111-92 loss to the Atlanta Dream.

Whitlock viewed the controversy as part of a larger debate, arguing Brondello should not have felt compelled to apologize.

The broadcast captured Brondello directing her frustration toward the officials after Nyara Sabally went down with an injury following contact with Reese. Sabally was called for a foul on the play, prompting Brondello to describe Reese as a “protected species,” words which some argued carried a racial undertone.

The Dream star obviously felt the same way, based on her tweet after the game.

Read it all.

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The UK government’s scientists have found a new category of wrongthink: a Government Office for Science report brands anti-trans views as “misinformation,” complete with a framework for using “psychological inoculation,” pre-emptively exposing citizens to “weakened” versions of the offending opinions.

Meanwhile, DK (@1Nicdar) sums up the last several years of media coverage of the U.S. president: accuse him of attacking free speech, then decline to air his address to the nation.

The proposed community note rightly observes that media outlets are not obligated to air the speech. But falling back on such a legal technicality is a bit rich coming from news orgs ostensibly committed to the vigorous exchange of ideas.

On a more hopeful note, Greg Lukianoff visited Florida State University to make the case that free speech may be humanity’s greatest invention for peace, a the technology that lets people settle their deepest disagreements with words instead of violence.

A round-up of the latest and best insight on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

Tom Durante: Jake Tapper Torches ‘Mr. First Amendment’ Trump as Free Speech Hypocrite

CNN’s Jake Tapper spent several minutes of Monday night’s Lead running through President Trump’s record on protecting freedom of the press, concluding the administration’s rhetoric about protecting speech hasn’t aged well:

Mr. First Amendment has turned out to be anything but … We have seen the president target free speech. Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert come to mind. But his disdain for freedom of the press is even more direct. Doesn’t go through oligarchs. Friday, the Trump Justice Department took the outrageous step of subpoenaing four New York Times journalists after their report on safety concerns over the president’s Qatari-gifted Air Force One plane.

…

But going after reporters, it’s just downright un-American. And it’s just the latest in a string of deeply concerning escalations. The White House barred Associated Press reporters from Air Force One and Oval Office meetings because the AP did not change their style to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Remember, the AP is read all over the world, and we’re the only ones that call it the Gulf of America.

The Pentagon tried to impose broad restrictions on reporters, barring them from the building if they didn’t agree to them. Both restrictions have been challenged in court.

Read the rest.

The Telegraph: Congress tells Britain’s culture secretary to back off American platforms

Britain’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Lisa Nandy wants social media platforms to give algorithmic priority to “trusted” outlets like the BBC and ITV, framed as a defense against misinformation. Jim Jordan and the House Judiciary Committee see it differently: a foreign government picking media winners and leaning on American companies to do the enforcing:

Members of the US Congress have warned Lisa Nandy that plans to prioritise the BBC and other government-trusted news sources are an attack on free speech. The Culture Secretary announced in June that the government was considering requiring platforms such as Meta, Google and YouTube to give greater prominence to content from public media services such as the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.

The government said it was part of a broader push to tighten regulation of the sector and combat misinformation. But the move has faced scrutiny from American-owned tech companies, who say they are being unfairly targeted. In a letter to Ms Nandy on Tuesday shared with The Telegraph, Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House judiciary committee and an ally of Donald Trump, said the rule “would serve as a major threat” to online speech and “infringe on the rights of American companies.”

Read it all.

The Star-Telegram: Fort Worth police insist the citation was about volume, not viewpoint

A Fort Worth officer, caught on camera at Trinity Pride Fest, told a Christian street preacher that offensive speech could get him ticketed — then, when pressed on whether misgendering someone was off-limits, called it a “gray area.”

Days later, the department walked it back, saying the actual citation was for a noise-ordinance violation, not the preacher’s message. Maybe the citation really was about decibels. But the statement doesn’t erase what’s on tape, and the U.S. Justice Department has apparently noticed too:

The Justice Department is weighing whether to launch an investigation into the Fort Worth Police Department’s handling of an event at Trinity Pride Fest in June that prompted the department to give officers a refresher on First Amendment rights.

On June 27, Fort Worth PD officers cited a person for disorderly conduct after street preachers were speaking into bullhorns near Trinity Pride in Fort Worth’s Near Southside neighborhood. Videos posted on Facebook and X show the street preachers speaking with police officers when one of the preachers asks if someone can be cited for misgendering a transgender person. “We’re talking gray area right now,” an officer responds. “I don’t believe I would cite that for offensive language.”

Read the whole thing.

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Preston Byrne, the American lawyer representing 4chan, had a blunt response after Ofcom said it would enlist U.S. law enforcement to help collect a UK speech-code fine from a company with no assets, staff, or servers in Britain: “legally illiterate,” and an invitation to try it in an American courtroom.

The Redheaded Libertarian marks the anniversary of the Sedition Act of 1798, which made it a crime to publish "false, scandalous, and malicious" criticism of the government and landed at least one newspaper editor in prison for calling John Adams names.

The backlash cost Adams the White House — a 226-year-old reminder that governments punishing "offensive" speech has a way of backfiring on the people doing the punishing.

Declan Ganley shares clips of the late Ann Widdecombe defending free speech at the Oxford Union, calling it "worth your time." Coming from a former Tory minister and one of Fleet Street's most reliable culture-war combatants, it's a fitting send-off — and a reminder that the argument for saying unpopular things out loud used to be a mainstream position, not a fringe one.

A round-up of the latest and best insight on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

Chris Truax: The defamation threat to free speech won’t quit

Two weeks ago the Supreme Court declined to hear Alan Dershowitz’s $300 million defamation suit against CNN — giving Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch another chance to say they’d like to overturn New York Times v. Sullivan. The 1964 ruling requires public officials and figures to prove “actual malice” before winning a libel suit.

As Chris Truax lays out at The Hill, Thomas has pushed to overturn it since 2019; Gorsuch, doubtful since a 2021 dissent, joined this one. Their dissent leans, in Truax’s telling, on a founders-knew-best argument.

Truax's real target, though, is Congress: he wants lawmakers to write the actual-malice standard into federal law now:

Whipping and mutilation were widely practiced in the 18th century. Thomas Jefferson himself once drafted a bill that would have provided for “an eye for an eye” punishment when someone was seriously injured in an assault, and for castration in cases of sodomy, rape and polygamy. The bill was a serious reform and failed to pass by a single vote, because it was viewed as too lenient.

Clearly, applying historical tradition when interpreting the Constitution has to be more than a rote exercise.

So it is with the First Amendment and defamation law. Whatever threats defamation cases might have posed to the First Amendment in the 18th century, the landscape is now completely different. The Founding Fathers had no conception of the unprecedented reach and complexity of modern mass media and the internet. Things like strategic lawsuits against public participation and the prospect of billionaire presidents attempting to sue their critics into ruination and silence were utterly alien to them.

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Thérèse Boudreaux: The KIDS Act is a free-speech bill wearing a child-safety costume

The Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act recently passed the House 267-117, and few in Washington want to vote against protecting kids online. That’s the problem, per Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) senior policy analyst Joe Mullen: the 114-page bill’s ban on content promoting “the sale or use” of alcohol, drugs, or gambling will sweep up far more than ads.

It’s also comes with new data-collection, parental-control, and AI chatbot rules its sponsor calls the strongest child-safety approach Congress has attempted:

Advocates of the 114-page legislation argue that it provides a multi-pronged approach to addressing safety concerns for children online. Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., the sponsor of the KIDS Act, called it “the strongest approach to protecting kids online that Congress has ever seen.”

But critics like Joe Mullin, a senior policy analyst at the online civil liberties advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, are concerned that the protective measures come at the expense of Americans’ rights to privacy and free expression.

While the bill package does not outright mandate that companies verify users’ ages, it creates requirements that depend upon companies knowing the age of users on their platforms. The new protective measures apply when a website or app “knows or should have known” a user is under 17 years of age, putting companies at legal risk if they do not verify all users’ ages.

“The fact that basically a website or app, no matter how big or small it is, could get in trouble if a user is a minor — and the knowledge standard is ‘knows or should have known a user’s age,’ and that’s a really low knowledge standard — that’s also going to be a problem for adults, because you’re going to have to start proving that you’re an adult,” Mullin told The Center Square.

Read it all.

Naman Ramachandran: Rushdie says America’s forgotten why people like him moved here

Accepting the Liberatum Cultural Honor in London this week, Salman Rushdie didn’t hold back on his adopted country, as Naman Ramachandran reports. His verdict: the current U.S. administration is undermining free expression at home even while criticizing Europe for the same. A pointed inversion of the usual script, where Washington scolds London and Brussels for their speech codes.

Rushdie’s evidence, per Ramachandran’s account: the wave of book challenges sweeping American school libraries, where one parent’s objection can get a title pulled:

Salman Rushdie warned that free expression in the U.S. is under sustained pressure from the Trump administration as he accepted the Liberatum Cultural Honor at Camden Town Hall at King’s Cross in London, the same building where he once worked on community relations before becoming one of the world’s most recognized novelists.

…

Turning to free expression more broadly, Rushdie said, “America is having a very difficult moment in this area. We have an administration, and its cohorts, who are really going after one of the most important things about America — the free speech — particularly when they come to speak in Europe, doing their best to suppress it at home.”

Rushdie pointed to book removals in American schools. “There are schools in states in America where one parent can object to a book in a school library, and the book is withdrawn,” Rushdie said. “That’s happening in the thousands of titles across America. And these are not just any old books, this is ‘Huckleberry Finn,’ this is Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved.’”

Read the whole thing.

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Eric Daugherty posted video of a Fort Worth police officer threatening a street preacher with a citation for “offensive speech,” telling him flatly that offending someone is a problem. The preacher, a retired cop, isn’t having it.

Greg Lukianoff warns his followers against empowering the government to further regulate AI, making the paradoxical libertarian argument that more rules usually mean giving Big Tech more control over your access to information.

Alastair Hilton, a Chiswick resident, says two police officers pulled him out of a pub and threatened him over a tweet criticizing a local councillor’s ban on outdoor pub seating — while reportedly admitting on camera that he hadn’t broken any law.

A round-up of the latest and best insight on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

Liz Wolfe: Stop hating America

Two new polls landed this week showing that younger Americans have basically given up on loving their own country. Only 31 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds told NBC they’re “extremely” or “very” proud to be American, compared to 75 percent of seniors. PRRI found something similar: 34 percent of the youngest cohort feels proud to be American, versus 66 percent of those 65 and up.

At Reason, Liz Wolfe isn’t having it:

America is still a fundamentally good experiment—one still in progress, and one very much worth keeping. We can’t be cynical about everything, we’ve gotta pick some things to love.

…

John Adams is dead, but Zoomers aren't yet, so there's still time to convince them of how much there is to love: American Flag cake and tech innovation and federalism and homesteading and Martha Stewart and the Beach Boys and the Fourth Amendment and going to space and Lana Del Rey and religious pluralism and Michael Jordan. But it's so much more than my silly little fixations: America is the land so many of our ancestors took a chance on and embraced great uncertainty to immigrate to.

It's the place where risk, coupled with work ethic, has historically been rewarded; where upward mobility seemed possible; where rising above your station—socially, economically, whatever—has been not just allowed, but encouraged, even for the fools and knaves among us. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, baby!

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Benjamin M. Osborne: What would C.S. Lewis have thought of AI?

At Chronicles, Benjamin Osborne goes back to The Abolition of Man to figure out what Lewis — writing decades before the first chatbot — might say about our new machine oracles. His answer: Lewis would have started with the humans training the machine, not the machine itself, because “no software is neutral when its makers are not.”

The line worth sitting with is Osborne’s warning about what happens when AI is built by people who’ve already decided that words themselves are dangerous: “A tool trained by people who think speech is harm will teach others to fear plain speech.”

That’s the real abolition of man in the AI age, Osborne argues — not robots replacing human judgment, but a generation of chatbots quietly absorbing the premise that disagreement is a form of injury:

A tool trained by people who think speech is harm will teach others to fear plain speech. A tool trained by people who hate limits will teach others to hate limits. A tool trained by people who think man is only a bundle of wants will answer as if man were no more than that. No software is neutral when its makers are not.

George Orwell helped us see what is coming. In “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell wrote that bad public speech is not just clumsy. It is dishonest. It piles up long words, stale phrases, and soft names until the facts disappear. The words do not defend the act; they rename it, doing what the Prophet Isaiah condemned: calling evil good and good evil, so the honest argument never has to happen.

Orwell called this inflated style a kind of euphemism. It falls on the facts like snow. It blurs the outline. It covers the blood. The great enemy of clear language, he said, is insincerity. When a man’s real aim differs from his declared aim, he reaches for cloudy words. He does not say what he means because he does not want others to see what he means.

AI can make that habit effortless for those who want to practice it. It can turn a lie into a memo, a threat into a policy, a command into a recommendation, and a sin into a service. It can help the coward sound kind and the tyrant sound calm. It can give every evasion a pleasant voice.

Read the whole thing.

The Federalist: FCC chair vows to crack down on anti-conservative media’s “free monopoly”

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has a message for the legacy broadcast networks: the era of unaccountable coverage is over. As the agency investigates Disney-owned ABC over alleged discriminatory hiring practices and pokes at whether The View even qualifies as a “bona fide news program,” Carr is leaning hard on the FCC’s dormant equal-opportunities authority under the Communications Act of 1934.

Carr’s pitch isn’t subtle. Asked about accusations that the Trump-era FCC is weaponizing its power against the press, he turned the question around on his critics: “The legacy media has really done this to itself.”

“I think it’s good for them to want to correct course and earn a little trust back,” Carr said of the FCC’s renewed focus on the “statutory equal opportunities requirement” in the Communications Act of 1934. Equal Time, as the act’s Section 315 is commonly known, stipulates that a broadcast program that hosts a political candidate also must provide equal access to the office seeker’s opponent to appear on the show or in another commensurate capacity.

The section was amended in 1959 when Congress passed limited exemptions to the equal time requirement for content deemed “bona fide” news — interviews, newscasts, and documentaries. The idea was to spur news coverage of political campaign activity in the early days of broadcast television. Congress gave the FCC discretion to determine the scope of each exemption, according to the agency’s guidance issued in January, putting broadcast stations on notice and sending shockwaves through the industry.

‘A Thumb on the Scale’

As the guidance states, Congress’ inclusion of “bona fide” in the exemption categories reflects congressional concern that “broadcast stations would apply the exemptions too broadly in service of a political agenda and thereby frustrate the original purpose of the equal opportunities requirement to maximize broadcast coverage of political events.” “The idea was pro-speech. It was about more debate, more discussion, more candidates, let’s empower people,” Carr said. “What Congress didn’t want was for broadcasters to put a thumb on the scale for one political candidate for one partisan political party.”

Read it all.

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UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy just announced she’s quitting X, taking her entire government department with her, on the grounds that a platform “originally designed for free speech and expression” now “favours abuse and misinformation over meaningful debate.”

A sitting cabinet minister walking away from the public square because it’s too open is a perfect coda to today’s Lewis piece.

Meanwhile in Fort Worth, Carlos Turcios reports that police at an all-ages Pride event warned street preachers they could be cited if their speech offended someone — and that calling a transgender woman “sir” was, in an officer’s words, a “gray area.”

Finally, Ben Shapiro shares a powerful statement from John Adams, issued just before America declared independence in 1776. Happy 4th of July, everyone.

A round-up of the latest and best insight on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

Simon Tam: MLB’s pride controversy exposes free speech double standard

During a recent San Francisco Giants “Pride Night” game, several pitchers wrote Bible verses on their rainbow-themed caps, prompting MLB to issue a warning for violating uniform rules against any writing on apparel.

Simon Tam argues the controversy exposes a broader free speech double standard: people (and organizations) defend expression when it aligns with their views rather than consistently upholding principles of open discourse.

A few San Francisco Giants pitchers wrote a Bible verse on their Pride Night caps this month. The MLB warned them that the modification violated uniform rules, insisting it had nothing to do with the message itself. Vice President J.D. Vance − who I happened to live near years before either of us had any reason to think about Major League Baseball’s uniform policy − posted on social media: “Trump won, we don’t have to do this anymore.”

That’s a remarkable thing to say. Not because it’s shocking (versions of it get said constantly, by people across the political spectrum) but because it states plainly what usually stays unspoken: that the principle was never really the point. It was really about the power to stop pretending it was.

…

A few years ago, Colin Kaepernick knelt during the national anthem. It wasn't disruptive, it wasn't violent. It was a symbolic expression of the kind that has shaped American civic life since the country's founding. Many of the same people now defending the Giants pitchers' right to write Scripture on their own caps were, not long ago, demanding Kaepernick be benched, fined, or run out of the league for kneeling.

The reverse holds too. Plenty of people who defended Kaepernick passionately have gone noticeably quiet now that the protected expression cuts against their own politics instead of toward it.

Read the rest.

LifeNews: Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Pro-Life Student’s Free Speech Case, Alito Disagrees

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of a former Indiana student, whose school blocked her from posting flyers advertising her Students for Life club because they featured political messages such as “Defund Planned Parenthood.” Details on the case here:

The nation’s highest court will not hear a pro-life free speech case regarding in Indiana high school student whose school denied her First Amendment rights.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to take up the appeal of former Noblesville High School student E.D., a pro-life teenager whose school blocked her from posting flyers promoting her Students for Life club.

The decision leaves in place lower court rulings that upheld the Noblesville school district’s policy.

E.D., then a freshman, founded the student-run Noblesville Students For Life club and sought approval to display flyers advertising club meetups. The flyers used a template from the national organization and featured photos of students holding signs that read “Defund Planned Parenthood” and “I Am the Pro-Life Generation.”

School administrators, including Principal Craig McCaffrey, rejected the flyers under the district’s content-neutral policy that barred political content on school walls.

After E.D.’s mother met with school leaders, administrators raised concerns that the club was not entirely student-run, describing it as “an attempt at insubordination led by an outside adult advocating with the student.” The club was temporarily suspended before being reinstated.

E.D. and her parents sued the school district, alleging violations of the First Amendment and the Equal Access Act. They argued that the school’s actions were “driven by hostility to her pro-life views.”

Read it all.

Paul du Quenoy: The Radical Left AAUP Beclowns Itself

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP)—established in 1915 to defend academic freedom—has been exposed for pursuing an aggressive campaign to “name and shame” and “knock out” classical education initiatives.

At Chronicles, Paul du Quenoy criticizes the AAUP’s ideological shift, including defending DEI in faculty evaluations and making dismissive statements about conservative scholars, arguing that it has abandoned its founding mission.

“I would really love to see kind of a robust research project on these right-wing centers and individuals—like, naming and shaming,” announced Isaac Kamola, a Trinity College political science professor who heads the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom (CDAF) at the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).

In an audio recording obtained by Manhattan Institute senior fellow John Sailer, who also obtained supporting public documents, Kamola lets us know that he wants “to strategically map who these f—ers are, and figure out what the weaknesses are, and design a research agenda that just goes through them and tries to knock them out.”

So much for competing in the marketplace of ideas.

Created in 2024, according to Sailer’s analysis for City Journal, CDAF receives $1.5 million in funds from the Mellon Foundation, the nation’s largest donor to the arts and humanities. In 2020, Mellon decided to embark on a “major strategic evolution for its organization, prioritizing social justice in all of its grantmaking.”

In recent years, the study centers and associated people Kamola hopes to “knock out” have stood in the institutional vanguard of the higher education reform movement, emphasizing non-ideological approaches to such traditional subjects as civics, great books, American government, military and diplomatic history, free enterprise, and other areas that the legacy professoriate prefers to ignore or deride. Many are proven academic successes.

The same day Kamola’s recording leaked, the University of Florida’s Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education announced that three of its affiliates had just received Fulbright fellowships.

Founded in 1915 “to advance academic freedom,” one might expect that the AAUP—and its center specifically named for academic freedom—would at least pretend to defend that concept.

Not so fast. According to CDAF’s website, the organization only touts the sort of “freedom” that supports its narrow assessment of policies consistent with the notion that “teaching, learning, and the pursuit of knowledge are essential to creating and sustaining multi-racial and plurinational societies.”

Read the whole thing.

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And now, Greg Lukianoff with today’s edition of “We’ve seen this movie before.”

Say it with us: It’s not free speech if it only applies to people you agree with.

This meme is making the rounds. We’re confident this is the best iteration so far.

A round-up of the latest and best insight on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

Jacob Sullum: Louisiana Cops Threatened To Arrest a Man for Handing Out Religious Leaflets. They Got Qualified Immunity.

In Bossier City, Louisiana, police ordered Richard Hershey—a member of the Christian Vegetarian Association—to stop distributing religious leaflets on a public sidewalk outside a Christian rock concert and threatened him with arrest if he returned, while allowing a commercial leafleteer to continue.

The 5th Circuit granted the officers qualified immunity, blocking Hershey’s First Amendment lawsuit; he is now asking the Supreme Court to intervene, arguing that viewpoint discrimination against religious speech is an obvious constitutional violation. Reason reports:

Six years ago, Richard Hershey was distributing religious leaflets on a public sidewalk in a public park surrounding a public arena in Bossier City, Louisiana, when he was accosted by police officers who insisted that he stop. Hershey, who was promoting the views of the Christian Vegetarian Association outside a Christian rock concert at the Bossier City Arena, pointed out that he was exercising his constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech and freedom of religion. He also noted that the officers had not interfered with another leafleteer, who was advertising a local radio station.

The cops were unmoved. If Hershey did not leave immediately, they said, he would be arrested, and he likewise would be carted off to jail if he ever dared return to the park.

It would be hard to imagine a more blatant violation of First Amendment rights. But last October, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit held that Hershey could not sue the officers responsible for it because they were protected by qualified immunity, a doctrine that bars federal civil rights claims unless they allege violations of “clearly established” law. Now Hershey is asking the Supreme Court to overrule that jaw-dropping conclusion, which illustrates how broad interpretations of qualified immunity prevent victims of outrageous police misconduct from vindicating their rights.

“The right to evangelize in public, free of viewpoint-based government suppression, is as clearly established as any right in the firmament,” Hershey’s lawyers, who include former Solicitor General Paul Clement and litigators at the First Liberty Institute, note in a Supreme Court petition filed last Friday. “It is squarely protected by two separate but overlapping clauses of the First Amendment—the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses—and by decisions of this Court underscoring that viewpoint discrimination is verboten and that discrimination against religious speech is viewpoint discrimination (im)pure and simple. No government official should need an on-point circuit precedent to illustrate what the Constitution itself and this Court’s cases make clear beyond cavil.”

Read it all.

Anna Pegis: Idaho, Minnesota universities stonewall public records requests for controversial course syllabi

The University of Idaho and University of Minnesota denied requests from the American Accountability Foundation for copies of syllabi from courses flagged for promoting left-wing ideologies, claiming the documents are protected intellectual property or otherwise exempt from disclosure under state public records laws. Critics argue the universities are evading transparency and accountability for taxpayer-funded curricula that shape public higher education:

The University of Idaho and the University of Minnesota refused to provide class syllabi to a conservative research group that submitted requests under the respective states’ public records laws.

In the case of UI, the American Accountability Foundation requested syllabi for Introduction to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and four Ecology of Health & Medicine–Foundations courses. In its demand letter to the university, AAF said the courses were “related to how the University of Idaho has changed its practices to comply with Idaho anti-DEI laws.”

The university “denied the request with respect to the syllabi on the grounds that they are ‘trade secrets’ exempt from disclosure under the Idaho Public Records Act. The university is wrong,” the demand letter to the school’s chief compliance officer states.

UI spokesperson Jodi Walker told The College Fix that the university’s “Board of Regents has outlined in policy that syllabi are intellectual property.”

“U of I policy is written to follow that state policy. Therefore, we do believe syllabi are protected under patent, trademark, copyright or other laws and are not subject to disclosure as a public record,” she said.

However, the foundation urged the school to pay closer attention to the state law’s definition of a trade secret, which requires it to derive “independent economic value” from “not being readily ascertainable by proper means” and to be protected by reasonable efforts to maintain its secrecy.

The foundation also requested syllabi copies for University of Minnesota’s courses of Human Sexuality; Justice, Law, and Medicine; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Health; and Sexual and Gender Health in Clinical Practice.

According to the foundation’s demand letter to UMN, the school refused the request “because the syllabi ‘are copyrighted and protected intellectual property.’”

However, it did offer to “‘provide [AAF] with an opportunity to inspect the data in-person.’”

The research group called this response “inadequate.”

Read the whole thing.

Erin Mindoro Ezra, George P. Albutt, Robin Reikes: Free speech at work? Considerations on how employers can regulate political discourse

In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, employers who fired workers for off-duty social media posts criticizing the right-wing commentator have faced costly settlements and judgments, underscoring the risks of disciplining employees for political speech unrelated to job performance.

While private employers are not bound by the First Amendment, there are a variety of state-level restrictions they must abide by. Reuters outlines the messy details:

Following Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Americans took to their social media accounts to comment on the violence and Kirk’s legacy. This intense online debate reached the White House. Hosting Mr. Kirk’s podcast on September 15, 2025, Vice President JD Vance encouraged Americans to report people to their employers for expressing political views that differ from their own: “Call them out, and hell, call their employer.”

Many people took political revenge into their own hands, notifying private employers about their ​employees’ off-duty social media activities. Some employers acted upon these reports, terminating employees in response. Several months later, employers who acted on these reports are suffering financial consequences as former employees seek lucrative settlements or judgments against them.

For example, as reported in Forbes, former Ball ‌State University administrator Suzanne Swierc recently settled for $225,000 after she was fired for her Facebook posts criticizing Kirk. Similarly, the Forbes article noted, former conservation biologist Brittney Brown secured a $485,000 settlement after being terminated for reposting a meme on Instagram criticizing Kirk’s gun violence stance. “People Punished For Criticizing Charlie Kirk After Shooting Have Won More Than $2 Million In Lawsuits.” Forbes, May 26, 2026.

These outcomes serve as a clear warning to employers about the potential consequences of disciplining employees for political conduct unrelated to their job performance.

Read the rest.

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We’re horrified to see any judge issue a blatantly unconstitutional ruling like this. The good news is that close to a million people have so far heard the proceedings—and they seem equally troubled.

Whatever you think of Elon Musk, his efforts to safeguard free speech have been invaluable.

Historian Phil Magness is unimpressed with the critics of liberalism, who see the perceived problems with liberalism as the solutions to those same problems.

A round-up of the latest and best insight on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

Daniel Martin: Hague: Oxford gender lectures should go ahead despite trans protests

Oxford Chancellor Lord Hague has urged the reinstatement of a gender law lecture series disrupted by trans activists, insisting academic freedom must prevail.

Dr Michael Foran cancelled the remaining talks on sex, gender identity and the law after repeated protests, but Hague courageously stressed that universities must uphold legitimate protest and the right to examine contentious ideas without intimidation. The Telegraph reports:

Lord Hague, the Chancellor of Oxford University, has said a series of lectures on gender law should be reinstated after pro-trans protests led to their cancellation.

Dr Michael Foran, an associate professor of law, said on Sunday he would not be holding his two remaining lectures because of “escalating disruptive protests”.

Activists interrupted him at two separate talks. Footage showed them standing in front of his lectern telling the audience he was a “bigot” and “transphobic”.

On Tuesday, Lord Hague, the former Tory leader, said the lectures should take place for the sake of “freedom of speech”.

“The rest of Michael Foran’s talks should go ahead,” he wrote. “Freedom of speech is a fundamental academic freedom and it must be upheld.

“Equally, legitimate and lawful protest has an important place in university life. The task is to maintain both.

“Especially at events open to the public like this, it is an important Oxford tradition that any disagreement is expressed in a civil and respectful way.”

The post of Oxford chancellor is purely ceremonial and does not confer any powers over the day-to-day running of the university.

The management of the university is in the hands of Prof Irene Tracey, the vice-chancellor.

Read the whole thing.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown: Beyond Orgasm: OneTaste Case Is About Freedom of Conscience, Says European Religious Freedom Group

EU religious freedom group CAP LC is defending OneTaste founders Nicole Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz, who were convicted of conspiracy to commit forced labor in 2025. OneTaste was known for its promotion of “orgasmic meditation” and other unconventional practices, but that doesn’t make Daedone and Cherwitz criminals, the free speech NGO argues.

They slammed the prosecution for relying on anti-cult “brainwashing” narratives—warning that such a precedent could criminalize influence in any spiritual, therapeutic or lifestyle movement:

A European religious freedom group is slamming the prosecution of OneTaste founder Nicole Daedone and former executive Rachel Cherwitz. The group, CAP LC—official (French) name Coordination des Associations et des Particuliers pour la Liberté de Conscience—has United Nations consultative status, which means it’s accredited by the U.N. to submit written statements and make oral arguments before the U.N. Human Rights Council. “The issues at hand involve not only the fate of two individuals but also the limits of freedom of thought, conscience, and belief,” said CAP LC in a recent letter to the council.

Daedone and Cherwitz were convicted last year of one count of conspiracy to commit forced labor and sentenced to nine and 6.5 years in prison, respectively. They have since appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

OneTaste is a wellness group best known for its promotion of orgasmic meditation (OM), a partnered clitoral stroking practice that the group advocates for both sexual and psychological health reasons. But while OM gets the most attention, it was just one part of a system of beliefs inspired by Buddhism, feminism, theosophy, and more. OneTaste leaders advocated for openness to new experiences, including sexual experiences, and consensual non-monogamy. Hardcore OM devotees sometimes lived in communal spaces and engaged in other common behaviors, like participating in daily yoga and abstaining from alcohol.

In court, prosecutors seemed intent on putting the group’s beliefs and practices on trial. They also relied on concerning theories of forced labor and of consent. Alleged victims freely admitted to consenting to various activities—from non-sexual activities and labor to participating in orgasmic meditation sessions to hookups with OneTaste investors or students—and sometimes even initiating these activities. But according to prosecutors, this consent and initiative didn’t count because OneTaste leaders were psychologically manipulative and exerted outsize influence on some participants’ lives. This was forced labor, suggested prosecutors, because Daedone and Cherwitz made them think they wanted to do things that they might not have done independently.

“The legal theory used to secure the convictions marks a major departure from established constitutional principles,” states the CAP LC letter to the U.N. Human Rights Council. “The defendants were convicted…based solely on psychological influence, without evidence of threats, violence, or physical coercion.”

Read it all.

Maarten Boudry: The Data a Flemish TV Network Didn’t Want You to See

Flemish public broadcaster VRT suppressed internal survey data showing dramatically higher intolerance toward women and LGBT people among respondents of foreign origin—while aggressively pushing a narrative blaming Andrew Tate for rising conservatism among young people.

At Quillette, philosopher Maarten Boudry outlines how he obtained the confidential PowerPoint, read the editorial instruction live on air and exposed how VRT lied to protect its preferred story of toxic masculinity.

Read the rest.

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There is little we can add to this, except to nod in affirmation.

Like free speech more generally, academic freedom loses its purpose if it doesn’t protect individual expression.

We’ve been told for more than a decade that hate speech isn’t free speech. Melissa Chen wants to know why the voices behind that rhetoric are suddenly so eager to hate Elon Musk for being successful.

A round-up of the latest and best insight on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

Richard Salsman: Animal Farm Rewritten: Hollywood Betrayed Orwell’s Anti-Communist Classic

Movie adaptations of classic books are infamous for butchering their source material. The recent retelling of George Orwell’s anti-communist novella “Animal Farm” might be the worst example of all time, however. The filmmakers quite literally inverted Orwell’s theme by making capitalism the story’s target. Richard Salsman reviews the movie for The Daily Economy:

This movie recklessly inverts Orwell’s original theme even beyond the public relations billing. Like his more famous, later work — the novel 1984 (which appeared in 1948) — Animal Farm is anti-authoritarian. It vilifies not capitalists, but communists. This movie effectively reverses Orwell’s moral framework and vilifies not communists (or even collectivists) but capitalists.

When the animals arrive on the farm, they first sense fun upon seeing signage that reads “Laughterhouse,” but they soon realize the full sign reads “Slaughterhouse.” The antagonist is not the cruel and corrupt Napoleon, but a greedy billionaire and a corporation intent on shutting down the farm. It is a clever but not-too-subtle hint — carried throughout the film — that these animals, like workers, will not merely be corralled but exploited. Filmmaker Andy Serkis appears to view this as a good and peaceful message for kids.

Not only is the original (anti-communist) theme of Animal Farm clear to anyone who bothers to read it, but Orwell himself was clearer still in his 1947 preface to the Ukrainian version, that “its various episodes are taken from the actual history of the Russian Revolution.” Orwell also knew, of course, that the 1917 revolt in Russia was not of workers against capitalists but of Bolsheviks and disgruntled (because unpaid) soldiers against the royalist-Czarist regime. Although Bolsheviks were inspired by Marxism and Marx was anti-capitalist, it didn’t follow that the Bolshevik Revolution was an overturning of capitalism. Russia in 1917 was more feudal-agrarian than it was capitalist-industrial.

Read it all.

Robby Soave: This Was the Moment the COVID-19 Experts Betrayed Us

We talk a lot about the need to protect all legal speech. At Reason, Robby Soave gives a shameful COVID-era example of what happens when governments favor some speech over other speech: the public’s trust in institutional authority collapses:

Some tweets live in infamy. Six years ago this week, NPR shared a link on X (Twitter at the time) to an article by correspondent Bill Chappell: “Protesting Racism Versus Risking COVID-19.”

This was June 2, 2020, in the grips of the pandemic. By that time, Americans had been forced to confront the reality that “two weeks to slow the spread” was a lie. The two weeks had come and gone at the end of March, yet government health advisors had continued to pressure authorities at the federal, state, and local levels to maintain lockdowns, mask mandates, and prohibitions on social gatherings.

These policies were initially sold to the public as temporary measures that were necessary to give hospitals time to receive an influx of COVID-19 patients. By the start of the summer, it had become clear that public health experts would continue to insist on heavy-handed mitigation measures until either case counts crashed on their own or a vaccine became widely available. This meant that in Democratic-controlled municipalities, where it was fashionable to “trust the science,” relevant policymakers would keep lockdowns in place, require masks in all public spaces, and discourage large gatherings—even outdoors.

Washington, D.C., was once such location. The streets were generally empty. When people did venture outdoors, they were expected to wear masks, even when walking by themselves or engaging in vigorous exercise.

But then something happened: a black man, George Floyd, died while in police custody after an officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeled on his back for nine minutes. Chauvin would eventually be convicted of second-degree murder. Video footage of Floyd’s death caused a massive public outrage and generated protests against racism and police violence across the country.

One might have expected public health experts to express sympathy with the cause but maintain their ironclad support for mitigation measures. After all, they had had no problem recommending that government officials close down schools, churches, and funeral homes, all of which serve vital social functions. They did not.

Read the rest.

Maria Tardiff: Conservative scholars debunk claim Declaration of Independence was document of revolt

At The College Fix, Maria Tardiff challenges an all-too-common myth about America’s founding. Our declaration of independence from Great Britain was not about justifying revolution, but preserving liberty:

While most Americans grew up hearing that the Declaration of Independence was a revolutionary document giving Americans “the right to blow things up,” a group of conservative scholars recently argued the Founding Fathers penned a thoughtful foundational statement that served as a rational basis for the emerging country.

The declaration is “the most monumental statement of human liberty written in the English language,” said Matthew Spalding, a constitutional government professor at Hillsdale College and one of three panelists who spoke at a recent event dissecting the document.

Hosted by the center-right National Association of Scholars, the mid-May webinar was one in the group’s new series “1776 in Mind” commemorating America’s 250^th anniversary.

Spalding, who oversees the Kirby Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship at Hillsdale’s Washington, D.C. campus, emphasized the document has a “narrative of its own, so that the declaration would tell its own story,” and does not need to be read through the biased lenses of interpreters.

Spalding said the text reveals that the founders were not just frustrated revolutionaries but well versed in British history and government, citing the influences of classical politics and Christianity on the declaration.

Spalding pointed to phrases like “prudence will dictate” in the declaration that sound more rational than revolutionary, and added what the founders argue for is “not an abstract, revolutionary right, à la the French revolution,” but rather “what makes America revolutionary is a change in ideas, but it’s not actually a revolution, rather a founding.”

Read the whole thing.

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How do we defeat censorship culture? Nico Perrino says the answer hasn’t changed: defend speech you disagree with.

Legal scholar Paul Sherman explains how the federal government lost its bid to further regulate campaign speech in Citizens United v. FEC: by trying to reserve the right to ban books.

The Manhattan Institute (MI) has challenged recent media coverage of its opposition to political violence. WIRED framed the effort as a threat to protesting more generally; MI’s Jesse Leg wasn’t having it. Destroying property is not protected speech, he insisted.

A round-up of the latest and best insight on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

Bradley Smith, Brett Nolan: The Supreme Court Protected Donor Privacy. The IRS Didn’t Get the Memo.

An ongoing legal battle has pit the US Supreme Court against the IRS on donor privacy. The Court recently ruled that the Constitution strongly protects donor information from prying bureaucratic eyes. Problem solved, right? Not exactly. In a separate case, the IRS is effectively trying to undo the decision. Reason reports on the potentially serious free speech implications:

The Supreme Court issued a resounding victory for donor privacy and free speech last month in First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Davenport, but it is cold comfort to the hundreds of thousands of nonprofit organizations around the country that must continue handing over similar information to the IRS every year.

First Choice reaffirmed that the First Amendment strongly protects the privacy of nonprofit supporters. The case arose after New Jersey’s attorney general issued a sweeping subpoena to First Choice, a Christian, pro-life medical nonprofit serving pregnant women, new mothers, and fathers.

The subpoena demanded the names and addresses of nearly all of First Choice’s donors. The Supreme Court unanimously held that such demands inflict real and immediate harm because they deter people from associating with disfavored groups—even if the government promises to keep the information confidential.

…

But it’s a much different story for the federal government in Buckeye Institute v. Internal Revenue Service, a case that our organization, the Institute for Free Speech, is litigating in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit.

In Buckeye, the IRS is defending a broad disclosure regime that requires hundreds of thousands of nonprofits to disclose donor information to the federal government every year. Five years ago, in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta, the Supreme Court held that disclosing this information—which appears on a tax form called a Schedule B—creates a “real and pervasive” chilling effect on the First Amendment. But the IRS claims that because donors to Buckeye can receive a tax deduction for their charitable contribution, Bonta doesn’t apply.

On the same day the Supreme Court announced its decision in First Choice, the IRS was in the 6th Circuit arguing that courts should not second guess the government’s claimed need to stockpile a treasure trove of sensitive donor data.

The central question in Buckeye is what standard courts must apply to evaluate the law. The Supreme Court’s decision in First Choice reaffirmed that “any demand” for donor information requires the government to satisfy “exacting scrutiny.” That means the government cannot compel organizations to reveal their donors without first proving that collecting this information is necessary to further an important government interest.

Read it all.

ACLU: Recording Law Enforcement is a First Amendment Right

Never forget: the First Amendment protects your right to record law enforcement. The ACLU outlines the relevant legal precedent, explaining why they continue to defend Americans who have been harassed and even arrested for filming the police:

The courts have repeatedly recognized that the First Amendment encompasses the right to record law enforcement when officers are performing official actions in public. This right is protected as part of the gathering and dissemination of information about government officials, and as a medium of expression in and of itself. The right to record gives civilians the ability to hold law enforcement and other government officials accountable for their actions so their communities are informed and protected.

Every circuit court to consider the issue has held that the First Amendment protects the right to record law enforcement activity in public and people’s exercise of that right has proven critical to democratic accountability time and time again. From the footage of law enforcement brutalizing Rodney King in 1991 to that of the murder of George Floyd in 2020, recordings of officers in public document abuses and spark political discussion and advocacy.

Since the Supreme Court’s 1952 decision in Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, video has been understood as being protected by the First Amendment. In that case, the Supreme Court recognized that the First Amendment guarantees protection to films, videos, and movies because “it cannot be doubted that motion pictures are a significant medium for the communication of ideas,” and that they “may affect public attitudes and behaviors in a variety of ways, ranging from direct espousal of a political or social doctrine to the subtle shaping of thought which characterizes all artistic expression.”

Several later cases applied this reasoning to hold that the First Amendment also protects the process of creating video, including recording. In Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Wasden (2018), for example, the Ninth Circuit explained that the process of creating a video, much like writing a book, cannot be disentangled from the end result, and is therefore protected by the First Amendment. Otherwise, the government could effectively silence expression by stopping someone in the midst of recording (or writing, or painting).

Read the rest.

Institute for Free Speech: Nashua’s Flag Censorship Ends with Federal Court Judgment

Nashua, New Hampshire, maintains a “Citizen Flag Pole,” on which residents can fly flags they deem important. But the city was getting choosy about the flags it allowed to be displayed. The Institute for Free Speech (IFS) got wind of this censorious policy and sued the city in federal court. Today they announced their victory in the case:

A federal district court in New Hampshire has entered a judgment against the City of Nashua in Scaer, et al. v. City of Nashua, a First Amendment case challenging the city’s viewpoint-based censorship of citizen flag requests.

The judgment, accepted by Institute for Free Speech clients Bethany and Stephen Scaer and entered by the court, orders Nashua to permanently maintain a policy closing the City Hall flagpoles to private expression and prohibits the city from resuming the discriminatory practices at the heart of the lawsuit.

The case stemmed from Nashua’s repeated denials of the Scaers’ requests to fly flags on the city’s so-called “Citizen Flag Pole,” offering no substantive justification beyond concluding that the Scaers’ flags were “not in harmony” with the city’s message. In one instance, Nashua initially approved Bethany Scaer’s “Save Women’s Sports” flag, but the city then revoked that approval just one day later after receiving complaints.

In December 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit unanimously reversed a lower court ruling, holding that Nashua had violated the First Amendment by engaging in viewpoint discrimination and rejecting the city’s attempt to characterize its censorship as “government speech.”

Read it all.

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“When we stop talking is when we start fighting.” Wise words from the late Charlie Kirk.

Thanks goodness the FBI protected us from the baleful influence of…Louie Louie.

Over a month in jail—for an “offensive” Facebook post. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) was having none of that.

A round-up of the latest and best insight on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

Thomas Hazlett: Ted Turner, Entrepreneur of His Age

Ted Turner is best known as a cable TV mogul. But he should be remembered for another great accomplishment: demolishing “the tyranny of licensed, bureaucratic TV” and replacing it with consumer-driven content. That achievement had free-speech implications we’re still experiencing today. Thomas Hazlett reports for Reason:

The cartoon character he cultivated was for fun and to amortize the lithium load. His real role was Entrepreneur of His Age. Turner held the lead spear when the Late 20th Century Barbarians stormed the gates of the Old Order in American media. Meeting the moment at the perfect instant—when a “deregulation wave” was opening doors long shut—Turner flipped the script on “public interest” regulation concocted during the Progressive Era. Intellectuals largely bemoaned the passing of the administrative state, and the Cronkite audience it favored, devoid of controversy and offered as the “news from nowhere” (as a CBS executive bragged). But the closed-loop spoon feeding was inimical to freedom, open inquiry, and honest debate.

Even before he was finished, the creative destruction triggered by Ted Turner’s wild gambits had left the tyranny of licensed, bureaucratic TV in rubble. What came next may not always look pretty. But freedom of expression has a renewed life, as soon even the chatbots will discover.

…

Managing to salvage what was left of the family business, Ted bought a few backwater radio stations and then acquired WJRJ-TV in Atlanta in 1970—cheap because it was losing $50,000 a month. In 1972, Turner grabbed another UHF bargain, WRET-TV in Charlotte.

The Atlanta property, renamed WTBS (for “Turner Broadcasting System”), took off. In 1976 it became the first national channel, a “superstation” distributed by satellite to thousands of cable systems coast-to-coast. That virtually worthless UHF license was now the foundation of what would be a vast cable programming empire.

The Charlotte station had been an even hotter mess than the Atlanta money loser. Turner’s company board had risen up in opposition, blocking his planned purchase, so Turner mortgaged his personal residence and bought the station himself. The property then ballooned in value. In 1979 he sold it to Westinghouse for $20 million—the most recorded for any UHF station in history.

That sale gave Turner the capital to create CNN—America’s first true 24/7 cable news outlet—in 1980. What happened then was far more than the making of a mogul. It was the transformation of the world’s information flow.

Read it all.

Samuel Montgomery: Opera cancelled after single complaint over cultural insensitivity

An open-air theater in the UK has cancelled a performance of a classic opera in response to exactly one complaint that it contained “colonial terminology,” and committed other culturally insensitive offenses. The Telegraph reports:

A Cornish open-air theatre has cancelled an opera after a single complaint about its colonial themes.

The Minack Theatre at Porthcurno pulled a planned production of Léo Delibes’s Lakmé after a US-based Hindu campaigner described the opera as “shallow exoticism based on prejudice”.

Rajan Zed, the president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, said it was “highly irresponsible” for the theatre to host Surrey Opera’s production given the perceived cultural sensitivities around the French opera.

“This deeply problematic opera was just a blatant belittling of a rich civilisation and exhibited 19th-century orientalist attitudes,” Mr Zed said, arguing that the theatre “should not be in the business of callously promoting appropriation of traditions, elements and concepts of ‘others’”.

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A spokesman for the theatre said: “The opera contains two well-known arias, the Bell Song and the Flower Duet, which are frequently performed in classical concerts. However, it was composed in 1883 and reflects colonial and social attitudes prevalent in Europe at that time.

“Because of this we had concerns from the start about their choice and were in discussion with Surrey Opera about how they would address these issues in their production before Mr Zed contacted us. They have subsequently withdrawn the opera and Mr Zed has been informed of this.

“The Minack is an inclusive venue, welcoming people of all cultures and faiths. We do not condone racial or religious intolerance or misrepresentation in any form. We understand and accept Mr Zed’s valid concerns and are happy that we have been able to resolve this matter.”

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John J. Miller: The New ‘Animal Farm’ Should’ve Worked Harder

George Orwell’s 1945 novella Animal Farm is a blistering satire of soviet communism. Sadly, the 2026 film adaptation sloppily replaced Orwell’s entertaining if horrifying warning about Stalinist Russia with hackneyed partisanship and fart jokes. That’s according to John Miller at The Wall Street Journal:

It’s an amusing line in a bad movie: “We’re just following, we’re just following,” chant several sheep as they enter a semi-trailer that’s supposed to haul them to a slaughterhouse. They literally follow the herd in the opening minutes of “Animal Farm,” which arrived in theaters this past Friday. Only the heroics of other livestock save them.

Sadly, nothing can save the movie. It’s a bland mash of computer animation, didactic moralizing and fart jokes. Its worst mistake is to stray from its compelling source.

George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” is a modern classic of satire. In 1945 it spoke an inconvenient truth: The Communists of the Soviet Union were the foes of freedom, even though they were wartime allies of the U.S. and Great Britain.

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The original “Animal Farm” was bold. A contemporary film that tried to capture its spirit might have lampooned the dictators of Beijing or Tehran. Yet that would risk offending the masters of a massive market or facing accusations of Islamophobia. Instead, the new “Animal Farm” sinks into Hollywood hackery. It’s a parable of capitalist greed. Its major villain drives a vehicle that resembles a Tesla Cybertruck and runs a company akin to Amazon. Adapting novels requires creative license, but this is like remaking “Moby-Dick” with Captain Ahab as a save-the-whales activist.

The one daring decision of the moviemakers is to insult their distributor, Angel Studios, known for its Christian content. In Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” Napoleon the pig stands in for Stalin. In the new version, he’s a buffoon who breaks wind and declares, “This is the sound of freedom!” It’s a dumb and vulgar joke. It’s also an obvious allusion to “Sound of Freedom”—a surprise hit in 2023 for Angel Studios, which took a chance on a story of human trafficking that left-wing reviewers condemned as a right-wing fantasy.

“Sound of Freedom” broke from the herd. It told many people something they didn’t want to hear. The new “Animal Farm” just follows the flock.

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Around X

Greg Lukianoff with a real-time reminder of why we must always be on guard against threats to free speech.

John Stossel profiles free-speech advocate Rikki Schlott. If you don’t know her story, it’s the epitome of cancel culture.

Sean Spicer doesn’t buy the knee-jerk First Amendment defense of legacy TV networks. They use public airwaves and shouldn’t be allowed to broadcast partisan propaganda, he claims.