​Chicago was the site of riots in 2020, with economic damages exceeding $66 million. In 2024, groups successfully protested the Democratic National Convention and Vice President Harris with a “noise demo” that included banging pots and megaphones.
 
But Brett Raio finally took things too far for the Chicago police when he recently preached the gospel on a Chicago street. Police charged Raio for violating a noise ordinance, despite video evidence proving that Raio’s decibel levels from a handheld mic with an amplifier were well within reasonable limits. This arrest further demonstrated that the street preacher acted peacefully during interactions with police. Now, the American Center for Law & Justice is filing a court action on Raio’s behalf.

That action relies on a line of cases from the Supreme Court of the United States, which has long recognized the right to engage in free speech and debate on sidewalks and other public areas because they are considered “traditional public forums.” In fact, the Court even addressed the use of sound amplification devices in such circumstances. In Saia v. New York (1948) the Court declared that:
 
“A city ordinance forbidding the use of sound amplification devices in public places except with the permission of the Chief of Police and prescribing no standards for the exercise of his discretion is unconstitutional on its face, since it establishes a previous restraint on the right of free speech in violation of the First Amendment, made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment.”
 
In Chicago, authorities seem to increasingly consider religious people – particularly Christians – as targets, while allowing other, patently obnoxious behavior by others. In 2022, Protect The 1st’s policy director Erik Jaffe filed a certiorari petition in Keister v. Bell, which involved the right of evangelist Rodney Keister to stand on city-owned sidewalks on a public street in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, near the University of Alabama. The UA campus police enforced an agreement with the city to clamp down on expressive activity at that portion of the sidewalk.
 
The Eleventh Circuit erroneously ruled against Keister using a multifactor balancing test and allowed the University to forbid expressive activity. As we wrote at the time, “Even assuming the propriety of a balancing test, the Eleventh Circuit’s circular reliance on the University’s intent to suppress speech was an improper fulcrum for converting the most quintessential of traditional public fora into a limited forum allowing suppression.”
 
Given all this, it’s time the Supreme Court addressed the issue of using public order laws to crack down on constitutionally protected speech. A sidewalk preacher should not fear arrest over the complaint of any local Demetrius. The same applies to all religions. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, for example, recognizes that “traditional public fora are open for expressive activity regardless of the government intent.” We hope that the court considering Raio’s case recognizes the importance of ensuring that religious speech is not persecuted for merely being public by granting him the relief he seeks.

Protect The 1st has long held that parents have a First Amendment right to extend their beliefs and values across generations. It is for that reason that we object to schools in Montgomery County, Maryland, (Mahmoud v. Taylor) denying parents the right to opt-out their young children from sexually explicit reading courses. As we demonstrated in an amicus brief before the U.S. Supreme Court, Montgomery County schools violate these families’ free exercise of religion.
 
Now a similar case has arisen in Massachusetts, as recognized by commentator Jonathan Turley:
 
“The 1st Circuit just held that parents have no right to know about their 11-year-old changing gender in school. This ‘unwritten’ policy was viewed as overriding parental rights. The decision is defended as a reflection of our ‘pluralistic society.’”
 
Frederick Claybrook, in a guest post on the case for The Federalist Society added:

“The First Circuit smoothed over all of this by finding that nobody at school forced the young lady to announce she was genderqueer; they just gave her information about LGBT issues after she expressed struggles with depression, insecurity, low self-esteem, poor self-image, and a perceived lack of popularity. To the First Circuit, this no more directed her to exhibit as another gender than providing a child a book about bricklaying would direct her to become a mason. After all, the school didn’t stop her parents from espousing their own views to her at home or from seeing her own mental health professional. The Fourth Circuit reasoned similarly in Mahmoud v. McKnight when it rejected a Free Exercise Clause challenge to a school district’s refusal to tell parents when they would be teaching their children LGBTQ+ lessons and what materials they would use; the Supreme Court has accepted that case (now Mahmoud v. Taylor) for review. Hopefully, the Court’s decision, expected by the end of June, will shed some light on the path rather than cloud it further.”
 
We too hope for clarity from the U.S. Supreme Court.
 
For our part, Protect The 1st cherishes the fact that we live in a pluralistic society. We stand fast against bigotry in any form. But schools keeping parents in the dark about mental health care decisions for their children strikes us as Orwellian, and for parents with faith commitments on issues of sexuality, a violation of the First Amendment. 

​Student journalists and their supporters across the United States are celebrating the eighth annual Student Press Freedom Day. This year’s theme, "At the Forefront," emphasizes the resistance of student journalists and the challenges of prior restraint, censorship, and even the threat of arrest they face. How these challenges are met today will shape the future of tomorrow’s journalism, already facing stiff challenges from collapsing business models and social media fragmentation.
 
Student Press Freedom Day, organized by the Student Press Law Center, brings together students, educators, and press freedom advocates to raise awareness about the struggles of student journalists. Participants advocate for legal reforms, such as “New Voices” laws, which safeguard student journalists from administrative censorship.
 
Consider how the University of Northern Iowa handled student journalists, imposing unconstitutional prior restraint by requiring resident assistants to obtain approval before speaking to the media. The student newspaper, The Northern Iowan, exposed this policy, leading to its revocation and earning the publication the First Amendment Award at the Iowa College Media Association Awards.
 
Student Press Freedom Day also shines a light on precedents that threaten student press freedom.
 
The 1988 Supreme Court decision in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier weakened protections for high school journalists by allowing administrators to censor school-sponsored publications if they could justify doing so for “legitimate pedagogical concerns.” Though the ruling was meant to apply to K-12 institutions, its logic was later extended to colleges in Hosty v. Carter in 2005. In that case, the Seventh Circuit Court ruled that a university could exert prior review over a student newspaper if it was not designated a public forum.
 
Courts have also upheld the rights of college journalists. Over the past four decades, more than 60 cases have addressed censorship in public college and university student media, with decisions consistently affirming that the First Amendment prohibits most administrative censorship of student-edited publications.
 
The challenges faced by student journalists are not limited to administrative censorship. In 2024, Stanford University student journalist Dilan Gohill was arrested while covering a protest after following demonstrators into the university president's office. Despite wearing a press pass and acting in his capacity as a reporter, Gohill faced potential disciplinary action and criminal charges. After seven months of uncertainty and advocacy from First Amendment groups, Stanford President Jonathan Levin confirmed there would be no disciplinary action from the university.
 
With changing business models and a polarized society, quality, independent journalism struggles to exist. Whether or not quality journalism can continue will require, at the very least, cultivating young reporters and editors who are free to learn their chosen profession by practicing it without restraint.
 
Protect The 1st is pleased to join student journalists in celebrating Student Press Freedom Day.

​America’s charities face a growing danger of being crushed by onerous regulations and government regulation of their speech.
 
Multiple courts have ruled that “tax-exempt” status constitutes “federal financial assistance,” subjecting non-profit organizations to a host of burdensome, proactive obligations to ensure compliance with: Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, The Age Discrimination Act of 1975, Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 … and the list goes on.
 
These are laws with noble intents, but they come with onerous paperwork requirements and the ever-present threat of restrictions on a faith-based group’s speech and doctrines. Most non-profit entities – charities, churches and schools – are ill-equipped to handle the vast compliance burdens reserved that a large university or national NGO would be able to dedicate a whole department of lawyers to handle. 
 
As Philanthropy Roundtable wrote last year, “targeting nonprofit organizations that exist to address community problems and provide assistance for those in need should be off limits on the political battlefield.” We’ll refrain for now from commenting on whether these cases constitute lawfare, but we’ll happily point out why the courts came to the wrong conclusion.
 
In Buettner-Hartsoe v. Baltimore Lutheran High School Association, a federal district court in Maryland found that Concordia Prep’s tax-exempt status constituted “federal financial assistance” for the purposes of Title IX compliance. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, writing:
 
“Tax exemption is not ‘Federal financial assistance.’ This is not a novel concept. Indeed, since Title IX’s inception over fifty years ago, it has never been applied to organizations based solely on their tax-exempt status. And for good reason.”
 
That reason, of course, has to do with the underlying policy goal of encouraging good works from organizations that are not seeking to make a profit. Placing burdensome requirements on such organizations hinders their ability to express their goals, values, advocacy interests and opinions – to the detriment of their First Amendment rights.
 
Another case from the Central District of California, Herrera v. Valley Christian Academy, however, also found that a non-profit school’s tax-exempt status “is a form of federal financial assistance that would subject the institution to Title IX.” The judge ruled:
 
“[T]he plain purpose of the statute is controlling. Here that purpose is clearly to eliminate discrimination in programs or activities benefitting from federal financial assistance.”
 
Yet legislative references to purely tax-exempt status goes back to at least 1894. According to the Internal Revenue Code, non-profits must merely be: “Organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, or to foster national or international amateur sports competition (but only if no part of its activities involve the provision of athletic facilities or equipment), or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals …”
 
Requiring non-profits to serve these charitable missions while constantly navigating a vast bureaucratic labyrinth undermines the clear policy aims of the law’s definition. Such requirements could crush smaller organizations that are doing immense social good. These rules also threaten the free speech of charitable groups to hold and express beliefs that offend official sensibilities, whether it is a Christian or Muslim group that advocates traditional marriage, or an environmental group that holds policy ideas that offend this administration or the next one.

Last year, then-Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) sponsored the “Safeguarding Charity Act” to clarify that tax-exempt status does not qualify as “federal financial assistance.” And if all else fails, the U.S. Supreme Court should strike down these rulings. That might be our fastest way to reform.
 
We’ll keep a close eye on these cases as they pop up, and new legislative efforts by the 119th Congress to protect America’s charities.

​The city of Clarksdale, Mississippi, sued the Clarksdale Press Register for publishing an editorial that criticized officials for allegedly failing to provide public notice regarding a hearing on a local “sin tax.” The editorial in question began: “SECRECY, DECEPTION ERODE PUBLIC TRUST.”
 
Hinds County Chancery Court Judge Crystal Wise responded by ordering the newspaper to take down the column.
 
In her order, Judge Wise said the case involved “defamation against public figures through actual malice in reckless disregard of the truth and interferes with their legitimate function to advocate for legislation they believe would help their municipality during this current legislative cycle.”
 
Perhaps Judge Wise could benefit from a few hours reading The First Amendment for Dummies. The “actual malice” standard in legal jurisprudence protects journalists from libel suits, requiring a public figure to prove: 1) that a defendant knew a statement was false; or 2) that a news outlet acted with reckless disregard for the truth. It’s one of the most basic, foundational protections for free speech in the United States, allowing for unfettered coverage of public figures without fear of legal reprisal.
 
There was at least one question of fact: Was there a reckless disregard for the truth by the newspaper? Not according to a city clerk, who submitted an affidavit admitting that she failed to send a routine notification of the public meeting to the newspaper. As for what else Judge Wise thought was illegal about the Press Register’s opinion column – that remains unclear. Since she didn’t hold a hearing before issuing her order, it’s anyone’s guess.
 
After the ruling, Clarksdale mayor Chuck Espy lauded the decision, writing on Facebook:
“Thank GOD! The City of Clarksdale WON today! The judge ruled in our favor that a newspaper cannot tell a malicious lie and not be held liable. The newspaper had to take down a false story that they printed. The only thing that I ask, that no matter what you print, just let it be the truth; be it good or bad. Thank you GOD for a judicial system.”
After the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and its lawyers became involved, the mayor withdrew his suit. And thank God for that!
 
In the meantime, Mayor Espy and other officials should keep in mind that when the courts fail, the internet’s Streisand Effect always kicks in to punish would-be censors.
 
Protect The 1st looks forward to seeing this editorial hot off the press when it is reprinted by The Clarksdale Press Register.

​Like a seven-layer gelatin salad in the aftershocks of an earthquake, the European commentariat is still quivering from Vice President J.D. Vance’s tongue-lashing on their abandonment of the principles of free speech. The vice president spoke boldly of “a retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values” as “a threat from within.”
 
Dominic Green of The Wall Street Journal nailed it when he said that this is “really, a threat from above.” European governments and the meta government of the European Union in Brussels are imposing a host of policies – from heavy-handed overregulation to mass immigration policies, to speech codes – that are unpopular among European voters.
 
But the disconnects are here in America as well as in Europe. Vance’s critique identified an intellectual short-circuit on the nature of free speech. This disconnect is one suffered not just by progressive European elites, but also American journalists, a celebrated conservative Italian prime minister, and even some in the Trump Administration who would do well to read Vance’s speech and take it to heart.
 
Germany’s Speech Police
 
CBS’s 60 Minutes did an in-depth exploration of Germany’s speech code regulation, interviewing German prosecutor Dr. Matthäus Fink, who said he tells people he arrests for speech violations, “you have free speech as well, but it also has limits.”
 
The German government’s stated concern is that hateful speech can lead to violence. The segment reported that a local German politician, Walter Lübcke, was shot to death in 2019, four years after he gave a speech in favor of immigration. But Lübcke had been the target not just of criticism, but also death threats. In the United States, as in Europe, such explicit threats against individuals are crimes – as well they should be. Beyond that, policing speech becomes not just a slippery slope.
 
It becomes a slope slathered in Crisco for a Vaseline-coated sleigh.
 
Consider: Germans can now be prosecuted not just for violent threats, but also for “public insults against politicians” – “spreading malicious gossip,” “inventing fake quotes,” or even reposting “lies” online. For such “crimes,” Germans can receive fines, suffer the confiscation of their devices, and go to prison.
 
Among the crimes, Dr. Fink told 60 Minutes, are “comments like ‘you’re a son of a bitch,’ excuse me for using, but these words have nothing to do with political discussions or a contribution to a discussion.” Protect The 1st begs to differ. We think that any prosecutor who would put someone in prison for calling a politician an SOB is, himself, an SOB.
 
Did Free Speech Cause the Holocaust?
 
Many commentators have harshly criticized CBS’s Margaret Brennan for explaining in a recent interview with Secretary of State Marco Rubio that “free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide …”
 
It was left to Secretary Rubio to correct Brennan by noting that the Nazis were the ones who shut down free speech. The shuttering of newspapers, the infiltration and takeover of churches, the dispatching of editors, journalists, intellectuals and academics, along with dissenting pastors, priests and nuns to concentration camps led to a vacuum. In that vacuum-echo chamber, when the Nazis spoke about “the Jewish problem,” there was no one to counter “actually, we have a Nazi problem.”
 
To be fair, Brennan was probably not talking about the Nazi era, but the Weimar Republic that preceded it. If only, she seems to suggest, someone had shut up the Nazis before they gained adherents. But that perspective is also flawed. The Weimar Republic did cancel Hitler speeches, shut down some Nazi publications, and outlawed hate speech. And the Weimar Republic learned what we now seem to have forgotten – that suppressing speech is like squeezing water in your hands. It always slips through your fingers and finds another channel. Indeed, for misfits and outsiders of all sorts, outlawing speech gives it the erotic allure of the forbidden.
 
There’s Still Free Speech Work to Do in Romania, Italy, and at Home
 
The vice president spoke of the recent Romanian election that was cancelled 48 hours before people were set to go to the polls. The reason? It was reported that Russia had invested in Tik Tok videos in support of a presidential candidate who favored withdrawing support for Ukraine. Vice President Vance said, “But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.”
 
But it isn’t just stripey-pants, tea-sipping progressives who seem to lack a firm grasp of free speech. The decidedly non-progressive prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, is taking British rocker Brian Molko to court for “contempt for institutions” by calling her a “fascist” during a concert in Turin. The prime minister’s action, to quote Curly from the Three Stooges, says, “Who me? I resemble that remark!”
 
Then there is our own country and Vice President Vance’s administration. President Trump made a clear, powerful statement with his Executive Order “restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship.” But not every member of the president’s administration seems to have received the president’s memo.
 
For example, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is “fast-tracking” a probe of CBS over whether it is guilty of “news distortion” in its editorial decisions on which portions to air from an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. The White House press office has even excluded AP from some events for refusing to adopt President Trump’s new moniker for the Gulf of Mexico.
 
Around the world, on the right as well as on the left, the intellectual disconnect is the inability to always accept that a commitment to free speech means allowing speech you find offensive, stupid, and wrong. 
 
Like Fight Club, free speech in a democracy has three rules: I will not attempt to censor people and ideas I don’t like. I will not attempt to censor people and ideas I don’t like. I will not …

Here are some choice excerpts from Vice President Vance’s recent speech to the Munich Security Conference in which he spoke truth to the dour:

• “What I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values …”

 

• “I look to Sweden, where two weeks ago the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Koran burnings that resulted in his friend’s murder. As the judge in his case chillingly noted, Sweden’s laws to supposedly protect free expression do not, in fact, grant, and I’m quoting, ‘a free pass to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.’”

 

• “A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes.”

 

• “This last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law. Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime. In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.”

About a Romanian court’s cancellation of a national election in that country after posts on Tik-Tok were deemed Russian disinformation:
​

• “But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.”

 

• “But what no democracy, American, German, or European, will survive is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid or unworthy of even being considered. Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There’s no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don’t.”

​Tennessee just became the 13th state to adopt universal school choice. The new program creates education savings accounts granting scholarships of up to $7,300 per student, which can be used for private school tuition, textbooks, transportation, and instructional materials.
 
It’s the latest win in the ongoing school choice movement sweeping the states. Already this year, two more states seem poised to take the plunge, while a bill to expand school choice nationally has new momentum in Washington, D.C.
 
In Texas, the Senate swiftly passed a universal school choice bill, SB 2. It’s now in the House, where Speaker Dustin Burrows believes the votes are squarely in favor of passage. President Donald Trump has spoken in favor of the bill. So have Sen. Ted Cruz and a Texan named Elon Musk, who wrote on X: "If kids only have one school option and it's bad, then it's like they never had a chance at all."
 
In Wyoming, a universal school choice bill passed that state’s House and is now one step closer to becoming a reality.
 
Why is this important to a First Amendment organization? PT1st believes the right of parents to choose their children’s schools is essential to their ability to transmit their beliefs across generations – an activity that is as close to the heart of the First Amendment as anything we can imagine. And as for “social justice,” school choice allows the children of the poor to attend quality schools that primarily serve the affluent. Americans agree that these are good outcomes, which is why all demographic groups and people from both political parties give school choice overwhelming support. A poll from September found that candidates who support school choice are more likely to win at the ballot box.
 
With all that in mind, Congress should follow the lead of the states and the will of the people. Sens. Katie Britt (R-AL), Bill Cassidy, (R-LA), and Tim Scott (R-SC) have the ball rolling by reintroducing the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA), which would allow individuals and businesses to receive tax credits for donations to Scholarship Granting Organizations that provide scholarships to eligible students for attending private or religious schools, homeschooling, or other non-public educational options. ECCA is a critical step in providing lifelines to struggling parents and children everywhere.
 
Sen. Scott, a die-hard school choice advocate, calls the school choice movement “the civil rights issue of our time.” He believes, as we do, that parents should be able to freely choose a school that fits their child’s needs and select an education that upholds their values. 
 
To date, school choice has mostly been propelled by Republicans. But there are now signs the blue wall of opposition to school choice is breaking. Democrats can’t stand athwart progress for much longer – particularly if they continue to alienate minorities who want better lives for their children.
 
That’s why we’re so optimistic about what else 2025 will have in store for families.

​A hearing in the House last week brought to light the dimensions of government censorship in America and around the world. One star witness before the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government was Matt Taibbi, a key figure in revealing the “Twitter Files” documenting questionable “content moderation,” aka censorship, policies at the social media giant.
 
Taibbi’s remarks on the “Censorship Industrial Complex” emphasized the importance of the present “Alamo moment” for free speech. Drawing from the ongoing controversy regarding USAID, Taibbi pointed out that an organization called Internews received more than $400 million from USAID to train journalists, despite the fact that its chief Jeanne Bourgault argues for actively repressing heterodox journalistic perspectives.
 
The State Department recently disbanded funding for the so-called Global Disinformation Index, a British organization that helps “advertisers and the ad tech industry in assessing the reputational and brand risk when advertising with online media outlets and to help them avoid financially supporting disinformation online." A 2022 report from GDI listed Reason, New York Post, Real Clear Politics, The Daily Wire, The Blaze, One America News Network, The Federalist, Newsmax, The American Spectator, and The American Conservative as among the “riskiest online news outlets.” The U.S. government was thus in the business of pressuring advertisers to shun media outlets based on viewpoint discrimination.
 
These revelations are emblematic of a massive government censorship campaign. As the Trump Administration pumps the brakes on censorship at home, the repression of views is gaining momentum in Europe. The EU’s highly punitive Digital Services Act explicitly allows member nations to threaten platforms into censoring speech. As journalist Michael Shellenberger noted in his own testimony before the subcommittee, “the censorship industrial complex remains almost entirely intact.”
 
Shellenberger added:
 
“The head of NATO, NATO-backed think tanks, the European Commission, former president Barack Obama, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the World Economic Forum, influential think tanks at Harvard and Stanford, elements of the DOD, the CIA, the FBI, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Homeland Security and many others have all called for government censorship of so-called misinformation in recent years.
 
“And it’s not just censorship that is the problem. The problem is that deep-state agencies within the U.S. government have for two decades sought to gain control over the production of news and other information around the world as part of ongoing covert and overt influence operations, and that after 2016 multiple actors in several deep-state U.S. government agencies turned the tools of counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency and counter-populism against the American people.”
 
It's abundantly clear that taxpayer dollars are going to pass-through agencies that fund organizations and individuals who actively despise First Amendment values and seek to undermine freedom of speech.
 
Canadian journalist Rupa Subramanya highlighted some of the state-sponsored censorship taking place internationally. Scotland, she noted, now criminalizes anything that “stirs up hatred” against certain protected groups.
 
Subramanya said:
 
“I’m not saying these countries are the same as the fear-based authoritarian societies of North Korea and Iran – not by a long shot. But I am suggesting that some of the free countries are not, in fact, living up to their promises of liberty, and that many allies of the U.S. have gotten in the habit of using the government against political enemies or disfavored companies.”  
 
President Trump last month issued an executive order aimed at restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship. We’ll have to wait and see if it has any teeth. The Federal Communications Commission seems to be ignoring the president’s anti-censorship executive order by continuing the speech-repression tradition of the Biden Administration through its ongoing and utterly baseless probe of CBS for “news distortion.”
 
The job of countering government censorship, coercion, and jawboning, which Protect The 1st has covered extensively, will always require eternal vigilance. Let’s hope we’ll all be allowed to keep up the scrutiny of the censorship bureaucrats at home and abroad.  

​You might like, laugh at, or deplore the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. One thing that cannot be disputed is that the administration’s new designation has spawned the sale of innumerable T-shirts.
 
Private organizations are free to adopt or not adopt the administration’s terminology. Google, for its part, enacted a diplomatic solution. Use Google Maps in the United States and you will find that it reflects the new name – Gulf of America. But Google Maps users in Mexico will find that the old name, the golfo de méxico, is intact.
 
The AP news organization does not have the luxury of splitting names in its reportage. It stuck with the old name, as do most Americans. This makes sense, given that Mexico’s Gulf coastline is longer than that of the United States. Now AP says the White House has informed the news organization that because AP “did not align its editorial standards” with the executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico, “AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office.” An AP reporter was later blocked from an executive order signing.
 
AP says that these actions violate its First Amendment rights. It remains to be seen whether courts will hold that this action violates the letter of the First Amendment. AP can argue that the White House is engaged in viewpoint discrimination, even if about access to a limited public forum. This kind of petty play and attempts to direct editorial policy from above is a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the First Amendment.
 
Those who advocate such a muscular approach to press relations were the first to protest attempts by the recent progressive administration to strongarm corporations, universities, and media into language policing. We were told to refer to America’s Latino population as “Latinx” (which most Latinos hated), to women as “birthing persons,” and to pronoun policing. The Trump press office would do well to discontinue the tradition of heavy-handed language control.

​Journalist Matt Taibbi testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. He noted that many politicians, such as former Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry, are publicly justifying curtailment of free speech, saying that the First Amendment gets in the way of building “a consensus.”

Matt Taibbi told the committee that building “consensus” is not his job as a journalist. He went on to say:

“This is an Alamo moment for the First Amendment. Most of America’s closest allies have already adopted draconian speech laws. We’re surrounded. The EU’s new Digital Services Act is the most comprehensive censorship law ever instituted in a democratic society.

“Ranking member Raskin, you don’t have to go as far as Russia or China to find people jailed for speech. Our allies in England now have an Online Safety Act that empowers the government to jail people for nebulous offenses like ‘false communication’ or causing ‘psychological harm.’ Germany, France, Australia, Canada, and other nations have implemented similar ideas.

“These laws are totally incompatible with our system. Our own citizens have been arrested in some of these countries, but our government hasn’t stood up for them. Why? Because many of our bureaucrats believe in these laws.

“Take USAID. Many Americans are in an uproar now because they learned about over $400 million going to an organization called Internews, whose chief Jeanne Bourgault boasted to Congress about training ‘hundreds of thousands of people’ in journalism. Her views are almost identical to Kerry’s.

“She gave a talk about ‘building trust and combatting misinformation’ in India during the pandemic. She said that after months of a ‘really beautifully unified Covid-19 message,’ vaccine enthusiasm rose to 87%, but when ‘mixed information on vaccine efficacy’ got out, hesitancy ensued.

“We’re paying this person to train journalists, and she doesn’t know the press doesn’t exist to promote ‘unity’ or political goals like vaccine enthusiasm. That’s propaganda, not journalism.

“Bourgault also once said that to fight ‘bad content,’ we need to ‘work really hard on exclusion lists or inclusion lists’ and ‘really try to focus our ad dollars’ toward ‘the good news.’”

“Again, if you don’t know the fastest way to erode ‘trust’ in media is by having government sponsor ‘exclusion lists,’ you shouldn’t be getting a dollar in taxpayer money, let alone $476 million. And USAID is just a tiny piece of a censorship machine Michael and I saw across a long list of agencies. Collectively they’ve bought up every part of the news production line: sources, think-tanks, research, ‘fact-checking,’ ‘anti-disinformation,’ commercial media scoring, and when all else fails, censorship.

“It’s a giant closed messaging loop, whose purpose is to transform the free press into a consensus machine. There’s no way to remove the rot surgically. The whole mechanism has to go.
​
“Is there ‘right-wing misinformation’? Hell yes. It exists in every direction. But I grew up a Democrat and don’t remember being afraid of it. At the time, we didn’t need censorship because we figured we had the better argument.”

​Congress is once again attempting to keep children off of social media. It’s a noble and well-intended effort – but it also implicates the First Amendment in ways that deserve more scrutiny in Congressional debate.
 
The bill, dubbed the “Kids Off Social Media Act,” is a bipartisan effort spearheaded by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). According to a press release on Sen. Schatz’ website, the legislation would ban social media accounts for children under 13 and prohibit algorithmic recommendations to users under the age of 17.
 
A large body of research implicates social media as harmful to child development. Sen. Schatz himself cites an alarming study showing that social media is a leading driver of poor mental health among youth. According to the CDC, 57 percent of high school girls and 29 percent of high school boys felt persistently sad or hopeless in 2021. This social despondency is often attributed to sites like Instagram that proliferate unattainable standards for children in looks, wealth, and travel.
 
As parents ourselves, we do not underestimate the risks social media can pose to children. At the same time, we cannot ignore that children have free speech rights, too. Some digital rights activists have also expressed concern that implementing new rules around social media would cause platforms to collect even more data from consumers. The Open Technology Institute demonstrates that such a law could make it necessary to engage in “the installation and use of AI-powered spyware to surveil students’ online activities during and outside of school hours.”
 
We advise Congress to move with great deliberation in considering this bill – and others like it – to ensure that Congress fully considers its secondary effects like the law’s potential to promote AI surveillance of students. There are few serious problems in America that cannot be made worse by an overly ambitious law and regulatory regime. It’s one thing to want to keep our kids happy and healthy – it’s another to prescribe broad fixes with insufficient detail and safeguards. Members of Congress should think hard about the implications inherent in any bill regulating the speech rights of Americans.
 
Perhaps this debate might spur social media companies to preempt legislation by taking serious steps to address the multitude of problems children face on social media. If social media companies were to create safer, more kid-friendly spaces, Congress may not need to act at all.

​The United States Military Academy at West Point last week ordered all extracurricular clubs centered around gender or race to immediately “cease all activities.” While the directive is likely legal, we might want to take a deep breath to navigate entry into tricky territory.
 
According to a recent memo issued by West Point deputy commandant Chad Foster, such clubs must immediately “unpublish, deactivate, archive, or otherwise remove all public facing content.” All other group activities, meanwhile, have been paused – presumably pending a review. Affected clubs include the Society of Women Engineers, the National Society of Black Engineers Club, the Asian-Pacific Forum Club, the Contemporary Cultural Affairs Seminar Club and the Latin Cultural Club. In total, at least a dozen groups are explicitly required to disband.
 
It's understandable why Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth would want to end DEI programs within our national security apparatus. DEI is an eccentric and extreme ideology that defines people based on their immutable characteristics – permanently branding them as privileged colonizers or oppressed victims. Replacing “equality” with “equity” is not exactly the best way to build unit cohesion in the military, or even to address racial disparities in the civilian world.
 
On the other hand, protecting us against the threat of the West Point chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers seems like overkill. Such affinity groups have traditionally been where minorities go for mutual support. West Point now has 280 women in a class of more than 1,200. It’s perfectly understandable why women might want their own affiliate group in a traditionally male-dominated institution like West Point.
 
Groups that will likely survive the order include gender-oriented clubs centered around athletics, such as women’s boxing and women’s team handball. West Point’s “Clubs and Organizations” web page is currently – and perhaps unsurprisingly – buggy and largely useless.
 
It is not immediately obvious how the First Amendment right to speech and free association should be treated at a military academy. Once a plebe takes the R-Day Oath to the Constitution, they are in a unique zone where some of those constitutional rules no longer strictly apply. It is reasonable to keep military education free of ideological indoctrination. But care must be taken to remove DEI in a way that is neutral in its application.
 
We’ll continue to closely monitor this situation as it develops.

“You mess around with me, and I’ll wipe the floor with you,” Judge Judy told an obstreperous litigant.
 
That’s how judges, even TV judges, run their courtrooms – as monarchs. But the reality is that the inner workings of these little kingdoms are delicate operations, protected from the outside world by stone, marble, X-ray machines, and metal detectors.
 
Courtrooms also need protection from outside protesters using sound-trucks and other devices to try to intimidate jurists or interfere with judicial operations. 18 U.S. Code § 1507 does this by prohibiting “interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice” through “pickets or parades in or near a building housing a court of the United States, or in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer.”
 
At present, the crime is punishable by a maximum prison sentence of up to one year. A new bill introduced in Congress would boost the punishment to five years. Are this law and its proposed amendment precise enough to avoid sweeping in legitimate protest?
 
Respect for the Constitution, of course, requires protecting the deliberations of a courtroom. In recent years, we’ve seen a marked increase in intimidation and even violence against the judiciary. Look no further than the horrifying case of Daniel Anderl, the son of federal judge Esther Salas, who was gunned down in a despicable act of vengeance by culprit – and attorney – Roy Den Hollander.
 
Nor are Justices of the Supreme Court immune from danger. Consider Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was threatened by an armed gunman outside of his house in Maryland.
 
These are serious concerns, and it is good that we have laws criminalizing threatening conduct. The new bill’s broad penalties, though they arise out of understandable concerns, could have the unfortunate effect of chilling free speech. Moreover, the reach of the federal statute – particularly when coupled with the proposed five-year penalty – could very well be sufficient to scare off law-abiding folks engaged in legitimate, peaceful protest.
 
After all, what exactly constitutes “influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer, in the discharge of his duty” through “pickets or parades” near a courthouse? How far away from a courthouse do protestors have to be to be considered legal? When coupled with such a draconian penalty, this law could discourage law-abiding citizens and their publicly aired complaints and criticisms. The U.S. Supreme Court allows such statements on the sidewalk in front of its majestic façade. Where are the lines drawn for other protests for other courts?
 
Our take: Though well-intentioned, the expansion of this bill overshoots the mark. Perhaps both civil libertarians and security-minded senators alike would profit from clarifying the existing law.

​Rabbi Mier Soloveichik has a touching piece in The Wall Street Journal about an Israeli women, Agam Berger, 20, who during her long imprisonment by Hamas refrained from engaging in any activities on Saturday that would violate the Sabbath.
 
Journalists reported: “Thus when ‘Hamas terrorists ordered Agam to cook food … she steadfastly refused.’ Another hostage, Liri Albag, 20, reportedly described how Ms. Berger refrained from eating nonkosher meat throughout her time in captivity, which doubtless involved enormous sacrifice.”
 
Such religious persecution has happened throughout history to people of every faith. This story got us to thinking of the sacrifices of such faithful, from the abolitionists and underground railroad volunteers to the heroes and martyrs of the civil rights movement. These stories make us think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. writing to the world from their jail cells.
 
We applaud the courage of such people and are amazed by the steadfastness of their conviction. But governments, regimes, and terrorists should not be allowed to exact such costs on people of faith, even if brave ones like Agam rise to the challenge. We cannot tolerate power that forces such people into making these brave choices.
 
In a better world, Dietrich Bonhoffer would have continued to write theology. Rev. King should have enjoyed a long and happy life as a minister tending to his Atlanta congregation.
 
Such stories reinforce our appreciation for the First Amendment’s protection of the free exercise of religion. And they inspire us to work harder with our civil liberties colleagues to ensure that in America, at least, people won’t have to pay a severe price for living out their faith.