Tag: free speech

The Left Ultimately Just Wants To Throw Conservatives In Prison

Did you know that in America you can be criminally charged for using a racial slur? The First Amendment is supposed to protect our freedom of speech (even the use of racial slurs!) and in theory it should prevent such a gross violation of our civil liberties.

But apparently it happens anyway — and it happens because the revolutionary left doesn’t care about free speech. What they care about is power, and if they have enough power they will throw their ideological opponents in prison for the crime of disagreeing with them. 

Consider the case of Lauren Noble, a Yale graduate and the founder and executive director of the Buckley Institute, named for conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr. Two years ago, Noble was arrested in New Haven, Conn., for allegedly using a racial slur in an argument with a black parking attendant.

The parking attendant, 60-year-old Gerno Allen, claimed that Noble repeatedly called him the N-word during a dispute in July 2023. Allen didn’t file a complaint with the police until February 2024, and Noble was arrested that May and charged at first with disorderly conduct and then three counts of breach of the peace.

Noble maintained her innocence throughout, and the misdemeanor charges against her were dropped last month. The state prosecutor cited “insufficient evidence … inconsistencies in the witness’ statements,” and “video evidence clearly contradicting the complaining witness’ statements.” In other words, Allen made up the entire story.

It’s great that Noble is no longer facing criminal charges, but the fact that she was forced to go through two years of this appalling legal ordeal based on an accusation with no evidence to support it is outrageous.

Even more outrageous is that she was arrested and charged in the first place for allegedly uttering an offensive word. Even if Noble had called Allen the N-word, and there was video evidence of it, that’s not a crime. You’re free to use whatever racial slurs you like, even lazy ones like the N-word. Contrary to what many college students seem to think at places like Yale, there’s no such thing as “hate speech” in America. It might be offensive, but it’s not illegal — at least it’s not supposed to be. 

But this was a just-so narrative that was apparently too good for the left-leaning police and prosecutors in deep-blue New Haven to ignore: a conservative woman who runs an organization promoting intellectual diversity and freedom of speech at Yale, caught using the N-word against a working-class black man. Perfect.

As Noble herself wrote in a recent New York Post op-ed: “The interest in my case seemed to have more to do with what the Buckley Institute represents than anything I ever did, or was accused of doing. Headlines in local newspapers made much of both Buckley and conservatism generally, as left-leaning media outlets welcomed the opportunity to advance the dishonest narrative that everyone on the right is racist.”

That’s really what Noble’s case was about. Concocting a race-based “crime” out of thin air to tarnish the reputation of a conservative activist and ruin her good name.

For the left, conservatives aren’t just wrong or misguided, but evil. They should be silenced. If they can be silenced by jailing them on bogus charges stemming from a made-up story, so be it. Even better if the story exposes them as racist.

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KOSA Reintroduced: Child “Safety” Bill Raises Alarms Over Internet Surveillance, Digital ID, and Free Speech Risks

Senators have once again put forward the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), reviving a bill that, if enacted, would radically reshape how Americans experience the internet.

Promoted as a measure to protect children, this latest version now carries the backing of Apple, a tech giant that has publicly endorsed the legislation as a meaningful step toward improving online safety.

But behind the bipartisan sales pitch and industry support lies a framework that risks expanding government control over online content and eroding user privacy through mandated age verification and surveillance infrastructure.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

KOSA is often described as a child protection bill, requiring platforms to limit exposure to content that could contribute to mental health issues such as depression or disordered eating.

What is less emphasized by its sponsors is how the bill empowers the Federal Trade Commission to investigate and sue platforms over speech that’s deemed “harmful” to minors.

Though lawmakers insist the bill does not authorize the censorship of content, it effectively places government pressure on websites to sanitize what users see, or face liability. Such chilling effects rarely need explicit censorship orders to shape outcomes.

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Colorado’s Democrat Governor Signs Law That Makes it Illegal to ‘Deadname,’ ‘Misgender’ Transgender People in ‘Certain Places’

Another day, another attack on the First Amendment.

Colorado’s Democrat Governor Jared Polis signed a new bill that makes it a crime to ‘deadname’ or ‘misgender’ transgender people in certain places.

“The bill requires to county clerks and recorders to issue name changes on marriage certificates when requested but leave no indication or mark that the certificate has been modified,” The Denver Post reported.

The Denver Post reported:

Colorado law now explicitly protects transgender people from being “deadnamed” or misgendered in certain places under legislation signed into law Friday by Gov. Jared Polis.

Passed as House Bill 1312, the new law is formally named for Kelly Loving, a transgender woman who died in the 2022 mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs. The law expands the state’s antidiscrimination laws, which apply to settings like workplaces and schools, to include provisions related to using a person’s chosen name and referring to them how they wish.

It also makes it easier for people to change their gender identity on birth certificates and driver’s licenses, and to change their names on marriage licenses.

“The Kelly Loving Act is a beacon of hope to trans people across the country,” Z Williams, whose law firm Bread and Roses supported HB-1312, said Friday. “Our organizing works. Hope is still alive. To be trans is to know how to struggle. We will not stop this work until every trans person is safe and free.”

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Gabriel Quadri Appeals to Inter-American Human Rights Commission in Landmark Free Speech Case Against Mexico

Gabriel Quadri’s legal struggle over the right to speak freely about sex and gender has reached the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights after he was punished in Mexico for expressing views that the state deemed politically unacceptable.

Represented by ADF International, the former congressman and presidential hopeful now seeks relief from a regional body, arguing that his conviction for “gender-based political violence” amounted to an assault on basic freedoms.

The controversy stems from a series of posts Quadri made on X in which he condemned the allocation of congressional seats reserved for women to individuals who identify as female but were born male. He also raised broader concerns about the erasure of women’s spaces in sports and politics. These statements triggered legal proceedings that ended in a unanimous ruling by Mexico’s Superior Electoral Tribunal in April 2022.

As part of the sentence, Quadri was ordered to remove the posts, undergo re-education courses, and repeatedly issue a court-written apology on his social media account over a two-week period. He was also placed on a registry branding him a “gender-based political violator,” a label that, according to his legal team, may have damaged his chances in the 2024 election, which he lost.

“I am committed to safeguarding every Mexican’s fundamental right to speak freely. My career has been dedicated to a prosperous and free Mexico for all, which demands that our country abide by its human rights obligations. I look forward to the day when all in Mexico can share their beliefs and opinions without fear of censorship or reprimand,” Quadri stated.

The case underscores growing concerns about how laws supposedly aimed at protecting marginalized groups are being used to silence individuals who dissent from prevailing gender orthodoxy.

“Gabriel Quadri was convicted in 2022 as a ‘political violator’ for stating the obvious fact that a man cannot be a woman. In 2024, he lost his re-election bid. Now, just a few years later, sanity is being restored across the world as the tide turns against gender ideology. Countless public officials at the highest levels are stating the same things that landed Quadri with a guilty verdict. It is egregiously unjust for Quadri to have suffered the ignominy of a conviction, and having his reputation damaged because of his registration as a ‘political violator’, which could have negatively impacted his re-election bid, for simply standing up for the truth,” said Julio Pohl, lead attorney for ADF International.

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The EU plot to crush free speech in Ireland

The European Commission in Brussels threatened to bring legal proceedings against Ireland last week. The Commission is demanding Ireland impose draconian restrictions on the right of its people to speak their minds. Yes, you read that right: according to the EU, Ireland has too much free speech.

The problem, as the EU sees it, is ‘hate speech’. In 2008, the EU hammered out a ‘framework decision’ on xenophobia, which requires all member states to forbid incitement to violence or hatred on the basis of race, religion or nationality. It also criminalises Holocaust denial, or ‘trivialisation’ of the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity.

Ireland, however, has not complied with the 2008 diktat. It hardly needed to, since it has had hate-speech laws of its own since 1989, which nearly go as far as what Brussels is demanding anyway. These laws ban speech likely to stir up hatred on grounds of race, religion, sexual orientation or membership of the Traveller community. Last year, the Irish government even imposed a new law that increases the length of prison sentences for crimes that are proven to be motivated by ‘hatred’ on the basis of any of those characteristics.

Yet according to the EU, none of this is good enough. In a communiqué released on 7 May, the Commission gave Ireland two months to enact the EU’s provisions on incitement to violence and Holocaust denial. If Ireland fails to do this, it faces punitive fines and a date at the European Court of Justice.

This threat should worry anyone who cares about free speech and democracy. For one thing, the laws demanded by the EU are a frontal attack on vital aspects of free speech. Of course Holocaust denial is appallingly offensive. It’s also very stupid, since there is no respectable argument that the Holocaust didn’t happen. But criminalising it is not the answer. Offensiveness doesn’t justify dragging people through the courts for what they say.

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Zuckerberg’s free speech charade

Mark Zuckerberg wants America to believe he has had a “Road to Damascus” conversion on free speech. Since President Trump’s return to office in January, Mr. Zuckerberg has positioned himself as a champion of the First Amendment, condemning “cancel culture” and claiming that Meta platforms now welcome diverse political viewpoints, all while ignoring the obvious subtext that his platforms are hostile to conservative speech.

It is his recent aggressive actions to silence a whistleblower that expose the deep hypocrisy of his recent and convenient conversion to a supposed free expression champion.

By now, most of the world has heard of Sarah Wynn-Williams’ bombshell book, “Careless People,” which reveals shocking details about Mr. Zuckerberg’s yearslong crusade to enter the Chinese market by creating sophisticated censorship tools for the Chinese Communist Party to use on Facebook, all the while playing innocent to the American public. According to Ms. Wynn-Williams’ account, Mr. Zuckerberg was willing to compromise every personal and political principle belonging to American citizens, including the security of American users, to gain access to the profit margins that Chinese consumers would bring to Facebook’s revenue streams.

Most disturbing is what, according to Ms. Wynn-Williams’ Senate testimony, Mr. Zuckerberg traded away to build his $18 billion business in China. America is in an artificial intelligence war with China, and it is winner-take-all. Yet Ms. Wynn-Williams’ revelations show that, for years, Mr. Zuckerberg has been transferring the technological expertise he and his company have to the Chinese Communist Party. Detailed briefings on data centers, facial recognition and, of course, artificial intelligence — all mission-critical to our country’s future.

Rather than address these serious allegations, Mr. Zuckerberg has hidden behind lawyers, invoking arbitration clauses and gag orders to silence Ms. Wynn-Williams, who, it must be said, clearly has a steel spine that Mr. Zuckerberg can only dream of. The irony couldn’t be more stark: While publicly posturing as a free speech advocate to curry favor with the Trump administration, he uses legal maneuvers to suppress whistleblowers from warning the public and lawmakers of these critical truths about his company.

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DEI’s defenders are massive First Amendment hypocrites

The Trump administration’s efforts to rein in diversity, equity, and inclusion policies plaguing public schools suffered a setback last month when judges in three states ruled in favor of advocacy groups defending the status quo. In one complaint, the American Federation of Teachers claimed the Trump administration policy change “will chill speech and expression.”

As a recently retired teacher who was a member of the union for decades, color me skeptical of the union’s commitment to the First Amendment. When I spoke against a union-approved DEI program and came under fire from school officials for my opinion, the union hung me out to dry.

Nineteen states, including my home state of Connecticut, followed the teachers’ union’s lead by suing the Department of Education over its plan to condition federal school funding on an end to DEI. The state coalition similarly claims that Trump’s policy change “threaten[s] to chill … speech[.]” But in my case, Connecticut school officials made it clear they can and will silence any speech they don’t like.

Such rank hypocrisy may not affect outcomes in court, but it should alert voters and teachers that when it comes to DEI, those cloaking themselves in the mantle of free speech view it as a one-way street.

This past fall, I ended a 35-year career teaching and training students in Hartford Public Schools. In that time, I successfully worked with kids from nearly every ethnic background.

But then I was told minority students couldn’t learn from me because I didn’t share their skin color, and that as a male I could not effectively teach female students. My privilege and implicit biases, according to DEI indoctrination, made me inadequate for the job — and possibly even a threat to the success of the children I thought I was helping.

What had changed? Not me. In 2017, new school administrators brought with them a race-focused agenda and sought to implement it through classroom teachers. They enlisted the Hartford Federation of Teachers, a local affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, to support their new direction.

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Affirm Your Kid’s Chosen Gender Or Lose Custody? Colorado’s Chilling New Bill

The Colorado state legislature is considering a bill that would radically chill parents’ speech. Dubbed the “Kelly Loving Act,” the bill, if signed into law, would empower judges to consider “deadnaming” and “misgendering” your child to be types of “coercive control” when they’re making custody decisions. In simple terms: if your child gender transitions and you don’t affirm their new gender identity, then a judge could consider your non-affirmation to be a form of abuse and use it as justification to deny you custody of your child.

This is a deeply chilling bill. The bill’s sponsors frame it as a way to show support for transgender people, but this bill goes way too far in stripping away parents’ rights.

Being a good and loving parent means telling your child “no.” Every parent has had these conversations.

“No, you can’t have M&Ms for dinner; eat your broccoli.”

“No, you can’t stay up until midnight. Your bedtime is ten.”

“No, you can’t hang out with Chad who’s always high; find some friends who will have a better influence on you.”

But when it comes to gender transitioning, saying “no” could be dangerous. If your son decides to socially transition and begins calling himself a girl, and you don’t unconditionally affirm that decision, then you could risk losing him if you’re ever in a child custody battle.

Some advocates of gender transitioning say that socially transitioning is harmless. After all, what does it matter if your son starts to use female pronouns and wear dresses? The problem is that socially transitioning puts many children on a conveyor belt to medically transitioning. According to a 2022 study on the topic, a stunning 97.5 percent of young people who socially transitioned continued to identify as either trans or nonbinary several years later. Nearly 60 percent went on to medically transition via either puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.

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Rep. MTG Says House Bill to Criminalize EU and UN-Backed Boycotts of Israel with $1 Million Fines and 20-Year Sentences Has Been PULLED

The U.S. House of Representatives has reportedly pulled H.R. 867, the IGO Anti-Boycott Act, following fierce opposition from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), and former Rep. Matt Gaetz.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), aimed to expand the 2018 Anti-Boycott Act to include international governmental organizations (IGOs) like the United Nations and European Union, targeting efforts to boycott U.S. allies, particularly Israel.

The Anti-Boycott Act of 2018 is a U.S. federal law that prohibits U.S. individuals and companies from participating in or supporting foreign-led boycotts against countries that are friendly to the United States, unless such boycotts are sanctioned by U.S. law.

This legislation is particularly aimed at countering boycotts initiated by foreign entities, such as the Arab League’s boycott of Israel.

The Arab League’s boycott of Israel—originally initiated in 1945—still exists on paper, but only a few member countries continue to actively enforce it in a comprehensive way.

  • Iraq
  • Kuwait
  • Lebanon
  • Libya
  • Qatar
  • Saudi Arabia
  • Syria
  • Yemen

Violations can result in civil penalties up to $300,000 or twice the value of the transaction, whichever is greater, and criminal penalties up to $1 million and/or imprisonment for up to 20 years.

In recent years, several companies have faced penalties for antiboycott violations:

  • Quantum Corporation was fined $151,875 for 45 alleged violations involving requests from a distributor in the United Arab Emirates to refrain from importing Israeli-origin goods.
  • Wabtec Corporation was hit with a $153,175 fine for 43 violations after failing to report requests from a Qatari customer to participate in a foreign boycott by avoiding Israeli-origin goods.
  • Pratt & Whitney was penalized $48,750 for 13 violations tied to similar unreported requests from a Qatari customer urging the company to refrain from importing products from Israel.

The new bill, co-sponsored by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), María Elvira Salazar (R-FL), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), and several others, will expand the 2018 law’s scope to include international governmental organizations (IGOs) such as the United Nations and its affiliates.

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Maine Lawmaker Asks Supreme Court to Reverse Speech Ban

A Maine legislator has turned to the US Supreme Court after being effectively stripped of her ability to represent her constituents over a controversial social media post. Republican Rep. Laurel Libby, who serves District 90, submitted an emergency request to the high court this week, seeking to overturn a disciplinary action imposed by her fellow lawmakers that has barred her from voting or speaking on the House floor since February.

The dispute stems from a Facebook post Libby made criticizing the inclusion of a transgender athlete in a statewide girls’ pole vault competition.

The post included a mention of a Maine student and questioned the fairness of allowing biological males to compete in girls’ sports categories, a stance that ignited outrage among Democratic legislators. In response, the House voted to censure Libby and conditioned her return to full legislative participation on an apology she had refused to give.

Rather than comply, Libby launched a legal fight to restore her role, arguing the punishment amounted to unconstitutional retaliation. After lower courts refused to intervene, she is now asking the Supreme Court to address what she sees as a blatant violation of the First Amendment and a denial of her constituents’ right to representation.

We obtained a copy of the application for you here.

“For over 60 days my constituents have had no say in any actions taken by their government, actions that directly impact their lives,” she wrote in a post on X. “Every vote taken on the floor of the legislature is a vote my constituents cannot get back. The good people of our district have been silenced and disenfranchised.”

Libby emphasized that the case raises serious concerns about the limits of legislative authority when it comes to penalizing elected officials for their speech.

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