Email from The Institute for Free Speech The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech August 8, 2025 Click here to subscribe to the Daily Media Update. This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected]. In the News Washington Times: With conservatives winning arguments, the left resorts to chaos By Scott Walker .....Another situation arose when a campus administrator at Golden West College tried to silence a YAF student who called Hamas a terrorist organization. In response, a radical student told the YAF activist, whose family had escaped oppression in Iran, to “go back to his f-cking country.” The YAF student is a proud conservative patriot. Young America’s Foundation and the Institute for Free Speech went to court to defend him and won. In each of these cases, the lesson is simple: Radicals are losing the debate, so they want to silence conservatives. We must not back down. Trump Administration New York Times: Trump Orders Clampdown on ‘Debanking,’ a Personal Gripe By Rob Copeland .....President Trump signed an executive order Thursday aimed at stopping banks from barring customers for what he says are political or religious reasons, an attempt to appease conservatives and cryptocurrency types who have complained about their treatment by Wall Street. The order deals with “debanking,” a catchall term for claims of having been denied a bank account or loan for reasons unrelated to finances. It instructs various federal regulators and agencies to investigate the matter and “make reasonable efforts” to reinstate debanked customers. The order also raises the specter of federal prosecutions of banks, by instructing regulators to refer some previous debanking complaints to the attorney general’s office. The Courts KTAR News: A top Republican in the Georgia governor’s race is suing his rival over campaign financing By Associated Press .....One of the top Republicans running for Georgia governor on Thursday sued the other leading GOP candidate, challenging the legality of the rival’s campaign funding. Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr sued Lt. Gov. Burt Jones in federal court in Atlanta, asking a judge to permanently cut off Jones’ ability to spend money from Jones’ leadership committee, a special fundraising vehicle that allows Georgia’s governor, lieutenant governor and legislative leaders to raise unlimited funds… Carr argues that the leadership committee violates Carr’s First Amendment right to free speech as well as his 14th Amendment right to equal protection by setting up a campaign finance structure that favors Jones and limits how much Carr can spend on his campaign. The 2021 state law that created leadership committees doesn’t grant Carr or other candidates access to the fundraising vehicle. Instead, Carr only has a regular campaign committee which is limited to raising $8,400 from each donor for his primary campaign, as well as $4,200 for any primary runoff. Courthouse News: Office manager of Kansas newspaper raided by police settles lawsuit with town By Hillel Aron .....The office manager of the Marion County Record, a Kansas weekly newspaper whose offices were raided by police, has settled her lawsuit with the city. Bloomberg Law: Disney and ‘Mandalorian’ Actress Agree to End Firing Lawsuit By Maia Spoto .....Walt Disney Co. and “The Mandalorian” actress Gina Carano agreed to end federal litigation over allegations she was written off the “Star Wars” spin-off due to her political posts on social media. The parties filed a notice that they permanently agreed to end the case Thursday in the US District Court for the Central District of California. The filing didn’t include settlement terms, and representatives for both parties didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The case tested the intersection of California employment law and the First Amendment. Ed. note: Read more detailed reporting from The New York Times. Independent: A far-right ‘1st Amendment’ group lost its defamation lawsuit. Now the New York Times is suing them back By Justin Baragona .....The New York Times is firing back against the far-right “paramilitary group” that accused the paper of defamation, filing a new lawsuit after the organization's $100 million case was thrown out of court. In a complaint that was filed in New York this week, the Times is suing 1st Amendment Praetorian for “reasonable costs, attorney’s fees, and disbursements pursuant to New York Civil Rights Law” while noting that the paper incurred at least $50,000 in legal fees defending against the organization’s “meritless” litigation. It is a lawsuit under anti-SLAPP provisions designed to protect First Amendment rights. Free Expression Daily Wire: JK Rowling Torches Liberals For Sacrificing Free Speech For ‘Approval Of Their Tribe’ By Virginia Kruta .....“Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling unloaded on liberals for failing to uphold the principle of free speech, arguing they’d largely done it out of fear that they’d no longer be accepted by “their tribe.” Rowling shared her thoughts in a post on X, explaining that free speech had to encompass the freedom to offend people with speech, and decried the liberals who could not get past “this most basic hurdle.” “Freedom of speech means freedom to cause offence. The number of supposed liberals who’ve fallen at this most basic hurdle, because for the first time in their lives they risked losing the approval of their tribe, has been staggering,” she wrote. Axios: Americans now support corporate activism again: Survey By April Rubin .....U.S. adults' stance on corporate activism has flip-flopped, according to a Wednesday Bentley University-Gallup report. After years of decline in support, more Americans across demographics and political affiliations want businesses to take a public stance on hot-button topics including free speech, immigration policy, diversity, climate change and health care issues. Online Speech Platforms Washington Post: Jim Acosta sparks fury with ‘interview’ of dead Parkland teen’s AI avatar By Drew Harwell .....The independent journalist Jim Acosta sparked an intense backlash this week with what he called a “one of a kind interview”: a video of him talking with an AI-generated avatar modeled on Joaquin Oliver, a teenager killed in the Parkland high school shooting in 2018. The States Daily Wire: Beto O’Rourke-Led Group Under Investigation Over Potential Bribes To Help Runaway Texas Dems By Zach Jewell .....Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation Wednesday into a group led by Democrat Beto O’Rourke that is bankrolling dozens of Democrats who fled the Lone Star State to block a vote on new congressional maps. RealClearMarkets: You Don't Enhance Free Speech By Giving Politicians Control of It By Norm Singleton .....[The] Stop Hiding Hate Act…requires social media companies to file intrusive “terms of service” reports with the New York Attorney General. These reports must disclose whether the company’s terms of service define terms such as hate speech, racism, extremism, harassment, and foreign political interference. The companies must also submit these definitions to the Attorney General. The companies must also report how many times they have addressed violations of their terms of services, the nature of the violations, and the actions taken by the company to address them. Any social media company that fails to comply will be subject to fines as high as $15,000 per day. This legislation is an attempt by the New York State government to shame tech companies into increasing their enforcement of terms of service as it relates to discussions of certain topics, words, and phrases. Tucson Sentinel: Arizona lawmaker seeks bar discipline for attorney who published racist cartoons By Jerod MacDonald-Evoy, Arizona Mirror .....David Stringer, a licensed attorney, owns and publishes Prescott eNews, an online news site that covers Prescott and the surrounding communities. He and the publication have been facing pointed criticism for publishing multiple AI-generated “political cartoons” that depict Prescott Valley Republican lawmaker Quang Nguyen in a racist manner. Nguyen’s family fled communist Vietnam when he was a child and immigrated to the United States and he became a naturalized citizen. “As Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I’m disgusted by attorney David Stringer’s publication of racist material. His conduct impugns the integrity of the legal profession,” Nguyen said in a post on X accompanied by his complaint to the Arizona State Bar. “Peddling racist tropes has no place in America.” Nguyen’s complaint cites the Bar’s own recent history of disciplining Stringer, who was formally reprimanded in 2022 for using the likeness of a federal judge and mischaracterizing language from the judge’s order in his unsuccessful bid for Yavapai County Attorney in 2020. Read an article you think we would be interested in? Send it to Tiffany Donnelly at [email protected]. For email filters, the subject of this email will always begin with "Institute for Free Speech Media Update." 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