Tag: free speech

Founding Felons: Jefferson Would Be on a Watch List Today — You Might Be Next

Everything this nation once stood for is being turned on its head.

We are being asked — no, told — to believe that the greatest threat to America today is not government overreach, endless war, corruption, surveillance, or the steady erosion of constitutional rights.

No, the real threat, it seems, is speech.

Dangerous speech. Hateful speech. Critical speech. Speech that dares to challenge power.

In the wake of the reported assassination attempt on President Trump, the Trump administration has wasted no time advancing a dangerous narrative: that criticism of the president — especially criticism labeling him authoritarian or fascist — is not just wrong, but responsible for violence.

The implication is as chilling as it is unconstitutional: if you criticize the government too harshly, you may be to blame for what happens next.

Taken to its logical conclusion, the government’s argument is this: criticism fuels anger, and anger leads to violence against the Trump administration.

Which means the solution, in the government’s eyes, is simple: silence the criticism — but only when it is leveled at the Trump administration.

When White House officials suggest that calling a president a fascist may constitute libel or slander, they are not merely defending reputations — they are laying the groundwork for criminalizing dissent.

This is how it begins.

This is how republics become regimes.

First, criticism is labeled dangerous. Then it is labeled harmful. Then it is labeled illegal. And before long, it is gone.

Beware of those who want to monitor, muzzle, catalogue and censor speech — especially when the justification is “safety.” Because every time the government claims it must limit freedom to protect the public, what it is really doing is expanding its own power.

The irony is almost too glaring to ignore.

By the standards now being floated by those in power, America’s founders themselves would be considered extremists.

Seditionists. Radicals. Domestic threats.

Keep reading

Judge Halts Colorado AI Law After First Amendment Challenge

A federal judge has frozen enforcement of Colorado’s first-in-the-nation AI law, the statute that would have required developers to police their own models for “algorithmic discrimination” and to inform the state of “foreseeable risks” before the rules took effect on June 30.

Judge Cyrus Y. Chung signed off on a joint request from xAI and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser on April 27, putting the law on ice while state lawmakers draft a replacement.

We obtained a copy of the order for you here.

The order was filed in xAI v. Weiser. The state agreed not to enforce SB 24-205 against xAI, or to issue rules under it, until at least 14 days after the court rules on a forthcoming preliminary injunction motion.

The June 16 scheduling conference was cancelled. The deadlines in the case are suspended.

This is a significant retreat as Colorado spent two years insisting the law was a model for the country. It was the only state AI statute named in President Trump’s AI executive order last year. Now the state is asking a court to stop the clock while its own governor’s policy group drafts a bill to repeal and replace it.

The law itself is the reason the climbdown looks the way it does. SB 24-205 told developers of “high-risk” AI systems they had to take “reasonable care” to prevent algorithmic discrimination, with one carveout that has done more work in the lawsuit than any other clause: the law exempts discrimination intended to “increase diversity or redress historical discrimination.”

The state forbids one kind of discrimination by an algorithm. It permits, and arguably requires, another. The developer is left to figure out which is which, with the attorney general’s office deciding after the fact.

xAI sued on April 9, calling the statute a First Amendment problem dressed up as consumer protection. The company’s complaint is more blunt than most filings of this kind. “SB24-205 is decidedly not an anti-discrimination law,” the company’s attorneys wrote. “It is instead an effort to embed the State’s preferred views into the very fabric of AI systems.”

The argument is that Colorado isn’t regulating outputs neutrally. It’s choosing which viewpoints an AI model is allowed to produce, then enforcing the choice through “onerous policy, assessment, and disclosure requirements,” in the words of the Justice Department’s filing.

The DOJ moved to intervene on xAI’s side, the first time the federal government has joined a constitutional challenge to a state AI regulation.

Keep reading

Censorship in Disguise? Congress Introduces Antisemitism Resolution

Two congressmen introduced a resolution this week that appears to include pressure on tech companies to censor people.

Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) have co-sponsored a resolution “condemning antisemitic rhetoric from prominent online personalities.” At four pages long, it urges “social media platforms and public leaders to denounce and address” antisemitism.

The resolution blames online platforms for the recent rise in anti-Jewish bigotry. It claims antisemitic incidents have “significantly increased, including a 344 percent increase over the past 5 years, and [an] 893 percent increase over the past 10 years.” And the reason is because online platforms have served as “a major vector for the spread of such hatred.”

Piker and Owens

Two influencers are targeted in the resolution, Hasan Piker and Candace Owens, both of whom have intensely criticized the Israeli government’s military operation in Gaza. “Piker has openly applauded Hamas’ terrorism, downplayed the mass rape of civilians on October 7th, and dehumanized Orthodox Jews as ‘inbred,’” Lawler said in a statement. “Owens has trafficked in vile conspiracy theories, promoted blood libels, and platformed Holocaust deniers.”

“Hatred is hatred, period,” Gottheimer said. “We must stand up and speak out. I get that speaking up is not easy, but our constituents didn’t elect us to always take the easy path. That’s what principled leadership is all about.”

Piker denied being an antisemite. “They are once again conflating legitimate critics of Israel with actual antisemites,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, according to reports. “They would rather complain about fake antisemitism in defense of Israel than call out the real sources of Jew hatred with a full chest. I have spent my entire career combating all forms of bigotry including antisemitism and will continue to do so in spite [of] this cynical ploy to satisfy donors.”

Owens has called the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza a genocide. So has another popular podcaster, Tucker Carlson. The Israeli human-rights groups B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel agree. As do millions of people around the world. And, if polls are to be believed, most American Jews believe Israel committed war crimes in Gaza, with about four in 10 saying it’s guilty of genocide.

Israel and Gaza

Reports say 70,000 people have been killed in Gaza, most of them civilians, thousands of them children. Most of the Gaza Strip has been carpet bombed, leaving a majority of people homeless. A few months back, U.S. President Donald Trump admitted people were starving in Gaza. Understandably, people have spoken out against that.

Israel has justified its severe response as a proper way to address the October 7 massacre during which Hamas brutally killed 1,200 Israelis. While it goes widely unreported, it should not be overlooked that Israeli defense officials reportedly ignored several warnings from within its own defense apparatus of what was coming. Nevertheless, this has all inflamed tremendous criticism toward the Israeli government. In some cases, it has ginned up genuine anti-Jewish bigotry.

Keep reading

House Bill Cuts Federal Funds for Online Censorship

A new House appropriations bill does something unusual for Washington legislation. It tells federal agencies they cannot spend money pressuring platforms, advertisers, or foreign governments to silence speech that Americans are legally allowed to make.

H.R. 8595, the national security and State Department appropriations bill, runs hundreds of pages and buried throughout are provisions that would shut off federal funding to a wide range of speech-suppression activities.

The restrictions cover direct platform pressure, ad boycott campaigns aimed at US media companies, blacklists, and cooperation with foreign censorship regimes that target American tech firms.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

The headline provision is on page 252. It bars the use of any appropriated funds to “deplatform, deboost, demonetize, suppress, or otherwise penalize” online speech, social media activity, or news outlets producing content that would be lawful under US law. The language is deliberately wide and it catches the obvious things, like government agencies asking a platform to take a post down, and the less obvious ones, like funding research projects that pressure advertisers to abandon publishers.

That second category has been doing real damage for years. Brand “safety” programs, hate speech classifiers built with federal grant money, “disinformation” tracking outfits that exist primarily to attach scary labels to inconvenient reporting.

Federal money cannot flow to programs designed to impose “legal, regulatory, financial, reputational, commercial, or political costs” on American tech companies, social media platforms, online intermediaries, or digital publishers for hosting First Amendment protected speech.

There is also a prohibition on funding work that pushes foreign governments to do the censoring instead. American agencies cannot use these appropriations to support foreign laws, regulations, codes, or enforcement mechanisms that punish US platforms for carrying speech that would be lawful here.

The whole architecture of routing American speech restrictions through Brussels or London or Canberra, then importing the results back home through global compliance regimes, runs into a federal funding wall.

Blacklists are out. Censorship cooperation with supranational bodies is out. Inducing advertisers to “cut off, reduce, redirect, or otherwise interfere with advertising, sponsorship, payment, or other revenue on the basis of lawful online speech” is out.

Keep reading

California Can’t Define ‘Hate Speech’ But May Mandate Workplace Training Anyway

“Hate speech” is notoriously hard to define and is usually a subjective characterization of harsh words. Though the term is thrown around by people describing comments they don’t like, it generally refers to expression that might not be nice but is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution as well as state speech protections. But that’s not going to stop California lawmakers from trying to hector people into refraining from voicing nasty sentiments.

Existing California law requires employers with five or more employees to provide at least two hours of training regarding sexual harassment to all supervisors, and at least one hour of training to all other employees, repeated every two years. Assembly Bill 1803, introduced by Assemblymembers Josh Lowenthal (D–Long Beach) and Rick Chavez Zbur (D–Los Angeles) and co-authored by Assemblymember Corey Jackson (D–Moreno Valley), “would additionally require that the above-described training and education include, as a component of the training and education, anti-hate speech training.”

In a press release, Lowenthal claims that “AB 1803 is about making our workplaces safer, more respectful, and more inclusive for everyone. Hate speech has no place on the job, just as sexual harassment has no place on the job. By incorporating anti hate speech training into existing sexual harassment prevention programs, we are building on a proven framework to address harmful behavior before it escalates.”

What the world really doesn’t need, it should be noted, is more state-mandated nagging about the allegedly naughty activities we shouldn’t engage in. As PBS’s Rhana Natour reported in 2018, “there’s little evidence that sexual harassment training works.” A 2016 U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission report concluded that “much of the training done over the last 30 years has not worked as a prevention tool—it’s been too focused on simply avoiding legal liability.” Research by Justine Tinkler, a sociologist at the University of Georgia, found that such training mostly reinforces traditional views of sex roles by portraying men as predators and women as victims. But training is an effective time suck.

Hate speech has the added burden of being primarily a political term used to describe expression that somebody doesn’t like. This makes it very difficult to describe in an actionable way in a country that has vigorous speech protections. California’s lawmakers have not risen to the challenge.

Keep reading

Pakistan: Professor Sentenced to Death Following Blasphemy Charges

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are among the world’s most egregious tools of religious repression. They enable abuse, mob violence, and the targeting of individuals and religious minorities (including Christians) for criminal prosecutions that carry life sentences and death penalties.

Pakistani professor Junaid Hafeez, for instance, is imprisoned and sentenced to death for alleged blasphemy. 

In 2013, police in Punjab Province arrested Hafeez, who was then an academic in his twenties. The professor has remained incarcerated ever since.

In 2019, a court sentenced Hafeez to death under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws following a trial whose delays spanned several years. The trial finally took place inside a high-security prison amid fears of mob violence. Hafeez’s appeal has yet to be heard.

According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), 

In March 2013, authorities arrested Hafeez, a lecturer at Bahauddin Zakariya University, after his students accused him of blaspheming Islam on social media. In 2014, authorities placed him in solitary confinement after other prisoners repeatedly attacked him. That same year, two gunmen shot to death Hafeez’s lawyer, Rashin Rehman, in his office.

In December 2019, a district and sessions court in Multan sentenced Hafeez to death for “insulting the Prophet Muhammad” (Sec. 295-C PPC). He was also sentenced to life in prison for “desecrating the Qur’an” (Sec. 295-B PPC) and 10 years’ imprisonment for “intending to outrage religious feelings” (Sec. 295-A PPC). United Nations experts swiftly condemned Hafeez’s sentence.

Prior to his arrest, Hafeez received a master’s degree in the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship. He specialized in American literature, photography, and theatre.

On February 26, Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a statement about Hafeez’s case. In it, HRW said:

“Junaid Hafeez’s case is emblematic of the unjust and abusive nature of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities should quash Hafeez’s conviction and safely release him and others held under the blasphemy laws.”

The blasphemy laws, section 295-C, and other provisions of Pakistan’s penal code carry what is effectively a mandatory death sentence. Although there have been no executions, several people are currently on death row, while dozens are serving life sentences for related offenses. Hundreds have been charged under the law in the past three decades.

On February 27, the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) submitted an official contribution to the U.N. Special Rapporteur regarding summary, extrajudicial, or arbitrary executions in Pakistan. In it, the ECLJ denounces the mandatory and automatic imposition of the death penalty for blasphemy against Islam in the country:

Those accused of blasphemy in Pakistan are sentenced to death by hanging. The death penalty, let alone by hanging, is egregious and disproportionate in blasphemy cases. It clearly amounts to torture. Notably, the Pakistani government has never carried out the death sentence in blasphemy cases. However, the accused spend years on death row. Additionally, many accused, their families, and communities have faced mob violence…

The authorities have also failed to stop mob attacks by private actors, such as fundamentalist individuals and organizations in blasphemy cases. In many cases, mobs gather and attack the accused, their families, and their communities. Where the accused are arrested and tried, fundamentalist organizations continue to pack the courtrooms to intimidate judges. As a result, trial courts rarely acquit the accused, leaving their fate up to the higher courts.

Even an accusation of blasphemy can provoke mob violence against victims, as well as their families and the wider Christian community. On Aug. 16, 2023, allegations of blasphemy against two Christian residents in Jaranwala (Faisalabad district of Punjab Province) led to a Muslim mob vandalizing and destroying over 20 churches and more than 80 Christian houses.

Keep reading

UK Police Arrest a Pastor for Preaching the Gospel: A Disturbing Sign for Christian Free Speech

On April 18, 2026, in the town of Watford just outside London, British police handcuffed a Christian pastor for preaching the Gospel in public. Pastor Steve Maile, a 66-year-old minister with decades of experience, was standing in the town centre doing what has long been a normal part of British life—open-air preaching—when officers moved in, restrained him, and led him away in front of his wife and children. As he was being handcuffed, Maile continued to address the crowd, insisting, “You cannot arrest me. I am a preacher of the Gospel… There is no offense being committed here.” It was a striking moment, not only for those present but for the thousands who later watched the footage online.

What makes the incident particularly troubling is what followed. No charges were ultimately brought against Maile. The allegations, whatever they were, did not stand. Yet he was still detained for hours and placed on bail. In other words, a man engaged in peaceful religious expression was treated as a criminal, only for the legal basis of that treatment to evaporate shortly afterward. For many observers, that raises a fundamental question: if no crime was committed, why was such force deemed necessary in the first place?

Pastor Maile is not an unknown figure or a fringe agitator. He has spent more than 35 years in ministry, preaching in over 50 countries and working to establish churches and support Christian communities. Alongside his wife Karina, he founded Oasis City Church in Watford in 1999, raising a family and building a reputation rooted in outreach and evangelism. This background matters because it underscores the nature of the incident—this was not disorderly conduct or confrontation, but a continuation of a long-standing and peaceful religious practice.

Nor is this an isolated case. In November 2025, Pastor Dia Moodley was arrested in Bristol after engaging members of the public in a discussion about theology. He was detained for eight hours and subsequently banned from the city centre during the Christmas season. As with Maile, the circumstances involved speech rather than violence, yet the response from authorities was significant. Taken together, these incidents point to a broader pattern rather than a one-off misjudgment.

Across the United Kingdom, Christian street preachers—once a familiar and largely accepted presence—are increasingly being treated as potential public order concerns. Complaints from passers-by, even when based on disagreement rather than genuine harm, can trigger police intervention. Meanwhile, other forms of public expression, including those that are equally or more provocative, often appear to receive a more permissive response. Whether intentional or not, the perception of unequal treatment is growing, and perceptions like that can be as consequential as policy itself.

At the heart of the issue is the legal framework governing speech in the UK. Unlike the United States, Britain does not have a single, entrenched constitutional protection equivalent to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Instead, it relies on a range of statutes, including the Public Order Act 1986, which grant authorities discretion to act when speech is considered offensive or disruptive. While such laws are intended to maintain public order, their broad wording leaves significant room for interpretation—and, critics argue, for inconsistent enforcement.

Keep reading

UK Blocks Entry for Anti-Islam Politician

The Home Office’s decision to block Valentina Gomez from entering the UK ahead of a next month’s London rally has re-opened the debate over free speech and government overreach. Gomez, a US-based anti-Islam commentator, had planned to speak at the “Unite the Kingdom” march on 16 May. However, the Home Office has now revoked her electronic travel authorisation, saying her presence is “not conducive to the public good”. The ban followed pressure from Muslim organisations and political figures who pointed to her previous remarks on muslims and immigration.

Gomez is a 26-year-old Christian conservative originally from Colombia. Last week, her Electronic Travel Authorisation was approved, but the Home Office revoked her permit on April 20th. Reports suggest that officials acted after renewed scrutiny of remarks she made during a similar appearance in London in 2025, where she delivered “inflammatory” comments about Islam and immigration. It’s also reported that Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood personally intervened to revoke the permission.

In its April 17 open letter, the Muslim Council of Britain urged the Home Secretary to revoke Valentina Gomez’s entry permission on the grounds that allowing her into the UK to speak at a Tommy Robinson rally showed “double standards” in how the government applies freedom of speech and entry rules. The MCB argued that Gomez’s past anti-Islam rhetoric risked making the UK’s streets “less safe”, and said others had previously been denied entry for inflammatory remarks aimed at different faith groups, making her case appear inconsistent by comparison. Its core case was therefore not only that Gomez was divisive, but that admitting her would signal uneven enforcement of the public-interest test used in immigration decisions.

The “Unite the Kingdom” marches have become a focal point for a growing anti-establishment constituency centred on immigration, Islam, public disorder and distrust of political institutions. The European Conservative reported that more than 100,000 people attended the September 2025 London march, presenting it as one of the largest demonstrations of its kind in recent years, though crowd figures at such events are often disputed.

The decision to exclude Gomez sits awkwardly with the UK’s self-image as a country committed to open political speech. It is one thing to prosecute criminal conduct or incitement; it is another to use border powers to decide which foreign political voices may be heard on contentious public questions. Once that principle is applied, the state is no longer merely keeping order. It is deciding, in advance, which arguments are too dangerous to enter the country. That is a serious threshold for a liberal democracy to cross.

Keep reading

DOJ Refuses Cooperation, Warns France to Back Off Censorship Probe Targeting X Platform

The U.S. Justice Department has flatly refused to help French authorities investigate Elon Musk’s social media platform X.

In a letter sent Friday obtained by The Wall Street Journal , the DOJ’s Office of International Affairs said the French probe is an attempt to regulate a U.S. company through criminal law.

“This investigation seeks to use the criminal legal system in France to regulate a public square for the free expression of ideas and opinions in a manner contrary to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution,” the letter states.

The department added that France’s requests “constitute an effort to entangle the United States in a politically charged criminal proceeding aimed at wrongfully regulating through prosecution the business activities of a social media platform.”

Keep reading

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.”

Keep reading