FIREwire — January 9, 2025
Mark Kelly fights, Plato gets banished, and Utah lawmakers pursue an online porn tax
“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.”
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.”
Can the Pentagon strip Mark Kelly’s rank over speech?
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the Pentagon is moving to dock Senator Mark Kelly’s captain rank and retirement pension after Kelly released a video, joined by five Democratic congressional colleagues who also served in the military, 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.
