FIREwire — November 21, 2025
FCC targets BBC, Texas governor calls Muslim groups terrorists, and Trump defends the Saudi crown prince
“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.
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.
While some evidence ties MB to terrorist funding, and the FBI lists CAIR within a Hamas-associated network, the federal government has not formally designated either as a terror group — and CAIR is now suing Abbott in response. The Department of Justice recently closed its review into whether the planned EPIC City, backed by the East Plano Islamic Center, would constitute a Sharia enclave after its developers revised their promotional materials — and while CAIR publicly defended the project, there is no evidence it is involved.
“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.
Most people are more censorial than we’d like, but women engaging in politics are disproportionately driving political intolerance and censorship.
