FIREwire — January 30, 2026
Alex Pretti, students targeted for speech, and Grok produces nudes
“You raise your voice, I erase your voice.”
— ICE agent threatening a protester in Minnesota.
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 Aaron Terr 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 Jacob Gaba 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
Greg Lukianoff 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, John Coleman 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, Nico Perrino spoke with Pouya Nikmand, 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.
It's hard to take you seriously when you partner with someone like bovine Bari Weiss, a person who censors news that may offend the powers that be. Just because she owns something called "The Free Press" doesn't means she believes in a free press.