“If any one is base enough to . . . shout for Jefferson Davis, let him, and do not lock him up for it.”
— Frederick Douglass, on free speech in wartime, 1863
First things first
Censors rarely say they’re punishing speech outright. Instead, a newsroom becomes a “national security” concern. Blocking a road becomes “civil terrorism.” A lecture on Jesus becomes “unprofessional.” That’s why the test of free speech must be what was actually said or done, not what someone in power chooses to call it.
Frederick Douglass understood this, and held that line at enormous personal cost. In 1863, men who had once mobbed abolitionists were suddenly demanding free speech. Douglass, a former slave, despised their motives but granted their basic point. Most of us will never face a test like that, and this week offers several examples of how often we fail much easier ones.
The press ban meets a Trump judge
Last week, President Trump threw CNN, MS NOW, and Politico out of the White House, citing “purposely negative stories” and national security concerns no one has managed to identify. A federal judge looked at the evidence, wasn’t impressed, and issued a temporary restraining order. Jacob Gaba carefully traces 130 years of White House press history to explain why. The White House doesn’t have to admit reporters, but once it does, it cannot hand out press passes based on what they write. “Press access may be a privilege,” Gaba writes, “but ‘privilege’ is not a magic word that allows the government to avoid constitutional problems.”
Reader Sadredin Moosavi pushes back. Barring the three outlets doesn’t stop them from reporting, he argues, and the president has “no obligation to take a question from a person or organization he does not like.” That second point is right. No president has to call on anyone, or hold a briefing at all. But again, once the government sets up a press facility, it cannot decide who gets a pass based on whether it likes their coverage. Moosavi says he’d like to see the courts settle the question, and so far they’re doing exactly that. I recently wrote a response to critics with Gaba, if you’d like to read more.
Below the fold
Pepperdine University banished professor Christina Littlefield from campus for 15 months after she assigned a reading about various depictions of Jesus, including a black one, in her “Christianity and Culture” class — and she said that colleagues’ support for censoring an art exhibit was right out of the “fascist playbook.” She has filed a grievance seeking reinstatement.
The Department of Education formally repealed the Biden administration’s 2024 Title IX rule and restored the 2020 framework. Courts had already struck down the 2024 rule, so the repeal mostly cleans up the books, but Tyler Coward explains why the 2020 rule’s speech and due process protections are worth having on paper.
The long view
Jacob Mchangama set out to learn whether Frederick Douglass, like Milton and Mill, had a free speech blind spot. He expected to find a few dozen relevant texts, and his new corpus logs 203 so far. By 1863, Douglass was arguing that pro-slavery mobs seeking to express their views had a right to speak. Mchangama’s verdict is that Douglass came close to absolutism on opinion, but drew a hard line at violence.
I published the piece last month to commemorate Douglass’s escape from slavery on Sept. 3, 1838.
Podcasts
The Blessings of Liberty explores constitutional history, Supreme Court debates, and the “American Idea,” hosted by bestselling author and constitutional scholar Jeffrey Rosen.
In this episode, recorded at the Washington National Cathedral, former White House Domestic Policy Council director Melody Barnes, Episcopal Bishop of Washington Mariann Edgar Budde, and former Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Rabbi David Saperstein join to discuss how faith and freedom of conscience can serve the common good and strengthen a democratic society.
So to Speak takes an uncensored look at the world of free expression through the law, philosophy, and stories that define free speech — hosted by FIRE’s Nico Perrino.
Reason senior editor and Rising host Robby Soave joins Nico to talk about the White House’s restrictions on media access, Macklemore getting dropped from Ed Sheeran’s tour, and why trying to suppress controversial speech so often backfires. The two also look back on how the free speech fight has changed since they started covering it, as it moved from campus censorship and cancel culture to content moderation.
Required reading
The Manhattan Institute’s Tal Fortgang has drafted model legislation to turn political road-blocking and vandalism into felony “civil terrorism.” Matthew Harwood, head of comms at FIRE, doesn’t think lawbreakers should go free. He thinks “terrorism” is a label any party in power will abuse, and points to Oklahoma prosecutors who charged Black Lives Matter protesters as terrorists, as well as the FBI interviewing a Moms for Liberty member over school-board remarks. Treating a blocked road like a truck bomb, Harwood argues, is “a category error.” Well said. I recommend reading it alongside Fortgang’s counterpoint in The Dispatch.
Today in history with Sheridan Macy
On June 3, 1957, Shigeyoshi “Shig” Murao, manager of San Francisco’s City Lights bookstore, was arrested for selling a copy of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems to undercover police inspectors. The poem’s frank treatment of drugs, mental illness, poverty, and sexuality, including homosexuality, made it a target. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the poet who published it, was arrested too. Ginsberg himself was in Europe and out of reach.
The charges against Murao were dropped because prosecutors couldn’t prove he knew what was in the book. Ferlinghetti went to trial. The defense called a parade of critics and scholars who testified to the poem’s literary merit. On Oct. 3, 1957, Judge Clayton W. Horn, who taught a Sunday school Bible class, ruled that Howl was not obscene. Coarse language and sex didn’t make a book obscene, he held. Only a work “entirely lacking in social importance” could be, and he did not believe Howl was without redeeming social importance. The decision came just months after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roth v. United States, which Horn cited. The trial made the poem famous. Howl went on to sell more than a million copies, and the 2010 film Howl dramatized the case. If you’ve never read it, here’s a taste:
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night…
Harper's magazine is honoring NPR CEO Katherine Maher with its first amendment award. She is an advocate for censorship. This is not the Onion: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/commissar-npr-ceo-katherine-maher-she-her