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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Night caps / Harmless? / Guess again

Night caps. San Francisco Giants pitchers who altered their Pride Night uniforms with Bible verses have prompted a DOJ investigation into Major League Baseball for possible religious discrimination.
■ Federal prosecutors in Minnesota have charged 15 people from protest groups with impeding an illegal-immigration crackdown by the Trump administration.
■ A federal judge ordered immigration officials to release the president of Wisconsin’s largest mosque from ICE detention, rejecting a government claim that he poses a foreign policy threat. His attorneys say he was targeted for speaking out against Israel.
■ Jane Fonda defended the First Amendment at a star-studded event, saying that “cowardly corporations” are allowing the government to routinely violate the Constitution to “silence artists.”

One for the ages. Ohio can implement a law requiring social media companies to obtain parental consent before allowing children under 16 to use their platforms, a U.S. appeals court panel ruled. The panel found that the requirement did not violate free-speech protections under the First Amendment.
■ Meta Platforms has lobbied the U.S. Congress for legal immunity from potential child-harm lawsuits stemming from the Kids Online Safety Act, Reuters reported.
■ The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a high school student’s free-speech challenge to an Indiana public school district policy that banned her from posting anti-abortion messages on school walls.
■ Along with freedom of speech, the freedom to read is under assault in America. Standing up for libraries is the best way to fight censorship, reasoned Penguin Random House attorney Daniel Novak in Human Rights magazine.

Harmless? A Department of Justice investigation has determined that the mammoth Hollywood media merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery will not harm competition or consumers.
■ Paramount Skydance refused to air a 30-second ad by a press-freedom group during the Ultimate Fighting Championship broadcast at the White House that criticized the network’s leadership and merger, The Guardian reported.
■ Company records show that the Israeli government asked Meta to censor content about the Iran conflict, according to an investigation by The Intercept.
■ The fiasco at “60 Minutes” was just a reminder that press freedom always has gone only as far as media owners wanted it to go, opined Amherst College professor Austin Sarat in The Hill.

Against the wall. A diocese in New Mexico is working to protect a 29-foot Jesus statue from construction debris by arguing that religious freedom trumps the nearby construction of a steel border barrier.
■ As the country approaches its 250th birthday, Thomas Tweed, a University of Notre Dame professor emeritus, has examined what the Declaration of Independence does, and does not, say about God.
■ A campus Republican group at the University of Florida failed to prove the school violated its First Amendment rights by banning it after claims of antisemitic behavior sparked a social media uproar, a federal judge ruled.

Guess again. Americans might think that the worst president for free speech in history is the one currently serving. However, there was someone worse a century ago, according to Angel Eduardo of FIRE.
■ TMZ has opened a Washington bureau in what is essentially a test of whether tabloid journalism tactics can serve the public interest, according to professor Angelica Kalika in The Conversation.

■ The fragmentation of the news media ecosphere makes it imperative that current definitions of media need to be changed to retain freedom of the press, noted John McGauley, a former print journalist, in a commentary for the Indiana Capital Chronicle.
■ Indiana University is facing pressure from more than a dozen national journalism groups to follow through on recommendations to maintain media independence on campus.

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Minutes count / Cup cuffs? / Dinnertime

Minutes count. CBS News is racing to steady a shellshocked “60 Minutes” staff in the wake of correspondent Scott Pelley’s firing and executive producer Nick Bilton’s hiring, CNN’s Brian Stelter reported.
■ “That’s the path that he chose,” said Bari Weiss, the CBS News editor in chief, to The New York Times about Scott Pelley’s dismissal.
■ Pelley, in his own words, shares details about the explosive series of events that led to his firing at CBS News in an interview with The New York Times.
■ A coalition of press-freedom groups has publicly warned that CNN will be the next news outlet to suffer upheaval similar to those at CBS News.
■ Local television stations owned by ABC have blasted the Federal Communications Commission for launching an early review of their broadcast licenses, calling it “arbitrary and unconstitutional.”

Courage or capitulation. Telling a symposium audience that he has never been “so afraid for the future of our democracy,” UC Berkeley’s law dean called for greater resistance to First Amendment attacks by the Trump administration.
■ James Comey’s “86 47” seashell post on Instagram is lodged in the murky middle between protected free speech and criminal intent, explained Quinnipiac University law professor Wayne Unger.
■ A single passage from Alex Haley’s “Roots” has prompted the Knox County Board of Education to challenge Tennessee’s Age-Appropriate Materials Act that requires the removal of any K-12 library book from public-school shelves.

■ In deleting a constituent’s comment about the financing of a sinkhole from his Facebook page, Omaha’s mayor engaged in viewpoint discrimination, a violation of the First Amendment, a federal court has ruled.

Cup cuffs? Concerned that the United States is no longer a safe place to report on events, foreign journalists fear persecution as they travel to this country to cover the FIFA World Cup soccer matches, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.
■ A report from the International Sports Press Association declared that Iranian and African journalists have been denied necessary visas to cover the World Cup, which begins June 11.
■ Advisory board members of the military newspaper Stars and Stripes have sued the Pentagon claiming that new restrictions on coverage are tantamount to illegal censorship, The Washington Post reported.
■ Declaring it a “classified space,” the Pentagon unironically has barred journalists from its press office.
■ More than a dozen press organizations in New Jersey have demanded that charges be dismissed against journalists arrested while covering the recent protests outside Newark’s Delaney Hall detention center.

Enter the historians. Donald Trump’s fight to gain control of his presidential records while ignoring the Presidential Records Act has taken on a historical element in a new lawsuit, which asks “Who owns history?”
■ Trump’s legal team failed to provide financial information to BBC lawyers in his $10 billion defamation suit against the broadcaster, effectively stalling the case, the Financial Times reported.
■ First Amendment advocates contend that the Trump administration’s push to have federal workers sign nondisclosure agreements to minimize news leaks is simply a way to stifle and silence them, The Hill reported.
■ Philadelphia police are tracking First Amendment activity on social media that is critical of AI data centers, according to documents obtained by The Intercept.
■ Nashville Zoo neighbors launched an online petition to persuade city leaders to stop construction of a planned 69,000-square-foot AI data center.

Dinnertime. With enhanced safety measures in place, as well as an RSVP from President Trump, the White House Correspondents’ dinner – cut short in April by a gunman – has been rescheduled for July 24.
■ The 2023 police raid on the Marion County Record that made national headlines is now the subject of a new documentary, “Seized,” which will have its premiere June 13 in the nation’s capital.

■ Fallout from the Minnesota church protest that saw former news anchor Don Lemon arrested has prompted states to toughen penalties for the disruption of worship services.
■ The University of Alabama did not violate students’ free-speech rights when it shut down two university-sponsored campus magazines, a federal judge ruled.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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