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

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.

Read the rest.

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.

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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!

Read the rest.

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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.”

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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.

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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’”.

…

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.”

Read it the rest.

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.

…

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.

Read the whole thing.

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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.

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

Jacob Gaba: How the Comey Indictment Could Backfire on Republicans

Republicans should think long and hard about the consequences of indicting former FBI Director James Comey for a careless tweet. So argues Jacob Gaba at The Dispatch. If you’ll use power against your enemies, don’t be surprised when they use it against you:

The Department of Justice’s recent indictment of former FBI Director James Comey has been rightly criticized as flimsy and an affront to the First Amendment. This is nothing more than a naked use of federal authority to intimidate a notable critic of President Donald Trump. It’s also something that should make conservatives uneasy.

The Republican Party won’t always control the government, but by treating hostile political symbolism as a threat, the Department of Justice has opened a door that future administrations may be all too willing to walk through.

DOJ first sought to indict Comey in September 2025, alleging that he lied to Congress during testimony he gave in 2020. A federal judge dismissed that indictment in December on the grounds that the prosecutor, acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, had been unlawfully appointed. In late April, Comey was indicted again, this time over a nearly year-old social media post in which Comey had spelled out “86 47” in seashells. The government called that “a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the President of the United States.”

How are numbers threatening? The indictment has no answer, but “86” commonly means to “get rid of” or “throw out” (with “47” meaning Trump, the 47^th president). To argue that “86” means “assassinate” or “kill” requires taking an uncharitable interpretation of Comey’s post, to say the least. Even Amazon sells “8647” and “8646” (referring to former President Joe Biden) decals explicitly branded as “anti-Trump” and “funny Joe Biden bumper stickers.”

It stretches credulity to suggest that any American who buys and sells those stickers threatens death on the president. But if the DOJ’s theory were to hold, there’s no reason a future Democratic administration couldn’t say that anti-Biden or anti-Democratic Party slogans sold online, chanted at rallies, or posted on social media are evidence of criminal intent.

Read the whole thing.

Craig Simpson: Nurseries urged to report ‘racist toddlers’ to police

It’s so overtly Orwellian you’d think it was a joke—yet it’s not. Day cares in the UK are being encouraged to report racist behavior among young children to the authorities. The Telegraph reports:

Welsh nurseries have been advised to report children for “racist incidents” in guidance backed by the Labour Government.

The taxpayer-funded guidance for childminders aims to make nurseries and play groups “anti-racist” environments.

Childcare workers are advised to call police if a “racist incident” occurs that could be deemed a hate crime.

Advised actions include calling 999 for emergencies, or otherwise speaking to police officers and taking “relevant action in conjunction with the police, ensuring you record all details of the incident”.

If the incident is not a hate crime, childcare workers can instead take steps including offering “age-appropriate learning support opportunities for the perpetrator”.

Should this be “met with resistance”, childcare workers are advised to draw up a “disciplinary route”, with various outcomes explained in a flowchart.

Those in the childcare, play and early years sector in Wales work with children aged 12 and below, including babies and toddlers.

The guidance advises staff in playgroups and other settings to conduct an “understanding audit” and to ask themselves, on a scale of one to five, how well they “understand what white privilege is and how it can affect my life and the lives of others”.

Read it all.

Olivia George: Activist who gave out fliers with Stephen Miller’s address won’t face charges

Activists who distributed fliers containing the home address of White House aide Stephen Miller won’t be charged, the Washington Post reports. Prosecutors in Arlington County, Virginia, say there wasn’t enough evidence the protestors intended to harass Miller and his family. Bringing charges would therefore violate the First Amendment:

A Virginia woman who distributed leaflets disclosing the home address of top White House aide Stephen Miller will not face state criminal charges, according to court documents filed Tuesday by Arlington County’s top prosecutor. Proceeding would violate the activist’s constitutionally protected free speech rights and “risk having a chilling effect on others wishing to engage in peaceful political protest.”

There was “insufficient evidence” to conclude the activist last year distributed the fliers with intent to harass Miller, wrote Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, a second-term Democrat who serves as Arlington’s lead prosecutor. The activist included Miller’s photograph with a red line through it and urged people to scan a QR code to “demand a congressional investigation.”

“Petitioning government is a clear and quintessentially protected activity,” Dehghani-Tafti wrote in court filings. She requested the Virginia State Police destroy all materials collected from the activist’s phone under a search warrant previously issued by the court.

Katie Miller, Stephen Miller’s wife, faulted the lack of prosecution in a text message to The Washington Post on Tuesday afternoon. She used an expletive and pointed out that Dehghani-Tafti had been backed by liberal donor George Soros in her campaigns. “This is a consistent theme across the country of prosecutor[s] and judges funded by Soros,” she wrote.

Read the whole thing.

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The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) applauds ABC for standing up to the government’s bullying tactics.

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch sits down with Reason Magazine to discuss the importance of checking political power to safeguard individual liberty.

Daily Wire commentator Michael Knowles says the Trump Administration has consistently defended free speech. It’s certainly a provocative argument.

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

Peter James: Why is a chatbot deciding what books our children read?

Revolutionary as it may be, AI still leaves a lot to be desired. ChatGPT and its sibling large language models routinely hallucinate quotes and misreport basic facts, so why would we trust them to ban books from school libraries? That reasonable question comes from Peter James writing at The Spectator:

A school in Greater Manchester has stripped 193 books from its library because they are ‘inappropriate’, liable to upset pupils and thus a safeguarding risk. Among the dangerously destabilising material: Michelle Obama’s memoir and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Who was entrusted with identifying these literary IEDs? An over-zealous head? A prurient librarian? A demented child psychologist? Nope. A humble AI bot.

While writing my latest novel, The Hawk Is Dead, much of which is set in Buckingham Palace, I asked ChatGPT to produce a simple floor plan. Not a tough assignment – much less taxing than diagnosing nearly 200 books as existential threats to adolescent wellbeing. It got the Palace’s orientation wrong. For more than 200 years, the East Wing has faced the Mall. According to ChatGPT, it now faces north.

And yet this is the oracle now consulted on what children may or may not read. Still, there is a certain grim logic to it. If you want to keep young minds safe from dangerous ideas, why not put a system in charge that struggles to grasp reality in the first place?

Read it all.

Angel Eduardo: Jimmy Kimmel proves the White House can’t take a joke

Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel has developed a habit of offending powerful politicians. While many Americans may not like his sense of humor, his rhetoric is not “hateful” (whatever that term means) and it’s fully protected by the Constitution. So argues Angel Eduardo at UnHerd:

Déjà vu has never been less fun.

Last week, late-night host Jimmy Kimmel made a joke during his show’s opening monologue that upset people in the White House, which led to demands that ABC “take a stand” against his “hateful and violent rhetoric.”

There’s a reason this story feels familiar. Last year, late-night host Jimmy Kimmel made a joke during his show’s opening monologue that upset people in the White House, which led to demands that ABC “take action on Kimmel” for his “intentional effort to mislead the American people”.

Back then, the one leading the charge was FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr. Now, it’s First Lady Melania Trump. In both cases, the reactions to Kimmel’s comments occurred in the wake of violence. Last year, it was in response to Charlie Kirk’s assassination at Utah Valley University. This week, it’s about the gunman who opened fire at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

The trouble is, Kimmel’s so-called “hateful and violent” remarks — that Melania possesses “a glow like an expectant widow” — were made during his April 23 monologue, two full days before the WHCA. In that context, it’s clear that Kimmel’s quip was a “Trump is really old” joke, and not a “Trump is going to be the subject of an assassination attempt this Saturday” joke. Arguing otherwise would require Kimmel to possess a time machine.

More importantly, however, the government has no authority to police the speech of television networks or their late-night hosts, nor can it flex its institutional power to pressure them to do so. The former is a clear violation of our First Amendment, while the latter is a sneakier manifestation of jawboning, where the government tries to do indirectly what it cannot do directly. Either way, it’s unconstitutional.

Read the rest.

Stephen Presser: The Godfather of American Law

Few Americans have ever heard of William Blackstone. That’s a real shame, because this legal scholar and intellectual giant profoundly influenced the drafting of the US Constitution. At Chronicles, Stephen Presser examines some of Blackstone’s most important contributions to American law—including the belief that restrictions on government protect individual liberty:

Sir William Blackstone is the godfather of American law. His greatest contribution is the Commentaries on the Laws of England, a four-volume, comprehensive treatise on English common law—a body of judicial decisions based on customs, statutes, and reason stretching back centuries, and, according to Blackstone, based on a divinely inspired law of nature. Written between 1765 and 1769, the Commentaries were originally delivered as lectures and intended to serve as guides for his aristocratic students at England’s Oxford University in their role as justices of the peace and presiders over the courts.

The books were an instant hit in England, but, remarkably, they had an even greater influence in the United States. The best description of the American Revolution, as far as paleoconservatives are concerned, is that it was Englishmen fighting Englishmen over the rights of Englishmen. And it was to Blackstone that American Whig lawyers turned for definitions and elaboration of the protections to person and property they claimed against King George III.

…

While Blackstone’s views were essentially conservative, he also set forth in the Commentaries a number of constitutional principles that reflect classical liberal notions of the Enlightenment. These were quite consistent with the Lockean thoughts that Jefferson would borrow for our Declaration of Independence, and those notions would shimmer through our Constitution of 1789 and the Federalist Papers. Among these ideas were the veneration of trial by jury, the preservation of the writ of habeas corpus, and the belief that government exists to secure the God-given rights and the private property of individuals. Blackstone clearly articulates the concept of government limited by law. If there was not yet a fully formed articulation of modern judicial review in the Commentaries, there was still the idea that the judiciary ought to be independent from the executive and the legislature.

Read the whole thing.

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Political commentator Mark Levin makes the case for separating free speech from harmful rhetoric that shouldn’t be protected by the Constitution. We’ll let you decide if he succeeded.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) amplifies an important free-speech victory at the Supreme Court. The decision means state governments cannot force religious nonprofits to hand over confidential donor information.

There’s something ironic, and very concerning, about a law school that doesn’t understand how the First Amendment works.

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

Joe Lancaster: 62-Year-Old Protester Acquitted on All Charges for Wearing Penis Costume

There’s only one thing we can say about this first item: even strange people have the right to free expression. Joe Lancaster at Reason explains why this category includes elderly women who register their opposition to politicians by dressing up as penises:

This week, a 62-year-old Alabama woman faced a criminal trial for wearing an inflatable penis costume during a protest.

After three hours of testimony, a judge acquitted her of all charges—a welcome result for her free speech rights.

In October 2025, Jeana Renea Gamble wore the offending phallus—holding a “No Dick-Tator” sign—at a “No Kings” protest. Responding to the scene, Cpl. Andrew Babb of the Fairhope Police Department threw Gamble to the ground and arrested her for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

Prosecutors later added charges of disturbing the peace and giving a false name to law enforcement—the latter because when she was asked her name, Gamble replied “Aunt Tifa,” a play on antifa, the shorthand used by antifascist activists.

The case was flawed from the start: Babb’s body camera footage shows his tone was aggressive as soon as he arrived, and he threw her to the ground less than a minute after arriving, even though she was walking away from him at the time.

Besides, wearing an offensive costume is fully protected by the First Amendment.

Read the whole thing.

Fatima Gunning: Free Speech Ireland sounds alarm on “Digital Wallet”

Officials in Ireland are lobbying for a “digital wallet,” a convenient app individuals can use to store their ID documents electronically. They claim it will improve access to public services and help protect children from online harms. Free speech advocates are a little more skeptical of the wallet’s benefits:

A government spokesperson said the measure intends to make it so that people can have digital versions of their birth cert, driving license, European health card, and other official documents “stored safely and securely in a digital wallet on their mobile. This will make it much easier to access public services and verify identity both online and in person.”

At the launch of the initiative, Minister Chambers said the Digital Wallet is “designed so that all personal data is fully protected, and the user stays in control of what information they put in the Wallet and choose to share. Only the details needed for a service will be shared, and nothing more.”

However, FSI warned that the move poses a significant risk to privacy, emphasising that this is “a constitutionally protected right”.

“Speaking truth to power means protecting anonymity,” O’Reilly said, adding, “A free society, and a free press, are dependent on functions such as whistleblowing and anonymous sources.”

Read the rest.

Noel Yaxley: When Democrats Engaged in ‘Mortal Kombat’

At Chronicles Magazine, Noel Yaxley recounts the scandal surrounding Mortal Kombat, the legendary arcade fighting game released in the early 90s. Although players never morphed into violent criminals, as certain politicians predicted, their censorship campaign against the game launched a moral panic that continues to this day:

With a new installment in the Mortal Kombat movie series set for nationwide release in early May, now is an ideal time to revisit the franchise’s origins and the role it played in one of America’s early culture wars. What began in 1992 as an arcade fighting game quickly became a cultural flashpoint, igniting fierce debates about violence, censorship, and the influence of video games on youth. The game’s graphic fatalities and unapologetic gore sparked the first major salvo in the culture war over video game content, most notably by pitting Democrats like the late Senator Joe Lieberman against the burgeoning gaming industry in congressional hearings.

…

On Dec. 9, 1993, Democratic Senators Joe Lieberman, Herbert Kohl, and Byron Dorgan held a congressional hearing on video game violence. Lieberman’s main goal was to establish a universal ratings system meant to keep violent games out of the hands of minors. In a display of collective Boomer indignation, Lieberman et al inveighed against Mortal Kombat’s brutality.

The senator from Connecticut claimed the game taught children “to enjoy torture,” describing the action of the game in this way: “the game narrator instructs the player to finish—and I quote, ‘finish’—his opponent. The player may then choose a method of murder, ranging from ripping the heart out to pulling off the head of the opponent with spinal cord attached.” Kohl argued these games tell kids that to win you must kill, a message he said “pollutes our society.” Bill White, Sega America’s Vice President, was grilled by Dorgan about why kids weren’t protected from this “trash.” The industry was issued an ultimatum: self-regulate or face federal intervention.

Read it all.

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The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine is an invaluable tool for preserving and accessing content. If major media corporations get their way, the site will disappear.

The federal government tried to prevent Apple and Facebook from carrying apps that report the activity of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) filed suit on the platforms’ behalf—and won.

Recent survey data shows that overall tolerance for opposing political views is low among both male and female college students. But men generally display greater tolerance for their political rivals than women do for their political allies.

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

John Rosenthal: Welcome to Online Censorship 2.0

At The American Mind, John Rosenthal argues that modern censorship isn’t outright restrictions on speech, but more subtle limitations on reach—how many people see your content. We saw this during the pandemic as platforms like Facebook and Twitter throttled content deemed “misinformation,” but now the practice is being codified into hate speech regulations around the world:

Much of the ostensible “hate speech” prosecuted under German law consists not, say, of speech considered to be racist, sexist, or homophobic, but merely of personal insults. Hence, much of the speech that German sources reported to online platforms under the Digital Services Act (DSA), the E.U.’s flagship online censorship law, undoubtedly consists of such insults as well. The activities of the German organization HateAid, which enjoys the status of an officially certified “trusted flagger” of illegal content under the DSA, make this clear.

Under the DSA, European sources may flag any online content in any language posted anywhere in the world. A German organization like HateAid may not only flag German content for removal—it can also target Americans.

…

The ruling is highly significant for the application of the DSA, which requires online platforms to remove illegal speech, at least in the jurisdiction where it is illegal. (Given the complexities and costs involved in tailoring content moderation to different markets, this requirement can often result in global takedowns.) But the law also explicitly permits platforms to meet their DSA obligations not by removing content outright, but by restricting its visibility and hence reach.

This idea was popularized by Elon Musk in November 2022 when, shortly after completing his acquisition of Twitter, he announced a new policy of “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.” But long before Musk adopted it, European Commission officials were already using the freedom-of-speech-is-not-freedom-of-reach mantra to try to reconcile the obvious censorship the DSA requires with the freedom of expression that is, after all, guaranteed by the E.U.’s own Charter of Fundamental Rights. (See Věra Jourová’s December 2021 remarks to Politico, where the E.C.’s then-vice-president for values and transparency uses the same expression.)

Read the rest.

Mark Judge: Classic ‘Rolling Stone’ and the Cowardice of Today’s Media

Rolling Stone may be a shell of its former self today, but the magazine was once enormously influential. What made it so great? Free speech. Co-founder Jann Wenner wasn’t afraid to hire journalists who would challenge authority—whether it be politicians, rock stars or even Rolling Stone’s leadership. Mark Judge explains at Chronicles:

Jann Wenner who, along with Ralph J. Gleason, co-founded Rolling Stone in 1967, may have been an egomaniac, control freak, and a bit of a jerk. But, as author Charles L. Ponce de Leon shows, Wenner was also ambitious and wise in his stewardship of the magazine. His vision and even humility allowed him to hire the best people and let them flourish, even if they disagreed with him.

This produced a magazine of surpassing excellence that was always engaging. Hiring people who were allowed to criticize its founder, willing to take on sacred cows (even if they were rock stars), and demanding high standards while taking on challenging subjects in new ways—these are all things that today’s version of the magazine has lost the courage to do.

…

Rolling Stone succeeded because Wenner had the courage to hire people with real talent—even when those people would criticize Wenner himself.

…

Then there was Greil Marcus, who was hired to be the editor of the record review section. Marcus took the job on the condition that Wenner not interfere with his decisions. Wenner agreed.

…

Marcus said he “felt debate and conflict within the section was good—that it was a version of how people actually argued about albums.” He made it clear to writers that they could be critical. “I said to people over and over again, ‘Be as mean, as tough, as angry as you want to be. If something insults your intelligence or is a betrayal of somebody’s talent, say so. Don’t hold back.’”

Read the rest.

Robert Corn-Revere: An Open Letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr

Former FCC Chief Counsel Robert Corn-Revere has some advice for the agency’s current chairman, Brendan Carr: stop threatening news outlets for airing coverage the FCC doesn’t like. It’s illegal, and it will not accomplish Carr’s “transparent political objectives”:

Dear Chairman Carr,

…

You have recently threatened to revoke the licenses of broadcasters who air what you call “fake news,” which apparently includes any skeptical reporting about the war in Iran—something you know you cannot do legally.

…

As you may recall, shortly after you were named to head the Federal Communications Commission, I offered you some unsolicited advice in the form of an open letter entitled “A Plea for Institutional Modesty.” I suggested you should be circumspect in your assertions of power over broadcasters because “you don’t have as much power as you may think,” and flexing your regulatory muscles would conflict with both the Communications Act and the Constitution.

But as was clear from your initial acts as chairman and statements you made while campaigning for the job, your quest for political advancement overrode any previous commitment to First Amendment values.

Gone were the days when, as a commissioner, you said things like “a newsroom’s decision about what stories to cover and how to frame them should be beyond the reach of any government official, not targeted by them,” or that “inject[ing] partisan politics into our licensing process” is “a deeply troubling transgression of free speech and the FCC’s status as an independent agency.”

…

Unlike some of the comically unqualified appointees in this Administration, you know better. You have been an FCC commissioner for nearly a decade, and once upon a time you practiced communications law. So, you know your Bizarro World social media post gets what “the law is clear” about exactly backwards.

The law is clear that the First Amendment bars the government from dictating news coverage or punishing editors or publishers for reports the president thinks are “false.” And it also is clear that broadcast licensees who operate under the public interest standard are shielded from this kind of government interference as well.

You have repeatedly referred to the Communications Act’s public interest standard as if it vests the FCC with authority to act as a super editor for the nation, but this is the very same law you used to say does not empower the Commission to be the broadcast speech police. And you never mention Section 326 of the Act, which prohibits the FCC from engaging in “censorship” or “interfer[ing] with the right of free speech.”

Read the whole thing.

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Google recently removed Doki Doki Literature Club (DDLC) from its app store. The “visual novel,” so we’re told, contains depictions of suicide and other disturbing imagery—violating Google’s terms of service. Some X users fear the game’s removal is only the first step in a broader censorship campaign.

Free speech: still the most important right we posses. Lest you’re tempted to forget, here’s a reminder from the legendary poet John Milton:

Turning Point USA reporter Savanah Hernandez says she’s afraid to do her job after being pushed to the ground by 250-pound man during a recent anti-immigration protest. Suffice it to say, having the "wrong" politics shouldn't put anybody in danger.

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

Margot Cleveland: Government-Funded Censor Told State Dept. Its Testing Wouldn’t Focus On U.S. Audiences — It Then Targeted The Blaze

Three State Department-funded groups, charged with monitoring foreign disinformation campaigns, targeted a US-based conservative news outlet—after promising they wouldn’t focus on domestic media. Margot Cleveland at The Federalist outlines a lawsuit against the US government that brought the scandal to light:

Staff with the Global Engagement Center (“GEC”) told a State Department official that its testbed platform “will NOT focus on US audiences,” but then proceeded to fund a trial targeting The Blaze — a Texas-based media outlet. The Federalist uncovered this detail during discovery in its lawsuit against the State Department and the GEC, which the plaintiffs settled last week after the Defendants agreed to detailed prophylactic measures to prevent similar violations of Americans’ First Amendment rights.

The Federalist, along with The Daily Wire, sued the State Department and GEC in December of 2023, after learning that the defendants had funded the testing, development, and promotion of censorship technologies that demonetized, denigrated, and limited the reach of the media plaintiffs’ speech. The complaint alleged both a First Amendment claim and a claim that the defendants exceeded their statutory authority, which was limited to managing foreign affairs.

Discovery evidence confirmed those allegations and revealed that in the waning days of the first Trump Administration, the State Department’s GEC funded a test of three so-called “Countering Propaganda and Disinformation” technology groups, PeakMetrics, NewsGuard, and Omelas. According to a PeakMetrics’ report produced by the State Department, the three companies “collaborated to create a mockup of a joint dashboard incorporating all three companies’ capabilities.” The test ran from December 14, 2020 – January 7, 2021, with PeakMetrics stating it “performed a preliminary analysis on Omelas’ ‘Unrest and Violence in America’ narrative, which has risen exponentially this week, as expected.” PeakMetrics added that it then integrated its “technology enrichment for sources,” noting that an “[a]nalysis of this metadata can provide unique insights into networks of disinformation propagators.”

But who were these supposed “disinformation propagators?”

PeakMetrics’ report offered two examples: Sputnik News and The Blaze.

The Blaze is a Texas-based media outlet, making GEC’s targeting of that domestic media outlet well beyond its mandate to manage foreign affairs — a limitation GEC clearly understood — not to mention an abridgement of The Blaze’s First Amendment rights.

Read it all.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown: OneTaste Founder Nicole Daedone Gets 9-Year Prison Sentence

Nicole Daedone, owner of the wellness company OneTaste, is headed to prison for nearly a decade. OneTaste promoted a variety of eccentric practices, most notably “organismic meditation.” The federal government successfully prosecuted Daedone and her partner Rachel Cherwitz for sex trafficking. But as Elizabeth Nolan Brown reports, there were some seemingly serious flaws in the prosecution’s case:

The alleged victims in this case could come and go as they pleased. They were adult women. They had college degrees, outside professional opportunities, and sometimes even independent wealth. They testified in court that they remained affiliated with OneTaste—some as employees, some as volunteers, some simply as people who took classes from the company or lived in group houses that it maintained—because they believed in its mission, believed in Daedone and Cherwitz, or wanted to maintain social status within the OneTaste community.

The government’s assertions about how Daedone and Cherwitz employed “coercion” in this case are a huge affront to freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. Prosecutors suggested that the ideas Daedone and Cherwitz spread served as a form of brainwashing. These supposedly dangerous ideas include such things as being open to new sexual experiences and the notion that engaging in daily O.M.—a 15-minute, partnered, clitoral stroking session—could focus the mind and help empower practitioners, especially women. Daedone and Cherwitz appear to sincerely believe these ideas, which they saw as rooted in both Buddhism and feminism.

The government’s case was also a huge affront to the idea that women are fully agentic people capable of consent, sexual and otherwise. Prosecutors suggested that anxiety about being shunned by the OneTaste community was a harm so powerful that grown women were effectively “trafficked” by it. They argued that these women’s consent—to O.M., to participate in sexual fantasy scenes, to enter into and out of relationships, to engage in sex acts with OneTaste members or donors, or to pay for OneTaste classes—was rendered null by the force of fear of social exclusion and/or fear that stopping O.M. and other OneTaste practices would have a negative impact on their lives.

Ultimately, the case portends a dangerous new standard for what counts as forced labor and what counts as harm under federal trafficking statutes.

Read the rest.

Emma Taggert: Rayner’s workers’ rights police get power to force their way into offices

In the UK, a newly created police-like bureaucracy has been empowered to forcefully enter private property, seize evidence and even arrest suspects as it enforces labor regulations. Critics are reasonably worried the euphemistically titled “Fair Work Agency” will abuse its expansive power:

The Fair Work Agency, championed by the former deputy prime minister, began to oversee the enforcement of the Employment Rights Act on Tuesday, with the power to carry out “unannounced” inspections and use force “where reasonable and necessary”.

Documents published by the Government show that enforcement officers will be able to obtain a warrant to search a property under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, granting them powers akin to police.

Agency officials will be able to search people, seize evidence and “arrest persons suspected of labour market offences”.

The Fair Work Agency, which has been dubbed Labour’s “jobs police”, is charged with enforcing various employment rights including minimum wage, modern slavery regulations, holiday pay and sick pay.

Ministers have empowered the agency to come up with new rules and regulations to enforce, urging it to “identifying where legislative, operational or strategic changes may be required” and explore “future remit expansion”.

The agency’s sweeping new powers were greeted with alarm by business leaders.

Read the whole thing.

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The most startling statistics you’ll see this week:

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) defends a student newspaper at the University of North Carolina that was condemned by the school for posting satire—on April Fool’s Day.

The US Supreme Court has struck down Colorado’s ban on so-called “conversion therapy,” calling it viewpoint discrimination and thus illegal under the First Amendment. Good riddance.

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

Greg Lukianoff & Adam Goldstein: Trump’s War on Lawyers Is a Threat to Everyone

The public intuitively understands why government speech restrictions applied to individuals, universities and private companies are dangerous. But Americans seem much less sympathetic to the First Amendment Rights of lawyers. At The Dispatch, Greg Lukianoff and Adam Goldstein argue that such a double standard puts everybody’s right to speak at risk:

Everybody understands, at least instinctively, why it matters when a president threatens the press. People also more or less understand why it matters when he menaces universities, museums, or other cultural institutions. Those are visible targets, and they read as political in an obvious way.

Attacks on law firms land differently. Part of that is because many major firms are hardly natural objects of public sympathy. Most everyday Americans won’t shed many tears for institutions associated with enormous hourly rates, corporate power, and a profession that people tend to joke about until they need a lawyer. Large white-shoe firms can also seem culturally and politically entangled in establishment Washington in ways that prompt some to assume they are just another faction in a power struggle.

But that perception is exactly why this threat is so easy to underestimate. The point is not whether one feels a spontaneous rush of affection for Big Law. The point is that when a government starts punishing lawyers for taking cases it dislikes, it is not merely lashing out at one privileged profession—it chomps down on the basic mechanism by which Americans challenge unlawful government action in the first place.

And here, the retaliatory nature of what Trump did was not especially subtle. In total, six law firms were the targets of presidential orders or memoranda; 20 (including two also targeted by orders) were included in an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission probe of hiring practices. Nine firms signed agreements with the administration, promising a total of $1 billion in legal services. Of those nine that signed deals? Two, Willkie Farr and Cadwalader, weren’t targeted at all. They just saw which way the wind was blowing.

Read it all.

Päivi Räsänen: My Criminal Conviction Is a Terrible Blow to Free Speech in Europe

Finnish politician and physician Päivi Räsänen was recently convicted of hate speech by her country’s supreme court—under a law written after her supposedly hateful speech occurred. At National Review, Räsänen explains the fallout from her six-year legal battle:

Ask yourself: What have you written over the years? A blog post, a comment, a paper for school, a pamphlet for your community? Under a standard like this, any peaceful expression could become the subject of a criminal investigation.

This case has never been only about me. It has been about whether Finland — and Europe broadly — will remain places where people are free to speak, write, and live according to their conscience without fear of prosecution.

It is also not about whether you agree with my views. In a free society, disagreement is not just tolerated; it is essential to the society’s proper functioning. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to debate, to dissent, and yes, sometimes to offend. Without that freedom, democracy cannot survive.

Read the rest.

Washington Post editorial board: Ohio’s drag on free speech

Ohio’s state legislature is contemplating a bill that would further restrict drag shows. Whatever you think of men in dresses and wigs, you have to oppose this unjustified assault on free speech, argues the Washington Post editorial board:

Ohio Republicans are racing to protect the public from a sinister threat: men in wigs and sequined dresses. In reality, it’s a heavy-handed attempt to chill constitutionally protected expression.

The state House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday to criminalize drag shows that take place outside specified venues. The legislation’s sponsor, state Rep. Angela King (R), argued that the purpose of the legislation is to protect children from “premature sexualization” and “the erosion of their innocence.”

The conversations animating the Editorial Board, delivered to your inbox every Tuesday

Ohio law already prohibits the dissemination of obscene materials or performances to minors. The bill would expand those restrictions to performances outside an “adult cabaret,” such as a nightclub or sex shop, that features “performers or entertainers who exhibit a gender identity that is different from the performer’s or entertainer’s biological sex using clothing, makeup, prosthetic or imitation genitals or breasts, or other physical markers.”

Violations could result in a felony charge and up to 18 months in prison.

Read the whole thing.

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Paul Sherman with a very important insight: Everybody is a ferocious defender of free speech—until that speech has consequences. At that point, our noble principles “must” yield to practical realities.

Taylor Lorenz laments Gen Z’s apathy about free speech, and offers some suggestions for effectively teaching our youngsters why the First Amendment is so important (click for video).

Nico Perrino says the UK needs to embrace free speech and abandon its affinity for censorship.

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

Samantha Swenson: Professor appeals case alleging anti-white discrimination at Penn State

Former Penn State English professor Zack De Piero claims the school retaliated against him after he objected to mandatory diversity training, violating his First Amendment rights. A district court dismissed De Piero’s case in 2024, an “erroneous” decision his lawyer anticipates an appeals court will reverse. The College Fix reports:

Provost wanted ‘white faculty to “feel the pain” that George Floyd endured,’ lawsuit alleges

Oral arguments are scheduled for Thursday in Zack De Piero’s lawsuit against Pennsylvania State University, alleging the public institution subjected him to a racially hostile work environment and retaliated against him after he objected to diversity trainings.

De Piero, a former English professor at the public university’s Abington campus, filed the lawsuit in 2023. Mountain States Legal Foundation Senior Attorney James Kerwin, who is representing De Piero, told The College Fix the case is scheduled to be argued at the Third Circuit Court of Appeals this Thursday.

“We are confident the court of appeals will reverse the lower court’s erroneous decision and reinstate Professor De Piero’s lawsuit,” Kerwin said in a recent email.

A district court dismissed the professor’s case last year, ruling that De Piero did not present “sufficient evidence” to support his First Amendment claims. However, he and his attorneys appealed.

The appeal argues that the lower court erred by failing to properly recognize that Penn State’s alleged actions could constitute unlawful discrimination, retaliation, and violations of De Piero’s constitutional rights.

“Penn State created an environment rife with discrimination, and it violated the law,” Kerwin told The Fix.

Read the whole thing.

Joseph Burgo: Why Traditional Psychotherapy Is Failing Today’s Gender-Confused Teens

We tend to think of speech restrictions as threats imposed on individuals by governments, but they have much broader consequences. In medicine, for instance, ideological constraints can prevent psychotherapists from speaking plainly, and thus treating their patients appropriately. Clinical psychologist Joseph Burgo lays out the details at Reality’s Last Stand:

Thanks in large part to Dr. Anna Hutchinson speaking and writing extensively about her experience at the Tavistock’s GIDS, we know how difficult if not impossible it can be to maintain and pursue an open-minded, questioning approach to trans-identified clients within an institute devoted to gender ideology. One remedy, she notes, is for psychologists to move into private practice to escape institutional environments that discourage traditional psychotherapeutic approaches.

Such a move might offer relief from institutes captured by gender ideology, but psychotherapists can’t escape a society saturated in the same belief system. Even solo practitioners today find it challenging to practice as we might once have done because the world around us disputes our authority as experts, undermines family structures that have traditionally supported our work, and replaces long-held understandings of human nature with newly minted and unevidenced theories presented as unassailable truth.

In other words, it’s difficult to practice traditional psychotherapy in a milieu so different from the social and scientific environment which gave birth to our ideas about human psychology and the drivers of psychopathology.

Read it all.

Autumn Billings: Prairieland Verdict: Texas Man Found Guilty of Transporting Constitutionally Protected Pamphlets

At Reason, Autumn Billings outlines the inherent risk in the government using anti-terrorism statutes to suppress rioting and related crimes. While acknowledging that violence isn’t protected speech, Billings says overzealous prosecutors sometimes abuse their authority and punish people whose only crime was speaking their minds:

A federal jury in Fort Worth, Texas, convicted eight protestors on charges ranging from rioting to attempted murder after a noise demonstration turned violent outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Prairieland Detention Center last summer. Federal prosecutors claim the group was part of an “Antifa Cell” and provided “material support to terrorists.” First Amendment legal scholars have raised serious concerns about the chilling effect these prosecutions and convictions will have on future political dissent.

One man’s conviction emphasized just how far that chilling effect could go. Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada, the husband of one of the convicted protestors, wasn’t present at the time of the July 4 demonstration. After receiving a call from his wife, Maricela Rueda, from the Johnston County Jail, in which she told him to do “whatever you need to do” and “move whatever you need to move at the house,” officers began watching Sanchez-Estrada, according to the criminal complaint filed against him.

Shortly after, officers observed Sanchez-Estrada load and move a box from his home to another residence. Sanchez-Estrada was then arrested on state traffic offenses, and officers obtained a search warrant to locate and search the box. Inside, they found “numerous Antifa materials, such as insurrection planning, anti-law enforcement, anti-government, and anti-immigration enforcement documents,” according to a November indictment. Sanchez-Estrada was subsequently charged federally with corruptly concealing a document and conspiracy to conceal documents.

Sanchez-Estrada was convicted on both counts on March 13 and now faces up to 40 years in federal prison. But despite ICE proclaiming in a post on X that the contents of Sanchez-Estrada’s box contained “literal insurrectionist propaganda,” these controversial materials fall squarely under constitutionally protected speech.

Read the rest.

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Rapper-turned-free-speech activist Afroman made headlines last week for beating defamation charges brought by Ohio sheriff’s deputies. Law enforcement executed a search warrant on his home in 2022, suspecting drug possession, drug trafficking and kidnapping.

Never charged with a crime, Afroman used footage from the raid for two music videos, which the deputies claimed contained false statements about them. The jury didn’t buy it: Afroman’s freedom of speech trumped any alleged defamation, they concluded:

Reminder: The government always promises it has your best interest at heart as it further encroaches on your liberty. As Nico Perrino notes, that’s usually not the case.

Censorship isn’t always enforced directly by government officials, but by proxies who benefit from public support. The textbook example? Academics whose research is funded by federal agencies. So says Cato Institute science policy expert Terence Kealey.

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

Simon Olech: Bangor U. debate society refuses to debate conservative Reform UK, prompting backlash

UK-based Bangor University’s debating society refused to allow two conservative speakers to host a Q&A, claiming the event would constitute hate speech. The controversy has sparked calls for the school’s public funding to be eliminated. The College Fix reports:

The Debating and Political Society at Bangor University, located in Wales, recently refused to allow two prominent right-wing speakers from conducting a live Q&A session with students, stating to do so would allow “hate” on campus.

Reform UK, a successor of the Brexit party, touts immigration controls, tax cuts, and deregulation.

The proposed event included a Q&A session from Sarah Pochin, a Reform UK member of Parliament, as well as Jack Anderton, a political campaigner focused on issues including housing and immigration, as part of Anderton’s A New Dawn Tour.

However, the Bangor Debating and Political Society refused their request in mid-February.

“Bangor receives £30 million in state funding a year, much of which comes from Reform-voting taxpayers,” Zia Yusuf, the party’s home affairs spokesman, posted on X. “I am sure they won’t mind losing every penny of that state funding under a Reform government.”

Richard Tice, deputy leader of Reform UK, posted on X: “Simple. In line with our values, if Bangor Uni does not believe in free speech, then British taxpayers should not have to fund them. Perhaps remove all government funding and no student loans for Bangor students.”

Anderton issued a response alongside MP Pochin on X, describing the irony of a debating society that refuses to debate, adding “free speech is under attack” and calling out the universities that “are really not doing their duty in protecting free speech for students and the wider public.”

Read the rest.

Andrew Gilligan: This ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ definition is truly sinister

It’s already illegal in the UK to discriminate against individuals based on their religious beliefs. As a result, Andrew Gilligan at The Spectator wants to know why Britain needs a law that carves out special protections for Muslims. Not only will the proposal strengthen divisive extremists on all sides, Gilligan argues, it will give the government another excuse to justify its already bulging restrictions on speech:

The government’s new official definition of ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ is 144 words long. But in a sign that even ministers now realize what a mess they have made, it is followed by a further tortuously pleading 1,400 words which ‘must be read together’ with it.

You will be relieved to hear, according to this ‘accompanying text,’ that the definition is no threat at all to ‘the fundamental right of every person in the UK to exercise freedom of speech,’ or to ‘academic and political discussion,’ or to ‘criticisms of religion or belief,’ or to ‘debates in the public interest.’

To which I reply: qui s’excuse, s’accuse (he who excuses himself, accuses himself). If this were not a threat to free speech, the government would not need to say so. And to which I also reply: for the state to publish a list of examples of permitted speech sets a deeply sinister precedent, and on subjects far wider than Muslims.

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Yet here is an obvious and open act of two-tier policy. Hatred and discrimination against Muslims are emphatically wrong – but are already illegal. The only purpose of an additional definition must be to create special protections for one faith which do not apply to those of other faiths or none.

Read it all.

Institute for Free Speech: Broad Coalition of Free Speech Organizations and Scholars Urges Supreme Court to Hear Case of Professor Silenced by University’s Threats

An all-star lineup of free-speech advocates is urging the Supreme Court to hear the case of Richard Lowery, a University of Texas (UT) professor who was threatened with punishment for criticizing UT’s DEI policies. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed Lowery’s suit because the school didn’t act on its threats.

The coalition of free speech groups says that’s precisely why the Court must settle the matter: the Fifth Circuit ruling “provides a roadmap for would-be censors to silence public employees without legal consequence”:

A compelling and ideologically diverse coalition of free speech organizations and First Amendment scholars have filed amicus (friend of the court) briefs urging the Supreme Court to hear the Institute for Free Speech case Lowery v. Mills, which challenges a ruling that leaves public employees without legal recourse when government employers silence them through threats rather than formal discipline.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, Institute for Justice, Manhattan Institute, Protect the First Foundation, Cato Institute, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, National Coalition Against Censorship, and a group of more than two dozen leading First Amendment scholars all filed or joined briefs in support of granting the Institute’s petition for the Court to take the case.

The case involves University of Texas (UT) Professor Richard Lowery, who was pressured by university officials to stop publicly criticizing UT’s administration, DEI programs, and funding decisions—or face reduced pay, loss of a lucrative research post, and other consequences. Rather than risk those outcomes, Professor Lowery self-censored. Both the trial court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit acknowledged that UT’s threats would deter “a person of ordinary firmness” from speaking, yet dismissed his First Amendment claim because the university never carried out its threats.

That ruling leaves the Fifth Circuit, which covers Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, at odds with ten other federal appeals courts. While the overwhelming majority of courts ask whether an employer’s conduct would deter a reasonable employee from speaking on matters of public concern, the Fifth Circuit, along with the Southeast’s Eleventh Circuit, require a completed adverse action—a firing, demotion, or formal reprimand—before an employee can sue. These outlier decisions mean that nearly 80 million people—about 23% of the U.S. population—live in states where public employees currently lack meaningful First Amendment protection against employer threats.

The new filings make clear that this gap in constitutional protection deeply troubles advocates across the ideological spectrum.

Read the whole thing.

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Good news out of the 9th Circuit this week: children do indeed have First Amendment rights; their youth is no excuse to silence their speech.

A lesson America’s intellectuals have learned the hard way in recent years: Censorship destroys the public’s trust in experts.

Steve McGuire highlights a concerning poll from the University of Wisconsin. If the results are any indication, dissent from the political orthodoxy on campus is still discouraged.

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

Nigel Biggar: Nine Intellectual Virtues

When we consider the virtues of liberalism, our minds immediately land on concepts like tolerance and individual liberty. But there’s another that shouldn’t be ignored: humility. Dialoguing with our political opponents—rather than silencing them with force—encourages us to listen and consider that we might not be as smart as we first thought. At Quillette, Oxford ethicist Nigel Biggar says this is one of nine intellectual virtues universities ought to cultivate:

Unless we intend to mistake ourselves for gods, we will be aware of our cognitive limits and moral flaws. So, when we first encounter someone else’s speech or writing, we should do so with a sixth virtue, humility. We should face an opponent as an equal, subjecting ourselves to the common rules of evidence and reason. We may have higher professional status and we may be much celebrated, but we should not take ourselves too seriously. We should acknowledge that authorities will sometimes be wrong, especially if they are arrogant, and that amateurs will sometimes be right, especially if they are temperate, careful, patient, and charitable. It is not uncommon for truth to speak from an unlikely quarter.

Humility implies the seventh virtue of docility or teachableness. Aware of our cognitive limits and moral flaws, we should be open to the possibility that we have things to learn and that we might be mistaken in what we think we know. We should therefore always be “docile”—not in the sense of being blindly submissive, but in the original sense of being open to instruction and correction.

If we exercise the virtues of temperance, carefulness, respect, patience, charity, humility, and docility, we will also exercise an eighth virtue: that of thoughtfulness. We will allow the difference between what we have assumed and what another says to provoke the kind of reflection that allows us to think and rethink.

Finally, we should exercise the virtue of courage. To be temperate, respectful, careful, patient, charitable, humble, docile, and thoughtful also makes us vulnerable. That is because, by allowing another person to express their disagreement clearly, we may find some of our most cherished convictions are challenged, threatened, or even overturned. And bound up with those convictions may be a career’s worth of reputation, rewards, and accumulated social status. It is brave, indeed, to give another person the freedom to speak clearly.

Read it all.

Katy Doniger: ACLU claims Ball State’s campus rules violate first amendment rights

Last November, Ball State University implemented two rules restricting campus protests, and apparently issued a semester-long suspension to one student accused of violating the new policies. This week, the ACLU of Indiana said, “not so fast,” filing suit against the school claiming it violated the student’s First Amendment right to free speech:

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana filed two federal lawsuits against Ball State University over a rule that prohibits protests and demonstrations within fifty feet of most campus buildings.

The lawsuits also call into question the use of campus rules to punish students who entered the administration building during normal business hours to leave notes for Ball State’s president. The notes were an effort for the students to express concern about Ball State’s financial ties to Israel.

Read the rest.

Sarah McLaughlin Netflix and…chilled? New UK rules target ‘harmful or offensive’ streaming content

Censorship generally follows a predictable trend: the restrictions begin narrowly, limiting access to only select varieties of “harmful” content. But inevitably, the net widens and regulators start to expand their control. Sarah McLaughlin gives a textbook example from the UK, where officials are trying to crack down on Netflix using a law designed to protect children from illegal internet content:

The United Kingdom isn’t just focused on age-gating and regulating what its citizens can see and do on the internet through its Online Safety Act. Now, officials are setting their sights on what people can stream, expanding their regulatory focus beyond local television channels and into the workings of non-UK companies like Netflix.

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This week, communications regulator Ofcom announced “enhanced” regulation for video-on-demand services with more than 500,000 UK-based users. Some of the requirements will address accessibility features such as subtitles, but there will also be a significant focus on the aired material itself: specifically “harmful or offensive material.” Platforms with user bases of this size will be subject to a forthcoming video-on-demand code modeled on rules already in place against stations like the BBC.

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The risk of fines for ambiguously defined harmful content — and fines will no doubt be a penalty for breaches of the not-yet-written code — could very well pressure streamers like Amazon Prime and Netflix to make editorial decisions not to greenlight content that might be perceived as offensive by UK regulators, including shows and projects intended for a global audience. Companies might decide it isn’t worth the risk of either fines in the UK or the production cost of creating content that will be inaccessible to its UK-based audience.

Read the whole thing.

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An appropriate analogy: speech restrictions are like poison gas—they harm everyone.

It appears our universities have a long way to go when it comes to free speech. Career consequences still keep many academics from speaking their minds, says veteran researcher Jason Locasale.

A school board trustee in Canada was recently fined $750,000 for declaring there are only two genders. This week, one of his colleagues has resigned, anticipating he could face a similarly exorbitant penalty and wouldn’t be able to pay it.