February 5, 2026

In the News

NH Journal: Red Flag for Nashua: Court Declares Flagpole Policy Unconstitutional

By Damien Fisher

.....A federal court has formally declared the City of Nashua’s public flagpole policy unconstitutional, delivering a decisive defeat to city officials who argued they had the authority to block citizens’ flags and symbols that they found offensive.

On Feb. 2, the U.S. District Court for New Hampshire entered a declaratory judgment implementing a December ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, finding Nashua engaged in “impermissible viewpoint discrimination” in violation of the First Amendment.

While the district court labeled its order “interim” for procedural reasons, the ruling leaves little ambiguity: Nashua’s flag policy — which allowed some private messages on a city hall flagpole while banning others — is unconstitutional.

“Any resumption of the City’s policy of during that time would be unconstitutional,” the court ruled. “Although the City cannot resume its prior practice or policy, the City of Nashua may close the Citizen Flag Pole to all private expression or return to the pre-2017 historic use of its flagpoles.”

The case, Scaer v. City of Nashua, was brought by longtime Nashua residents Stephen and Bethany Scaer, who were repeatedly denied permission to fly flags expressing viewpoints the city deemed objectionable, including the Pine Tree “Appeal to Heaven” flag, a “Save Women’s Sports” flag, and a “Detransitioner Awareness” flag.

Free Press: Threats to Local Journalism Show Why We Need Stronger Media Policy in Wisconsin

By Arin Anderson

.....The Institute for Free Speech’s recent Anti-SLAPP Statutes: 2025 Report Card gave Wisconsin and 10 other states an F rating for failing to pass legislation to protect free speech and local journalists. But there’s an opportunity to change this in Wisconsin in 2026, as state lawmakers have introduced new anti-SLAPP bills that adopt the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (UPEPA), and would protect journalists and ordinary community members from these lawsuits. SB 666 and AB 701 have both passed out of committee unanimously with bipartisan support.

The Courts

Fox News: Federal judge grills DOJ lawyers over censure of Democratic senator

By Ashley Carnahan and Jake Gibson 

.....A federal judge on Tuesday appeared receptive to the claim from Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., that the Pentagon is retaliating against him for protected political speech, raising concerns about potential violations of the First Amendment.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon is considering whether to issue a preliminary injunction that would halt War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s efforts to reopen Kelly’s military retirement grade, a process that could result in a reduction of his pension, while the case proceeds.

"You don’t need a weatherman to see which way the wind is blowing," Leon said, invoking Bob Dylan and suggesting he needed little additional information to determine whether Kelly’s First Amendment rights were violated.

ABC News: Texas A&M professor files lawsuit after firing over gender identity lesson

By Juan A. Lozano

.....A Texas A&M University professor who was fired last year after a controversy over a classroom video that showed a student objecting to a children’s literature lesson about gender identity sued the school on Wednesday, alleging the university violated her rights by bowing to political pressure calling for her ouster.

Melissa McCoul was a senior lecturer in the English department with over a decade of teaching experience. Republican lawmakers, including Gov. Greg Abbott, had called for her termination after seeing the video, which showed a student questioning whether the class discussion last July was legal under President Donald Trump’s executive order on gender.

Congress

Gript: Linehan: Gender ideology and free speech can’t co-exist

By Niamh Uí Bhriain

.....Irish comedy writer and activist, Graham Linehan, has told a US Congressional committee that “gender ideology and free speech cannot co-exist” and called for pressure to be put on the Irish government to open a debate on the 2015 Gender Recognition Act. 

Linehan was speaking before the judiciary committee of the US House of Representatives who are looking at “Europe’s threat to American speech and innovation”.

Ed. note: Our Nov 2025 panel, "Speech Under Fire: How Gender Ideology Threatens Free Speech", is available here.

Candidates and Campaigns

Persuasion: Not Everything Is Corruption

By Siddhu Pachipala

.....The empirical case for the simplest version of the corruption story—call it the quid pro quo story—is shakier than is often assumed. Decades of scholarship has failed to identify a systematic causal link between congressional donations and roll-call votes. Effects shrink once you account for a politician’s existing ideology and the preferences of voters in the district. Money usually flows toward candidates who already share donors’ views, rather than flipping preferences. This is not to overlook the very real examples of corruption in the Trump era—meme coins for crypto-billionaire foreign nationals, Qatari jets, and Mar-a-Lago dinners. But they seem to be a glaring exception to a baseline of propriety.

There are contexts in which concentrated interests matter more: the low-salience, technical fights where voters aren’t as vigilant. Sugar subsidies are a classic example. Political scientist Kevin Grier and colleagues found that targeted contributions from the sugar industry are associated with more reluctance to reform subsidies.

But that is a world away from the biggest, most visible issues where voters are louder and more organized, such as top marginal tax rates, gun control, and immigration. If ambitious politicians want re-election, they don’t start by trying to convince the sugar industry. They attend first to the people who can actually fire them: the voters.

Then there’s the idea that there is too much money in politics. Yes, American political campaigns spend a lot—roughly $14.8 billion in 2024. But the scale looks awfully different in context. That same year, holiday shopping was forecast at nearly $1 trillion; Americans spent north of $100 billion a year on their pets. As Harvard political scientist Stephen Ansolabehere and colleagues put it in a 2003 article, the big puzzle is why there is so little money in U.S. politics relative to the size of the prize.

Chicago Tribune: New Melissa Conyears-Ervin ad in Illinois’ 7th District race highlights federal campaign spending loophole

By Rick Pearson

.....The subtleties might not seem significant to the average viewer, but they signal a tightrope Conyears-Ervin is walking that allows her to pay for the ad with money from her more robust state campaign fund.

Generally, candidates for federal office are prohibited from using state campaign cash because state fundraising rules and contribution limits are much looser than federal restrictions.

But in seeking a seat in Congress and a position on the state central committee, both from the 7th Congressional District, Conyears-Ervin is taking advantage of a loophole in federal campaign finance law that allows her to use state campaign cash for the commercial.

While the ad is ostensibly for her campaign for state central committee — a state Democratic panel elected from each of the state’s 17 congressional districts with largely ministerial duties such as setting party rules and platforms, coordinating budgets, planning voter turnout and candidate recruitment programs — it also helps her congressional bid by spreading a message appealing to congressional voters.

New York Post: ‘Grassroots’ anti-ICE campaigns funded by left-wing billionaire donors: sources

By Chadwick Moore

.....It’s the same dark money, with new signs.

Anti-ICE protests in Minnesota may appear to be “grassroots” efforts organized by concerned citizens, but they’re really funded with megadonor money — some coming from China.

A so-called “ICE Out” march drew an estimated 15,000 left-wing political activists to a frozen, snow-covered Minneapolis on Friday, with attendees chanting “ICE out now” and demanding an end to federal immigration enforcement in the city.

Although framed as a spontaneous uprising of concerned, everyday people, the demonstration — like countless that have regularly metastasized during President Trump’s terms — featured a familiar cast of politically obsessed activists and terminally online characters.

Daily Caller: New Governor Who Ran On ‘Transparency’ Reportedly Uses Loophole To Host Secret Ritzy Dinner With Donors

By John Loftus

.....During her campaign, Democratic New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill vowed to bring “transparency and accountability” to the governor’s office. She even said she wanted to get dark money out of politics. But, of course, she appears to have already reneged on her promise after reportedly using a loophole to host a secret ritzy dinner with her deep-pocketed donors.

The States

People United for Privacy: Virginia Senate Leader Proposes to Strip Nonprofits – and Everyone Else – of Their First Amendment Rights

By Luke Wachob

.....Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell (D) has introduced radical legislation that would effectively silence nonprofit organizations, businesses, and labor unions during election debates. Surovell’s bill, S.B. 688, flatly prohibits “business entities” from making any contributions or expenditures in Virginia campaigns. If that weren’t enough, it also imposes contribution and expenditure limits on candidate committees, and it enforces a $25,000 aggregate limit on all political spending by individuals and groups other than party committees.

Readers may recognize that S.B. 688 is unconstitutional. The First Amendment forbids government from restricting how much Americans may speak about candidates for office through limits on campaign spending or independent expenditures (Buckley v. Valeo, 1976). It further protects the rights of corporations, labor unions, and nonprofit organizations to participate in campaigns by making independent expenditures (Citizens United v. FEC, 2010). It even forbids aggregate limits on individual political contributions. (McCutcheon v. FEC, 2014).

The Intelligencer: Senate Judiciary Committee moves bill decreasing transparency on W.Va. campaign finance filings to subcommittee

By Steven Allen Adams

.....A bill to shield disclosure of addresses of political donors on state campaign finance reports was moved to a subcommittee after numerous issues were raised about implementing the bill.

The state Senate Judiciary Committee moved Senate Bill 640, prohibiting release of certain personal information of contributors to political elections, to a subcommittee Tuesday afternoon, whose members include the lead sponsor of the bill, state Sen. Mike Azinger, R-Wood, and state senators Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, Ryan Weld, R-Brooke, and Joey Garcia, D-Marion.

SB 640 would prohibit the release of street numbers and street name for residences and mailing address of any individual making a political contribution to a candidate or cosigning a loan.

The bill would also prohibit the listing of business affiliation, employer, and/or business of such individuals on campaign finance reports filed with the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office. While this information would continue to be reported to public entities to receive campaign finance reports, the information would no longer be available to the public.

The nondisclosure mandate applies to all forms of public access, specifically including disclosure on any governmental websites or responses to public records requests under the West Virginia Freedom of Information Act. SB 460 would still require campaign finance reports to continue to include the name of any person making a contribution to a candidate and the amount.

Jonesing for Nonprofits: Maryland Considers State "Nonprofit Killer Bill"

By Darryll K. Jones

.....Both houses of the Maryland Legislature are considering a bill that would, if passed, revoke income, property and sales tax exemption for any organization designated a terrorist supporting organization by the U.S. Secretary of State or Treasury.

Spiked: Trans lunacy is still thriving in New York

By Kara Dansky

.....Until 22 January, Glenna Goldis was an assistant attorney general in the office of the New York state attorney general. But on that Thursday, Goldis was dismissed for alleged ‘disruptive public speech’.

And what was this ‘disruptive public speech’? During non-work hours, she had posted on social media about the dangers of puberty blockers and sex-change surgeries for children.

New York Times: Professors Are Being Watched: ‘We’ve Never Seen This Much Surveillance’

By Vimal Patel

.....College professors once taught free from political interference, with mostly their students and colleagues privy to their lectures and book assignments. Now, they are being watched by state officials, senior administrators and students themselves.

In Oklahoma, a student disputed an instructor’s grading decision, drawing the notice of a conservative campus group, Turning Point USA, that has long posted the names of professors criticized for bringing liberal politics into their classrooms. The instructor was removed.

In Texas, a student recorded a classroom lesson on gender identity that led to viral outrage and the instructor’s firing. Now, Texas has set up an office to take other complaints about colleges and professors.

And several states, including Texas, Ohio and Florida, have created laws requiring professors to publicly post their course outlines in searchable databases.