Taken to task / Dinner plan / Meme streak

Taken to Task. Memphis Safe Task Force agents reportedly have harassed and intimidated civilians who document their activities, in a violation of their First Amendment rights, according to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU.
■ Courts have historically recognized the recording of law enforcement agents performing official actions in public as a First Amendment right.
■ Free speech or race-baiting? The attempted-murder charge against livestreamer “Chud the Builder” has stoked debate in a small Tennessee town.
■ The redrawing of Tennessee congressional districts is being challenged on First Amendment grounds in two federal lawsuits.
 
Mo’ mocking. Although Stephen Colbert has departed the late-night TV airwaves, the other hosts that President Trump has tried to get off the air are mocking him even more, according to a Washington Post analysis.
■ Disney’s claim that “The View” is a bona fide news program, making it exempt from equal-time rules for political candidates, is outrageous, contended David Spector in The New York Post.

■ AG Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, criticized news outlets in a Yale Law School speech for caving to pressure from the Trump administration to alter their coverage.

■ Rather than invite potential controversy, many schools have decided to cancel graduation speeches, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
 
Dinner plan. Weeks after a gunman caused havoc at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner the event has yet to be rescheduled. Some question whether it should continue at all.
■ New York City is reviewing its press-credential policy after supporters of murder suspect Luigi Mangione used city-issued press passes to make inflammatory remarks. First Amendment experts warn that restricting access based on controversial speech would amount to viewpoint discrimination.

■ A federal judge has ruled that the White House must comply with the Presidential Records Act despite an opinion from the Justice Department that it was unconstitutional.
■ Pulitzer Prize-winning newsrooms quietly have been publishing gambling slop as news articles, a Popular Information analysis discovered.
 
Meme streak. Jailed for 37 days over a meme he posted on Facebook after the killing of conservation activist Charlie Kirk, a Tennessee man has settled his First Amendment lawsuit for $835,000.
■ A Florida biologist who was fired over a Charlie Kirk online post and subsequently sued to be reinstated has been awarded $485,000 in a settlement with the state.
■ Courtroom cameras will not be banned in Charlie Kirk’s murder trial, a Utah judge has ruled.
■ Rejecting the prevailing notion of the separation of church and state is one recommendation of President Trump’s religious-liberty commission.
 
Deep thoughts. Media scion James Murdoch, saying he is intent on “longer-form, thoughtful journalism,” is acquiring half of Vox Media for $300 million.
■ For a second time in five months, The New York Times has sued the Defense Department over a required Pentagon escort policy for journalists that it claims violates the First Amendment.

■ Federal charges tied to a church protest has left journalist Georgia Fort unable to interview sources, limiting her ability to do her job.
■ As CBS News Radio has gone silent so has the demand that U.S. media should serve the public interest, declared a Penn State professor in an analysis for The Conversation.
■ Longtime reporter and editor Frank Gibson, who founded an open-government coalition in Tennessee to educate journalists and citizens that eventually helped shape public-records law, has died.

Continue reading →

ABC vs. FCC / Lesson plan / Televisionary

ABC vs. FCC. In the most aggressive defense taken by a television network against the Trump administration, ABC has accused the Federal Communications Commission of violating its free-speech rights.
■ President Trump’s wrath against James Comey and Jimmy Kimmel again illustrated his contempt for freedom of speech, Reason’s Jacob Sullum reported.
■ The First Amendment favors former FBI Director James Comey in the ‘8647’ case launched by the Justice Department. Here is why.

■ While Justice Department lawyers work to defend Donald Trump in lawsuits against him, his Truth Social posts are providing a trove of evidence for those challenging his actions in court, CBS News reported.

■ The cancellation by the Trump administration of more than $100 million in humanities grants was unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled.

Volunteer State hypocrisy. Tennessee legislation has turned the right of free speech into a tool held by a de facto one-party state that forces a preferred ideology onto the public while stifling any semblance of dissent, according to a commentary in the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
■ The implications of Tennessee’s Charlie Kirk Act on state college campuses are examined by Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University.
■ Three members of a family have been indicted on assault charges against a Turning Point USA reporter during an ICE protest in Minnesota.
■ Reporters Without Borders announced that press freedom has fallen to its lowest level since the organization began publishing its annual freedom index in 2002.

■ California legislators appear ready to target independent journalists rather than allegations of fraud, according to the editorial board of The Washington Post.

Lesson plan. The classroom, where students confront unfamiliar issues and learn to think beyond what they know, is the key to solving the campus free-speech crisis in America, declared an Amherst College professor and student in a commentary for The Hill.
■ Supreme Court justices agreed to hear from Catholic preschools whose leaders say it is unconstitutional to exclude them from a taxpayer-funded program.
■ The U.S. Supreme Court sided with a New Jersey faith-based pregnancy center that raised First Amendment concerns about an investigation into whether it misled people in order to discourage abortions.
■ A Texas law that requires Bible readings for K-12 students has reignited a century-old legal battle over their place in public schools.

■ The court ruling that upheld a Texas law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms is important to Americans who live in the other 49 states as well.

Televisionary. The late Ted Turner was the first to understand that global and continuous content was the future of news.
■ Larry Ellison’s alleged promise to fire CNN anchors has drawn the ire of two press-freedom groups that own shares in Paramount Skydance.
■ Watch former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich’s video account of how Paramount is on the verge of creating the largest pro-Trump media monopoly in the United States.
■ Pulitzer Prize winners in journalism were honored for tackling the tough task of covering the Trump administration’s drive to reshape national government and what the change means for individual Americans.
■ A reporter for The Atlantic, who wrote about FBI Director Kash Patel’s “excessive drinking” and its effect within the bureau, is allegedly the subject of a criminal investigation.

Continue reading →

Dark night / Diss play / Rattling rhetoric

Dark night. Personal safety and news coverage for some of the nation’s top reporters and editors commingled when a gunman brought chaos into the White House correspondents’ dinner, a reminder that political violence can spread anywhere, anytime, reported David Bauder of The Associated Press.
■ Before the gunfire, Free Speech Center director Ken Paulson questioned whether the correspondents’ dinner has outlived its journalistic usefulness.
■ A nonprofit journalism operation stepped in and prevented the imminent shutdown of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
■ Satirical website The Onion has a new deal to take over Infowars, the far-right media company of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Diss play. The National Park Service is being sued for allegedly violating the First Amendment by threatening to revoke protest permits over the display of signs critical of President Trump.
■ The Trump administration has been accused by migrant advocates of restricting public access to immigration court proceedings, violating First Amendment rights.
■ Donald Trump’s refusal to accept that the First Amendment is a right worth honoring is a contemptuous attitude and decidedly un-American, wrote attorney Jack Greiner, a leading authority on media law and the First Amendment.
■ Four former U.S. presidents hail the First Amendment in NBC News interviews ahead of the country’s 250th anniversary.

Turning point? A new campus free-speech bill in Tennessee named for slain political activist Charlie Kirk has passed, and it was drafted in collaboration with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
■ Rep. Justin Jones argued that Tennessee’s “Charlie Kirk Act,” which could punish college students who show their displeasure with campus speakers, will stifle free expression in his state’s institutions of higher education.
■ For doing nothing more than exercising his First Amendment rights, a Black Lives Matter activist has wrongly had to battle a police officer’s lawsuit for eight years, JT Morris, an attorney for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, argued in an opinion piece.
■ Four public companies are navigating cancel-culture wars over free speech in the U.S. workplace by giving employees more space to express themselves.

A dictate. Saying it was free speech and not a public safety risk, a magistrate judge ended the case of an Alabama protester who was arrested for wearing an inflatable penis costume at a No Kings rally in 2025.
■ An investor vote has brought the deal to unite major news and entertainment giants Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount another step closer to fruition.
■ A reporter who authored an article about FBI Director Kash Patel’s girlfriend was investigated by the bureau, The New York Times reported.
■ The Trump administration violated the First Amendment rights of a Facebook group that tracked ICE activity when it “coerced” Apple and Facebook to remove posts, an Illinois judge has ruled.
■ The Federal Trade Commission has dropped its investigation of the news-rating website NewsGuard, according to the Washington Times.

Rattling rhetoric. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s ongoing religious bombast, seen by critics as a form of Christian nationalism, could undermine religious liberty of American troops, reported The Christian Science Monitor.
■ A Texas law that requires public schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms can proceed, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.
■ In the United States, religious radio draws approximately 45 percent of American adults who listen occasionally, a Pew Research Center poll found.
■ Establishing chapters of Turning Point USA in public high schools has raised free-speech and religious-freedom concerns among First Amendment advocates.

Continue reading →

Florida chill / Ad break / Sun sets

Florida chill. Gov. Ron DeSantis has raised free-speech concerns after signing into law a measure that gives Florida officials the power to designate groups of people as “terrorist organizations.”
■ State officials in Texas and Florida excluded Islamic schools from taxpayer-funded school voucher programs, new lawsuits claim.
■ The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on conversion therapy has stirred a viewpoint-discrimination debate among First Amendment experts.

■ Following the high court’s ruling in Chiles v. Salazar, five questions about conversion therapy and free speech get answered by Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University.

■ Iowa can enforce a law that bans some books and restricts teachers in K-6 classes from talking about LGBTQ+ topics, an appellate court has ruled.

A load off. ProPublica journalists staged a newsroom-wide strike in part over an unexpected question: How much of their work can be offloaded to artificial intelligence?
■ A federal judge has ruled that the Pentagon has failed to comply with his orders to restore access to reporters.

■ President Trump’s defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over its report of his lewd birthday card he alleto sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was dismissed by a federal judge.

■ The Trump administration’s order to halt federal funding for NPR and PBS was permanently blocked by a federal judge who said it violated the First Amendment.

■ Tennessee’s high court has blocked a lower court’s order that would have allowed media-member witnesses to see additional portions of state-run executions.

Ad break. To fight potential new litigation accusing social media companies of designing platforms that are addictive to young people, Meta announced it was pulling ads from law firms that aimed to recruit new plaintiffs.
■ Meta must face another youth-addiction lawsuit in Massachusetts, the state’s supreme court ruled.
■ A Texas judge has dismissed a lawsuit that sought to allow churches to endorse political candidates without losing their tax-exempt status.
■ Arizona school districts continue to have bans on “offensive” speech after a federal appeals court declared in 2025 that they violated the First Amendment. It cost one district $200,000.

Will of the people? William Henry Harrison saw the “dangerous temptations” of executive power 180 years before Trump. We need another president like him that honors the Constitution, opined Gabe Fleisher in The Washington Post.
■ President Trump, angered by a news leak over the shooting down of a fighter jet, has threatened to jail reporters who protect certain sources while covering the war in Iran.
■ A Department of Justice legal-opinion memo declared that Trump does not have to comply with the 1978 Presidential Records Act.
■ Donald Trump is not immune from civil claims that he incited the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, a federal judge has ruled.

Sun sets. After decades of a joint operating agreement between rival newspapers in Las Vegas, one announced it would no longer print the other. Jessica Hill of The Associated Press explained why.

■ American journalist Shelly Kittleson was released after she was held captive for a week by an Iran-backed militia, officials confirmed.
■ Albany, N.Y., will be the setting this week for a re-enactment of the John Peter Zenger trial, which in 1735 introduced the concept that truth is a defense against libel, an important touchstone that influenced free-speech freedoms to come.
■ Freely Fest, an event celebrating the First Amendment through live music and interactive experiences, made its debut in Nashville in front of thousands.

Continue reading →

Curtain pulled? / Speak up / Low marks

Curtain pulled? After years of complaints that social media is detrimental to young people’s mental health, juries in two states found Big Tech liable for harm to children.
■ The editorial board of The Washington Post argued that the social media-addiction ruling is a blow against free speech.
■ Professor John R. Vile explains why the government cannot coerce social media companies to remove content it disagrees with.

■ The Pentagon’s efforts to “punish” AI company Anthropic have been blocked by a federal judge in California.

■ Rapper Afroman has won a lawsuit brought by Ohio deputies who claimed they were defamed in the artist’s music videos.

Speak up. Notable speakers, including Jane Fonda, Billy Porter, and Joan Baez, led a rally outside the Kennedy Center vowing to fight back against President Trump’s crackdown on arts and media.
■ Thousands of “No Kings” protest rallies that drew an estimated 8 million people could affect the results of upcoming midterm elections, The New York Times’ Tim Balk reported. 

■ Longtime political talk-show host Bill Maher is this year’s recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
■ A “content-neutral” sign policy at Boston University has led to the removal of pride flags on campus.

No promotion. A group of veteran Voice of America journalists have sued Trump administration official Kari Lake over pro-Trump propaganda on the air.
■ The U.S. Defense Department announced new restrictions on journalists just days after a court blocked a previous policy. The policy now would require journalists to have department-assigned escorts to access the Pentagon.
■ An appeal from an online journalist who said she was wrongfully arrested for seeking nonpublic information from police has been rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.
■ Supreme Court justices have unanimously ruled to revive a lawsuit from an evangelical Christian who was barred from demonstrating after shouting insults over a loudspeaker.

Taking a shot. Allies of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have petitioned the government to broaden a federal list of vaccine injury conditions they say are linked to immunizations.
■ President Trump’s on-again, off-again campus antisemitism fight is accelerating, driving debates that the government is using the campaign against discrimination as a cover to force universities to adopt more conservative ideas, The New York Times reported.

■ Students at the University of Alabama, citing viewpoint-discrimination and censorship, have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the decision of school officials to suspend two student-run magazines.
■ An Arkansas law mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools was struck down by a federal judge.

Low marks. A research group’s democracy index report has found that freedom of expression in the United States is at its lowest level since the end of World War II, with authors citing the “suppression and intimidation of media and dissenting voices” as the key reason. 
■ A $6.2 billion television-station merger will deprive communities of vital local journalism, declared the editorial board of The Seattle Times.

■ Immigration reporter Estefany Rodríguez publicly shared her two-week federal detention ordeal with the Nashville Banner.
■ Nashville’s “Jackie Robinson of journalism,” Robert Churchwell, is honored by the city where he worked as the first full-time Black reporter for a Southern newspaper.
■ George Kennedy, a “journalist’s journalist” who inspired thousands of student reporters at the University of Missouri, has died at 84.

Continue reading →

Hollow ring / Target practice / Help line

Hollow ring. Social media is not just speech; it is a community of hazardous platforms, argued law professor Tim Wu in a New York Times commentary.
■ Content-crafting A.I. algorithms are entitled to free-speech protections, Vanderbilt University professors concluded in a law review article.
■ The bombardment of A.I. fake images about the war in Iran has created a cascade of disinformation and chaos online, The New York Times reported.
■ Big tech has reversed course in the battle between the artificial intelligence company Anthropic and the Pentagon, according to an analysis in The Guardian.

Ruling transmitted. Kari Lake, as head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, did not have legal authority to dismantle the Voice of America, a federal judge has ruled.
■ The Pentagon, without explanation, has barred photographers from attending Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Iran war briefings.
■ Comments from Hegseth make it clear that the Trump administration is not eager to show the war’s human cost, the Associated Press reported.
■ FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has threatened to revoke the licenses of broadcasters over what he sees as “news distortions” in Iran war coverage.

■ Free Speech Center Director Ken Paulson explains why the FCC chairman’s licensing threats over the content of war reporting would be a clear violation of the First Amendment.

Target practice. Activist Mahmoud Khalil has declared in a Fox News commentary that the U.S. government targeted him over his political speech, and warns that it can happen to anyone.
■ Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ executive order to designate Muslim groups as terrorist organizations has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge.
■ House Republicans largely have remained silent as some representatives ramp up public anti-Muslim comments, NPR reported.
■ Noncitizen academics have challenged Trump administration immigration policies, claiming that they violate their First Amendment rights.

■ The Justice Department has dropped criminal charges against a U.S. combat veteran who burned the American flag in protest last year.

Kid stuff? A first grader’s Black Lives Matter drawing is at the center of a yearslong First Amendment legal fight in California.
■ A civil liberties group in Montana has asked the state’s Supreme Court to reconsider a 2003 decision to help with a 2026 free-speech case.
■ The Florida Federation of College Republicans has disbanded its University of Florida chapter after an internal investigation found misconduct concerning alleged antisemitism.

■ Americans can learn much about religious freedom today from founding father James Madison.

Help line. The Pentagon may seek to punish The Washington Post under its new reporting restrictions of journalists over the newspaper’s “tip box,” which solicited information from readers.
■ President Trump is still going after the press in court as his lawsuits keep growing, according to Politico.
■ Government officials say that ICE agents did have a valid warrant before detaining journalist Estefany Rodriguez in Nashville and taking her into custody.
■ After a story about an Eagle Scout project went awry, a Jackson, Wyo., newspaper has settled a $25 million defamation lawsuit.
■ Acclaimed foreign correspondent John F. Burns has passed away at 81.

Continue reading →

Incite insight / Empire building / Trial run

Incite insight. The chaos in Minneapolis illustrated that the phrase “peaceably to assemble” in the First Amendment protects expression, but not incitement, professor Jeffrey McCall explained in a commentary for The Hill.
■ Dozens of protesters were cited or arrested after an anti-ICE demonstration in Minnesota turned violent.

■ The Department of Justice announced that 30 more people have been indicted for alleged involvement in a January protest at a Minnesota church.
■ First Amendment groups vow to fight for the release of a special counsel report on President Trump’s classified-documents case despite a judge’s ruling sealing it.

■ A judge is expected to order that Greenpeace pay an expected $345 million in damages connected to North Dakota pipeline protests from 2016 and 2017.

Empire building. If Larry and David Ellison can close a deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, they would influence every corner of news, tech, and entertainment, The New York Times reported.
■ Staffers at CNN and CBS News fear “a disaster” if the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger is approved, according to The Guardian.
■ The Trump administration is looking to override editorial-freedom protections for federally funded news groups that broadcast overseas, The New York Times reported.
■ Federal authorities are barred from searching the electronic devices seized from a Washington Post reporter’s home, a judge has ruled.
■ Press-freedom violations against journalists in January and February reached record numbers for the first two months of any year, the Freedom of the Press Foundation reported.

Unfair and imbalanced? President Trump’s plan to manipulate news coverage by applying a consumer protection law to media companies may be legally creative but it is democratically dangerous, said the editorial board of The New York Times.
■ Following the Stephen Colbert-James Talarico “barred” interview on CBS, here is what you need to know about the equal-time rule.
■ It might seem excessive, but government free speech does allow a U.S. president to name things after himself, The Conversation reported.
■ A slavery exhibit in Philadelphia, ordered removed by the Trump administration, is being reinstalled following a U.S. district judge’s ruling.

Trial run. While a court case regarding the addictive nature of its social-media app continues, Instagram will start notifying parents when their children use the platform to search for items relating to self-harm, parent company Meta announced.
■ New York City bills designed to combat hate crimes by establishing buffer zones outside houses of worship are sparking a free-speech debate. 
■ The Associated Press published its rationale for describing the Iran conflict as a war.

■ Prison-style censorship is making its way into the general public, asserted an incarcerated writer and activist for The Intercept.
■ A U.S. appeals court has cleared the way for Louisiana to require the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools.

Continue reading →

Bully tactics / In focus? / No easy fix

Bully tactics. Press groups have called the Trump administration’s crackdown on journalists’ sources “chilling,” Axios reported.

■ President Trump’s attacks on the media to hide the truth threatens press freedom, declared People for the American Way’s president Svante Myrick in The Hill.
■ The Department of Homeland Security is using subpoenas against tech companies to get information that exposes anti-ICE social media accounts.

■ DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi have been sued for allegedly censoring a citizen-created Facebook group and app that reported on real-time ICE operations.

■ Requirements that ICE agents use body-cameras could backfire, allowing the government to track protesters, according to congressional Democratic leaders.

In focus? The ombudsman for Stars and Stripes said in a recent interview that there is cause for concern about the Defense Department’s push to “refocus content” in the military news publication.
■ The United States is not a free country if there is no free speech, contended Politico founder Susan B. Glasser in a New Yorker commentary.
■ Sen. Mark Kelly’s First Amendment rights were “trampled” by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in an attempt to punish him over a video to military personnel reminding them that they can refuse illegal orders, a federal judge has ruled.

■ After a lengthy search, free-speech group PEN America has chosen new leadership.
■ Free-speech lawsuits connected to the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk continue five months after his death, NPR reported.

Excess access. The landmark trial over potentially addictive social-media platforms began with Instagram and You Tube executives testifying that excessive use does not equal addiction.
■ Tech reporter Cecilia Kang described what is at stake for tech giants in a short video by The New York Times.
■ NetChoice examined whether Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 still protects users from censorship online.
■ While it draws regulatory scrutiny and global censure, Elon Musk’s A.I. chatbot Grok has grown its U.S. market share.

It’s complicated. A Pew Research poll has found that Americans believe that following the news is essential, but they have different ideas on where to get it.
■ Journalist Don Lemon pleaded not guilty to church-protest charges in a Minnesota federal courtroom.
■ An immigration court has blocked the DHS-planned deportation of a Tufts University Turkish graduate student.
■ A U.S. appeals court affirmed that computer code used in the manufacturing of “ghost guns” is not protected by the First Amendment.

No easy fix. If Jeff Bezos really wants to build back what he has torn down at The Washington Post, he should look at the reinventions of five major U.S. dailies, according to author and journalism professor Dan Kennedy.
■ The Federal Trade Commission has been hit with a lawsuit from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression for its targeting of NewsGuard’s news-rating system.
■ The American Civil Liberties Union has announced a settlement in a federal lawsuit over the unlawful targeting and questioning of photojournalists at the U.S.-Mexico border.
■ After a lengthy public-records challenge, a Tennessee appeals court has ruled that the writings of a school shooter can be released publicly.

Continue reading →

Lemon pledge / Kari on / Nip and Tuck

Lemon pledge. CNN’s Brian Stelter examined whether the arrests of Don Lemon and Georgia Fort in connection with a Minnesota church protest is really a case about chilling journalism. Lemon vowed not to be silenced.
■ Lemon’s arrest has raised questions about First Amendment-protected boundaries inside and outside of a house of worship.
■ Cellphone videographers are now a vital part of the news ecosystem, making Alex Pretti’s murder an attack on press freedom, contends Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Seth Stern.
■ Federal prosecutors cannot review material seized from a Washington Post reporter’s home during an FBI search, a judge has ruled.

■ Alabama has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to end First Amendment protections for panhandling. 

State media? Social media, once viewed as a tool that ordinary citizens could use to counteract the excesses of the powerful, is now helping government suppress dissent, according to a report by Popular Information.
■ TikTok has agreed to settle a landmark social media addiction lawsuit that is set to begin after jury selection this week, the Associated Press reported.
■ Under a new ownership structure in the United States, TikTok is experiencing challenges of censorship claims, technical problems, and app deletions.
■ A ruling in a case involving a student who posted memes of his school principal on Instagram has served to strengthen free-speech protections for Tennessee high schools, asserted journalism professor Mark Harmon in a Tennessee Lookout commentary.

Kari on. While overseeing the Voice of America, Kari Lake’s use of the government-owned network to promote President Trump may be in violation of federal law and policies.
■ Stars and Stripes must maintain its core mission of truth-telling, not present information that flatters authority, argued Rufus Friday, executive director of the Center for Integrity in News Reporting.
■ In a court filing, the Pentagon defended its policy that puts restrictions on news organizations that require them to comply or lose press access.
■ Free speech, “inherently fraught with bias,” needs a reset in America, declared Sheldon H. Jacobson, a computer science professor, in a commentary for The Hill.

A bigger ban. Summer Boismier protested against an Oklahoma book ban, lost her teacher’s license, and is now fighting a legal battle to return someday to the classroom, the New York Times reported.
■ Unsealed court records show that the Trump administration targeted students for criticizing Israel, according to a Mother Jones report.
■ A UMass Amherst student, suspended for protesting on campus, has filed a lawsuit against the university claiming his First Amendment rights were violated.
■ Under state law, the email list of a school superintendent’s newsletter must be made public, the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled.

Nip and Tuck. A new book seeks to explain the unraveling of conservative journalist Tucker Carlson, arguably the most contentious media personality of the Trump age.
■ CBS News chief Bari Weiss told her staff that if the network does not alter its current strategy for delivering the news, “We’re toast.”
■ The USA Today Co. now owns both Detroit newspapers after it acquired the 153-year-old Detroit News and retained its staff.
■ A new court ruling may make it harder for the University of Alabama to defend its reasoning for shutting down two student magazines.

Continue reading →

Finger tip / Being the news / Saving face

Finger tip. The suspension of President Trump’s heckler at a Ford plant visit served as a reminder that free speech can get you into trouble at work.
■ Minnesota’s governor and the Minneapolis mayor are being investigated by the Justice Department for allegedly conspiring to impede law enforcement efforts through public statements that they made. Critics say it is retaliation for free speech.
■ Government censorship of free speech and academic freedom on U.S. college campuses, powered by a full-blown ideological campaign against higher education, reached unprecedented heights in 2025, a new PEN America report has found.

■ A federal judge presiding over a hearing concerning Trump administration detentions denounced cabinet members for “not honoring the First Amendment.”

Control issues. Federal agents in Minneapolis cannot arrest peaceful protesters or use crowd-control tools against them, a federal judge has ruled.
■ Sen. Mark Kelly filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon claiming that attempts to punish and censure him after his participation in a video telling U.S. troops they have the right to resist unlawful orders are “unconstitutional.”
■ President Trump is considering an executive order to bar other networks from showing other college football games during televised coverage of the annual Army-Navy game.

■ The BBC has asked a Florida court to toss out President Trump’s $10 billion defamation suit against the broadcaster.
■ A jury has found that a Tennessee high-school student’s suspension for sharing memes of his school’s principal on Instagram violated the First Amendment.

Being the news. When CBS News editor Bari Weiss told her producers “We need to be the news,” she succeeded, but not in the way she hoped, according to The New York Times.
■ The White House warned CBS News that if it did not run a Trump interview “in full” it would be sued, The New York Times reported.
■ CBS aired a “60 Minutes” report Sunday on deportations that it had abruptly pulled a month ago.

■ The MAGA plan to take over television is just getting started, according to Jim Rutenberg in an extensive report for The New York Times Magazine.

■ Tennessee prison officials must grant expanded press access to state-run executions, a judge has ruled.

Loyal to a fault? Applicants for jobs with Stars and Stripes are being asked if they agree with Trump administration policies, raising concerns about the news outlet’s editorial independence.
■ Press advocates have condemned the Pentagon’s push to take editorial control of Stars and Stripes.
■ U.S. journalists are facing war-zone conditions covering conflicts here at home, concluded Editor & Publisher in a report.
■ The highly unusual raid on the home of a Washington Post journalist has press-freedom champions worried it could chill future reporting efforts.

■ A professor at the University of Pennsylvania explained in The Conversation why the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s closure exposes a growing threat to democracy.

Saving face. Bowing to pressure, Elon Musk’s X will restrict the ability to use its A.I. chatbot Grok in generating explicit images of real people.
■ A Texas teachers union has sued the state over the “wave of retaliation” against public school employees that included investigations and dismissals over Charlie Kirk-related social media comments.

■ An Alabama public library lost state funding after it refused to move several books deemed “sexually explicit” by the state’s library service board, including The Handmaid’s Tale, out of its teen section.
■ Funding cuts have forced PBS to shut down its weekend newscasts.
■ Cleveland State University is facing a free-speech lawsuit after shutting down its student-run campus radio station.

Continue reading →