Free Republic

President Trump’s lawyers on Tuesday filed a notice of appeal of Judge Tanya Chutkan’s unconstitutional gag order, Reuters reported.

At issue in the hearing on Monday is whether Judge Tanya S. Chutkan should impose a gag order on former President Donald J. Trump in the federal election subversion case. Gag orders can forbid people to publicly discuss a case or aspects of it. In this dispute, Jack Smith, the special counsel, has asked Judge Chutkan to bar Mr. Trump from publicly making “disparaging and inflammatory or intimidating” public statements about witnesses, the District of Columbia jury pool, or the judge and prosecutors themselves. Doing so would raise tricky First Amendment issues as Mr. Trump makes another bid for the...

Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 @julie_kelly2 Here’s the kicker in gag order. It applies to what Jack Smith called “surrogates” in his proposed order. This in effect gags Trump’s campaign spokesmen, advisors, and anyone DOJ/Chutkan views as “others” tied to Trump. NOT a limited gag order—a contempt trap for Team Trump.

President Trump on Monday afternoon responded to Judge Tanya Chutkan’s gag order. Judge Tanya Chutkan held a hearing on Monday morning on Jack Smith’s proposed gag order and used it as an opportunity to attack Trump. President Trump will be barred from speaking out against Special Counsel Jack Smith, court witnesses and more! Trump responded to Chutkan’s unconstitutional gag order. A TERRIBLE THING HAPPENED TO DEMOCRACY TODAY – GAG ORDER!” Trump said on Truth Social as he was about to land in Adel, Iowa for a campaign rally. Trump’s spokeswoman Liz Harrington also released a statement on Chutkan’s gag order....

CNN — A federal judge on Monday issued a gag order on former President Donald Trump, limiting what he can say about special counsel Jack Smith’s federal prosecution into his alleged attempt to subvert in the 2020 presidential election.The order restricts Trump’s ability to publicly target court personnel, potential witnesses, or the special counsel and his staff. The order did not impose restrictions on disparaging comments about Washington, DC, – where the jury will take place – or certain comments about the Justice Department at large, both of which the government requested.

Washington — The federal judge in Washington overseeing the case against former President Donald Trump related to the 2020 election agreed Monday to impose some limitations on what he can say publicly about the case, restricting the former president and his attorneys making statements that target special counsel Jack Smith, his staff, court personnel, and possible witnesses who may testify in the proceedings. The decision from U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan followed a lengthy hearing in federal court in Washington, D.C., regarding a request from Smith and his team to limit what Trump can say about the case brought against...

Brussels, Oct 11--The EU's digital chief Thierry Breton warned Elon Musk on Tuesday that his platform X, formerly Twitter, is spreading "illegal content and disinformation", in a letter seen by AFP. The letter said concerns had heightened after the Hamas attack against Israel, and demanded Musk respond to the complaint within 24 hours and contact "relevant law enforcement authorities." As the European Union's commissioner for industry and the digital economy, Breton is charged with regulating internet giants that trade within the bloc and can launch legal action. "Following the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas against Israel, we have indications...

What matters more to the maintenance of a free society: laws that support free speech, or a culture that supports it? To answer that question, take a look at these three speech protections, each of which is legally afforded to citizens by different countries: “Everyone shall be guaranteed freedom of thought and speech.” “Citizens are guaranteed freedom of speech, the press, assembly, demonstration, and association.” “Everyone has the right to express and disseminate his or her thoughts and opinions by speech, in writing or in pictures or through other media, individually or collectively.” These all sound like relatively principled, robust...

For over a year, I have been writing and commenting on California’s unconstitutional Covid gag law for physicians and other medical professionals. The law allowing the revocation of licenses for “false or misleading information” on Covid-19 was a frontal attack on free speech. Nevertheless, many lawyers supported the law and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it. Now Newsom has quietly signed the repeal of the law after it was headed for an almost certain rejection by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. All of the supporters of the law seem to be shrugging and moving on after...

A Swiss writer has been fined and sentenced to 60 days in prison for a speech crime that's made international headlines. While Alain Bonnet is a controversial figure, in this instance, he was sentenced for defamation, discrimination, and incitement to hatred for calling journalist Catherine Macherel a “fat lesbian” in a Facebook video two years ago, Fox News Digital reports. This won’t be the first time he’s served a prison sentence. He was previously jailed in France over his Holocaust denials, a crime in the country. The Franco-Swiss writer had initially been convicted of defamation at the first instance in...

The claim by Newsweek is rather alarming – that the Dept of Homeland Security and FBI consider President Trump supporters as domestic violent extremists (DVE’s) in combination with official designation from the FBI as “domestic terrorists.”There’s nothing within the article, the citations or the quotes from multiple anonymous officials within the domestic surveillance system, that will seem a surprise if you take away the hyperbolic use of adjectives and descriptive statements. Yes, to the Newsweek readers, anyone who would challenge their worldview or political position is dangerous; after all, these are the same people who equate words with violence.Remember, DHS...

In a bombshell ruling, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has shut down the “nerve center” of federal government-led speech policing, correcting a critical error in its prior jurisprudence and striking a major blow for the First Amendment and against deep-state election interference. The court’s opinion comes in the landmark free speech case in the digital era, Missouri v. Biden. Before the litigation landed in appellate court, Louisiana District Judge Terry A. Doughty declared in a fitting Independence Day ruling that federal authorities from the Biden White House to the FBI and CDC had likely engaged in “the most...

The Costs and Casualties of Government’s Information Total War“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,”This phrase, misattributed to Voltaire, has largely come to dominate—and confuse—our understanding of the importance of free speech in a free society. That misunderstanding seems to be at the heart of the very lukewarm response elicited by the exposure of “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history” unearthed through discovery in Missouri v. Biden now before the Supreme Court. The trouble with this framing of free speech is that it focuses...

A federal court ordered an injunction on a top agency within the Department of Homeland Security after finding that it likely violated the First Amendment by coordinating with social media companies to effectively censor "election-related speech." On Tuesday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals extended the scope of an injunction in place that limits the Biden administration's communication with big tech companies to include the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within the Department of Homeland Security. According to GOP Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who is leading the litigation against the Biden administration, CISA is the "nerve center" of...

A Russian doctor has been convicted of “promoting fascism” — for sharing the music video for The Cranberries’ anti-war mega-hit “Zombie.” Valery Kochnev, a surgeon and aspiring politician who had been running for a seat on the Veliky Novgorod’s City Council as a candidate from the Yabloko opposition party, was found guilty Tuesday of “displaying extremist symbols” and fined the equivalent of $20, his party said. The case revolved around a 2021 post that was published on Kochnev’s “V Kontakte” social media page — and which was discovered by a prosecutor with the Russian Internal Affairs Department’s Center for Countering...

GENEVA (AP) — LGBTQ+ groups hailed the 60-day jail sentence a court in Switzerland gave to a writer and commentator for deriding a journalist as a “fat lesbian” and other critical remarks. The Lausanne court sentenced French-Swiss polemicist Alain Bonnet, who goes by Alain Soral, for the crimes of defamation, discrimination and incitement to hatred on Monday. He was ordered to pay legal fees and fines totaling thousands of Swiss francs (dollars) in addition to the time behind bars.

Since Elon Musk has taken over Twitter (now X), he relaxed its misinformation policies on the platform and has become increasingly critical of Democrats and the Biden administration, federal agencies have begun probing X, Tesla, and SpaceX, raising questions about targeting of the billionaire’s breadth of companies. Following Musk’s takeover of Twitter last year, his companies have been probed by the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission as he has been an advocated for free speech on the platform. The probes include the Justice Department’s Immigrant and Employee Rights division investigating a complaint of employment discrimination from a non-U.S....

Accusing people of “shouting ‘Fire’ in a crowded theater” isn’t sufficient grounds for regulating what they say. Even people who know about the First Amendment still have trouble believing that someone can make false, irresponsible, even dangerous statements without paying any penalty. For instance, when Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, spoke with National Public Radio to promote COVID vaccinations and boosters just before Thanksgiving, he sharply criticized people who intentionally spread misinformation about the vaccine’s safety. “Isn’t this like yelling fire in a crowded theater?” he asked. “Are you really allowed to do that without...

A new lawsuit before the Supreme Court could set the precedent on whether or not various “speech police” efforts on college campuses are constitutional. As the Daily Caller reports, numerous so-called “bias response teams” have been created at colleges across the country, serving the purpose of monitoring speech on campus for any “offensive” remarks, and subsequently taking action against those who make such remarks. These efforts overwhelmingly and disproportionately impact conservative students rather than left-wing students, with the latter often being the ones to report the former to campus authorities. Now, an amicus brief has been filed before the Supreme...

On Friday, September 29, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced a new “regulatory plan” for streaming services that operate in Canada, that earn $10,000,000 annually or more and offer broadcast content (podcasts). According to the CRTC, this is a new way to “modernize” media regulation in Canada so that, in the future, streaming platforms, such as Netflix or social media, “make meaningful contributions to Canadian and Indigenous content.” However, critics say this new measure actually seeks to restrict freedom of expression and silence the few remaining dissident voices in Canada. “Governments hide things by announcing them on Friday...