You Have a Right to Record the Cops

Many posts have discussed freedom of speech and the press.

 C.J. Ciaramella at Reason:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit issued a landmark ruling Monday that a Connecticut man had a First Amendment right to film a police station from a public sidewalk, but it also ruled that the officers who arrested the man are immune from his lawsuit.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit held that Keith Massimino, a self-described "First Amendment auditing hobbyist," had a constitutional right to film the exterior of a police department in Waterbury, Connecticut, on an October evening in 2018.

"When the government wants to preserve its privacy, it may build a fence or close a door—but not ban speech," U.S. Circuit Judge Myrna Pérez wrote for the majority.

The panel's opinion creates binding precedent in Connecticut, New York, and Vermont, and, according to the opinion, it makes the 2nd Circuit the ninth federal circuit to agree on the issue. Although the Supreme Court has not ruled on the matter, every circuit court that has considered the issue has found an unambiguous First Amendment right to record and monitor the police, so long as one isn't physically interfering with or obstructing an officer.

"Government Censorship Is Deeply Un-American"

Complaint by ABC et al. against FCC: 

1. Government censorship is deeply un-American.  That fundamental principle predates the Republic, with our Founders recognizing that “the freedom of the press is one of the great[est] bulwarks of liberty.”1  And it is no less true today, as the Supreme Court unanimously 1Va. Declaration of Rights § 12 (adopted unanimously by the Virginia Convention of Delegates, Williamsburg, Va., June 12, 1776). 1 Case 1:26-cv-02902     Document 1     Filed 08/18/26     Page 3 of 46 reaffirmed only two years ago: the government may not “use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression.”  Nat’l Rifle Ass’n v. Vullo, 602 U.S. 175, 188 (2024).   

2. This case concerns the Administration’s sustained effort to do just that.  Acting through the Federal Communications Commission, the Administration has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts.  

3. That campaign began in this Administration’s earliest days and has only intensified since.  Again and again, the Administration has attacked ABC’s speech—the stories its journalists report and the viewpoints its network programs air.  Over time, those attacks have escalated into express demands that ABC be stripped of its broadcast licenses because of its speech. 2   

4. In prosecuting the Administration’s campaign against free speech on network television, the Commission fights on several fronts using its expansive regulatory powers.  What has unfolded, in the words of sitting FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, is “a sustained, coordinated campaign of censorship and control, carried out through the weaponization of the FCC’s authority as a federal regulator and aimed at pressuring a free and independent press and all media into submission.”3   

5. The Administration has not been shy about openly coercing ABC into changing its programming.  For example, in response to on-air comments by ABC’s late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, the FCC’s Chairman issued an ultimatum to Plaintiffs: “We can do this the easy way or 5. The Administration has not been shy about openly coercing ABC into changing its programming.  For example, in response to on-air comments by ABC’s late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, the FCC’s Chairman issued an ultimatum to Plaintiffs: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.  These companies can find ways . . . to take action . . . on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”4   

 6. For months, the Administration has steadily increased the pressure on ABC, culminating in the present threat to the broadcasting licenses of the eight ABC Owned Stations (“the Stations”).  The day after the President objected to additional on-air comments by Mr. Kimmel, the Commission issued an unprecedented order requiring the Stations to file early applications to renew their licenses—years before any of their licenses would have come up for renewal in the ordinary course and allowing only thirty days to file applications which ordinarily take months to prepare.  Until the day before that order issued, the Commission had not called for a renewal application ahead of schedule in more than half a century.  Nor had it ever demanded simultaneous early renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a single broadcast network—much less stations with the record of public service and award-winning journalism like these Stations.  In a contemporaneous interview, the Chairman did not mince words when explaining the Commission’s decision to ramp up its pressure on ABC: “If you didn’t take us seriously, now you should.”5   7. The Commission has demanded a review of the Stations’ licenses extraordinarily early.  For all but two of the Stations, this early review comes before their current license terms have even reached the halfway point, and years before the Commission is statutorily authorized to grant renewal.  That timing underscores the Commission’s true purpose: coercing and retaliating against a network that refuses to bow to the Administration’s demands.

Perceptions of Media Freedom

Many posts have discussed freedom of the press.

Benedict Vigers  at Gallup:

As the world marks World Press Freedom Day this weekend, perceptions of media freedom worldwide show little movement, remaining near the levels recorded each year since 2010. Overall, a median of 64% of adults across 131 countries in 2025 said they believe the media in their country have a lot of freedom, while 30% disagreed.

...

Three in four U.S. adults (75%) in 2025 think the U.S. media have a lot of freedom, among the lowest totals measured in the past 15 years and statistically tied with the other low point of 78% in 2023. This year also marks one of the few times the U.S. has been statistically tied with, rather than ahead of, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in these perceptions.

Since 2022, Americans’ perceptions that the press in their country has a lot of freedom have fallen 11 points (from 86%), compared with a one-point decline in the median among OECD countries. While this decline has been uneven — the measure rebounded slightly in 2024 before dipping again in 2025 — only three other countries have seen larger absolute declines in perceived media freedom than the U.S. since 2022: Ukraine (-18 pts.), Pakistan (-18 pts.) and Morocco (-15 pts.).

 

 

Free Speech and Retired Military Members

At Davos a few weeks ago, Trump said: Usually they say, 'He's a horrible dictator-type person,' I'm a dictator. But sometimes you need a dictator

Previous posts have discussed authoritarian moves by the executive branch.

Judge Richard J. Leon of the District Court for the District of Columbia:

United States Senator Mark Kelly, a retired naval officer, has been censured by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for voicing certain opinions on military actions and policy. In addition, he has been subjected to proceedings to possibly reduce his retirement rank and pay and threatened with criminal prosecution if he continues to speak out on these issues. Secretary Hegseth relies on the well-established doctrine that military servicemembers enjoy less vigorous First Amendment protections given the fundamental obligation for obedience and discipline in the armed forces. Unfortunately for Secretary Hegseth, no court has ever extended those principles to retired servicemembers, much less a retired servicemember serving in Congress and exercising oversight responsibility over the military. This Court will not be the first to do so!

 Worse still, Secretary Hegseth contends that this Court is not yet competent to decide the issues in this case. He and his fellow Defendants argue that military personnel decisions are exempt from judicial review and, in any event, that Senator Kelly should first be required to go through the military appeals process so the military can have the first crack at adjudicating his First Amendment rights. I disagree. This Court has all it needs to conclude that Defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly's First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees. After all, as Bob Constitution demands they receive it! I. Dylan famously said, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."1 To say the least, our retired veterans deserve more respect from their Government, and our Constitution demands they receive it! 

Senator Kelly's First Amendment claim is not only justiciable; he is likely to succeed on the merits. He has also shown irreparable harm, and the balance of the equities fall decidedly in his favor. As such, his motion for a preliminary injunction on his First Amendment claim is hereby GRANTED.

Opinion on Immigrant Officers and Civilian Actions

Many posts have discussed immigration.

Andrew Daniller and J. Baxter Oliphant at Pew:

Amid ramped-up immigration enforcement efforts around the country, Americans overwhelmingly say it is acceptable for ordinary people to record video of immigration arrests. A clear majority also say it’s acceptable for people to share information about where enforcement is happening.

And by wide margins, the public says it’s not acceptable for federal immigration officers to wear face coverings that hide their identities, or to use people’s appearance or language use as a reason for checking their immigration status.

A new Pew Research Center survey of 8,512 U.S. adults conducted Jan. 20-26 finds that:

• 74% say it is acceptable for people to record video of immigration officers while they make arrests.
• 59% say it’s acceptable to share information about where officers are making arrests.

 

Jack Smith Testimony

Many posts have discussed the insurrection of January 6, 2021. 

On New Year's Eve, the GOP majority on the House Judiciary Committee released the transcript of special counsel Jack Smith's December 17 testimony.

Q But the President's statements that he believed the election was rife with fraud, those certainly are statements that are protected by the First Amendment, correct? 

A Absolutely not. If they are made to target a lawful government function and they are made with knowing falsity, no, they are not. That was my point about fraud not being protected by the First Amendment. 

Q I mean, there is a long list of disputed elections, I mean, the election of 1800,  1960, year 2000, where candidates believed they were wronged by the -- you know, because they lost. And there's a long history of candidates speaking out about they believe there's been fraud, there's been other problems with the integrity of the election process. And I think you would agree that those types of statements are sort of at the core of the First Amendment rights of a Presidential candidate, right? 

A There is no historical analog for what President Trump did in this case. As we said in the indictment, he was free to say that he thought he won the election. He was even free to say falsely that he won the election. But what he was not free to do was violate Federal law and use knowing -- knowingly false statements about election fraud to target a lawful government function. That he was not allowed to do. And that differentiates this case from any past history. 

Q A lot of these statements, though, you know, people come into the Oval Office -- I mean, the President isn't conducting his own due diligence. He is receiving people in his office that are telling him these things, whether it be Rudy Giuliani, whether it be John Eastman, whether it be Jeffrey Clark, whether it be Sidney Powell. And, you know,  for the most part, he is just receiving this information and, you know, his statements are almost just regurgitating what these people have told him. I mean, isn't that the case?

A No. And, in fact, one of the strengths of our case and why we felt we had such strong proof is all witnesses were not going to be political enemies of the President. They were going to be political allies.We had numerous witnesses who would say, "I voted for President Trump. I campaigned for Trump President Trump. I wanted him to win." The Speaker of the House in Arizona. The Speaker of the House in Michigan. We had an elector in Pennsylvania who is a former Congressman who was going to be an elector for President Trump who said that what they were trying to do was an attempt to overthrow the government and illegal. Our case was built on, frankly, Republicans who put their allegiance to the country before the party.And so the President got information from people he trusted on other issues. He rejected it whenever it didn't fit him staying in office. And there was a pattern in our case where any time any information came in that would mean he could no longer be President he would reject it. And any theory, no matter how far-fetched, no matter how not based in law, that would indicate that he could, he latched on to that. And we had -- we were confident that we had very strong proof of that pattern. He also, I would just add, very consciously did not try to reach out to the sort of people who have the most expertise on these issues. He reached out to people who he thought could back him up.

Religion and Christmas Messages

Many posts have discussed Christmas.

 Ashley Ahn at NYT:

The Trump administration celebrated Christmas on Thursday by posting a series of religious messages from official government accounts, using language that drew criticism from those who pointed to the country’s separation of church and state.

While many lawmakers in both parties posted universal messages of love, joy and peace on the holiday, a number of cabinet members and agencies made references to Jesus and the religious meaning of Christmas.

“Today we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote. “May His light bring peace, hope, and joy to you and your families.”

Posts by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Homeland Security Department and the Labor Department followed in a similar vein.

...

One of the most extensive Christmas messages was posted by the Homeland Security Department on Christmas Eve. It read, “We are blessed to share a nation and a Savior,” and included a video that featured images including the American flag, Christmas trees, Santa Claus, President Trump and a Nativity scene, along with the words “Remember the miracle of Christ’s birth.”

...

The Homeland Security post also drew strong responses online. Alex Nowrasteh, senior vice president for policy at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said: “Americans don’t share a religion. Our state is secular.”

Timothy Sandefur, the vice president for legal affairs at the conservative Goldwater Institute, said, “Whatever this department of the federal government may say, I appreciate and respect my Jewish fellow Americans.”

Laura Kennedy, a former ambassador who worked in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, said: “I am a Christian. I am also a proud American because our laws were designed to prohibit a national religion.”

Confession

 Many posts have discussed the role of religion in American life.   

Daniel Payne at Catholic News Agency:

Officials in Washington state have agreed to back off a controversial effort to force priests there to violate the seal of confession as part of a mandatory abuse reporting law.

A motion filed in federal district court on Oct. 10 affirmed that state and local governments would stop attempting to require priests to report child abuse learned during the sacrament of reconciliation.

The state attorney general’s office on Oct. 10 said in a press release that clergy would remain mandatory reporters under state law, but prosecutors would agree “not to enforce reporting requirements for information clergy learn solely through confession or its equivalent in other faiths.”

The agreement brings an end to a high-profile and controversial effort by Washington government leaders to violate one of the Catholic Church’s most sacred and inviolable directives, one that requires priests to maintain absolute secrecy over what they learn during confession or else face excommunication.

Washington’s revised mandatory reporting law, passed by the state Legislature earlier this year and signed by Gov. Robert Ferguson, added clergy to the list of mandatory abuse reporters in the state. But it didn’t include an exemption for information learned in the confessional, explicitly leaving priests out of a “privileged communication” exception afforded to other professionals.

The state’s bishops successfully blocked the law in federal court in July, though the threat of the statute still loomed if the state government was successful at appeal.

In the July ruling, District Judge David Estudillo said there was “no question” that the law burdened the free exercise of religion.

...

Well ahead of the law’s passage, Spokane Bishop Thomas Daly had promised Catholics in the state that priests would face prison time rather than violate the seal of confession. “I want to assure you that your shepherds, bishop and priests, are committed to keeping the seal of confession — even to the point of going to jail,” Daly told the faithful in April 2023.

The Washington bishops, meanwhile, noted on Oct. 10 that the Catholic Church has upheld the sanctity of confession “for centuries.”

“Priests have been imprisoned, tortured, and even killed for upholding the seal of confession,” the state Catholic conference said. “Penitents today need the same assurance that their participation in a holy sacrament will remain free from government interference.”

 

"Hate Speech"

From FIRE:

There is no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment. So, many Americans wonder: Is hate speech legal?

Contrary to a common misconception, most expression one might identify as “hate speech” is protected by the First Amendment and cannot lawfully be censored, punished, or unduly burdened by the government — including public colleges and universities.

The Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly rejected government attempts to prohibit or punish hate speech. Instead, the Court has come to identify within the First Amendment a broad guarantee of “freedom for the thought that we hate,” as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes described the concept in a 1929 dissent. In a 2011 ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts described our national commitment to protecting hate speech in order to preserve a robust democratic dialogue:

Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here—inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.

In other words, the First Amendment recognizes that the government cannot regulate hate speech without inevitably silencing the dissent and dialogue that democracy requires. Instead, we as citizens possess the power to most effectively answer hateful speech — whether through debate, protest, questioning, laughter, silence, or simply walking away.

As Justice Louis Brandeis put it, the framers of the Bill of Rights “believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.”

Justice Brandeis argued that our nation’s founders believed that prohibiting “evil counsels” — what today we might call hate speech — would backfire

:They recognized the risks to which all human institutions are subject. But they knew that order cannot be secured merely through fear of punishment for its infraction; that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones. Believing in the power of reason as applied through public discussion, they eschewed silence coerced by law — the argument of force in its worst form. Recognizing the occasional tyrannies of governing majorities, they amended the Constitution so that free speech and assembly should be guaranteed.

The Scopes Trial

Today is the 100th anniversary of the Scopes "monkey trial" verdict. James C. Foster at the Free Speech Center:

The Scopes “monkey trial” was the moniker journalist H. L. Mencken applied to the 1925 prosecution of a criminal action brought by the state of Tennessee against high school teacher John T. Scopes for violating the state’s Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in public schools.

In the case Scopes v. State (1925), Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, but, on appeal, the Supreme Court of Tennessee, pointing to a technicality in the issuance of the fine, overturned Scopes’s conviction, while finding the Butler Act constitutional.

The trial involved A Civic Biology, a textbook by biologist George William Hunter. Today few people remember that the book's discussion of evolution was explicitly racist:

At the present time there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; the American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.

And in light of subsequent events, its discussion of eugenics sounds chilling:

Hundreds of families such as those described above exist to-day, spreading disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites.

If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with success in this country.

Higher Education Fights Back

Many posts have discussed the politics of colleges and universities in the United States.

Harvard President Alan Garber:

Over the course of the past week, the federal government has taken several actions following Harvard’s refusal to comply with its illegal demands. Although some members of the administration have said their April 11 letter was sent by mistake, other statements and their actions suggest otherwise. Doubling down on the letter’s sweeping and intrusive demands—which would impose unprecedented and improper control over the University—the government has, in addition to the initial freeze of $2.2 billion in funding, considered taking steps to freeze an additional $1 billion in grants, initiated numerous investigations of Harvard’s operations, threatened the education of international students, and announced that it is considering a revocation of Harvard’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. These actions have stark real-life consequences for patients, students, faculty, staff, researchers, and the standing of American higher education in the world.

Moments ago, we filed a lawsuit to halt the funding freeze because it is unlawful and beyond the government’s authority. I encourage you to read our complaint.

Yale President Maurie McInnis:

Earlier today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation that proposes to raise the tax on the investment income of Yale and a number of other universities from 1.4% to 21%. Each year, this increased endowment tax would strip from Yale’s budget hundreds of millions of dollars that currently fund financial aid, research, scholarship, and teaching.

This legislation presents a greater threat to Yale than any other bill in memory. Today, I ask you to join me in defending the research that saves lives and keeps America competitive, the faculty who enrich minds and help us make sense of our complex world, and the students who keep our future bright. What is at stake is Yale’s ability to offer financial aid, to contribute to the vitality of our nation’s culture and civic life, and to introduce discoveries and innovations that transform the world.

Chris Cameron at NYT:

A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration’s wide-reaching effort to detain and deport international students, barring the federal government from arresting those students or revoking their visas while the case plays out in court.

Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Northern District of California, who was appointed to the court by President George W. Bush, granted a temporary injunction protecting international students who were among the thousands whose visas were revoked earlier this year without clear justification, writing that government officials had “uniformly wreaked havoc” and “likely exceeded their authority and acted arbitrarily and capriciously” by the mass revocation of students’ immigration status.

“The relief the court grants provides plaintiffs with a measure of stability and certainty,” Judge White wrote in the 21-page order. “That they will be able to continue their studies or their employment without the threat of re-termination hanging over their heads.”

It's not just the "woke" Ivy League.  CAITLIN OPRYSKO at POLITICO:

Hillsdale College has become an exemplar for higher education on the right, even partnering with the White House last month. But the conservative Christian school located in Michigan has turned to K Street in an effort to avoid being swept up in congressional Republicans’ efforts to crack down on “woke, elite universities,” according to a disclosure filing.

Hillsdale last month retained Williams and Jensen to lobby on “specific threats to the institutional and financial independence of the college, primarily related to the higher education endowment tax,” the filing shows. The team of lobbyists working on the account includes Dan Ziegler, who served as House Speaker Mike Johnson’s top policy aide before returning to the firm in March.

— Wealthy universities were first hit with a 1.4 percent excise tax on their endowments in the 2017 GOP tax law. But the reconciliation package approved last week by the House Ways and Means Committee calls for a tiered endowment tax that would see some schools’ rate soar as high as 21 percent.

— Hillsdale dodged an endowment tax once before. During Senate debate on the 2017 tax bill, four Republicans sided with all Democrats to strip out language that would have exempted schools that don’t accept federal financial aid — a provision lawmakers said would have only applied to Hillsdale. But the size of Hillsdale’s endowment, when adjusted for the number of students, fell below the threshold included in the final bill, sparing the college.

— That’s no longer the case. Under the House bill, Hillsdale would be eligible for the lowest rate of 1.4 percent. The bill includes a provision that would exempt certain religious institutions from the endowment tax, though it’s unclear if that would apply to Hillsdale. Hillsdale did not respond to a request for comment.

— The school’s president, Larry Arnn, ripped the House proposal in an op-ed last week that called the changes “not merely bad policy,” but “a profound inversion of the American idea.”

— Arnn argued the bill, as approved by the Ways and Means Committee, “penalizes most severely those institutions that have chosen the harder path of independence,” by refusing federal funds, while leaving “untouched the vast web of colleges and universities sustained by taxpayer dollars, often bloated with bureaucracies committed to fashionable ideas, far removed from the purposes of education.”

— “Worse still,” he continued, “this tax turns the incentives backward; it rewards dependence and punishes self-reliance. It encourages institutions to seek the shelter of government aid, where subsidies can offset tax burdens.”

Going After Journalists

Many posts have discussed freedom of the press.

 

Attorney General Pam Bondi has revoked former Attorney General Merrick Garland’s policy designed to shield the news media from secret government requests for phone, email and other records.

Text of a new memo obtained by NBC News:

Safeguarding classified, privileged, and other…

— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) April 25, 2025

Polarized Concern About Press Freedom

 

Many posts have discussed freedom of the press.

Naomi Forman-Katz snd Kirsten Eddy at Pew:

Overall, seven-in-ten Americans are at least somewhat concerned about potential restrictions on press freedom – a right that is enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This includes 43% who say they are extremely or very concerned. These numbers are almost identical to the findings of an April 2024 survey, when 41% said they were extremely or very concerned and an additional 29% were somewhat concerned.

But in many cases, it is not the same people who are worried. In 2024, during the Biden administration, 47% of Republicans and independents who lean Republican said they were extremely or very concerned about restrictions on press freedoms. Fewer Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (38%) said the same.

Press Freedom: W and L

Michael M. Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullin at NYT:

CBS News entered a new period of turmoil on Tuesday after the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Bill Owens, said he would resign from the long-running Sunday news program, citing encroachments on his journalistic independence.

In an extraordinary declaration, Mr. Owens — only the third person to run the program in its 57-year history — told his staff in a memo that “over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ‘60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.”

“So, having defended this show — and what we stand for — from every angle, over time with everything I could, I am stepping aside so the show can move forward,” he wrote in the memo, which was obtained by The New York Times.

“60 Minutes” has faced mounting pressure in recent months from both President Trump, who sued CBS for $10 billion and has accused the program of “unlawful and illegal behavior,” and its own corporate ownership at Paramount, the parent company of CBS

...

Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, is eager to secure the Trump administration’s approval for a multibillion-dollar sale of her company to Skydance, a company run by the son of the tech billionaire Larry Ellison. She has expressed a desire to settle Mr. Trump’s case, which stems from what the president has called a deceptively edited interview in October with Vice President Kamala Harris that aired on “60 Minutes.”

Katie Robertson and David Enrich at NYT:

A federal jury on Tuesday ruled against Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and Republican vice-presidential nominee, in her yearslong defamation lawsuit against The New York Times. The jury reached the verdict after two hours of deliberations.

Ms. Palin sued The Times in 2017 after the newspaper published — and then swiftly corrected and apologized for — an editorial that wrongly suggested she had incited a deadly shooting in Arizona years earlier.

The case became a bellwether for battles over press freedoms and media bias in the Trump era, with Ms. Palin’s lawyers saying they hoped to use it to attack a decades-old Supreme Court precedent that makes it harder for public figures to sue news outlets for defamation.

This is the second time a federal jury has concluded that The Times was not liable for defaming Ms. Palin in its editorial. The case first went to trial in 2022, and both the jury and the judge ruled in favor of The Times. But last year, a federal appeals court invalidated those decisions, setting the stage for this month’s retrial.

AP and the First Amendment

A ruling from U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden:

 About two months ago, President Donald Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.  The Associated Press did not follow suit.  For that editorial choice, the White House sharply curtailed the AP’s access to coveted, tightly controlled media events with the President.  The AP now sues the White House chief of staff, her communications deputy, and the press secretary (collectively, “the Government”), seeking a preliminary injunction enjoining the Government from excluding it because of its viewpoint. 

 Today, the Court grants that relief.  But this injunction does not limit the various permissible reasons the Government may have for excluding journalists from limited-access events.  It does not mandate that all eligible journalists, or indeed any journalists at all, be given access to the President or nonpublic government spaces.  It does not prohibit government officials from freely choosing which journalists to sit down with for interviews or which ones’ questions they answer.  And it certainly does not prevent senior officials from publicly expressing their own views.   

No, the Court simply holds that under the First Amendment, if the Government opens its doors to some journalists—be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere—it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints.  The Constitution requires no less.   

The Rights of Noncitizens

Many posts have discussed immigration.

María Luisa Paúl at WP:

Legal scholars broadly agree that the U.S. Constitution protects all people within the country’s borders, not just citizens. That includes rights to free speech, freedom of religion and peaceful assembly under the First Amendment, as well as the right to due process.

In a 1953 decision, the Supreme Court maintained that “once an alien lawfully enters and resides in this country he becomes invested with the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to all people within our borders.” Over the following decades, the court extended those constitutional protections to any noncitizen within the country — including those who entered illegally.

But while noncitizens are generally protected from criminal or civil penalties for expressing political views, those same protections don’t always apply in the immigration context, where the government has broad discretion to detain or deport. The Supreme Court has sent mixed messages in its decisions.

“To be frank, it’s really a murky area,” said Tyler Coward, lead counsel for government affairs at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). “The Supreme Court has upheld, back during the Red Scare era, deportations of noncitizens for their involvement with Communist Party politics. But there are other Supreme Court cases where they do uphold noncitizens’ free speech rights.”
...

Noncitizens do not have the same legal protections in immigration court as citizens do in criminal court, Asad L. Asad, a sociology professor at Stanford University, wrote in 2019. For instance, they can be detained without a warrant and have no guaranteed right to a government-appointed attorney. The immigration judges overseeing their cases, Asad added, are “administrative judges under the executive — not judicial — branch of government and subject to replacement should they make decisions unaligned with the goals of the U.S. Attorney General.”

Still, noncitizens have the right to contact a lawyer, to remain silent, to refuse to consent to a search, to request bond and to appeal deportation orders, according to Espíritu. Just like American citizens, they also have a right to due process. Legal defense organizations are mobilizing to assist students and residents caught in the current sweep.

"It's the First Amendment, Stupid."

Juliann Ventura at The Hill:

A Florida judge issued a temporary restraining order against health officials in the state, citing the First Amendment and siding with a group that brought forward a lawsuit alleging that its political speech had been censored in the state after it sponsored an ad in support of an abortion rights ballot initiative.

The lawsuit came after the state’s Department of Health had sent a cease-and-desist letter to television stations in Florida that aired an ad sponsored by Floridians Protecting Freedom in support of Amendment 4, a ballot initiative that would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution and overturn the current ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy

In the court documents, the judge ruled that “political advertisement is political speech — speech at the core of the First Amendment.”

“To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid,” the court documents read.

 

Federal court issues TRO barring Florida from threatening TV stations over Amendment 4 ads. "To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid." pic.twitter.com/NbeLU8WJjS

— Adam Steinbaugh (@adamsteinbaugh) October 17, 2024

It is not "freedom of the press" when newspapers and others are allowed to say and write whatever they want even if it is completely false!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 14, 2016

Tenure, Academic Freedom, and Public Universities

 Ryan Quinn at Inside Higher Ed:

In February, Republican lawmakers in Indiana passed a law saying public colleges and universities must deny tenure to professors who are “unlikely to foster … intellectual diversity.” The legislators left it to university trustees, many of whom are appointed by the governor, to determine what intellectual diversity actually means for faculty members and whether they have provided it.

Professors who earned tenure before the law’s passage aren’t spared from its implications. The statute says that whether they fostered intellectual diversity, and whether they “introduced students to scholarly works from a variety of political or ideological frameworks,” will now be considered in post-tenure reviews required every five years. A bad review could mean losing both tenure and employment.

In May, four faculty members from Indiana and Purdue university campuses sued to invalidate those parts of the law. The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, representing them, wrote in the lawsuit that these provisions impinge upon their First Amendment right to “academic freedom to determine the content of and deliver their instruction, free from interference by the State.”

But Indiana’s attorney general, Republican Todd Rokita, argues that the professors have no such First Amendment right. In an echo of Florida’s ongoing defense of its own legislative attempts to regulate public university classrooms, Rokita’s office wrote in a brief to the federal court that “the classroom curriculum of a public university is government speech set in accordance with State law.”

“The curriculum used in state universities and instruction offered by state employees” is “state speech,” the attorney general’s office wrote, and “plaintiffs”— the professors—”have no right to control how the State speaks.”

The state says the professors are “claiming a brand new, state-university specific ‘First Amendment right to academic freedom.’”

That last line is one of the “gratuitous stupidities” in the attorney general’s brief, wrote Steve Sanders—an Indiana University at Bloomington law professor who’s not involved in the case—in an essay on Medium Friday. The U.S. Supreme Court recognized decades ago that the First Amendment protects public university professors’ academic freedom; in 1967, the majority found that academic freedom is “a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.”

Ten Commandments and Denominational Differences

Many posts have discussed the role of religion in American life.    

Steven Lubet at The Hill:

Posting the Ten Commandments is an essentially religious act — not only because it favors religion over non-religion, but also because it invariably favors one faith tradition over others.

The Louisiana statute requires a distinctly Protestant text, with Elizabethan language based on the King James Bible, which differs significantly from the versions used by Catholics, Jews and others. Some differences are inconsequential, but others have deep theological implications.

The Ten Commandments first appear in Exodus, and again in Deuteronomy. Although it is clear that God gave Moses a covenant of Ten Commandments, the relevant Exodus chapter comprises 17 verses, with no instructions for numbering or organizing them into 10 laws.

It is an act of interpretation to reduce the 17 verses to 10 poster-sized commandments, omitting some while abbreviating or combining others. Thus, any specific text always denotes a choice for one tradition or another.

The first commandment for Jews is “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” This commandment is missing from Christian texts, as it is from the Louisiana statute, likely because it is not considered an imperative (the Hebrew speaks of 10 d’varim, or words, rather than commandments.)

The Jewish second commandment — “You shall have no other gods before me”– is where Christians begin, as does the Louisiana legislature (using King James’s “thou” and “shalt”), with numerical adjustments down the line.

Theological disputes then arise, as the leading Christian texts diverge. For Protestants, the second commandment is a variation on “Thou shalt not make for yourself a graven image,” which is also used in the Louisiana statute.

This commandment, however, is found nowhere in standard Catholic iterations, which instead divide the erstwhile 10th Commandment — against coveting — in two.

Polarization and Free Speech

At RealClearPolitics, Carl Cannon reports on a new survey:

Traditionally, opposing censorship — whether imposed by government or corporations — was a bedrock principle of liberalism in this country. The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 to promote and defend free expression. And this ideal was at the heart of liberal thought, liberal lawmaking, and liberal jurisprudence during most of the 20^th century. But times change. And notwithstanding the controversial current push by social conservatives to denude public school libraries of content they dislike, the new RealClear Opinion Research poll is the latest to document the gradual change that has taken place on the left when it comes to this free expression. Here are some of its findings:

• Republican voters (74%) and independents (61%) believe speech should be legal “under any circumstances, while Democrats are almost evenly divided. A bare majority of Democrats (53%) say speech should be legal under any circumstances, while 47% say it should be legal “only under certain circumstances.”

• Nearly one-third of Democratic voters (34%) say Americans have “too much freedom.” This compared to 14.6% of Republicans. Republicans were most likely to say Americans have too little freedom (46%), while only 22% of Democrats feel that way. Independents were in the middle in both categories.

• Although majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents agree the news media should be able to report stories they believe are in the national interest, this consensus shifts when it comes to social media censorship. A majority of Democrats (52%) approve of the government censoring social media content under the rubric of protecting national security. Among Republicans and independents, this percentage is only one-third.

• Poll respondents were read this statement: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Only 31% of Democratic voters “strongly agreed” with that sentiment, compared to 51% of Republicans.

• Fully three-fourths of Democrats believe government has a responsibility to limit “hateful” social media posts, while Republicans are more split, with 50% believing the government has a responsibility to restrict hateful posts. (Independents, once again, are in the middle.)

• Democrats are significantly more likely than Republicans to favor stifling the free speech rights of political extremists. Also, Republicans don’t vary by the group: Only about half of GOP voters favor censorship — whether asked about the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis, or the Communist Party.