■ 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.
