Email from The Institute for Free Speech The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech October 1, 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 Richards, Layton, and Finger: Delaware Strengthens Protections for Free Speech Rights .....To protect the public’s right to engage in activities protected by the First Amendment without the threat of abusive, retaliatory litigation, Delaware Governor Matt Meyer signed Senate Bill 80 into law on September 15, 2025, enacting the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (the “Act”) to provide greater protections against strategic lawsuits against public participation, or “SLAPP.” The Act replaces Delaware’s prior anti-SLAPP statute (10 Del. C. §§ 8136-8138), which had been criticized for protecting only “public applicants or permittees.” Delaware’s anti-SLAPP statute now provides expansive protections for persons exercising their rights to free speech on matters of public concern. It has already received an A+ grade from the Institute of Free Speech. Delaware’s former anti-SLAPP law, which was regarded as a “Petition Clause,” offered relatively limited protection against SLAPP, as demonstrated by the D-minus rating it had received from the Institute for Free Speech. Congress Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee: Chairman Paul Brings to Light Biden’s Quiet Skies Weaponization, Releases Damning Documents into the Record .....Today, Chairman Rand Paul (R-KY) of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, convened a hearing to examine the Biden administration’s abuse of the TSA’s Quiet Skies Program and added newly obtained documents into the record. The hearing followed an investigation Chairman Paul launched in 2024 and a report released yesterday detailing his findings, which revealed how the Quiet Skies Program and related watch lists were weaponized into political surveillance tools used against veterans, sitting lawmakers, political opponents, and even the family of a Federal Air Marshal. The Committee heard testimony from Mark Crowder, a Senior Federal Air Marshal with the U.S. Transportation Security Administration and whistleblower whose wife was placed on a watch list in a case of mistaken identity; the Honorable Tristan Leavitt, President of Empower Oversight; Matt Taibbi, Editor of Racket News; Jim Harper, Senior Nonresident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; and Abed Ayoub, National Executive Director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. DOJ Covington (Inside Political Law): DOJ Withdraws Dozens of Regulatory Actions, Keeps FARA NRPM By Brian D. Smith, Zachary G. Parks & Alex Langton .....The U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ” or the “Department”) announced that, effective September 11, 2025, it is withdrawing several dozen Notices of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRMs”), Advance Notices of Proposed Rulemaking, and Supplemental Notices of Proposed Rulemaking. The Department explained that it is “withdrawing these actions as part of the Federal Government’s deregulatory initiative and because of ongoing assessments of agency needs, priorities, and objectives.” The list of withdrawn proposed regulations includes rulemaking actions related to controlled substances, firearms, criminal justice, healthcare, immigration, asset forfeiture, and disability discrimination, among other topics. Notably, the NPRM that would have made significant changes to the regulations concerning the application of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”) for the first time in decades was not on the list of regulations withdrawn by DOJ. The Courts Politico: Judge excoriates Trump in blistering decision calling efforts to deport pro-Palestinian academics illegal By Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein .....A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration’s effort to deport pro-Palestinian academics is a deliberate attack on free speech meant to “strike fear” into non-citizen students and chill campus protests. “The effect of these targeted deportation proceedings continues unconstitutionally to chill freedom of speech to this day,” U.S. District Judge William Young concluded, in a scathing, 161-page opinion that he described as the most crucial he’s delivered in his 30 years on the bench. ProPublica: A New Lawsuit Alleges the Gun Industry Exploited Firearm Owners’ Data for Political Gain By Corey G. Johnson .....Two major law firms accused the National Shooting Sports Foundation this week of violating the privacy rights of millions of gun owners by running a decades-long program that sent their information to political operatives without consent. The allegations in a lawsuit filed Monday in federal court by Keller Rohrback of Seattle and Motley Rice of Connecticut closely mirror the findings of a ProPublica investigation that detailed the secret program operated by the gun industry’s largest trade group. The 24-page complaint asks the court for approval of class-action status and requests financial damages against the NSSF, claiming the gun industry lobbyist enriched itself by exploiting valuable gun buyer information for political gain. It features the accounts of two gun owners, Daniel Cocanour and Dale Rimkus, both of whom assert they purchased rifles, pistols and handguns from the 1990s through the mid-2010s. ProPublica identified at least 10 gun industry businesses, including Glock, Smith & Wesson and Remington, that handed over hundreds of thousands of names and addresses, along with other private data, to the NSSF. The lobbying group then entered the details into what would become a massive database, which was used to rally gun owners’ electoral support for the industry’s preferred candidates running for the White House and Congress. FEC Campaigns & Elections: FEC Member Resigns, Deepening Crisis at Watchdog Agency By Max Greenwood .....As of April, there were 161 pending enforcement matters before the FEC. In an interview with Campaigns & Elections over the summer, Broussard acknowledged the challenges at the agency stemming from the absence of a quorum, but said she was hopeful that Trump would soon nominate new members so the commission could get back to work. Weintraub, the Democratic former commissioner who now works as a senior fellow at End Citizens United, accused Trump of intentionally withholding nominations for the FEC in order to prevent the commission from enforcing campaign finance laws. “With just two members and no nominations to fill the vacant seats, President Trump is intentionally sidelining the nation’s campaign finance watchdog,” Weintraub said in a statement. “Restoring the quorum is the bare minimum to have any safeguards against corruption.” To be sure, it’s not the first time that the FEC has been left quorumless. The commission found itself with just three members in 2020. By the time it regained a quorum, it faced a backlog of more than 450 cases, which took months to work through. Free Expression The Atlantic: Left-Wing Terrorism Is on the Rise By Daniel Byman and Riley McCabe .....No matter how hard ideologues try to exclusively blame their political foes for acts of political violence, the truth is that violent extremists today emerge from across the political spectrum. We have studied this problem and believe that our data can help illuminate an issue too often defined by partisan finger-pointing. As part of a study to be published this week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, we compiled and analyzed a data set of 750 attacks and plots in the United States from January 1, 1994, to July 4, 2025. Our research focuses only on incidents of terrorism, which we define as attacks or plots by a nonstate actor attempting to achieve a political end and exert a psychological influence on a broad population. Among other details, the data set includes the types of weapons used, the intended targets, the number of fatalities, and the ideology of the perpetrators. We found that left-wing terrorism has increased since President Donald Trump’s rise to political prominence in 2016. Indeed, 2025 marks the first time in more than 30 years that left-wing attacks outnumber those from the far right. Despite its recent increase, however, left-wing terrorism is not nearly as common today as it was in the 1960s and early ’70s. Those years marked the height of groups such as the Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army, best known for kidnapping the newspaper heiress Patty Hearst. In the ’80s and early ’90s, left-wing terrorism declined while jihadist and right-wing terrorism rose, particularly in the forms of anti-government and white-supremacist violence. Online Speech Platforms Newsmax: Ramaswamy to YouTube: Restore Alex Jones, Nick Fuentes By Solange Reyner .....Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is pressing YouTube to restore the accounts of Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes. "I think it's better if you just unlock those accounts and let the guys be heard," Ramaswamy said in a YouTube video. "Censorship isn't good for America. It's antithetical to our culture." New York Post: Google’s sly censorship ‘confession’ is no big win for free speech By Dan Schneider .....Last week, after years of leftist mockery, Google finally admitted conservatives were right all along about online censorship. On Sept. 23, the tech giant’s lawyers sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee stating the obvious: Former President Joe Biden’s administration applied “repeated and sustained” pressure on the company to silence his political opponents. Biden’s tactics were “unacceptable and wrong,” the attorneys declared. Pop the champagne corks! But before the party gets underway, let’s be clear-eyed about what really happened here: Google admitted little, promised less — and pledged to change nothing. It offered not confession but evasion. The States New Jersey Monitor: NJ teachers union misused dues to fund chief’s bid for governor, lawsuit claims By Nikita Biryukov .....Two public school teachers are suing the New Jersey Education Association, alleging the teachers’ union violated the law when it funneled $40 million to former union president Sean Spiller’s gubernatorial campaign this spring. The suit, filed Tuesday in state Superior Court by Roselle teacher Marie Dupont and Hamilton teacher Ann Marie Pocklembo, alleges the union improperly used dues it said would not fund its political committees to fuel the independent expenditure groups that backed Spiller’s failed bid for the Democratic nod for governor. AZ Mirror: AZ Supreme Court allows GOP lawmakers to challenge voter-approved dark money disclosure law By Jerod MacDonald-Evoy .....The legal battle over a voter-approved anti-dark-money law passed in 2022 will continue as the Arizona Supreme Court Monday said Republican lawmakers have a right to legally challenge the law but the court did not rule on its constitutionality. Monday’s decision comes as the court has been weighing another challenge to the law brought by proponents of anonymous campaign spending who are challenging the constitutionality of the law. Monday’s ruling was on a case brought by Republican state lawmakers who claim that the voter-approved proposition takes away their legislative powers, violating the state constitution. State Affairs: Lawmakers face mounting tech opposition over AI rules By Austin Jenkins .....Most states have passed restrictions on election-related or intimate deepfakes, or both. Colorado lawmakers passed the nation’s first comprehensive AI law last year. This year, California and New York lawmakers this year approved nation-leading bills to regulate companion chatbots and large, frontier AI models, and Texas adopted an AI regulation bill. Government affairs firm MultiState tracked nearly 1,100 AI bills in 50 states this year. The global law firm Orrick’s U.S. AI Law Tracker lists 163 state laws that directly or indirectly implicate AI. AI companies and the venture capital-backed startup community increasingly view state-level regulatory efforts as a threat and have pushed back forcefully. They supported a failed effort this summer in Congress to pass a moratorium on enforcement of state AI regulations, an idea that is likely to return. Now they are preparing to spend money in the 2026 cycle and beyond to elect pro-AI candidates and fight policies they oppose. Read an article you think we would be interested in? 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