Free Republic

~An official message from the French government via its mission to the United Nations:That's a definition of free speech we can all get behind! You have the right to say whatever you want as long as the government has graciously agreed to permit it.What's somewhat dispiriting about the brazen authoritarianism of the above is that, after my hard-fought battle in Canada, I am well aware that, wherever you live, half your neighbours will accept that this definition sounds eminently reasonable. What does that boil down to in practice? Well, in order to prevent you noticing that a significant proportion of...

America First Legal obtained new documents proving what we knew to be true all along: Merrick Garland’s infamous memo labeling concerned parents at school board meetings “domestic terrorists” was politically orchestrated and driven by the Biden White House.

“We’re aware; the challenge here is finding a federal hook. But WH has been in touch about whether we can assist in some form or fashion.”America First Legal shared documents with Fox News showing communication between the Biden White House and the DOJ over the memo that demonized protesting parents at school board meetings. Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland’s memo weaponized the FBI against these parents after the National School Boards Association begged former President Joe Biden’s administration to intervene. The NSBA described the protests as “a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” The memo came out on October 4,...

Can someone please tell New York things have changed? New Yorkers are stuck in the Biden era or earlier. Some are still pushing BLM-catch-and-release policing; some are still hoping that defunding the cops might somehow be a way to make the streets safer. Meanwhile, they just nominated Zohran Mamdani, a wacky radical socialist, as their Democratic candidate for city mayor, a guy who makes AOC look like she could be an editor for The American Conservative. But the biggest policy throwback of recent memory is a new law to force social media censorship on a state-wide level to cut off...

NEW YORK, July 9 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday overturned the conviction of a social media influencer who used Twitter posts that resembled Hillary Clinton ads to spread false information about the 2016 presidential election and help Donald Trump win. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said no rational jury could have found that Douglass Mackey knowingly agreed to join a conspiracy to deprive people of their constitutional right to vote. It overturned Mackey's March 2023 conviction in Brooklyn and seven-month prison sentence, opens new tab, and ordered an acquittal. A spokesman for U.S....

Britain's largest misinformation monitor and "fact-checker" went into bankruptcy, according to a report in the Times of London last week. In the U.S., left-wing groups like NewsGuard and GDI have come under fierce criticism as de facto tools for censorship. Logically, founded in 2016 by Cambridge engineering graduate Lyric Jain, aimed to combat "harmful and manipulative content" following high-profile events like the Brexit referendum and the U.S. presidential election. A pivotal misstep was its decision to work with India's Karnataka state government's fact-checking unit, a move criticized by the Editors Guild of India and others for potentially enabling state censorship...

The Washington State Office of the Attorney General has launched a taxpayer-funded hotline in three counties that would allow residents, including foreign nationals and illegal immigrants, to report U.S. citizens for engaging in legally protected speech and activity, in addition to hate crimes. The launch of the hate crimes and bias incidents hotline in King, Clark and Spokane counties occurred almost exactly a year after The Center Square reported that Oregon’s hate crime and bias incident hotline mostly tracks legal activities. Referring to both legal crimes and protected speech, the hotline’s website says “these incidents have a devastating and long-lasting...

Dr. Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya appeared this week at Aspen Ideas: Health, addressing his previously controversial stance on COVID-19, as well as his plans as the new National Institutes of Health director. Bhattacharya was sworn in as the 18th director of the NIH on April 1. President Trump nominated him for the position in late November, and the U.S. Senate confirmed his position on March 25. The NIH is the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research, with Bhattacharya referring to it as “the crown jewel of American biomedical sciences.” In his conversation Tuesday evening with Stefanie Ilgenfritz, coverage chief for...

House raids over speech violations are becoming commonplace across Germany, even as violent crime explodes... On Wednesday morning at 6 a.m., a large-scale police operation was launched across Germany, targeting hundreds of individuals suspected of insulting politicians or spreading “hate and incitement” online. The massive crackdown saw police launch morning raids against 170 individuals, which saw police seize computers, cell phones, and tablets, and conduct searches in multiple locations across the country. The action, which was conducted by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), uses the new Criminal Code Paragraph 188 to target individuals accused of racism and hate speech....

At around 6 a.m. this morning, hundreds of people across Germany awoke to police officers at their door. Their only ‘crime’ is to have openly made critical or offensive comments on the internet, many about specific politicians. German police raiding right-wing Compact Magazine’s editor-in-chief’s home, Twitter This is not a scene from the Third Reich or the German Democratic Republic, but from the Federal Republic in the 21st Century. Officers from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) intend to make approximately 170 house visits today, to investigate ‘hateful’ or insulting comments made online. Suspects have had their tablets, laptops, and...

Police in Germany have executed more than 170 operations targeting people they referred to as “digital arsonists”. Starting early on the morning of June 25, officers from the Federal Criminal Police Office raided the homes of people suspected of running “criminal posts” online. The police move was not the first such in Germany, where it is flagged a “day of action”, targeting alleged authors of “online hate and hate messages”. This was the 12th time that the police took such nationwide action against so-called politically motivated crime (PMK). Two-thirds of those people whom officers hit had reportedly made right-wing radical...

Obama’s embrace of censorship speaks to the desperation of a party that can’t survive without uniform control of the information space.. The modern Democrat Party is many things. But an ardent defender of Americans’ First Amendment right to free speech is not one of them. This theme was front and center during a sit-down interview former President Barack Obama participated in at The Connecticut Forum earlier this week. At one point in his conversation with historian and author Heather Cox Richardson, America’s 44th commander-in-chief broached the subject of “propaganda” and how “[t]hose in power, those with money, exploit [the information]...

Even as other banks are backing down, the bank that debanked us doubles down. Last spring, 15 state attorney generals wrote to Bank of America warning that its politically motivated debanking targeting conservatives and religious people was under the looking glass. After taking office, President Trump directly challenged Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan to stop discriminating against conservatives. “I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives, because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank. What you’re doing is wrong.” But instead of ending its political discrimination, BOA launched a...

On January 20, 2025, the first day of his second presidential term, Donald Trump signed an executive order: “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” The bad old days of the “censorship-industrial complex,” allegedly responsible for suppressing online speech under President Joe Biden, were over.Except they weren’t. The driving force behind online censorship had never been the U.S. government, which meant that freedom of speech could not be restored by the stroke of a president’s pen. Rather, the European Union has wielded its Digital Services Act (DSA) to restrict the speech not just of Europeans but especially of Americans...

Partisan targeting or legitimate antitrust inquiry?The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is seeking documents from the left-leaning nonprofit Media Matters to determine whether the self-styled watchdog conspired with other organizations to orchestrate illegal advertiser boycotts of conservative news sites in violation of antitrust laws. In 2024, Elon Musk sued the company for allegedly costing his X platform billions of dollars in lost advertising revenue, leading some observers to criticize the current FTC inquiry as a Musk-inspired alliance.What FTC SeeksThe FTC seeks communications between Media Matters and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) — a cross-industry initiative of the World Federation...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced new visa restrictions the Trump administration is implementing against foreign authorities who it says are "complicit" in censoring Americans. "For too long, Americans have been fined, harassed, and even charged by foreign authorities for exercising their free speech rights," Rubio wrote on X. "Today, I am announcing a new visa restriction policy that will apply to foreign officials and persons who are complicit in censoring Americans. Free speech is essential to the American way of life – a birthright over which foreign governments have no authority." Foreigners who work to undermine the rights of...

The White House has said it is “monitoring” the case of Lucy Connolly in an escalation of free speech tensions with Sir Keir Starmer. State department officials are examining the treatment of Connolly, the wife of a Conservative councillor, who was jailed for 31 months over a social media post about the Southport attacks. Judges threw out an appeal brought by the 42-year-old last week, meaning she will not be released before August. Campaigners raised her case with Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, as part of a wider effort to challenge what they regard as draconian hate speech...

The American public is still learning more about the Biden regime’s sinister nature and how it felt about its political opponents. On Friday, DNI Director Tulsi Gabbard declassified documents that revealed that Americans who opposed the draconian and cruel COVID mandates were declared “Domestic Violent Extremists.” Michael Shellenberger’s Public and Catherine Herridge Reports first obtained the newly declassified records. Former FBI agent Steve Friend explained to Public that the designation created an “articulable purpose” for FBI or other government agents to open an “assessment” of individuals, which is often the first step toward a formal investigation. In other words, COVID...

At one time, most Americans (and virtually all academics) would have agreed with the famous saying, often attributed to Voltaire, “While I disagree with what you say, I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Over the last several decades, that has dramatically changed. Many academics now seem to embrace the opposite view—something like, “Since I disagree with what you say, I will do everything possible to silence you.” Is that an exaggeration? You won’t think so after reading Nicholas Wolfinger’s new book, Professors Speak Out: The Truth About Campus Investigations. Wolfinger, a sociology professor at the...

CNN’s Collins: Media Didn’t Help Shut Down Skepticism, Critical Thinking During COVID Video Source: CNN Ian Hanchett23 May 202544 1:10 During a portion of an interview with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that was aired on Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Source,” host Kaitlan Collins argued that the media wasn’t involved in shutting down skepticism, critical thinking, and people making their own decisions during the coronavirus pandemic. Towards the end of the interview, Kennedy stated, “I would say be skeptical of authority. My father told me that when I was a young kid, people in authority...