Tag: 1st amendment

California’s “Stop Nick Shirley Act” Would Penalize Journalism

California’s Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee voted 11-2 on April 7 to advance a bill that would let employees and volunteers at immigration service organizations demand the deletion of their images and personal information from the internet, backed by civil penalties starting at $4,000 and the threat of criminal charges.

AB 2624, authored by Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, is already being called the “Stop Nick Shirley Act.”

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

The bill arrives just weeks after investigative video creator Nick Shirley published a 40-minute video on alleged hospice fraud in California that racked up 42 million views on X.

Other investigations have found that a single program is causing the state to lose an alleged $6 billion in fraud annually. Shirley had already reported on over $110 million in Somali daycare fraud in Minnesota in December 2025, with empty facilities billing taxpayers while kids were nowhere to be found.

His California reporting uncovered an alleged $170 million in similar fraud in daycares and hospices, with ghost operations registered to empty lots and strip malls. Sacramento’s response to this flood of documented waste and abuse was not an audit, not an investigation into the programs themselves, but a bill to make it harder to film the people running them.

Under AB 2624, anyone affiliated with an organization providing “designated immigration support services” can send a written demand prohibiting the publication of their personal information or image online.

That demand remains effective for four years, even after the person leaves the organization. If the demand is ignored, the person can go to court for an injunction or declaratory relief.

Fines run up to three times the actual damages, with a floor of $4,000, meaning the minimum penalty triples to $12,000 in cases where a takedown demand is defied. If a journalist or anyone else is accused of posting information with the intent to incite harm, they face criminal charges and fines of $10,000.

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Letitia James’ Crusade Against Abortion Pill Reversal Is Also Killing Free Speech

State attorneys general are duty-bound to seek justice for the weak and powerless, not to use their immense power to harass them. But New York Attorney General Letitia James’ policing of private conversations about the abortion pill reversal (APR) protocol amounts to a cynical abuse of state power.

Two years ago, James launched a legal assault on Heartbeat International and 11 affiliated pregnancy centers in New York. She claimed the centers and Heartbeat — the largest network of pregnancy help organizations in the world — had engaged in false advertising, supposedly deceiving women by sharing scientific findings supporting the safety and effectiveness of APR.

APR is a safe and effective way for a woman to improve her odds of continuing her pregnancy to term after she has ingested mifepristone — the first pill in an abortion drug regimen designed to block progesterone from the growing baby. A worldwide network of more than 1,500 health care professionals is available to prescribe bioidentical progesterone to counteract the mifepristone in order to reverse its effects. Most notably, statistics suggest that more than 8,000 babies have been saved through the abortion pill reversal protocol.

Thousands of smiling — living — babies and emotional testimonies of grateful moms illustrate the success of a chosen medical treatment. And James “has no business butting into the intimate medical decision of [a] … mother.” It’s why Heartbeat and its New York affiliates filed their own lawsuit, arguing that defendant James has provided “no evidence of fraud, misrepresentation, material omission, or harm to anyone” in providing free services or speaking about the safety and efficacy of APR.

This week, Heartbeat and its affiliates have their day in court. On Wednesday, April 15, their attorneys argued that James’ hostile lawsuit should be dismissed because it targets free speech and participation in public debate. James’ lawsuit is a classic Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP). Or, more bluntly, James’ efforts amount to a bully’s legal slap in the face to keep small pro-life nonprofits from sharing a life-saving message she doesn’t like.

Her friends have called her a “voice for the voiceless.” She claims to “speak truth to power, and challenge the status quo.” And she frequently talks of “using [her] position to address the needs of those who are locked out of the sunshine of opportunity.”

But the attorney general ought not ignore the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent defense of free speech rights, even when offering medical services. At the end of March, the court delivered an 8-1 decision in Chiles v. Salazar, noting that counseling conversations are speech and Colorado cannot silence viewpoints in the counseling room. The majority warned that “[t]oday, tomorrow, and forever, too, any professional speech that deviates from ‘current beliefs about the safety and efficacy of various medical treatments’ could be silenced with relative ease.”

Sensitive to the danger of stifling innovation in medicine, they continued, “Medical consensus, too, is not static; it evolves and always has. A prevailing standard of care may reflect what most practitioners believe today, but it cannot mark the outer boundary of what they may say tomorrow.”

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What are They Hiding? — Radical California Democrats Pass ‘Stop Nick Shirley Act’ to Criminalize Investigative Journalism and Shield Massive Immigrant Services Fraud from Scrutiny

The radical Left in Sacramento has finally done it.

In a move straight out of a totalitarian playbook, the California Assembly Judiciary Committee voted 11-2 on Monday to advance AB 2624, the so-called “Stop Nick Shirley Act,” a disgusting Democrat power grab designed to make it illegal for brave citizen journalists like Nick Shirley to expose the rampant fraud bleeding American taxpayers dry in immigrant service centers.

This is nothing less than an all-out assault on the First Amendment by the radical left in the People’s Republic of California.

The bill, authored by far-left Assemblywoman Mia Bonta (wife of Attorney General Rob Bonta), would slap investigative reporters with massive civil sanctions starting at $4,000 minimum if a fraudster from one of these “immigrant service centers” decides they don’t want to be caught on camera committing their scams.

The crook can then run to court for an injunction banning the journalist from filming or exposing them on camera for up to four years.

And if the journalist refuses to take down the original video? Triple the damages, $12,000, just for telling the truth!

In the worst cases, if the journalist is accused of “doxxing” or creating an “imminent threat” by simply reporting the facts, they could face criminal charges and $10,000 fines.

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How UK Regulator Ofcom Quietly Bypassed International Law to Police American Speech

A Freedom of Information response has confirmed what the UK’s speech regulator would probably have preferred to keep quiet. Ofcom fired off 197 information demands to American tech companies under the Online Safety Act, and not a single one went through the US-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, the formal diplomatic process that exists for exactly this kind of cross-border legal enforcement. Every one of those 197 notices was sent directly, by email or post, to companies operating entirely on American soil.

The number comes from a FOI request filed by Daniel Lü, who asked Ofcom a series of pointed questions about how it enforces the Online Safety Act against non-UK targets.

Ofcom confirmed that as of February 26, 2026, it had issued 197 Section 100 notices to US businesses. Zero through MLAT. The treaty between the US and UK that governs how one country’s legal process gets enforced in the other’s jurisdiction was treated as optional. Ofcom decided it didn’t apply.

That admission drew an immediate response from Preston Byrne, the American lawyer who represents 4chan and other US companies targeted by Ofcom.

Byrne called the 197 notices a “breathtaking” “attack on the First Amendment” and pointed out the uncomfortable math.

Only two US companies, 4chan and Kiwi Farms, have publicly refused to comply with Ofcom’s demands. If Byrne’s assessment is right, that leaves Ofcom enjoying “a 98% compliance rate with foreign censorship orders that violate the First Amendment.”

A British regulator sent nearly 200 demands to American companies, bypassed every established legal channel, and almost all of them appear to have simply done what they were told. The chilling effect is already here.

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Clinton Judge Rips Hegseth, Orders Pentagon to Restore Press Access

US District Judge Paul Friedman, a Clinton appointee on Thursday once again sided with The New York Times and ordered the Pentagon to restore press access.

Last month Judge Friedman ruled that the Pentagon’s new press policy restricting press credential of reporters is unconstitutional.

In October, Pentagon reporters turned in their badges after they refused to sign Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s new security rule.

“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth demanded that reporters agree by 5 p.m. Tuesday to a new policy, under which they would need to pledge to not obtain or use any unauthorized material, even if the information is unclassified — or hand over their press badges in the next 24 hours,” The Hill previously reported.

By that afternoon, Pentagon reporters turned in their badges.

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Los Angeles Teen Blinded in One Eye by DHS Agent at ‘No Kings’ Rally, Attorney Says

An 18-year-old college freshman was blinded in his right eye by a federal agent during the Los Angeles “No Kings” protest on March 28. 

Tucker Collins, who is studying astronautical engineering with a minor in cinematic arts at the University of Southern California, was documenting the rally protesting policies implemented under President Donald Trump near the Metropolitan Detention Center, where immigration detainees are held. Video of the incident shared by Collins’ attorney, V. James DeSimone, shows a crowd of people separated from agents by a tall black fence surrounding the facility. Collins can be seen holding his phone and filming near the back of the group before abruptly falling to the ground. Blood streams from his right eye as bystanders come to his aid. He was helped by a nurse present at the protest, DeSimone told CNN, and later taken to the hospital.

In the video, DeSimone accuses Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents of unlawfully shooting Collins with “a less-lethal launcher…shooting directly into his head” while exercising his First Amendment rights. The strike caused irreparable damage to Collins’ eye and fractured bones in his eye socket, DeSimone told CNN. Collins’ eye had to be surgically removed. 

In a statement made to the Los Angeles Times, a DHS spokesperson claimed that agents “followed their training and used the minimum amount of force necessary to protect themselves, the public, and federal property” after a group of 1,000 protestors “threw rocks, bottles, and cement blocks at officers.” The agency said seven warnings were given before crowd control measures were used. “The First Amendment protects speech and peaceful assembly—not rioting,” the spokesperson continued. 

Under DHS use-of-force guidelines, while agents may be authorized to use less-lethal weapons, such as pepperballs and rubber bullets, using such a device is considered deadly force when “it carries a substantial risk of causing death or serious bodily injury,” such as “strik[ing] the neck or head.” Deadly force is only permissible when “the [officer] has a reasonable belief that the subject of force poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the [officer] or to another person.” 

Even with this guideline in place, a federal court in California issued a preliminary injunction last September prohibiting DHS agents from, in part, “using crowd control weapons,” including less-lethal weapons, “on members of the press, legal observers, and protesters who are not themselves posing a threat of imminent harm to a law enforcement officer or another person.” The order was a result of a lawsuit in which DHS agents were accused of using excessive force and suppressing First Amendment-protected activities when officers shot less-lethal weapons at people protesting the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics in Southern California last summer. 

In this case, Collins “was not threatening anyone. He wasn’t attacking anyone,” DeSimone told The Guardian. “DHS officers took out his eye and they did it despite a federal injunction that plainly forbids firing these weapons at people’s heads,” he continued. 

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US’s Erosion of the Right to Cartoon Is No Laughing Matter

During World War II, cartoonist Bill Mauldin was summoned to a meeting with Gen. George S. Patton. Mauldin’s Stars and Stripes cartoons drew Patton’s ire over his matter-of-fact depictions of war and American GIs.

To Mauldin, war was no fun adventure. In Up Front, his Willie and Joe were war-weary and disheveled soldiers, not heroes ready for movie stardom. They expressed a darkly comic view of the life of an infantryman. In an exemplary cartoon, one of the duo says to a medic attempting to hand out a medal: “Just gimme th’ aspirin, I already got a Purple Heart.”

Mauldin avoided punishment when Gen. Dwight Eisenhower circulated a letter instructing all officers “not to interfere” with “such things as Mauldin’s cartoons” (Oklahoman, 4/16/82). Mauldin won the Pulitzer twice for his editorial cartooning, once during the war and once afterwards.

Perhaps Donald Trump’s Pentagon saw itself as acting in the Patton tradition when it eliminated comics from Stars and Stripes. As FAIR (3/20/26) previously documented, Pete Hegseth has taken steps to crack down on the independence of the Pentagon’s own newspaper. Among the new guidelines to promote “good order and discipline” is a ban on syndicated material, including comics (Stars and Stripes, 3/13/26). US servicemembers have now been saved from the woke, subversive influences of Doonesbury, Pearls Before Swine and, perhaps worst of all, Beetle Bailey.

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Trump Threatens to Jail Journalists Who Received Leak About US Pilot Downed in Iran

President Donald Trump vowed Monday to find the “leaker” who disclosed that US forces could not locate the second pilot stranded in Iran after their F-15 fighter jet was shot down, threatening to jail unnamed journalists who received the information if they do not reveal its source.

Trump claimed that Iranian authorities did not know that a second pilot of the downed two-seat warplane was missing until after the news report, which made the US rescue mission “much more difficult.”

“We’re looking very hard to find that leaker,” Trump said. “We think we’ll be able to find it out because we’re going to go to the media company that released it and we’re going to say: ‘National security – give it up or go to jail.’”

“The country, Iran, put out a major notice… offering a very big award for anybody that captures the pilot,” Trump continued. “We have to find that leaker, because that’s a sick person. Probably didn’t realize the extent of how bad it was.”

“We’re going to find out,” he added. “It’s national security, and the person that did the story will go to jail if he doesn’t say.”

While the president did not say which “media company” he was talking about, the first widely cited reporting about the missing second pilot was broadcast Friday by CNN, CBS News, and The New York Times.

Israel journalist Amit Segal – who has close high-level links to the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – claimed Monday on his Telegram channel that he was the first to publish information on the second pilot.

“We are about to see Trump’s promise to find and imprison whoever leaked the info about the second pilot vanish into the ether,” US investigative journalist Ryan Grim said on social media Monday in response to Segal’s post.

Both pilots were successfully rescued. Some critics mocked Trump for presuming that Iranians would not know that the two-seat F-15 is crewed by multiple pilots.

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SURPRISE: Justice Jackson Gets NUKED by Fellow Leftist Justice Kagan For Writing This Insane Dissent in Case Regarding Conversion Therapy Ban for LGBTQ Minors

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has become such an embarrassing spectacle on the Supreme Court that even her fellow leftists appear to be tiring of her.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, The US Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled 8-1 against Colorado’s conversion therapy ban for LGBTQ minors. Jackson was the lone dissenter.

The lawsuit was filed by Christian talk therapist Kaley Chiles, who argued that Colorado’s ban on her talk therapy methods violated her First Amendment rights.

In an insane 35-page dissent, Jackson essentially said that therapists like Chiles should not have the same free speech rights as other Americans.

“Professional medical speech does not intersect with the marketplace of ideas: ‘In the context of medical practice, we insist upon competence, not debate,’” she wrote. “Treatment standards exist in America.”

“It threatens to impair States’ ability to regulate the provision of medical care in any respect,” she added. “It extends the Constitution into uncharted territory in an utterly irrational fashion. And it ultimately risks grave harm to Americans’ health and well-being.”

She also attacked the Court for ‘playing with fire’, which could ‘burn Americans.’

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Oregon’s Union Crackdown Spreads

The state of Oregon passed a law last year that should outrage every American who believes in the First Amendment.

Not because it bans speech outright. Not because it targets a newspaper or a broadcaster. Because it targets a letter. An email. A text message. A conversation telling public employees they have a constitutional right to opt out of their union.

That’s what Oregon made illegal.

The Freedom Foundation has been communicating with public employees for years. We do it because back in 2018 the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed in Janus v. AFSCME that every government employee has a constitutional right to decline union membership and dues — a right workers will never find out about if they’re waiting for their union to inform them of it.

Someone else, most likely the Freedom Foundation, has to do it for them.

Oregon’s HB 3789, which took effect Jan. 1, was written specifically to shut down our outreach activities in that state — and potentially others. Egged on by their union puppet masters, lawmakers in that state approved legislation threatening heavy financial penalties for what the law describes as impersonating a labor union.

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