March 24, 2025

In the News

The Hawk Eye: From Russian politics to the Iowa Statehoue: Bleeding Heartland blogger Laura Belin sheds light on government activities

By Tracey Lamm

.....It took Laura Belin, an independent blogger, five years and the threat of a lawsuit to get press credentials for the Iowa House of Representatives to be able to provide Iowa House coverage from the “press bench.”

Over the course of five years, Belin would apply for a credential only to be denied for various reasons until 2024, when she applied again only this time, she had the backing of the Institute for Free Speech.

She filed a lawsuit claiming the denial was an infringement of her First Amendment rights to free speech.

“Within five days of filing the suit I had my credentials,” Belin told a capacity crowd at the Burlington Public Library Tuesday night.

Her blog, Bleeding Heartland, has several contributors, and she is the administrator of the online presence, where she writes mostly about the Iowa legislature.

The Courts

Washington Post: Voice of America journalists sue Trump officials for dismantling the outlet

By Tobi Raji

.....Six Voice of America journalists — including its former White House bureau chief — sued members of the Trump administration Friday, accusing officials of unlawfully shuttering a federally funded media outlet that has delivered news coverage to millions across the globe since its founding during World War II...

The complaint argues that the president violated the First Amendment by dismantling the media organization and exceeded his authority in violation of the Constitution. Congress, which created and funds USAGM, has sole authority over the agency, the complaint said.

“In many parts of the world a crucial source of objective news is gone, and only censored state-sponsored news media is left to fill the void,” the plaintiffs said in the complaint. “What is happening to the VOA Journalists is not just the chilling of First Amendment speech; it is a government shutdown of journalism, a prior restraint that kills content before it can be created.”

Bloomberg:  DOJ Moves to Take Over Trump Defense Against Jan. 6 Lawsuits

By Zoe Tillman

.....The US Justice Department is seeking to intervene on behalf of President Donald Trump in the long-running civil lawsuits accusing him of being personally liable for the violence and disruption at the US Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

The cases have been held up for years amid a fight over whether Trump is entitled to immunity. In a notice filed Thursday night, a Justice Department official told a judge Trump was acting “within the scope of his office” during the events in question, meaning the US government, and not Trump, should be the defendant in the cases.

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Chicago Public Defender's Claim Over Displaying Photo with Israeli Flag and Gun Can Go Forward

By Eugene Volokh

.....From today's decision by Judge Joan Lefkow (N.D. Ill.) in Gassman v. Cook County; as usual on a motion to dismiss, the factual recitation consists of the allegations from plaintiff's Complaint (not any factual findings by a judge or jury):

Trump Administration

The New York Review: A Constitutional Redline

By David Cole, interviewed by Daniel Drake

.....This week the NYR Online published an open letter signed by eighteen constitutional scholars from across the ideological spectrum that argued that the Trump administration’s treatment of Columbia University “risks deterring and suppressing constitutionally protected speech.” One of the signatories is David Cole, who since Trump’s inauguration has been writing in our pages about the dangers of the president’s encroachment on the Constitution.

Cole, the former national legal director of the ACLU and a professor of law at Georgetown, has been writing about legal issues for the Review since 2004. At the end of a week in which the government escalated its attempts to deport thousands of people on dubious legal grounds and succeeded in extracting from Columbia University a number of concessions after threatening to withhold $400 million in federal funding, I called him to ask about what is beginning to seem like a constitutional crisis.

Racket News: Donald Trump’s War on Anti-Semitism is the Last Thing We Jews Need

By Ben Kawaller

.....Perhaps that stab at basic empathy makes me a threat to national security as well. Cheerleaders of Khalil’s deportation see things in black-and-white, rights be damned: as Hannah E. Meyers puts it in City Journal: “Manhattan is home to one less terror-supporter.”

Meyers’s article, “Mahmoud Khalil Doesn’t Deserve to Be in the U.S.,” lays out as well as any other I’ve found the case for detaining Khalil, and yet fails to identify a single crime he has committed. Rather, it’s all guilt by association: he has “helped propel” episodes of “anonymous violence,” and has led a movement that “has involved everything from erecting encampments on school property to directing death wishes at Zionists[.]”

So this is where we are. The same camp that thirty seconds ago couldn’t spill enough ink bemoaning campus “safetyism” is calling for heads to roll because a bunch of kids camped out and…wished?

Politico: Trump revokes security clearances for Biden, Harris, Clinton and other enemies

By Seb Starcevic

.....President Donald Trump revoked security clearances for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and a string of top Democrats and political foes in a presidential memo late Friday.

“I have determined that it is no longer in the national interest for the following individuals to access classified information,” Trump wrote.

Reuters: Exclusive: FBI scales back staffing, tracking of domestic terrorism probes, sources say

By Andrew Goudsward and Sarah N. Lynch

.....The FBI has cut staffing in an office focused on domestic terrorism and has scrapped a tool used to track such investigations, in a shift that could undermine law enforcement’s ability to counter white supremacists and anti-government extremists, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The moves, sources said, are an indication that domestic terrorism investigations, which in recent years have largely involved violence fueled by right-wing ideologies, may be less of a priority under FBI Director Kash Patel, a prominent critic of the effort.

New York Times: ICE Tells a Cornell Student Activist to Turn Himself In

By Stephanie Saul

.....The Trump administration moved early Friday to detain an international student at Cornell University who has led protests on its Ithaca, N.Y., campus, in what appeared to be the latest effort to kick pro-Palestinian activists out of the United States.

A lawyer for Momodou Taal, a doctoral student in Africana studies, said in court papers that he had been notified by email early Friday morning that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was seeking Mr. Taal’s surrender.

Last year, Mr. Taal was among a group of pro-Palestinian activists who shut down a career fair on the Cornell campus that featured weapons manufacturers. As a result, the university had ordered him to study remotely for the spring semester.

Free Expression

Daily Wire: What It’s Like To Be Swatted

By Ashe Schow

.....Erin Derham heard the knocking first.

Another storm was raging over North Carolina, with heavy rain and wind gusts over 40 MPH bringing more damage to an area still suffering from a hurricane last year. The pounding at her door was so loud and so desperate that she thought a tree must have fallen on the house, and someone was coming to check on her family.

She rushed to the door in her pajamas, as her three kids slept upstairs and her husband, social media influencer Matt Van Swol, frantically dressed. When Derham answered the door, she found a police officer with his gun drawn. He asked her if someone inside the home had been shot.

She immediately knew what was going on. Her family was being swatted.

Independent Groups

New York Times: Musk Offers $100 to Wisconsin Voters, Bringing Back a Controversial Tactic

By Theodore Schleifer

.....Elon Musk is bringing back his most controversial gambit from the 2024 presidential election: paying voters as part of a plan to identify and turn out conservative-leaning ones.

The super PAC that Mr. Musk founded to funnel his fortune into Republican causes, America PAC, said on Thursday that it was offering $100 to registered voters in Wisconsin who sign a petition “in opposition to activist judges” or refer others to sign it. Mr. Musk has been using the group to spend millions of dollars to elect a conservative candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court in an April 1 election.

The petition reads: “Judges should interpret laws as written, not rewrite them to fit their personal or political agendas. By signing below, I’m rejecting the actions of activist judges who impose their own views and demanding a judiciary that respects its role — interpreting, not legislating.”