Free Republic

A California judge issued a preliminary injunction against a state law that empowers the Medical Board of California to discipline physicians who support opinions about COVID-19 that are not in line with the “consensus,” according to reports. The law, known as Assembly Bill 2098, was set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2023. Under the law, the Medical Board of California and the Osteopathic Medical Board of California could discipline physicians who “disseminate” information about COVID that is not in line with the “contemporary scientific consensus.” But in November, a group of five California physicians filed a lawsuit against California...

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to consider what employers must do to accommodate religious employees, among eight new cases it added. The cases are expected to be argued in April. In one involving a former postal employee, the justices will consider what accommodations employers must make for religious employees. The case comes when religious plaintiffs have generally fared well at the court, which is dominated 6-3 by conservative justices. Under a federal civil rights law, employers can’t discriminate against employees because of their religion. The law says employees’ religious practices have to be accommodated unless the employer can demonstrate...

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — An electronic billboard in Butler County is upsetting a lot of people. The billboard along Route 422 in Summit Township features a swastika. People who live in the area say this type of hate and negativity isn't welcome in their community, and they're working to do something about it. "To me, what's on the sign is just not acceptable, it's hate speech," Heidi Priest said. The billboard is privately owned and sits on private property. Some people who live in the area said it doesn't represent their community, but they do believe it does represent the need...

EXCERPTS: PHOENIX [AZ] — A Wall Street Journal journalist said his rights were violated when Phoenix police detained him while reporting on a story. Cell phone video shows Dion Rabouin, a markets reporter with WSJ, being handcuffed and placed in the back of a Phoenix police cruiser in November of 2022. The Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief Matt Murray sent a letter to Police Chief Michael Sullivan saying, "I am appalled and concerned that officers at your department would attempt to interfere with Mr. Rabouin’s constitutional right to engage in journalism." Additionally, they are determining what further action will be taken...

In the battle over language, those who thought that they could sit on the sidelines are discovering that there are no sidelines. This story is a couple of days old, but it still matters enough that it’s worth looking at now: North Carolina State football announcer Gary Hahn was suspended indefinitely for referring to “illegal aliens.” That he dared to mention their existence and refer to them by their legal nomenclature was a bridge too far for the wokesters at NC State. It’s also a reminder that the left is relentlessly limiting the parameters of what we’re allowed to say....

During a hearing on anti-semitism today, Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.) claimed that those who “espouse hate” are not protected under the First Amendment, and called for the federal government to be “more aggressive” in its efforts to combat hateful rhetoric. Senator Cardin serves as the Chair of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which is also referred to as the Helsinki Commission. […] On Dec. 13, the Helsinki Commission held a hearing entitled, “The Alarming Rise of Anti-Semitism and Its Threat to Democracy.” During the hearing, Cardin stated, “If you espouse hate, if you espouse violence, you’re...

Missouri’s Attorney General Eric Schmitt who, together with Louisiana’s Attorney General Jeff Landry, filed a lawsuit alleging collusion between the federal government and social media companies to censor certain speech, sent a letter to Twitter asking for the preservation of evidence related to communications between the company and federal government officials on content moderation and misinformation. Schmitt, who was elected to the Senate in November, referenced the internal documents, dubbed “Twitter Files,” that are being released by CEO Elon Musk via journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger. The files showed that then-deputy legal counsel Jim Baker, who was...

Elvis Chan estimated social media companies took censorship action 50% of the time when FBI asked. An FBI agent's testimony in a freedom of speech case confirms that the bureau ran an operation during the 2020 election that requested social media companies remove content as disinformation, suggesting the government’s requests succeeded about half of the time and were conducted with a "headquarter stamp of approval." Elvis Chan, the FBI assistant special agent in charge of the Cyber Branch in San Francisco, told lawyers for the Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general in a lawsuit over social media censorship that he supervised...

A Chicago reporter is taking Mayor Lori Lightfoot to court for her "attack on the First Amendment" after facing a slew of angry responses from the Democratic leader and losing his press credentials. "I was asking the obvious questions, and she lost her temper," journalist William Kelly said Wednesday on "Fox & Friends," recalling a May exchange when she told him he was "full of crap." "Mayor Lightfoot is in re-election mode, and she doesn't want any more embarrassing questions to go viral. So she revoked my media credential. … This is a very serious constitutional crisis in the city...

A groundbreaking complaint has been filed with the US Department of Education Office of Human Rights against University of California, Berkeley Law School, over the August 2022 discriminatory decision of at least nine student groups to adopt a bylaw excluding Zionist speakers. Gabriel Groisman, a Florida-based attorney and partner at LSN Law, PA and Arsen Ostrovsky, an Israel-based attorney and CEO of The International Legal Forum submitted the joint complaint. The complaint alleges that the bylaw represents “profound and deep-seated antisemitic discrimination” against Jewish students, faculty and staff at UC Berkeley Law School. .....

It’s a sign of election season. A Republican group in Camp Hill is suing the Borough to overturn an ordinance that prohibits residents from placing more than two political signs on their property. The Camp Hill Borough Republican Association calls the ordinance—and the $1,000 fine for placing more than two temporary political signs—unconstitutional, and is asking a federal judge to lift the restriction less than two weeks before election day. The ordinance in question aims to regulate how, when and where signs are placed, according to the borough’s stated purpose and intent, the lawsuit wrote. It does not seek to...

The private consortium that reported election "misinformation" to tech platforms during the 2020 election season, in "consultation" with federal agencies, targeted several news organizations in its dragnet. Websites for Just the News, New York Post, Fox News, Washington Examiner, Washington Times, Epoch Times and Breitbart were identified among the 20 "most prominent domains across election integrity incidents" that were cited in tweets flagged by the Election Integrity Partnership and its collaborators. The Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the State Department, and liberal groups such as the Democratic National Committee, also flagged purported misinformation through the consortium.

Charlie Kirk talks with John Solomon about the bombshell story of government-directed censorship during Election 2020 e Charlie Kirk: While I was getting ready to speak at the great Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, Producer Andrew was emailing me and texting me about the story that came out on the terrific website, justthenews.com. And I couldn’t quite process it in time. And then I had a chance to read it and the weekend happened and I saw Sean Hannity did a segment on this with John Solomon. And essentially, it turns out new documents show that there is a censorship machine...

Tom Jones at the Florida-based Poynter Institute -- touted by Johnny Dollar as a "Stelter press agent" -- has penned a deeply disturbed piece headlined "CNN ‘hewing toward the center’ is not necessarily good for our democracy: Pushing for fairness and completeness in journalism is never a bad idea. But presenting 'both sides' sometimes can be." Jones was attempting to shame the Chicago Tribune for an editorial touting this purported CNN move to the center -- which sorely lacks evidence so far, other than dismissing a few flagrantly opinionated staffers like Stelter and John Harwood. Jones sounds like a press...

Robert Keith Packer’s sister asked people not to judge him by his cover, a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt. A prosecutor said he was wearing a Nazi SS T-shirt underneath. The revelation of what Packer, a 57-year-old Virginia pipefitter, was wearing on Jan. 6, 2021, came Thursday when a federal judge sentenced him to 75 days for his role in the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol. The sweatshirt, which became a symbol of the rioters’ ties to white supremacist movements, was “incredibly offensive,” U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols said before handing down the sentence. “It seems to me that he wore...

Lisa Gallagher recalls being woken up by federal law enforcement after voicing her support for former President Trump on Facebook in an interview on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'

Tucker Carlson revealed on Monday night that his Fox News show obtained subpoenas that were sent from Biden's Department of Justice to Trump allies and supporters, seeking personal communications. (snip) "The subpoena," Carlson said, "claims to be investigating 'any claim that the Vice President and/or the President of the Senate had the authority to rehect or choose not to count presidential electors.'""Now keep in mind," Carlson said, "that any claim you make, as an American citizen, about electors, any claim you make about American politics period, is protected explicitly under the first amendment.

A military band canceled its appearance at the annual “Carolina Celebration of Liberty” concert because it was held at a church. The 246th Army Band of the South Carolina National Guard removed itself from the annual celebration held in June at the First Baptist Church in Columbia. The decision was made after they were ordered to cease and desist by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a national organization that gets triggered by the Holy Bible and the Baby Jesus.

State attorney generals obtained emails that show the Biden administration arranged weekly and monthly calls with Facebook to discuss content to censor. The documents show a specific conversation in which a Biden official asks a Meta executive to take down an Instagram account that mocked Dr. Fauci, the partisan bureaucrat who lied about the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. In essence, the Biden admin sees comedy as a thoughtcrime. Consider this more proof that Facebook has acted as a government agent on behalf of the White House.

In her recent guest essay in the New York Times, former Times reporter and columnist Linda Greenhouse accuses Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito of weaponizing religious liberty. In reality, Alito merely issued a plea that religious liberty is provided “special protection” promised by the Constitution. It appears Greenhouse actually believes religious liberty should be relegated to a lower tier status than other rights. Doing so would do serious damage to our Constitution and to the fundamental rights millions of Americans enjoy under its protection. To support her claims, Greenhouse takes aim squarely at the role religious liberty plays in America,...