Free Republic

...An executive summary of the committee’s final report released on Monday provided readers with the committee’s theory of the case against Trump.... ...But there are a number of reasons these particular charges are likely a legal overreach.... ...The threshold for criminalizing speech is a high hurdle to clear. The seminal 1969 Supreme Court case on the matter, Brandenburg v. Ohio, established that it is not criminal even to advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government before a group of armed and menacing members of the Ku Klux Klan. Indeed, the courts have spent decades making it more difficult to...

The FBI may have violated the First Amendment rights of Twitter users when it flagged accounts for the social media platform to review, several legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Twitter became an “agent of the government” when it worked with the FBI to silence specific accounts at the agency’s request, Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow, told the DCNF. Ari Cohn, free speech counsel at TechFreedom, told the DCNF that while the findings of the Twitter Files were “interesting,” he doesn’t believe there are “many legal...

Most college students in the United States should be able to expect that freedom of expression will be upheld on their campuses. Public institutions are legally bound by the First Amendment, and the vast majority of private institutions promise their students free speech rights. However, FIRE’s annual review of our Spotlight database of speech codes reveals most schools maintain policies that infringe on those rights. Of the 486 schools included in FIRE’s Spotlight database, 94 earn an overall “red light” rating for maintaining policies that clearly and substantially restrict free speech. 324 earn an overall “yellow light” rating for maintaining...

President Trump made a major announcement today about his plan to liberate the American people and restore the First Amendment rights that were stolen by “a sinister group of deep state bureaucrats, Silicon Valley tyrants, left-wing activists, and depraved corporate news media.” President Trump announced yesterday that he was coming out with a major announcement today. As The Gateway Pundit reported earlier, President Trump announced that his team has created digital trading cards for sale. This was not the announcement we were expecting. However, President Trump made another absolutely huge announcement promising, “When I am president, this whole rotten system...

For years now, Leftists have waved away freedom of speech concerns over Big Tech’s censorship of voices that dissent from the Left’s agenda. Twitter, Facebook, Google and the rest are all private companies, you see, and so they can set any speech policies they want. Now that Elon Musk has bought Twitter, that argument has been consigned to the dustbin of history, as it might suggest that Musk is free to restore the freedom of speech on his platform. But evidence is piling up that the FBI was actively involved in getting pre-Musk Twitter to censor patriots, and it may...

More damning evidence of collusion between the CDC and social media companies to stifle free speech and censor the public was revealed in the fourth batch of explosive documents obtained from litigation against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released by the nonprofit organization America First Legal (AFL). Twitter allowed government officials and other “stakeholders” to use a secret portal called, “Partner Support Portal” to report anything they believed to be “misinformation.” Previously, back in July 2021, TGP reported on Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai and his investigation, where he uncovered Twitter’s “partner support portal.” Dr. Shiva discovered that Twitter...

Policymakers across the world banned choral singing during the COVID-19 pandemic after taking wrongful interpretations of a high-profile outbreak as facts, a new study suggests. The study, set to be published in Public Health, a British journal, revisits what was widely reported as a “super-spreader event” in March 2020 at Skagit County in northwest Washington State. Among 61 Skagit Valley Chorale members who attended the March 10 rehearsal at a local church, 53 were diagnosed with COVID-19 within a few weeks, including two who died. In a report that had since been used by governments across the world to justify...

From their Website, and emailed to me today. Mass General Brigham is committed to providing high quality healthcare and building healthy and thriving communities. Everyone should expect a safe, caring, and inclusive environment in all our spaces. Our Patient Code of Conduct helps us to meet this goal. Words or actions that are disrespectful, racist, discriminatory, hostile, or harassing are not welcome. Examples of these include: Offensive comments about others’ race, accent, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or other personal traits Refusal to see a clinician or other staff member based on these personal traits Physical or verbal threats and assaults...

The White House doesn’t use a secret Facebook portal to request the removal of alleged “misinformation,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday when asked about a bombshell report laying out how government officials get tech firms to manipulate online speech — despite her predecessor Jen Psaki saying last year the White House was “flagging” Facebook posts it didn’t like. When pressed by The Post, Jean-Pierre said firmly that “no,” the White House does not use the recently exposed portal to request the removal of Facebook or Instagram posts. The Intercept on Monday revealed the existence of the apparently still-active portal...

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...

Steve Bannon has been sentenced to four months in federal prison and fined $6,500.

Censorship of wrongthink by Big Tech at the behest of the government is government censorship, which violates the First Amendment. One warm weekend in October of 2020, three impeccably credentialed epidemiologists—Jayanta Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta, and Martin Kulldorff, of Stanford, Oxford, and Harvard Universities respectively—gathered with a few journalists, writers, and economists at an estate in the Berkshires where the American Institute for Economic Research had brought together critics of lockdowns and other COVID-related government restrictions. On Sunday morning shortly before the guests departed, the scientists encapsulated their views—that lockdowns do more harm than good, and that resources should be devoted...

GREENSBORO, N.C. – In settlement of a lawsuit that Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed on behalf of several pro-life citizens who were arrested for engaging in peaceful prayer and sidewalk counseling outside an abortion facility, Greensboro city officials admitted that the pro-life citizens were cited for their “exercise of constitutionally protected First Amendment rights.” As part of the settlement, the city agreed that the First Amendment protects engaging in pro-life advocacy on public sidewalks and further agreed to uphold citizens’ First Amendment rights in any future proclamation order related to a public-health emergency like COVID-19. Based on the city’s admission...

How did harmful content and misinformation online get so bad — after so much time, money, and scores of people trying to limit the spread of inaccurate, violent, obscene, and harmful content? For starters, the problem is much bigger than it used to be, and human-driven efforts cannot keep up. Even with tens of thousands tackling the problem (Meta’s Trust & Safety team has swelled to an army of more than 40,000) the sheer amount of digital content is too overwhelming. Moderating this content by human review is not only time-consuming, ineffective, and error-prone, it also can endanger the mental...

"This is already war": Commissioner says online platforms drove citizens out onto the streets during the May 2021 Arab-Jewish riots Israel Police commissioner Kobi Shabtai said that in any future outbreaks of severe civil unrest, social media platforms should be shut down in order to halt the spread of violence. Shabtai asserted in an interview that during Arab-Jewish violence in May 2021, social media platforms helped drive civilians to the streets to participate in riots, and that closing them down for a limited period is a necessary step despite democratic norms. "I am of the opinion that in such circumstances,...

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...

The Justice Department has hit the Eagle Forum of Alabama with a voluminous subpoena that violates the organization’s First Amendment rights to speak freely, engage in the political process, and talk to their elected representatives. It’s an intimidation tactic, pure and simple, and shows just how partisan the department has become. This out-of-control behavior should scare every citizen and volunteer organization, no matter where they stand on the political or social spectrum. Eagle Forum is a very small non-profit in Alabama. It only has one full-time employee and a second, part-time employee. Virtually all of its work on issues of...

On August 9, The Gateway Pundit posted an article on a planned demonstration outside the FBI headquarters in Washington DC to protest the “out of control FBI.” The protest was organized by Special Ops Veteran Adam Hardage who said he sees his current mission clear as day; Defending America against Tyranny. TGP later updated the report that the protest was canceled due to the possibility of bad actors and unpredictable actions of law enforcement agencies. The article received hundreds of responses from patriots, 892 people in total. The FBI also flagged a comment posted by a commenter at The Gateway...

After nearly two years of lobbying by representatives of the nation’s largest, wealthiest, and most pro-censorship media companies, after being killed in the House and then revived in the Senate, the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) is (temporarily) dead again — killed by its champion, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), because Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) successfully added an amendment that would prevent media companies and tech companies from colluding on content moderation.The core concept of the JCPA is allowing media companies to form a legal cartel in the U.S., for the sole purpose of negotiating with tech giants for special...