Free Republic

Today at 10:00 a.m. the Supreme Court hears oral argument in Murthy v. Missouri, a case on federal government officials communicating with social media companies about content moderation policies and whether it amounts to government suppression or speech censorship. At 11:00 (or after Murthy) The Supreme Court hears oral argument in NRA v. Vullo, a case concerning the First amendment and whether a New York State regulator violated it by threatening its regulated entities with regulatory action if they do business with the NRA.

According to Horowitz, the IRS contends that, by reporting on Hillary Clinton’s national security violations, the tax-exempt foundation effectively endorsed Trump. Nobody likes the IRS, but Americans always assumed that the IRS was an equal opportunity government pest, bedeviling people across the political spectrum. The belief in the agency’s non-partisan status vanished in 2013 when we learned that the IRS had deliberately withheld tax-exempt status from Tea Party organizations, severely hampering their ability to share information during the 2012 presidential election. Now, David Horowitz contends that the IRS is trying to destroy his long tax-exempt Freedom Center, which, among many...

A Belgian court has sentenced an activist to one year in prison for running an organization that allegedly spreads “racist, hateful, Nazi and negationist speech.” According to POLITICO, a judge said 30-year-old Dries Van Langenhove “revelled in Nazi ideas that cause much suffering.” “Dries Van Langenhove, a political activist and leader of a Flemish-nationalist youth movement called Schild & Vrienden, was convicted of inciting violence and denying the Holocaust, the Ghent criminal court ruled Tuesday morning,” the outlet reports. “Former Flemish parliamentarian Dries Van Langenhove has just been sentenced to 1 year IN PRISON because supposedly ‘racist memes’ were shared...

Residents of the Evergreen State will soon be able to report their neighbors for expressing “bias.” The governor of Washington is poised to sign a bill that ends free speech in certain counties – and the rest of the state probably sometime thereafter. Recently passed by the Washington state legislature, this measure creates a “bias incident hotline” to the State Attorney General’s Office. You read that right: American citizens in the northwestern state will soon be able to turn in their friends, neighbors, family members, or even strangers for not only physical “hate crimes” but also expressions of “bias.” Substitute...

Recently, the city of Portland, Oregon, exhibited a moment of sanity when city officials decided to reverse a law they had enacted in 2020 that basically decriminalized all drugs. The results of that law were extremely predictable (everyone did, in fact, predict it). Crime escalated, drug use became rampant, overdoses soared, and the city descended even further into chaos than it already had. But if you were fooled into thinking that Portland may have regained a modicum of common sense, you can rest easy: it has not. Yesterday, independent journalist Andy Ngô broke the news that a Portland area woman...

The far left leaning Senate is about to try and kill the first amendment. Senate Bill 5427, after it is signed into law, would allow private individuals (note: this is not limited to American citizens) to report “bias incidents*” (see definition below) to the State Attorney General’s Office, with the possibility of receiving up to $2,000 of taxpayers money for this noncriminal incident. The bill was very clear: this is a non-crime which they will then forward to local law enforcement to investigate. What’s to investigate? No crime, no investigation.

Heather Idoni picked up a phone receiver and punched in her inmate number on a keypad to activate it through the visitation window at Grayson County Detention Center. She had 15 minutes to talk before the sound was cut off without warning and her guests were told to leave.In prison, every move an inmate makes is controlled. Ms. Idoni, 59, is getting used to that. She must, because she is facing more than 41 years in prison—the rest of her natural life.Her sentence is expected to be the longest in the United States for someone charged with violating the Freedom...

UPDATED: A federal judge has found Catherine Herridge in civil contempt of his order that she reveal the source of stories she wrote when she worked for Fox News. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper set a fine of $800 per day, but he stayed the ruling to give her time to appeal. The judge had ordered Herridge to reveal her sources for 2017 stories that reported on a federal investigation of Yanping Chen, a naturalized U.S. citizen who founded the University of Management and Technology in Virginia. The stories had to do with Chen’s affiliations with the Chinese military. The...

The Blaze journalist Steve Baker cuffed and taken into FBI custody allegedly for his reporting on J6. Baker previously said he didn’t know what the charges were against him but was told they were non-violent misdemeanors

A Christian school in Maine must adhere to the state's LGBT antidiscrimination policy to qualify for a state tuition assistance program while the lawsuit against the state continues, a federal judge has ruled.U.S. District Judge John Woodcock, a George W. Bush appointee, denied a preliminary injunction Tuesday requested by Bangor Christian Schools run by Crosspoint Church, concluding that the church's lawsuit against assorted state officials is not likely to succeed.He ruled that Bangor Christian Schools must follow all the Maine Human Rights Act provisions."The Court determines that the educational antidiscrimination provisions do not violate the Free Exercise Clause because they...

A federal judge held veteran investigative reporter Catherine Herridge in civil contempt on Thursday for refusing to divulge her source for a series of Fox News stories about a Chinese American scientist who was investigated by the FBI but never charged. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington imposed a fine of $800 per day until Herridge complies, but the fine will not go into effect immediately to give her time to appeal. ... “Herridge and many of her colleagues in the journalism community may disagree with that decision and prefer that a different balance be struck, but she is...

MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade argued Monday that the United States’ “deep commitment to free speech” makes Americans uniquely susceptible to disinformation campaigns. McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor, went on “The Rachel Maddow Show” to promote her new book, “Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America.” She said her “goal” with the book was to spark a “national conversation about truth and our commitment to it.” She added, “I hope that by dissecting it, explaining it, and educating the public, we can all see disinformation for what it is so that we can begin to push back...

The CBS News boss who signed off on the controversial ouster of Catherine Herridge — a respected Washington correspondent who has been embroiled in a high-profile First Amendment case — is nevertheless being honored with a free speech award next month. CBS News president Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews was selected by Radio Television Digital News Association to be among 13 honorees at the 33rd annual First Amendment Awards at The Watergate Hotel in Washington DC on March 9. The irony was not lost ... “The RTDNA must be tone deaf to give Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews and CBS News an award for the First...

CBS News has returned the notes it seized from a high-profile reporter the network fired for 'investigating Hunter Biden' .. ... SAG-AFTRA, the CBS workers' union, called the seizure of her notes 'completely inappropriate' and 'very unusual'. ... CBS News has returned the notes it seized from a high-profile reporter the network fired for 'investigating Hunter Biden.' Catherine Herridge, a veteran reporter covering national security and intelligence, was among the hundreds of CBS employees who were laid off by parent company Paramount last week. Herridge covered investigations into the Biden family, and the network seized her personal notes after her...

Below is my column in The Hill on the trouble brewing at CBS over the seizure of the files of acclaimed investigative reporter Catherine Herridge. The column broke the story on the uproar over not just her being laid off but her being locked out from her files. I am now hearing from CBS sources that the network is moving toward a resolution to turn over the files after the outcry. However, the concerns over Herridge’s firing and the network’s handling of her confidential notes continues to draw fire from journalists and commentators. The union issued a statement (below) after...

The acclaimed CBS reporter who was investigating the Hunter Biden laptop scandal before she was fired last week had her personal files seized by the network in an “unprecedented” move, sources told The Post on Thursday. Catherine Herridge — who is the middle of a First Amendment case being closely watched by journalists nationwide — was among 20 CBS News staffers let go as part of a larger purge of hundreds of employees at parent company Paramount Global. Her firing had stunned co-workers, but the network’s decision to hold on to her personal materials, along with her work laptop where...

Volokh: The order came down today; it noted that no judge called for a vote on the en banc rehearing petition. Here's my post on the panel decision, from September. From Junior Sports Magazines, Inc. v. Bonta, decided today [Sept, 13, 2023] by Ninth Circuit Judge Kenneth Lee, joined by Judges Randy Smith and Lawrence VanDyke: "This case is not about whether children can buy firearms. (They cannot under California law.) Nor is this case about whether minors can legally use firearms. (California allows minors under adult supervision to possess and use firearms for hunting, target practice, and other activities.)...

A year after its censorship programs were exposed, the Global Engagement Center still insists the public has no right to know how it's spending taxpayer money. “You can look, but don’t touch!”The State Department is so unhappy a newspaper published details about where it’s been spending your taxes, it’s threatened to only show a congressional committee its records in camera until it gets a “better understanding of how the Committee will utilize this sensitive information.” Essentially, Tony Blinken is threatening to take his transparency ball home unless details about what censorship programs he’s sponsoring stop appearing in papers like the...

The most important thing you will see this week is this interview of Mike Benz by Tucker Carlson: Benz is with the Foundation for Freedom, which tracks government censorship. In this interview he explains how our government rigged elections abroad and has now, through DHS (Department of Homeland Security) and CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency), censored online communications, noting that its most substantial censorship involved blocking and limiting any critiques online respecting the government’s responses to COVID-19 and the security of the 2020 election. It's a well-detailed account that I urge you in the strongest terms to view. In...

A green nonprofit that is indirectly funded by a foreign billionaire is pressuring broadcasters to drop advertisements that criticize the Biden administration’s massive electric vehicle (EV) agenda. Climate Power wrote to numerous broadcasters this week demanding that they stop airing American Fuel and Petrochemicals Manufacturers (AFPM)-funded advertisements in swing state markets that rail against President Joe Biden’s plans to impose widespread EV adoption in the coming years. The charitable organization affiliated with Hansjorg Wyss, a Swiss health care mogul and billionaire philanthropist, donates millions of dollars to the Fund for a Better Future, which was the fiscal sponsor for Climate...