Trump Administration’s Targeting Of International Students Jeopardizes Free Speech And Privacy Online

Free Speech

from the attacking-all-the-rights dept

The federal government is using social media surveillance to target student visa holders living in the United States for online speech the Trump administration disfavors. The administration has initiated this new program, called “Catch and Revoke,” in an effort to revoke visas, and it appears to be a cross-agency collaboration between the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of Justice. It includes a dedicated task force and the use of AI and other data analytic tools to review the public social media accounts of tens of thousands of student visa holders. Though the full scope remains unclear, current reports indicate that the administration is surveilling for “pro-Hamas” sentiment, “antisemitic activity,” or even just “conduct that bears a hostile attitude toward U.S. citizens or U.S. culture.” At the time of publishing of this blog post, the federal government has already revoked over 1600 student visas for a variety of reasons.

This social media surveillance program is an alarming attack on freedom of speech and privacy—for both visa holders here in the United States and their American associates.

A Dangerous Erosion of Free Speech

While there is some nuance in the interplay between freedom of speech and immigration law, one principle is evident: foreign nationals who currently reside in the U.S.—including student visa holders—are protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court stated in Bridges v. Wixon (1945) that “[f]reedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country.”

First Amendment-Protected Political Speech

Revoking student visas based, in part, on what students have said publicly on social media is especially constitutionally problematic given that the Trump administration is targeting core First Amendment-protected political speech. As the Supreme Court stated in Mills v. Alabama (1966), a central purpose of the First Amendment is to “protect the free discussion of governmental affairs,” whether on political issues, public officials, or how the government should operate.

The administration is targeting non-citizen students for “pro-Hamas,” antisemitic, and even just pro-Palestinian speech. Yet what falls under these categories is vague and not clearly defined. For example, the administration detained a Georgetown University researcher due to social media posts that are critical of Israel, but do not express support for Hamas.

More importantly, even controversial or offensive speech falls within the protections of the First Amendment. There are several categories of speech that do not enjoy First Amendment protection, including true threats of violence, inciting imminent violence, and providing material support for terrorism. However, short of rising to that level, the student speech targeted by the administration is protected by the First Amendment. Worse still, the administration is broadly going after students who simply appear to be “social activists” or are engaged in speech that is generically “anti-American.”

Such an overbroad social media surveillance and visa revocation program—one that sweeps in wholly lawful speech—strikes at the heart of what the First Amendment was intended to protect against.

Chilling Effect

Social media surveillance motivated by the government’s desire to punish political speech will chill (and certainly has already chilled) student visa holders from speaking out online.

The Supreme Court stated in Lamont v. Postmaster General (1965) that a government policy that causes individuals “to feel some inhibition” in freely expressing themselves “is at war with the ‘uninhibited, robust, and wide-open’ debate and discussion that are contemplated by the First Amendment.” More recently, Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor expressed in a concurring opinion that “[a]wareness that the Government may be watching chills associational and expressive freedoms” guaranteed by the First Amendment.

In other words, student visa holders are more likely to engage in self-censorship and refrain from expressing dissenting or controversial political views when they know they’re being surveilled. Or they may choose to disengage from social media entirely, to avoid the risk that even seemingly harmless posts will affect their visa status and their ability to continue their education in the United States.

Student visa holders may also limit whom they connect with on social media, particularly if they fear those connections will have political views the current administration doesn’t like. The administration has not expressly stated that it will limit its surveillance only to the social media posts of student visa holders, which means it may also look at posts made by those in the students’ networks. This, too, undermines the First Amendment. The freedom to associate and express political views as a group—“particularly controversial ones”—is a fundamental aspect of freedom of speech, as the Supreme Court stated in its landmark NAACP v. Alabama (1958) decision.

American Citizens Impacted

Because student visa holders’ social networks undoubtedly include U.S. citizens, those citizens may also be subject to social media scrutiny, and therefore will also be chilled from freely speaking or associating online. Government agents have previously held visa holders responsible for the activity of their social media connections. Knowing this, a U.S. citizen who has a non-citizen friend or family member in the U.S. on a student visa might hesitate to post criticisms of the government—even if fully protected by the First Amendment—fearing the posts could negatively impact their loved one. A general climate of government surveillance may also lead U.S. citizens to self-censor on social media, even without any foreign national friends or family.

A Threat to Digital Privacy

Social media surveillance, even of publicly available profiles and especially with automated tools, can invade personal privacy. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the government’s collection and aggregation of publicly available personal information—particularly when enhanced by technology—can implicate privacy interests. The government can obtain personal information it otherwise would not have access to or that would usually be difficult to find across disparate locations.

Social media aggregates personal information in one place, including some of the most intimate details of our lives, such as our health information, likes and dislikes, political views and religious beliefs, and people with whom we associate. And automated tools can easily search for and help find this information. Even people who choose not to post much personal information on social media might still be exposed by comments and tags made by other users.

Constitutional Harms are Exacerbated by Automated Tools

The Trump administration is reportedly deploying artificial intelligence and other automated tools to assist in its review of student visa holders’ social media posts. While facts are still coming to light, any form of automation is likely to amplify speech and privacy harms to student visa holders.

By the government’s own assessment in another context—evaluating the admissibility of visa applicants (discussed below)—social media surveillance has not proven effective at assessing security threats.

Human review of public social media posts is itself prone to problems. Social media posts are highly context-specific, and government officials often have trouble differentiating between sarcasm, parody, and exaggeration from unlawful support for controversial causes. This leads to mistakes and misinterpretations. For example, in 2012 an Irish citizen was turned back at the border because DHS agents misinterpreted two of his Twitter posts: one, that he was going to “destroy America” – slang for partying – and two, that he was going to “dig up Marilyn Monroe’s grave” – a joke. These mistakes are even more likely when the posts are not in English or when they contain cultural references .

Human review augmented by automated tools is just as bad. Automated tools also have difficulty understanding the nuances of language, as well as the broader context in which a statement was made. These algorithms are also designed to replicate patterns in existing datasets, but if the data is biased, the technology simply reinforces those biases. As such, automated tools are similarly prone to mistakes and misinterpretations. Yet people often defer to automated outputs thinking they are correct or fair simply because a computer was used to produce them. And in some cases, decision-makers may even use these tools to justify or cover their own biases.

Most concerning would be if automated systems were permitted to make final visa revocation decisions without any human review. As EFF has repeatedly stated, automated tools should never get the final say on whether a person should be policed, arrested, denied freedom, or, in this case, stripped of a student visa and forcibly barred from completing their education.

Government Social Media Surveillance is Not New—and is Expanding

That the Trump administration is using social media surveillance on student visa holders residing in the United States is a disturbing apparent escalation of a longstanding trend.

EFF has long sounded the alarm on the civil liberty harms of government social media surveillance. In particular, since 2019, visa applicants have been required to disclose all social media accounts they have used in the last five years to the U.S. government. That policy is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit, Doc Society v. Pompeo, in which EFF filed an amicus brief.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently upped the ante by ordering officials to deny visas to new or returning student applicants if their social media broadly demonstrates “a hostile attitude toward U.S. citizens or U.S. culture (including government, institutions, or founding principles).” Notably, Rubio indicated this standard could also apply to current student visa holders. The State Department also announced it will review the social media of any visa applicant who has been to Gaza since 2007.

The Trump administration has also proposed dramatically expanding social media scrutiny by requiring non-citizens already legally residing in the U.S. to disclose social media accounts on a variety of forms related to immigration benefits, such as people seeking lawful permanent residency or naturalization. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a component of DHS, also announced it would look for “antisemitic activity” on social media to deny immigration benefits to individuals currently in the country.

Protecting Your Accounts

There are general steps you can take to better protect your social media accounts from surveillance. Understand, however, that the landscape is shifting rapidly and not all protections are foolproof. Law enforcement may be able to get a warrant for your private information and messages if a judge is convinced there is preliminary evidence supporting probable cause of criminal activity. And non-governmental individuals and groups have recently used other forms of technology like face recognition to identify and report student activists for potential deportation. You should conduct your own individualized risk assessment to determine what online activity is safe for you.

Still, it never hurts to better secure your online privacy. For your current social media accounts, consider locking them down:

• Make public accounts private and ensure only approved connections can see your content. Note that if your past public posts have already been copied and saved by an outside party, making your account private will not undo this. It will, however, better protect your future posts.
• Some platforms make certain information publicly viewable, even if you’ve made your account private. Other information may be public by default, but can be made private. Review each platform’s privacy settings to limit what information is shared publicly, including friend lists, contact information, and location information.
• You should also review your friends or followers list to ensure you know every person you’ve approved, especially when making a once-public account private.

If you create a new social media account:

• Query whether you want to attach your legal name to it. Many platforms allow you to have a pseudonymous account.
• When setting up the account, don’t provide more personal information than is necessary.

EFF’s Surveillance Self-Defense guide provides additional information on protecting your social media accounts from a variety of actors. If you’re not sure what information is publicly available about you on social networks or other sites, consider doing some research to see what, if anything, others would find.

By targeting international students for broad categories of online speech, this administration is fostering a climate of fear, making students anxious that a single post or errant “like” could cost them their U.S. visa or even lead to detention and deportation. This will, ultimately, stifle political debate and silence dissent–for non-citizens and citizens alike–undermining the open dialogue crucial to democracy.

Originally published to the EFF’s Deeplinks blog.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, chilling effects, free speech, international students, privacy, surveillance, visas

Why The Fuck Are Democrats Helping Build MAGA’s Censorship Machine With KOSA?

Free Speech

from the what-are-we-even-doing-here? dept

The Trump administration is methodically implementing every element of Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 censorship playbook, and Democratic leadership’s response is… to help them? Earlier today, Chuck Schumer and Richard Blumenthal joined MAGA Republicans to reintroduce the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) — a bill that Heritage itself has proudly proclaimed as central to its strategy of censoring progressive content around LGBTQ issues and abortion. The new bill appears to be effectively identical to last year’s version.

It raises a huge question of… what the fuck are they thinking?

The press release touts its “bipartisan” nature, with Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer and Richard Blumenthal sponsoring the bill, alongside Marsha Blackburn and John Thune.

Last year, when Heritage Foundation declared its desire to use KOSA to censor LGBTQ content and announced it would leverage the bill to remove pro-abortion content if Trump won, perhaps some could dismiss it as empty rhetoric. But now? The Trump administration is systematically implementing every element of Heritage’s Project 2025 censorship playbook. There’s no more room for wishful thinking about how KOSA might be used.

And yet, Democrats seem to act as if none of that is happening, and we can just assume good faith in how KOSA will be implemented and enforced by an FTC that has loudly proclaimed its willingness to conduct partisan, culture war witch hunts on behalf of Project 2025’s goals.

Yes, we expect Richard Blumenthal to reflexively support any anti-internet bill. But Chuck Schumer? After everything we’ve seen, how can Democratic leadership still pretend there’s any good faith here? Trump is already using every available tool to wage his censorial culture wars. Heritage has explicitly laid out how they’ll use KOSA to silence progressive voices. What possible justification could there be for Democrats to hand them an even more powerful weapon?

Even some Republicans recognize the danger here. Senator Rand Paul has consistently maintained that censoring the internet won’t help children. And last year, House GOP members actually stopped the bill after realizing it was a censorship tool that could be used against their own speech. But now that Trump has won (and the GOP acts as though there will never be another free election), that objection may evaporate.

The bill’s lead sponsor, Marsha Blackburn, was already openly stating last year that her support for KOSA was about using it to censor LGBTQ content. That was before Trump’s victory made Heritage’s censorship plans a reality.

So here we are: Heritage Foundation explicitly laid out their plans to weaponize KOSA against progressive speech. Marsha Blackburn openly admitted it’s about censoring LGBTQ content. The Trump administration is systematically implementing every element of Project 2025’s censorship agenda. And the FTC stands ready to enforce it all.

Yet Democratic leadership isn’t just standing idle — they’re actively helping to build the machinery of censorship that will be used against their own constituents. Either Schumer and Blumenthal are catastrophically naive, or they’ve simply decided that appearing “bipartisan” matters more than protecting vulnerable communities from state-sponsored censorship.

The real question isn’t what they’re thinking. It’s whether they’re thinking at all.

Filed Under: abortion, censorship, chuck schumer, free speech, kosa, lgbtq, maga, project 2025, protect the kids, richard blumenthal

Judge To ICE: No, You Can’t Actually Kidnap Students For Writing Op-Eds

Legal Issues

from the this-detention-cannot-stand dept

Correction/Update: In this original article, I included a quote from DHS that I thought was in response to today’s order, which implied DHS believed they could still detain Ozturk, but it appears it was in response to the earlier ruling on Wednesday when she was first ordered to be transferred. We have removed that quote and apologize for the confusion.

There have been so many absolutely crazy stories in the first few months of the second Trump administration, but the story of federal agents kidnapping Tufts graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk entirely over a fairly boring op-ed she co-authored criticizing the Tufts administration still stands out for its utter pointlessness. It is extreme even when compared to the many other extreme and horrific immigration efforts engaged in by this administration.

Get this, though: it turns out that kidnapping celebrated foreign PhD students in broad daylight for writing mild criticism of their own university is not even remotely constitutional or reasonable.

Thankfully, a judge has now freed her and made it quite clear that nothing the government is weakly arguing in this case makes any sense at all.

U.S. District Judge William Sessions, who is presiding over the case, said at the conclusion of Friday’s bail hearing that Ozturk raised “very substantial” and “very significant” claims that her First Amendment and due process rights were violated when she was taken into custody following the revocation of her student visa in March.

“Her continued detention cannot stand,” he said.

Not that it should matter — because it doesn’t — but at least with many of the other people the administration has targeted, they could craft some sort of (absurd) rationale for why they did what they did. Here there was none. Just that she once co-authored a fairly benign op-ed.

Let’s be clear about what happened here: A Fulbright scholar wrote something that made someone in the administration sad, and their response was to send masked men to make her disappear. Cool system we’ve got! Very normal democracy stuff. America. Land of the free.

Everything about how they treated her was cruel and unusual. Obviously, punishing her for her speech is a blatant First Amendment violation. But even if the government wanted to argue that she was no longer welcome in this country (which is absurd, given that she’s a Fulbright scholar doing really useful child development work, including how to make sure kids have more prosocial uses of the internet and technology), they could have alerted her that her student visa was being revoked, and given her a time period in which she’d need to leave the country.

They didn’t do that. They just sent masked, non-uniformed people to kidnap her off the street. Then they quickly moved her out of Massachusetts to Vermont, and then from Vermont to Louisiana. Then, while detained in Louisiana, they refused to give her the asthma medication she relied on, and it was reported that the stress was causing regular and dangerous asthma attacks.

Just to recap: Write op-ed → get black-bagged by unidentified agents → get shuffled across multiple states → be denied life-saving medication. Is this the “efficient government processing” DOGE has been promising?

Earlier today, federal district court Judge William Sessions ruled that she was unlawfully detained and needed to be released immediately on her own recognizance. On top of that, Judge Sessions rejected the government’s demand that her travel be restricted if she was released.

During the hearing today, Ozturk testified remotely (via Zoom) and told her story, which revealed that she seems like exactly the kind of serious, thoughtful, caring student the US should want more of here. After she was done testifying, when another witness was testifying, Ozturk had to be excused as she was hit with another asthma attack.

The US government barely put up a fight. It was almost as if the DOJ lawyers knew they fucked up badly in this case. They didn’t admit to fucking up, but they did little to present a case. No witnesses. Barely any questioning of the other side. When they presented their side, they basically presented silly technical legal arguments that the Vermont court doesn’t have jurisdiction over Ozturk.

Nothing says “we’re on solid legal ground” quite like arguing that the court can’t determine whether your kidnapping was legal because you cleverly moved your victim to a different state. Checkmate, due process!

The judge then ruled from the bench that even though there’s a very high bar with a “difficult burden” to reach to have her ordered released, in Ozturk’s case she cleared that high bar. He directly called out that, despite having the opportunity to present more evidence, the DOJ only had the co-authored op-ed, which raised serious First Amendment issues, saying that it appears that Ozturk was detained for her protected expression.

He also called out the due process issues with her kidnapping appearing to be punitive, rather than for any legitimate reason. Add to that the asthma attacks and the horrific and cruel conditions in which she has been kept (which would continue to damage her health if unchanged) and he ordered her released immediately.

On top of that, as mentioned, the court rejected the DOJ’s request for travel restrictions, noting that it presented no evidence that Ozturk was a “flight risk,” while Ozturk and her lawyers presented plenty of evidence that she’s a part of the Tufts community and eagerly hoping to finish her PhD there. The judge also noted that, as a PhD student, she likely needs to be able to travel to attend conferences and such.

There are some minor conditions around checking in with the Burlington Center for Justice, which will “supervise” her release and provide reports to the US government.

There will be more in this case later, but this was a complete and total win for Ozturk, who has had to suffer for no good reason for the past six weeks after being kidnapped off the street by the US government for obviously protected speech.

This is a good result in a terrible and shameful event from the current administration.

And, on that note, I will again highlight that almost none of the usual voices who spent the last decade plus screaming about “free speech on campus” said anything about Ozturk being literally kidnapped by the federal government over her speech on campus. Bari Weiss’s publication put out an unsigned editorial piece complaining that there wasn’t enough public evidence in the case (though suggesting they wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Ozturk “coordinated their activism with Hamas, or encouraged or participated in riots”) but still claiming that Marco Rubio’s statement about taking away visas for op-eds was “common sense.”

Ah yes, “common sense” — that thing where the government can kidnap you for writing an op-ed. Just like the Founding Fathers intended.

Weiss was even able to interview Rubio just a few weeks later, and did ask him a softball question about the deportations (in general) with no follow up:

WEISS:  One of the things the President and you have done in the past 90-something days – it feels like it’s been a lot longer than that – (laughter) – has been to successfully – I cannot even imagine how long it’s felt for you – has been to successfully close the southern border.  And yet, that story has been just totally overtaken with the story of some of these individual deportations that have captured the national conversation and that many people, even people that voted for Trump, are opposed to.   

And so I want to just ask you a bigger question, which is:  What message is the President trying to send with these deportations?  There’s – is it about deterring people from coming?  Or is it about terrifying people that have been here for years, that have paid taxes for many, many years, and might even have American children?  Should they be scared of deportation?  Like what is the message that the President and the State Department is trying to send?  

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, so two things.  The State Department isn’t involved necessarily in the issue of migratory enforcement.  We’re involved in making sure that foreign countries take back the citizens that are in our country illegally of their countries.  So I would say two things.   

Number one, mass migration is almost entirely based on an incentive system.  People were coming to this country under Joe Biden because they knew if they got to the border and claimed asylum, said these magic words, they would be allowed to come in and they would be allowed to stay – almost 90 percent success rate if you said the magic words, so people were coming.   

Now they know that if they come they won’t get to stay, and they’ve stopped coming, which is why it’s the most secure border we’ve had in modern history.  And in fact, we’ve seen a new phenomenon, which is people that were on their way here sort of do a U-turn and go back.  We’ve seen that play out.  And that’s an enormous achievement, because it stops the problem. 

That still leaves us with a fundamental challenge, and that is that we have in this country millions of people – some who have been here many years, some who have been here for a year and a half or two – who are unlawfully in the United States.  And it’s this simple:  If you say the speed zone is 70 miles an hour, but people know they’re not going to get a ticket unless they go 90 miles an hour, no one’s going to drive under the speed limit.  You have to have laws, and laws have to be enforced.  If you don’t enforce your laws, then your laws become meaningless.  And that’s what’s happened in this country over the last 20 years.  We were not enforcing our immigration laws, and now we are.   

Obviously, they’re going to prioritize the most dangerous people, dangerous criminals.  If you look at the manifest of these flights of people that are being deported, these are some of the most vile human beings imaginable that we’re getting out of our country – sex offenders, rapists, killers.  That’s who we’re prioritizing being sent out.   

But let there be no doubt we have immigration laws, and if you are in violation of those immigration laws, you have no right to be in the country.  Now, some will choose to leave voluntarily; others may get caught up and be forced to leave.  But we are – they are prioritizing the most dangerous.   

But that said, you have to have – there’s no point in having immigration laws if you have no intent to enforce them.  

WEISS:  Okay, let’s talk about Iran.

Yeah, top-notch journalism there. You ask a general question that lets him dance around. He even claims (falsely) that the US wasn’t enforcing immigration laws before, and also that they’re prioritizing “the most vile human beings imaginable.” That’s a perfect opening to ask about cases like Ozturk. Who is not vile. Is not a criminal. Was here legally. And was kidnapped for her speech.

But, no, “let’s talk about Iran.”

The hypocrisy is blindingly obvious. The same people who built careers defending the right of provocateurs to speak on campus are suddenly silent when a student is literally disappeared by the government for co-writing a mild op-ed. Their selective outrage reveals that for many self-proclaimed “free speech warriors,” the principle was never about free expression — it was about protecting specific political viewpoints.

How about we talk about the person who was here entirely legally, who did nothing wrong, was a Fulbright scholar studying how to make kids use the internet better, and who co-authored a single op-ed gently criticizing the Tufts administration (not the US government) and was kidnapped by masked federal officials (not in uniform) in broad daylight, and then renditioned across the country, then treated cruelly and inhumanely, putting her own health at risk.

Thankfully, Ozturk should now be free, but it was not with any help from some of the people who built their careers claiming to support free speech on campus.

The Ozturk case may be just one example of many, but it was an important test case for whether this administration could get away with explicitly punishing even the most mild speech it doesn’t like through extrajudicial means. Today, at least, the answer was no — but the fact that they’ve been doing this to hundreds of people should terrify everyone who claims to care about constitutional rights.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, 5th amendment, dhs, due process, free speech, immigration, kidnapping, marco rubio, rumeysa ozturk, student visas, tricia mclaughlin, william sessions

Texas’s War On Abortion Is Now A War On Free Speech

Free Speech

from the another-censorship-bill dept

Once again, the Texas legislature is coming after the most common method of safe and effective abortion today—medication abortion.

Senate Bill (S.B.) 2880* seeks to prevent the sale and distribution of abortion pills—but it doesn’t stop there. By restricting access to certain information online, the bill tries to keep people from learning about abortion drugs, or even knowing that they exist.

If passed, S.B. 2880 would make it illegal to “provide information” on how to obtain an abortion-inducing drug. If you exchange e-mails or have an online chat about seeking an abortion, you could violate the bill. If you create a website that shares information about legal abortion services in other states, you could violate the bill. Even your social media posts could put you at risk.

On top of going after online speakers who create and post content themselves, the bill also targets social media platforms, websites, email services, messaging apps, and any other “interactive computer service” simply for hosting or making that content available.

In other words, Texas legislators not only want to make sure no one can start a discussion on these topics, they also want to make sure no one can find one. The goal is to wipe this information from the internet altogether. That creates glaring free-speech issues with this bill and, if passed, the consequences would be dire.

The bill is carefully designed to scare people into silence.

First, S.B. 2880 empowers average citizens to sue anyone that violates the law. An “interactive computer service” can also be sued if it “allows residents of [Texas] to access information or material that aids, abets, assists or facilitates efforts to obtain elective abortions or abortion-inducing drugs.”

So, similar to Texas Senate Bill 8, the bill encourages anyone to file lawsuits against those who merely speak about or provide access to certain information. This is intended to, and will, chill free speech. The looming threat of litigation can be used to silence those who seek to give women truthful information about their reproductive options—potentially putting their health or lives in danger.

Second, S.B. 2880 encourages online intermediaries to take down abortion-related content. For example, if sued under the law, a defendant platform can escape liability by showing that, once discovered, they promptly “block[ed] access to any information . . . that assists or facilitates efforts to obtain elective abortions or abortion-inducing drugs.”

The bill also grants them “absolute and nonwaivable immunity” against claims arising from takedowns, denials of service, or any other “action taken to restrict access to or availability of [this] information.” In other words, if someone sues a social media platform or internet service provider for censorship, they are well-shielded from facing consequences. This further tips the scales in favor of blocking more websites, posts, and users.

In three different provisions of the 43-page bill, the drafters go out of their way to assure us that S.B. 2880 should not be construed to prohibit speech or conduct that’s protected by the First Amendment. But simply stating that the law does not restrict free speech does not make it so. The obvious goal of this bill is to restrict access to information about abortion medications online. It’s hard to imagine what claims could be brought under such a bill that don’t implicate our free speech rights.

The bill’s imposition of civil and criminal liability also conflicts with a federal law that protects online intermediaries’ ability to host user-generated speech, 47 U.S.C. § 230 (“Section 230”), including speech about abortion medication. Although the bill explicitly states that it does not conflict with Section 230, that assurance remains meaningful only so long as Section 230’s protections remain robust. But Congress is currently considering revisions—or even a full repeal of Section 230. Any weakening of Section 230 will create more space for those empowered by this bill to use the courts to pressure intermediaries/platforms to remove information about abortion medication.

Whenever the government tries to restrict our ability to access information, our First Amendment rights are threatened. This is exactly what Texas lawmakers are trying to do with S.B. 2880. Anyone who cares about free speech—regardless of how they feel about reproductive care—should urge lawmakers to oppose this bill and others like it.

*H.B. 5510 is the identical House version of S.B. 2880.

Originally published to the EFF Deeplinks blog.

Filed Under: abortion, free speech, mifepristone, sb 2880, texas

Trump’s Aggressive Actions Against Free Speech Speak A Lot Louder Than His Words Defending It

Free Speech

from the defending-actual-free-speech-is-about-more-than-words dept

Harvard University took the extraordinary step of suing the Trump administration on April 21, 2025, claiming that the pressure campaign mounted on the school by the president and his Cabinet to force viewpoint diversity on campus violated the Constitution’s guarantees of free speech.

“Defendants’ actions are unlawful,” Harvard’s lawsuit states. “The First Amendment does not permit the Government to ‘interfere with private actors’ speech to advance its own vision of ideological balance.’”

Yet in his first term, President Donald J. Trump declared that free speech mattered.

Trump issued the “Executive Order Restoring Free Speech and Ending Federal Censorship” on March 21, 2019. In it, he expressed the importance of free inquiry and open debate to education and directed federal officials to use the federal government’s funding of higher education to ensure that universities promote free inquiry.

Channeling free-speech champions Benjamin Franklin and James Madison, Trump wrote that “free inquiry is an essential feature of our Nation’s democracy.”

As a professor of constitutional, criminal and comparative law, and as a citizen who enjoys his liberty, I agree.

Free speech is fundamental to human progress. Scientific, medical, technological and social advancements all rely on the free flow of information. Robust discussion and disagreement are equally important to maintaining a healthy constitutional republic.

In the words of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

The First Amendment’s free speech and press clauses protect all forms of expression – oral, print, digital and artistic – from governmental interference or punishment.

Of the many types of speech, political speech is the most protected.

On the first day of his second term in office, Trump issued another free speech executive order. It affirms the administration’s commitment to free speech, directs that tax money is not used to abridge free speech and instructs federal employees to “identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to censorship of protected speech.”

In a vacuum, Trump’s orders appear to bode well for free speech.

But what is important is free speech reality, not rhetoric. Three months into his second term, where does Trump stand?

The many interconnected orders, letters, statements and actions of Trump’s White House make an assessment of any positive effects difficult. On the other hand, the Trump administration has clearly violated and chilled free speech on many occasions.

Repression and retaliation

Attempts to silence the president’s adversaries are developing as a pattern.

Law firms and attorneys who have sued or prosecuted Trump, or represented his adversaries, have been targeted for retribution and concessions. It began with an executive order on March 6, 2025, directed at the U.S.-based global law firm Perkins Coie, which had once represented Trump’s opponent in the 2016 presidential race, Hillary Clinton. A second order was issued on March 14, 2025, against Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison because it once employed an attorney who investigated Trump. Subsequently, at least six other prominent law firms were also targeted.

Several law firms acceded to the president’s demands, agreeing to accept clients without regard to political beliefs, to eliminate DEI practices, and to perform pro bono work valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars for causes Trump supports.

The firms that didn’t accede to the president’s demands had their security clearances removed, access to federal buildings restricted, and were banned from working for federal agencies. A few of the firms that didn’t relent have won temporary injunctions barring the administration’s actions against them.

The nonpartisan free speech advocacy organization Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression decried the orders as threatening the foundations of justice and free speech. In one of several challenges to these orders, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell wrote on March 12, 2025, that Trump’s order appeared motivated by “retaliatory animus” and concluded that it “runs head on into the wall of First Amendment protections.” Two other federal courts reached similar conclusions.

In the first three months of his second term, Trump withdrew Secret Service protection of several prominent critics who are former federal government officials, including John Bolton, a former Trump national security adviser. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, his top aide, Brian Hook, and former high-level health official Anthony Fauci also lost their security protection.

It is hard to imagine that these decisions won’t have a profoundly chilling effect on potential critics of the president, especially since the revocations were publicly announced and each individual has been the subject of credible threats resulting from their governmental service.

Targeting the press

A similar pattern exists for journalists, where Trump is using his power to punish organizations whose reporting he doesn’t like.

AP journalists were banned from the White House and Air Force One on Feb. 11, 2025, for refusing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, the new name Trump had ordered for the body of water. On April 9, 2025, this ban was found to violate the First Amendment by a judge nominated by Trump during his first term.

Denouncing CNN and MSNBC as “illegal” and claiming they are paid political operatives, Trump suggested they should be investigated during a speech at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Trump effectively closed Voice of America, after 83 years of continuous broadcasting, for being “anti-Trump” and radical in its views. By charter, the broadcaster represents “America, not any single segment of American society,” with “accurate, objective, and comprehensive” news and “a balanced and comprehensive projection of significant American thought and institutions” through television, radio, internet, social media and satellite broadcasts to peoples around the world.

The Federal Communications Commission has initiated regulatory actions against the licenses of several television stations for broadcasts that have been accused by the President of being anti-Trump or biased in favor of Kamala Harris. Early in the process, the outcomes of these actions are to be determined.

Pressuring universities and students

Other administration actions, I believe, raise serious free speech issues.

Harvard isn’t the only university feeling pressure.

The administration is threatening to withhold federal money from universities as a way to coerce many of them to comply with administration policies in ways that implicate free speech and in some instances violate legal processes for the withholding of federal support.

Some of the Trump administration’s recent immigration enforcement efforts have targeted international students who are in the U.S. lawfully but who participated in Palestinian rights protests and disagreed with  Israel’s actions during the war in Gaza.

The administration claims that some students whose visas have been revoked were either Hamas supporters or violated criminal laws. The administration has also said that many students are being deported under broad authority the secretary of state has to deport those deemed a danger to national security.

Democracy and free speech

In the past decade, the U.S. has fallen in press freedom, rule of law and democratic governance, resulting in the classification of a “flawed democracy” by the Economist Intelligence Unit, a democratic watchdog. Unsurprisingly, there has been a simultaneous rise in public support for authoritarianism. These changes make support for free speech increasingly important.

On March 4, 2025, Trump declared in a speech before a joint session of Congress that he “stopped all government censorship and brought free speech back to America.”

The record doesn’t support this claim.

Daniel Hall is Professor of Justice and Community Studies & Political Science, Miami University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, coercion, donald trump, free speech, threats

Texas Lawyer Harassed At Home By Federal Agents, Fired By His Employer After He Tells His Story

Legal Issues

from the bullies-and-cowards dept

Radley Balko’s post on Substack details an ordeal, however brief, Texas appellate lawyer Clayton Jackson suffered through recently. A longer one possibly awaits, thanks to his employer firing him shortly after he went public with his recounting of this unwanted interaction.

Balko’s opening paragraph explains why the Trump Administration has hit law firms and universities with punitive executive orders. It explains why it’s blocking certain news agencies from attending press conferences and threatening others with further punishment for daring to report the facts. It’s why Trump has weaponized every aspect of the federal government to go after anyone who dares to criticize him or repudiate his claims. These are not the acts of a president. These are the acts of an aspiring despot. Here’s how that’s working out right now:

One of the more pernicious effects of authoritarianism is to make the everyday participation in civic life we take for granted feel subversive. The goal isn’t to police all behavior at all times. It’s to make us fearful to the point that we police our own behavior.

And that’s where Clay Jackson comes in. While at a local gas station, he was approached by an employee who asked if he might be able to give a little legal advice to an immigrant family. The family’s father had recently been detained in an ICE workplace raid and the gas station attendant wondered if Jackson might be able to help.

It turns out he could, even if it was out of his area of expertise, something that was further complicated by the language barrier. But Jackson did what he could.

Later that afternoon, March 4, Jackson visited the family in their home. “It was a little difficult to communicate because everything had to be translated through the 10-year-old kid.” He met with them for less than an hour and told them their rights if they’re detained by ICE. “I said I’d help find them pro bono counsel who specialized in immigration.”

Simple enough, even if it probably wasn’t enough (and what could possibly be under this government?). No good deed goes unpunished, not in this bizarre iteration of the Land of the Free.

“A couple days later, on March 6, I was working from home at around 11:30 when I got a notice that my VPN had gone down,” he says. “I didn’t think much about it. It can cut out from time to time. About 10 minutes later, I got a knock at the door.”

Two men were outside Jackson’s door, dressed in slacks and polos. They were not wearing badges.

“I first thought they were going to try to sell me something. But as soon as I opened the door they said, ‘Are you Clayton Jackson?’ I think I shook my head or said ‘yeah,’ and then I heard, ‘We have information that you are obstructing an ongoing immigration investigation.’”

Cool cool cool. Officers refusing to identify themselves or wearing anything clearly identifying their law enforcement agency just rolling on up on someone’s house to insinuate that they probably broke a federal law. Fortunately, Jackson is a lawyer. He demanded identification. They refused to provide it. They asked to come inside. He refused. And 15 minutes after they left, his WiFi suddenly started functioning again. But because it was out during this unwanted interaction, it wasn’t captured by his Ring devices.

Whether or not the internet outage and the arrival of officers at Jackson’s door was just a coincidence is a mental exercise best left to the reader. It can mean whatever you want it to mean, but there’s nothing about this story that rings false. And it certainly serves no purpose for Clay Jackson to simply make this whole thing up, especially since it has now cost him his job. And that makes his comments to Balko in his post extremely (and unfortunately) prescient:

Jackson isn’t an immigration attorney, but he occasionally represents undocumented people in non-immigration matters. He is using his real name, but he asked that I not name his employer or describe the type of law he practices.

“I thought, shit, now I’m going to have to get my employer involved. I’m going to have retain my own attorney. And now I have to worry about my clients. If they’re investigating me, are they going to start looking into my clients, too?”

And, as careful as he was discussing this with Radley Balko, it still somehow wasn’t enough. It would be extremely interesting to see if his employer experienced a similar visit from, um… unmarked officers? (Is that the correct term?) Balko reached out to every law enforcement agency that might have been involved in this visit (ICE, local cops, the state police, etc.) and, of course, has received no responses. But there’s not much comfort to be taken from even the best-case scenario:

Clay Jackson hasn’t heard anything more from the two officers who visited him, nor has he heard from whatever agency that employs them. It seems likely that his initial hunch was correct — this incident wasn’t the product of a top-down conspiracy to intimidate lawyers. It’s more likely that two cops were pissed off that someone had the audacity to help a scared and powerless family. 

Not when the outcome is losing your job and realizing that intimidation tactics — no matter how clumsily they’re deployed — still work. And when one side has all the power, even those who know the law and their rights are equally capable of getting fucked.

If there’s anything we can all agree with, it’s Jackson’s take on the current political climate in his state — a statement that applies to this entire nation at this point in time:

“[C]an I just be honest with you? I’m fucking scared to be in Texas right now.”

Filed Under: clayton jackson, dhs, donald trump, immigration, mass deportations, police intimidation, radley balko

‘Free Speech’ GOP Threatened Billboard Company To Remove Democrats’ Ads About Medicaid Cuts

Free Speech

from the doesn't-seem-very-free-speechy dept

The “Party of Free Speech” is at it again. House Speaker Mike Johnson just bragged about using legal threats to remove his opponents’ political advertising — perhaps the most constitutionally protected form of speech that exists. And he did it while lying about them lying.

As he says in that clip:

Do not believe the hype. Do not believe the lies the Democrat Party has said. We had their ads taken down. They were running ads around the country in swing districts trying to convince people Republicans are going to ‘gut Medicaid.’ It’s just simply not true & that’s why their ads & billboards had to come down. We sent them a cease-and-desist letter because they were lying.

This isn’t just hypocritical coming from the party that claims to have “brought free speech back” — it’s potentially a serious First Amendment violation. And Johnson seems almost proud of it.

The fact that Johnson is so cavalier about admitting that he helped remove ads from an opposing political party shows the new norm for the GOP: that it does not care about free speech at all, and is willing to censor at will.

The hypocrisy is particularly striking given how Republicans react when their own ads face scrutiny. Just last year, the MAGA world erupted in outrage over “cEnSOrSh!p!” when Google briefly restricted a Trump campaign ad:

That was a private company enforcing its own rules. Here we have government officials, who control all three branches of government, using legal threats to remove constitutionally protected political speech from their opponents.

It turns out that the media did report on this (though not very widely) back in March when it happened. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) sent a threatening cease-and-desist not to the Democrats, but rather to the billboard advertising company they used, Lamar Advertising.

Before we get to the legal threats themselves, let’s be clear: the Democrats’ ads were accurate and not even remotely defamatory. The GOP’s attempt to claim otherwise relies on a semantic dodge that falls apart under the slightest scrutiny.

It has come to our attention that your company may imminently be planning to display billboards containing patently false claims in the respective home districts of six Members of Congress: Representatives Gabe Evans (CO-08), Don Bacon (NE-02), Ryan Mackenzie (PA-07), Monica De La Cruz (TX-15), Jen Kiggans (VA-02), and Rob Wittman (VA-01).1 The message House Majority Forward has evidently paid you to display is that each Representative “VOTED TO CUT MEDICAID TO GIVE BILLIONAIRES…TAX CUTS.” To avoid defaming a half-dozen sitting Members of Congress, your company must cease any and all plans to display these billboards to the public.

House Majority Forward’s claims are demonstrably false. A simple review of the concurrent resolution passed by the House of Representatives shows that Medicaid was not mentioned once in the document’s sixty pages.3 Instead, the resolution delegated broad authority to the House Energy and Commerce Committee to reduce the deficit at their own discretion. House Majority Forward’s billboards target Representatives who cast their votes for a topline budget number voted to put money back into taxpayers’ pockets – not to cut funding to Medicaid. Even legacy media outlets confirm:

The NRCC’s evidence that these ads are “demonstrably false”? Two carefully cherry-picked media quotes that actually prove the opposite when put back in context:

FACT: Medicaid “isn’t specifically mentioned in the budget resolution” and the “vote is simply one to begin the reconciliation process.” CBS News.

FACT: Medicaid is “not specified in the budget” and the resolution “calls for the Energy and Commerce Committee to identify more than $800 billion in reductions.” Politico.

Those two claims are the sole basis for the NRCC asserting that the ads are “lies.” But, that’s bullshit. Even their links disprove it. The CBS link for that first line also includes this “fact”:

Johnson wouldn’t commit to preserving Medicaid in its entirety as the reconciliation process continues, and the budget resolution instructs the committee overseeing Medicaid to find $800 billion in cuts.

So, uh, yeah, the bill does, in fact, cut Medicaid.

The Politico story is even worse. Note how it’s framed in the quote above with strategic use of quote marks to suggest that the $800 billion reduction is not about Medicaid. But in context in the Politico article, it’s literally noting that President Trump himself expressed concerns that Johnson’s budget would cut Medicaid!

This week, POTUS expressed reservations to some lawmakers about potential cuts to Medicaid, which while not specified in the budget, are expected given that the document calls for the Energy and Commerce Committee to identify more than $800 billion in reductions.

The level of sheer chutzpah to claim that that sentence proves that Medicaid won’t be cut, when it very clearly says that even Trump is worried that Johnson’s proposal will cut Medicaid is insane.

Indeed, basically every actual fact check notes that Medicaid is clearly on the chopping block because of the requirement for the $800 billion in cuts, even if it’s not specifically named:

Aguilar has a point that the $880 billion would have to touch Medicaid, unless lawmakers wanted to find the reductions in Medicare — which may be even more politically challenging. Plus, House Republicans already have talked about some options for Medicaid cuts, such as adding work requirements and finding efficiencies in the program.

Scalise is correct in saying the legislation doesn’t include the word “Medicaid.” But, again, there’s little doubt that the program would face spending reductions — and they could be substantial, as we’ll explain.

Even the Congressional Budget Office made it clear that there’s basically no way to cut $880 billion without cutting Medicaid.

So with the facts established — that the ads were accurate and the GOP is lying about lying — let’s look at the actual legal threat. The letter itself has all the hallmarks of a bullshit SLAPP demand, designed to silence and suppress protected speech.

Indeed, the First Amendment would clearly allow political speech suggesting that these Republicans “voted to cut Medicaid.” Not only is that a fair assessment of reality, in the political speech context, it is expected that certain rhetorical claims can be simplified.

And, really, Republicans like Mike Johnson should be the last ones to try to argue that political puffery may be defamatory. Hell, his claim that the Democrats “lied” would be even more defamatory than the claims that the Dems’ billboards were “false.”

Second, though, Johnson is trying to make it out like the Democrats pulled the billboards because they knew they were false, when that’s not the case at all. The ad firm pulled them because it feared the threats from the NRCC… and appeared to be courting the NRCC’s business itself:

“Lamar’s National Sales Campaign Specialist has confirmed that the copy is no longer running,” the vendor letter reads. “While your letter came to Mario Martinez’s attention, Mr. Martinez was not involved in the Advertiser’s campaign. Notwithstanding, Mr. Martinez…is available to assist the NRCC with counter messages or future campaigns.”

Indeed, the organization that put up the billboards separately noted that the billboards still ran… just from a different vendor:

a House Majority Forward spokesperson said the billboards criticizing Bacon and Rep. Gabe Evans, R-CO, are still up, because they are under a different vendor. 

So, to summarize, Johnson is lying about the Democrats lying. Their ads are accurate. The ads are certainly not defamatory. On top of that, one single vendor pulled the ads, not the Democrats themselves. And the billboards still ran via a different vendor.

Oh, and this just shows how the hypocritical Republicans are continuing their censorial anti-free speech campaign against anyone who calls them out. Here they’re issuing a blatant SLAPP threat, falsely claiming defamation in a scenario that is clearly not defamatory.

This incident fits a clear pattern: Republicans wielding government power to silence critics while crying “censorship” when faced with private moderation. The legal implications are particularly troubling given last year’s Supreme Court ruling in Vullo, where a unanimous Court made it clear that government officials cannot target intermediaries to punish speech they dislike. Republicans celebrated that ruling when it stopped a Democratic official from pressuring companies working with the NRA.

Now those same Republicans are trying to dodge Vullo by laundering their threats through the NRCC rather than coming directly from elected officials. It’s a transparently weak argument — especially given Johnson’s proud admission of involvement — but it reveals their playbook: use whatever tools available, legal or otherwise, to silence opposition speech while maintaining the fiction of being “free speech warriors.”

The GOP’s eagerness to suppress accurate criticism of their Medicaid cuts shows just how far they’ll go to hide their actual agenda — and just how much they know their actual agenda would be faced with massive criticism. When they say they’re the “party of free speech,” what they really mean is they want consequence-free speech for themselves while retaining the power to silence anyone who calls them out.

Of course, the end result here is a bit of a Streisand Effect. I had missed the GOP’s attempt to censor these ads, and now because Johnson is advertising it, I went back and found the details, including a better understanding of just how accurate those ads are, and how the GOP’s own threat letter points me to news articles noting that Medicaid cuts are absolutely a part of the plan.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, budget cuts, coercion, free speech, intermediaries, medicaid, mike johnson, nrcc, threats, vullo
Companies: lamar advertising, nrcc

Government Actually Threatens Wikipedia’s Editorial Freedom; Self-Proclaimed Free Speech Warriors Suddenly Have Other Plans

Free Speech

from the free-speech-relativism dept

When Trump officials want to censor speech, they don’t quite say “we want to censor speech” (after all, they pretend to be the party that “brought free speech back.”) Instead, they find ways to threaten organizations by pretending it’s got nothing to do with the content, even as they can’t hide their true intentions and motives. And so we have DC US Attorney Ed Martin, who has decided that the real problem with Wikipedia isn’t its content — it’s its tax status… based on its content.

This latest move follows Martin’s established pattern of constitutional violations, including investigating protected speech by Congress members, attacking the Associated Press, and probing medical journals over their editorial policies.

But his attack on Wikipedia represents something even more dangerous: a federal prosecutor attempting to control how the internet’s largest collaborative knowledge platform manages its content.

The way this works is pretty straightforward: First, you find some pretext to investigate. Then you write a threatening letter. Then you leak that letter to a friendly media outlet. In this case, Martin sent his letter to The Free Press, a publication that has spent years warning about government censorship — at least when they pretend Democrats do it. The letter reads in part:

It has come to my attention that the Wikimedia Foundation, through its wholly owned subsidiary Wikipedia, is allowing foreign actors to manipulate information and spread propaganda to the American public. Wikipedia is permitting information manipulation on its platform, including the rewriting of key, historical events and biographical information of current and previous American leaders, as well as other matters implicating the national security and the interests of the United States. Masking propaganda that influences public opinion under the guise of providing informational material is antithetical to Wikimedia’s “educational” mission.

In addition, Wikipedia’s operations are directed by its board that is composed primarily of foreign nationals, subverting the interests of American taxpayers. Again, educational content is directionally neutral; but information received by my Office demonstrates that Wikipedia’s informational management policies benefit foreign powers

There’s more in there, including complaints about how AI tools train on Wikipedia, suggesting (ridiculously) that this might implicate Wikipedia if “foreign actors” are able to “launder information” into AI systems. And the letter threatens to revoke Wikpedia’s non-profit status (something the IRS would normally investigate, not the US Attorney for DC).

There are also demands to know details about Wikpedia’s editorial processes and how it handles trust & safety. Just imagine the freakout that would occur (probably led by The Free Press) if a US Attorney during the Biden admin had demanded to know Fox News’ editorial policies and standards and practices, while claiming that they were letting too much propaganda online. The screaming would never stop.

Indeed, what Martin is doing here represents exactly the kind of government interference in editorial decisions that free speech advocates have been warning about. But where are those voices now?

During the Biden administration, we were told over and over again by the MAGA faithful that literally any communication between an internet platform and federal law enforcement, especially regarding trust & safety practices, was the biggest threat to free speech ever.

To understand why this matters, we need to talk about Missouri v. Biden, a lawsuit that made it all the way to the Supreme Court (as Murthy v. Missouri). The case was basically about whether government officials could talk to social media companies about content moderation without violating the First Amendment. The summary, as the Supreme Court noted, affirming earlier cases, is that the government can absolutely talk to social media companies to share information. What it cannot do is threaten or coerce the platforms for their editorial decisions.

Which is exactly what Martin is doing here.

Even though the Supreme Court debunked all the lies in its ruling in the case, the MAGA universe (along with hangers-on like Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger) insisted that they were evidence of a huge attack on free speech: the Biden administration sometimes talking to social media companies about their content moderation practices.

The original district court ruling in the case, by (Trump-appointed) Judge Terry Doughty, had soaring language like the following:

Plaintiffs have put forth ample evidence regarding extensive federal censorship that restricts the free flow of information on social-media platforms used by millions of Missourians and Louisianians, and very substantial segments of the populations of Missouri, Louisiana, and every other State

That “extensive federal censorship” was based off of very weak claims of federal officials sometimes reaching out to social media platforms to highlight certain content or to ask if certain things violated their policies. And it was treated as a five-alarm fire. As the Supreme Court noted, the actions of the Biden White House did not appear at all coercive or threatening.

That’s very, very different from what’s happening here. Here we have the top DC prosecutor clearly threatening Wikipedia over editorial decisions — and, not even editorial decisions of its employees, but the site’s volunteer editors. In other words, Wikipedia is clearly protected under Section 230 for such edits.

It seems likely that Martin (or someone in his office) then leaked the letter to The Free Press, a publication that has built its brand on warning about government censorship. The same publication that ran breathless stories about the Biden administration’s supposedly coercive communications with social media platforms. The same outlet whose writer, Rupa Subramanya, dramatically testified to Congress’ subcommittee on the “weaponization” of the government, about the horrors of government censorship… in Canada.

Let’s look at her testimony, which Republican Jim Jordan gleefully presented as a warning about Democratic censorship:

I’d like all of you to think of me as a time traveler from the not too distant future coming back to the present to offer you a glimpse of what could lie ahead for America.

I live in a time in which, in the name of fairness, you can’t share the stories you write for my news publication on social media.

[….]

I live in a time in which, in the name of safety, you can be arrested for exercising your right to peaceful protest if you happen to be protesting the wrong thing.

That dystopian future she warned about? It’s here. People are not just being arrested but actually deported for peaceful protests. And The Free Press’s response to this actual censorship? Crickets.

This fits a pattern that Peter Shamshiri recently documented in his analysis of The Free Press’s selective outrage. When it comes to actual censorship from the Trump administration, The Free Press has developed a curious case of writer’s block:

The problem they face is that their brand is predicated on directing overwrought skepticism toward the left and childlike credulousness toward the right. That may have worked in 2021, when it could be pitched as a sort of half-baked contrarianism. But now, with the Trump administration embracing overt authoritarianism, it’s a little embarrassing. 

He notes that while they have a “Free Speech” section, almost none of it is covering the attacks on free speech from the Trump administration. Yes, The Free Press published this story, but it didn’t put it in the “Free Speech” section and doesn’t treat it as the massive First Amendment violation it absolutely is. It quotes a “person close to Martin” multiple times, suggesting that Martin’s office leaked this directly to Weiss, knowing The Free Press wouldn’t call out what bullshit it is.

Want to see this double standard in action? Let’s play a quick game of “spot the difference” between how The Free Press covers different types of government intervention. Here’s their headline for Martin’s Wikipedia threat:

• Trump’s D.C. Prosecutor Threatens Wikipedia’s Tax-Exempt Status

And here’s how they covered various aspects of the Murthy case:

• Free Speech on Trial
• How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate

And right before the election, the Free Press published a story about “Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Our Government Censors” about the case, claiming that Kamala Harris would definitely abuse her powers as President to censor people online and holding up Musk as an example of someone who would fight for free speech.

What are the chances that a President Kamala Harris would resist pressuring social media companies into censorship? Based on her record: Not great.

Looking over that author’s writings since Trump took office, she’s written excitedly and supportively about Trump trying to harm transgender youth and the movie When Harry Met Sally. The fact that the Trump administration has been issuing censorship decrees from almost all corners of the executive branch is apparently not worth mentioning.

So here’s where we are: A federal prosecutor is directly threatening Wikipedia’s editorial independence. This is not the information sharing found in the details of the Twitter Files and the Murthy case (which the Supreme Court just said was fine), but explicit threats about their tax status and demands about their editorial policies.

This is, quite literally, the exact kind of government censorship that The Free Press had been warning about. The kind they said would inevitably come from a Democratic administration. The kind they said justified extraordinary measures to “protect free speech.”

Yet their coverage reads like a press release from Martin’s office, repeatedly citing “a person close to Martin” (which is often how media will represent the person themselves, who asks the journalist not to quote them directly):

“Masking propaganda that influences public opinion under the guise of providing informational material is antithetical to Wikimedia’s ‘educational’ mission,” Martin wrote in the letter, claiming his office received information showing that Wikipedia’s “policies benefit foreign powers.” ….

The letter did not specify which foreign actors were manipulating information on Wikipedia and did not cite examples of alleged propaganda. However, a person close to Martin said he is concerned about “edits on Wikipedia as they relate to the Israel-Hamas conflict that are clearly targeted against Israel to benefit other countries.”

They even helpfully note that Wikipedia “fundraises in the district” — as if that somehow justifies a US Attorney threatening their First Amendment rights.

But what’s clear is that this is about one thing only: Wikipedia allowing content Martin doesn’t like.

Even if Wikipedia’s content was biased (it isn’t), even if every editor was actively trying to push an anti-Israel narrative (they aren’t), that would still be protected by the First Amendment. The government doesn’t get to threaten organizations over their editorial choices, no matter how much certain prosecutors or publications might dislike those choices.

The Free Press spent years insisting that mundane communications between the Biden administration and social media companies represented an existential threat to free speech. Now faced with actual government censorship — explicit threats from a federal prosecutor over editorial decisions — they’re treating it as just another political story.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, bias, content moderation, ed martin, editorial policies, free speech, irs, israel, non-profit, tax status, wikipedia
Companies: wikimedia, wikimedia foundation

Federal Prosecutor Fires Off Letter To Medical Journals Asking About Their Policies On ‘Competing Viewpoints’

Free Speech

from the prepping-for-anti-vax-propaganda dept

Another day, another new bit of ugliness from the Trump Administration. What was first reported by MedPage Today appears to be the initial wave of attacks on medical journals for preferring scientific rigor to splashing around in the swampier parts of the marketplace of ideas.

A federal prosecutor sent a letter to a medical journal editor, probing whether the publication is “partisan” when it comes to “various scientific debates.”

Edward R. Martin Jr., U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, sent a list of questions to CHEST Editor-in-Chief Peter Mazzone, MD, MPH, of the Cleveland Clinic, asking how the journal handles “misinformation” and “competing viewpoints,” among other things.

MedPage Today has learned that at least two other journals have received similar letters.

The language is coded, but definitely not clever. Composed by a DOJ prosecutor perhaps best known for his hundred-plus appearances on Russian state-owned media outlets, the letter [PDF] is full of phrases that make it clear at least one federal prosecutor is interested in deterring scientific rebuttals to the parade of horrors that will be emanating from RFK Jr.’s Dept. of Health and Humans Services over the next few years.

Martin’s letter claims “more and more” scientific journals and publications are “conceding they are partisans in various scientific debates.” He alludes to possible federal crimes being committed by these journals if they are “advocating due to advertisement” (which Martin links to the postal code) or sponsorship (which Martin pretends might have something to do with federal fraud laws). In order to find targets for his prosecutorial attention, Martin asks every journal receiving this letter to respond to the following questions:

How do you assess your responsibilities to protect the public from misinformation?
How do you clearly articulate to the public when you have certain viewpoints that are influenced by your ongoing relationships with supporters, funders, advertisers, and others?
Do you accept articles or essays from competing viewpoints?
How do you assess the role played by government officials and funding organizations like the National Insitutes of Health in the development of submitted articles?
How do you handle allegations that authors of your work in your journals may have misled their readers?

I am also interested to now if publishers, journals, and organizations with which you work are adjusting their method of acceptance of competing viewpoints. Are there new norms being developed or authored?

These are pretty weird questions to be asking scientific journal publishers. These are exceptionally weird questions for a federal prosecutor to be asking scientific journal publishers. While there are certainly valid concerns about AI involvement in crafting scientific reports, along with some pay-to-play operations that undermine the scientific community in general, it’s generally accepted that these publishers usually publish work that has been subjected to peer review and scientific method best practices.

What this letter sounds like is a very vague threat that prosecutors will start hassling journals that refuse to publish unscientific garbage that appears to support the multiple conspiracy theories pushed by Trump, RFK Jr., and far too many of their supporters. It also suggests that if journals don’t cozy up to the Trump quacks, whatever NIH funding that still somehow exists post-DOGE will vanish completely. It would be worrying enough if this letter had been issued by the HHS. That it came from a federal prosecutor is legitimately horrifying.

Once again, the party of free speech and alleged participant in the marketplace of ideas is showing that it only thinks speech it agrees with should be “free” and that the marketplace of ideas should only offer up ideas it likes. At the very least, this letter has the chance to push some journals into self-censorship, limiting dissemination of studies and essays publishers know don’t align with the Trump Administration’s deep disdain for established scientific principles. And once that end of the idea marketplace begins to dry up, the administration will do all it can to fill the void in the market with bad science, bad ideas, and children’s corpses.

Filed Under: censorship, dc, doj, ed martin, edward martin jr, marketplace of ideas, nih, science
Companies: chest, cleveland clinic

Harvard Goes To Court To Stop Trump Nonsense

Legal Issues

from the turns-out-harvard-knows-some-lawyers dept

Last week, we wrote about Harvard showing a bit of institutional courage in telling the Trump administration to fuck off with its demands that the university fire certain professors, change its curriculum, and allow government oversight of campus activities. In response, Trump escalated things, as he tends to do, cutting off over $2 billion in promised funds and saying that Harvard should lose its tax-exempt status:

The IRS quickly got to work exploring just such a possibility, never mind that it’s a literal crime for the executive branch to weaponize the IRS to target any individual or entity.

For what it’s worth, there was a weird moment over the weekend when Trump officials tried to argue that the overly aggressive letter they sent Harvard was sent by accident:

It is unclear what prompted the letter to be sent last Friday. Its content was authentic, the three people said, but there were differing accounts inside the administration of how it had been mishandled. Some people at the White House believed it had been sent prematurely, according to the three people, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about internal discussions. Others in the administration thought it had been meant to be circulated among the task force members rather than sent to Harvard.

The article claimed that the administration had actually been working with Harvard officials and seemed confident that a deal could be reached (i.e., Harvard was open to capitulating) when they sent this aggressive letter, leading to Harvard’s aggressive response. Yet another sign of administrative competence.

Either way, as you’d expect, Harvard has access to some lawyers, and on Monday they sued the administration seeking an end to all this bullshit (not quite the technical legal terms, but, close enough).

Defendants’ actions are unlawful. The First Amendment does not permit the Government to “interfere with private actors’ speech to advance its own vision of ideological balance,” Moody v. NetChoice, 603 U.S. 707, 741 (2024), nor may the Government “rely[] on the ‘threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion . . . to achieve the suppression’ of disfavored speech,” Nat’l Rifle Ass’n v. Vullo, 602 U.S. 175, 189 (2024) (citation omitted). The Government’s attempt to coerce and control Harvard disregards these fundamental First Amendment principles, which safeguard Harvard’s “academic freedom.” Asociacion de Educacion Privada de P.R., Inc. v. Garcia-Padilla, 490 F.3d 1, 8 (1st Cir. 2007). A threat such as this to a university’s academic freedom strikes an equal blow to the research conducted and resulting advancements made on its campus.

The Government’s actions flout not just the First Amendment, but also federal laws and regulations. The Government has expressly invoked the protections against discrimination contained in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a basis for its actions. Make no mistake: Harvard rejects antisemitism and discrimination in all of its forms and is actively making structural reforms to eradicate antisemitism on campus. But rather than engage with Harvard regarding those ongoing efforts, the Government announced a sweeping freeze of funding for medical, scientific, technological, and other research that has nothing at all to do with antisemitism and Title VI compliance. Moreover, Congress in Title VI set forth detailed procedures that the Government “shall” satisfy before revoking federal funding based on discrimination concerns. 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-1. Those procedures effectuate Congress’s desire that “termination of or refusal to grant or to continue” federal financial assistance be a remedy of last resort. Id. The Government made no effort to follow those procedures—nor the procedures provided for in Defendants’ own agency regulations—before freezing Harvard’s federal funding.

These fatal procedural shortcomings are compounded by the arbitrary and capricious nature of Defendants’ abrupt and indiscriminate decision. Even before the freeze, the Government had threatened to terminate up to $8.7 billion in federal funding not just to Harvard, but also to preeminent Boston hospitals such as Massachusetts General Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. These hospitals are independent corporate entities with their own boards of directors or trustees and their own separate officers, leadership, and management. They are not under Harvard’s control. The hospitals have no control over Harvard’s enforcement of Title VI requirements, and vice versa. These hospitals have their own tax identification numbers, endowments, and accounts. And they seek and receive federal financial assistance directly from federal agencies, not through Harvard.

There’s more, but it’s a good, strong complaint.

What makes Harvard’s position particularly strong is how neatly it fits into recent Supreme Court precedent that we’ve discussed quite a bit on Techdirt. The complaint cites both Moody v. NetChoice and NRA v. Vullo, where the Court made clear that the government can’t use threats or actual coercion to pressure private entities into changing their speech or expression. Trump’s hamfisted attempts to dictate Harvard’s policies is just the latest in a long list of attacks on free expression from this administration.

It’s worth noting they have a ton of lawyers on the complaint, and their strategy is telling. The team includes Quinn Emanuel’s co-managing partner Bill Burck who was in George W. Bush’s White House (Quinn, notably, is also where Elon Musk’s favorite lawyer, Alex Spiro works). There are also lawyers from Ropes & Gray and King & Spalding. That’s three of the biggest “big law” firms all on the same filing. The King & Spalding lawyer is Robert Hur. If his name sounds familiar, he was the “special counsel” Merrick Garland appointed to investigate Joe Biden’s classified documents retention, and is known as a “Republican super lawyer.”

There are a bunch of other lawyers as well, including the named partners from the relatively new, boutique law firm Lehotsky Keller. While newer and smaller, Lehotsky Keller has been working on a number of high profile cases and are considered super well connected in the Republican world, with each of the named partners having roles in Republican politics (Keller, for example, was Solicitor General in Texas under Greg Abbott).

This isn’t just legal representation — it’s a political statement. Harvard has assembled a big list of big-name lawyers, many of them with strong Republican credentials, effectively telling Trump: “Even your own people think this is unconstitutional overreach.” It’s a move that makes it harder for the administration to dismiss the case as partisan politics (though it certainly won’t stop that argument from the true believer MAGA cultists).

The next phase will be critical. While the administration may continue pressuring Harvard, early court victories could decisively demonstrate the unconstitutionality of Trump’s attacks on academic institutions. Though some universities might still follow Columbia’s shameful example and capitulate, Harvard’s principled stand could embolden others to resist.

When the courts ultimately vindicate Harvard’s position — and they will — it will serve as more than just an institutional victory. It will reaffirm a fundamental constitutional principle: that no president, regardless of their political agenda or institutional threats, can leverage federal funding to override First Amendment protections. This reminder comes at a crucial moment, even if Trump and his allies rage against or attempt to circumvent these inevitable rulings.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, donald trump, free association, free speech, irs, moody v. netchoice, tax exempt, vullo
Companies: harvard, lehotsky keller, quinn emanuel