September 30, 2025

In the News

Iowa Politics with Laura Belin: Whitver steps aside, 2026 campaign polls, lawsuit over Charlie Kirk fallout

By Laura Belin

.....I reached out to David Keating, president of the Institute for Free Speech. He didn’t want to comment on this particular case without knowing all of the facts. Speaking broadly, he said these cases tend to be complicated, and the outcome rests on facts surrounding the case. The judge will likely use what is called the “Pickering test” (named after a 1968 U.S. Supreme Court decision), weighing factors such as: did the speech happen in school? Was the remark about “a matter of public concern” rather than private grievance? The court will balance the employee’s right to free speech against the employer’s interest in avoiding disruption in the workplace.

Congress

Washington Examiner: Democrats and the liberal long assault on free speech

By Timothy P. Carney

.....When Citizens United, a conservative activist group, created a documentary titled Hillary: The Movie, it was clear that broadcasting the movie and advertising for it on television would be banned by the BCRA. The Supreme Court found that this was unconstitutional abridgement of the freedom of speech. The main purpose of the First Amendment’s free speech protection is, arguably, to protect criticism of powerful politicians, and campaign-finance reform banned that explicitly.

Democrats complained about the Citizens United decision, and in the years following the ruling, many of them, including Hillary Clinton, demanded a constitutional amendment to once again outlaw electioneering such as Hillary: The Movie. That is, they spent much of a decade campaigning to curtail the First Amendment in order to protect themselves from criticism.

These are the very people today crowing about free speech.

AZ Mirror: National Dems call for reprisals against AZ GOP lawmaker for ‘unconscionable’ call to hang colleague

By Jerod MacDonald-Evoy

.....Democratic leaders in Congress are calling for Republican leaders to reject violent rhetoric by an Arizona Republican lawmaker who called for the execution of a Democratic congresswoman because she urged people upset with President Donald Trump to peacefully protest in the streets.

Kingman Republican Rep. John Gillette wrote on the social media site X on Sept. 25 that U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington, was calling for the government to be overthrown and should be hanged. 

“Until people like this, that advocate for the overthrow of the American government are tried convicted and hanged.. it will continue,” Gillette said in response to a video of Jayapal. 

The top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday called on the Republicans who control the Arizona House of Representatives to hold Gillette accountable for his “dangerous” words.

“These dangerous comments calling for her execution are unconscionable,” Democratic Leader Hakeem Jefferies said in a statement. “Arizona legislators must hold this unhinged elected official accountable for contributing to an unsafe environment and risking bodily harm to a sitting Member of Congress. There is no place for the incitement of political violence in this country. Republican leaders must reject it immediately.” 

Jayapal herself called Gillette’s post “appalling, unacceptable and dangerous” in a statement released on social media. 

The Courts

Politico: YouTube settles with Trump for $24.5 millon

By Aaron Mak

.....YouTube agreed to pay $24.5 million on Monday to settle a lawsuit with President Donald Trump, who accused the platform of censoring him and his followers.

While YouTube does not have to admit fault, it must give $22 million to the nonprofit Trust for the National Mall to help fund the construction of the White House State Ballroom, at Trump’s behest. An additional $2.5 million will go to a group of his supporters, including the American Conservative Union and author Naomi Wolf.

Trump brought lawsuits against YouTube’s parent company, Alphabet, and Meta and Twitter (now X) in 2021, shortly after they suspended his accounts following the Capitol riot. Trump alleged that the companies were suppressing his account due to pressure from his enemies, including Democrats in Congress and Dr. Anthony Fauci.

YouTube is the last of the three to settle. Meta settled in January for $25 million, while X agreed to settle a month later for $10 million.

Trump Administration

The Free Press: Conservative Philanthropy CEO to Trump: Don’t Attack Liberal Nonprofits

By Gabe Kaminsky

.....The leader of one of the country’s most influential right-leaning nonprofits said that he has cautioned White House officials against pursuing investigations of liberal philanthropic groups without clear evidence of legal wrongdoing.

Lawson Bader, the president and CEO of DonorsTrust, told The Free Press that the stream of retaliatory rhetoric since Charlie Kirk’s assassination “has the potential to weaponize philanthropy in a way that is antithetical to philanthropic freedom.” Anyone who threatens the nonprofit status of law-abiding organizations “narrows the important boundary between citizen and state,” Bader said.

Based in Alexandria, Virginia, DonorsTrust offers what are known as donor-advised funds tailored to conservative and libertarian-minded philanthropists who want to donate money anonymously and receive tax breaks. Democrats have used the phrase “dark money ATM” to describe DonorsTrust, which had over $1.2 billion in assets at the end of 2023 and paid out $351 million that year.

Nextgov/FCW: White House seeks industry input as it crafts “anti-woke” AI guidelines

By Natalie Alms

.....The White House Office of Management and Budget is hosting listening sessions with industry as it creates its anti-woke guidance for artificial intelligence. 

In July, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on “Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government,” requiring federal agencies to only purchase large language models deemed “truth-seeking” and showing “ideological neutrality.” 

The White House says that diversity, equity and inclusion are the main target, although how exactly the government will screen for DEI among AI models isn’t clear.

OMB wants to hear from industry on how it's approaching AI transparency, auditable risk management and how they address politically sticky topics, including whether models have any instructions about political or other sensitive issues. 

The executive order “basically says that if you want access to taxpayer money — if you want the government to buy your model — you can't inject an ideology in it, and we don't care which ideology, you just can't have political ideology in it,” Sriram Krishnan, a senior White House policy advisor on AI, said at a POLITICO event earlier this month. 

Free Expression

Washington Post: Jimmy Kimmel had to answer to the FCC. Internet comedians answer to the algorithm.

By Tatum Hunter

.....Political humor is still the lifeblood of many performers’ careers, comedians said. But now, a new generation of joke-makers is playing by the rules of the internet. Traditional comedy power-brokers like networks, late-night hosts and agents have been largely replaced by new ones: Social media platforms and algorithms. It changes the calculus for performers doing political humor — and shifts the battleground of free speech from our big screens to our small ones.

“There’s a ton of mental gymnastics at every corner when you’re posting,” said Jordan Wilson, who grew an audience of 1.3 million on TikTok doing characters and sketches. This new generation of internet comics doesn’t answer to network executives, he said, and the FCC’s strictures don’t make a direct impact. But algorithms, social media advertisers and online mobs are all tempering forces as comics decide which jokes are worth the risk.

Lifesite News: Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis warns Liberals’ ‘hate’ bill will allow for prosecution of free speech

By Anthony Murdoch

.....Canadian Conservative Party MP Leslyn Lewis blasted a new Liberal “hate crime” bill, calling it a “dangerous” piece of legislation that she says will open the door for authorities to possibly prosecute Canadians’ speech deemed “hateful.”

In an X post on Tuesday, Lewis slammed the Liberal government’s Bill C-9, or the Combating Hate Act, in a scathing post.

Lewis observed that the bill, as written, “expands state power to prosecute speech under unclear rules and with fewer checks on government abuse.” …

Lewis noted how the bill will change Section 319 of the Criminal Code “in two dangerous ways.”

She then went through a variety of sections in the bill, commenting on her concerns with them.

Lewis noted how Section 319(6) will remove the “Attorney General’s consent, eliminating a safeguard that prevents political or overzealous prosecutions.”

She said Section 319(7) of the bill will redefine “hatred” as an “emotion” of “detestation or vilification,” which she noted is “a vague and subjective test that could capture ordinary debate or criticism.”

The States

Arizona Republic: Arizona Supreme Court seems willing to overturn anti-'dark money' law

By Taylor Seely

.....The Arizona Supreme Court appeared willing to overturn the state's popular law requiring people who spend thousands of dollars to influence the outcome of elections to identify themselves.

Considering a challenge to the Voters' Right to Know Act, the justices expressed concern about potential threats of violence from disclosure, asked whether the law imposed undue burdens on political participation and questioned whether the state's constitutional framers would have prioritized disclosure above free speech and privacy…

When Bolick asked whether mandatory disclosure was the government forcing someone to say something against their will, Fraser said there were myriad government disclosure requirements, such as those that home sellers may have to make about having pools in their backyard.

Montgomery countered, "None of those disclosures necessarily could result in someone being threatened or intimidated ... . There are people who have engaged in speech and they have been threatened, and they have a reasonable fear of being threatened. And it's not lost on us what happened yesterday."

Oral arguments took place Sept. 11, the day after conservative political activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated while debating college students on campus in Orem, Utah.

Nevada Independent: Opinion: Don’t panic over political campaigns using AI. It could be a good thing

By Michael Schaus

.....There’s something unnerving about the idea of candidates using artificial intelligence to influence voters, but we should all take a deep breath before panicking too much about machines taking over our politics. 

For starters, our political era is so bereft of intelligent discourse, the inclusion of any sort of intelligence — even the artificial variety — should probably be considered a welcome development. 

But risks clearly exist, which is why Nevada is preparing to implement a law (AB73) that would require political campaigns to disclose any AI-generated content in their ads. Nevada is among 24 other states that now require such disclosures, with two additional states placing an outright ban on political “deepfake” AI content. 

Concord Monitor: The ongoing legislative debates over New Hampshire’s right-to-know law

By Anna Brown

.....Outside the right-to-know law, there is another debate around press freedom: whether New Hampshire needs an anti-SLAPP law. SLAPP stands for “strategic lawsuits against public participation.” These lawsuits attempt to intimidate journalists, victims and whistleblowers who speak up about injustice. An anti-SLAPP law allows the individual being sued to ask the court for immunity by a summary judgment. Ideally, this saves the individual from a drawn-out court battle they may not be able to afford.

This year, House Majority Leader Jason Osborne, R-Auburn, co-sponsored HB 391 to pass an anti-SLAPP law in New Hampshire. The House killed the bill, however, after the Judiciary Committee said it was too broad. This is not the first time New Hampshire considered anti-SLAPP legislation, however, and future bills are likely.