Email from The Institute for Free Speech The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech September 29, 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 Arizona Republic: Conservatives say Charlie Kirk shooting shows need for anonymous political spending By Taylor Seely .....Brad Smith, chairman of Institute for Free Speech and former commissioner at the Federal Election Commission, has pointed to the harrassment of a Trump donor in 2019. Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro shared online a list of 44 donors and their employers who contributed the maximum allowed amount to Trump's re-election campaign. One of the donors reportedly received a voicemail from someone calling him a "scumbag" with "no (expletive) worth." The person who left the voicemail promised to post the person's phone number "all over the internet." Smith also cited "boycotts of SoulCycle and Equinox after the chairman of their parent company, real estate developer Stephen Ross, decided to host a fundraiser for Trump." Trump Administration Wall Street Journal: The Comey-Trump Revenge Cycle By The Editorial Board .....Eight years later we’re still stuck in the Comey-Trump revenge cycle that escalated again Thursday with an indictment of the former FBI director for lying to Congress. None of this has served the country well. But it’s important to understand that Mr. Comey is as much the antagonist as Mr. Trump. There’s no doubt that this is a political prosecution with a revenge motive... Mr. Comey says he’s innocent, and the indictment on its face looks weak... Yet please spare us the media narrative that this prosecution “shatters norms” at the Justice Department. Mr. Comey led an FBI that spread lies about Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia in an attempt to defeat him in 2016. A member of his team lied to the FISA court to get a warrant to surveil an adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign. The Biden Justice Department prosecuted Mr. Trump in an attempt to disqualify him for a second term. New York prosecutors indicted him, and Attorney General Letitia James campaigned explicitly on a promise to find something to charge against him. Target the man, then find the crime. That is what Mr. Trump now wants Justice to do, but the Biden crowd was there first. New York Times: Justice Dept. Official Pushes Prosecutors to Investigate George Soros’s Foundation By Devlin Barrett .....A senior Justice Department official has instructed more than a half dozen U.S. attorney’s offices to draft plans to investigate a group funded by George Soros, the billionaire Democratic donor whom President Trump has demanded be thrown in jail. The official’s directive, a copy of which was viewed by The New York Times, goes as far as to list possible charges prosecutors could file, ranging from arson to material support of terrorism. The memo suggests department leaders are following orders from the president that specific people or groups be subject to criminal investigation — a major break from decades of past practice meant to insulate the Justice Department from political interference. Cato at Liberty: On Trump’s Anti-Antifa Executive Order By Patrick G. Eddington .....On September 22, President Trump issued his long-threatened executive order (EO) designating an idea—antifascism, known by its shorthand version, Antifa—a “domestic terrorist organization.” Yes, on the surface, the EO is idiotic on multiple levels. The notion that an idea can be designated an organization is one. The fact that there’s no constitutional provision or statute granting any president the power to designate a domestic civil society organization a “domestic terrorist organization” is another. The EO’s declaration that “Antifa is a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law” is more than false—it is designed to act as a justification for legal and coercive action against anyone or any entity that the administration designates as engaged in[:] Congress The Atlantic: What Republicans Can Do If They Really Want to Protect Free Speech By Conor Friedersdorf .....Senator Ted Cruz, who often sides with the Trump administration, objected on free-speech grounds. “That’s right out of Goodfellas. That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, ‘Nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it,’” he said on his podcast, warning, “There will come a time when a Democrat wins again” and “they will use this power.” Other Republicans, including Senators Mitch McConnell, Dave McCormick, Rand Paul, and Todd Young, also objected. In contrast, the activist Christopher Rufo argued that the right must police speech when in power to avoid being dominated by the left. “Turnabout is fair play,” he wrote. “We cannot accept the idea that history started in 2025 or that only the Left can legitimately use state institutions. The only way to get to a good equilibrium is an effective, strategic tit-for-tat.” This “tit-for-tat” approach seems to be part of the Trump administration’s strategy. FEC NOTUS: ‘Hobbled’ Campaign Finance Regulator Cancels Public Meetings Until 2026 By Taylor Giorno .....The Federal Election Commission has canceled all of its scheduled public meetings until 2026 — a tacit acknowledgement that the agency’s months-long de facto shutdown at the hands of President Donald Trump won’t end anytime soon. The imminent departure of the last remaining Republican commissioner, Trey Trainor, who announced his resignation Thursday, prompted the FEC to axe the FEC’s remaining meetings in 2025 while it still had the numbers to do so. The six-member, bipartisan commission needs a quorum of at least four commissioners to execute its high-level duties, such as enforcing campaign finance laws and issuing legal rulings. With Trainor’s departure, two commissioners will remain. Free Expression Wall Street Journal: The Right Needs to Conserve Free Speech By Tunku Varadarajan .....Mr. Silverglate believes the ACLU “has defaulted on its prior role of being the main civil-liberties organization in the country.” When “the great Ira Glasser” retired as executive director in 2001, the organization went into “a downward spiral,” which Mr. Silverglate attributes to “the problems of affirmative action”: The ACLU board decided that, “having had a Jewish male executive director, it was time for a gay Hispanic.” That was Anthony Romero, who Mr. Silverglate says is “not a civil libertarian but a creature of the left. He has stopped the ACLU’s historic focus on free speech and due process and has taken on leftist causes.” Mr. Silverglate met Mr. Romero in 2001, when the former was president of the ACLU’s Massachusetts affiliate. Over lunch Mr. Silverglate listened to Mr. Romero’s plans for the ACLU. “At the end of his spiel, I said, ‘Anthony, I didn’t hear one word about civil liberties. I heard about workers’ rights, but there are unions that deal with that. I didn’t hear one word about free speech.’ And Romero just got up and stomped out. He was so insulted he left.” Mr. Silverglate was stuck with the restaurant tab, which FIRE picked up along with “the baton that Romero dropped.” Mr. Silverglate left the ACLU board soon after and is still a member of FIRE’s board. Online Speech Platforms Blaze Media: YouTube bans Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes AGAIN immediately after saying it would support 'free expression' By Andrew Chapados .....Less than two days after YouTube was alleged to be giving banned creators a second chance, the platform has reportedly banned controversial commentators Nick Fuentes and Alex Jones. The news comes after Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) made announcements about how Google, parent of YouTube, was prepared to make a series of policy changes after admitting to the fact that "White House pressure" during the Biden administration led to censorship of "political debate on COVID and elections." Rep. Jordan wrote on X, "Due to our oversight efforts, GOOGLE commits to offer ALL creators previously kicked off YouTube due to political speech violations to return to the platform." Testing out the new alleged commitments, both Alex Jones' Infowars platform and Fuentes reportedly started new YouTube channels... It was not long before YouTube responded to both claims directly and revealed that the pages were not taken down by mistake. The States New York Times: Super PACs Pay $900,000 to Settle Inquiry Tied to Zeldin, Head of E.P.A. By Nicholas Fandos and Shane Goldmacher .....Two Republican super PACs paid nearly $1 million this month to quietly settle an inquiry into whether they illicitly coordinated with the campaign of Lee Zeldin, a member of President Trump’s cabinet, during his 2022 run for governor of New York. The state’s top elections watchdog spent years investigating the matter, using subpoenas to try to show that there was illegal overlap between the Zeldin campaign and two groups that spent $20 million supporting it, Save Our State Inc. and Safe Together New York. An agreement to settle the case, reached in recent days, ultimately does not include an admission of wrongdoing by the super PACs, a copy of the document obtained through a Freedom of Information request shows. Mr. Zeldin, who is now the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, was not a party to the agreement. But the $900,000 fine is the largest ever paid in a super PAC coordination case in New York, where the free-spending groups seeking to sway elections have grown in size and number over the last decade. National Review: Manhattan DA Declines to Prosecute NYC Woman Who Punched Pro-Life Activist During Street Interview By Brittany Bernstein .....Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has declined to prosecute a woman who left a pro-life activist bloodied during a street interview in New York City earlier this year, according to attorneys from the Thomas More Society. New York police arrested Brianna J. Rivers, 30, in April on one count of second-degree assault after she sucker punched activist Savannah Craven Antao during a street interview on abortion. The attack was caught on camera as Craven Antao asked Rivers questions about abortion on behalf of the pro-life organization Live Action. But now, attorneys with the Thomas More Society say they plan to file a civil suit and seek damages on Craven Antao’s behalf after Bragg’s office declined to prosecute the felony assault charge. The Texas Tribune: Texas Tech’s limits on gender identity discussion deepen fears of politics breaching academic freedom By Jessica Priest, Jayme Lozano Carver and Sneha Dey .....In a first for Texas higher education, the Texas Tech University System has ordered faculty across its five universities to limit classroom discussion of transgender and nonbinary identities, but gave little guidance on how academic endeavors or instruction should proceed. The vague directive rattled Texas Tech students and professors, many of whom expressed fear that they will face academic or professional repercussions for pushing back. Free speech groups quickly characterized the unclear limits as unconstitutional censorship. And LGBTQ+ advocates said the move will only further marginalize already-vulnerable trans and nonbinary students and faculty. “Everyone is terrified,” said a professor at the flagship Tech campus in Lubbock, who asked not to be named over fear of losing their job. Texas Tech Chancellor Tedd Mitchell late Thursday said that when faculty are acting as employees and instructors, they must follow President Donald Trump’s executive order recognizing only male and female genders as assigned at birth, Gov. Greg Abbott’s letter directing state agencies to “reject woke gender ideologies” and House Bill 229 requiring a strict binary definition of gender for the collection of vital statistics. PA House Republican Caucus: Williams to Introduce Legislation to Make Swatting a Crime in Pennsylvania .....Rep. Craig Williams (R-Delaware/Chester) issued a co-sponsor memo today announcing legislation he will introduce next week targeting the rise of “swatting” in Pennsylvania, a dangerous criminal act which endangers lives, including those of law enforcement... In August, a coordinated wave of false active shooter reports targeted Villanova University, terrorizing students and parents while pulling emergency responders into an all-out mobilization. These threats turned out to be fictitious. But the impact was real and deeply felt... To address this threat, Williams will introduce two bills. The first will make swatting a felony when the individual engages in the act of swatting. The second allows courts to order those convicted of swatting to reimburse the state, municipalities and emergency responders for the full cost of their response, including personnel time, prosecution and equipment. Read an article you think we would be interested in? Send it to Tiffany Donnelly at [email protected]. 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