Miller time / In the pink / Just joshing

Miller time. Incoming White House chief of staff Stephen Miller has plans for a crackdown on freedom of the press, including the prospect of arresting journalists to force them to reveal their sources, according to leaked documents obtained by The Atlantic.
■ Three news outlets that were denied access to the White House and Air Force One to report on President Trump are beefing up their legal complaint to compel his administration to obey a judicial order.
■ Cleveland’s Plain Dealer reversed course and endorsed a candidate in the bitterly fought Ohio gubernatorial race between Republican Vivek Ramaswamy and Democrat Amy Acton after readers demanded it take a stand. Readers still want newspapers to take a leadership role when warranted, Free Speech Center director Ken Paulson wrote.
■ If you continually wonder why misleading campaign ads are allowed to air on television, The News & Observer can explain.

In the pink. Dads banned from school grounds for wearing pink wristbands to protest transgender athletes playing high school girls’ sports have won their two-year First Amendment battle against a New Hampshire school district.
■ Conservative Supreme Court justices last week appeared to support a religious-freedom challenge by two Catholic preschools concerning a Colorado requirement that they enroll children of gay or transgender parents or lose public funding.
■ The Satanic Temple organization in Iowa can hold a one-day holiday event in the state capitol, a federal judge has ruled.
■ A 2024 law that bans employers in California from holding mandatory meetings in which political or religious views are conveyed remains on hold after a recent ruling.

Order up. A longtime Kansas burger establishment, The Cozy Inn, won its lengthy free-speech fight against the City of Salina over a UFO-themed mural.
■ Hosts of the popular progressive podcast “I've Had It” lost several sponsors after laughing at an insensitive joke about slain conservative influencer Charlie Kirk.

■ A U.S. district judge will hear a suspended University of Kentucky law professor’s request to stop the university’s 15-month investigation of his public criticisms of Israel.
■ A federal judge ruled that the city of Houston violated the First Amendment when it tried to stop a volunteer group from distributing free food outside a downtown library.

Just joshing. President Trump said he was only kidding about giving the White House press secretary job to the CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
■ Saying the president was “grasping at straws,” a federal judge threw out Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over its reporting of his personal ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
■ Following an outcry over the potential web scraping of news sites, Meta has delayed the launch of new automated software terms for its business accounts.
■ Police orders demanding that X block the online accounts of prominent free-speech groups in India were fake, the social media company acknowledged in court, Reuters reported.

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Carr-jack / No open house / On or off?

Carr-jack. FCC Chair Brendan Carr again has threatened television broadcasters, this time over the reporting of political polls he and President Donald Trump deem to be “fake.”
■ Denied access to Air Force One and to the pool reporters accompanying the president, CNN is considering new legal action against the Trump administration.

■ Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate arrested by ICE agents during a campus protest last year, has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to prevent his deportation.

■ A Tennessee state representative has filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the city of Memphis after he was banned from council meetings, alleging the city council’s public-comment policies unconstitutionally restrict free speech.

Misleading fine. A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay a $25 billion penalty for having misled users about their data privacy. It is one of the largest fines levied against a tech giant.
■ A shrinking local press across the country is making it easier for public officials to deny credentials to journalists and to shut them out of government spaces, according to a Poynter report.
■ The U.S. Supreme Court has its best chance at protecting freedom of the press with investigative reporter Catherine Herridge’s source-confidentiality appeal, argued law professor and author Jonathan Turley in The Hill.

■ Names of the confidential sources who gave major scoops to legendary reporter Bob Woodward are exposed in his new memoir.

No open house. A split District of Columbia Circuit panel sided with a multifaith coalition that challenged the Trump administration’s policy allowing ICE agents to freely enter houses of worship.

■ The U.S. Supreme Court is set to rule on the constitutionality of a Colorado preschool program that offered free access to both public and private schools provided they adhere to antidiscrimination rules. Catholic preschools have objected to requirements that they serve children regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity of freedom of religion grounds.

■ A school district that told students to hide religious material in backpacks has settled its case against religious-education nonprofit LifeWise Academy.

On or off? A Maryland congressman was wrong when he challenged a student reporter’s right to record his press conference. Now, here is what every journalist needs to know about the all-party consent law, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
■ First Amendment audits, or filming the actions of individuals in public places, are not new but technology has made them more common, says political science professor John R. Vile.
■ The University of Maryland has agreed to First Amendment training for its athletics department following an incident where campus police were called to investigate “suspicious activity” outside the football facility. Two student reporters were there waiting to interview players.
■ CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, one of the most visible international news correspondents for more than 40 years, has announced she is leaving the network.

■ Jim Knipfel, the fedora-wearing Slackjaw columnist who documented his chaotic life for readers of alternative publications, has passed away at 61.

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No, Justice / Dance partners / Free form

No, Justice. Five major TV networks are being investigated by the Justice Department over potential antitrust law violations connected with their halt to White House pool reporting.
■ At a court hearing, media attorneys asked a federal judge to prevent the Trump administration from barring reporters from the White House.
■ The government argument for President Trump’s media ban threatens the entire free press, declared First Amendment attorney Caitlin Vogus in an MS NOW commentary.
■ ABC tells a federal judge that Trump’s Federal Communications Commission is holding the network’s “head on the guillotine.”

Dance partners. Even with a pledge from CEO David Ellison that it would maintain editorial independence, CNN’s future is uncertain now that new owner Skydance has placed two titans of American television news under the same roof.
■ The Paramount-Warner merger has sparked press-freedom fears, in part due to Ellison family ties to President Trump and Israel, Al Jazeera reported.
■ In a case that touched on free speech and judicial ethics, the U.S. Supreme Court did not reinstate a Pennsylvania judge who was suspended for partisan Facebook posts.
■ Supreme Court justices rejected an appeal that challenged a Michigan school district’s ban on “Let’s Go Brandon” shirts in public schools.

Bound for bans. Public schools banned nearly 12,000 books over the past year, according to a new study from PEN America. Many of the bans took place in Florida and Texas, where restrictive laws were passed that pushed for removals.
■ Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) blocked an effort by Congress to unanimously pass a Kids Online Safety Act.
■ A Florida State University shooting lawsuit has prompted the question of whether AI chatbots have First Amendment protections, according to a Miami Herald report.

“Shrek’’ undressed. A lewd image of the animated-movie ogre that was texted to a Republican state senator raised questions in an Ohio courtroom about the boundaries of free speech and harassment, The New York Times reported.
■ A year after the U.S. Supreme Court deadlocked on a Catholic charter school decision, another case is asking whether religious charter schools are constitutional.
■ In a new book, Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito called the high court’s same-sex marriage decision a “decisive” turn against religious liberty, ABC News reported.
■ A Colorado preschool case in front of the Supreme Court will test the boundaries of LGBTQ rights and religious freedom.

Free form. Stars and Stripes has shown how well government-funded journalism can work if it is free to report the truth, a journalism professor explained in The Conversation.
■ Forty years after a “crash” that quieted a science boom, media experts ponder whether science journalism is on its last legs.
■ Take a test to see if you have a good local newspaper and, if you do, never take it for granted.

■ Freedom of the press is a public right, not a privilege reserved for journalists and media companies, said former CBS News reporter Scott Pelley in a hometown interview.

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Court order / Poor view / Get with God?

Court order. Against President Donald Trump’s continued efforts to curtail free speech and a free press, American courts have used the First Amendment as a first defense, reported CNN’s Brian Stelter.
■ A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore White House access to journalists from three news outlets, calling the ban unconstitutional on due process grounds.
■ Trump’s action against the press is “clearly unconstitutional” and a clear case of viewpoint discrimination, reasoned Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University.
■ U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche on ABC’s This Week said that what the Trump administration considers “one-sided news” is a national security issue that warrants barring the press.
■ When asked about the Trump ban, Pope Leo XIV affirmed the need for media to cover public figures, telling reporters that “you are all welcome” at his events.

Bad ‘Love.’ The Trump administration’s television ad urging Americans to “defeat communism” is an apparent breach of a long-running White House practice of separating public funding from political advertising, USA Today reported.
■ Legislation to bar government officials from pressuring private companies to censor speech was approved by the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee. The decision was reached after committee members cited threats from the Trump administration against late-night talk shows, Reuters reported.
■ Cases concerning free speech and religious freedom will be among the large docket items before justices as the U.S. Supreme Court begins its October term, wrote Jonathan Turley for The Hill.
■ A U.S. District Court judge ordered the Department of Human Services to stop violating the First Amendment rights of a man who emailed criticisms of an ICE director and was threatened with arrest.
■ A judge in Iowa has dismissed a Trump lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and its former pollster over what the president called inaccurate poll results.

Poor view. A writer/humorist who watched an hour of Trump TV recalled in an opinion piece for The Guardian that it was full of the president’s vanity and myopia but also deeply dull.
■ Journalists have followed the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics for a century, but now the age of artificial intelligence has prompted editors to give it a reboot.
■ Americans do value press freedom although some support government restrictions on reporting in some instances, a Pew Research Center study showed.
■ Active-duty military members became de-facto photojournalists when they leaked photos of damaged U.S. military planes and bases to CBS News.
■ A secret battle between the Department of Justice and tech giants over the disclosure of a reporter’s LinkedIn interactions was revealed during an argument in federal court, Politico reported.

Get with God? U.S. Air Force airmen and guardians face uncertainty over completing a mandatory directive to align their religious beliefs with one of 31 options on the Department of Defense’s standardized list of religious affiliation codes. Unlike on past lists, atheism is not a choice, raising freedom from religion concerns.
■ A Tennessee law that prevented adults from giving information to minors about out-of-state abortions will remain blocked, a federal three-judge panel has ruled.

■ Attorneys for multifaith and nonreligious Arkansas families have urged an appellate court to block a state law mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in all public-school classrooms, the ACLU reported.
■ A federal judge has cleared the way – for now -- for Oklahoma to open the nation’s first religious charter school.

■ Billy Graham’s granddaughter, Cissie Graham Lynch, is President Trump’s pick to serve as the next U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom.

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Stifling speech / Unfiltered / Bore witness

Stifling speech. With petty clashes with reporters seemingly serving as decoys, President Trump in his second term is orchestrating a sweeping campaign to control speech in America, according to a news analysis in The New York Times.
■ Accountability NOW USA’s lawsuit decision over public protests reinforced the belief that the government cannot shut down free speech that criticizes the president, a commentary from the ACLU proclaimed.
■ Texas candidate James Talarico said the Trump administration is committing a “most dangerous form of cancel culture” by pressuring TV stations to reconsider their content, CNN reported.
■ How a college football eligibility rule became a testy First Amendment issue for Louisiana State University is explained by John R. Vile, a political science professor at Middle Tennessee State University.
■ New York’s largest charter school network has filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the state’s education commissioner for failing to release Advanced Placement exam results to U.S. News & World Report for its annual high school rankings.

Defend and protect? Attorneys now are being added to the list of advisers for high school newspapers as censorship threats from inside the institutions escalate, The Guardian reported.
■ College free-speech rankings rose slightly on a majority of campuses following a year of dealing with difficult topics, such as the murder of Charlie Kirk and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That’s according to the seventh annual survey from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
■ “The American university was built to be a place of friction,” wrote a university president in a Fox News opinion piece to mark the anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s death. He called on other college presidents to adopt a “real free-expression policy” on campus and defend it.
■ A professor who parodied university-approved “land acknowledgment” in his syllabus received a $600,000 settlement in his viewpoint discrimination lawsuit against the University of Washington.

Unfiltered. Social media platform TikTok misled consumers about the company’s efforts to filter inappropriate content away from minors, a Texas judge has ruled. Prosecutors alleged employees knew TikTok’s “restrictive mode” did not work, The Hill reported.
■ Despite industry warnings that artificial intelligence technology is moving too fast, President Trump downplayed those fears while adding that he did not want to cede America’s edge over China in global AI competition.
■ In a court filing, the Trump administration contends that OpenAI’s unauthorized use of copyrighted New York Times content was defensible as “fair use.”
■ By letting justices decide what, if any, public records will be made available, the U.S. Supreme Court has become too secretive, contended Lauren Harper, the first Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
■ The Maine Supreme Court upheld the right of a father to decide whether to send his daughter to a church he considers problematic.

Landmark Howl. More than 70 years ago, a defining work of the Beat Generation, Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl and Other Poems,” generated a high-profile obscenity trial and reshaped free speech in the United States.
■ The continued harassment and intimidation by Memphis Safe Task Force agents of people documenting their activity is a violation of First Amendment rights, the American Civil Liberties Union has claimed in a federal court filing.
■ Former longtime NBA announcer Grant Napear has lost his free-speech fight over his firing for a tweet related to the Black Lives Matter protests.
■ A bill proposed by the New York City Council making it easier to revoke press credentials would curb supporters of accused killer Luigi Mangione who present themselves as journalists.

■ A federal judge refused to block the Pentagon’s firing of Stars and Stripes staff members.

Bore witness. With memories still fresh after 25 years, journalists from the Associated Press shared what they heard, saw, and felt on Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center towers were attacked.
■ “We are waist-deep in quicksand and still sinking,” was how one editor reacted to the staff cuts made by the McClatchy newspaper chain.

■ The Bari Weiss era of “60 Minutes” began Sunday with a few tweaks and little overhaul, according to media reporters at The New York Times.
■ Former “60 Minutes” managing editor Guy Campanile, fired from CBS News after 34 years, wrote that he and other terminated colleagues “refused to be accomplices in the destruction of the most prestigious news program on American television,” Variety reported.
■ Maria Bartiromo has not given a reason for her leaving Fox News, but a New York Times news analysis provides insights into the former Fox Business host’s downfall at the network.

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On notice / Battle ready / Poll troll?

On notice. Meta’s landmark, $18 billion social media-addiction settlement shifts focus onto TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms that may be next on the California attorney general’s firing line, reported CNBC.
■ TikTok reached a $400 million settlement with a case involving the company’s alleged illegal gathering of children’s information, The New York Times reported last week.
■ A U.S. district judge has barred the Trump administration from retaliating against AI firm Anthropic from the federal government, determining that the punishment violated First Amendment protections.
■ The $50 million judgment against Infowars’ Alex Jones for false claims about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was reduced to $6 million by the Texas 3rd Court of Appeals, NBC News reported.

Hostile territory. Tensions between presidents and the press have existed since George Washington took office, but no chief executive has attacked the news media in such a relentless and retaliatory manner as Donald Trump, according to Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University.

■ The Trump administration is using an obscure law to snoop on unions, nonprofits, and especially journalists, in an alarming maneuver to obtain private information, The Guardian reported.
■ President Trump has vowed to report “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker to the FCC for “rebuke or punishment” over her apparently accurate comments about mixed endorsement results.

■ The president cannot deport students for criticizing Israel, a federal judge in California ruled on behalf of Stanford University students.
■ A free-speech group has condemned the use of passages from ex-FBI Director James Comey’s novel by prosecutors to build a case that he threatened to kill President Trump.

Battle ready. David McCraw, lead newsroom lawyer for The New York Times, just may be the tip of the spear defending U.S. press freedoms under attack almost daily, explained Brier Dudley in a Seattle Times opinion piece.
■ An Alabama jury awarded $9.25 million in damages to a college basketball player it found had been defamed in New York Times reporting of a fatal shooting in Tuscaloosa.
■ Florida International University likely violated the First Amendment rights of students who staged a silent anti-ICE protest, a federal judge has ruled.
■ After objections to its censoring of a student newspaper over a cartoon critical of ICE, a Nebraska school district adopted a new policy that gives administrators formal power to restrict student journalism.

Poll troll? Calling it a short-term social experiment, a previously unknown organization, Median Strategies, posted fabricated poll results on political races in three states that were shared on social media and carried on news outlets. The results were later retracted without explanation.
■ Continuing its battle with the Trump administration over broadcast licensing, ABC has taken the rare step of suing the Federal Communications Commission on First Amendment grounds, according to Associated Press reports.
■ An arbitrator has ordered The Washington Post to reinstate black opinion writer Karen Attiah, who was fired for social media posts she made after the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk last year.
■ Civil rights groups have made public-records requests in five Tennessee school districts for documents detailing their decisions to display the Ten Commandments in their K-12 schools.

Dolly would. Media-savvy Dolly Parton, who died last week at 80, is remembered as an American hero and icon of inclusion by writer and editor Andi Zeisler in a Salon commentary.
■ Citing the late Dolly Parton in his ruling, a federal judge has struck down a Texas ban on drag shows, telling anyone offended by them: “just don’t go.”
■ Staff members from the Stars and Stripes military news outlet have sued to challenge their firings by the Pentagon, calling the action a violation of their free-speech rights.
■ White nationalists have mapped out strategies to target the rural areas of the country where local news outlets continue to disappear, investigative reporter Phil Williams discovered.

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Not so fast / Plate shift / Harm costs

Not so fast. A plan to sell early access to Truth Social posts prompts a federal lawsuit against President Donald Trump by free-press groups that claim such a scheme violates the First Amendment.
■ Remember when President Trump vowed to “bring back free speech?” Well, in 75 judicial rulings he tried to stifle it, Reuters reported.

■ The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected for a second time a request by President Trump to review the $5 million civil judgment against him after he was found to have sexually abused and defamed writer E. Jean Carroll. 

■ Despite being met with shrugs and silence from Republicans, President Trump’s threat to sue a liberal think tank is an affront to the First Amendment, declared the editorial board of The Washington Post.

Plate shift. A Virginia man’s anti-police license plate is in the fast lane of a potential landmark free-speech case that could determine whether a vanity plate constitutes private speech or government speech.
■ West Point has dropped its faculty-speech rule after its longest-serving law professor fought against the policy, claiming it violated his First Amendment rights.
■ A federal appeals court is examining a defamation claim by New England lobster fishermen that has raised First Amendment questions.
■ Convinced that a state cannot mandate education or control what children are taught, parents in Nebraska have filed a lawsuit arguing that school choice is a First Amendment issue.

Blessing in disguise? A little-noticed Supreme Court case, in which an Ohio man was sent a cease-and-desist notice after hosting a prayer session in his home, could have a big impact on where people can gather to pray, according to a CNN report.
■ Street preachers are taking First Amendment battles to court, amplifying a defense of their free-speech rights, USA Today reported.
■ Florida has settled a free-speech lawsuit with a former state wildlife agency employee who claimed she was wrongly fired for a social media post criticizing the late Charlie Kirk.
■ A top editor at Forbes was dismissed from his job after reportedly accepting $6 million from the founder of a company that does business with the magazine in publishing the rankings of wealth advisers.

Harm costs. Meta has been ordered by a New Mexico court to pay $567 million to address perceived harms to young people from its online platforms Instagram and Facebook.
■ In the latest wave of lawsuits against it, Meta is heading back to federal court this week to fend off accusations that its products are designed to hook children.

■ A federal prosecutor has sued the U.S. Justice Department, saying his 2025 firing over a years-old anti-Trump blog post, written when he was a private citizen, violated his First Amendment rights. 

■ Florida’s attorney general is leveraging the state retirement fund’s investment in The New York Times to probe the newspaper’s editorial practices, Politico reported.

An active life. Mary Morello, a free-speech activist who defended artists against “enemies of freedom” that included Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), has died at 102.
■ A judge has halted the $800 daily contempt fine levied against journalist Catherine Herridge while she appeals her confidential-source case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
■ Former CNN anchor Don Lemon has asked a federal judge in Minnesota to dismiss the criminal civil rights charges against him, claiming he is being targeted for vindictive prosecution by the Trump administration.
■ The small town of Marion, Kan., agreed to pay $850,000 to a former reporter to end her federal lawsuit stemming from a 2023 raid on her newspaper’s offices.

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Seashelled / Justice serves / Post hole

Seashelled. Former FBI Director James Comey wants a judge to dismiss federal charges against him for posting “86 47” in a photo of seashells, claiming it was political speech and not a threat against President Donald Trump.
■ Local ABC television stations targeted by the Federal Communications Commission gained passionate defenders who champion free speech and press freedom, according to CNN’s Brian Stelter.
■ A U.S. reporter is fighting back after border patrol agents seized his cellphones in what appeared to be the latest Trump administration move to crack down on members of the media whose reporting it disagrees with, The Guardian reported.
■ A new media ecosystem that bypasses legacy institutions to move further left is reshaping Democratic politics, according to the Associated Press’ Ali Swenson.

Fall from Earth. Fear of deepfakes prompted the removal of a Google Earth feature that allows users to create AI-generated satellite images just a day after its launch.
■ Elon Musk has sued the state of Minnesota over a law that bans “nudification” technology, a first test to see how far states might go in constitutionally regulating AI.
■ Meta has agreed to a deal to use Newsmax to train its AI products on far-right media, Popular Information reported.
■ Thousands of authors will get $3,000 each from Anthropic after a federal judge approved a $1.5 billion copyright settlement. The AI company used pirated copies of the authors’ works to train its Claude chatbot.
■ A U.S. district judge has blocked a South Dakota law banning advertising about abortion pills. The ruling was in response to a lawsuit that argued a ban violated free-speech rights.

Justice serves. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch declared the country was not founded on “one race or one religion,” pushing back against comments made by Vice President J.D. Vance that Christianity is America’s creed.
■ President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission can proceed after a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit from an interfaith group that claimed the members selected lacked balanced viewpoints.
■ Arguing falsely that the First Amendment does not apply to state governments, a Tennessee candidate for governor has pledged to ban mosques and non-Christian religions if elected.
■ The federal government accumulated the highest-ever backlog of public records requests in 2025 despite rejecting a record number of them, raising concerns over Freedom of Information Act compliance, according to The New York Times.

Brandon’s back? Brothers who were banned from wearing “Let’s Go Brandon” shirts in their public-school classrooms want the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that schools cannot censor political messages that are not “plainly profane or lewd.”
■ A Florida English professor, fired after assigning a story about a teacher who talks about sex with her students, has sued to get her job back.
■ An Oregon school counselor’s display of books reinforcing traditional gender roles -- He is He and She is She -- to students was not protected by the First Amendment because it was presented in his capacity as a government employee and not protected as personal speech, a federal appeals court has ruled.
■ U.S. college policies that restrict student expression continue to decline, according to the latest “Spotlight on Speech Codes” report by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Post hole. Without giving a reason, the opinion editor of The Washington Post abruptly resigned after only a year on the job.
■ A new slate of correspondents and contributors has joined “60 Minutes,” including former CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell and Ross Douthat, a conservative opinion columnist at The New York Times.
■ The rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association dinner saw President Trump serve up a rambling, insult-filled speech, heavy on crass, light on humor, according to the Associated Press.
■ The Justice Department, chastised by a federal judge for sloppy work, has withdrawn the subpoenas that would have compelled New York Times reporters to testify about sources.

■ A new DHS regulation that reduces the length of a foreign journalist’s visa needs congressional intervention to limit the damage, according to an opinion piece in The Hill.

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Blockbuster / Push to pull / To a whisper

Blockbuster. A U.S. district judge has temporarily paused Paramount’s $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, after a dozen states sued to block it, arguing the deal would create a media behemoth with the power to raise film and television prices.

■ Following years of school administrators using it to censor student expression, the Supreme Court’s Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier decision needs to be revisited, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression concluded.
■ Why do free-speech debates make us so angry? Matei Candea, a University of Cambridge professor, found that even the answer is up for debate, in a commentary for The Guardian.

■ Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act,” a broad ban on what can be discussed in public-university classrooms, has been blocked by a federal appeals court.

Push to pull. Can President Donald Trump revoke the broadcast licenses of ABC and NBC for the networks’ decision not to air his speech? Legal experts say he cannot, USA Today reported.
■ U.S.-based advocacy groups claim that the Trump administration’s sanctions on the International Criminal Court violate free-speech protections.

■ A New York startup tattoo shop looking to expand to other states has sued South Carolina over parlor restrictions that it says violates the First Amendment by treating ink on skin as second-class speech.

■ A food truck business that has fed patrons outside the Indiana Statehouse for nearly two years was directed to roll away as a result of its suggestive slogan and now the situation has served up First Amendment implications.

Pressing issue. The subpoenas issued to New York Times reporters is an escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign to control and intimidate news outlets, declare media analysts who view it as an unprecedented threat to press freedom.
■ The dispute over the equal-time rule for “The View” has escalated as ABC pushes back against FCC regulators, the Associated Press reported.
■ Two House Republican lawmakers have urged the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case that they say would strengthen First Amendment protections for street preachers, Fox News reported.

That’s settled. Professors, fired for online comments about the murder of Charlie Kirk, are winning wrongful-termination lawsuits because they have a First Amendment right to speak their minds on their own time, explained Bruce Barry, a Vanderbilt University professor emeritus, in a Tennessee Lookout commentary.
■ A new study from the Meta Oversight Board has identified concerns that AI chatbots could spread government influence over online speech ahead of any guardrails being put in place.
■ A technology writer discovered that there was, without her involvement, an AI-generated published biography of her. She then found many AI slop books by fictitious authors.

To a whisper. America’s newspapers are losing their editorial voices. Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center, explored a few ideas on how to restore them in an essay in The Conversation.

■ The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has been accused of political retaliation and free-speech infringement by The New York Times in a countersuit over a discrimination case.
■ U.S. news organizations have asked a federal judge to impose sanctions on OpenAI, which they contend built its technologies using millions of copyrighted news articles.
■ A New Jersey judge contradicted U.S. Supreme Court precedents on First Amendment issues by censoring news coverage of a high-school lockdown, Reason reported.

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First question / Limitless / Escorted out

First question. The decision by President Donald Trump to restrict access to “expressive” artificial-intelligence models, such as Anthropic, is resurrecting an old First Amendment query but with a modern twist.
■ Warnings from federal agents to online critics of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are sparking concern among free-speech advocates that the Trump administration is targeting protected political speech, The Independent reported.
■ In a “messy” democracy, the July 4 march by a white supremacist group in the nation’s capital was protected free speech, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told CNN.
■ The United States’ 250th birthday deserved more than fireworks. The real celebration should have focused on the revolutionary idea that free speech is a “principal pillar of a free government,” explained FIRE’s senior writer Angel Eduardo.
■ Carrying a rifle and a pen at the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn with George Custer and his troops, Mark Kellogg became the first American war reporter to die on the job.

Limitless. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 vote, rolled back federal spending limits on campaign contributions, the majority concluding that limiting the amount of money political parties can spend in collaboration with a candidate is a violation of the First Amendment.
■ Supreme Court justices have refused to revive attorney Alan Dershowitz’s $300 million defamation lawsuit against CNN over his comments that aired during the 2020 impeachment hearing of Donald Trump.
■ The high court declined to intervene on behalf of reporter Catherine Herridge who has been fined $800 a day for refusing to reveal a confidential source.
■ A former inmate cannot sue Louisiana prison officials who cut off his dreadlocks in violation of his Rastafari religious beliefs, the Supreme Court ruled.

Bridge too far. Eyeing a “bridge” between church and state, a Trump-appointed Religious Liberty Commission seems content to build around the First Amendment, according to an NBC News report.
■ Texas public-school students will have mandatory Bible readings in classrooms after the Texas State Board of Education recently approved a required list.

■ A University of Tennessee at Knoxville professor fired for social media criticism of Charlie Kirk after his death has reached a $1.9 million settlement with the school.
■ A Trump administration plan to overhaul the student-loan forgiveness program was struck down on First Amendment grounds by a pair of federal judges.
■ Citing the petition process as “core political speech,” a federal judge struck down several newly passed Arkansas laws on gathering signatures for ballot petitions.

Escorted out. A federal judge has ordered the Pentagon to halt a policy that required journalists to be accompanied by an official escort to have media access there.
■ The Justice Department issued and then withdrew subpoenas that sought to compel reporters to testify before a grand jury.
■ The District of Columbia has agreed to pay $50,000 to a man who was detained illegally for taunting National Guardsmen by playing the Darth Vader theme song from “Star Wars” on his cellphone.
■ A new nonprofit tax structure will allow a struggling Kentucky legacy newspaper to keep publishing. 
■ Tennessee is memorializing the impact of trailblazer Rosetta Miller-Perry, editor and publisher of the country’s only statewide African-American newspaper, who passed away at 91.

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