Tag: censorship

The Free Speech Act: A Demolition Plan For Britain’s Speech Laws

The Adam Smith Institute has published the Free Speech Act 2026, a model bill that would dismantle virtually the entire legal architecture the British state uses to police speech.

Written by Preston Byrne, an Adam Smith Institute Senior Fellow, alongside co-authors Elijah Granet and Michael Reiners, the legislation runs to 32 sections and seven schedules.

It would repeal seven entire Acts of Parliament, create a statutory right to free expression, ban the state from censoring lawful speech directly or through third parties, and give citizens a private right of action to sue when their rights are violated.

Byrne, a dual-qualified English solicitor and US attorney, is best known as the lawyer who responds to Ofcom’s enforcement notices with cartoon hamsters.

He represents 4chan in its federal lawsuit against the UK’s speech regulator in Washington, D.C., and acts for every current US-based enforcement target of the Online Safety Act.

He is also the architect of the GRANITE Act, the first foreign censorship shield bill in American history, which passed the Wyoming House of Representatives 46-12 before running out of time in the state Senate.

All of that, Byrne writes, was prologue. “The big fight, the real fight, is to restore free speech in the UK. Publishing this Model Bill today, we mean to start it.”

The Bill’s stated purpose is to answer a single question: “If the UK wanted to enact something like the First Amendment, what would the resulting statute look like?”

The answer is a controlled demolition.

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School librarians told to remove art books with ‘historic paintings of nudes’ in latest censorship row

School librarians are being told to remove art books with ‘historic paintings of nudes’ in the latest censorship controversy revealed today.

The ‘insane’ trend was revealed by a delegate at the annual conference of the National Education Union (NEU), saying she had heard ‘many accounts’ of art books being cut.

It comes after a school librarian at Lowry Academy in Salford, Greater Manchester, revealed last week she had been forced to remove books deemed ‘inappropriate’ by management.

Bosses used artificial intelligence to earmark almost 200 books for removal, including George Orwell’s 1984 and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight.

The school later admitted it had removed ‘a small number of books’ but said it had put most of them back, into ‘age-appropriate categories’.

The Lowry Academy case prompted the NEU to pass an urgent motion yesterday to ‘fight censorship and defend librarians’.

The union said that although the woman in the original controversy is not part of the union, it wanted to protect its own librarian members from suffering a similar fate.

Proposing the motion, Kristabelle Williams, a member from Lewisham, said: ‘We cannot ignore the issues that this case has brought up.

‘We can take action as a union now to try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.’

She said the support of the union would give librarians the ‘confidence to not self-censor and resist the chilling effect that this case will cultivate’.

She added members fear there is now an ‘increased risk of external complaints’ and ‘hate campaigns’ about books in their libraries.

Also speaking during the debate was Laura Butterworth, a member from Tameside Greater Manchester, which is near Lowry Academy.

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Children’s Health Defense Wins Settlement in Landmark Censorship Case

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) finalized a settlement in CHD’s landmark class action censorship lawsuit against key Biden administration officials accused of colluding with tech companies to censor social media content.

In a press release, the DOJ cited President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20, 2025, Executive Order “acknowledging that ‘the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve.’ 90 Fed. Reg. 8243 (Jan. 28, 2025).”

CHD, along with its then-Chairman Robert F. Kennedy Jr., sued the Biden administration in March 2023.

The lawsuit, Kennedy v. Biden, became CHD v. Trump after Trump became president of the U.S., and Kennedy, who first left CHD to run his own presidential campaign, was later named secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under the Trump administration.

The class action lawsuit against then-President Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top administration officials and federal agencies alleged they “waged a systematic, concerted campaign” to compel the nation’s three largest social media companies to censor constitutionally protected speech.

Jed Rubenfeld, attorney for CHD, called the settlement a “tremendous win” against government censorship.

“We brought this case years ago to challenge the Biden administration’s assault on free speech,” Rubenfeld said. “Today, the government, under a new administration, acknowledged that assault. And via a previously issued Executive Order, the president prohibited government officials from pressuring social media companies in the future to trample on Americans’ First Amendment rights.”

As part of the settlement with CHD, the government agreed to pay attorneys’ fees.

The DOJ also settled a similar lawsuit, Missouri v. Biden, and issued a consent decree in the case.

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Pentagon Wants It to Be Illegal for Reporters to Ask “Unauthorized” Questions

A judge last week struck down the Pentagon’s restrictions on journalists seeking “unauthorized” information, siding with the New York Times in its lawsuit against the government. In response, the Pentagon on Monday added some meaningless window dressing and essentially reissued the same restrictions. The administration pledged to “immediately” appeal the decision on the original policy, and on Tuesday, the Times filed a motion to compel the administration to comply with the judge’s order. 

As alarming as the Pentagon’s antics are, the Times’ lawsuit is not the only case about whether reporters have the right to ask questions. It’s not even the only one in the news this week. 

In 2017, police in Laredo, Texas, arrested citizen journalist Patricia Villarreal under an obscure and never previously used law making it a felony to ask government employees for nonpublic information for personal benefit. Her supposed crime was asking a police officer about two local tragedies — a suicide and a deadly car wreck.

Her arrest was widely ridiculed, and a judge quickly threw out the charges. When Villarreal sued over her arrest and mistreatment by officers, the legal question wasn’t whether the charges against her were permissible but whether they were so obviously bogus that she could overcome qualified immunity, the unjust and expansive legal shield that protects government employees from liability for all but the most blatant violations. That issue went to the Supreme Court twice, but on Monday, the Court declined to review a federal appellate court’s ruling that the officers were shielded from liability. 

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Settlement Stops Government From Using Social Media As ‘Speech Police’

The government censorship machine took a huge hit Tuesday in a historic win for First Amendment rights. 

What is being billed as an “unprecedented” agreement will bar the three government agencies central to killing speech the Biden administration didn’t like from pressuring social media platforms from doing so in the future. 

“This case began with a suspicion, that blossomed into fact, that led to Congressional hearings and an Executive Order that government censorship of Americans’ social media posts should end,” said John Vecchione, Senior Litigation Counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), the nonprofit civil rights group that has battled in courts for years to bring justice to victims of government-led speech suppression. 

Also celebrating, Sen. Eric Schmitt, who, as Missouri’s attorney general, sued the Biden administration for “brazenly colluding with Big Tech to silence Missourians.” 

“This is a massive win for the First Amendment and for every American who believes in free speech,” the Missouri Republican said in a press release, adding that President Biden’s tenure in office brought “the most aggressively liberal and antiliberty excesses of government that America has ever seen.”

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Government Agencies BANNED From Pressuring Big Tech to Censor Americans for 10 Years

In a historic win for free speech, the U.S. Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have been legally restricted from pressuring social media companies to silence Americans for the next decade. This comes from a formal Consent Decree in Missouri v. Biden, one of the most consequential First Amendment cases in modern history.

The agreement itself is striking. It acknowledges that, in recent years, federal officials “exerted substantial coercive pressure” on social media companies to suppress speech they did not approve of. This case began after physicians, journalists, and everyday Americans—especially those dissenting on COVID and elections—were systematically censored online. This was confirmed through discovery: a coordinated, government-backed effort to pressure Big Tech into silencing alternative viewpoints.

Now, under this decree, these entities are prohibited from threatening, coercing, or directing platforms like Facebook, X, YouTube, and others to remove or suppress lawful speech—including through algorithmic means. These restrictions will remain in place for 10 years.

Perhaps most important, the agreement explicitly states that labeling speech as “misinformation,” “disinformation,” or “malinformation” does not strip it of First Amendment protection.

This is one of the most significant blows yet to the censorship regime.

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School used AI to purge library of ‘inappropriate’ books including Orwell’s 1984 and Twilight, with librarian branded ‘safeguarding risk’

A school used artificial intelligence to censor books in its library including George Orwell’s 1984 and Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, campaigners claim.

An investigation by Index on Censorship found a secondary school in Greater Manchester earmarked almost 200 books for removal from its library that were deemed ‘inappropriate’.

These also included Michelle Obama‘s autobiography, Becoming and The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks.

The charity, which campaigns for free expression, says the school got AI to generate summaries justifying why each book was not suitable for pupils.

Incredibly, the school librarian was also put under a ‘safeguarding’ investigation – leading to her resignation – for allowing the books in the library.

Index said it would not reveal the name of the librarian or the school, due to her being vulnerable.

Although many of the books were initially removed, it is not known if all of those on the list remain banned from the library.

The case was exposed this week by the school librarian, who spoke to the organisation on condition of her anonymity.

She said the purge began in November 2025, when the headteacher demanded the removal of Laura Bates’ nonfiction title Men Who Hate Women, which is an exposé of incel culture.

The head thought the book was inappropriate due to ‘exposure of misogynistic beliefs’, even though it was kept in a special section for older pupils.

Off the back of this incident, the school then launched an ‘investigation’ into the librarian, and closed the library as a ‘temporary safeguarding measure’.

She was then asked to remove any book that was ‘not written for children’, had ‘themes that could be upsetting to children’ and those that were ‘inappropriate or constitute a safeguarding risk’.

She told Index: ‘I was absolutely gobsmacked. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.’

The school also reported her to the council as a safeguarding risk due to introducing ‘inappropriate’ books – and there was also a threat of gross misconduct proceedings.

The school shared with her a list of 193 books which it deemed might be inappropriate, seen by Index.

Index said it had seen another document in which the school admitted the reasons given for the censorship had been written by AI.

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Brussels Launches Brazen Election Interference in Hungary: Activating ‘Disinformation’ Censorship Machine to Silence Anti-Globalist Camp Ahead of April 12 Vote

A full-scale assault on Hungarian sovereignty is underway as unelected bureaucrats in Brussels crank up their censorship apparatus just weeks before Hungary’s crucial parliamentary election on April 12, 2026.

According to a report from Brussels Signal, European Commission has shamelessly activated the so-called “rapid response” mechanism under the oppressive Digital Services Act (DSA), a naked attempt to meddle in Hungary’s internal democratic affairs and tilt the playing field against the nationalist government of Viktor Orbán.

This heavy-handed measure will stay in place until a full week after Hungarians cast their ballots, supposedly to fight “disinformation” and foreign meddling. In reality, it’s a blatant power grab by Brussels elites who cannot stomach a sovereign nation refusing to bow to their federalist agenda.

Critics rightly call it outright election interference—giving faceless EU commissars the power to dictate what Hungarian citizens can read, share, and debate online in the heat of a national campaign.

Major platforms like Meta and TikTok are now forced to team up with so-called “fact-checkers” and “civil society” groups—many fattened by EU cash handouts—to hunt down and suppress content Brussels dislikes. This creates a corrupt echo chamber: Brussels funds the watchdogs, sets the rules, and then enforces them through Big Tech. No wonder impartiality has gone out the window.

The Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) in Brussels, via its Democracy Interference Observatory, has exposed this sham as anything but neutral. They warn it’s a politically motivated intervention designed to pre-emptively delegitimize the election if the Hungarian people dare to re-elect their patriotic leadership. The funding ties make it crystal clear: these are not independent guardians of truth, but paid extensions of the same Brussels machine targeting Hungary.

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Blackburn’s TRUMP AMERICA AI Act Repeals Section 230, Expands AI Liability, and Mandates Age Verification

Senator Marsha Blackburn has introduced a 291-page legislative discussion draft that would reshape how information is allowed to exist online.

The TRUMP AMERICA AI Act, officially titled the “The Republic Unifying Meritocratic Performance Advancing Machine intelligence by Eliminating Regulatory Interstate Chaos Across American Industry” Act, bundles together Section 230 repeal, expanded AI liability, age verification mandates, and a stack of additional bills that have been circulating separately for years.

All of it is wrapped in a national AI framework that claims it is tied to President Trump’s December Executive Order. The bill is framed as pro-innovation, pro-safety, designed to “protect children, creators, conservatives, and communities” while positioning the US to win the global AI race.

What the actual 291 pages describe is a system that centralizes regulatory authority, removes the legal protections platforms currently rely on, and hands new enforcement tools to federal agencies, state attorneys general, and private litigants simultaneously.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

The legal foundation of the modern internet is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. It shields platforms from being sued for the content that users post. Without Section 230, platforms could become legally responsible for what their users post, which could mean anything controversial, contested, or legally ambiguous becomes a liability they’ll quietly remove rather than defend.

Blackburn’s bill repeals it entirely, after a two-year transition period.

Platforms and AI developers could face lawsuits for “defective design,” “failure to warn,” or deploying systems deemed “unreasonably dangerous.”

AI platforms would be incentivized to heavily monitor users.

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Court backs city censorship: Ontario appeal ruling blocks ‘Woman = Adult Female’ ad

The Ontario Court of Appeal has ruled against the Christian Heritage Party of Canada (CHP) in a high-profile free speech case, siding with the City of Hamilton’s decision to reject a controversial bus shelter ad.

The case stems from a 2023 attempt by CHP to purchase advertising space on Hamilton transit shelters. The proposed ad featured a smiling woman alongside the message: “Woman: An Adult Female.”

City officials blocked the ad, arguing it could offend transit users, a decision CHP challenged through judicial review before ultimately appealing to Ontario’s top court.

That challenge has now failed.

In its decision, the Court of Appeal upheld the city’s authority to control messaging in public advertising spaces even where that control intersects with constitutionally protected expression.

The ruling effectively shuts down CHP’s argument that a political party has the right to publicly promote what it describes as the biological, biblical, and dictionary definition of a woman in a public forum.

CHP leader Rod Taylor blasted the decision, calling it a blow to fundamental freedoms.

He argued that the ruling undermines core Charter protections, including freedom of speech, press, conscience, and association, and warned that ideological pressure is now influencing both legislatures and the courts.

The party says it will continue advocating for what it calls “truth and freedom,” despite the setback.

In today’s Canada, even defining a word can land you in court — and still lose.

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