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First Amendment

Trump Administration Wins First Antifa Terror Charge

March 16, 2026 Olivia Rosane, Common Dreams. , , , ,
The government has largely won its first case bringing material-support-for-terrorism charges against protesters alleged to belong to “antifa,” which President Donald Trump designated as a domestic terror group in 2025 despite the fact that no such organized group exists and the president has no legal authority to designate organizations as domestic terror groups. A federal jury in Fort Worth, Texas agreed on Friday to convict eight people of domestic terrorism because they wore all black to a protest outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas on July 4, 2025, at which one of the protesters shot and wounded a police officer.

First Amendment Allows You To Report Things Government Wants To Hide

January 10, 2026 Jim Naureckas, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. , , ,
The House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed journalist Seth Harp (Washington Post, 1/8/26) over his posting on X a photo and publicly available biographical information about the US colonel who apparently leads the Army’s Delta Force unit, which played a key role in the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Committee member Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R–Fla.) called for Harp’s criminal prosecution, accusing him of “leaking classified information” and “doxing” the colonel. In a statement to the Washington Post, she said: The First Amendment does not give anyone a license to expose elite military personnel, compromise operations or assist our adversaries under the guise of reporting.

Abolishing The First Amendment

July 29, 2025 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , , , ,
I testified at the New Jersey state capital in Trenton last week against Bill A3558, which would adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism. “This is a dangerous assault on free speech by seeking to criminalize legitimate criticism of Israeli policies,” I said. “The Trump administration’s campaign to ostensibly root out antisemitism on college campuses is clearly a trope to shut down free speech and deport non-citizens, even if they are here legally. This bill falsely conflates ethnicity with a political state.

Columbia Students Boo President, Cheer Mahmoud Khalil At Graduation

May 23, 2025 Michael Arria, Mondoweiss. , , , , , ,
Columbia University held its graduation ceremony this week. When acting school president Claire Shipman addressed the crowd, she was met with a loud chorus of boos and “Free Mahmoud!” chants. “Good morning, Class of 2025. I know that many of you feel some amount of frustration with me, and I know you feel it with the administration,” she told the students. Shipman’s attempt to separate the two entities was met with louder boos, and why wouldn’t it be? Since Columbia students erected a Gaza Solidarity Encampment last spring, the school has worked to stifle pro-Palestinian activism on campus.

Rare Right-Wing Revolt Sinks Bill Punishing Boycotts Of Israel

May 6, 2025 Robert Inlakesh, MintPress News. , , , , , ,
A sweeping pro-Israel bill backed by Republican leadership and AIPAC collapsed this week after a rare revolt by right-wing lawmakers who argued it posed a direct threat to Americans’ First Amendment rights. The bill, H.R. 867 — known as the IGO Anti-Boycott Act — would have imposed up to $1 million in fines and prison terms of up to 20 years on Americans who support international boycotts of Israel, even those led by the United Nations. The bill had been scheduled for a vote Monday but was abruptly pulled from the House calendar following backlash from a broad coalition of critics, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and conservative firebrands like Rep. Thomas Massie, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Rep. Matt Gaetz.

Meet The Think Tanks Behind MAGA’s New Free Speech Crackdown

May 1, 2025 Robert Inlakesh, MintPress News. , , , , ,
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump—and many of his most prominent right-wing supporters—are directly linked to some of the most radically pro-war, pro-Israel organizations in the country. These connections form a sprawling web of lobbying groups, tech billionaires, and media figures who consistently promote Israeli interests above those of ordinary Americans. Why has the pro-Trump right suddenly pivoted from branding itself as a bastion of free speech to openly supporting censorship and state-led crackdowns? This MintPress News investigation uncovers a donor-driven advocacy network driving that ideological shift.

This Is An All-Out War On The First Amendment

April 11, 2025 Janine Jackson, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. , , , ,
There are reasons that the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, is an opaque entity for many people. The fact that there is a federal agency setting the terms for media companies’ operations conflicts with many Americans’ understanding of the press corps as a group of brave, independent individuals looking to tell the truth, and let the chips fall where they may. There are, in fact, many community-supported, differently structured news outlets doing just that. But, listeners know, the big major papers and stations and channels we may look to for news are owned and sponsored by big profit-driven corporations that share the status quo–supporting interests of other big profit-driven corporations.

Trump Megadonor Escalates Campaign Against Freedom Of The Press

February 11, 2025 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. , , , ,
In 1964, the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision known as New York Times Company v. Sullivan that further protected freedom of the press and speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Billionaire Steve Wynn, a casino tycoon and former finance chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC), has now asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn this precedent. During the 2024 election cycle, he donated over $1 million to groups that supported President Donald Trump. If Wynn prevails, it would potentially open the floodgates to libel lawsuits against reporters, editors, producers, and news media organizations and have a chilling impact beyond what President Donald Trump has accomplished through his latest torrent of lawsuits.

Trump To Cancel Student Visas For Palestine Protesters

January 30, 2025 Michael Arria, Mondoweiss. , , , , , ,
Donald Trump will sign an executive order to deport non-citizen university students who have participated in protests opposing the Gaza genocide. “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” said the President in a fact sheet. “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.” Although the order has not been issued yet, the White House has released materials in support of the order and unnamed White House officials have been quoted in the press saying the announcement can be expected as early as today.

Trump Issues Order To End Censorship

January 21, 2025 Joe Lauria, Consortium News. , , ,
President Donald Trump in his inaugural speech on Monday vowed to end online censorship by government using social media companies as proxies. He said: After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I will also sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America. Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents, something I know something about. We will not allow that to happen. It will not happen again. Later on Monday Trump signed the executive order, “Restoring Free Speech and Ending Federal Censorship

Report: Trump Plans UK-Style Attack On Israel Criticism

November 6, 2024 Joe Lauria, Consortium News. , , , , ,
A second Trump administration could criminalize criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza as support for terrorism, along the lines of the British Terrorism Act, according to a report in Drop Site News. The report says the plan is to “break the pro-Palestinian movement in the U.S.” “The plan, dubbed ‘Project Esther,‘ casts pro-Palestinian activists in the U.S. as members of a global conspiracy aligned with designated terrorist organizations. As part of a so-called ‘Hamas Support Network,’ these protesters receive ‘indispensable support of a vast network of activists and funders with a much more ambitious, insidious goal — the destruction of capitalism and democracy,’ Project Esther’s authors allege. This conspiratorial framing is part of a legal strategy to suppress speech favorable to Palestinians or critical of the U.S.-Israel relationship, by employing counterterrorism laws to suppress what would otherwise be protected speech, legal experts told Drop Site News.”

DRAD Fights DC’s Anti-Protest Residential Tranquility Act

November 4, 2024 Cody Bloomfield, Defending Rights and Dissent. , , ,
We’ve been fighting anti-protest bills across the country for years. This week, an assault on the right to protest came to our own backyard, aimed at restricting protests in residential neighborhoods. The bill comes as part of a nationwide wave of anti-protest legislation, with hundreds of bills introduced since 2017. Introduced as an “emergency measure,” Defending Rights & Dissent had 3 days to help pull together a coalition to stop the bill. We successfully brought legal and activist groups into a united front to mobilize against the bill.

‘We’re Witnessing This Global Tidal Wave Of Repression’

October 27, 2024 Janine Jackson, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. , , , ,
As media critics, we look to Palestinians to represent Palestinian views, but it’s crucial that we not see the present moment as something happening to other people somewhere else. The repression of simple anti-genocide calls, the censorship, the firings, the disinformation, the malforming of concepts like antisemitism—these are problems for all of us, about all of us, that will influence all of us forever. Defending Rights & Dissent, online at RightsAndDissent.org, have started a project called the Gaza First Amendment Alert, which is going to come out every other Wednesday. Chip Gibbons is policy director at Defending Rights & Dissent. He’s a journalist, researcher and a longtime activist.

Judges In TikTok Case Seem Ready To Discount First Amendment

September 29, 2024 Ari Paul, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. , , ,
A US circuit court panel appears ready to uphold a federal law that would effectively ban the popular social media network TikTok because it’s owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. The legal attacks on the video platform—which FAIR (8/5/20, 5/25/23, 11/13/23, 3/14/24) has written about before—are entering a new phase, in which judicial interpreters of the Constitution are acting as Cold War partisans, threatening to throw out civil liberties in favor of national security alarmism. Earlier this year, despite widespread protest (Guardian, 3/7/24), President Joe Biden signed legislation forcing TikTok’s owner “to sell it or face a nationwide prohibition in the United States” (NBC, 4/24/24).

Police Must Respect Journalists’ Rights To Freely Report On DNC Protests

August 19, 2024 Seth Stern and Jimena Pinzon, Chicago Sun-Times. , , , , , , , ,
Hundreds of journalists are expected to converge on Chicago to cover the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19-22 – and they must be allowed to do their jobs unimpeded. The city’s plan to “streamline” mass arrests during the convention, by processing arrestees at a makeshift court at the Area 3 police station at Belmont and Western, does nothing to alleviate the threat mass arrests pose to journalists. The plan, reported by the Sun-Times last week, is supposedly for the arrestees’ convenience: It’ll be easier for them to get home on public transportation that way. But “catch and release” arrests are never convenient for journalists, or their readers.
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