— Larry Bushart after winning an $835,000 settlement over his Facebook-post arrest.

Larry Bushart, jailed over Facebook meme, wins $835,000 settlement

Tennessee officials must pay $835,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by retired police officer Larry Bushart, who was jailed for 37 days over a Facebook post he made about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

“It’s in times of turmoil and heightened tensions that our national commitment to free speech is tested the most,” said Cary Davis, an attorney for FIRE, which helped represent Bushart. “When government officials fail that test, the Constitution exists to hold them accountable. Our hope is that Larry’s settlement sends a message to law enforcement across the country: Respect the First Amendment today, or be prepared to pay the price tomorrow.”

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Below the fold

• After administrators at Cape Fear Community College censored a modern staging of the ancient Greek play The Bacchae, one theater student and former Marine found himself fighting for free speech.

• Clemson fired two professors and one staff member over social media posts about Charlie Kirk’s assassination, then two faculty risked their own careers to challenge the growing culture of censorship on campus — winning FIRE’s Berkson Award in the process.

• A Nevada high school allegedly praised students for protesting ICE one day, then expelled another student for posting pro-ICE stickers the next, comparing the stickers to a burning cross and prompting a federal lawsuit.

Figures of speech

This year, the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary. To commemorate the occasion, FIRE is proud to present the limited series “Figures of Speech,” looking at the heroes and villains of free speech in American history. This week, we present Thomas Paine — American history’s winter soldier:

On June 8, 1809, 72-year-old Thomas Paine took his last breath inside a small house in Greenwich Village. The next day the pamphleteer and revolutionary’s body was loaded onto a cart and taken to his farm in New Rochelle, about 22 miles north of New York City, for burial. There was no procession, no national moment of silence, no celebration of a life fully lived. Only six people attended his funeral, including his caretaker, Madame Marguerite Bonneville, a friend from his many years in Revolutionary France, and her son, Benjamin. Continue reading…

In the frame

The Big Sea became the week’s standout free-speech media story when this award-winning documentary about pollution, surfing, and Louisiana’s Cancer Alley allegedly had its public screening shut down by parish leadership, turning an environmental film into a censorship fight. St. John the Baptist Parish President Jaclyn Hotard allegedly “vetoed” a public-theater screening of the film, which ties neoprene production to pollution in Reserve, Louisiana. Organizers say no explanation was given 16 weeks later, while a Tulane First Amendment Clinic professor called the cancellation “very clearly a First Amendment violation.”

‘Spirit of Liberty’

On May 21, 1944, Judge Learned Hand delivered a speech in New York City that famously defined the spirit of liberty as “the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.” Read the full speech on FIRE’s website.

This week in history

On May 22, 2000, the Supreme Court ruled in U.S. v. Playboy Entertainment Group that a federal law requiring cable operators to “fully scramble” sexually explicit channels or restrict them to late-night hours violated the First Amendment.

Playboy entertainment challenged the constitutionality of the law, which was intended to prevent children from accidentally viewing adult content. The Supreme Court held that the law, Section 505 of the Communications Decency Act, did not satisfy strict scrutiny because it was not narrowly tailored and because less restrictive alternatives — such as targeted channel blocking at a subscriber’s request — were available to achieve the government’s goal.

By the numbers

We’ve seen before that students who frequently attend religious services as well as students who are studying religion are unusually tolerant of controversial speakers, meaning they are willing to let them speak on campus. This raises a few questions. Are religious people more tolerant? Which religions’ members tend to be more tolerant? In this week’s data dive, we discuss several findings related to these questions. For example, we found that students who choose to identify as Protestant are the most tolerant religious group on campus. Mormon students are also very tolerant. Atheists and agnostics are especially tolerant of left-wing — but not right-wing — speakers. And Catholic students have the lowest average tolerance.

“Part of art is about expression, so if we start censoring ourselves then we shut down the core of our creativity, which is where we can discover truth and answers.”

— Demi Moore speaking this week at the Cannes Film Festival.

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ABC accuses FCC of chilling speech

ABC accused the Trump administration and the FCC of chilling protected speech by revisiting whether The View qualifies as a “bona fide news program” exempt from equal-time rules for competing political candidates. But as FIRE explained on X:

ABC’s refusal to quietly allow the federal government to dictate the range of viewpoints it may air without fear of retaliation is welcome and commendable. The Federal Communications Commission is not and cannot become the nation’s censor-in-chief, as its chairman once recognized.

Below the fold

• Amid reports that President Trump recently labeled Iran coverage “treason,” Marie McMullan warns that officials are increasingly ignoring the post-Watergate law designed to protect reporters from government probes.

• A federal judge ordered Texas State University to continue paying philosophy professor Idris Robinson for up to one year or until his lawsuit ends, after the school fired him over a talk he gave about the war in Gaza. He was represented by Samantha Harris and Michael Allen of Allen Harris and FIRE’s JT Morris.

• Last month, a bipartisan congressional hearing on free speech in higher education exposed deep disagreements between Republicans and Democrats, Michael Hurley reports, but it also revealed a rare consensus that free expression is indispensable to our democracy.

Figures of speech

This year, the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary. To commemorate the occasion, FIRE is proud to present the limited series “Figures of Speech,” looking at the heroes and villains of free speech in American history. We begin with the senator who became our censor-in-chief and gave America a new term for political oppression: Joseph McCarthy.

In the frame

Pegah Ahangarani’s Rehearsals for a Revolution, which premiered this week at the Cannes Film Festival, is an intimate documentary about censorship, state violence, and resistance in modern Iran. Rather than constructing a straightforward historical narrative, Ahangarani builds the film through the fragments of family archives, protest footage, personal reflections, and portraits of people she sees as embodiments of dissent across generations. The film traces the arc from the 1979 Iranian Revolution through the Green Movement and more recent protest waves, portraying a society caught in recurring cycles of hope and suppression.

But the documentary is less a journalistic explainer than a cinematic memoir, as it mainly tells the story of Ahangarani, who has suffered oppression by Iranian authorities because of her work. She was arrested after publicly supporting the Green Movement in the wake of Iran’s disputed 2009 presidential election. In 2011, she wasarrested again before leaving to Germany to cover the Women’s World Cup for Deutsche Welle. In her new film, she confronts the machinery of censorship in Iran by incorporating underground recordings, protest archives, and personal materials tied to the very events the government has sought to suppress. The film itself, therefore, is not simply about dissent but an act of dissent itself.

Terms of service

In this episode of Free Speech Future, we look at the history of tech censorship — from video games to social media — and discuss what worked, what didn’t, and where we go from here. The discussion panel includes Nico Perrino, FIRE’s executive vice president and host of the podcast So to Speak; Corbin Barthold, internet policy counsel at TechFreedom and host of Tech Policy Podcast; Christopher J. Ferguson, professor of psychology at Stetson University and co-author of Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video Games Is Wrong; and Kmele Foster, co-host of The Fifth Column and editor-at-large at Tangle News. Enjoy.

This week in history

On May 12, 1963, Bob Dylan appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, then the highest-rated variety program on American television. But during rehearsals, CBS executives objected to the song he planned to perform, “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues,” a satirical attack on the ultra-conservative John Birch Society and its obsession with Communist conspiracies. The song had been approved, but network officials later feared the lyrics could provoke a defamation lawsuit. Rather than comply with the censorship demand and choose another song, Dylan walked off the show.

The incident generated widespread media attention and backlash. Even Ed Sullivan publicly criticized the network’s decision. In the aftermath, Columbia Records, which was owned by CBS and shared concerns about possible legal liability, removed the song from Dylan’s album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. The controversy became one of the earliest high-profile examples of Dylan clashing with institutional censorship. He would later face similar censorship battles with the BBC and other broadcasters.

By the numbers

Last week, FIRE released results from April’s National Speech Index, a quarterly poll designed to track Americans’ changing attitudes and beliefs about free speech. The results show that the average American opposes censorship far more than college students in this country. We also found that liberals seem to support all forms of protest, even illegal ones, while conservatives tend to oppose protest tactics, even some legal ones.

“CBT changed — and probably saved — my life. And CBT has a lot in common with freedom of speech. The way we figure out truth is a process of checking and rechecking. And it doesn’t work if you just talk to people you already agree with.”

—Greg Lukianoff speaking to Psychology Today on cognitive behavioral therapy.

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Trump admin considers AI oversight

Recent reports suggest the Trump administration is considering ways to create new oversight for advanced AI models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. explains:

The public should be wary of arrangements that give government officials of either party a foothold over what AI systems generate. Once the government assumes a gatekeeping role over emerging forms of expression, the line between oversight and censorship gets blurry real fast.

FBI investigates journalist who wrote about Patel’s drinking

The FBI reportedly opened an unusual criminal leak investigation tied to an Atlantic story claiming Director Kash Patel has behaved erratically on the job due to heavy drinking.

Agents are reportedly examining reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick rather than a classified leak itself, centering the probe on her sourcing for a story built on two dozen anonymous accounts, despite DOJ policies historically limiting scrutiny of journalists absent classified disclosures.

UK reverses fine against school for investigating professor

Last week, the High Court of England and Wales overturned a £585,000 ($793,696) fine against the University of Sussex.

The school had allegedly violated free speech policies by investigating philosophy professor Kathleen Stock for institutional transphobia because she believes people cannot change their biological sex. But the Court said the Department of Education had unfairly targeted the school in order to make an example out of it.

Below the fold

• A federal judge permanently barred the Trump administration from cutting more than $100 million in humanities grants, saying DOGE lacked authority and violated the First and Fifth Amendments.

• More than 100 U.S. lawmakers, including 68 senators, urged President Trump to raise the issue of Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai — sentenced to 20 years over his pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily — with Xi Jinping at the May 14–15 China summit.

• IFEX and media-freedom groups condemned Zambia’s last-minute cancellation of RightsCon 2026 under Chinese pressure over delegates from Taiwan, saying nearly 3,000 journalists, digital-rights defenders, and civil-society actors were affected.

In the frame

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has intensified international scrutiny of Senegal’s prosecution of journalist and author René Capain Bassène through a newly released six-part Wolof- and French-language podcast that alleges torture, coerced testimony, fabricated evidence, and major due-process violations in one of West Africa’s most controversial press-freedom cases.

Bassène, a veteran reporter covering the Casamance separatist conflict, one of the longest conflicts in Africa, is serving a life sentence for the Bayottes forest massacre that killed 14 men in 2018, despite saying he was at a football match when it happened. CPJ’s investigation cites former co-defendants who say they were detained for years and pressured under beatings and electric shocks to implicate Bassène. The podcast argues Senegalese authorities criminalized Bassène’s journalism and ignored evidence that he had actually warned officials about escalating tensions tied to illegal logging networks and vigilante groups in Casamance while researching his fourth book on the conflict.

Following Senegal’s Supreme Court decision to uphold the conviction, CPJ is calling on President Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye to release Bassène, framing the case as a stark example of the risks faced by local journalists covering armed conflicts.

Terms of service

New York’s proposed SB 7263 would make AI companies liable if chatbots provide responses that could be construed as unlicensed professional advice — especially in law, medicine, or mental health — even when users understand they are interacting with software and no professional credentials are claimed.

This week for Free Speech Future, John Coleman explains how the bill dangerously expands already broad unauthorized-practice laws. Because chatbot interactions are tailored by ordinary exchanges — like asking whether jaywalking is illegal or how to dispute a credit-card charge — could trigger liability if deemed “legal advice.” Coleman warns that this effectively regulates speech rather than conduct, creating First Amendment concerns by making legality depend on what an AI system says.

This week in history

On May 9, 1754, the political cartoon “Join, or Die” was published. Attributed to and published by Benjamin Franklin, this is widely considered the first political cartoon published in an American newspaper. The cartoon depicts a snake chopped into eight pieces with each piece representing one of the original colonies (New England was represented as one segment rather than the four colonies it included at the time, Delaware was still part of Pennsylvania, and Georgia was omitted).

The cartoon was based on a superstition that if a snake is cut into pieces and the pieces are put together before sunset, the snake would be resurrected. The cartoon was intended to make a point about the importance of colonial unity in the French and Indian War, and was later used as a symbol of colonial freedom during the American Revolution. Political cartoons are frequent subjects of censorship attempts, demonstrating the importance of First Amendment protections.

And if it ever comes up in a game of trivia, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has the cartoon tattooed on his right forearm.

Where there’s smoke

Last week, Pensacola State College told a professor it would not print her students' LGBT stories in a student magazine, arguing they would violate Florida’s dystopian Stop WOKE Act. FIRE gave the school until the close of business on May 4 to respond to our First Amendment concerns. The school has refused to take full accountability. Now we’re taking a closer look.

By the numbers

Since noting a little over a month ago that we are on pace for a record number of campus deplatforming attempts this year, we’ve recorded another 38. That increases the tally to 108 deplatforming attempts so far this year, the fifth-highest total for a year in the entire database going back to 1998. And it’s only May.

“Yale’s data suggests that self-censorship is a real problem. In a 2025 survey by the university, nearly a third of undergraduate respondents disagreed with the statement that ‘I feel free to express my political beliefs on campus,’ up from 17 percent in 2015.”

—Yale Committee Report on Trust in Higher Education, April 10, 2026, also see Graham Piro’s essay on the report and this week’s data dive on student self-censorship.

DOJ indicts Comey, again

The Department of Justice indicted former FBI Director James Comey for allegedly threatening to murder President Trump by posting an image online of seashells on the beach in the shape of the numbers 8647, which critics interpret to mean “eliminate the 47th president.”

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As and recently wrote for :

The reality is that this indictment is a flimsy excuse to use government authority to punish the president’s political enemies — something this administration is quite fond of and has been thoroughly documented doing. This is all the more reason to vehemently oppose this indictment and the retaliatory actions of the administration.

If political retribution for speaking out becomes the norm in American politics, then everyone’s right to free speech could be eighty-sixed.

Below the fold

• “Elon Musk’s personal political views have no place in the California Coastal Commission’s evaluation of SpaceX’s rocket launch proposals,” wrote on X, responding to California regulators settling a SpaceX lawsuit this week.

• A New York bill would prevent AI chatbots from giving legal, medical, financial, mental health, or other advice normally provided by a licensed professional.

• A lawsuit against Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson, despite no evidence he committed or incited violence, has survived federal appeals court review, meaning protest organizers nationwide could face massive financial liability for unforeseeable acts by others.

• California lawmakers are considering making “anti-hate” training a requirement.

This week in history

In April 1989, the former head of the Chinese Communist Party died. Hu Yaobang had pushed for democratic reforms, and when students gathered to mourn him, they began to demand freedom of speech and democratic reforms themselves. Up to 100,000 students marched across the city into Tiananmen Square. As protests continued throughout May, Beijing declared martial law. On June 4, the military forcibly cleared the square, killing up to 2,000 people. The CCP removed officials who had supported reform — or opposed the massacre, discussion of which remains heavily censored in China today. Chinese sometimes use “8964” (1989, June 4) as a coded reference online to bypass censors, but even this gets picked up nowadays.

By the numbers

This week, we looked into the data behind student self-censorship. Among other things, we found that students tend to lean heavily on emotional rather than rational thinking when deciding to censor themselves. In fact, even the most principled group operates less on principle than on how situations feel.​​

“In a truly free society, we enjoy the right to debate and mock those with unsavory views to prove them wrong in the court of public opinion. What we don’t have the right to do is to prevent them from speaking entirely. Free speech is not valuable because it makes us comfortable. It is valuable because it protects the right to hear and challenge even the most offensive ideas.”

—Hannah Owens Pierre, a Yale sophomore, on Sen. Rick Scott saying the school should lose federal funding over a planned debate involving streamer Hasan Piker.

FBI director sues The Atlantic

FBI Director Kash Patel filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic over a report that his “excessive drinking” caused him to miss meetings and mysteriously disappear at times, that in April he had a “freak-out” over being fired, and that his behavior “resulted in normally unflappable agents ‘losing their shit.’”

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In New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), the Supreme Court reversed a defamation verdict over the paper’s sensationalist coverage of police actions in Montgomery, Alabama, because police commissioner LB Sullivan couldn’t show “actual malice,” meaning the paper knew it was lying or did not care — setting a high bar that Patel must now clear.

Texas Tech censors sex and gender courses

Texas Tech University System announced a “strict prohibition” on all academic programs “centered on” sex and gender, giving its schools only two months to comply.

“Forget walking on eggshells,” writes in a recent piece, “Faculty now need to walk across the verbal equivalent of broken glass if they dare include material that could conceivably violate these rules.”

What critics get wrong about the Charlie Kirk Act

Tennessee lawmakers are advancing the “Charlie Kirk Act,” which would require public universities to adopt the Chicago Statement and prohibit retaliation against professors for their speech. As Michael Hurley explains:

The Charlie Kirk Act will allow members of the campus community to speak with renewed confidence. Professors can contest university positions with more protection against retaliation. Students and faculty can invite speakers without worrying that the school will shut them down because others protest. Bottom line: that’s a significant win for free expression at Tennessee’s public universities.

Below the fold

• FCC Director Brendan Carr made yet another effort to regulate content by floating the idea of TV ratings for transgender material. But with “ratings” legislation, as Bob Corn-Revere once wrote, “The circuitry in and of itself is neutral. It does nothing until someone decides what programs should be blocked.”

• In response to the FBI investigating a New York Times journalist for reporting on Patel’s girlfriend receiving government security and transportation, recently commented, “Reaching out to the subject of a story with questions is not ‘stalking.’ It’s routine journalism at the core of the First Amendment.”

• English universities that don’t protect free speech could face fines of £500,000 ($675,078) as the UK tackles an ongoing “culture of fear” on campuses.

In the frame

Hulu just released an anthology produced by Jimmy Kimmel — 4X20: Quick Hits — made up of four 20-minute documentaries about cannabis. One of the films tells the story of the magazine High Times, directed by Kyle Thrash, who says the film is not really about marijuana, but about free speech.

High Times faced relentless censorship efforts in its early days, and was essentially run “as an act of First Amendment defiance,” the magazine reports in a review of the Hulu series. The review goes on to quote Thrash as saying, “Free speech leads to being able to speak about the things we want to speak about, which is cannabis. So they are so intertwined.”

Terms of service

In a new op-ed for R Street, “AI, free speech, and America’s real advantage over China,” and argue that while China’s censorship undermines its ability to advanced AI, the United States risks weakening its own advantage in this area by imposing speech-constraining AI regulations. Many proposed laws pressure developers to produce sanitized, government-aligned outputs that could harm both free expression and the quality of AI systems. America’s strength, they claim, lies in its tradition of open inquiry and free speech. Abandoning those principles will only jeopardize innovation and our competitive edge over China.

This week in history

On April 22, 1940, the Supreme Court decided Thornhill v. Alabama. Byron Thornhill, a union member, had joined a picket line protesting his former employer when he was arrested under an Alabama law that banned loitering and picketing near businesses “without a just cause or legal excuse.” Notably, he was the only picketer charged under the statute. In an 8–1 ruling, the Court struck down the law, holding that labor disputes are not just private matters, but issues of public concern. The Court said being able to openly discuss one’s working conditions is essential to democracy.

By the numbers

​​Two of the most controversial student groups in the country, Students for Justice in Palestine and Turning Point USA, have next to nothing in common — except that both are frequently targeted for their speech. Together, they account for 24% of all group entries in FIRE’s Students Under Fire database going back to 2020. But these groups operate in very different ways, and face very different types of censorship. This week, we dive into the data behind America’s most controversial student groups.

“This decline did not come out of nowhere, nor did it happen overnight. And we were certainly more than mere bystanders. We must acknowledge how we have fallen short . . . I accept without reservation the committee’s recommendations to protect free speech and support academic freedom . . . We must ensure that Yale is a place where people are free to take intellectual risks, including the risk to disagree and be disagreed with.”

—Maurie McInnis, president of Yale University, responding to a recent school report showing the erosion of public trust in higher education, April 15, 2026.

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You don’t need to live in China to experience China’s censorship

The UK’s Victoria and Albert Museum quietly altered its own exhibition catalogues — removing maps and an image of Vladimir Lenin — to satisfy Chinese Communist Party censors tied to overseas printing. But as explains in a chilling post, this is just one canary in a very large coal mine:

Perhaps worst of all, this influence is operating in higher education on a global scale, introducing both overt and subtle limits on universities and the people who study and teach within them. In the short term, researchers and student dissidents suffer threats and censorship. In the long run, the education, research, and discussion that the entire world relies on for knowledge generation is throttled . . . You may be thousands of miles away from the Chinese government, but its censorship is operating much closer than you think.

UNC Chapel Hill drops probe into satire

UNC Chapel Hill dropped its investigation into a satirical comedy sketch mocking performative “white liberal” attitudes. As Marie McMullan explains:

Naturally, critics are free to answer The Daily Tar Heel and Hill After Hours with more speech. They can comment on the article or videos online. Or they can make their own content in response, as some students already have. But the school itself, as a public research university, is not free to answer such speech with actions designed to chill student expression.

Below the fold

• French lawmakers withdrew a bill yesterday that would have implemented sweeping antisemitism restrictions, including banning the phrase “from the river to the sea.”

• An Alabama woman was found not guilty on all charges after attending a No Kings parade to protest the Trump administration dressed as a giant penis.

Terms of service

Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming one of the world’s primary engines of knowledge creation. And as this meaning-making system comes online, so too does the inevitable desire for government control. The following discussion from Jan. 22, “Regulating AI: Who decides?,” brings together the individuals tracking and resisting that expansion. Dean Ball — technologist, AI governance analyst, and former White House science and technology adviser — warns that “responsible AI” rhetoric often serves as an on-ramp to permanent regulatory control. Ari Cohn, First Amendment attorney and tech policy expert, brings a free speech lawyer’s clarity to where government proposals cross constitutional lines. Matt Perault, head of AI policy at Andreessen Horowitz, examines how regulatory choices shape the incentives that drive innovation. And guiding the discussion is Kmele Foster of The Fifth Column podcast, whose work is defined by a first-principles approach and an inimitable commitment to curiosity.

This week in history

On April 11, 1938, Life magazine sparked widespread controversy after publishing “The Birth of a Baby,” a photo essay depicting childbirth. The images were based on a film already banned in several cities for “indecency,” yet Life proceeded after consulting officials and warning readers in advance. Authorities in multiple jurisdictions — including parts of New Jersey as well as Chicago, New Orleans, St. Louis, and the state of Pennsylvania — moved to restrict or block distribution. Despite these efforts, public opinion leaned strongly against censorship, with a Gallup poll finding 76% opposed to the bans. On April 26, the Bronx Court of Special Sessions ruled the magazine was not indecent, and publisher Roy Larsen was acquitted. The controversy ultimately boosted Life’s national profile, providing significant publicity just two years after its launch in an early example of the Streisand effect.

By the numbers

Regardless of ideology, Gen Z is vastly more likely to endorse violence against speakers than Boomers. In fact, Gen Z are 9.6 times more accepting of violence against speakers than Baby Boomers and over 25 times more accepting of violence against speakers than the Silent generation.

“In light of the First Amendment to our Constitution, the government cannot properly silence the People or the Press simply because the government disagrees with public protests, demonstrations, press reporting, or other speech criticizing the government.”

– Judge Ronald M. Gould on federal immigration officers using crowd-control weapons in Los Angeles Press Club v. Noem.

Trump threatens CNN over Iran reporting

President Trump claimed on Truth Social that CNN’s reporting of a statement in which Iran declared victory in the ongoing war is disinformation, adding, “CNN is being ordered to immediately withdraw this Statement with full apologies for their, as usual, terrible ‘reporting.’”

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FCC Chairman Brendan Carr also weighed in, calling for “change at CNN.” But as we have explained before, jawboning is a clear violation of the First Amendment.

Turkey seeks to end online anonymity

The Turkish government is submitting a proposal to parliament requiring people to ID themselves to use social media. Unregistered accounts will be removed by platforms. As recently explained:

We need the ability to speak anonymously online, whether to criticize our leaders, search for embarrassing medical advice, or even just to ask the age-old question: r/AmItheAsshole? What’s happening in Turkey should signal a clear shot across the bow. We need to fight for this right, or we are going to lose it. Fast.

Below the fold

• President Trump threatened to jail a journalist in efforts to find who leaked reports that a second Air Force officer from a downed U.S. fighter jet in Iran was missing, saying, “We’re going to go to the media company that released it, and we’re going to say, ‘National security, give it up or go to jail.’ The person that did the story will go to jail if he doesn’t say.”

• A former philosophy professor is suing Texas State University for firing him one year after he gave a speech — in a different state as a private citizen — on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

• London’s annual rap and hip-hop Wireless Festival was canceled this week after the British government refused entry to Kanye West over his antisemitic comments in the past.

• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill (HB 1471) allowing him to designate foreign and domestic terrorist organizations.

Terms of service

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has called on ministers to take stronger action against social media companies that spread disinformation, calling it “the outrage economy,” after a study showed a surge in the number of people talking about the city’s crime rate, often in relation to immigration. Khan even called for the formation of a new watchdog group. “We need a new central body with the agility and authority to protect our democracy from disinformation,” he said, “and deal with the scale and speed of this crisis. And we need more aggressive enforcement of the rules we already have.”

This week in history

On April 8, 1999, FIRE was founded by UPenn professor Alan Charles Kors and Boston civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. After publishing their book, The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses, they received hundreds of pleas from college students and faculty who had been harmed by illiberal policies and double standards.

FIRE originally focused our work on college campuses before expanding in 2022 to defend free expression generally. We also changed our name to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Today, FIRE defends free speech not just on campus but across American culture, taking on threats to civil liberties wherever they arise.

Where there’s smoke

In this new FIREwire section, we’ll be covering the ongoing cases we’ve got our eyes on and the ones we think you should be watching too.

UNC Chapel Hill students celebrated April Fools’ Day by creating satirical content, including one video mocking performative liberal attitudes, then the university condemned the material and launched an investigation. But student satire is protected under the First Amendment, as recently explained.

By the numbers

People who agree with the claim “words can be violence” are generally more likely to support censorship. But how widely held is this idea, and who holds it? It turns out, this belief is not just a disproportionately liberal opinion but also a disproportionately female one. In fact, even very conservative women are more likely to think “words can be violence” than very liberal men.

Colorado may regard its policy as essential to public health and safety. Certainly, censorious governments throughout history have believed the same. But the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country. It reflects instead a judgment that every American possesses an inalienable right to think and speak freely, and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for discovering truth. However well-intentioned, any law that suppresses speech based on viewpoint represents an ‘egregious’ assault on both of those commitments.

– Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the Supreme Court majority in Chiles v. Salazar, holding that Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy violates the First Amendment.

Supreme Court strikes down Colorado conversion therapy ban

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8–1 that Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy may violate the free speech rights of licensed counselor Kaley Chiles, who provides talk therapy to clients on sexual orientation, and sent the case back to lower courts to reconsider it under the toughest constitutional standard — strict scrutiny.

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Strict scrutiny requires the government to show that its goal is important, that the law helps it achieve that goal, and that there’s not a less restrictive way to do it. The decision could affect similar laws in nearly 30 states and marks a major expansion of speech protections into professional and medical regulation, despite opposition from major medical groups.

Ohio restricts drag shows to adult venues

Ohio lawmakers passed a bill expanding the state’s public indecency and adult entertainment laws to restrict adult drag shows in places where minors could be present.

The law imposes potential felony charges for drag shows deemed obscene if performed in front of anyone age 12 or younger. Critics warn this could chill artistic expression and disproportionately target LGBT performers under the guise of obscenity regulation.

UK looks to curb policing lawful speech

After years of logging tens of thousands of “non-crime hate incidents” over perfectly lawful speech, the UK government now says NCHIs will be “scrapped” to “end policing of petty squabbles,” scaling back a widely criticized system that blurred the line between crime and protected speech.

Still, as carefully explains, there are reasons to remain concerned — and already signs that similar practices are quietly emerging in the United States.

Terms of service

What if the next big threat to free speech doesn’t come from banning content, but from making it too engaging? In their latest issue of Notice and Takedown, and take aim at the latest wave of lawsuits blaming “addictive design” (think infinite scroll and algorithms) for social media harms. They argue it’s a clever — but dangerous — end run around the First Amendment. Basically, if courts accept that platforms can be punished for making speech compelling, they’re effectively creating a rule against speech that works too well. Even if you’re skeptical of Big Tech, this is a sharp analysis that forces you to think more critically about where product design ends and protected expression begins, and what happens if we get that balance wrong.

Know your rights

The encrypted messaging app Signal has been in the news lately, and people have questions. What’s the news story? How does Signal work? Can using it get me in trouble? Can it help me get away with murder? The first thing to know is, your rights are the same as if you were speaking in person or on the phone. The First Amendment protects your ability to communicate, organize, and even criticize the government, while the Fourth Amendment limits how the government can access your data without a warrant. Signal’s strong encryption means it collects very little information, but that doesn’t mean it can shield illegal activity. If you break the law, you can still be investigated through other means. In his latest explainer, addresses all these questions and more concerning Signal.

This week in history

On March 29, 1940, the New York legislature unanimously authorized what became known as the Rapp-Coudert Committee — a sweeping inquiry into alleged “subversive” activity in the state’s schools, specifically Brooklyn College, City College of New York, Hunter College, and Queens College. Over the next two years, the committee spent the equivalent of more than $11 million today to identify and purge suspected communists and sympathizers from public education.

The investigation produced a list of more than 600 names, which was shared with law enforcement and later federal authorities, and led to the dismissal of roughly 40 faculty and staff from municipal colleges. It also helped dismantle two local teachers’ unions, with the support of the American Federation of Teachers. This episode, which forms part of the broader “little red scare” that preceded McCarthyism, is a reminder that politically driven censorship campaigns—and the urge to root out ideological “threats”—have not been confined to any one party or era.

By the numbers

The 1970s were the high-water mark of campus deplatforming with a total of 19 attempts. While earlier controversies centered around political views and the Cold War, deplatforming efforts in the 70s pivoted sharply to race. That shift was driven largely by repeated controversies involving the Nobel physicist and eugenicist William Shockley. This week, explores the data going back to 1947 and tells the story of how campus deplatforming has evolved since World War II.

“I’m tired of being a ‘free speech Barbie.’”

– Salman Rushdie on being reduced to a symbol after surviving an Islamist attack in 2022.

White House unveils AI framework

A new federal proposal aims to protect expression in the AI era while raising questions about issues such as age verification.

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Here’s FIRE Legislative Counsel for AI and Free Expression :

FIRE appreciates the proposed protections for expressive rights embodied in the Trump administration’s new policy framework for artificial intelligence. There are elements that warrant caution and scrutiny, and the devil will inevitably be in the details. But FIRE supports several aspects of the proposal that, if enacted, would go a long way to protecting free speech rights in the AI era.

FCC warns media over Iran coverage

Over the weekend, FCC Chair Brendan Carr effectively threatened to censor news about the Iran war, invoking the “public interest” standard to suggest broadcasters will risk losing their licenses if their reporting is deemed misleading.

Writing for , Aaron Terr explains:

If the past is prologue, Carr will continue to reach for any excuse to justify the FCC’s unconstitutional crackdown on the press. But in America, the people decide for themselves what is true — not federal bureaucrats. Principled broadcasters must lead the way by refusing to cave in to Carr’s lawless demands.

Below the fold

• Wales’ plan to criminalize “false or misleading” political statements aims to curb dishonesty but risks empowering governments to police truth.

• Spain is launching an AI system to track online “hate,” but it could easily blur into government-driven censorship of lawful speech.

In the frame

The musician Afroman (“Because I Got High”) won a legal victory this week after a group of Ohio sheriff’s deputies sued him for defamation, emotional distress, and misuse of their likenesses. This comes after a 2022 raid on his home that turned up no evidence of any crime. In response to that raid, which damaged his property, Afroman did what Afroman does and turned the experience into content, using his own security footage to create satirical songs and videos mocking the officers, including the viral track “Lemon Pound Cake.”

Terms of service

In their second installment of Notice and Takedown, and explain that the current wave of lawsuits blaming AI chatbots for tragic outcomes — suicides, delusions, erratic behavior — is less a sound legal development than a familiar moral panic dressed up in new technology. While the underlying events are undeniably real and devastating, the authors explain that the legal theories driving these cases are fundamentally flawed because they seek to treat speech as a defective product. A particularly alarming signal, they note, is a judge openly questioning whether AI-generated text even counts as “speech,” a position that, if adopted, could open the door to sweeping government control over what AI systems are allowed to say.

The authors draw parallels to earlier cultural panics over new media, from Dungeons & Dragons in the 1980s to violent video games and heavy metal music. In each instance, grieving families and public pressure produced lawsuits claiming that media content caused real-world harm, only for courts to reject those claims on the grounds that ideas themselves cannot be treated as dangerous products. That distinction applies today. Extending product liability to chatbot outputs would create a powerful incentive for companies to strip their systems of anything remotely controversial or emotionally complex, resulting in bland, heavily sanitized tools that limit both what users can hear and what they can say.

This week in history

James Madison was born on March 16, 1751, on his family’s Virginia plantation. He fathered the Constitution and wrote nearly a third of the Federalist Papers defending it and the establishment of a strong federal government. The Anti-Federalists fought back, fearing centralized power would strangle individual liberty. They won a concession — 10 amendments known as the Bill of Rights that protect people’s freedoms explicitly.

Madison was notoriously shy and quiet. He hated public speaking, which is wild for a Founding Father. There’s even a story that he was so soft-spoken at the Constitutional Convention that people had to lean in to hear him. He was also deeply devoted to his wife Dolley, who was much more outgoing. Madison steered the Bill of Rights through the first Congress, fighting hard for press freedom and religious liberty. Later, he became secretary of state under Jefferson and the fourth president of the United States. After leaving office, he retired to his Virginia estate Montpelier, where he spent his final years reflecting on the young republic he had helped shape.

By the numbers

At hyper-liberal schools, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is more than twice as difficult for liberals to discuss as any other issue, even though they are surrounded by more like-minded peers than any other students. This week, we dive into the data to find out why.

FIRE Update

Imagine a pro-Israel student club wanting to invite a pro-Israel elected official and an officer in the Israeli Defense Forces reserves to speak at their events.

Sounds... absolutely normal, right?

That’s because it is. What’s not normal is what happened next.

Catholic University denied the event requests because the club didn’t include speakers from “both sides” of the issue.

That’s right. The university is forcing Students Supporting Israel to invite someone who doesn’t support Israel — or they can’t hold the event.

Student clubs, regardless of their perspective, are allowed to advocate for their beliefs and provide programming that supports those beliefs. Requiring a group to host a speaker they oppose is textbook compelled speech — and we’ll fight it every step of the way.

Imagine if the university forced its environmental club to bring in representatives of the oil industry? Or if Catholic clubs had to pair their guest speakers with speakers representing other world religions?

But they’re not: Other groups at CUA have hosted speakers — including Democratic officials and pro-life advocates — without being required to include opposing viewpoints. When rules like this are applied inconsistently, it’s clear they’re not about “balance” but about control. That’s how viewpoint discrimination happens — even when it’s dressed up as neutrality.

CUA is a private university not bound by the First Amendment — but it is legally and morally bound to adhere to its own promises to protect students’ free speech.

Catholic University is officially on notice. We’re calling on administrators to approve these events and make clear that all student groups are free to host speakers of their choice.

For more breaking alerts like this, be sure to sign up for FIRE Updates.

“Analyzing such distinctions in a classroom — guided by facts, context and reasoning — would give young people the civic tools they’ll need long after graduation. Encouraging open inquiry prepares them to weigh evidence and form independent opinions.”

— A Washington Post letter writer on how to teach critical thinking.

Judge weighs Pentagon press restrictions

A federal judge is considering whether a Pentagon policy forcing journalists to sign new access terms violates the First Amendment, after outlets including The New York Times and the Associated Press refused to comply and lost credentials.

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The policy requires reporters to accept limits on contact with military personnel and other rules critics say would restrict independent reporting, raising concerns about government transparency during wartime.

Australia charges pro-Palestinian protesters

Authorities in Queensland charged protesters for using phrases including “from the river to the sea,” marking the first arrests under newly enacted hate-speech legislation.

Civil liberties advocates say the law criminalizes political expression and predict constitutional challenges in Australia’s High Court.

Germany probes historian for criticizing … Hitler

German writer Rainer Zitelmann is under criminal investigation in Berlin after retweeting a Ukrainian post comparing Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler.

But it wasn’t the Putin attack that got him into trouble — it was the fact that the post included a swastika, even though he used it as an insult, because it potentially violates Section 86a of Germany’s criminal code, which bans Nazi symbols.

Below the fold

• New York Mayor Mamdani defended hosting activist Mahmoud Khalil for dinner as a matter of protecting free speech rights, while the Anti-Defamation League and others criticized the invite over Khalil’s previous remarks about October 7. This week, Khalil wrote about his experience in an op-ed for Fox News.

In the frame

In this episode of So to Speak, host breaks down the Pentagon’s targeting of the AI company Anthropic, the push for government-mandated age verification technologies, and the Department of Justice’s raid on a Washington Post reporter’s home. He is joined by , senior fellow in technology policy at the Cato Institute, as well as Mike Godwin, AI and privacy expert at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and .

Terms of service

FIRE filed two separate friend-of-the-court briefs arguing that the Pentagon violated Anthropic’s First Amendment rights by labeling the AI company a “supply chain risk.” The dispute began when the Defense Department demanded that Anthropic allow its AI system Claude to be used for any “lawful purpose,” which the Pentagon says could include fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance.

After Anthropic refused, citing safety concerns and its internal usage policies that place guardrails on how Claude can be used, the Pentagon designated the company a supply-chain risk, a sanction that could severely harm its ability to do business with the government and with other partners. FIRE, along with a coalition of free speech advocates, argues this designation is retaliatory and violates the First Amendment.

Know your rights

Obscenity is one of the few categories of speech the Supreme Court has held is not protected by the First Amendment — but defining it has long been notoriously difficult. Early courts used the broad Hicklin test, which allowed censorship based on whether isolated passages might corrupt susceptible readers, leading to bans on works by authors like James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence. In the 1957 case Roth v. United States, the Court narrowed the concept, holding that obscenity lacks constitutional value and creating a test based on whether the work’s dominant theme appeals to a prurient interest according to community standards.

The Court ultimately established the modern Miller test in the 1973 case Miller v. California, which asks whether the average person applying community standards would find the work appeals to prurient interests, depicts sexual conduct in a patently offensive way defined by law, and lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. Although prosecutions are relatively rare today, obscenity doctrine still influences debates over pornography regulation, book bans, drag shows, and online age-verification laws, including the Supreme Court’s 2025 decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, which upheld Texas’ requirement that users verify their age before accessing adult websites. For all that and more, see our explainer on the obscenity exception to the First Amendment.

This week in history

On March 9, 1964, the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case New York Times v. Sullivan, establishing First Amendment limitations on public officials’ ability to sue for defamation. The Times ran an ad raising funds to defend Martin Luther King Jr. from perjury charges for allegedly signing false tax returns. The ad had several factual errors, including about the number of police arrests in Montgomery, Alabama. L.B. Sullivan, the city commissioner overseeing the police department, demanded a retraction. When the Times refused, Sullivan sued for defamation.

The Court reversed the Alabama judgment against the paper, holding that public officials must prove “actual malice” to win a defamation case. The Court defined actual malice as either knowing a statement is false or showing “reckless disregard” for the truth. Justice Brennan famously wrote that “debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.”

“Protecting speech during wartime is neither easy nor popular. But it is precisely in such moments that constitutional principles matter most.”

— on calls to censor Columbia University Apartheid Divest for posting “Death to America” in response to the start of war in Iran.

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Trump admin threatens Anthropic

The Trump administration threatened to seize or blacklist Anthropic after the AI company refused to remove safeguards limiting military and surveillance uses of its models. , FIRE’s legislative counsel on AI and free expression, explains:

If the government wants AI systems without Anthropic’s restrictions, it can develop its own or contract with companies willing to provide them. (Indeed, OpenAI reportedly stepped in quickly as a replacement.) What the government cannot do is coerce a private company into abandoning its own design principles, or punish it for refusing. That violates the First Amendment.

Hamit Coksun wins Quran-burning case

Kurdish-Armenian asylum seeker Hamit Coskun has won a year-long legal battle after burning a Quran in protest near the Turkish embassy in London last February.

“Laws and prosecutions protecting religious institutions from offence and insult should be a relic of the past,” writes , “but are instead still present in dozens of countries, and are experiencing a resurgence of sorts in European countries like Sweden and Denmark, with the encouragement of the United Nations Human Rights Council. The UK appears to be heading down this path, too, giving another means of censorship to a country increasingly fond of them.”

Below the fold

• Police in Dubai, a popular haven for social media influencers, are threatening jail time for “any content that contradicts official announcements” amid attacks from Iranian drones.

In the frame

After the murder of Charlie Kirk at a Turning Point USA campus event on Sept. 10, 2025, students were left in shock and the country was left debating the future of free speech. Some blamed rhetoric, some demanded limits. Others warned that giving the government the power to decide which speech is “too dangerous” could threaten the very freedoms it claims to protect. In this episode of 1AX, FIRE sits down with the students who witnessed the shooting and explores a question that now confronts the nation: Is free speech the cause of political violence, or the only alternative to it?

Featuring firsthand accounts by professors and students, difficult conversations, an interview with , and an unflinching look at the First Amendment, 1AX asks what it really means to coexist in a country where disagreements are not small, and sometimes are life and death.

Terms of service

The U.S. government’s forced TikTok sale predictably sparked new concerns about political manipulation of online speech, Anthropic is clashing with the Pentagon over whether its AI should be used for surveillance and weapons systems, and the FCC wants to revive outdated broadcast rules to pressure talk shows critical to the administration. For analysis on all this and more — from meme regulation to age-verification surveillance risks — check out the debut issue of Notice and Takedown, a biweekly newsletter on all things free speech and tech policy, in which FIRE’s and bring readers an engaging mix of style, humor, and thoughtful analysis.

Today in history

On March 4, 1789, the U.S. Constitution went into effect. Drafted at Independence Hall in Philadelphia between May and September 1787, it was ratified by 11 of the 13 colonies. Delaware was the first to ratify. North Carolina and Rhode Island held out mainly because the Constitution did not yet include a Bill of Rights, and many people feared the new federal government would be too powerful. Since going into effect, the Constitution has been amended 27 times, including the first 10 amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, intended to address Anti-Federalists’ concerns about the potential tyranny of a strong centralized government.

By the numbers

Trump voters are not a monolith. In fact, there are basically four kinds of Trump voters. You’ve got your MAGA hardliners, your mainline Republicans who support him because they support the party, anti-woke conservatives whose animating principle is their opposition to woke ideology, and the “reluctant right” who simply voted for Trump because they thought he was less bad than Kamala Harris.

“Free speech should never become a conservative issue any more than it ever should have been a liberal issue. It is an issue for all . . . Everybody agrees with free speech in theory. But when you ask, should you defend the free speech of — and fill in whatever blank you want — the vast majority of Americans believe in free speech for me, but not for thee.”

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— Alan Dershowitz on why modern liberalism appears to have turned against free speech, speaking at RealClearPolitics’ Samizdat Prize gala on Feb. 11.

CUNY investigates professor over ‘racist’ remarks

Hunter College is investigating biology professor Allyson Friedman for allegedly making racist remarks during a school district meeting without realizing her mic was on. “If you train a black person well enough,” she said, “they’ll know to use the back. You don’t have to tell them anymore.”

But Friedman says she was simply explaining the mentality of racists to her daughter by paraphrasing the black historian Carter Woodson, who famously wrote, “When you control a man’s thinking . . . you do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told.”

Here’s Zach Greenberg, FIRE’s director of Faculty Legal Defense:

FIRE is alarmed at Hunter College’s investigation of Professor Allyson Friedman for her comments at a NYC school district meeting. Discussions of systemic racism fall squarely within the First Amendment rights this public college is legally required to uphold. Faculty have the right to discuss political issues off-hours, especially those related to their children’s schooling and local communities.

Below the fold

• In this week’s Free Speech Dispatch, reports how governments are using hate speech laws, anti-terror statutes, cybercrime rules, and platform regulations to silence political expression — from barroom posters in Australia and gender commentary in Canada and Brazil to protests in the UK, internet access in Russia and India, satire in Asia, and journalism pretty much everywhere.

• U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has dropped the case against six Democratic lawmakers who urged military and intelligence personnel to refuse illegal orders.

• Amid campus tensions over controversial political speech, Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute launched its “Reconstructing Free Expression” research initiative to “reinforce First Amendment protections.”

Know your rights

In the last month, we’ve seen anti-ICE student walkouts at secondary schools in Oklahoma, Illinois, Virginia, Texas, Washington state, Ohio, Florida, and more. In Texas, the state is investigating whether school employees encouraged the walkouts. In Florida, the state teachers union has openly said their members don’t support walkouts. This week, answers the question:

In the frame

This week we turn to a classic, the 2020 documentary Mighty Ira, about the longtime executive director of the ACLU, Ira Glasser, and his unapologetic defense of free speech — even for people almost everyone hated. Directed by FIRE’s , Aaron Reese, and Chris Maltby, the film centers on the ACLU’s 1977 decision to defend the right of American Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, a town with many Holocaust survivors. But rather than a mere history lesson, this is a meditation on the nature of free speech itself and what its advocacy looks like in the modern age.

Today in history

On Feb. 24, 1969, the Supreme Court heard the landmark case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District, involving a public school principal who suspended four students (the three Tinker siblings and one friend) for wearing black armbands at multiple schools to protest the Vietnam War. The Court held that officials can only censor students if their speech significantly interferes with school discipline, or if school authorities reasonably think it will, which the armbands did not. This became known as the Tinker test. As Justice Abe Fortas famously wrote, “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

By the numbers

Americans’ confidence in U.S. colleges and universities remains near historic lows. Though some have suggested public opinion about higher education may be stabilizing or rising, our latest survey finds little evidence of meaningful recovery. Instead, explains, it shows that almost a third of Americans say they have little or no confidence in American higher education.

— Emmanuel Macron on social media platforms and the tech executives who run them, during a discussion in New Delhi on university partnerships between India and France.

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Stephen Colbert defies CBS

Stephen Colbert said CBS lawyers told him not to interview, or even mention not being able to interview, Texas Democratic state representative James Talarico, who is running for U.S. Senate. Colbert then promptly blasted the decision on-air, accusing the network of over-complying with guidance by the FCC, which isn’t going after conservative radio stations that do something similar.

The reasoning is that this would violate “equal times” rules that say American broadcast stations must provide equal access to competing political candidates, but as FIRE Chief Counsel Bob Corn-Revere has explained:

Brendan Carr’s FCC is continuing its streak of naked partisanship by wielding the agency’s power in new and laughable ways . . . Candidate interviews have long been exempt from “equal time” rules for good reason. It would be wrong if a Democratic administration demanded conservative talk radio hosts give equal airtime when they interview candidates, and it’s wrong for the Trump administration to demand the same of late night talk show hosts.

Australian police declare café a crime scene

In Canberra, authorities declared a café a crime scene and took down satirical posters depicting world leaders in Nazi uniforms under newly enacted hate-speech laws.

The incident triggered backlash from artists and civil liberties advocates who argue this is an overreach that chills political expression and protest art.

Below the fold

• The UK’s ruling on its Palestine Action ban has only cast even more doubt on the nation’s troubling mass arrests of peaceful protesters.

• The UK Crown Prosecution Service appealed a court’s decision to reverse the guilty finding against Hamit Coskun, who burned a Quran outside London’s Turkish consulate last year. Speech advocates in the UK are anxiously awaiting the outcome of the appeal and Coskun is reportedly under consideration for asylum by U.S. authorities if he is again found guilty.

Today in history

“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn,” Ernest Hemingway famously wrote. That book was published in the United States on Feb. 18, 1885. Following the story of Huckleberry “Huck” Finn as he travels down the Mississippi River with the runaway slave Jim, the novel is one of the most frequently challenged in the country, with school districts pulling it from curriculum and school libraries, often due to the book’s use of “nigger” more than 200 times, even though the book itself is a scatching indictment of racism.

By the numbers

It’s a common refrain that hyper-liberal colleges make students intolerant of conservatives and unwilling to engage them in productive conversation. But is that true? In this week’s data dive, we explore the question and consider why the effect doesn’t seem to work in reverse.

— Ukrainian Olympian Vladyslav Heraskevych, explaining why he defied Olympic political-speech restrictions by wearing a remembrance helmet honoring war victims.

Two universities. Two posters. One First Amendment problem.

Penn State and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have each launched investigations into anti- and pro-ICE political posters, respectively, both of which are protected speech at public universities.

Amanda Nordstrom puts it plainly:

You don’t need to sympathize with either political stance taken — pro-ICE or anti-ICE — to defend the principles at stake. Political advocacy is at the core of the First Amendment, especially at a public university. America’s most pressing issues should be debated, not investigated into silence.

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NYC officials want to turn yellow cabs into speech police

A New York City official wants to turn yellow cabs into speech police. Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal urged Mayor Zohran Mamdani to “summarily suspend” the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission’s partnership with Curb over its deal to air Newsmax updates on taxi screens.

As Stephanie Jablonsky recently explained:

When officials use jawboning — especially behind closed doors — to influence how others moderate or distribute speech, it raises serious constitutional issues because it can circumvent formal legal protections for free expression . . . Perhaps Hoylman-Sigal should take some advice from the late George Carlin, who once said in response to a reverend who complained about something he didn’t like on the radio, “Reverend, there are two knobs on the radio. One of them turns the radio off and the other one changes the station.”

Below the fold

• The FCC opens investigation into ABC’s The View after a Texas Democratic Senate candidate’s appearance, part of the agency’s crackdown on applying the statutory equal-opportunity requirement to daytime talk shows.

• An immigration judge has dropped the case against Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk, finding the Department of Homeland Security showed no legal grounds for her deportation after her arrest last year for an op-ed.

• Spain considers banning teens from social media and Jimmy Lai gets 20 years in prison for publishing a newspaper. For more, see the latest Free Speech Dispatch.

In the frame

In a new episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour, the magazine’s editor-in-chief David Remnick interviews civil-liberties attorney Jenin Younes about how she’s come to view threats to free speech as coming from both the left and the right. Younes first gained prominence challenging what she saw as government pressure on social media companies during the pandemic, defending critics of public-health policy, and was associated with libertarian and conservative legal circles. But she now argues that the most serious dangers to free expression stem from President Trump and his political movement, contending that free-speech principles are often invoked selectively rather than consistently. The broader theme is that defending expressive rights in a polarized climate can leave you politically homeless, because each side tends to champion speech when it benefits them and grow queasy when it doesn’t.

Today in history

On Feb. 9, 1919, as part of ongoing protests to pressure Congress into passing the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote, the National Women’s Party burned an effigy of President Woodrow Wilson in front of the White House. The day before the Senate vote, the amendment was expected to narrowly fail. One suffragette, Doris Stevens, wrote in her later book:

Knowing that he always put forth more effort under fire of protest from us than when not pressed, we decided to make as a climax to our watchfire demonstrations a more drastic form of protest. We wanted to show our contempt for the President’s inadequate support which promised so much in words but did so little in deeds to match the words.

The 14th Amendment failed to pass the following day, but it passed Congress as a whole later that year. As for the spectacle outside the White House, the First Amendment protects symbolic speech like burning draft cards, flags, or effigies, so long as there’s no threat to public safety. Effigy burnings were a common form of protest in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and Wilson faced plenty more during his presidency, but arrests rarely followed. Wilson did not pursue broad speech crackdowns until World War I, when his administration used the Espionage Act (1917) and Sedition Act (1918) to target allegedly disloyal expression.

By the numbers

FIRE’s National Speech Index has been regularly taking America’s temperature on expressive freedom since January 2024 — and two notable trends stand out. Americans are more likely to say the country is headed in the wrong direction on free speech. Also, they’re losing trust that President Trump will protect their First Amendment rights.

“A generation is losing faith in the premise underlying liberal democracy: that we can govern ourselves through words rather than force. If that faith dies, what replaces it is not hard to imagine.”

— Sam Abrams, on the growing support for political violence among students.

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Don Lemon arrested

Federal agents arrested journalist Don Lemon in connection with an anti-ICE protest inside a Minnesota church last month, charging him with violating federal statutes that protect people exercising their constitutional rights. But reminds us:

In a free society, journalists play a vital role in documenting and reporting on events of public concern, including illegal conduct. Manufacturing federal crimes out of the facts we’ve seen so far chills that core function. Considered in light of the administration’s online taunts and demonstrated hostility to the press, that appears to be the point.

Below the fold

• FBI Director Kash Patel announced an investigation into Signal group chats that Minnesotans are using to track ICE activity, but every American has the right to criticize, observe, and document what the government is doing.

• The University of Maryland charged two student journalists, Riona Sheikh and Rumaysa Drissi, with misconduct for simply documenting a protest, reframing routine newsgathering as “interference” and raising serious alarms about press freedom and viewpoint suppression on campus.

• Venezuela has advanced an amnesty bill that could result in the mass release of political prisoners — opposition leaders, journalists, and human rights activists — meanwhile, Venezuelans are beginning to test the limits of free speech.

• The teen social media bans are spreading. Now Greece and Spain are looking to ban youth from social media access — and Spain’s prime minister says he wants “a law to hold social media executives personally responsible for hate speech on their platforms.”

In the frame

In the first episode of FIRE’s tech series Free Speech Future, we discuss how large language models have become gatekeepers of truth despite the fact that they are trained not for honesty, but for ideological safety. The panel warns that government mandates and “algorithmic discrimination” laws risk hard-coding political orthodoxies into AI systems, reviving speech codes not just socially but technically. If these systems are optimized for offense-avoidance rather than truth-seeking, the result could undermine the very conditions that allow truth to emerge.

Today in history

Born in London on Feb. 7, 1478, Thomas More was a lawyer, judge, author of the book Utopia (in which he coined the term), and Speaker of the House of Commons who delivered England’s first formal demand for free speech in the form of parliamentary debate. More’s fight for free expression helped lay the groundwork for the English Bill of Rights and, later, the U.S. Constitution. As lord chancellor under King Henry VIII, he was put to death for refusing to reject the pope in favor of the king and the newly created Church of England, thus becoming a martyr for religious freedom and a reminder that free speech has always threatened power.

By the numbers

This week’s data dive finds that military students are a bit more tolerant than civilians overall — and significantly more fair to their political opponents. Controlling for ideology, male military students have 21% less tolerance bias than male civilians, while female military students have 29% less tolerance bias. If you don’t control for ideology, military men are 16% less biased than civilians while military women are 32% less biased.

“You raise your voice, I erase your voice.”

— ICE agent threatening a protester in Minnesota.

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Immigration agents kill Alex Pretti

On Saturday, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse named Alex Pretti was shot and killed by U.S. Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis. As recently explained:

When Americans see someone shot dead in the street shortly after recording federal agents — and then hear top government officials immediately justify the shooting before any investigation can begin — they will reasonably fear that exercising these rights carries not just legal risk but physical danger.

Americans have the right to criticize our government. We have the right to come together in protest. We have the right to record law enforcement. When we exercise our First Amendment rights, we shouldn’t fear we will be detained, surveilled, added to government databases, assaulted, or worse.

Khalil, Ozturk, Mahdawi were targeted for speech

For months, the Trump administration tried to justify targeting pro-Palestinian activists like Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, and Moshen Mahdawi by insinuating they supported terrorism and/or posed a national security threat.

But, as recently wrote, newly unsealed records confirm that “despite the administration’s attempted winks and head-fakes to the contrary, targeting Khalil, Ozturk, and Mahdawi has always been predicated solely on their protected speech. And that, as FIRE has repeatedly explained, violates the First Amendment.”

Below the fold

• turns to the chaos of the Minneapolis ICE protests to examine how the conflict is testing Americans’ commitment to open discourse.

• Now that X’s AI chatbot is being used to generate nudes of real people, steps in to answer the question, “Did Grok break the law?”

• After the Bondi Beach mass shooting, Australia passed legislation giving the government new powers to target “hate groups,” while the UK is planning to crack down even harder on speech it deems hateful. We cover these stories — and much more — in the latest Free Speech Dispatch.

• When asked why he was taking pictures of a legal observer’s car, an ICE agent in Maine replied, “Cuz we have a nice little database and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist, so have fun with that.”

In the frame

Recent protests in Iran have led to mass arrests, internet restrictions, and many thousands dead. This week, spoke with , an Iranian-born writer who escaped Iran at 18, about how his experiences have shaped his understanding of expression, freedom, and belonging.

Know your rights

We’ve said it before but it bears repeating. If you are lawfully present in a public space, the police cannot interfere with your recording solely because you are recording. Rather, there must be a legitimate law enforcement need to do so, like maintaining public and/or officer safety or protecting the integrity of an investigation. For more, see our explainer on recording the police in public.

By the numbers

The assassination of Charlie Kirk last year sparked a wave of anger directed at scholars for their public comments about the tragedy. This reaction was faster, more targeted, and more severe than the response after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

“I think that censoring that speech does more harm than good.”

— U.S. Under Secretary Sarah Rogers arguing UK arrests of Palestine Action protesters merely for speech are not a matter of public order but of censorship.

Protesters disrupt Minnesota church service

Anti-ICE protesters interrupted a service at Cities Church in St. Paul, targeting pastor David Easterwood, who is reportedly also an ICE official.

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The protest organizers, who have since been arrested, defended the disruption as an exercise of First Amendment rights while journalist said, “This is what the First Amendment is about.”

But as FIRE board member writes, “There is no First Amendment right to enter a house of worship and engage in conduct that effectively shuts down a religious service, even as part of a protest.”

Miami Beach police visit woman over Facebook post

Two Miami Beach police officers visited U.S. Army veteran Raquel Pacheco, three-time candidate for local office, after she posted on Facebook that Mayor Steven Meiner was targeting Palestinians and failing to defend the LGBT community.

In an essay on the topic, and recently explained, “If sharp but non-threatening criticism and political commentary can be treated as unlawful incitement, freedom of speech ceases to exist in any meaningful sense.”

Below the fold

• President Trump plans to sign an executive order blocking any postseason football games from overlapping with the annual Army-Navy Game.

• Pete Buttigieg says corporations are not people and money is not speech — for more, see FIRE’s explainer on Citizens United.

• Trump plans to sue the New York Times/Siena National poll, echoing his frivolous lawsuit last year against FIRE client Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer.

By the numbers

For the past two years, FIRE’s National Speech Index has tracked Americans’ views on free expression — whether the country is moving in the right or wrong direction, how secure people believe free speech to be, and how often they self-censor. Americans have generally said the country is headed in the wrong direction when it comes to free speech. But as explains in this week’s data dive, those judgments are highly sensitive to political loyalties.

“If we can’t hold this line, we are screwed.”

– Raquel Pacheco, a Miami Beach resident, after police visited her home over a critical Facebook post about the mayor, describing it as a First Amendment violation.

FBI raids WaPo reporter’s home

The FBI searched Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s Virginia home and seized her devices while investigating Navy veteran and contractor Aurelio Perez-Lugones, now jailed on charges of unlawfully retaining top-secret materials.

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Here’s Will Creeley, FIRE’s legal director:

We are watching closely and seeking to learn more. But Americans who believe in freedom of the press have reason to be concerned. The First Amendment provides robust protection to newsgathering because an informed electorate requires a free press. Law enforcement searches of journalists’ homes are very rare — and must remain so — for good reason.

Below the fold

• Iran’s regime is crushing nationwide protests with mass killings, arrests, executions, and near-total internet shutdown to hide the scale of its brutality — but as writes, governments don’t silence people this aggressively unless they’re scared, and the world must fight for a free internet before this playbook spreads.

• A federal appeals court overturned a lower court ruling that released activist Mahmoud Khalil from ICE detention, saying immigration courts have exclusive jurisdiction at this stage, despite unresolved First Amendment issues over whether political speech is being punished through immigration enforcement.

• Australia’s parliament is debating legislation combining hate speech restrictions with gun reforms after two Islamic fundamentalists opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach, killing 15 people — a law that would turn controversial political opinions into punishable offenses.

• Australia’s largest literary festival, Adelaide Writers Week, has been canceled after organizers dropped an Australian-Palestinian writer, prompting over 180 authors to boycott in protest.

• A new poll shows 35% of UK students support banning from campus speakers who belong to Reform UK, a political party that supports deregulation and lowering immigration.

In the frame

Speak is a documentary premiering on Jan. 23 at the Sundance Film Festival that follows five U.S. high-school students on the national speech-and-debate circuit as they compete, prep, and obsess over arguments that mirror the country’s biggest cultural and political fights. The film uses teenagers arguing about race, gender, and free speech to show how persuasion works in real life and how America’s future advocates learn to argue without canceling each other — most of the time.

By the numbers

Learning math might actually make you more tolerant of political views you oppose. Our data shows that students studying religion and philosophy have the highest average rates of political tolerance. The majors with the lowest tolerance include fashion, marketing, and real estate — while majors sometimes derided as “woke studies” perform better than critics might imagine.

“Just because someone is a teacher in the state of Texas doesn’t mean that they check their free speech rights at the door.”

– Zeph Capo, head of the American Federation of Teachers-Texas union, which is suing the Texas Education Agency and Commissioner Mike Morath for investigating teachers over social media posts about Charlie Kirk.

Mark Kelly vows to fight

After Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon is moving to potentially dock Senator Mark Kelly’s rank of captain and retirement pension, Kelly vowed to fight the demotion “with everything I’ve got.”

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Hegseth’s move comes after Kelly and five other Democratic lawmakers, all of whom previously served in the military or intelligence community, released a video saying, “Our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal orders.”

Plato banished

Texas A&M told philosophy professor Martin Peterson he must teach the course “Contemporary Moral Issues” without discussing race or sex — and drop readings that touch on those topics, including some by Plato, by the following day or be reassigned.

“This is what happens when the board of regents gives university bureaucrats veto power over academic content,” said Lindsie Rank, director of Campus Rights Advocacy at FIRE, adding, “You don’t protect students by banning 2,400-year-old philosophy.”

Below the fold

• Israeli tech billionaire Shlomo Kramer sparked outrage by urging Americans to “limit the First Amendment” as a way to address societal polarization.

• Utah lawmakers introduced a bill that would target protected expression by imposing a 7% tax and annual fee on online pornography.

In the frame

Seized is a documentary premiering on Jan. 25 at the Sundance Film Festival about the 2023 police raid on the Marion County Record, a small-town Kansas newspaper whose newsroom was searched and whose computers, phones, and reporting materials were seized while it was engaged in routine investigative reporting. The film follows how the paper was digging into alleged misconduct by a local official, how police relied on a thin and widely criticized warrant to justify the raid, and how the incident quickly drew national attention as a stark violation of the First Amendment.

By the numbers

Last year, attempts to censor faculty speech on campus hit record levels, with more than one attempt per day. In total, FIRE’s Scholars Under Fire database recorded 525 sanction attempts, with 460 resulting in some form of punishment, including 29 firings. Even if we count multiple incidents at the U.S. Naval Academy as a single entry, 2025’s total still breaks records going back 25 years. Almost all these sanction attempts came from the right of the faculty member’s expression.

“When I speak of the fear, intimidation, arrests and public shaming of intellectuals and religious leaders who dare to speak their minds, and then I tell you that I’m from Saudi Arabia, are you surprised?”

– Jamal Khashoggi, Washington Post column, September 2017

FCC targets news outlets, again

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr sent a letter to BBC, NPR, and PBS executives saying the agency is investigating whether the British broadcaster’s misleading edits of President Donald Trump’s speech on Jan. 6, 2025, aired in the U.S. via those outlets.

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Here’s Bob Corn-Revere, chief counsel at FIRE and former legal advisor and later chief counsel to FCC Chairman James H. Quello:

It looks like Chairman Carr has joined President Trump’s litigation team and is reaching across the Atlantic Ocean to try to regulate British media. This is quite a stretch for someone who used to say that the FCC cannot act as the nation’s speech police, much less the world’s information czar.

Texas governor declares CAIR, Muslim Brotherhood terrorist groups

Gov. Greg Abbott labeled the Muslim Brotherhood and Council on American-Islamic Relations as foreign terrorist groups and barred them from buying land.

The federal government has not formally designated either as a terror group — and CAIR is now suing Abbott in response. “When First Amendment rights are at stake,” says FIRE Legal Fellow Jacob Gaba, “such tenuous connections are not sufficient independent bases to impose such sweeping punishments.”

Below the fold

• A former FBI employee is suing the agency, claiming he was fired for displaying a Progress Pride flag at his workstation after his supervisor had approved it.

• President Trump publicly defended Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who U.S. intelligence says ordered the killing and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Here is FIRE’s Will Creeley in response.

In the frame

The premiere of the documentary, Think Before You Post, about the rise of the British speech police, set to take place at Rich Mix arts hub in London on Nov. 25, was canceled this week. The venue officials explained by email that the film and its speakers “do not align” with Rich Mix’s mission “to support marginalised communities (primarily communities facing racial inequity).” Watch the full film here:

Know your rights

If you are lawfully present in a public space, the police cannot interfere with your recording solely because you are recording. Rather, there must be a legitimate law enforcement need to do so, like maintaining public and/or officer safety or protecting the integrity of an investigation.

For more, see our explainer on recording the police in public.

By the numbers

When it comes to tolerance for opposing viewpoints, voting is tied to more tolerance in men — but less in women. Male students who are registered to vote are more tolerant generally and a lot more likely to say they’d allow every speaker on campus, full stop, than male students who aren’t registered. But that effect doesn’t exist for women, at all. Instead, being registered to vote is associated among women with being even more intolerant than they already are, especially of speakers on the right.