FIREwire — January 16, 2025
FBI raids reporter's home, Iran crushes protests, and Australia debates hate speech
“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.
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 Sarah McLaughlin 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.
