■ 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.
■ Indiana University is facing pressure from more than a dozen national journalism groups to follow through on recommendations to maintain media independence on campus.