On Saturday, Minnesota will impose penalties on companies that provide technology for artificial intelligence-generated images of an individual’s “intimate parts.” Although legislators might have intended the law, HF 1606, to crack down on nonconsensual AI-generated intimate deepfakes, the law has serious First Amendment problems.

Elon Musk’s xAI filed a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality. While it is impossible to predict the outcome of such challenges with certainty, xAI has raised strong objections that likely will give the court good reason to carefully scrutinize HF 1606.

The law prohibits companies from allowing their technology to be used for “nudification,” which it defines as “an image or video is altered or generated to depict an intimate part not depicted in an original unaltered image or video of an identifiable individual” and “the altered or generated image or video is so realistic that a reasonable person would believe that the intimate part belongs to the identifiable individual.” If a technology is used for nudification, the company faces an action from the state Attorney General seeking up to $500,000 per image, as well as a lawsuit from the subject of the image. HF 1606 has five primary First Amendment problems.

First, the law broadly applies even to images created with the subject’s consent. Minnesota’s law would not be the first to address intimate images, including those generated by artificial intelligence. All states have passed nonconsensual pornography laws, and last year Congress passed the TAKE IT DOWN Act, which requires service providers to remove nonconsensual pornography within 48 hours of a request. But those laws are limited to nonconsensual publication. Minnesota’s law, in contrast, applies regardless of whether the subject of the image consented. “Liability does not depend on whether the person depicted objected to the image, welcomed it, or even made it personally,” xAI wrote in its complaint. “A service used by an adult to edit a photograph of him or herself or a consenting individual is covered on the same terms as a service used to create an image of an unwilling stranger. The statute’s text draws no distinction among them.”

Second, HF 1606 penalizes companies even if they attempt to prevent nudification. The law is “strict liability,” meaning that it applies regardless of the technology company’s state of mind or the steps that the company took to try to prevent people from using the technology to generate intimate images. So even if a company had a rigorous program designed to block the creation of the images and a user circumvented it, that company would face a $500,000 fine per image.

Third, the law applies to a broad range of images. It defines “intimate part” as “the primary genital area, groin, inner thigh, buttocks, or breast of a human being.” As xAI wrote in its brief, the law “bans ordinary depictions of men without shirts, people in shorts or swimsuits, and other body parts routinely displayed in public—far beyond what an ordinary person would consider ‘nudification.’”

Fourth, unlike other state attempts at regulating deepfakes, this law does not have an exception for satire. The Supreme Court has long held that the First Amendment protects satirical expression. It is not difficult to imagine a politician seeking to use the law as revenge for a viral image that was clear satire.

Fifth, the law’s proponents fail to justify why they are going after the technology companies rather than the individuals who generate nonconsensual intimate images. Minnesota, like every state, has a law that addresses nonconsensual distribution of intimate images, or “revenge porn.” Most of those laws, including Minnesota’s, include AI-generated deepfakes. And last year’s federal TAKE IT DOWN Act creates a criminal prohibition on nonconsensual images and a 48-hour takedown system (though, as Jess Miers has aptly demonstrated, that law suffers from its own constitutional problems).

For these reasons, xAI has a strong First Amendment case and a reasonable chance of convincing a judge to strike down the law. If xAI does not succeed, Minnesota’s law and others like it would likely discourage companies entirely from offering image generation in those states. Companies would fear that they could not guarantee with absolute certainty that users would not misuse their services, and it is unlikely that they would risk a half-million-dollar fine each time a user circumvented their controls.

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Jeff Kosseff is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at The Future of Free Speech and the co-author (with Jacob Mchangama) of the new book The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026).

Editors’ Note: Next week, the Free Flow will be on a hiatus. We will resume publishing the following Thursday, August 13.

Join Us! The 2026 Global Free Speech Summit returns on October 2–3 in Nashville, TN. Hosted by The Future of Free Speech and Vanderbilt University, this event will bring together global leaders, thinkers, and change-makers to confront the most urgent threats to freedom of expression and explore bold, resilient solutions. Guests will have the opportunity to attend networking receptions where they can exchange ideas with speakers and other guests.

🎟️ Spots are limited. Get your tickets here.

This Week at a Glance 🔎

• 🇪🇺 CJEU Ruling Threatens Liability Exemptions for Online Platforms

• 🇮🇳 India Orders GitHub to Restrict Content

• 🇺🇲 Judge Blocks SD Law Against Abortion Advertising

• 🇷🇺 Russia Labels Libertarian Party Foreign Agents

• 🇦🇺 Australian Protesters Challenge Ban on Pro-Palestine Slogans

First of All 🇺🇸

» Judge Blocks SD Anti-Abortion Advertising Law

• A federal judge temporarily blocked the enforcement of a South Dakota law against abortion advertising.

• Details:

  • The state prohibits the advertisement of any “article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing an abortion.”

  • Mayday Health, which runs an informational website about where people can access abortion pills, sued over the law.

  • U.S. District Judge Camela Theeler said the law is a content-based restriction and will have to meet a high bar to be constitutional.

» LA City Council Ban Sparks Speech Concerns

• Civil liberties groups submitted a joint letter to the Los Angeles City Council over its July 2025 ban on using the N-word and C-word during their meetings.

• Details:

  • The council said the words were “fighting words” and unprotected speech.

  • The groups intend to file a lawsuit if the ban is not repealed within 30 days.

  • The letter also argues against a policy barring individuals removed from meetings from attending future ones for a limited time period.

» NC National Guard Settles Free Speech Case

• The North Carolina National Guard settled a case brought by veteran Timothy Stanhope, who alleged it had violated his First Amendment rights.

• Details:

  • Stanhope made several posts on the Guard’s Facebook page criticizing leadership.

  • The Guard revoked his access to the page, removed his posts, and pressured him to retire.

  • The Guard settled the case and restored Stanhope’s access and posts on Facebook.

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The Digital Age 🤖

» India Orders Restrictions on GitHub

• 🇮🇳 India’s Ministry of Home Affairs directed GitHub to restrict content on the grounds that its open-source software could facilitate unlawful activity.

• Details:

  • GitHub operates Bitchat repositories that allow users to communicate amid internet shutdowns and avoid centralized networks’ restrictions.

  • The notice resembled the format of recent government takedown notices, but did not identify specific posts or messages with unlawful material.

  • Instead, it orders GitHub to restrict access to three Bitchat repositories within three hours because its software makes it possible to “circumvent lawful restrictions.”

  • The order comes as authorities crack down on student-led protests over alleged examination paper leaks, as mentioned in last week’s Free Flow.

The Brussels Effect: Europe and Beyond 🇪🇺

» CJEU Ruling Threatens Online Platforms’ Liability Exemptions

• A recent judgment by the European Court of Justice threatens to remove liability exemptions for user-generated content for platforms with certain algorithms.

• Details:

  • The Court evaluated restrictions on Coyote System, a navigation service that notifies drivers about roadside checks.

  • It formulated a general test for when an intermediary is no longer considered a “neutral” host and exempt from liability over user-generated content.

  • It held that when an algorithm determines “under what conditions, how and in which order of priority” information is disseminated, the intermediary loses its liability exemption.

  • The Electronic Frontier Foundation argues the Court’s reasoning could apply to social media platforms’ recommendation algorithms, exposing them to liability and incentivizing them to remove too much content.

» EU Finds TikTok Violated Digital Services Act

• The European Commission found TikTok did not adequately protect children’s privacy rights on its platform by allowing adults to view minors’ accounts.

• Details:

  • Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said allowing children aged 13-15 to “easily” change their accounts from private to public is unacceptable.

  • Regnier argued the action exposed children to cyberbullying, grooming, and predators.

  • TikTok could face fines of up to 6% of its total annual revenue.

» EU AI-Label Mandate to Take Effect

• The EU will begin enforcing artificial intelligence transparency rules on August 2, requiring companies to label AI-generated content.

• Details: Companies must ensure their AI systems inform users when they are using AI, such as a chatbot, or when an image or text was created using AI.

» Italian Journalist Held Liable for Users’ Comments

• 🇮🇹 Italy’s Court of Cassation held journalist Fabio Butera liable for third-party users’ comments on his Facebook page.

• Context:

  • In a 2018 Facebook post, Butera criticized a news report by journalist Valentino Gonzato.

  • Gonzato filed a civil defamation lawsuit against Butera.

  • Lower courts found Butera’s post was not defamatory, but users’ comments on the post were, and ordered Butera to pay damages for failing to remove them.

  • Italy’s Court of Cassation, its highest appellate court, upheld the lower court’s reasoning.

Free Speech Recession 🌍

» Russia Labels Libertarian Party ‘Foreign Agent’

• 🇷🇺 The Russian Ministry of Justice added the Libertarian Party of Russia (LPR) and 24 of its members to its list of foreign agents, barring it from participating in elections.

• Context:

  • Russia’s 2012 foreign agents law allows NGOs to be labeled foreign agents if they receive foreign funding and engage in political activity.

  • In 2022, it was broadened to include media organizations and individuals “under foreign influence.”

  • The registry lists LPR as having disseminated material of other “foreign agents” and “unreliable information” about Russian policies and the electoral system.

  • Designated foreign agents are subject to labeling and reporting rules and can face administrative or criminal liability, including fines, searches, and imprisonment.

» Australian Protesters Challenge Ban on Pro-Palestine Slogans

• 🇦🇺 A group of 7 pro-Palestinian activists filed a lawsuit against a Queensland law banning the slogans “from the river to the sea” and “globalise the intifada.”

• Details: The suit follows the arrest of more than 20 people protesting the ban when it was passed in March, as mentioned in a previous Free Flow.

» Egypt Detains Dozens Over Online Activism

• 🇪🇬 Since late May, Egyptian authorities have arrested at least 50 people part of a Gen Z online group criticizing the government and calling for change.

• Details:

  • The group, known as “Gen Z002,” was formed in October 2025 on Discord and hosts online discussions and live voice chats on political developments.

  • Those arrested are under investigation for terrorism-related and false news charges.

  • Some allege being forcibly disappeared for periods ranging from 6 to 40 days and being tortured.

» U.S. Embassy Concerned Over Georgia’s Hate Speech Department

• 🇬🇪 The U.S. Embassy in Georgia said it is concerned about the state’s new Hate Speech Department.

• Context:

  • The statement was a response to questions around the detention of journalist Vakho Sanaia, which was included in last week’s Free Flow.

  • The Department was created in June to detect statements that “violate/insult human dignity and contain hate speech.”

» Russian Editors Fined For Reporting on Former Official

• 🧑‍⚖️ A magistrate in Moscow’s Tagansky district fined two Russian editors for reporting on remarks made by Andrey Tsyganov, a former member of Roskomnadzor, the country’s communications regulator.

• Details:

  • Tsyganov called for the promotion of domestic heroes and said children were being raised on Western characters, including anime, toy cars, and Spider-Men.

  • The Daily Storm, a Telegram channel, reported on his remarks on February 24.

  • On March 2, the first deputy prosecutor general demanded that the post be restricted as material “aimed at destabilizing socio-political situations.”

  • RusNews reported on the remarks in March, adding that Tsyganov proposed substituting Western characters with war veterans.

  • A magistrate fined the heads of the two outlets 30,000 rubles ($385), arguing the editors failed to send an official inquiry to Roskomnadzor to verify the information.

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Ashley Haek is a communications coordinator and research assistant at The Future of Free Speech.

Audrey Campbell is a communications intern at The Future of Free Speech and an international relations major at American University.

Isabella Dail is a communications intern at The Future of Free Speech and a recent graduate from Princeton University with a bachelor’s in philosophy.

History shows that freedom of expression comes under its greatest pressure during periods of war. Faced with military conflict or perceived threats to national security, governments have repeatedly concluded that exceptional dangers justify exceptional restrictions on speech. During the First World War, the United States enacted the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, leading to the prosecution and imprisonment of thousands of individuals for anti-war speech, including the socialist leader Eugene Debs. Similar patterns emerged in Germany. The Weimar Republic did not collapse because it tolerated Nazi speech. It imposed extensive censorship and emergency restrictions, many of which were later exploited by the Nazis themselves to dismantle democracy after taking power. This demonstrates a recurring constitutional challenge. Exceptional measures rarely remain confined to their original purpose. Instead, they often expand in scope, applying to new actors, new forms of communication and new circumstances.

The European Union’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine fits within the above historical tradition. Describing Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik as central components of “an international campaign of media manipulation and distortion of facts,” the Council of the European Union prohibited the broadcasting and distribution of their content throughout the region. The legality of those measures was subsequently upheld by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU/Court), which accepted that the circumstances created by Russia’s aggression justified the action taken. The broader sanctions regime also illustrates the progressive expansion of these exceptional measures. In fact, the EU has imposed restrictive measures not only on Russian state-controlled media, but also on individuals alleged to have engaged in “information manipulation and interference.” For example, Jacques Baud, a former Swiss army colonel and former NATO official, was one of several persons subjected to travel restrictions and an asset freeze after the Council alleged that he promoted pro-Russian narratives through media appearances

The Court’s recent judgment in Case C-67/25 concerns a different question, but one with potentially broad implications. It does not ask whether RT itself may lawfully be prohibited from broadcasting. That has already been settled. Rather, it asks how far that prohibition extends once RT’s content leaves the broadcaster. Can a private individual who republishes RT material through a free website become subject to the same restriction?

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From Broadcasters to Disseminators

The case reached the Court through the preliminary ruling procedure under Article 267 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). Under that procedure, national courts may ask the CJEU to interpret EU law where the answer is necessary to resolve proceedings before them. The CJEU does not determine whether the defendants are guilty of a criminal offence. Rather, it provides an authoritative interpretation of EU law that the referring court must subsequently apply to the facts before it.

The reference arose from criminal proceedings before a German court concerning three individuals accused of repeatedly making RT Germany videos available through a publicly accessible website financed exclusively through voluntary donations. The referring court asked whether such individuals could qualify as “operators” within the meaning of Article 2f(1) of the aforementioned Regulation. The article prohibits operators from broadcasting, enabling, facilitating or otherwise contributing to the broadcast of, amongst others, RT Germany, including through distribution through internet service providers, internet video-sharing platforms or applications.

The Court noted that the concept of ‘operator’ extends to “any natural or legal person directly or indirectly responsible for making available or transmitting that content to the public,” including where the activity is non-remunerated or carried out through a website financed by voluntary contributions. Specifically, the CJEU noted that, because the website relied on voluntary contributions from third parties, identifying the origins of its funding and, consequently, any potential influence over the content it broadcast could help prevent interference by foreign nationals. As such, the CJEU found that the website “may be used to relay the propaganda campaign which the Russian Federation engages in and which Regulation No 833/2014 seeks to prohibit.”

One may argue that a prohibition applying only to RT itself would be easy to circumvent in an online environment where information is replicated instantaneously by countless intermediaries. Yet every extension of an exceptional speech restriction raises a fresh constitutional question. Restricting the broadcaster itself is one thing. Extending that restriction to those who subsequently disseminate its content is another. It is that question, rather than the fate of RT itself, that makes Case C-67/25 a deeply concerning judgment for freedom of expression.

Beyond RT: Effectiveness, Proportionality and the Limits of the Ban

At its core, Case C-67/25 permits national courts to treat the republication of RT content by third parties as falling within the EU prohibition on dissemination, even where those third parties are independent, volunteer-funded websites and do not themselves produce or control RT’s broadcasts.

In grappling with the question posed by the German court, the CJEU proceeds on the implicit assumption that once the restriction imposed on RT has been accepted as proportionate, extending that restriction to others becomes primarily a question of ensuring the Regulation’s effectiveness. The result is a judgment in which effet utile largely eclipses proportionality. The CJEU said remarkably little about why the broader interpretation it adopts represents the least restrictive means of achieving the same objective. It did not examine whether extending the prohibition to non-profit-making third parties who merely reproduce RT material strikes a fair balance between the objective of combating Russian state propaganda and the right to freedom of expression guaranteed by Article 11 of the Charter if Fundamental Rights of the European Union (Charter) on the right to freedom of expression. Instead, the restriction is largely treated as self-justifying.

This is particularly notable because the Court has demonstrated elsewhere that it is capable of undertaking rigorous proportionality review where freedom of expression is at stake. In Commission v Hungary, the CJEU carefully assessed whether the measures in question were suitable, necessary and proportionate in light of the Charter before concluding that they could not be justified. No comparable exercise appears in Case C-67/25. The contrast raises legitimate questions about the consistency of the Court’s approach. It gives the impression that proportionality is applied selectively, rather than forming an indispensable component of the Court’s fundamental rights analysis.

Nor does the Court identify a principled limiting criterion. If liability depends upon making prohibited content available, how should courts distinguish between dissemination intended to amplify RT’s messaging and dissemination undertaken for entirely different purposes? Investigative journalists regularly reproduce original broadcasts to expose disinformation. Researchers preserve and analyse the material for historical and academic purposes. Documentary filmmakers rely upon authentic footage because it provides the most accurate record of events. Civil society organisations monitoring foreign influence operations frequently publish examples of the material they analyse. None of these actors share RT’s objectives. Yet each may, in one sense, make the prohibited material available to others. The Court offers almost no guidance as to where the legal boundary lies.

Admittedly, those questions were not directly before the Court. Under Article 267 TFEU, the Court answers the questions referred by the national court rather than constructing a comprehensive framework governing every conceivable factual situation. Even so, the broader the interpretation adopted, the greater the need for clear limiting principles. Those principles are largely absent from the judgment.

However, the right freedom of expression depends not only upon substantive protection, but also upon legal certainty. Individuals should be able to foresee, with reasonable confidence, whether their conduct falls within the scope of a legal prohibition. The CJEU’s interpretation undoubtedly makes it more difficult to circumvent the prohibition on RT content. Whether it provides equally clear guidance to journalists, academics, researchers and others who reproduce such material for legitimate public interest purposes is considerably less obvious.

Conclusion

The significance of Case C-67/25 extends beyond RT or the facts of the German proceedings. It reflects a broader constitutional shift. A severe restriction, originally directed at a specific state-controlled broadcaster during a geopolitical crisis, has been extended to encompass independent third parties who reproduce the broadcaster’s content, including operators of websites funded solely through voluntary donations. Whether every such reproduction will ultimately attract criminal liability remains a matter for the national courts. What the CJEU has done is make that possibility legally conceivable.

Liberal democracies are often judged not by how they protect freedom of expression in ordinary times, but by how they protect it during periods of crisis. History demonstrates that exceptional measures have a tendency to expand beyond the circumstances that first justified them. That is precisely why proportionality and legal certainty matter. They ensure that exceptional restrictions remain exceptional. The concern raised by Case C-67/25 is not simply that the CJEU interpreted Article 2f broadly. It is that, in doing so, it offered little explanation of where the constitutional limits of that interpretation lie.

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Natalie Alkiviadou is a Senior Research Fellow at The Future of Free Speech. Her research interests lie in freedom of expression, the far-right, hate speech, hate crime, and non-discrimination.

TL;DR

• Colorado Overhauls Its AI Law After a First Amendment Challenge: A federal court stayed enforcement of Colorado’s AI Act weeks before its June 30 effective date after xAI argued its disclosure requirements as compelled speech and the DOJ intervened on equal protection grounds; the legislature replaced it with a narrower statute and separately enacted a companion chatbot safety law for minors, both taking effect January 1, 2027.

• FTC Targets State AI “Truthful Output” Laws: The FTC opened public comment on a policy statement arguing that state laws forcing AI models to alter truthful outputs, including Colorado’s previous AI Act, may be preempted as unfair or deceptive practices under federal law.

• US Export Controls Force Anthropic to Suspend Its Newest Models: The government ordered Anthropic to cut off foreign nationals’ access to its newest models in June, citing national security; the controls were lifted three weeks later, and OpenAI similarly limited its own new releases at the government’s request amid growing federal oversight of frontier AI.

• “Preventing Woke AI” Order Takes Effect for Federal Contractors: As of July 1, agencies must apply “ideological neutrality” criteria to AI procurement, requiring vendors to document that their models avoid “ideological bias” or risk losing their federal contracts.

• EU Finalizes “Digital Omnibus on AI,” Bans “Nudifier” Apps: Parliament and Council reached final political agreement in early May on a package that delays high-risk compliance deadlines while banning AI tools that generate non-consensual intimate imagery or CSAM, giving companies more time to comply.

• US Circulates Draft UN Declaration Targeting EU Tech Rules: Ahead of September’s UN General Assembly, the Trump administration is lobbying world leaders to sign a declaration on free expression that challenges the EU’s Digital Services Act and its approach to online speech.

• China Partially Bans AI “Companion” Apps: New rules effective July 15 ban virtual romantic or family partners for minors and require pre-launch review of any AI with a human-like personality, prompting ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent to pull their companion features.

• South Korea’s Amended AI Basic Act Takes Effect: A revised enforcement decree took effect July 21 as Seoul announced a free, domestically built chatbot meant to reduce reliance on foreign platforms like ChatGPT, in an explicit bid for “AI sovereignty.”

• German Court Rules Google Liable for AI Overviews: A Munich court held Google directly liable for false AI-generated claims about two publishers.

• New York Passes Bill Requiring AI-Content Disclosure by News Outlets: The FAIR News Act, passed in the final hours of the legislative session, would let the state Attorney General fine outlets for failing to disclose AI-generated content; press groups warn its copyright exemption is illusory, and it now awaits Governor Hochul’s decision.

• Meta Built, Then Removed, Facial-Recognition Code From Smart Glasses App: Reporting revealed dormant code that would have identified strangers in public through Ray-Ban smart glasses; Meta pulled the code the day after the story broke, following earlier warnings from lawmakers and advocacy groups.

Major Stories

» Colorado Overhauls Its AI Law After a First Amendment Challenge

• Federal court stayed the enforcement of Colorado’s Consumer Protections for Artificial Intelligence Act (SB 24-205), the country’s most comprehensive AI accountability statute. Then, the law was repealed and replaced weeks before its long-delayed June 30 start date. Two weeks after, Governor Polis had already signed a separate law creating a new safety track for AI chatbots that interact with children.

• Details:

  • On April 9, xAI sued in federal court, arguing the law’s algorithmic-discrimination and disclosure duties compelled speech in violation of the First Amendment; the Department of Justice filed a companion complaint on April 24 supporting that position, the first time the DOJ has intervened in a lawsuit challenging a state AI law.

  • A federal magistrate judge stayed enforcement on April 27, and the legislature quickly passed a narrower replacement, SB 26-189 before Governor Polis signed it on May 14. It drops the mandatory bias-audit and algorithmic-discrimination duties for a narrower disclosure-and-notice framework, with a new effective date of January 1, 2027.

• A Second Colorado Law:

  • On May 29, Polis signed the Chatbot Safety Act, requiring conversational AI operators to disclose that a service is AI, estimate users’ age, and implement a suicide/self-harm response protocol.

  • Output also cannot be presented as equivalent to licensed professional services and must report annually to the Attorney General. The law shares SB 26-189’s 2027 effective date.

  • For minors, operators must additionally block sexually explicit content and statements simulating emotional dependence, stop engaging if a user prompts about sexual conduct involving a minor, avoid using points or rewards to encourage engagement, and provide privacy/account-management tools for the minor or their parent/guardian.

Free Speech Implications: The case illustrates how First Amendment compelled-speech arguments, backed by the federal government, can unwind an enacted state AI law. The Chatbot Safety Act targets product design and disclosure rather than content, though its requirements to detect and interrupt certain conversations could still push companies toward more moderation of sensitive discussions with young users.

For insight into Colorado’s now-repealed AI Act, see the US chapter of FoFS’s report: “That Violates My Policies: AI Laws, Policies, and the Future of Expression.”

» FTC Targets State AI “Truthful Output” Laws Like Colorado’s

• On July 1, the FTC opened public comment on a proposed policy statement arguing that AI companies which distort their models’ outputs to satisfy undisclosed ideological objectives may be engaging in unfair or deceptive practices, and that state laws compelling such alterations may be preempted.

• Details:

  • The statement, issued under a December 2025 executive order, invokes the FTC’s authority under Section 5 of the FTC Act to police “unfair or deceptive” conduct, arguing that AI companies distorting outputs for undisclosed ideological reasons may be deceiving consumers about their products’ objectivity. It names Colorado’s previous AI Act as coercing companies into altering outputs to serve state ideological objectives, and states such a law is “impliedly preempted” where it conflicts with federal policy.

  • Chairman Andrew Ferguson framed the goal as advancing US “dominance in artificial intelligence” by preventing ideological subversion of AI systems, and noted the statement follows the FTC’s 2025 inquiry into AI companion chatbots.

Free Speech Implications: In line with other efforts to write culture-war framing into AI policy, the proposed statement risks substituting one orthodoxy for another. Under the banner of truth-seeking and neutrality, these actions give providers a reason to align their outputs with the views of whichever administration is in office.

» US Export Controls Force Anthropic to Suspend Its Newest Models

• On June 12, the US Department of Commerce ordered Anthropic to cut off foreign nationals’ access to its newly launched Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, citing national security. Unable to verify users’ nationality in real time, Anthropic suspended both models for everyone.

• Details:

  • The trigger was a jailbreak technique found by Amazon researchers that could bypass a Fable 5 safeguard; Anthropic says the flaw is now largely fixed.

  • The Commerce Department lifted the controls on June 30; Fable 5 returned globally July 1, while Mythos 5 had already been restored for vetted US organizations on June 26.

  • Days later, OpenAI similarly limited new GPT-5.6 models to trusted partners at the government’s request, and by mid-July the administration was reportedly dictating frontier-model access decisions directly.

  • Both episodes trace back to a June 2 executive order asking AI developers to voluntarily give the government advance access to their most capable models before public release.

  • This follows our previous coverage of Anthropic’s suit over a Pentagon “supply-chain risk” designation, where a CA court sided with Anthropic on First Amendment grounds.

Free Speech Implications: The existing opaque and case-by-case system in which officials can suspend a newly launched model overnight, and shape who gets early access to others, gives real leverage over when and to whom new AI capabilities become available.

» “Preventing Woke AI” Procurement Order Takes Effect for Federal Contractors

• Executive Order 14319, signed in July 2025 to bar the federal government from buying AI models with “ideological biases or social agendas,” became operative for new acquisitions on July 1, 2026, after OMB issued implementing guidance in December 2025 and gave agencies until March to update their procurement policies.

• Details:

  • Vendors supplying large language models to federal agencies must document adherence to the order’s “Unbiased AI Principles” of truth-seeking and ideological neutrality, providing acceptable-use policies and model cards, or risk having contracts terminated if an agency finds a model’s outputs reflect prohibited “ideological bias.”

  • The order exempts national security systems, open-source models, and incidental administrative use, but covers most commercial LLM procurement; it does not ban any specific model outright, only requiring disclosure of how it was built and trained.

Free Speech Implications: A state-defined “neutrality” standard, backed by the threat of lost federal contracts, gives vendors a strong incentive to sand down substantive answers on contested topics, and that caution can follow into their commercial products as well.

» EU Finalizes “Digital Omnibus on AI,” Bans “Nudifier” Apps

• Parliament and Council finalized the “AI Omnibus” in June, an agreement first struck in early May that pushes back key AI Act deadlines while adding, for the first time, an EU-wide ban on AI tools built to generate non-consensual intimate imagery or CSAM. Parliament adopted the deal June 16 and the Council followed June 29.

• Details:

  • The main change delays compliance for high-risk AI systems, things like biometrics, hiring tools, and law enforcement uses, from August 2026 to December 2027; AI used as a safety component in other products gets even longer, until August 2028. Watermarking requirements for AI-generated content are also pushed back, to December 2026.

  • The new “nudifier” ban prohibits any AI system built or sold in the EU for generating non-consensual intimate or sexually explicit images of real people or that does not have reasonable safety measures to prevent such creation; companies have until December 2026 to comply.

  • The package also narrows which AI features count as “high-risk” and gives the EU’s AI Office more centralized power to enforce the rules.

  • Separately from the Digital Omnibus on AI, the Commission adopted the guidelines on Article 50 of the AI Act, which deals with transparency obligations for interactive AI systems and the marking and labelling of AI-generated content.

Free Speech Implications: The omnibus resets the AI Act’s clock for key provision without settling what it requires. For expression, the substance now moves to the guidelines, codes of practice and early enforcement decisions that follow, which is where the Act’s practical reach over generative systems will actually be determined, and which we will continue to track.

» US Circulates Draft UN Declaration Targeting EU Tech Rules

• Ahead of the UN General Assembly’s September session, the Trump administration is circulating a draft declaration on freedom of expression that would conflict with the EU’s approach to platform regulation.

• Details:

  • Signatories would “commit to recognizing” that punishing alleged “disinformation,” “false information,” or “hate speech” risks freedom of expression unless the material directly incites violence, and the draft would shield platforms from government mandates to proactively fact-check or remove such content, creating a tension with key provisions in the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA).

  • The push extends a year of US-EU friction over the DSA, including a February 2025 presidential memorandum reviewing whether EU and UK rules “undermine free speech” and a December 2025 decision barring five European officials and activists linked to DSA enforcement from entering the US; the US mission to the UN has separately stated that it “will not accept suppression of the freedom of expression under the guise of combatting ‘disinformation’ and ‘misinformation.’”

Free Speech Implications: Laws targeting hate speech and disinformation are producing real and documented restrictions on expression worldwide, and a standard confining punishment to speech that directly incites violence or causes other clear harms would be a genuine step forward. Its credibility, however, hinges on the administration’s willingness to live up to its own principles. Washington is asking other governments to stop policing false speech at the same moment its own consumer-protection regulator is proposing to police how AI companies handle accuracy, as discussed above, within a wider push for “truth-seeking” AI.

» China Partially Bans AI “Companion” Apps

• China’s first regulations on AI companion services took effect July 15, banning virtual romantic or family partners for minors and requiring pre-launch review of any AI with a human-like personality.

• Details:

  • The rules, issued in April by China’s Cyberspace Administration and four other agencies, target bots that simulate a consistent personality and sustained emotional relationship with users, and require reminders every two hours for users flagged as overly reliant on a service.

  • ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent all discontinued companion features in Doubao, Qianwen, and Yuanbao around the deadline, prompting an outpouring of grief online from users who described their AI companions as partners or family members.

Free Speech Implications: Banning simulated relationships limits the expressive experience users seek from these tools, and the pre-launch review requirement leaves little public visibility into how regulators are actually applying that standard.

For insight into China’s AI policies, see the China chapter of FoFS’s report: “That Violates My Policies: AI Laws, Policies, and the Future of Expression.”

» South Korea’s Amended AI Basic Act Takes Effect

• A revised enforcement decree under South Korea’s AI Basic Act, the world’s second comprehensive AI law after the EU’s, took effect July 21, as the government announced plans for a free, state-backed chatbot to compete with foreign platforms.

• Details:

  • The AI Basic Act has been in force since January 22, with fines generally deferred during a grace period; the July 21 amendment expands procurement preferences for domestic AI and requires labeling of generative AI content across ten sensitive sectors, including healthcare, education, and criminal investigations.

  • Science Minister Bae Kyung-hoon said the government aims to roll out a free public chatbot and AI agent by year’s end, an explicit bid for “AI sovereignty,” as nearly 23 million of South Korea’s 51 million residents currently use ChatGPT.

Free Speech Implications: A state-subsidized, domestically developed alternative to foreign chatbots does reduce reliance on any single foreign platform which diversifies the information ecosystem, but a chatbot built and promoted by the government itself invites questions about whether its outputs on politically sensitive topics will be shaped by the same authority funding it.

For insight into South Korea’s AI policies, see the Republic of Korea chapter of FoFS’s report: “That Violates My Policies: AI Laws, Policies, and the Future of Expression.”

» German Court Rules Google Liable for AI Overviews

• The Regional Court of Munich ruled in May that Google may be held directly liable for false claims made by its AI-generated search overviews.

• Details:

  • The case arose after Google’s AI Overviews falsely linked two Munich publishers to scams and “dubious business practices,” drawing connections that did not appear in any underlying source; the court issued a preliminary injunction and ordered Google to cover 80 percent of legal costs.

  • The court held that AI Overviews generate “independent, new, and substantive statements,” making Google itself responsible for what the AI says, and that AI-generated opinion carries markedly weaker expressive protection than human speech since it is “the result of an algorithm” rather than a genuinely held view.

Free Speech Implications: The ruling suggests AI-generated expression may not carry the same weight as human expression when courts balance it against other rights, a doctrine with major implications for how liability, and possibly protection, will be allocated as AI-generated content displaces more human-authored text across the web.

» New York Passes Bill Requiring AI-Content Disclosure by News Outlets

• In the final hours of its session on June 5, the New York Legislature passed the FAIR News Act, which would require news publishers to conspicuously disclose when content is “substantially composed” using generative AI; the bill now awaits Governor Hochul’s signature or veto, which she has until the end of the year to decide.

• Details:

  • The bill would empower the state Attorney General to determine what content is “substantially” AI-generated and fine outlets $1,000 for a first violation and $5,000 for subsequent ones.

  • Senator Patricia Fahy says the bill targets “fly-by-night” outlets, not mainstream newsrooms, which are shielded by a copyright exemption; press groups, including the New York News Publishers Association argue that carve-out is illusory and the bill could reach any newsroom.

  • The FAIR News Act is one of several AI bills passed by Albany lawmakers before adjourning, alongside a companion-chatbot safety bill for minors and an AI training-data transparency measure.

Free Speech Implications: The bill has the potential to force newsrooms to publish a government-mandated disclaimer, and it hands the Attorney General discretion to decide which outlets’ editorial processes trigger that obligation, and potentially, its fines.

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» Meta Built, Then Removed, Facial-Recognition Code From Smart Glasses App

• Meta had quietly embedded dormant facial-recognition code, internally called “Name Tag,” inside the Meta AI companion app used to pair its Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses. Reported on June 4, the code was stripped from the app the very next day.

• Details:

  • The code, present in an app downloaded more than 50 million times, would have converted faces into biometric “faceprints” and matched them against a database, even though Meta had publicly said no decision had been made to launch the feature.

  • More than 70 advocacy organizations had already urged Meta to abandon the plans; Meta’s June 5 update stripped the recognition pipeline out, though the company did not explain why the code was there or whether the feature will return. Meta executives criticized the reporting that surfaced the code as misleading.

  • We flagged the early warning signs of this story in our March-April edition, when senators and a 75-organization coalition first pressed Meta over the same underlying facial-recognition plans.

Free Speech Implications: Always-on, AI-enabled cameras capable of identifying strangers in public without their knowledge or consent threaten the anonymity that underlies free association and expression in public spaces.

The Future of Free Speech in Action

Registration is open for the third annual Global Free Speech Summit, hosted by The Future of Free Speech and Vanderbilt University on October 2-3, 2026, which will again convene scholars, policymakers, and industry representatives to discuss threats to free expression worldwide, including AI’s growing role in shaping public discourse across democracies and authoritarian states alike.

The Future of Free Speech joined a coalition in a letter urging the Senate Judiciary Committee not to advance the NO FAKES Act of 2026 in its current form, warning that its takedown regime creates a “heckler’s veto” over lawful speech by pushing platforms to remove content first and sort out satire, parody, or commentary later.

The Future of Free Speech also joined a letter to the ITU Secretary-General urging meaningful civil society participation in the AI for Good Global Commission. The Commission brings together more than 40 Founding Members — governments, companies, and UN agencies — to help define practical pathways for AI governance. Yet it included no civil society representatives, a departure from the multistakeholder tradition that leaves important voices unheard, including those of disadvantaged communities.

Senior Research Fellow Jordi Calvet-Bademunt spoke at the 2026 Internet Communications Governance Forum, held in Taipei on May 12–13, 2026, where he discussed developments in international AI legislation and their implications for free speech. The event is organized by Taiwan’s National Communications Commission and the Taipei Computer Association.

Jordi also presented findings from our ongoing project on AI and freedom of expression at Columbia University, Esade Law School, and a meeting of the Freedom Online Coalition, which brings together representatives of 41 countries. He additionally discussed these findings bilaterally with representatives of EU institutions.

Senior Legal Fellow Ashkhen Kazaryan joined the Business Untitled podcast to discuss chatbot liability, algorithmic “hidden editors,” and the free-speech stakes of the TikTok debate and deepfake regulation.

Executive Director Jacob Mchangama spoke at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on May 12, 2026, where he discussed the “AI and Censorship” dilemma.

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Isabelle Anzabi is a research associate at The Future of Free Speech, where she analyzes the intersections between AI policy and freedom of expression.

Jordi Calvet-Bademunt is a Senior Research Fellow at The Future of Free Speech and a Visiting Scholar at Vanderbilt University.

Join Us! The 2026 Global Free Speech Summit returns on October 2–3 in Nashville, TN. Hosted by The Future of Free Speech and Vanderbilt University, this event brings together global leaders, thinkers, and changemakers to confront the most urgent threats to freedom of expression and explore bold, resilient solutions. Guests will have the opportunity to attend networking receptions to exchange ideas with speakers and fellow guests.

🎟️ Spots are limited. Get your tickets here.

This Week at a Glance 🔎

— 🇺🇲 New Rules Target Foreign Journalists’ Visas

— 🇦🇺 X Appeals Block on Footage of Aftermath of Bondi Beach Attack

— 🇬🇧 UK Report Labels Political Claims ‘Misinformation’

— 🇹🇳 Tunisian Journalist Jailed Over Social Media Posts

— 🇯🇵 Japan Bans Desecration of National Flag

First of All 🇺🇲

» New Rules Target Foreign Journalists’ Visas

• The Trump administration announced new visa rules that will cut the duration of foreign journalists’ visas from five years to 240 days.

• Details:

  • 🇨🇳 Visas for Chinese journalists will be shortened to 90 days.

  • The new rules will also introduce “clear, finite limits” on visas for exchange visitors and foreign students.

Our Take: In a statement, Jacob Mchangama argued, “Press freedom is enshrined in the Constitution, yet these policies treat journalists with suspicion, leaving foreign correspondents to weigh honest reporting against the risk of losing their ability to work in the country.”

» D.C. Circuit Upholds Pentagon Journalist Escort Policy

• In a case brought by The New York Times, the D.C. Circuit Court ruled that the Pentagon can continue enforcing its journalist escort policy in a split 2-1 decision.

• Details:

  • The decision pauses a district judge’s preliminary ruling suspending the policy, as mentioned in a previous Free Flow.

  • The majority found the policy did not constitute unlawful retaliation because The Times did not argue that the policy unfairly targeted it.

  • ✍️ Judge Bradley Garcia dissented, saying a “retaliatory government policy should not be immunized simply because it is broadly and evenly applied.”

  • The Times plans to continue litigation on the merits.

» DOJ Seeks Phone Records of Journalists and Their Families

• The Department of Justice is reportedly seeking the phone records of three journalists who covered security concerns over the Qatar-gifted Air Force One jet.

• Details:

  • The news comes after the department issued subpoenas to the reporters, summoning them to testify before a grand jury.

  • The New York Times reports the DOJ is seeking records from third-party communications companies, including those of two of the reporters’ spouses.

  • The DOJ insists that “reporters are not the targets, those leaking classified information are.”

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The Digital Age 🤖

» X Appeals Bondi Shooting Video Ban

• X has appealed a decision by the Classification Review Board that a video showing fallen and dying victims in the aftermath of the December 14 shooting on Australia’s Bondi Beach could not be shown in the country.

• Context: The Classification Review Board is a statutory body that guides Australia’s national classification of various content.

• Regulators’ Perspective:

  • Regulators claim that the video is too violent and that platforms are attempting to monetize harmful content.

  • Richard Lancaster, lead lawyer for Australia’s antisemitism royal commission, questioned: “whether X Corp has or ought to have a social license to operate in Australia.”

• X’s Perspective:

  • 🇦🇺 X said the decision violates Australia’s free speech protections and argued the film provides evidence “against anyone seeking to deny” or minimize the event.

  • It also noted that graphic depictions of historical events — the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, Australian special forces’ war crimes in Afghanistan — are permitted in Australian media.

» Meta Report Warns of Cross-Border AI Restrictions

• A Meta Oversight Board study found that AI systems are more likely to refuse to criticize restrictive governments or leaders.

• Details:

  • 💻 The study asked 10 large language models to give reasons to join a protest, write a critical pamphlet, or write a limerick.

  • The report said models responding to an Australia-based user were less likely to generate political criticism of leaders from places where such criticism is penalized.

  • A separate report from American universities found that models gave different responses to questions when asked in different languages.

  • Together, the reports indicate that speech restrictions and biases could be extending beyond the borders where they apply,

Our Research: For more, view our report that examines safeguards for freedom of expression in AI policies from six global jurisdictions, and measures openness of the world’s leading AI models.

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The Brussels Effect: Europe and Beyond 🇪🇺

» France Bans Social Media For Under-15s

• France’s Parliament passed a bill banning social media for children under 15.

• What’s Next:

  • In September, age verification will be required on all new accounts, and under-15s will be prohibited from opening accounts.

  • Beginning January 2027, users will undergo age verification for all existing accounts.

  • Social media platforms must use age-verification tools approved by the country’s privacy regulator.

» Digital Rights Groups Warn Over DSA Draft Rules

• 🚩 The Electronic Frontier Foundation and ARTICLE 19 have submitted joint comments to the European Commission on draft guidelines for the Digital Services Act’s trusted flagger mechanism.

• Details:

  • New guidelines could allow governments to suppress speech without securing a court order or providing a legal basis, according to the orgs.

  • The “trusted-flagger” mechanism requires platforms to prioritize illegal content flagged by designated organizations.

  • Under Article 9 of the DSA, national authorities can issue legally binding removal orders to platforms–but only with a legal basis, a legitimate aim, and evidence of necessity.

  • The draft guidelines would let police and prosecutors bypass those safeguards by designating them as trusted flaggers.

  • The organizations argue that combining those powers “creates a risk that platforms may treat trusted flagger notices as de facto removal orders.”

» UK Report Labels Political Claims as ‘Misinformation’

• 🇬🇧 A study commissioned by the UK government classified ideas, including “anti-LGBTQ+ narratives” and “electoral fraud claims,” as “misinformation.”

• The Report:

  • The study, conducted by a group of seven academics, urges the government to use psychology to prevent spreading narratives deemed potentially “misleading.”

  • Public communications and schools are encouraged to implement these methods to prevent the spread of “false” ideas.

  • The government said the report did not represent official policy.

• Categories of ‘Misinformation’:

  • Anti-LGBTQ+ narratives, gender ideology claims targeting institutions, Pride event misrepresentation, and transgender athlete controversies.

  • 🇪🇺 Electoral fraud claims and the “institutional delegitimization” of the EU.

  • False claims about migrant entitlements, arrival demographics, and criminal acts.

  • Content “associating minority communities with crime or cultural threat.”

» Georgian Journalist Jailed for Facebook Post

• Vakho Sanaia, a journalist and TV host, was sentenced to 14 days of administrative detention over Facebook posts flagged by Georgia’s Hate Speech Department.

• Details:

  • Sanaia was initially fined for posting about a lawmaker: “I hope no one called [Vladimer Bozhadze] d**k, because the law prohibits calling Lado d**k. I would also like to urge everyone not to call Lado a d**k.”

  • A subsequent post resulted in administrative detention: “I wrote a post saying, ‘Don’t call Papuashvili and Bozhadze d**k,’ and I was fined 6,000 lari. Am I missing something? Give them a call.”

  • Georgia’s recently formed Hate Speech Department can initiate administrative cases over public speech.

Our Take: This comes after the European Court of Human Rights upheld a fine against a Georgian man who criticized local public transportation. At Persuasion, Jacob Mchangama wrote, “The implication is stark: online speech, precisely because it travels further and faster, warrants more restriction, not less. That gets the logic of democratic accountability exactly backward. “

Free Speech Recession 🌍

» Japan Bans Desecration of National Flag

• 🇯🇵 Japan enacted a law prohibiting the desecration of its national flag in ways that “cause extreme discomfort or sense of disgust to others.”

• Details:

  • Violators could face up to two years in prison or fines of up to 200,000 yen ($1,230 USD).

  • Legal experts warn the law’s vague wording criminalizes speech based on hurt feelings and could be turned against government critics.

  • Critics also note that flag desecration laws in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere come with clearer criteria and stronger free speech protections.

» Tunisian Journalist Sentenced to Prison Over Social Media Posts

• 🇹🇳Tunisian journalist Haythem El Mekki was sentenced to one year in prison over posts on social media criticizing conditions at a public hospital morgue.

• Details:

  • The Habib Bourguiba University Hospital filed a public lawsuit against Mekki in 2023 for saying its morgue exceeded its capacity.

  • A lower court dismissed the case, but an appeals court convicted him of “insulting others through public telecommunications networks.”

  • Mekki has been prosecuted three times since 2023 for remarks made online or in the media.

» Crackdown on New Delhi Education Protests Escalates

• Social media videos and accounts allege police in New Delhi threw stones, fired tear gas, and beat peaceful protesters.

• Details:

  • On July 20, protesters marched to the Parliament of India to demand the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, the Union Education Minister.

  • Demonstrators demanded accountability after alleged leaks of medical school entrance exam questions forced officials to cancel all results.

  • Protesters also seek compensation for families whose students committed suicide following the distress.

  • Amnesty International reports that police also installed barricades and suspended metro services and mobile internet to curb the protests.

» Cambodia Imprisons Journalist Over Water Shortage Report

• Cambodia sentenced journalist Luot Sophal to two years’ imprisonment for reporting that frontline soldiers lacked water.

• Details:

  • He was convicted on charges of demoralizing the armed forces and incitement to commit a felony.

  • Sophal was arrested after posting a video on his personal Facebook page in February discussing the shortage.

  • Authorities ordered him to delete the post and apologize while in custody.

  • Cambodia has punished critical coverage of its conflict with Thailand with sentences as harsh as 14 years for treason.

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Ashley Haek is a communications coordinator and research assistant at The Future of Free Speech.

Audrey Campbell is a communications intern at The Future of Free Speech and an international relations major at American University.

Isabella Dail is a communications intern at The Future of Free Speech and a recent graduate from Princeton University with a bachelor’s in philosophy.

Adapted from my keynote at the Amerikahaus in Munich, July 2026. Edited for length and readability. The full talk and the Q&A that followed are here.

It is an honor to speak in Germany, a country where discussions about the limits of free speech are almost existential given its history. I do so knowing that my take is a heretical one from a European perspective, if such a perspective exists, and perhaps that is easier for a European who lives in the United States.

We have heard a great deal about the state of free speech in the United States, and conspicuously little about the state of free speech in Europe. So I will venture to talk about developments in this country, even though I am not an expert in German law, because it is always good to look inward as well.

Dachau

The afternoon before this talk, I left this beautiful city and went to one of the darkest places in Bavaria. It struck me how much relevance Dachau has to the question we are here to discuss, not least because in its opening years it was primarily political prisoners who were interned there.

One story struck me in particular. Fritz Gerlich was the Catholic conservative editor of Der gerade Weg, a newspaper published here, and he had become increasingly critical of Nazism, of antisemitism, and of Hitler. In 1932 he published a deeply satirical article which, in a very primitive form of photoshopping, showed Hitler being wedded to a Black African woman under the caption “Does Hitler have Mongolian blood?” It was an effective satirical takedown of Nazi racial-scientific theories.

Unfortunately, Hitler would have the last laugh. Once he came to power, Gerlich was arrested, taken to Dachau, and executed there in 1934. The Nazis, of course, had very harsh rules about spreading so-called fake news and hate speech about Nazi leaders, institutions, and ideas.

That history is relevant in another sense too. Regardless of our different positions, all of us here are united by a deep commitment to keeping Dachau a museum and a warning, rather than reopening it and once again becoming a place where you put people with the wrong ideas, the wrong skin color, the wrong religion.

When it comes to free speech, that poses some questions. Is the best way to avoid new Dachaus to be intolerant of the intolerant, to paraphrase Karl Popper, to build a militant democracy the way Germany has done, and to insist that the enemies of democracy, dignity, and equality should not be allowed to abuse their freedom? Or is that a cure worse than the disease? Does it in and of itself create the risk of an authoritarian state using these powers to entrench itself, paving the way to new camps, or at any rate restricting the freedoms of unpopular minorities in ways that are incompatible with democratic ideals?

This is also, in a generalized way, the competing vision between the American and the European models, and especially between the American and German ones.

He had a point

Someone who mentioned that not far from here was US Vice President JD Vance, who last year launched an incendiary attack on European democracies, saying they had abandoned common transatlantic values, not least free expression. He did so in a way that shocked a lot of Europeans. It was a moment when the transatlantic rupture was made manifest.

I think Vance did so in a calculated way, to demonstrate the contempt the Trump administration has for its European allies. As a Danish citizen, I am not sure how reliable an ally the Trump administration is, given that they want to invade our territory. And it was framed around particular culture war grievances.

Nonetheless, I want to be provocative myself and say that he had a point. Of course, he failed to look in the mirror. But it is the truth, in my opinion, that we are living through what I call a global free speech recession, one that has crashed ashore not only in authoritarian states but in democracies too, including Europe and especially the United States under this administration.

A golden age

To show the drift, I want to start somewhere happier: a golden age, if you like, from around the 1970s to the early 2000s. This was the third wave of democratization, when democracy swept from continent to continent, and there was an optimistic feeling that free speech and democracy went hand in hand. These two values were the north star in the constellation of transatlantic values. They were present in the Helsinki Final Act, the document Western states and the Soviet bloc agreed on, which promoted freedom of expression and became deeply empowering for dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. There were philosophical and doctrinal differences between America and Europe, but they were minor, and they paled in comparison to the systematic censorship of the common geopolitical enemy on the other side.

There were iconic moments of triumph. Václav Havel, the Czechoslovak dissident, playwright, and co-author of Charter 77, stood before a joint session of Congress in 1990 and told the incredible story of how, only a few months earlier, he had been a political prisoner in one of the most reactionary communist regimes in Central Europe. Now he stood there as the democratically elected leader of a country with complete freedom of speech. Many dissidents behind the Iron Curtain saw free speech as the most important freedom.

This was not only a European phenomenon. Before assuming office in 1994 as the first democratically elected leader of a free and multiracial South Africa, Nelson Mandela paid homage to the essential role free speech and a free press had played in shedding light on the evils of white supremacy. Apartheid South Africa had a very harsh censorship system. It had, ironically, hate speech laws that protected the white minority, and which could land you in prison. And of course the regime was not above killing people if that was necessary. Mandela said that free speech would be a cornerstone of the new South African democracy, and that no person, doctrine, institution, or government can claim a monopoly on truth, and that it is therefore a disservice to humanity to adopt any restrictions on free speech.

This is interesting, because thirty years earlier Mandela had given another speech. At the Rivonia trial in 1964, on trial for sabotage, he explained eloquently why the ANC had abandoned nonviolent action and turned to sabotage. Every step until then had been one of protest, speech, civil disobedience, and all of them had been progressively shut down by the apartheid regime. Only then, he said, did we decide we had to use violence.

Mandela gives us what we might call a pressure cooker theory of free speech. Free speech acts as a safety valve for grievances, one that lets them out in a peaceful manner. Remove it, and grievances turn into a pressure cooker that can explode into violence. If a person like Nelson Mandela says that, perhaps we should take heed of what others who are not as committed to democratic values have to say as well.

Then came the World Wide Web, ushering in a techno-optimistic belief that authoritarianism and censorship would be consigned to the ash heap of history, because no country would ever again be able to control what people said.

The recession

Fast forward to today and the situation looks quite different. According to V-Dem, the biggest data set on democracy, the number of countries where free speech is worsening has grown almost exponentially over the past twenty years. Almost thirty years of democratic gains have been rolled back.

It is no surprise that authoritarian states adopt censorship. That has been page one of the dictator’s playbook ever since the Athenian democracy was first overthrown in an oligarchic coup. You have to control the public sphere; you cannot allow dissent. But some things have changed. Authoritarian states, China most prominently, have learned to reverse-engineer the technological promise and supercharge censorship and surveillance at a scale previously unimaginable. Imagine what an Adolf Hitler or a Josef Stalin could have done with AI, as if their societies were not sufficiently unfree already.

What concerns me most, though, is that democracies have become much more defensive about freedom. Democracies once looked at free speech as a competitive advantage against authoritarian states. Today, and especially in our digital age, they increasingly look at it as a Trojan horse, a tool weaponized against democracy that empowers enemies both within and without, whether Russian disinformation or right-wing extremism.

Germany’s militant turn

This has manifested itself here in Germany, where my argument is that the militant part of German democracy has been re-emphasized and the liberal part de-emphasized.

We all know the historical reasons. There are also more recent developments that I understand can make Germans deeply apprehensive: the attack in Halle in 2019, the assassination of Walter Lübcke, the mass killings in Hanau the following year. These are a few examples of right-wing extremist violence that give many Germans deeply uneasy feelings about repeating history, about whether democracy will hold this time or whether we are living through a Weimar 2.0. That is reinforced by the fact that the AfD is polling well and looks like it might become the most popular party in the country.

So there is a relevant context, and I want to emphasize up front that I am not following the American attacks on Germany. Germany is not an authoritarian state. It has a vibrant political and media landscape, political pluralism, competitive elections, peaceful transfers of power, and judicial independence, all the ingredients that go into a democracy.

Nonetheless, there has been an increasing focus on restricting speech. In 2017 Germany introduced the NetzDG, which required social media platforms to remove manifestly illegal content within twenty-four hours or risk fines of up to fifty million euros. It has now been replaced by the Digital Services Act across the European Union. The flip side is that this makes large private platforms the arbiters of speech and incentivizes them to remove content that may be perfectly legal, without the due process one would normally expect.

It is not only platforms that have been cracked down on. In 2022 the New York Times documented at least 8,500 open online speech cases in Germany. Very often these are coordinated days of action where police go to private homes early in the morning, present people with charges of incitement to hatred, using anticonstitutional symbols, or insulting politicians, and sometimes confiscate laptops and other devices for forensic analysis. I am sure some of these people are genuine neo-Nazis who threaten politicians and incite violence. But there are numerous documented examples of people caught in the dragnet who have engaged in what many would label satire, using Nazi symbols not to advocate for Nazism but to criticize someone, perhaps by making a hyperbolic comparison.

It has also spread to the physical world, and this is where the inherent contradictions of militant democracy come to the fore. Iris Hefets is an Israeli Jew who has lived in Germany for more than twenty years. She is an anti-Zionist on the far left, very critical of the Israeli government, and she believes Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza. After October 7, several German cities made blanket bans on pro-Palestinian protests out of fear of antisemitic statements. Hefets went out in a multicultural neighborhood in Berlin with a placard saying “As an Israeli Jew, stop the genocide in Gaza.” Within minutes, two German police officers detained her and put her in a police van, where she spent a couple of hours. She was not charged. On at least four occasions the same thing has happened.

So we have a situation where the descendant of a people subjected to genocide in Germany is being censored by the descendants of those who committed the genocide, all in the name of protecting people like her from antisemitism. And there are other contradictions. These laws are meant first and foremost to protect minorities, yet many Muslims have been caught up in them too.

That is not even the most far-reaching way speech is restricted here. After the assassination of Walter Lübcke, the criminalization of malicious gossip and insult was expanded to persons in political life. In other words, and this is my interpretation, a special protection of politicians against insult. And it is being used by the most powerful people in office in this country.

As leader of the opposition in 2021, Friedrich Merz retained a law firm specializing in scanning social media to identify insulting content and report it to police, and brought hundreds of cases. This has continued since he became chancellor. A few weeks ago someone was fined roughly a month’s wages for calling him a “Lügen-Fritz.” In my view that is a very mild insult of the most senior political leader in the country. And even if Merz might not be in the same class as Donald Trump, I am fairly sure you can find examples of Merz and many other politicians saying things that are not entirely true. Robert Habeck, the former vice-chancellor, had something like 800 cases against people, including someone who posted a meme calling him a Schwachkopf. Again, a very mundane insult. And again, police are being sent to the homes of Germans who criticize their political leaders.

So my question becomes: is this really a defense of democracy, or has it become a tool for protecting those who derive their democratic power from the people against the very people they derive it from? I lean very heavily toward saying this is an indefensible tool, and one not required under any meaningful definition of militant democracy.

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Does it work?

Another question I think Germans and Europeans should ask themselves is whether militant democracy is mostly a psychological mechanism, something symbolic, or whether it actually works.

Let us ask the German domestic intelligence services. Their own overview of right-wing extremism shows criminal and violent offenses rising steeply from 2018 to 2025. Look at where that begins. By 2018 the NetzDG was already in place, and several other speech-restrictive measures had already been adopted. You see the same pattern for antisemitism. And the rise of the AfD in the polls, even after members such as Björn Höcke have been convicted several times, does not inspire confidence that this is an effective remedy.

That does not necessarily mean the idea must be abandoned. But you should at least have a conversation about whether the mechanism is defensible, given that Germany is also committed to freedom of expression.

Germany is not alone. Across the European Union there is a push to criminalize hate speech further. The European Commission has proposed making it an EU crime across all twenty-seven member states, harmonizing and further restricting it, with harsher punishments and more emphasis on prosecutions. This would be deeply detrimental to free speech in Europe, because the differences are not only between Germany and the United States; they exist within Europe. My country, Denmark, is very different from Germany. We do not ban Holocaust denial. We do not ban swastikas. We have never banned communist parties; they sat in parliament. We had revolutionary socialists whose platforms were explicitly to overthrow the bourgeoisie and capitalism. The Danish tradition has been to say that it is better to combat these things out in the open. And Denmark has never had any real threat from political violence, nor neo-Nazi parties of any meaningful size.

Forcing a country like Denmark to adopt a militant democracy model is indefensible, and not something a European Union committed to freedom and democracy should be doing. Germany has its historical reasons. But forcing those reasons onto states with a different tradition, a different history, a different reality would, in my view, be illiberal.

European courts have not been willing to extend much protection either. The European Court of Human Rights has long insisted that hate speech is not protected. Even offensive speech, even blasphemy, can be criminalized in Europe. That is incredible to me. Look at the history of free speech. Why was Socrates sentenced to death? One of the reasons was impiety. We have not made progress since the trial of Socrates.

Earlier this year the Court also ruled in a case from Georgia, brought by a food courier who was upset that Georgian officials used bus lanes to race to and from the office while couriers were being fined. He insulted the officials on TikTok. The Court in its wisdom said it is very important to protect the functioning of civil servants and to protect them from offensive and abusive verbal attacks, especially online, because the online sphere is dangerous. So with this in hand, Friedrich Merz could go to Strasbourg and say: if you want to call me a Lügen-Fritz, I can punish you, and this is completely compatible with human rights. That is a simplistic take, since these cases are highly contextual, but essentially that is the message sent.

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What America learned

It is worth looking at why the First Amendment, in its current interpretation, differs from the European approach, and at the fact that Americans have grappled with these questions rather than simply inheriting the answer.

In 1949 in Chicago, a former Catholic priest with incendiary views on Jews and Black Americans was to give a speech, and he said a lot of horrific things. A large group of counter-protesters, agitated by his views, broke into the building, and violence ensued. The city fined Terminiello for breaching public order, on the theory that by giving such an offensive speech he had invited others to attack him. The Supreme Court, five to four, said no: the whole point of free speech is to invite dispute. If you allow someone to use violence to stop speech, and reward them for it, you defeat the entire purpose.

One of the justices who disagreed was someone whose views were shaped right here in Bavaria. Robert H. Jackson had been the chief American prosecutor at Nuremberg. He had put Nazi war criminals on trial, including Julius Streicher, the editor of Der Stürmer, sentenced to death for incitement to genocide in his antisemitic writings. Jackson was deeply concerned about how totalitarian movements in Europe had used democratic freedoms to get into power. His democratic bona fides are unimpeachable. He wrote a dissent, often quoted, arguing that if we allow freedom without balancing it with order, the Bill of Rights will be converted into a suicide pact. Democracies that allow too much freedom, in other words, hand totalitarian movements a gun they will use to end freedom. That was not an unreasonable statement for a man who had just tried Nazi war criminals.

But look at what happened. Fourteen years later, in 1963, 187 African American students protested against white supremacy outside the capitol in South Carolina. They used no violence. They sang, they chanted, they held placards. The white police force told them to disband because they were endangering public order. Why? Because white citizens might be so offended that they would use violence against them. The students refused, were arrested, and brought their case to the Supreme Court. The Court said what it had decided fourteen years earlier in Terminiello: that holding and expressing views deeply offensive to others is not a ground for restricting them.

Terminiello did not become a suicide pact. It became a deeply empowering tool for a persecuted minority to speak truth to power in a hostile environment.

That underscores an argument the civil rights movement made again and again. When The Birth of a Nation came out, the NAACP initially campaigned to have it banned, and occasionally succeeded. But they discovered two things. Their campaigning vastly increased the audience for the film and made its director a martyr who could claim the mantle of free speech. And Thurgood Marshall, then at the NAACP’s legal arm, wrote an internal letter saying they could not go to Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana to argue that banned films showing interracial marriage must be protected by free speech, and then go to Ohio the next day and argue that The Birth of a Nation must be prohibited. The NAACP changed its position.

Marshall argued against hate speech laws before the Supreme Court. In Beauharnais, about anti-Black leaflets, he said the comments at issue were thoroughly repulsive and nonetheless comments on the burning political and social issues of the day, and that there was a grave danger that such bills, when enacted, would serve to throttle any speaker who sought to champion the cause of minority groups.

By 1969 Marshall had become the first African American justice on the Supreme Court. The canonical case that cements American free speech exceptionalism is Brandenburg v. Ohio: a Klansman, in full regalia and armed, making thinly veiled threats against Black people and Jews in front of cameras. He was convicted under an Ohio law. He was defended, interestingly, by the ACLU, by two staff lawyers, one of them Jewish, the other Eleanor Holmes Norton, who would later become a delegate to Congress for Washington, DC. She defended Clarence Brandenburg on principle. The Supreme Court ruled in his favor, unanimously, and one of the justices was Thurgood Marshall.

We can assume that Norton and Marshall did not do so because they sympathized with a man who wanted to take away their rights, and who knows, perhaps even kill them. They did it because Marshall saw that the values of free speech and equality were not mutually exclusive but mutually reinforcing. The equal dignity of racial minorities depends on a principled and consistent application of free speech. He did not argue that free speech is a sufficient condition for racial equality, or a magic wand that makes racism disappear. He saw it as deeply instrumental and empowering in that fight.

On his first day in office Donald Trump signed an executive order promising to restore the First Amendment. Just about every action he has taken since has repudiated it. Once you see this history, it should not surprise us that his administration is hostile to core principles that have served, however imperfectly, to protect unpopular minorities throughout American history, and that it has tried to repurpose them for its own ideological agenda.

Only a majority away

If we accept that free speech and equality go hand in hand, and if we accept that it is dangerous for minorities to advocate restrictions, because those restrictions will always be defined and enforced by majorities, then it follows that if you are a minority you will only ever be a political majority away from being the target rather than the beneficiary of free speech restrictions.

That is not enough, though. There are other assumptions underlying free speech, and one of them is the tired cliché that bad speech is answered with better speech, as though this happens automatically. It does not. It requires effort. And we live in an imperfect world, so we will never have a utopia, not least because we disagree about first principles. Your utopia might be different from mine.

But let me give one concrete and recent example from Europe.

In April, Viktor Orbán was voted out of office after sixteen years, in a landslide. In theory this was not supposed to be possible. Orbán had built an illiberal and increasingly authoritarian state. His allies controlled eighty percent of traditional media and ninety percent of advertising revenue. Universities had been closed down. Civil society groups had been marginalized. LGBT protests were banned.

There was one thing Orbán did not control: the internet. A small group of independent online outlets kept trying to hold him accountable, and they broke a corruption story about child abuse that ultimately led to the resignation of the president and the minister of justice. On the day of that resignation, a Fidesz insider named Péter Magyar went on Partizán, a YouTube channel discussing public affairs, and made incendiary allegations, really tearing into Orbán over the level of corruption built around the state apparatus. Very quickly that interview garnered a million views in a country of ten million citizens. It now has more than two million. He followed up on Facebook. Two years later he had not only built a political party but won a two-thirds majority in a democratic election in which he was heavily outspent and had everything stacked against him.

That was only possible because of the internet, because of the social media we so often treat as a threat to democracy. Here it was a lifeline for democracy. And that is why Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin would call Orbán a lousy amateur. They know very well that it is not enough to control the press. If you do not control the internet, you cannot be a dictator.

A spirit of tolerance

I want to close with a line from someone who was born in this country and had to flee it, even though he was probably the smartest man in it. Albert Einstein wrote that laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression, and that in order that every man may present his views without penalty there must be a spirit of tolerance in the entire population.

That spirit is difficult. It is challenging, and in many ways counterintuitive. Human beings are not necessarily wired for a principled, consistent approach to free speech. We are very good at telling ourselves why particular kinds of speech should not be protected, why they are really dangerous, and why, purely by coincidence, the dangerous ones happen to align with our underlying ideological priors.

You can have the First Amendment. It can be the greatest paper on earth. But if you do not have a critical mass of people committed to a robust conception of free speech, it will not mean anything. We would go back to the days when you were sent to prison for ten or twenty years for opposing American involvement in the First World War, if you were an anarchist or a socialist.

That is the challenge for us. I think that spirit of tolerance demands an open democracy rather than a militant one. I understand that the German experience speaks in the other direction. But it may be worth a conversation about how militant, and how liberal, that democracy should be going forward.

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Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media and The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom (with Jeff Kosseff).

Join Us! The 2026 Global Free Speech Summit returns on October 2–3 in Nashville, TN. Hosted by The Future of Free Speech and Vanderbilt University, this event brings together global leaders, thinkers, and change-makers to confront the most urgent threats to freedom of expression and explore bold, resilient solutions. Guests will have the opportunity to attend networking receptions to exchange ideas with speakers and fellow guests.

🎟️ Spots are limited. Get your tickets here.

This Week at a Glance 🔎

— 🇯🇵 Japan Mandates AI Labels for Social Media Content

— 🇪🇺 EU Pledges to Ban Social Media for Children

— 🇺🇸 Massachusetts Senate Passes Youth Social Media Bill

— 🤖 EU Preliminary Report Finds Meta Violated DSA

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Court Bans Investigative Report Ahead of Publication

First of All 🇺🇸

» Faculty Sue Texas Tech Over Requiring Approval to Teach Race and Gender

• Faculty unions have sued Texas Tech University System leaders over two memos from Chancellor Brandon Creighton that dictate curriculum disclosures and restrictions.

• Details:

  • 📑 The first memo requires professors to disclose whether course materials address race, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

  • 🛑 The second memo requires professors to stop teaching these subjects until they receive approval from the Board of Regents.

  • The new rules apply to five institutions within the Texas Tech System.

  • The American Association of University Professors and the Texas AAUP-AFT sued the chancellor and members of the Board of Regents.

  • The lawsuit claims the policies are unconstitutional, citing subject matter that will be removed from curricula under the new rules.

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The Digital Age 🤖

» Japan Mandates AI-Labels for Social Media Content

• 🇯🇵 Japan has enacted new legislation that will require certain AI-generated or altered images and videos on social media to be clearly labeled.

• Details:

  • The legislation will take effect on March 1, 2027.

  • It applies to AI-generated or modified content that could reasonably be mistaken for being authentic, with exemptions for illustrations and animated material.

  • Platforms must take measures to curb the harmful effects of misinformation on elections.

  • 📃 The internal affairs and communications minister will set guidelines for the expected measures, and companies will publish annual reports detailing their efforts.

  • The law does not include criminal penalties.

» Massachusetts Senate Passes Youth Social Media Bill

• 📲 The Massachusetts Senate has passed a bill that would disable certain social media features for minors.

• The Bill:

  • The bill amends House Bill 5366, which sought to ban under-14s from social media platforms and require parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds.

  • Under the new bill, social media platforms would have to set default settings for minors to limit “addictive” features and increase safety.

  • ⚙️ Defaults include: disabling algorithmic feeds, autoplay, and infinite scroll, notifications from midnight to 6 a.m., and sharing precise geolocation data.

  • ⚙️ It also requires platforms to notify users after one hour of daily use, with follow-up alerts every 30 minutes.

  • 🚸 Minors cannot change these settings, but adults can. Minors can change settings that limit posts and direct messaging to their social media “friends.”

  • Age assurance methods must allow users to remain anonymous or not rely solely on a government-issued ID.

  • The amendment to change age-verification requirements from opt-out to opt-in failed.

  • The House must pass the amended bill for it to head to the Governor.

The Brussels Effect: Europe and Beyond 🇪🇺

» EU to Implement Social Media Ban for Children

• 📵 European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has promised a draft law this fall that would ban social media for EU children.

• Details:

  • Her pledge followed an expert panel’s call to restrict social media and other platforms that have similar features, such as video games and AI chatbots, for under-13s.

  • Von der Leyen declined to specify a minimum age for the draft bill.

» EU Preliminary Report Says Meta Breaches Digital Services Act

• 🇪🇺 An EU preliminary report found that Instagram and Facebook’s “addictive design” has violated the Digital Services Act.

• Details:

  • The EU Commission said Meta failed to weigh the risks of design features that harm users’ physical well-being.

  • 📲 The features include infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and personalized recommendation systems.

  • The Commission also accused Meta of ignoring data on how much time young people spend on its platforms at night and how different types of content lead to excessive use.

  • Since the investigation began, Meta introduced Teen Accounts that allow parents to block access to platforms at night and cap daily screen time at 15 minutes.

  • If the Commission’s findings are confirmed, Meta faces a fine of up to 6% of its total annual turnover.

» EU Commission Responds to Claims that Meta is Censoring Activists

• 🇪🇺 The European Commission has responded that it is “aware of the issue” and “in touch with relevant stakeholders” after an MEP asked what it will do about allegations that Meta censors progressive advocates.

• Details:

  • MEP Alexandra Geese filed a parliamentary question asking whether the Commission will launch formal proceedings to assess Meta’s compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA).

  • 🏳️‍🌈 Geese’s question stems from allegations that Meta is “censoring women, progressives, and LGBTQ accounts.”

  • Geese accused the platform of failing to meet DSA obligations to provide clear and specific reasons, effective and accessible internal complaint procedures, and risk assessments.

  • The Commission’s response noted that very large online platforms must assess systemic risks, including hindering freedom of expression and information.

  • It added that it cannot share details of its investigation, but that proceedings were opened in 2024 against Meta on suspicion that its platform’s recommendation systems penalized political content.

» Germany Advances Bill Criminalizing ‘Denying Israel’s Right to Exist’

• 🇩🇪 Germany’s upper house of parliament has advanced a bill that would criminalize publicly denying Israel’s right to exist or calling for its destruction.

• Details:

  • To trigger penalties, statements must encourage “a willingness to commit acts of antisemitic violence or arbitrary acts.”

  • Violators face up to five years in prison or a fine.

  • 🏛️ The bill now heads to the lower house of the national parliament.

» Swedish MEP Files Police Complaint Against Fellow MEP Over Hate Speech

• 🇸🇪 A Swedish MEP has filed a police complaint against a Danish MEP, accusing him of racist hate speech after she was targeted on social media.

• Context:

  • 💬 Danish MEP Kristoffer Storm responded online to a clip of Al-Sahlani addressing parliament, saying she “should go home.”

  • Al-Sahlani filed a police complaint against Storm for using racist and hateful speech against her.

  • 💬 Her complaint did not include a Finnish MEP, who responded to the clips with “cry more,” because police were unsure of how to handle the post.

  • The Finnish MEP said he planned to file a complaint over accusations that he threatened or made racist comments.

  • The Parliament’s services said they are looking into the incident, and Parliament President Roberta Metsola said her office would “take appropriate action” to prevent a repeat.

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Free Speech Recession 🌍

» Ukraine Court Bans Investigative Report Ahead of Publication

• 🇺🇦 A Kyiv court issued a temporary injunction blocking the publication of a joint investigation by an independent Ukrainian outlet and NGO.

• Details:

  • The report, by Slidstvo.Info and the Anti-Corruption Action Center (CPK), concerned the business dealings of the brother of the head of the country’s State Investigation Bureau (DBR).

  • CPK sent questions to the siblings, after which Parkovyi-2 LLC, a company linked to the brother who was the subject of the report, requested an injunction.

  • 🏛️ The court found that publication could cause irreparable harm and disclose trade secrets.

  • ⚖️ It did not weigh the public interest of the reporting, as national law requires.

  • Slidstvo.Info maintains that the report was based on publicly available documents.

» Israel Wants to Enforce ‘Institutional Neutrality’ on Universities

• 🇮🇱 Israeli proposals seek to impose “institutional neutrality” on the country’s universities by barring them from taking political stances, organizing strikes, or halting teaching as a protest.

• Details:

  • 🎓 University presidents would also be barred from voicing views that might be perceived as political or could prompt them to do so.

  • Lecturers and students are exempt from the rules if their political activity is private, “not specific to the institution or done by virtue of their academic or administrative role, and does not harm the institution’s regular activity.”

» Report Reveals 1,500+ Rulings Under Russia’s Law Against ‘Discrediting’ the Army

• 🇷🇺 A report from the Regional Centre for Human Rights shows Russian occupation courts have issued at least 1,529 rulings under a 2022 law against “discrediting” the Armed Forces.

• Details:

  • 🔎 Law enforcement agencies monitoring social media comments, likes, and posts–some from years earlier—opened 80% of the cases.

  • The report also detailed procedural violations, noting that proceedings in some cases lasted less than a minute.

  • 🇺🇦 One woman faced administrative charges for selling yellow and blue pillowcases at a market, the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

» Russian SpongeBob Viewers Suspect Rainbow Removed Under LGBTQ+ Propaganda Law

• 🇷🇺 Russian viewers suspect that the removal of a rainbow in an episode of the animated series, SpongeBob SquarePants, is due to the country’s ban on LGBTQ+ propaganda.

• Details:

  • 🌈 In the original episode, a rainbow appears over SpongeBob’s head as he discusses the fun of using one’s imagination–a scene that has become a viral meme.

  • Now, the episode shows only a blurred yellow arc.

  • Viewers suspect the change was made to comply with Russia’s ban on “any action or the spreading of any information that is considered an attempt to promote homosexuality.”

» Turkish Comedian Sentenced Over Ottoman Joke

• 🇹🇷 An Istanbul court issued a suspended five-month sentence to comedian Tuba Ulu after her sexually explicit joke about Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent circulated online.

• Details:

  • Ulu was charged under Article 216 of the Turkish Penal Code, which criminalizes public denigration of a group based on race, class, gender, religion, sect, or region.

  • The law calls for six months to a year in prison, but prosecutors sought three years for “insulting historical, national, and moral values.”

  • Ulu will not go to prison unless she commits another offense within the supervision period.

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Ashley Haek is a communications coordinator and research assistant at The Future of Free Speech.

Audrey Campbell is a communications intern at The Future of Free Speech and an international relations major at American University.

Join Us! The 2026 Global Free Speech Summit returns on October 2–3 in Nashville, TN. Hosted by The Future of Free Speech and Vanderbilt University, this event will bring together global leaders, thinkers, and change-makers to confront the most urgent threats to freedom of expression and explore bold, resilient solutions. Guests will have the opportunity to attend networking receptions where they can exchange ideas with speakers and other guests.

Spots are limited. Get your tickets here.

This Week at a Glance 🔎

— 🇺🇲 Federal Judge Suspends Pentagon’s Journalist-Escort Policy

— 🇰🇷 South Korean Disinformation Amendment Sparks Censorship Concerns

— 🇪🇺 ECJ Says Individuals Can Be Criminally Liable for Sharing RT Content

— 🇫🇷 French Prosecutors Launch Hate Speech Probe Against Paraguayan Senator

— 🇹🇿 Tanzanian Authorities Arrest Dozens Ahead of Planned Protests

First of All 🇺🇸

» Federal Judge Suspends Pentagon’s Escort Policy for NYT Journalists

• U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman issued a preliminary ruling ordering the Defense Department to halt its policy requiring journalists to be escorted in the Pentagon.

• Context:

  • The New York Times brought the case, taking its second legal action against the Pentagon in five months over newly enacted press restrictions.

  • The escort policy was enacted in March, as mentioned in a previous Free Flow, after Friedman struck down earlier restrictions.

  • Friedman ruled the Defense Department violated the First Amendment and blocked enforcement while the Times’ lawsuit proceeds.

  • Friedman did not specify whether journalists from other news organizations would also get relief from that policy.

» Homeland Security Agents Attempt to Warn Man Over Email to Former ICE Head

• Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents tried to give a warning notice to a man for potentially violating the law after he sent an email to the former head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Todd Lyons.

• Context:

  • In a January 26 email, David Streever compared Lyons to a Nazi and said he would be tormented by his own conscience.

  • On June 23, two HSI agents left a warning notice at Streever’s home with his wife for him to sign.

  • The notice said that ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility is requesting he “remove/or discontinue” the behavior.

  • Streever, who was in Finland when agents visited his home, returned to the U.S. two days later and stayed at a hotel near JFK airport.

  • Hotel staff told him that a Department of Homeland Security agent had come to see him and left a business card.

• What’s Next:

  • The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed a lawsuit asking the court to find that Streever’s email was protected speech and to bar further action against him.

  • The suit also cites similar actions by HSI agents and asks the court to declare that such warning notices are “sufficient” to chill protected speech.

  • A statement from DHS said anyone who assaults or threatens officers “will face consequences.”

» University Threatens Diplomas Over Silent Protest

• Florida International University (FIU) threatened to withhold diplomas from students who stood up during a March event to reveal the slogan “ICE OFF FIU” on their shirts.

• Details:

  • Students silently stood at the event while the school president was speaking.

  • Emails obtained by news outlets show school officials admitting the students’ actions “did not disrupt the event.”

  • Months later, the school told students they must make a two-minute “video reflection” on their actions to receive a diploma, citing policies on “student conduct” and expression.

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The Digital Age 🤖

» Supreme Court Declines to Block Texas Age-Verification Law

• The Supreme Court denied petitions to block enforcement of a Texas law requiring app stores to verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent for minors who download apps or make in-app purchases.

• Context: In June, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law can take effect, suspending a district court’s ruling that it was unconstitutional.

» South Korean Disinformation Amendment Sparks Censorship Concerns

• An amendment to South Korea’s Act of Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection that targets disinformation has sparked censorship concerns.

• Details:

  • The amendment took effect July 7, and allows courts to impose damages of up to five times the harm caused by “false and manipulated” information online.

  • Courts may also fine anyone up to 1 billion won (approximately $660,000) for repeatedly sharing such content.

  • Platforms with at least 1 million users per day are subject to the law.

  • The People Power Party (PPP) argued that the law empowers the government to decide what is false or hateful and risks causing citizens to self-censor.

  • PPP said it will file a constitutional complaint. The law can be paused only if the Constitutional Court grants a temporary suspension before a final ruling.

The Brussels Effect: Europe and Beyond 🇪🇺

» ECJ Says Individuals Can Be Criminally Liable for Sharing RT Content

• The Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) ruled that individuals can face criminal liability for sharing content from Russia Today TV.

• Details:

  • In 2022, EU sanctions prohibited the broadcasting of RT channels.

  • Three individuals in Germany are accused of posting RT Germany content on a website.

  • A German court asked the ECJ whether individuals who finance websites solely through user donations can be considered “operators” and subject to sanctions.

  • The ECJ concluded that the sanction restrictions apply to official broadcasters and the owners and administrators of public websites.

  • The ruling emphasized the restrictions apply to all materials regardless of content, duration, format, or the source of the website’s funding.

» ECtHR Says Suggesting Soccer Referees are Corrupt or Criminal Not Protected Speech

• The European Court of Human Rights ruled that while criticism and insults directed at soccer referees are protected speech, suggesting officials are corrupt or criminal is not.

• Details:

  • The ruling involves cases brought by Porto soccer club concerning a series of punishments imposed by Portuguese authorities and courts.

  • The punishments were tied to attacks and “conspiracy theories” spread by Porto’s media outlets against named referees.

  • The ECtHR ruled against Porto in the majority of the cases. It said Porto’s “accusations of corruption and match manipulation” were made “without a minimal factual basis.”

  • However, it deemed a 2019 article that said a named referee had “a problem with impartiality” and a career “full of untenable decisions” to be permissible value judgments.

  • The ECtHR said that Portuguese punishments for these remarks violated free speech protections and ordered payment of damages.

» French Prosecutors Launch Hate Speech Probe Against Paraguayan Senator

• French prosecutors launched an investigation into aggravated public insult and incitement to hatred over Paraguayan senator Celeste Amarilla’s social media posts about a French soccer player.

• Details:

  • After Paraguay’s loss to France at the World Cup, Amarilla mocked France captain Kylian Mbappe’s origins, upbringing, education, and appearance on X.

  • The Paris prosecutor’s office can investigate statements made abroad if the victim is a French national.

  • Amarilla could face penalties of up to one year’s imprisonment and a €45,000 fine for her remarks.

  • Yet questions remain how the French government would enforce a potential conviction in this case.

» EU Parliament Shields Encrypted Chats from CSAM Bill

• The European Parliament voted to exclude end-to-end encrypted apps, such as WhatsApp and Messenger, from a bill that allows platforms to scan for child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

• Details:

  • The original bill exempted platforms from certain obligations under EU privacy law, allowing them to scan private messages for CSAM.

  • Parliament rejected a proposal to extend the bill in March, and the rule expired in April.

  • Parliament President Roberta Metsola forced the bill back onto Parliament’s agenda with no changes.

  • Her party attempted to use a rare procedure that requires an absolute majority vote to amend or reject the bill.

  • However, a majority of MEPs voted to amend the bill to exclude end-to-end encrypted communications services.

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Free Speech Recession 🌍

» Tanzanian Authorities Arrest Dozens Ahead of Planned Protests

• Tanzanian authorities arrested dozens of people accused of recruiting youth to join planned anti-government protests.

• Details:

  • On June 26, Tanzania banned political rallies as protesters planned to demonstrate against last year’s election and the detention of opposition leader Tundu Lissu.

  • Army spokesperson Sylvester Mangure asked the public to report anyone recruiting or organizing protesters.

  • Police spokesperson David Misime said, “Strong action will be taken against anyone who participates in the unlawful riots being mobilized through social media.”

» Pakistan Supreme Court Dismantles Press Office

• Pakistan’s Press Association of the Supreme Court sent a letter to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court after its press room was vacated and dismantled last month.

• Details:

  • The press room was vacated on June 15, leaving journalists without a workplace in the Court.

  • Journalists tried to set up a temporary workspace with chairs and sofas, while some worked outside in extreme heat.

  • The letter reports that the registrar’s office ordered the furniture confiscated, leaving journalists to carry out duties on the ground.

  • The Association demands a working environment for court reporters and the addressing of restrictions on media access.

» Iran’s Parliament Protests State Broadcaster

• Iran’s parliament is protesting against the country’s state broadcaster after a pre-recorded interview with Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was abruptly cut.

• Details:

  • A statement from parliament’s media office said the cut portion included the most sensitive political issues in the interview.

  • It also said the broadcaster should have coordinated with them if it chose not to air parts of the interview.

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Ashley Haek is a communications coordinator and research assistant at The Future of Free Speech.

Audrey Campbell is a communications intern at The Future of Free Speech and an international relations major at American University.

This Week at a Glance 🔎

— 🇺🇸 Justice Department Issues, Withdraws Subpoenas Against Reporters

— 🇦🇺 Australia to Strengthen Enforcement of Social Media Ban for Under-16s

— 🇧🇪 Belgian Police Detain Journalists at US Embassy Event

— 🇺🇬 Ugandan Government Shuts Down Multiple Independent News Outlets

— 🇭🇰 Two Hong Kong Booksellers Arrested for “Seditious Publications”

First of All 🇺🇸

» Justice Department Issues, and Then Withdraws Subpoenas Against Reporters

• The Justice Department issued and then withdrew subpoenas that sought to compel reporters at The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal to testify before a grand jury.

• Details:

  • Reporters from The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post received grand jury subpoenas, which were later rescinded, though the reasons for the withdrawal are unclear.

  • The subpoenas are part of a larger crackdown by the Trump administration on media leaks.

  • Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said that “reporters are not our targets,” but that “we’re not going to stop investigating people who work in this administration who think it’s OK to leak classified information.”

  • The subpoenas come after an April 2025 decision by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to revoke policy that protected journalists from having their phone records secretly seized during leak investigations.

  • The move gave prosecutors the power to use subpoenas, court orders, and search warrants to unmask sources who make “unauthorized disclosures” to journalists.

  • In January of this year, the Trump administration searched a Washington Post reporter’s home and seized her electronics as part of a leak investigation into a Pentagon contractor, as mentioned in a previous Free Flow.

» Maryland Student Journalists Sign Open Letter Against Prior Restraint Policy

• Around 150 student journalists from high schools in Montgomery County, Maryland have signed an open letter questioning the legality of a policy from a leaked memo, that would require all student articles to receive administrative approval ahead of publication.

• Details:

  • Previous guidelines allowed prior restraint only in narrow categories permitted by the New Voices state law (such as unlawful content).

  • Free speech organizations have come out in support of the students, including the Student Press Law Center (SPLC) and Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

  • Jonathan Gaston-Falk, an SPLC attorney, argued that “A vague memo that confuses administrators, chills reporting, and muddies rights protected by established Maryland law cannot stand.”

  • After hearing students’ testimony, Montgomery County Board of Education Superintendent Dr. Thomas Taylor said that while “students have a right to appeal decisions that are made… we do also have a responsibility and that responsibility we are going to follow as adults in compliance with the Maryland New Voices Act.”

» California Professor Wins Job Back After Firing for Pro-Palestine Activism

• Sang Hea Kil, a tenured professor at San Jose State University, has won her job back after being fired last year for participating in pro-Palestinian campus protests.

• Details:

  • An arbitrator reduced her termination to a one-month suspension and ordered the school to reinstate her with backpay.

  • She was terminated despite the recommendation of a faculty committee that reviewed the incident and advised against dismissal.

  • Kil filed a lawsuit against the state university system, alleging it had violated employment law and the First Amendment.

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The Digital Age 🤖

» Australia to Strengthen Enforcement of Social Media Ban for Under-16s

• Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced that the government is planning to strengthen laws barring under-16s from social media platforms.

• Details:

  • The move is a response to evidence that the ban, which came into effect in December as mentioned in a previous Free Flow, has failed to keep under-16s off social media.

  • A British Medical Journal study found that 85% of a group of Australian 12 to 17-year-olds were using restricted platforms

  • Fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars on platforms that do not take reasonable steps to remove children’s accounts have also failed as a deterrent. .

  • Albanese told Parliament that the government is considering options to strengthen the ban’s enforcement, and that the government is asking whether “laws are as strong as possible” and whether eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has “every power at her disposal.”

» Democratic Project 2029 Calls for Child Social Media Ban & Online Safety Rules

• The first proposal to be released by Democrats working on Project 2029, a policy plan ahead of the 2028 presidential election, calls for a ban on social media for kids under 16 and stronger privacy protections.

• Details:

  • The proposal, “Kids Over Clicks,” calls for lawmakers to ban social media platforms for kids under 16 and implement safety measures at the system’s design level.

  • It also proposes updating Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to exempt AI firms from liability shields for their systems’ outputs.

  • Other recommendations include cellphone bans in schools and a campaign to discourage giving kids smartphones until the age of 14.

» Second Circuit Clears New York Online Hate Speech Law

• The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has concluded that a New York law requiring social media companies to deter hate speech does not violate the First Amendment because platforms aren’t required to adhere to the state’s definition of “hateful conduct.”

• Details:

  • In its order certifying questions to the state court, the Second Circuit said that if companies can comply with the law without fully adopting the state’s definition of hateful conduct, the law survives constitutional scrutiny.

  • The law defines hateful conduct as content that is used to humiliate or incite violence against a group based on race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, disability, gender identity, or sexual orientation.

  • It does not require platforms to explain or publicize their reporting mechanisms with reference to the law’s definition, just that the mechanism be clear and accessible to users.

  • Judge Anthony Cannataro said the statute requires that a company’s disclosure must include only how it will respond to reports of hateful content, rather than compelling networks to specifically address hateful content.

  • The decision will affect how the Second Circuit proceeds with a lawsuit brought by legal expert Eugene Volokh and video site Rumble Inc. against the state, challenging the law as unconstitutional.

» Federal Judge Blocks Nebraska Age-Verification Law

• A federal judge has blocked Nebraska’s Parental Rights in Social Media Act, also known as LB 383, which would have required all users to undergo age verification for social media account creation and required minors to have parental consent to create an account.

• Details:

  • In a case brought by NetChoice, a tech trade association, the judge partially granted an injunction to stop the law from going into effect in July.

  • Judge John Gerrard said the provisions likely violate the First Amendment rights of both the users and the platforms.

  • “On the whole, the law is not tailored to solve the identified problem,” Gerrard wrote. “LB 383 too broadly restricts minors’ ability to access and engage in protected speech, even where speech does not pose the identified risk of harm.”

  • Gerrard, however, allowed a provision requiring companies to create a dashboard for parents to access and monitor children’s posts, interactions, and private messages, to be enforced.

The Brussels Effect: Europe and Beyond 🇪🇺

» Czech Bill Targets Funding for Czech Television & Radio

• A Czech bill that would allocate funding for Czech Television (CT) and Czech Radio (CRo) to the state budget, rather than through the current monthly license fee that households and businesses pay, has sparked concern among experts.

• Details:

  • The change would reduce each outlet’s annual budget to its level before the previous government increased the license fee last year, cutting CT’s 2027 budget by about €41 million and CRo’s by €16 million.

  • The government argues that most EU states have moved away from the license fee model and the country is merely joining the majority.

  • Vaclav Stetka at the European New School of Digital Studies warned that the cuts represent an act of “cultural vandalism” and that “the political elite has never accepted the independence of public media.”

  • The International Press Institute said they had not seen proposals for legislative safeguards to protect the outlets from political influence over future funding decisions.

  • The legislation will take effect next year if approved by both houses of parliament and signed by the president.

» Belgian Police Remove Journalists from US Embassy Event

• Brussels police removed two journalists after they tried to question U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Bill White at an embassy event they were invited to

• Details:

  • Video shows European Correspondent reporter Samuel Dempsey asking White a question before a member of the ambassador’s team cuts him off.

  • Dempsey and editor Julius Fintelmann said local police then surrounded them, questioned them about their outlet’s political agenda, and escorted them from the event—despite the U.S. embassy having officially invited them.

  • Brussels-Ixelles police confirmed their involvement in addressing an “active threat” on behalf of the embassy’s protocol unit.

  • When the European Correspondent later sought comment, White replied: “Both of you are losers.”

» Irish Regulator Adds to ‘Trusted Flaggers’ List

• Ireland’s media regulator, Coimisiún na Meán, has granted three additional organizations “trusted flagger” status under the EU Digital Services Act, allowing them to notify online platforms of illegal content for takedown.

• Details:

  • The added organizations include the Irish Internet Hotline, the Irish Music Rights Organization, and the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland.

  • Platforms must prioritize notices from trusted flaggers and decide on content takedown without undue delay.

  • The new accreditations will remain valid for three years, and can be reviewed or revoked after the period expires.

» Poland Passes Anti-SLAPP Legislation

• On June 19, Polish President Karol Nawrocki signed a law against Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs).

• Details:

  • The law, titled the Act on Special Protection Measures in Civil Proceedings for Persons Participating in Public Debate, will provide safeguards to journalists and media outlets against vexatious lawsuits.

  • It includes early dismissal mechanisms for SLAPP lawsuits, detailed definitions to identify SLAPPs, the introduction of security deposits for claimants, and a reversal of the burden of proof on the claimant in such cases.

  • Defendants are not allowed to seek compensation within the same proceedings and must file a separate legal claim for damages.

» Hungary Passes Public Media Reform Law

• Hungary’s new Tisza government seeks to restore independent public service broadcasting through a law amending the governance structures of public media and media regulatory bodies.

• The Law:

  • The law establishes a new Press Fund to support community and minority media, as well as a multi-year funding model for public media.

  • The International Press Institute has urged the government to ensure the legislation is followed with further reforms that target transparency around state advertising, media ownership, and media concentration.

» ‘Citizen Vigilante’ Director Says Germany Banned Movie Over its Messages

• Uwe Boll, the director of action thriller “Citizen Vigilante” starring Armie Hammer, said the film was banned in Germany for its extreme violence and alleged anti-migrant message.

• Details:

  • The film begins with a mother being stabbed to death by migrant criminals in front of her sons, who then dedicates himself to delivering justice to criminals and corrupt officials who protect them. The character primarily targets migrants, though not exclusively.

  • Boll said the country’s ratings board declined to classify the film, leaving audiences to import Blu-ray copies from abroad in order to watch it.

  • He said he challenged the decision in court but lost, claiming authorities argued the film incited violence against migrants.

  • Since the ban, the film has been posted on X for 48 hours, attracting 5 million views, and has been shared by Elon Musk, garnering more than 10.5 million views.

  • The plot was inspired by a 2016 Hamburg case in which a group of teenagers walked free with suspended sentences after raping a 14-year-old girl and leaving her dead.

» Oxford University Reported for Alleged Free Speech Failures

• Free speech advocates have reported Oxford to the Office for Students (OfS), England’s independent regulator of higher education, after the university canceled several lectures.

• Details:

  • Associate Professor Michael Foran canceled his talks on “gender critical and gender identity belief” after protests interrupted opening events.

  • Faculty have said that the canceled lectures will be rescheduled for the next academic year.

  • Groups like the Alumni for Free Speech (AFFS) have criticized the response, arguing that the university should not have allowed protestors in the lecture space, per OfS guidelines.

  • AFFS believes that protestors should face discipline, the university should draft an apology, and that a free speech officer should be appointed.

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Free Speech Recession 🌍

» Canada Passes Combating Hate Act

• Canada’s Combating Hate Act, or Bill C-9, which strengthens prosecution of hate crimes while removing a long-standing protection for expressing religious beliefs, has received Royal Assent and is set to take effect July 18.

• Details:

  • The law bans promotion of terrorism and hate symbols, which include Nazi signs and any flag or symbol of designated terror groups.

  • It also criminalizes intimidation or blocking access to places of worship and increases penalties for offenses motivated by hate.

  • Bill C-9 also removes a section of the Criminal Code that exempts persons who express an opinion on a religious subject or based on a religious text “in good faith.”

Our Take: In a guest post at The Bedrock Principle, Josh Dejaas, the Interim Litigation Director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, warned that “C-9 is just the latest in a series of laws restricting free expression that Canada’s Liberal government has passed or proposed. A worse one may be on the way”

» Turkey Bans Protests Ahead of NATO Summit

• Turkish authorities have begun enforcing a blanket ban on all protests in Ankara, the capital, ahead of the NATO Summit on July 7 and 8.

• Details:

  • On June 22, the Ankara governorate issued a statement announcing special security measures ahead of the Summit.

  • On June 25, the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office announced that 225 people had been linked to ISIS and leftist groups and detained under the measures.

  • 135 of the arrested individuals were referred to court with requests for pre-trial detention.

  • Turkish authorities argue the ban and detentions are necessary to ensure public order and counter alleged terrorist threats ahead of the Summit.

» Hundreds Arrested in Kenya as Families of Deadly 2024 Protest Victims Demand Compensation 2 Years Later

• Police in Kenya have detained hundreds of people and deployed tear gas, as families of those killed in 2024 anti-government protests marched to the Parliament building to demand transparency regarding their compensation.

• Details:

  • In 2024, at least 60 people protesting tax increases were killed while police opened fire outside the Parliament building in Nairobi.

  • On June 15 of this year, families of the victims gathered to protest what they said was a lack of transparency regarding compensation that was promised by the government.

  • President William Ruto said their protest would be allowed, but warned against attempts to “shut down the country,” adding that the government would protect schoolchildren and workers.

  • Protesters barricaded Parliament and highways to Nairobi. Police arrested 335 individuals, with journalists and witnesses claiming that ordinary Kenyans were among those detained.

» Uganda Military Head Shuts Down Independent Media Stations

• Muhoozi Kainerugaba, son of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and head of the country’s military, has announced that NTV Uganda and The Daily Monitor, both part of the Nation Media Group, will be shut down.

• Details:

  • Kainerugaba announced the shutdown in a June 27 social media post on X, and added that “In Uganda, I DO NOT believe in a free press! The press should be guided by cadres of the revolution,” Kainerugaba added.

  • The Daily Monitor reported that armed soldiers were gathered outside its offices in the capital Kampala.

  • A senior NTV reporter said that the military shut down the station’s studios and offices, and those who were working in the building were ordered to leave.

  • The stations went off air the following day, and Kainerugaba said they will not reopen without his permission.

» Hong Kong Police Arrest Booksellers for Selling ‘Seditious’ Publications

• Hong Kong police arrested two people on suspicion of selling seditious publications and receiving funds from foreign political organizations.

• Details:

  • Police investigations reveal the pair are suspected of displaying seditious items and selling seditious publications, including materials that incite hatred against the city’s government, judiciary, and law enforcement agencies.

  • They are also suspected of receiving funds from foreign political organizations, though the statement did not specify which foreign orgs were involved.

  • The bookstore was accused of “soft resistance” by a pro-Beijing newspaper last year, which highlighted the store’s plan to sell jailed pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai’s biography.

  • Police arrested the owner and staff of another bookstore in March for selling seditious publications, including Lai’s biography, as mentioned in a previous Free Flow. The sellers were later released on bail.

» Russian Opposition Politician Sentenced to 7 Years in Prison

• Maxim Kruglov, a former lawmaker in Moscow’s city legislature and the deputy leader of Russia’s Yabloko party that opposes the Ukraine war, was convicted and sentenced to seven years in jail for “spreading lies about the Russian army.”

• Details:

  • Kruglov was arrested in October on charges stemming from two Telegram posts concerning war-time casualty data and events in Bucha, where Russia alleges that Ukrainians staged a massacre.

  • He pleaded not guilty and rejected prosecutors’ claims that political hatred motivated his posts, arguing his career had been devoted to improving life in Russia.

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Ashley Haek is a communications coordinator and research assistant at The Future of Free Speech.

Audrey Campbell is a communications intern at The Future of Free Speech and an international relations major at American University.

In January, two detectives from the Miami Beach Police Department knocked on the door of a woman named Raquel Pacheco. She had posted a Facebook comment criticizing the mayor. The detectives showed her the post, asked if she had written it, and told her she should refrain from posting things like that, because someone might agree with her.

Pacheco was neither arrested nor charged with anything. She has since filed a federal lawsuit, and she will probably win, because what happened to her is the kind of First Amendment violation our courts immediately recognize. A police officer told a citizen to stop engaging in protected political speech; that is traceable and provable, with clear precedents guiding courts on the boundaries of First Amendment law.

Over the past year, a few prestigious law firms in the country were targeted by executive orders that stripped their employees of security clearances and barred them from federal buildings. Their offense was representing clients the president disliked or hiring lawyers who had once worked on investigations of him. The orders were struck down as flagrantly unconstitutional, and the Justice Department recently dropped its appeals.

Meanwhile, some law firms decided, several even before any executive order against them was issued, to provide millions of dollars in free legal services for causes the administration supported and while making other concessions. They paid because the threat was credible enough that paying seemed like a more rational choice than fighting.

Last month, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ordered Disney to file early license renewal applications for all of its ABC stations, three years ahead of schedule, and days after President Trump called for the firing of late night host Jimmy Kimmel over a joke about him and the First Lady. The FCC, which has not revoked a broadcast license in over 40 years, has now placed every Disney-owned station into renewal proceedings. The agency has demanded that the company prove it meets pretty vague standards and also gets to evaluate whether the company has met those standards. Whether or not the licenses are ultimately revoked, a three-year early renewal proceeding itself is the punishment, both in compliance costs and in its goal to chill speech that ABC airs.

Meanwhile, Paramount paid 16 million to settle a lawsuit Trump brought over how CBS edited a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. Paramount was careful to note that the money goes to a future presidential library and that the deal involved no apology, and it even called the lawsuit meritless. But Paramount reached this settlement deal while it was awaiting the administration’s approval of its merger with Skydance. Whether this settlement was truly coerced can never be fully answered under a standard First Amendment framework, since all the decisions, the surrounding government pressure, and the ultimate changes in the behavior of the speakers involved are all connected. But none of this can really be proven in a court of law.

Columbia University paid the federal government $221 million to resolve federal investigations and unfreeze its research funding. In addition, Cornell paid $60 million, Northwestern paid $75 million, Brown paid $50 million. Harvard, which fought back in court, currently has $2.7 billion in frozen funding, an appeal pending, threats to its tax-exempt status, repeated efforts to bar it from enrolling international students, and a swarm of investigations that the university says it fears could lead to criminal referrals. The cumulative effect on what universities feel free to teach, hire, and say is impossible to quantify and impossible to miss.

None of these actions constituted a direct prohibition on speech. The First Amendment, on paper and in the courtroom, is exactly the document it was a year ago. What changed is that the government learned how to make speaking expensive. It does not need to ban speech if it can make the price of speech so high for certain institutions that they would rather placate, self-censor, or even pay up in large settlements rather than challenge in court.

This is what I call the First Amendment Tax. So far, I’ve identified five regulatory instruments the government deploys to indirectly suppress speech using this new tactic.

The government can make speech expensive through its control of regulatory approvals such as broadcast licenses, merger clearances, spectrum allocations; through its visa authority over the foreign scholars, journalists, and employees that universities and newsrooms and think tanks depend on; through withholding of federal funding, which underwrites most American research and a substantial share of nonprofit work; by threatening the tax exempt status that lets nonprofits exist; and through the power to designate organizations as connected to terrorism, which can destroy reputations and freeze bank accounts before any court rules on anything.

When these instruments are deployed selectively and in a coordinated fashion against speakers and viewpoints the administration disfavors, the First Amendment Tax kicks in. These tools stop functioning as your run-of-the-mill government regulation and become the price you have to pay for your speech. The result: speech and expression in the United States still have the highest legal protections in the world. But engaging in free speech that the government doesn’t like has become far more expensive.

Americans tend to assume this kind of thing only happens in autocratic states. That it has happened repeatedly in those countries should worry us all about the state of free speech in the United States.

Under Viktor Orbán, Hungary made it financially irrational for opposition media to operate through selective regulatory pressure, tax treatment, and the withdrawal of state advertising. Turkey weaponized tax authorities, broadcast regulators, and criminal defamation statutes until the cost of critical coverage exceeded what most outlets could absorb, suppressing independent journalism. India has used income tax raids and restrictions on foreign funding against critical NGOs and media. The global free speech recession over the past decade has frequently been driven by exactly this kind of administrative pricing.

The First Amendment tax is the American version of this global pattern. The current administration uses existing regulatory authority, applies it selectively to people the president has identified as adversaries, and lets the cost of resistance do the work that the law forbids it to do directly.

The First Amendment’s most powerful tools, the ones taught in law schools and invoked in litigation, were designed for a government that comes at speech directly — a law that can be struck down or an injunction. Each individual regulatory action has its own facially neutral justification, reviewed under its own deferential standard, by a court examining only that single action. This is not a problem we can litigate our way out of one piece at a time. It requires recognizing these actions as part of a pattern. Fortunately, there is some history from which we can draw inspiration. .

In 1963, in a case called Bantam Books v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court struck down a Rhode Island commission that had been sending letters to book distributors flagging titles it found objectionable. The Supreme Court held it was an unconstitutional prior restraint. The RI commission never formally banned anything, but instead relied on implied threats to chill speech. The Court called the pressure itself unconstitutional. The point isn’t that these taxes fall outside of the First Amendment, but that they exist because the nature of government pressure and power often forces speakers to settle and self-censor even if they would win in court.

The pattern occurring right now under the current administration deserves to be named and operationalized so we can recognize it when it arises. Until we can identify these indirect forms of censorship as the First Amendment Tax, each individual application of it gets explained away as an isolated regulatory dispute, a one-off, or an unfortunate compliance matter. With this framework, it becomes easy to see the law firm that paid, the university that settled, the scholar or activist that left the country, and the woman in Florida who opened her door to find police standing outside, as parts of a single coordinated phenomenon.

It’s no accident that a common trope in books and fairy tales is that the villain’s name is often kept secret and feared. But it often loses power when it’s said out loud. Now that we can name the First Amendment Tax for what it is, free speech advocates can do what it takes to fix it.

Ashkhen Kazaryan is a Senior Legal Fellow at The Future of Free Speech, where she leads initiatives to protect free expression and shape policies that uphold the First Amendment in the digital age.

In recent years, and accelerated by the post-pandemic landscape, democratic societies have experienced what scholars define as an epistemic crisis—a breakdown not just in public trust, but in the collective mechanisms used to validate truth and authority. In Argentina, this crisis has taken a radical turn. For decades, traditional political debates fluctuated between a minimal, managerial state and a robust, interventionist one. The current administration, however, has introduced a narrative that attacks the very legitimacy of the State, branding it as a criminal organization.

This discourse constructs an all-encompassing enemy: the “caste” (la casta), a derogatory term Milei repeatedly uses to rail against an alleged class of politicians, union leaders, businessmen, and journalists who live a privileged life off the effort of ordinary, hard-working Argentines.

Under this framework, any critical inquiry or piece of investigative journalism is disqualified a priori as a functional defense of the ruling class’s corruption. Paradoxically, while the official rhetoric positions itself as strictly anti-statist, the executive branch has repeatedly turned to the punitive architecture of the State—specifically criminal defamation lawsuits—to censor and intimidate dissenting voices.

The Rise of Judicial Harassment: SLAPPs in the Highest Office

The most striking manifestation of this paradox is the frequent recourse to criminal lawsuits for slander (calumnias e injurias) initiated personally by President Milei against prominent journalists. Legal actions have targeted high-profile editorial figures such as Carlos Pagni (La Nación), investigative reporters such as Ari Lijalad (El Destape), and political commentators like Julia Mengolini (Futurock), whose case prompted CELE to present an Amicus Curiae position paper before the Federal Criminal Court of Cassation.

These actions align perfectly with the international definition of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs). Far from seeking genuine legal redress, these lawsuits exploit the judicial machinery to inflict severe financial, emotional, and professional strain on journalists or other individuals willing to participate in the public conversation. The underlying objective is to produce a profound chilling effect across the entire media ecosystem, signaling that critical coverage of the executive carries prohibitive personal costs.

The president’s lawsuits targeted journalists who were pursuing investigative pieces or editorial analyses on matters of high public interest. These ranged from critical assessments of government policies to signaling alleged similarities between Milei’s party discourse and that of the Nazi party and inquiries into the ruling party’s inner and most intimate circle. One story labeled the relationship between the president and his sister as incestuous.

Milei found all these publications extremely offensive and a direct assault on his honor, so he chose to pursue criminal defamation. Fortunately, the Argentine judiciary, for the most part, has resisted this wave. Federal judges, applying robust constitutional doctrines, recently dismissed the criminal complaints against Pagni and Lijalad. The courts reaffirmed that editorial analysis, historical comparisons, and criticism of presidential decisions fall squarely under the protection of freedom of expression in a democratic society.

In some cases, the Judiciary ordered the president to pay the legal and procedural fees incurred in the case, highlighting the classic anatomy of a SLAPP strategy designed not to win on legal merits but to intimidate and exhaust independent voices. To counter Milei’s strategy in the Lijalad case, the press workers’ union of Buenos Aires (SiPreBa) re-published the exact same piece that had led to the criminal defamation lawsuit and opened it to signatures. The re-published piece achieved more than 600 signatures from other journalists.

Milei’s reaction to these setbacks has been, generally, to double down on his systematic discrediting of the press, including name-calling and insisting on his X account that “we don’t hate journalists enough” (“no odiamos lo suficiente a los periodistas”, or its acronym #NOLSALP, which has been embraced as a hashtag by his followers in a collective campaign to question the honorability of any journalist who dares to criticize the government). More recently, he has consistently signaled both in X posts and in his public appearances that “95% of journalists are criminals.”

International Legal Standards: Public Interest and Public Officials

The deployment of criminal law by a sitting president against journalists violates core international human rights standards, specifically Article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights. Landmark precedents from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights—such as Kimel v. Argentina, Álvarez Ramos v. Venezuela, and Baraona Bray v. Chile—have established a clear legal consensus:

• Enhanced Presumption of Protection: Expressions concerning public officials or matters of high public interest enjoy a reinforced status of protection due to their vital role in fostering an informed citizenry and public accountability.

• High Threshold of Tolerance: Public figures, by virtue of voluntarily assuming roles of state power and high public exposure, must display a significantly higher threshold of tolerance toward harsh, piercing, or even deeply offensive criticism.

• Incompatibility of Criminal Sanctions: The protection of a public official’s honor should be pursued exclusively through civil remedies, the right of reply, or public clarifications. Using the criminal justice system to punish political speech is inherently disproportionate and democratically corrosive. The mere initiation of criminal proceedings by top-tier public officials against journalists for matters of public interest constitutes an abusive restriction on free speech, regardless of the final judicial outcome.

A Systematic Campaign: The IACHR’s Diagnosis

These judicial actions do not occur in a vacuum; they are part of an explicit, state-sponsored “cultural battle.” During a recent urgent hearing granted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR/CIDH) held in Miami, a broad coalition of human rights and media organizations—including Amnesty International, FOPEA, CELS, SiPreBA, and CELE—presented an alarming diagnosis of the accelerating deterioration of the civic space in Argentina.

The IACHR’s Office of the Special Rapporteurs on Freedom of Expression (RELE), led by Pedro Vaca, documented a sharp rise in institutional hostility. This systematic degradation manifests through multiple vectors:

1. Coordinated digital violence: Journalists, particularly women, face massive online harassment campaigns frequently orchestrated or amplified by official government accounts. For instance, journalist Julia Mengolini testified before the CIDH regarding unprecedented campaigns involving AI-generated explicit imagery, death threats, and public justification of violence by the executive.

2. Repression on the streets: Under controversial security measures like the “anti-picket protocol,” nearly 300 media workers have been injured by law enforcement while covering public demonstrations. Photojournalists have effectively become targets to prevent independent external monitoring of police actions.

3. Administrative barriers to journalism and hurdles to accessing information: The government has arbitrarily restricted press credentials for access to the presidential palace (Casa Rosada) on accusations of espionage, and for entering the Congress building to cover Milei’s speech on the occasion of the inauguration of the Congressional 2026 term. A Presidential decree repealed the Access to Public Information Law and abruptly shuttered or intervened in vital public media, such as the 80-year-old national news agency Télam, severing access to pluralistic information and historical archives across the country’s provinces.

Conclusion: Defending Institutional Counterweights

The Argentine case serves as a warning for the international community. It demonstrates how a fiercely anti-statist, pro-liberty rhetoric can coexist with—and act as a shield for—the systematic weaponization of state power against accountability and public debate. When the executive power shouts through systematic stigmatization and bad-faith litigation, independent institutions and international human rights frameworks must speak clearly to preserve the bedrock principles of democracy.

Matías González Mama is a Senior Researcher and Coordinator of the Latin America Regional Desk at Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression (CELE). He is also co-editor of the topic "Media and Big Tech Governance for the Public Sphere" for the journal "Frontiers in Communications.”

Nicolás Zara is a Researcher at the Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression (CELE).

This Week at a Glance 🔎

— 🇺🇸 ABC Enlists Audience in Battle With FCC

— 🇵🇰 Pakistani Activist Sentenced to Life for ‘Provactive Speech’

— 🇮🇳 Telegram Sues Over India Block

— 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Scottish Parliament Restricts Press Access to Legislature

—📱Texas Urges Supreme Court Against Halting Age-Verification Bill

First of All 🇺🇸

» ABC Enlists Audience in Fight Against FCC Licensing Review

• Disney’s local ABC stations aired messages notifying viewers of its ongoing battle with the Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission over the commission’s early review of their broadcast licenses, which asked them to submit public comments in support.

• ABC vs. FCC:

  • The move comes after the FCC ordered an early license review of ABC-owned television stations in April, a day after Trump pressured the network to fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over a controversial monologue, as detailed in a previous Free Flow.

  • FCC Chairman Brendan Carr insists that the early-renewal order is the result of a separate investigation into diversity, equity, and inclusion practices at Disney, ABC’s parent company.

• Details:

  • The ads urge viewers to contact the FCC by scanning a QR code linking to the agency’s public comment page and align with the FCC’s public comment period to demand that Disney reapply early for its stations’ license renewals.

  • The public comment period will precede any court battles between Disney and the FCC, and while the actions involving The View and the local stations are separate proceedings, the company has said they involve the same free speech principle.

» Thousands of Americans Submit Comments to FCC on ‘Equal Time’ Rule Inquiry into The View

• Over 40,000 public comments have been submitted to the FCC over its inquiry into whether The View should be exempt from the agency’s “equal-time” rule, which requires broadcast stations to provide equal airtime to all legally qualified candidates in a particular race.

• Background:

  • In February, the FCC accused ABC’s The View of violating the equal time rule over Texas Senate candidate James Talarico’s appearance on the show.

  • The agency opened a request for comment in May on whether the show is a “bona fide news interview program” and is exempt from the rule.

  • ABC also sent a legal letter accusing the Federal Communications Commission of attempting to threaten broadcasters and limit political discourse, as mentioned in a previous Free Flow.

Our Take: We, alongside the ACLU, Center for Democracy & Technology, and National Coalition Against Censorship, submitted a public comment to the FCC urging it to reaffirm that The View qualifies as a bona fide news program.

“The First Amendment does not permit the government to decide which interview programs qualify as legitimate journalism based on their viewpoints or perceived political leanings,” said Ashkhen Kazaryan, the lead author of the filing. “For 40 years, the FCC has deferred to broadcasters’ good-faith news judgments. Abandoning that principle now would chill political coverage and invite government scrutiny of editorial decisions that the Constitution places beyond the government’s authority.”

» Texas ICE Protesters Sentenced to At Least 50 Years Imprisonment on Terrorism Charges

• A group of protesters has been convicted of terrorism charges and received sentences of at least 50 years in prison over a July 4 protest at the Prairieland Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Alvarado, Texas.

• The Protest:

  • The demonstrators planned to set off fireworks outside the facility for detainees to hear, as an expression of solidarity.

  • A few protesters separated from the main group and vandalized cars in the parking lot, a guard shack, slashed tires on a government van, and broke a security camera.

  • The incident comes after the Trump administration designated “Antifa” as a domestic terrorist organization in a September executive order and assigned federal agencies to “investigate,” prosecute, and “disrupt” protesters engaging in “anti-capitalism,” “anti-fascism,” and “anti-Americanism” in a memo days later.

• In Court:

  • The defendants denied ties to antifa, short for “anti-fascist.”

  • Prosecutors also focused on the cache of guns that several defendants owned and brought to the protest, though all the firearms were legally purchased, and only one person, Benjamin Song, fired a weapon, hitting an officer in the shoulder. He was sentenced to 100 years.

  • 6 protesters were convicted of riot, providing material support to terrorists, and explosive charges, with 5 sentenced to 50 years in prison and one sentenced to 70 years, with an additional conviction of corruptly concealing a document or record.

  • Several of the defendants, including Elizabeth Soto and her husband, Ines Soto, were not involved in the group that planned to bring firearms; they arrived separately at the protest and left the grounds when facility guards asked. Soto was among those sentenced to 50 years.

» Former Employee Sues EPA for Firing Over Petition Signature

• Elin Warn Betanzo, a former employee of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has filed a lawsuit against the agency, alleging she was fired for signing a petition critical of the Trump administration’s environmental policies.

• Details:

  • Warn Betanzo, a drinking water expert who played a significant role in exposing the Flint water crisis, joined hundreds of EPA employees in July 2025 to sign the “EPA Declaration of Dissent,” a petition to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin criticizing recent agency policies.

  • The petition also alleged that the recent policies undermined the EPA’s mission to protect public health and the environment.

  • Two days later, she and 144 other signatories were suspended despite warnings from the EPA’s own lawyers that retaliation over the petition would likely violate the First Amendment.

  • Betanzo was the only member removed from the council before the end of her term, a move the agency had not done since at least 2000.

  • The agency said it had a “zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting the administration’s agenda.”

  • Her lawsuit accuses the EPA of violating the First Amendment and Whistleblower Protection Act, among other violations, and asks a judge to reinstate her to the advisory council, clear any disciplinary records related to the petition, award lost pay and damages, and block enforcement of the agency’s “zero tolerance” policy against speech.

» Judge Frees Jordanian National from ICE Custody Amid Political Speech Retaliation Claims

• Salah Sarsour, a Jordanian national and lawful permanent resident, was released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody after a federal judge found that the evidence supported a reasonable inference that his detention was, at least in part, motivated by his political speech.

• Context:

  • Sarsour, the president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, was arrested on March 30 outside his home.

  • An April 2 statement from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed that he had previously been convicted in an Israeli military court for attempting to illegally possess weapons and ammunition and for throwing a Molotov cocktail at the homes of members of Israel’s armed forces.

  • DHS also claimed he made false statements during the immigration process and had ties to terrorist organizations.

  • Although the DHS argues his original visa application was denied because of his prior convictions, Sarsour entered the U.S. in 1993 and became a lawful permanent resident 5 years later.

• In Court:

  • U.S. District Judge James Hanlon concluded that Sarsour presented evidence that supported a reasonable inference that his pro-Palestine advocacy was “at least a motivating factor” in his detention.

  • The ruling does not resolve Sarsour’s immigration case or whether he will be deported, but it releases him from custody while his First Amendment case against the government is litigated in court.

  • Hanlon noted that authorities had known about Sarsour’s Israeli convictions for decades and had reviewed them while allowing Sarsour to maintain his resident status after more than 30 years in the U.S.

  • The judge noted that while the government argued that foreign policy concerns justified the detention, those interests do not forego First Amendment protections.

The Digital Age 🤖

» Telegram Challenges Block in India

• Telegram, a messaging app, has sued Indian authorities over an order blocking its use until June 22 to prevent exam fraud.

• Details:

  • The order, which took effect on June 16, was a response to Telegram channels claiming to have exam copies of a national medical entrance test that was canceled last month.

  • The test was canceled despite millions having sat for the exam due to allegations of leaked papers.

  • Telegram’s court filing to the Delhi High Court argued that the order was issued “on the impermissible premise that misuse by a subset of users justifies blocking of an entire platform,” citing constitutional and access-to-information concerns.

  • The restriction was issued under a provision in India’s IT law that allows the government to block access to internet apps in the “interest of sovereignty and integrity of India.”

  • India’s Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said the government would counter Telegram’s position in court and that it has repeatedly asked the platform to fix its systems.

» Texas Urges Supreme Court Against Halting Age-Verification Bill

• Texas officials have urged the Supreme Court to deny emergency petitions seeking to stop the state’s law requiring app stores to verify users’ ages.

• Details:

  • The emergency petitions were filed by Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT), a student advocacy organization, and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), a tech trade association.

  • They aim to halt the Texas App Store Accountability Act, which would require app stores to verify all users’ ages and require parental permission for minors under 18 to download apps or make in-app purchases.

  • In its emergency application, SEAT argued that the law lets government officials regulate online speech under the guise of stopping children from accessing harmful content, and restricts minors’ access to news, community forums, and creative expression platforms.

  • In a separate emergency appeal, the CCIA warned, “Under SB2420, before a Texan may download the Wall Street Journal— or even a weather app or calculator — he must first verify his age.”

  • “And any Texan under 18 must link his account to a verified parent’s account (another verification hurdle) and obtain express parental consent for any app download or any in-app purchase — every audiobook, every movie, and so on—without any possibility of blanket consent,” the CCIA added.

  • A lower court had found that, because the state could not show a compelling interest in restricting every category of speech covered by the act or adequately connect its goals to the law’s mandates, it failed strict scrutiny.

  • The lower court enjoined the law enforcement before the Fifth Circuit paused the injunction, ruling that the law regulates commercial activity and not speech.

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The Brussels Effect: Europe and Beyond 🇪🇺

» Scotland’s Parliament Announces Building Restrictions for Reporters

• Scottish officials have designated an area in the Parliament where journalists must remain after First Minister’s Questions (FMQs), restricting access to public spaces where they previously questioned politicians.

• Details:

  • Journalists generally had broad access to the outside of chambers, where they could question or “doorstep” politicians following debates, major announcements, or FMQs.

  • Now, the media’s movement is restricted to the designated area after FMQs.

  • The parliamentary bureau said it had made the decision “following feedback from a range of building users and discussions with all parties.”

  • The Scottish Parliamentary Journalists’ Association (SPJA) said that the change “represents a significant departure from established parliamentary practice.”

  • “It creates a physical and symbolic barrier between elected representatives and those tasked with holding them to account,” the SPJA added.

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Free Speech Recession 🌍

» Australia’s Health Practitioner Regulation Agency Adopts IHRA Definition of Antisemitism

• The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA), the country’s regulator of health professionals, has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which critics argue blurs the line between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of Israel.

• Details:

  • The definition will be used in the agency’s regulatory work, including investigations of complaints lodged against registered health professionals.

  • The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) argued APHRA’s decision risked silencing political expression about Israel’s actions in Gaza and Lebanon, citing testimony from healthcare workers since October 2023 that revealed “fear of professional consequences for speaking publicly about Gaza and Palestine.”

  • APHRA Chief Executive Justin Untersteiner said the agency is aware of the potential “weaponization of the notifications process” and will view notifications with a framework.

  • It will also establish an advisory panel of practitioners to improve the process and “strengthen safeguards.”

» Pakistani Activists Sentenced to Life Imprisonment Over ‘Provocative Speech’

• Mahrang Baloch, an activist who has spent years campaigning against enforced disappearances in Balochistan, a Pakistani province, has been sentenced to life in prison over accusations of inciting a mob that fatally attacked a paramilitary soldier.

• Details:

  • Baloch began campaigning after her father was allegedly taken by security service officers in 2009 and found dead two years later. She leads an organization called the Balochistan Unity Committee (BYC).

  • She was convicted of murder and terrorism alongside Sibghatullah, a fellow activist, after prosecutors claimed the pair had incited a mob at a 2024 protest in Gwadar.

  • 30-40 people struck one of the soldiers’ vehicles with sticks and stones, according to a security official, who said Baloch had given a “very provocative speech.”

  • The official added that paramilitary soldier Shabbir Ahmed was beaten to death after he was separated from the other soldiers.

  • An anti-terrorism court in Quetta sentenced the pair to life imprisonment and ordered they pay a fine of 200,000 rupees ($719) to Ahmed’s heirs.

» Bangladesh Journalists Charged Over Reporting on State Minister

• Six journalists in Bangladesh have been charged, and one has been jailed over their reporting about the State Minister for Local Government, Rural Development, and Cooperatives, Mir Shahe Alam..

• Details:

  • The complaint, filed by Bogura Press Club Treasurer Tanvir Alam Rimon, accuses journalists, all employees of the Daily Agrajatra Pratidin, of false and defamatory reporting.

  • The complaint also accused the paper’s acting editor, who was jailed, Md. Rezanur Islam, of trying to extort 2 million taka ($16,400) from Rimon and Alam.

  • Islam was arrested on June 18, while efforts to arrest the other journalists remain ongoing, according to police.

  • The State Minister Alam has expressed regret over the arrest and urged others not to pursue action on his behalf.

» Turkey Reverses Order to Shut Down Private University

• Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan has reversed his decision to close Bilgi University, a private foundation university, following backlash from students and faculty.

• Details:

  • On May 22, Erdogan ordered the university’s closure under a law that allows for private institutions to be closed if “the expected level of education and training… is insufficient.”

  • Students stayed overnight to protest the closure, and the number of demonstrators reached the hundreds before the order was reversed.

• Context:

  • In September 2025, the state seized Can Holding, the university’s corporate owner, in a criminal investigation into alleged fraud and money laundering, and placed the conglomerate’s companies under the management of the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund.

  • 10 detention orders were also issued, three of which included Bigli principals.

  • According to Yaman Akdeniz, a professor at the university’s Faculty of Law, no one had heard about Can Holding when it took over the university. “We knew that they were close to the government; they owned many things, and they didn’t interfere with academia.”

  • Akdeniz added that there is no indictment for the alleged crimes yet, and that “Unofficially, some say this is a way to pressure the family into selling the university.”

  • Although Erdogan has reversed his order, Akdeniz notes that he doesn’t expect many students and or their families to choose to attend the university next year, and that could mean it has only a few years left.

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Ashley Haek is a communications coordinator and research assistant at The Future of Free Speech.

Audrey Campbell is a communications intern at The Future of Free Speech and an international relations major at American University.

Isabella Dail is a communications intern at The Future of Free Speech and a recent graduate from Princeton University with a bachelor’s in philosophy.

This Week at a Glance 🔎

— 🇺🇲 Anthropic Pulls Plug on New AI Models after U.S. Order

— 🇨🇦 Canada Proposes Ban on Social Media for Under-16s

— 🇬🇧 UK Proposes Social Media Ban for Under-16s

— 🇮🇳 Mumbai Mayor Calls for Ban on Stand-Up Comedy

— 🇷🇺 Exiled Russian Artist Killed in Poland in Suspected Execution

First of All 🇺🇸

» FTC Sues Transgender Health Group for ‘Deceptive Claims’ on Youth Gender Medicine

• The Federal Trade Commission and four states have filed a lawsuit against the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) over making “deceptive claims” in its health care guidelines for transgender children.

• Details:

  • WPATH is a nonprofit professional and educational organization whose members include psychiatrists, surgeons, pediatricians, endocrinologists, and primary care doctors. The organization does not provide direct medical care to patients.

  • “The FTC filed a lawsuit against WPATH alleging that the organization made false and unsubstantiated claims regarding the necessity, effectiveness and safety of puberty blockers, hormones and sex-change surgeries,” FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson said in a press release.

  • In a statement, WPATH said, “The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is not a medical provider and has no place interfering with the process of individualized medical decision-making.”

  • The suit comes after the FTC probed WPATH and other physician organizations that created guidelines for gender-affirming care earlier this year.

  • WPATH, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Endocrine Society sued the agency separately, arguing the probe was retaliatory. A federal judge ruled in their favor.

  • WPATH noted in its statement that a federal court has already ruled against this effort from the FTC when it blocked the investigation: “WPATH is in a strong position to prove that the FTC is acting out of pure retaliation as part of the federal government’s relentless and targeted campaign to undermine gender-affirming care by attacking the First Amendment rights and the independence of professional medical organizations.”

» Anthropic Pulls Plug on Top AI Models after US Order to Limit Foreign Nationals’ Use

• Anthropic has announced it will “abruptly disable” its most advanced AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, for all users, following a directive from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for foreign nationals, claiming the order violates principles of fair and fact-based regulation.

• Context:

  • Earlier last week, Anthropic unveiled Claude Fable 5, which has a new tier of capability it calls “Mythos-class” that experts claim could accelerate sophisticated cyberattacks if in the wrong hands.

  • Anthropic claims it worked with the U.S. government, among others, on safety ahead of the model’s launch, and that rival models demonstrated similar capabilities.

  • Yet, on June 12, the company said it had received an export control directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all foreign nationals due to national security concerns, though specific details were not provided.

• Anthropic’s Response:

  • Anthropic claims the directive stems from the government’s belief that there is a method to bypass, or “jailbreak,” a safeguard that prevents Fable 5 from being used to identify software vulnerabilities and unearth minor bugs in code.

  • However, it argues that the U.S. has provided only “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal, jailbreak,” and that that should not “be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people.”

  • In response, the company announced it must terminate all customers’ access to the models to ensure compliance, and that it is working to restore access as soon as possible amid what it believes is a “misunderstanding.”

• The tension follows an earlier battle between the AI company and the government after Anthropic refused to allow the U.S. military to use its models for domestic surveillance and for fully autonomous weapons systems, as detailed in a previous Free Flow.

Our Take: “Software and the publication of model components are expression,” Ashkhen Kazaryan argued in an X thread. “When the state restricts a general purpose information tool by invoking national security without particular demonstrated harm, it is doing exactly what the First Amendment exists to stop — a prior restraint on expression justified by speculative risk.

» Supreme Court Declines High School Student’s ‘Defund Planned Parenthood’ Poster Case

• On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear a free-speech appeal from a former Indiana high school student who was barred from hanging anti-abortion club flyers reading “Defund Planned Parenthood” on school walls, leaving in place a lower-court ruling that the school could restrict the content.

• Details:

  • The case began in 2021, when a freshman identified as E.D. founded a chapter of Students for Life of America at Noblesville High School.

  • An assistant principal refused to approve two proposed meeting flyers featuring the phrases “Defund Planned Parenthood” and “I am the Pro-Life Generation,” telling her the posters could list only the club’s name, meeting date, time, and location.

  • A federal district court ruled for the school in 2024, finding the flyers “could reasonably be perceived to bear the imprimatur of the school,” and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld that decision.

  • The Seventh Circuit agreed: “This is not a case about tolerating private student speech. To the contrary, E.D. was permitted to wear her pro-life shirt to school and hand out her flyers to students at the activities fair. Instead, it is a case about whether the school must lend its resources (here, literally its walls) — and, by extension, its authority — to disseminate student messages.”

  • The district court had applied a 1988 Supreme Court decision in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, which held that a school can exercise “editorial control over the style and content of student speech in school-sponsored expressive activities so long as their actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns.”

  • Justice Samuel Alito criticized the denial, writing that the Court should “clarify the relationship between” the 1988 decision and its other government-speech rulings.

» Federal Judge Blocks Texas AG’s Lawsuit Against Fundraising Platform

• A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction halting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit against ActBlue, a Democratic fundraising platform, over its donation practices, arguing Paxton infringed on its free speech rights.

• Context:

  • Paxton alleges that ActBlue told Congress in 2024 that it had stopped accepting donations via gift cards and foreign prepaid debit cards, and later quietly resumed accepting gift-card donations, thereby misleading consumers about its fundraising processes and violating state law.

  • The lawsuit argued that the group’s actions facilitated illegal campaign contributions by anonymous foreign nationals and that it should be forced to pay penalties and be barred from accepting gift card donations.

  • ActBlue filed a federal case, claiming Paxton was retaliating after the group had made fundraising announcements about James Talarico, Paxton’s opponent in the race for a U.S. Senate seat.

• In Court:

  • U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns issued a preliminary injunction, arguing that the lawsuit was an attempt to suppress ActBlue’s political speech.

  • “The truth is plain and captured in Paxton’s own declarations: The lawsuit was filed in retaliation for (and in an attempt to suppress) ActBlue’s efforts to fund Talarico’s campaign,” Stearns wrote.

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The Digital Age 🤖

» Canada Proposes Social Media Ban for Under-16s, Expansion of Enforcement Powers

• Proposed Bill C-34 in Canada, also known as the Safe Social Media Act, would ban social media for kids under the age of 16, unless a social media company can prove that it has working safeguards in place for children.

• At the same time, the government has unveiled Bill C-36, also known as the Protecting Privacy and Consumer Data Act (PPCDA), which would reform existing privacy laws to transfer authority from Canada’s privacy commissioner to an incoming Canadian Digital Safety Commission (CDSC).

• Bill C-34:

  • The law would require companies to block users under 16 from creating accounts, though they may seek an exemption if they can demonstrate guardrails in place to protect children from bullying or harmful content.

  • Companies would also be required to remove sexually explicit content that victimizes children and adults, including AI-generated deepfakes, within 24 hours.

  • Although AI chatbots are not included in the social media ban, they will face additional regulations, such as mandated notices directing users to help when prompts explore suicide ideation, self-harm, or criminal activity.

  • The bill would also create the Canadian Digital Safety Commission, which could take up to 18 months to establish after the bill becomes law, and have new powers under another recently proposed law, Bill C-36.

• Bill C-36:

  • Bill C-36 transfers the authority to oversee privacy in the private sector from Canada’s privacy commissioner to the CDSC, and grants it new powers, including the ability to issue platforms binding orders and monetary penalties of up to $10 million or 3% of companies’ global revenue.

  • Officials claim that a privacy and data commissioner will be appointed to the CDSC and will enforce both the PPDCA and the Safe Social Media Act.

  • Among a number of changes, Bill C-36 would allow individuals to request that companies delete their personal information and remove deepfake images or videos from commercial platforms such as social media.

» Florida Sues TikTok, Claiming It Flouts State’s Social-Media Law for Minors

• Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has filed a civil lawsuit against TikTok, asking a state court to declare the company a public nuisance for failing to comply with a 2024 law requiring parental consent for teens aged 14-15 to use social media apps.

• Details:

  • Florida’s 2024 law, which took effect in November 2025, requires 14- and 15-year-olds to obtain a parent’s consent to have social media accounts and bars children 13 and under from apps with addictive features such as endless scrolling, push notifications, autoplay video, and live streaming.

  • Uthmeier, in a first lawsuit brought under the law, alleges that TikTok does not require the parental consent required by the law and misrepresents the maturity of its content.

  • Uthmeier said TikTok faces “potentially billions in damages” and asked the court to impose a $50,000 fine per violation.

» Illinois Governor Intends to Sign Social Media Age-Verification Law

• Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has said he intends to sign House Bill 5511, or the “Child Social Media Safety Act,” designed to protect children on online platforms — despite experts’ concerns about its constitutionality.

• Details:

  • State Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, a sponsor of the bill, said she believes the law will allow parents to control the content shown to children through a one-time, device-level age verification.

  • Pritzker is slated to sign the legislation into law soon, and it could face challenges in federal court.

» NY Senate Passes Bill Requiring Publishers, Broadcasters to Label AI Content

• The New York State Senate and Assembly have passed companion bills as part of a legislative package called the FAIR News Act that would require publishers and broadcasters to disclose and label AI-generated content.

• Details:

  • The bill would require outlets to disclose content that is “substantially composed, authored, or otherwise created through the use of generative artificial intelligence.”

  • Labels of such content would be required to appear at the top of a print or digital story or at the beginning of audio or visual content.

  • The Attorney General is empowered to determine what content is “substantially created” by AI and requires labeling.

  • Failures to disclose could result in a $1,000 fine for the first infraction and $5,000 for subsequent violations.

  • State Sen. Patricia Fahy has claimed her bill is not aimed at mainstream news outlets or commercial television newsrooms, but rather targets “fly-by-night” digital outlets that distort, pirate, or misrepresent content from legitimate outlets using AI.

  • However, the press release issued by her office applies to “news organizations operating in New York” and makes no distinction between legitimate and rogue outlets.

  • The bill is now headed to Governor Kathy Hochul’s desk.

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The Brussels Effect: Europe and Beyond 🇪🇺

» UK Proposes Social Media Ban for Under-16s

• A proposed UK law would bar children under 16 from social media platforms and extend restrictions to gaming sites, to block children from accessing “harmful functions” such as livestreaming and the ability to communicate with strangers.

• Details:

  • The ban would apply to platforms including Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X, though under-16s would still have access to messaging services like WhatsApp.

  • People under 18 would be banned from having AI “romantic companions,” though the details of the restriction and its enforcement are unclear.

  • Tech companies that fail to comply could face fines.

  • Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he hopes to have the regulations passed by lawmakers in late December and for them to take effect by the spring of 2027.

Our Take: “Although framed as a child-protection measure, the proposal would affect far more than teenagers,” Jeff Kosseff wrote at The Bedrock Principle. “By requiring intrusive age verification and limiting access to online platforms, it risks undermining privacy, anonymous speech, and freedom of expression for everyone.”

» UK Appeals Court Upholds Terrorism Ban on Protest Group Palestine Action

• Britain’s Court of Appeal has ruled that the government’s proscription of the activist group Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organization under the Terrorism Act 2000 was lawful, overturning a February High Court finding that the ban was unlawful and disproportionate.

• Context:

  • Since the group was banned in July 2025, more than 3,000 arrests have been made for displaying support for it.

  • Lawyers representing Britain’s Interior Minister, Shabana Mahmood, had argued at an April hearing that the claims the ban would significantly curtail free expression were “overstated and incorrect.”

  • Chief Justice Sue Carr cited the fact that the group’s activities have caused injury and property damage, and “at no stage has Palestine Action suggested that its terrorist activities were either a mistake or an aberration.”

Free Speech Recession 🌍

» Exiled Russian Artist Killed in Suspected Execution in Poland

• Semyon Skrepetsky, a 44-year-old Russian artist known for creating unflattering caricatures of President Vladimir Putin, was shot dead in Poland in a parking lot near his home near Poland’s border with Belarus.

• Details:

  • Skrepetsky had lived in Poland for 5 years after escaping Russia, fearing arrest for his activism.

  • His paintings often depicted Putin with a bovine nose or hugging pigs, many times alongside Russian officials, world leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Xinping, and even Elon Musk.

  • Marcin Kozak, a spokesman for Poland’s prosecutors’ office, said that according to current information, Skrepetsky fell to the ground after an unidentified man fired two shots at him. Then, the perpetrator fired three more shots before fleeing the scene.

  • Police detained two Belarusian men near the Belarusian Consulate after the shooting for suspected execution.

» Tunisian Court Sentences Government-Critical Journalist To Prison In Absentia

• A Tunisian court has sentenced Khaoula Boukrim, journalist and founder of the news website TUMEDIA, to four years in prison in absentia under a 2022 cybercrime law.

• Details:

  • The ruling is the latest move against critical voices under President Kais Saied, following the jailing of several media figures earlier this year, including Zied Heni, Mourad Zghidi, and Borhen Bsaies.

  • Boukrim had fled to Paris in December 2025, after she was informed that two separate judgments had been issued against her under Decree-Law 54, a cybercrime law aimed at combating misinformation and online abuse.

  • According to Reuters, rights groups argue that the law has increasingly been used to prosecute critics and curb free speech.

» Mumbai Mayor Calls for Ban on Stand-Up Comedy Shows

• In Mumbai, India, Mayor Ritu Tawde has called for a ban on stand-up comedy shows after the Maharashtra Cyber, the state’s cybercrime and cybersecurity agency, launched an investigation into a comedy show that allegedly featured obscene and objectionable content circulating online.

• Details:

  • Content from the program, hosted by comedian Pranit More, began circulating on social media and allegedly contained offensive remarks concerning women, consent, and deceased persons.

  • Authorities claim the content was contrary to accepted societal norms and subject to provisions of criminal law.

  • The Maharashtra Cyber registered a First Information Report (FIR), which automatically initiates a formal police investigation, against comedians Pranit More, Himanshu Jangra, Sejal Pawar, and other individuals associated with the show.

  • Speaking about the show, Tawde said, “As the Mayor, I oppose this; it does not befit our Indian culture…Stand-up comedy shows should be banned. I will write a letter to the Chief Minister.”

» Azerbaijan Rearrests Exiled Journalist After Forced Return From Georgia

• Azerbaijan rearrested Afgan Sadigov, editor-in-chief of the online outlet Azel.TV, after he was arrested in Georgia in 2024 over an Azerbaijani extradition request alleging extortion, without evidence.

• Details:

  • Sadigov had applied to the European Court of Human Rights to halt his removal on the grounds that his rights in Azerbaijan would be violated, and the court suspended his transfer.

  • On April 1, Azerbaijani authorities terminated the criminal prosecution behind the extradition request. Georgian courts subsequently lifted the restrictions on Sadigov.

  • On April 4, Georgian authorities detained Sadigov on an administrative charge of “insulting a police officer on social media” and deported him to Azerbaijan.

  • Georgian authorities claimed that the ECtHR’s suspension of Sadigov’s transfer was no longer relevant since Azerbaijan had dropped the charges.

  • In Azerbaijan, authorities prevented him from leaving the country, telling him the case against him was active despite official documentation showing it had been closed.

  • Sadigov was detained on June 8, and his lawyer reports that an Azerbaijani court had ordered the case reopened.

» Pakistan Detains YouTube Journalist Over Kashmir Protest Coverage

• Pakistani authorities have arrested journalist Sohrab Barkat over his coverage of protests in Kashmir on his YouTube channel.

• Details:

  • The National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) accused Barkat of violating the country’s Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA), which criminalized the dissemination of “fake or false” information.

  • The NNCIA cited a June 5 report by Barkat, which they say promoted the views of a local protest movement called the Jammu Kashmir Join Awami Action Committee (JAAC).

  • JAAC was banned by Pakistan-administered Kashmir under anti-terrorism laws on the same day.

  • Bakarat appeared in court and was remanded in custody for three days.

  • This follows his earlier detention from November 2025 to March this year, which carried no charges and is linked to his journalism, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

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Ashley Haek is a communications coordinator and research assistant at The Future of Free Speech.

Audrey Campbell is a communications intern at The Future of Free Speech and an international relations major at American University.

Isabella Dail is a communications intern at The Future of Free Speech and a recent graduate from Princeton University with a bachelor’s in philosophy.

The United Kingdom announced this week that it plans to ban certain social media sites for all children under 16 years old. Although framed as a child-protection measure, the proposal would affect far more than teenagers. By requiring intrusive age verification and limiting access to online platforms, it risks undermining privacy, anonymous speech, and freedom of expression for everyone.

The UK is following in the footsteps of Australia, which enacted a similar ban last year. Both countries are imposing the bans out of concern for the impacts of social media on children’s mental health. “Parents want to keep their kids safe and happy, but the online world has made that harder than ever,” UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement announcing the policy.

The UK plans to ban children under 16 from using social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X, and YouTube, but it will not ban Signal, WhatsApp, and other messaging services. The government’s announcement did not sufficiently justify how a selective ban on only certain platforms would address its concerns about harms to children.

The government also plans to examine restrictions on certain social media features, such as infinite scrolling, for 16- and 17-year-olds.

The government justified its move in part on the basis of a consultation with more than 116,000 children, experts, and parents, who overwhelmingly said they want a social media ban. It’s worth noting how the government admits (on a webpage that is several clicks away from its announcement) that its consultation findings have a self-selection bias and are not representative:

“The consultation was open to anyone who chose to respond. The results reflect the views of parents and carers who were motivated to take part, and are not representative of parents and carers nationally. As with any open public consultation, respondents may differ systematically from the wider population in their views and characteristics.”

Regardless, the government did not explain why parents are unable to control the platforms that their children access. Nor did it articulate the strength of the data supporting its assumption that social media harms children under 16. In January, the UK government released a report authored by 14 scholars, which found a “small but consistent correlation” between adolescent social media use and poor mental health. But the report warned that “while longitudinal studies can demonstrate the sequence of events, they cannot confirm causality without the use of more robust causal methods.”

This is in line with research around the world, which is equivocal at best on the issue of whether social media harms teenage mental health. A 2024 report by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found that its “review of the literature did not support the conclusion that social media causes changes in adolescent health at the population level.”

Assuming that the UK government is correct to conclude that social media could harm teenagers’ mental health, it ignores the many potential benefits of social media in providing community and access to information. “Social media has the potential to connect friends and family. It may also be valuable to teens who otherwise feel excluded or lack offline support,” the National Academies report found. “Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, questioning, and other (LGBTQ+) teenagers may find support online that they do not have in their offline world, as do young people coping with serious illness, bereavement, and mental health problems.”

And even if one were to discount these benefits and conclude that banning children from social media would be desirable in the abstract, it is unlikely that the UK policy would accomplish that goal. Six months after Australia’s ban went into effect, the government reported that about 70 percent of children continued to use social media. Children are well aware of how to circumvent age-assurance technology, such as facial recognition and ID checks. If the overwhelming majority of children continue to use social media despite the ban, the policy primarily succeeds in increasing surveillance rather than reducing access.

Starmer acknowledged that possibility but said it is not a reason to refrain from the social media ban. “They get around other laws, too, but we don’t say, ‘Oh, look, a teenager managed to get a drink somehow, so let’s not bother banning alcohol sales to children,’” Starmer said, according to the New York Times. “We don’t do that, that would be utterly ridiculous, and so I just don’t accept that argument.”

What Starmer failed to acknowledge is that underage drinking is quite different from the use of social media, which provides the ability to express and receive information and therefore carries many more potential social benefits and raises fundamentally different constitutional questions.

Starmer also fails to account for the policy’s impact on adults. The announcement said that the government would introduce “highly effective age assurance” measures, but it did not specify the required technology. This technology either estimates age from a facial scan or requires the user to upload a driver’s license or passport.

Indeed, the UK recently began requiring age verification for online “harmful” content such as pornography, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation reported that the use of these technologies on platforms such as Reddit was “chaotic,” requiring people, including adults, to surrender their anonymity to continue to use platforms. EFF wrote that “users reported various bugs in the age-checking process, like being locked out or asked repeatedly for ID despite complying.”

Requiring sensitive information such as facial scans or photo IDs risks real privacy violations. This is not merely hypothetical. Last year, Discord’s age-verification provider suffered a data breach, compromising 70,000 users’ government identification cards.

The UK’s minimization of the severity of these problems is particularly ironic, as it has a long and proud history of anonymous speech. For instance, in the 1700s, a pseudonymous writer known only as Junius wrote dozens of letters to a London newspaper, criticizing King George III and many government officials. His letters had a great impact on public sentiment, and to this day, his identity is unknown.

Under the UK’s plans, the next potential Junius would be less likely to criticize the government on social media, as a third-party age assurance provider would have collected Junius’s face scan or photo ID.

Jeff Kosseff is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at The Future of Free Speech and the co-author (with Jacob Mchangama) of the new book The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026).

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For the past few years, one of the most contentious issues in the online speech world is “jawboning,” or government pressure on companies to censor certain speech. Although jawboning has typically been associated with pressure on social media companies, we have more recently seen serious allegations of jawboning against broadcasters and artificial intelligence providers.

A new bipartisan bill seeks to prevent jawboning in all those contexts and to grant victims of jawboning the right to sue government employees who attempted to censor them. Introduced last week by Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the Justice Against Weaponized Bureaucratic Overreach to Networked Expression Act (“JAWBONE Act”) defines impermissible government jawboning and provides much-needed transparency to government pressure on speech intermediaries.

The bill would make it illegal for a federal agency or federal employee to “coerce” an online service, AI provider, or broadcaster into changing or removing speech, or suspending or terminating individual users.

Central to the bill is its strong and broad coverage. It defines “coerce” as “to take a harmful, hostile, or unfavorable action, to imply the possibility of taking such action, or to threaten such action.” Among the factors that determine whether coercion exists are:

• “the word choice and tone of any relevant communication from the agency, officer, or employee,”

• “the existence of any federal regulatory or enforcement authority over the recipient of any relevant communication from the agency, officer, or employee,”

• “whether any relevant communication from the agency, officer, or employee referred to adverse consequences to the recipient,”

• “whether any relevant communication from the agency, officer, or employee was private or public,”

• “whether any relevant communication from the agency, officer, or employee included an affirmative disclaimer that the communication lacked legal force,”

• “whether any relevant communication from the agency, officer, or employee included a factual statement without legal force that could be useful to the decision-making of the recipient,”

• “whether any relevant communication from the agency, officer, or employee was for the purpose of aiding compliance with existing law,” and

• “whether any relevant communication from the agency, officer, or employee led the recipient to act contrary to its own policies.”

The bill’s test for coercion is more detailed than, but similar to, the four-part test for unconstitutional jawboning that the Supreme Court articulated in a 2024 First Amendment case, National Rifle Association v. Vullo. In that opinion, the Court held that to determine whether a government communication constitutes a coercive threat, courts should consider “(1) word choice and tone; (2) the existence of regulatory authority; (3) whether the speech was perceived as a threat; and, perhaps most importantly, (4) whether the speech refers to adverse consequences.”

One might wonder why there is a need for a jawboning bill in light of that strong First Amendment precedent. The JAWBONE Act addresses a major shortcoming in the current legal framework: although the government might have violated the First Amendment, victims of jawboning often lack effective remedies. It is difficult to sue the federal government for constitutional violations. The Supreme Court only allows these suits, known as Bivens claims, in a few specific types of cases and has expressed an unwillingness to extend such lawsuits to First Amendment claims. In other words, even if a plaintiff has strong evidence that the federal government violated their First Amendment rights, there might not be a mechanism to sue for damages.

The JAWBONE Act addresses this problem by creating a private right of action, allowing jawboning victims, state attorneys general, and online services to bring a civil lawsuit against federal agencies or employees for violations of the law. The right of action allows compensatory damages, costs, attorneys’ fees, and equitable relief.

The bill addresses another obstacle to jawboning cases: defendants often move to dismiss for failure to state a claim or lack of standing before any discovery has occurred. Without discovery, the plaintiff may not have alleged enough facts to survive a motion to dismiss. The bill allows the court to grant a limited 30-day discovery period before ruling on the motion to dismiss. This enables the plaintiff to gather sufficient evidence to allow the suit to proceed beyond the dismissal motion.

The bill allows a private right of action not only against federal agencies, but against federal employees in their individual capacities. The JAWBONE Act requires the federal government to indemnify those employees unless the court determines that the employee “acted in a willful and wanton manner in incurring liability.”

In addition to creating a private right of action, the JAWBONE Act would provide much-needed transparency to the federal government’s interactions with social media platforms, AI providers, and broadcasters. It would create a centralized, publicly available portal for federal agencies to report their communications with those companies regarding expression on their platforms.

Jeff Kosseff is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at The Future of Free Speech and the co-author (with Jacob Mchangama) of the new book The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026).

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Originally published on my personal Substack.

Last week, a German man was fined 30 daily income units for calling Chancellor Friedrich Merz a “Lying Fritz” on Facebook. He was not alone. When the Heilbronn police published a Facebook post in October 2025 announcing the chancellor’s upcoming visit, some 400 comments rolled in — many mocking Merz, by then unpopular for breaking a string of campaign promises.

He was subjected to such indignities as “Ftzn Frieder” (roughly “c**t Freddie”), “Pinocchio,” and “Lackaffe” (”pompous fool”). Unfortunately for these keyboard warriors, Article 188 of the German Criminal Code punishes “Insult, malicious gossip and defamation directed at persons in political life” with fines or up to five years imprisonment.

Heilbronn police launched 39 investigations. The persons responsible for “Lying Fritz” and “Ftzn Frieder” were fined with 30 daily income units, “Lackaffe” escaped a formal conviction by paying a 100 Euro fine, while “Pinocchio” was deemed protected speech.

This was not an isolated incident. German newspaper Die Welt broke the story that Merz has used a private reputation firm to scan social media and report hundreds of insulting comments to the police since 2021, when Merz was the leader of the (then) opposition conservative CDU party in the Bundestag. Several of these complaints resulted in house searches with confiscations of phones and tablets, including one later deemed illegal and one of a severely disabled woman in a wheelchair.

Merz is not the only thin-skinned politician in Germany. From 2023 - 2025, the number of investigations for insults against politicians increased from 2,598 to 4,792, or roughly 85%. These cases often involve powerful government officials, such as the previous Vice-Chancellor and Interior Minister.

Article 188 was adopted in 2021 after the murder of a German politician by a white supremacist. Merz’s CDU colleague Carsten Müller defended the provision since “murderous acts followed bloodthirsty words.” But the idea behind punishing ordinary citizens for sarcastic, offensive, and insulting statements about their elected officials goes well beyond incitement and threats. Its purpose is to prevent “attacks on personal rights” as well as on “political discourse in the democratic and pluralist social order.”

Ironically, an unelected Roman emperor who held vastly more political power over his subjects than Germany’s democratic leaders hold over the citizens from whom they derive their power would have rejected Article 188 and its rationale as both unjust and unwise.

Almost 2,000 years ago, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote his famous “Meditations” (Hays translation), a timeless manual on how to apply Stoic philosophy to practical life. Aurelius is often referred to as a “philosopher king.”

But Meditations is not an abstract theoretical work of philosophy. It was written for an audience of one, Aurelius himself, as a form of philosophical self-help guide while he was fulfilling his duties on military campaigns, navigating treacherous revolts and trying to hold the empire together during deadly plagues.

Despite ruling the most powerful empire on earth and wielding unchecked power over millions of subjects, Marcus Aurelius has a lot to say about the value of free speech, criticism, and the tolerance of insults, mockery, and hatred, which contrasts sharply with the democratically adopted laws that protect elected government officials like Merz.

In Book I.14, Marcus pays respect to his mentors and teachers for instilling basic values in him, including the ideal of:

a society of equal laws, governed by equality of status and of speech, and of rulers who respect the liberty of their subjects above all else.

Marcus uses the Greek terms “parrhesia” — uninhibited or fearless speech — and “isegoria” — equality of (political) speech — concepts central to the Athenian democracy that was the epicenter of the very Greek philosophy that Marcus Aurelius consumed.

Contrast this with the German prosecutor who insisted that it was necessary to punish the Facebook post calling Merz a Lying Fritz because it was:

shaking confidence in the integrity of the victim, because it was capable of stirring up further negative prejudices or even aggression among like-minded individuals.

But for Aurelius, the values of free and equal speech were not so much about institutional safeguards or laws — the Roman empire had no bill of rights — as about ethics and cultivating the mental habits necessary for leading a virtuous life.

Marcus was surrounded by courtiers and flatterers, and many people he met would have been afraid to criticize him. There had traditionally been very good reasons for this, given the harsh treatment that Emperors like Tiberius dished out to people whose words and writings displeased them and who transformed Republican Rome’s relatively lenient attitude towards political criticism into the capital crime of “literary treason.”

Yet, Marcus entirely rejects the idea that he — or any other prominent figure — is different from other men, or in need of special protection. In fact, he welcomes criticism as set out in book VI.21:

If anyone can refute me—show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective—I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.

It’s no surprise that John Stuart Mill - who regarded Marcus Aurelius “the best and most enlightened among his contemporaries” - would adopt and elaborate this argument in On Liberty some 1,700 years later.

Merz and the German political establishment might retort: We too value debate and pluralism and will heed constructive criticism, yet we draw the line at gratuitous insults that contribute nothing to serious discussions and are solely aimed at degrading the dignity of public officials and undermining democratic institutions.

Yet, Marcus Aurelius’s ethics is much more demanding than merely embracing reasoned criticism. Again and again, he reminds himself that humans are imperfect and hold conflicting ideas about the highest good, with each person convinced that they are in the right and others wrong. Accordingly, insults and expressions of hatred are a natural consequence of ignorance and pluralism, which cannot be remedied by punishment or responding in kind with anger and hatred.

When possible, a virtuous person should try to reason and correct those who are misguided. When this is not possible, a virtuous person should strive to look at words for what they are: words. Aurelius’ central insight is that insults and hateful words only hurt if you allow them to. If you train your mind not to slavishly identify with others’ opinions about you, but evaluate them as objectively as possible, you’ll not be afflicted by feelings of rage, anger, hatred, or sorrow that offensive words can provoke in the reactive mind. This quote from Book VIII.48-49 is instructive:

The mind without passions is a fortress. No place is more secure. Once we take refuge there we are safe forever. Not to see this is ignorance. To see it and not seek safety means misery. Nothing but what you get from first impressions. That someone has insulted you, for instance. That—but not that it’s done you any harm.

And he goes further:

Someone despises me. That’s their problem. Mine: not to do or say anything despicable. Someone hates me. Their problem. Mine: to be patient and cheerful with everyone, including them. Ready to show them their mistake. Not spitefully, or to show off my own self-control, but in an honest, upright way.

In light of Marcus Aurelius’ wise insights, Merz’s reaction becomes almost laughable and pathetic. Should the Chancellor of Germany really be concerned about random insults on a Facebook post? In what concrete way can such comments hurt the most powerful man in Germany? Should the leader of a country struggling with a flagging economy, integration of immigrants, and a disintegrating NATO, not be robust enough to laugh at personal insults, rather than treat them as threats to the government he heads? If Merz believes that the people in whose name he governs are wrong about his policies, why not try to listen, understand, and correct their views, rather than have the police show up at their doors?

Marcus Aurelius also appreciates the benefits of tolerating the value of humor in the form of sharp and sarcastic personal attacks. He specifically praises the Old Comedy of Athens, often associated with Aristophanes, who ridiculed prominent Athenian politicians, intellectuals, and even the Gods. From Book XI.6 (Long translation):

After Tragedy the Old Comedy was introduced, with its magisterial freedom of speech, and by its very plain speaking reminding men not to be insolent.

In other words, the emperor of Rome actively embraced the value of satire in reminding the powerful that they, too, are mere humans and that arrogance and self-importance are vices to be kept in check, not to be indulged or protected through force.

It would be wrong and ahistorical to portray Marcus Aurelius as an early champion of liberal democracy or human rights. He was, after all, an emperor; there were persecutions of Christians during his reign, and he fought bloody campaigns to retain the empire that his predecessors had conquered through brutal wars. For these failings, Mill explicitly uses Marcus Aurelius as both an aspirational figure for cultivating an open and tolerant mindset and as a tragic warning against believing oneself to be beyond reproach:

Unless any one who approves of punishment for the promulgation of opinions, flatters himself that he is a wiser and better man than Marcus Aurelius--more deeply versed in the wisdom of his time, more elevated in his intellect above it--more earnest in his search for truth, or more single-minded in his devotion to it when found;--let him abstain from that assumption of the joint infallibility of himself and the multitude.

Mill’s challenge applies with full force to Germany’s prosecutors and legislators: do they flatter themselves wiser and better than Marcus Aurelius? However imperfect his rule, it is difficult not to conclude that the ethics this ancient emperor strove to live by were far more conducive to liberal democracy than the cognitive dissonance underlying modern Germany’s speech crimes, where the powerful enjoy special protection against criticism from their own citizens.

Several politicians have argued for the repeal of Article 188 and the end of mass investigations of citizens who throw rhetorical daggers at their politicians, but so far to no avail. Perhaps Germany needs a “philosopher Chancellor.”

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Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media and The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom (with Jeff Kosseff).

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This Week at a Glance 🔎

— 🇺🇸 Trump Seeks to Revive $475M Defamation Suit Against CNN

— 🇬🇧 White House Opposes UK Social Media Ban for Under-16s

— 🇨🇳 China Suppresses Tiananmen Square Anniversary Remembrance

— 🇩🇪 German Court Says Google Liable for AI Overviews

— 📱FCC Targets “Burner Phones”

First of All 🇺🇸

» Trump Tells Supreme Court He Will Seek to Revive $475 Million CNN Defamation Suit

• President Donald Trump has reportedly told the U.S. Supreme Court that he plans to ask the Justices to revive his $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN over the network’s use of the term “Big Lie” in reporting on his claim that the 2020 election was rigged against him.

• Context:

  • Trump sued CNN in 2022, accusing the network of smearing him by frequently using “Big Lie” to describe his theory that Joe Biden’s 2020 victory was the result of mass voter fraud, and of harming his reputation by hosting guests who compared him to Adolf Hitler.

  • The case was dismissed in July 2023 by U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal, who said that while the network’s statements were “repugnant,” they were not “defamatory.”

  • “This case involves political speech of the highest order,” Singhal wrote, “The First Amendment has its fullest and most urgent application precisely to the conduct of campaigns for public office.”

  • The ruling was upheld by a three-judge federal appeals court panel in November 2025.

  • According to a request docketed by the Justices, Trump’s lawyers have now asked the Court for a 60-day extension to August 15 to file his petition for a review of the lower court’s dismissal of the case.

  • The filing indicated Trump also wants the Justices to weigh in on when a jury, rather than a judge, should decide whether an allegedly defamatory statement would be viewed by the public as opinion or fact.

» Press-Freedom Groups Demand Charges Be Dropped Against Journalists Arrested at Newark ICE Protests

• More than a dozen national and statewide press organizations have demanded that authorities drop charges against at least three journalists arrested while covering protests outside Newark, New Jersey’s Delaney Hall immigration detention center.

• Details:

  • Protests at Delaney Hall, the state’s largest immigration detention center, have been ongoing since May 22.

  • After authorities enforced an emergency curfew around the facility, they began “kettling” crowds, or surrounding and containing groups before making arrests.

  • Despite state guidelines that exempt journalists from the curfew, three were arrested on May 31, and one was reportedly charged with felony rioting and resisting arrest.

  • The allegations directly challenge state officials’ statements that journalists at Delaney Hall were not arrested, detained, or injured during operations.

• Broader Context:

  • According to the organizations, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker is investigating at least three arrests, 38 assaults, and five incidents of equipment damage involving journalists covering the Delaney Hall protests.

  • The Tracker is also investigating an Essex County Prosecutor’s Office sergeant after they were charged with stealing an injured photojournalist’s gear.

  • Photographers report being pepper-sprayed and struck with batons by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents while reporting.

  • A WNBC television crew claims state police removed them from their marked news vehicle and directed them into an area where tear gas was deployed.

» Hawaiian Think-Tank Sues Over State’s Corporate Political Spending Law

• Grassroot Institute of Hawai’i (GIH), a public policy think tank, has filed a lawsuit against “Act 11,” which establishes new restrictions on political spending by incorporated entities, including nonprofits, trade associations, corporations, and unions, arguing that the law violates organizations’ First Amendment rights.

• Act 11:

  • Act 11 directly challenges the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, which affirmed independent spending by third parties on political advertisements as protected speech.

  • Existing campaign finance statutes allow organizations to make such contributions as long as they register “independent expenditures” and “electioneering communications” and disclose them to donors.

  • Act 11 prohibits incorporated entities, including nonprofits, from engaging in “election activity” and “ballot-issue activity,” which could potentially include any spending to speak out for or against candidates, ballot measures, or political parties.

  • Entities can face a range of penalties from suspension of authority to operate, revocation of tax exemptions, to involuntary dissolution.

  • According to the Institute for Free Speech (IFS), GIH’s legal representation, by prohibiting any spending to “directly or indirectly … support or oppose” a candidate, the law risks prohibiting routine legislative education and advocacy that may mention elected officials.

• The Lawsuit:

  • Keli’i Anika, President of GIH, said in a statement that Act 11 “prevents citizens from organizing and pooling resources, time, and effort to speak on topics of public concern.”

  • Owen Yeates, the lead IFS litigator on behalf of GIH, argued, “Americans have a constitutional right to join together through nonprofits and other associations to advocate for the causes that matter to them and their communities. Moreover, Americans have a right to decide for themselves which voices they want to hear. Act 11 strips those rights from the residents of Hawai‘i.”

  • The Act is set to take effect in July 2027.

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The Digital Age 🤖

» White House Urges UK Not to Ban Social Media for Under-16s

• In a submission to the UK government’s consultation on online safety, the White House has urged the country not to impose a social media ban for children under 16.

• Details:

  • The submission argues that age-gating content will not work and instead calls on the UK to give parents “robust tools” to manage children’s privacy settings and account controls, and to mandate that platforms offer a safe online experience.

  • It also explains, “We have concerns about regulations that impose disproportionate compliance burdens on American companies or that apply to one platform but not similar services.”

• Context:

  • Meta, whose platforms will be affected by the outcome of the consultation, has already launched a legal challenge against Ofcom, the UK’s media regulator, regarding the fees and fines it is enforcing under the Act, as included in a previous Free Flow.

  • The news comes as the country’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected to unveil a package of online restrictions that includes a ban on “harmful” social media apps and potential blocks on conversations with strangers on gaming platforms.

  • The “harmful” apps subject to the ban are unknown, though reports that YouTube Kids could be exempt indicate there may be exceptions for “educational” platforms.”

» FCC Proposes Telecom Providers Collect Identifying Information About Phone Customers

• A recent proposal from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) would legally require telecommunications companies to store identifying personal information of all phone customers to prevent people from buying “burner phones.”

• Details:

  • “Burner phones” are phones that are not linked to your identity at the point of purchase, and can be important technology for journalists, domestic abuse survivors, or privacy-conscious people.

  • The proposed changes would require telecom providers to obtain the “name, physical address, government issued identification number, and an alternate telephone number of any new and renewing customer before granting access to its services.”

  • The agency claims the goal of collecting the data is to deter scammers and to allow enforcers to better identify them, but it also lists other ways the data could help authorities.

  • Authorities note that the data could help identify people involved in investigations into “fraud, espionage, or influence operations that undermine national security” as well as “abuse in text messaging networks.”

  • One section adds, ‘criminals continue to leverage the anonymity provided by phone calls and texts to defraud Americans and exploit communications networks…”

  • The proposal is open to public comment until June 25.

The Brussels Effect: Europe and Beyond 🇪🇺

» German Court Holds Google Liable Over AI-Generated Overview Results

• The Regional Court of Munich has ruled that Google is directly liable for what its AI search overviews say, and that prior case law shielding search engine operators from liability does not apply to such overviews.

• Context:

  • The case was brought by two Munich-based publishing companies that Google’s AI overviews had falsely linked to scams, subscription traps, and shady business practices in certain search queries.

  • The publishers had sent Google a cease-and-desist letter, but even though specific texts were no longer being displayed, Google had not properly complied with the letter, nor had it implemented safeguards to prevent the algorithm from generating the same statements again.

  • The Munich Court issued a temporary injunction against the company, barring it from spreading false claims about the publishers in AI overviews.

• In Court:

  • Germany’s Federal Court of Justice has ruled that search engine operators are only subject to limited liability over third parties that they merely made findable.

  • The Munich court determined that such liability protections do not apply to AI overviews, which it found are a generation of “independent, new, and substantive statements,” made by evaluating and combining content.

  • It said that Google’s AI overviews differ from traditional search results because it rewrites information “in its own words and according to its own structure,” and that the claims against the publishers, which did not appear in search results, were the “defendant’s own statements.”

  • Google argued at the hearing that users could fact-check the AI overview using the linked sources themselves, but the Court rejected this, saying the possibility of disproving a statement doesn’t exempt its maker from liability.

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Free Speech Recession 🌍

» China Represses Tiananmen Square Remembrance Activities

• According to an anonymous source who spoke with the Associated Press, Chinese police told the relatives of victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre that they would not be allowed to visit a Beijing cemetery on the 37th anniversary of the tragedy.

• Details:

  • Police increased security measures on the anniversary in a park where candlelight vigils have been held every year since the massacre, until a clampdown in 2019 following anti-government protests.

  • A handful of people showed up, and officers stopped and searched seven of them on suspicion of being disorderly in public.

  • The police said the individuals were taken for further investigation before being allowed to leave.

• Context:

  • The police presence is the latest in a yearslong campaign to erase the tragedy from public memory.

  • Authorities in Hong Kong have banned the vigil since 2020, citing the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • Three of the vigil’s organizers have been charged under a 2020 national security law.

» Two Men Convicted in London of Stabbing Iranian Journalist in Attack Linked to Iran

• A jury at Woolwich Crown Court has convicted two Romanian men of stabbing Pouria Zeraati, a journalist from a Farsi-language television station, allegedly at the behest of Tehranian authorities.

• Details:

  • Zeraati, a presenter at London-based Iran International, was stabbed in the leg in March 2024.

  • Nandito Badea and George Stana were arrested in Romania in December 2024 for the attack and extradited to the U.K., while the third suspect, David Andrei, remains the subject of criminal proceedings in Romania.

  • The jury’s verdict does not conclude that the attack was executed on behalf of Iran, though the judge may determine that when the pair is sentenced in July.

  • Iran’s senior diplomat in England has denied it was behind the attack, though the broadcaster has previously received threats over its coverage of the country.

  • In 2023, the broadcaster temporarily moved to studios in Washington, D.C., citing an escalation of “state-backed threats from Iran,” before later resuming operations at a new location in London.

  • U.K. security officials claim Iran is behind a growing number of plans in the country targeting opposition Farsi-language media outlets and the Jewish community in the country, with reports that more than 20 lethal plots were disrupted by the country’s MI5 domestic intelligence service between October 2024 and ‘25.

» Surge in Arrests Over False News & Offensive Speech in Ghana

• The Media Foundation for West Africa has reported a sharp uptick in arrests linked to false news and offensive speech in Ghana as authorities increasingly enforce the country’s Criminal Code and Electronic Communications Act.

• Details:

  • 14 such arrests have occurred in less than 16 months, nearly double the number documented during the previous administration’s eight-year tenure.

  • Opposition minority leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin has criticized enforcement efforts, arguing, “Arresting citizens for words that do not constitute genuine threats is not justice. It is intimidation.”

  • Meanwhile, the government has rejected allegations of a crackdown, and a National Democratic Congress (NDC) Party communicator said: “Ghana’s laws, Section 208 of the Criminal Code and Section 76 of the Electronic Communications Act, have been on the books for decades.”

  • “What has changed,” he added, “is the sheer volume of reckless, anonymous, and sometimes dangerous content on social media. There is no systematic crackdown. There is simply enforcement of existing law.”

  • A legal consultant told Al Jazeera that after reviewing recent cases, Section 208 of the Criminal Code was misapplied at least 16 times in the past 18 months.

» Journalists Arrested in Mali for ‘Undermining the State’

• Malian authorities have arrested two journalists in the past two days as part of a crackdown on dissent, as a security crisis escalates.

• The Arrests:

  • The main press association in Mali, the “Maison de La Presse,” said that journalist Abderhmane Keita was arrested on charges of “undermining national unity and the credibility of the state” and “dissemination of false and misleading information.”

  • Chahana Takiou, a television presenter and the editor-in-chief of the newspaper 22 Septembre, was arrested on charges of “undermining the credibility of the State through the judicial system.”

  • Takiou had criticized the authorities’ application of a cybercrime law, which he argued was weaponized against press freedom.

• Context:

  • Public statements suggesting that Mali’s military leadership is losing ground to jihadist groups often lead to charges in the country.

  • The arrests come as reports of Islamic extremists attacking the country reach record numbers and government forces face accusations of killing civilians with suspected ties to militants.

  • The security crisis has been used as justification for the crackdown on dissent, with authorities banning magazines, French media outlets, and imprisoning opposition leaders.

» Amnesty International Report Shows Inadequate Protest Protections in Greece, Leading Demonstrations to Become Violent

• A report from Amnesty International finds that protest legislation in Greece, which fails to meet international standards, is underpinning an increase in the use of unnecessary or excessive police force against peaceful protesters in the country.

• Excessive Force:

  • The report is based on two years of research, video footage analysis, and interviews with protesters, journalists, and lawyers.

  • Of the 67 people interviewed specifically about unlawful use of force in policing demonstrations, 30 described authorities throwing stun grenades above peaceful protesters and journalists’ heads, or at their feet, or into dense crowds.

  • Verified video shows police using stun grenades next to a cafe where bystanders were sitting, and documents officers striking peaceful demonstrators with batons, chasing them, and beating people already under police control.

  • The report also covers incidents involving the use of chemical irritants, water cannons, and force during arrest and or detention.

• Broad Police Powers:

  • Police are empowered to stop protesters and bring them into stations for identity checks, which has resulted in people being subject to arbitrary detentions, body searches, and use of force despite no reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.

  • Peaceful protesters have been criminalized, including individuals charged for participating in demonstrations or engaging in civil disobedience.

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Ashley Haek is a communications coordinator and research assistant at The Future of Free Speech.

Audrey Campbell is a communications intern at The Future of Free Speech and an international relations major at American University.

Isabella Dail is a communications intern at The Future of Free Speech and a recent graduate from Princeton University with a bachelor's in philosophy.

For most of human history, gatekeepers determined what information reached the public — first the church, then the press, then broadcasters. Today, that power belongs to algorithms. Recommendation systems now decide what news people see – or don’t. Regulating those systems is, therefore, no longer a matter of market competition exclusively. It is a question of free speech.

And the next decisive move in the global campaign to tame Big Tech companies may come not from Brussels, Washington, or Beijing — but from Brasília.

For years, Europe has set the tone in digital regulation. The Digital Markets Act established the principle that some platforms are so large and so strategically placed that regulators need not wait for proven misconduct before imposing restrictions.

That idea is now spreading. Brazil’s proposed Digital Markets Bill, PL 4675/2025 (expected to be voted on in May or June), does more than borrow Europe’s template. In important respects, it improves upon Europe’s political ambition while discarding some of its restraint.

That should concern anyone interested in who will wield the power to shape the architecture of the digital public square.

The bill, introduced by President Lula’s administration and pushed rapidly through the legislative process, would allow Brazil’s antitrust authority, CADE, to designate certain firms as systemically relevant and subject them to special obligations through a new digital markets unit. The broad rationale is familiar: large platforms occupy bottleneck positions, and governments should be able to intervene before damage is done.

That case deserves serious debate. But Brazil’s proposal goes well beyond a narrow ex-ante framework aimed at preventing anti-competitive conduct. It creates something more elastic: a regime in which the practical scope of intervention will depend less on clear statutory limits than on administrative interpretation. This is the bill’s defining feature as well as its greatest danger.

Europe’s DMA is interventionist, but it is also relatively specific. It sets out an identifiable list of dos and don’ts for designated gatekeepers. Brazil’s bill is more open-ended. The obligations it contemplates are illustrative rather than exhaustive, giving regulators room to broaden the scope of intervention over time without returning to Congress. In other words, lawmakers would authorize a model whose real content may be determined later by bureaucratic discretion.

That is not a minor drafting choice, but a transfer of power.

The bill is also broader in operational reach than some of its foreign counterparts. Rather than targeting only a particular service or market where a concern arises, it appears to allow obligations to spill over into entire corporate groups and integrated ecosystems.

In digital markets, that matters enormously. Platforms do not operate as isolated products. They operate as systems: of search, advertising, communications, app distribution, cloud infrastructure, payments, logistics, and data. A regulator empowered to reach across that web is not merely correcting abuses, but acquiring leverage over how digital ecosystems are designed and governed.

And Brazil’s bill says that part out loud.

Most antitrust laws concern conduct: exclusionary contracts, self-preferencing, tying, discriminatory access, and predatory behavior. This proposal moves further upstream. It explicitly permits interventions in algorithms, ranking systems, interoperability structures, and data flows — the internal mechanics through which platforms determine visibility, prioritize services, and shape user choice.

That is the real story. In digital markets, design is not cosmetic. Design is power.

Recommendation systems and integrated services affect more than prices and convenience. They affect what people see and how information circulates — and these are the raw materials of public debate. When regulators can reshape these by decree, the implications extend well beyond market efficiency. Users have a right to receive information, and a regulatory regime empowered to rewrite the mechanics of visibility can also quietly suppress ideas that those in power find inconvenient. The line between correcting an algorithmic bias and imposing one is thinner than it appears.

This is why the old distinction between competition policy and information policy is becoming harder to sustain. Once regulators are empowered to redesign the mechanisms that organize visibility and access, they are no longer acting only as market referees. They are helping shape the environment through which economic and informational life flows.

The geopolitical implications are equally important. The companies most likely to be designated under PL 4675/2025 are not Brazilian firms. They are overwhelmingly American. The bill is not openly protectionist; it does not impose tariffs or formal barriers to entry. But it would give a domestic authority in one of the world’s largest democracies continuing power over the design and operation of foreign platforms that function as essential infrastructure in the local economy.

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That is a subtler, more modern form of power. It works not by excluding foreign firms, but by governing the conditions under which they may operate.

Europe pioneered this model. The so-called Brussels effect showed that regulatory decisions taken in one large jurisdiction can become de facto global rules, because firms often find it easier to adapt products broadly than maintain different systems for different markets. Brazil may now be pointing to a next stage: not only the international diffusion of digital regulation, but the spread of a more discretionary and interventionist version of it. And if discretionary control over platform design diffuses across democracies, so does discretionary influence over what citizens see and read.

The Brasília effect, if it takes hold, would not only export a regulatory model — it would export a new architecture of speech. This matters especially because Brazil is not China or Russia. It is a large Western democracy. Its choices, therefore, carry a kind of legitimacy that authoritarian regulatory models do not. If Brazil normalizes a regime of open-ended authority over platform conduct and design, other democracies may find it easier to do the same.

Defenders of the bill will say that extraordinary market concentration demands extraordinary tools. Perhaps. But Brazil already has competition laws that allow preventive and corrective action based on evidence, including remedies and interim measures. The move toward a structural designation regime is not simply a technical necessity but a political choice to expand the timing, scope, and flexibility of state intervention.

That choice may prove costly. For firms, it means compliance under uncertainty, where the rules are less fixed than continually interpreted. For markets, it means greater fragmentation and slower innovation. For users, it means decisions about visibility, access, and integration moving further away from open competition and closer to bureaucratic management.

The deeper issue is not whether digital platforms should be regulated. They already are, and they will be more so. The real question is who will write the rules of the global internet and how much discretion they will claim in doing it.

Silicon Valley still builds many of the world’s most important platforms. But increasingly, others, including governments, are deciding how those platforms must work. And the rules that govern how platforms work are, ultimately, the rules that govern what billions of people can say, see, and share. Whoever holds open-ended power over platform design holds power over the architecture of global expression.

That is the Brasília effect.

Jamil Assis is the Institutional Relations director at Sivis Institute. He has an Engineering degree and an MA in Catholic Studies, and is the author of Democracy on Hold (free translation of Democracia em Modo Suspenso, available in Portuguese).

— 🇺🇲 Pentagon Bars Journalists From Press Office

— 🤖 Meta Expands Teen Account Safety Restrictions Globally

— 🇲🇾 Malaysia Begins Enforcing Social Media Ban for Users Under 16

— 🇬🇧 UK Bars American Commentators Entry Ahead of SXSW Appearance

— 🇪🇺 EU Watchdog Moves to Strip European Political Party of Status and Funding

First of All 🇺🇸

» Pentagon Bars Journalists From Press Office, Designating It a Classified Space

• In its latest move to restrict media access to the Pentagon, the Defense Department barred reporters from its press office, designating the space as classified.

• Details:

  • Pentagon reporters have long held press credentials granting them wide movement in the building to interact with press officials.

  • Now, Pentagon press secretary Joel Valdez said the office has been redesignated as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility because speechwriters who “routinely handle classified material” now occupy the space.

• The Bigger Picture:

  • The decision comes after major news outlets surrendered their access badges in October, following a refusal to agree to a new policy requiring journalists to pledge not to gather information not expressly authorized for release, as reported in a previous Free Flow.

  • In a lawsuit brought by The New York Times, U.S. District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman blocked the policy in March, and the Pentagon responded by mandating that all reporters be escorted through the Pentagon grounds.

  • The following month, Friedman ruled that the interim policy violated his March order, but an appeals court stayed part of his ruling, keeping the policy in place while the government appeals.

  • The Times filed a second lawsuit against the escort requirement last month, as reported in a previous Free Flow.

» DOJ Subpoenas Reddit and X to Unmask Anonymous Critics of ICE

• Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., subpoenaed Reddit and X seeking the names, addresses, and banking information of users who have criticized the government’s deportation efforts on social media.

• Details:

  • Previous court records show the Trump administration had abandoned the use of administrative summonses to unmask critics, which don’t require a judge or court process to proceed, following legal challenges.

  • Now, the U.S. Attorney’s Office has reportedly issued grand jury subpoenas to social media companies in which two anonymous posters criticized immigration enforcement efforts as part of criminal investigations.

  • Reddit and X have notified some users that they can oppose the data requests, giving them a brief window to intervene.

  • Users claim they remain unaware of the possible offenses under investigation, the posts that caught the government’s attention, or the laws allegedly broken.

• Grand Jury Subpoenas:

  • Grand jury subpoenas allow federal prosecutors to demand documents or testimony to present to grand jurors, who decide whether to indict the defendant. They indicate a criminal investigation, while administrative summons do not.

  • These subpoenas also do not receive judicial review unless they are challenged, and failure to comply can lead to fines and jail time.

  • The bar to quash a subpoena is high, and the challenger must prove that the request is unreasonable or oppressive.

Our Take: “For more than a quarter century, state and federal courts have held that the First Amendment protects the ability to speak anonymously on the internet. Despite this longstanding precedent, the Reddit and X subpoenas arise in a context that will be more challenging for the posters. Courts generally are more deferential to prosecutors seeking grand jury subpoenas than they are to plaintiffs’ lawyers in civil discovery, so it will be an uphill battle.”

» Judge Blocks National Park Service From Removing Anti-Trump ‘8647’ Flag From the National Mall

• A federal judge granted a temporary restraining order against the National Park Service after a chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) alleged a Park Police officer asked a protester to take down an “8647” flag, arguing it suggested a threat against President Trump.

• Details:

  • “86” is a common shorthand for “get rid of” or “throw out.” The phrase “8647” gained heightened scrutiny after two federal indictments were issued against former FBI Director James Comey over an Instagram post of seashells spelling out the digits on a beach, as reported in a previous Free Flow.

  • In April, the ACLU filed a complaint on behalf of Accountability NOW USA, a protest organization, alleging that the National Park Service violated the group’s First Amendment rights by threatening to revoke their protest permit over signs critical of Trump.

  • The ACLU requested a preliminary injunction to bar the revocation of the group’s permit on May 26, and submitted a request for a temporary restraining order the day after, alleging Accountability NOW USA was asked to take down the “8647” flag.

  • The judge rejected the government’s argument that the flag display amounted to incitement and said the evidence shows that the group’s purpose was “to urge that Congress impeach and remove President Trump from office.”

  • The temporary restraining order bars the government from ordering that the flag not be displayed and from revoking the group’s permit because of the flag.

» Judge Overturns West Point’s Prior Restraint on Civilian Faculty Speech

• A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the U.S. Military Academy at West Point from enforcing a February 2025 policy requiring its civilian faculty to obtain advance approval for “engagements” with external audiences on their academic disciplines.

• Context:

  • The policy applied to faculty “while on duty or when using any USMA affiliation or branding,” and included, but was not limited to, journal articles, conference presentations, media interviews, op-eds, and social media posts.

  • It followed an executive order from the month prior that banned West Point, the U.S. Naval Academy, and the U.S. Air Force Academy from “promoting, advancing, or otherwise inculcating…un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist, and irrational theories.”

  • The theories listed in the executive order included “divisive concepts,” “gender ideology,” race or sex “stereotyping,” and “scapegoating,” and the idea that “America’s founding documents are racist or sexist.”

  • Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had also commanded the service academies to ban instruction on critical race theory and DEI.

• In Court:

  • West Point law professor Tim Bakken sued the academy and six of its leaders in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in September 2025 over the policy and comments from the West Point Academic Board dean advising faculty not to “advocate for a particular position or ideology” in the classroom.

  • The court found the preapproval policy likely violates the First Amendment and issued a preliminary injunction barring its enforcement against any civilian faculty.

  • The ruling also forbade the academy from restraining Bakken “from expressing or offering his opinions, beliefs, or views to his students on the subjects he teaches.”

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The Digital Age 🤖

» Fifth Circuit Allows Texas App-Store Age Verification Law to Take Effect During Appeal

• A federal appeals court has ruled that Texas’s App Store Accountability Act, which requires app marketplace operators to verify users’ ages and mandates parental consent before minors under 18 download apps or make in-app purchases, can take effect.

• Details:

  • The law also requires app developers to indicate whether their apps are appropriate for children in four tiers: under 13, teens aged 13-15, older teens aged 16-17, or adults aged 18 or older.

  • In a case brought by the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a tech trade group, and the advocacy group Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, federal district judge Robert Pitman issued a temporary injunction in December 2025, arguing that the law likely violated the First Amendment.

  • “The Act is akin to a law that would require every bookstore to verify the age of every customer at the door and, for minors, require parental consent before the child or teen could enter and again when they try to purchase a book,” Pitman wrote.

  • Upon appeal by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked the injunction on the Act while it continues to review the case, without explaining its reasoning.

» Florida Sues OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, Seeking Personal Liability for Harms to Users

• Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman over the company’s design and safety, claiming that its systems present a “great danger of addiction, cognitive decline, suicide, violence, and related harms” to users.

• Context:

  • The civil action is separate from Uthmeier’s criminal investigation into the company, launched in late April of this year.

  • Uthmeier said he seeks civil penalties and a court order “to hold Altman personally liable.”

• The Lawsuit:

  • OpenAI is accused of four counts of deceptive and unfair trade practices, two counts of negligence, two counts of violating product liability laws, and one count each of fraudulent misrepresentation and causing a public nuisance.

  • A wide array of commonly cited risks from AI are cited, including that advertisements don’t display warnings about hallucinations or falsities, that ChatGPT’s sycophancy can cause dangerous psychological attachment, and the illicit provision of medical and legal advice.

  • The company maintains that it has integrated safety measures into its systems and that it has “safeguards in place to help people, especially teens, when conversations turn sensitive.”

» Meta Expands Teen Account Safety Restrictions Globally Following Court Losses

• Meta has expanded its content settings for teen accounts across Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger globally, as part of an initiative launched last October in select countries to prevent children from accessing inappropriate content.

• The company has also announced an Instagram feature aimed at diversifying the content teens see to prevent repetitive exposure to certain themes.

• Details:

  • “We recognize that some content— like posts about nutrition, weightlifting, or how to cope with anxiety— can be helpful, but it should be balanced with other types of content rather than shown repeatedly,” the company said.

  • Meta has also said that a “limited content” setting will be made available on Facebook and Messenger this year to further restrict potentially harmful content.

  • The new features come after a Los Angeles jury found Meta negligent in designing social media platforms that are harmful to young people in March, as reported in a previous Free Flow.

» Malaysia Begins Enforcing Social Media Ban for Children Under 16

• Malaysia has begun enforcing a ban on social media accounts for children under 16, requiring social media platforms with at least 8 million users in the country to implement age-verification systems and block children from creating accounts.

• Details:

  • The country’s Communications and Multimedia Commission said that age-verification will be rolled out over the next six months, and current users under 16 will have a month to download or transfer any data before restrictions are applied.

  • Companies that violate the ban could face penalties of up to $2.5 million, though parents whose children manage to circumvent the rule will not be penalized.

  • Platforms have yet to describe how they will comply, though Clara Koh, Meta’s director of public policy for Southeast Asia, has cautioned that the ban could drive teenagers away from protected apps to unregulated corners of the internet.

» California Bill Barring Teens Under 16 From Social Media Passes the State Assembly

• The California Assembly has passed a bill that would ban minors under 16 from using social media platforms with “addictive features,” including notifications, endless scroll, and autoplay.

• Details:

  • The bill would require social media platforms with addictive features to verify users’ ages and delete the accounts of minors under 16, or face financial civil penalties.

  • An e-safety commission would also be established to oversee the legislation’s implementation.

  • The bill now heads to the state Senate.

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The Brussels Effect: Europe and Beyond 🇪🇺

» UK Bars American Commentators Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker, Citing ‘Public Good’

• The British Home Office has canceled the electronic travel authorizations of American political commentators Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker because “their presence in the U.K. may not be conducive to the public good.”

• Details:

  • Uygur, co-host of “The Young Turks” on YouTube, draws over 200 million views per month. Piker, his nephew, has a daily audience of 30,000 on Twitch.

  • The pair claim they’ve been “banned for criticizing Israel.”

  • The statement from the Home Office did not mention Israel, and said that decisions to “refuse or cancel” people’s electronic authorization “on these grounds are based solely on an assessment of the potential risk an individual may pose ot U.K society.”

  • Both men had been scheduled to speak at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in London this week and at the University of Oxford.

  • Piker’s SXSW talk was titled “How the American Left Learned to Speak the Internet”; Uygur’s was “Techno-Feudalism is Here. Who Are the Lords?” Piker had also been scheduled to appear at the University of Oxford.

  • The UK previously blocked 11 people described as “foreign far-right agitators” in May who had been scheduled to speak at an event organized by Tommy Robinson, an anti-Islam activist.

» Germany Fines Facebook User for Calling Chancellor Merz ‘Lügenfritz’

• A German court has imposed a criminal fine on a Facebook user for calling Chancellor Friedrich Merz “Lügenfritz” (“Lying Fritz”), ruling that the remark constituted a criminal insult under Section 188 of Germany’s Criminal Code.

• Background:

  • The case arose after Merz visited the city of Heilbronn in October 2024. Local police posted a notice on Facebook about a temporary ban on drone flights during the visit, prompting dozens of comments criticizing the chancellor.

  • Prosecutors reviewed 38 comments for possible violations of Section 188, a controversial provision that grants enhanced protection against insults directed at public figures involved in political life.

  • The Öhringen District Court issued a penalty order of 30 daily income-based fines against a user who referred to Merz as “Lügenfritz.” The penalty has already become final.

  • Other cases produced mixed outcomes. Prosecutors dropped investigations into comments calling Merz “Pinocchio” or a “Lügen-Kasper” (“lying clown”), while courts also issued penalty orders against users who referred to him as “Ftzn Frieder” or “Fo****Fritz.”

  • Section 188 has long been criticized for its potential chilling effect on political debate. The law permits heightened penalties when speech directed at political figures is deemed capable of significantly hindering their public work.

  • Prosecutors argued that calling Merz “Lügenfritz” could undermine public confidence in the chancellor’s integrity and encourage further hostility among like-minded individuals, thereby satisfying the requirements of Section 188.

» German Police Detain Right-Wing Activist at Airport to Block Remigration Summit Attendance

• German federal border police detained Generation Identity activist Maximilian Märkl at the Munich Airport, where he was traveling to Porto, Portugal, to attend the Remigration Summit 2026.

• Details:

  • Märkl is one of the national spokesmen for Identitäre Bewegung Deutschland (IBD), a right-wing youth movement that seeks to preserve the cultural identity of European countries, and was scheduled to speak at the Remigration Summit, where leaders associated with anti-migration / remigration campaigns gather.

  • Märkl was taken into custody at the airport and banned from traveling to Portugal until the end of the event. He must report to his local police station twice a day in the interim, or risk a €500 penalty for each absence.

  • Authorities cited that Märkl’s participation in the event “threatens the reputation of the Federal Republic of Germany” as justification for the ban, while a federal police citation also argued that the concept of “remigration” violates the German constitution.

  • A year prior, German police had arrested a group that had been similarly banned from attending the Summit after they circumvented the ban and drove to Italy, where the Summit was taking place.

» EU Watchdog Moves to Strip European Political Party of Status and Funding

• The Authority for European Political Parties and Foundations, the watchdog that oversees European parties, has initiated a process that could result in the Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) party being banned and losing its funding for failing to uphold EU values.

• Details:

  • The watchdog monitors whether political parties and foundations comply with EU rules requiring them to uphold core values, including “respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and human rights, including the rights of minorities.”

  • The ESN party is separate from the ESN political group in the European Parliament, which comprises 27 MEPs. The group and party were founded by Alternative for Germany (AfD) in 2024, and comprise alliances of national parties funded by the EU budget.

  • The watchdog argued that certain evidence, including court rulings, screenshots, and social media posts from MEPs and party lawmakers that display anti-immigration, antisemitic, and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, “cast doubt on the compliance” of the ESN party with EU values.

  • In a statement to POLITICO, the Authority said it had “provided facts…to the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission” to allow them to decide whether to lodge a request for verification of compliance with Union values with the Authority.

Our Take: At the Bedrock Principle, Natalie Alkiviadou and Justin Hayes warn that banning or sanctioning political parties can backfire, “fueling narratives of martyrdom and persecution and weakening the legitimacy of democratic pluralism.”

Free Speech Recession 🌍

» The U.S. Revokes Visa of Chinese State Media Journalist After Beijing Expels NYT Reporter

• China expelled New York Times correspondent Vivian Wang in February over a Times event in December, in which Taiwan’s president appeared on video, though wang played no role in the event.

• In a diplomatic tit-for-tat, the Trump administration has revoked the visa of a U.S.-based Chinese state media journalist.

• Context:

  • Chinese officials had complained for months about Wang’s coverage, which often tackled topics related to censorship, Beijing’s response to COVID-19, and the expansion of China’s security state.

  • A couple of dozen foreign journalists employed by American news organizations are believed to be based in China after Mr. Xi assumed power; the Times now has one correspondent, and The Washington Post has not had one for several years.

  • China’s foreign ministry has reduced the number of long-term visas issued to American journalists, and short-term visas are less likely to be renewed if Beijing officials dislike the journalists’ coverage.

• Ongoing Feud:

  • In February 2020, three Wall Street Journal correspondents were expelled after the publication released an opinion essay critical of Beijing, despite having no role in the essay’s publication.

  • Around the same time, the Trump administration announced that five state-run Chinese news organizations operating within the U.S., including Xinhua, the outlet of the journalist whose visa it revoked, would be subject to regulations similar to those that apply to foreign diplomats.

  • The number of journalists allowed to work for those organizations in the U.S. was also capped at 100.

  • China retaliated by expelling a dozen more American journalists working for The Times, The Journal, and The Post, demanding detailed information about their activities.

  • Ms. Wang was admitted into China after the Biden administration struck an agreement with Beijing in 2021 that granted visas to several journalists.

» Israeli Police Compile Dossiers on Critical Foreign Journalists to Support Entry Bans

• Court documents released in a legal challenge by Italian freelance photojournalist Alessandro Stefanelli reveal that Israeli police have established a police body to review foreign journalists’ work and recommend entry bans against those whose coverage is deemed critical of Israel.

• Details:

  • Stefanelli, a contributor to Le Soir, La Stampa, and other publications, had, with Israeli government press credentials, made 13 reporting trips to Israel and the West Bank over two and a half years and was banned in June 2025.

  • Police documents found his coverage to be “one-sided,” citing articles he had photographed for but had not written, and including a tweet authored by someone else as evidence.

  • The police document on Stefanelli stated that the police had recommended that population control authorities ban other foreign journalists based on a review of their work, but the names of the journalists in question were not released.

  • Reporters Without Borders (RSF) referenced a ban on Spanish freelancer Queralt Castillo, which authorities justified by arguing that entry to the country “will not be permitted for those who act against Israel.”

  • documents specified that police had recommended entry bans against other unnamed foreign journalists based on similar reviews. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) referenced a ban on Spanish freelancer Queralt Castillo, justified by authorities “as part of its fight against antisemitism and the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement.”

  • Israeli Interior Ministry spokesperson Sabine Haddad confirmed to Index on Censorship that the Government Press Office (GPO) — which had fully accredited Stefanelli for each of his reporting trips — “did not object” to his ban.

» Bolsonaro Family Allies Target Intercept Brasil Reporters Over Corruption Coverage

• A lawmaker in Brazil, Helio Lopez, has sent letters to the Supreme Federal Court (STF) and the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) requesting an investigation into The Intercept over “selective leaks.”

• Details:

  • The letters came a day after the outlet published an investigation into the relationship between Senator and current presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, an ally of Lopez, and jailed banker Daniel Vorcaro.

  • The investigation showed that Flávio negotiated with the banker to finance the film “Dark Horse,” about his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro.

  • Dallas-based freelance reporter Steven Monacelli also faced harassment and threats after attempting to get a comment from Flávio’s brother, Eduardo Bolsonaro, who is currently residing in Texas.

  • When Monacelli rang Bolsonaro’s doorbell, Bolsonaro called local Southlake, Texas, police and posted a social media video saying that “people in Texas have firearms at home.”

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Ashley Haek is a communications coordinator and research assistant at The Future of Free Speech.

Australia might appear rather isolated when looking at a world map, but recent tragic events, such as the antisemitic Bondi Beach shooting, shatter the illusion of the country’s insulation from the world’s instability and conflict. Barbaric terror attacks like those that occurred at Bondi demand a government response, but it should not cause collateral damage to civil liberties. This, however, has been the case in New South Wales (NSW) and in Australia more broadly.

Sydney law professor and UN Special Rapporteur on counterterrorism, Ben Saul, put it bluntly: a 2025 NSW protest law made the state one of the most draconian anti-protest jurisdictions in the democratic world. In April, the NSW Court of Appeal struck down this protest law (“PARD scheme”) on the grounds that it impermissibly burdens the implied constitutional freedom of political communication. In recent weeks, NSW police have begun withdrawing charges made under the PARD scheme.

The Jarrett v. New South Wales constitutional challenge might seem like robust rights protection in action in Australia’s most populous state. However, I would argue it’s a symptom of the weakness of NSW’s human rights system and the state’s creeping illiberalism, especially regarding freedom of expression and assembly.

This stems both from the lack of a NSW (or federal) human rights act, and from the form of free speech protection under the Australian constitution (more on this below). Perhaps as a result, of all Australian states, NSW enacted the highest number of anti-protest laws between 2004 and 2024.

Australian Exceptionalism?

For context, Australia has traditionally viewed the common law and legislatures as the main guarantors of civil liberties. Instead of individual rights, its constitution deals largely with the structure and relationship of government. This might be surprising to international readers — especially in the U.S. — but similar systems operated in several British Commonwealth countries until the late 20^th century.

However, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and some Australian states have since enacted human rights acts/charters, having concluded that the old model of Commonwealth constitutionalism did not sufficiently protect rights. Nevertheless, important democratic concerns have been raised about granting judges greater power on human rights questions.

Unlike in many democracies, Australians have an implied freedom of political communication, not a personal, constitutional right to free speech (explained in Brown v. Tasmania). The implied freedom is a limit on legislative and executive power, not a right someone can assert directly or sue for damages over its violation. It applies to a narrower range of speech than expression rights in the US, UK, Canada, and New Zealand.

The NSW government’s disregard of protest rights when enacting the PARD scheme arguably created a pressure cooker that boiled over during the February 2026 visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog. Using the PARD scheme, police restricted protests throughout Greater Sydney, including on the day of Herzog’s visit.

This “blunt tool” (Jarrett) not only ripped through the rights of expression and assembly, but it also seemingly emboldened the police to use disproportionate violence (currently under investigation) against protestors. One Sydney financier – a.k.a. “white shirt guy” – is now suing, alleging assault by police. More generally, this blanket ban removed the safety valve that peaceful protest provides in a democracy.

Social cohesion and Jewish safety were invoked to justify the PARD scheme and a new hate speech law in the state of Queensland. The Queensland law outlaws the phrases “from the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada” (contextualized here; see charitable and critical interpretations of the slogan) when used to menace, harass, or offend someone.

Predictably, unintended consequences followed: Jewish pro-Palestinian activist Stephen Heydt was among the first charged under the Queensland law. This aligns with a pattern of censorship of pro-Palestinian Jews under hate speech and counter-terror laws, which The Future of Free Speech has documented.

Heydt’s crimes were that he wore a t-shirt to a Brisbane rally that said, “Jews for a free Palestine from the river to the sea” and gave a speech using the six-word phrase. In farcical scenes, protestors have recently sought to push the limits of the Queensland law by dancing in fancy dress en masse to an 80s ballad with very similar wording. This has faint echoes of the “Plasticine Action” and “Private Eye” arrests in England last summer.

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Sharing Across The Kangaroo Route

Speech and protest laws Down Under have global implications, perhaps especially for the UK. As protest law expert Maria O’Sullivan argues, there has been some recent “swapping” between the UK and Australia on approaches to pro-Palestinian protest regulation.

Reports from Human Rights Watch, Netpol, and Justice have documented the effect of protest laws enacted in recent years in Britain. These share characteristics with Australian laws alleged to erode protest rights. The laws have enabled Australia and the UK to lead the world in arresting climate protestors.

Another similarity is the context in which further curbs on protest are being debated. Depressingly, there have been several recent antisemitic attacks in the UK, carried out by racists targeting longstanding British Jewish communities for the actions of Israel.

The most recent antisemitic attacks in the UK (and Bondi) have had implications for pro-Palestinian advocacy. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said that he would consider banning some pro-Palestinian protests due to the “cumulative” effect, echoing new legislation, that they were having on some/most of the UK Jewish community. Decisions on specific marches in the UK are, however, ordinarily matters for the police under public order law.

Meanwhile, opposition political figures have called for a moratorium on all pro-Palestinian protests, calls echoed by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Jonathan Hall. People who advocate for “intifada” or “death to the IDF” on protests now face being arrested and charged. Hall argues the “precautionary principle” in national security policy justifies some further restrictions on “open hatred on the streets,” which, in his view, has legitimized terror attacks on British Jews. However, perhaps counterintuitively, empirical research suggests that greater free speech is associated with lower levels of terrorism in democracies.

Among the above responses, it is possible to distinguish the Prime Minister’s slightly more nuanced approach from that of the opposition, which would most likely result in a disproportionate infringement of rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). As a former human rights lawyer, Starmer should have in mind the obligations of public authorities, such as the police, under the UK Human Rights Act (HRA).

It is legitimate, and sometimes desirable, for authority figures to denounce the use of certain slogans on protests, such as “globalize the intifada.” This counterspeech and self-policing can also come from the self-professed antiracist organizers of the marches, which they would argue they do. However, when people are arrested for advocating “intifada,” it lowers the bar for censorship of political speech under UK and Australian law.

As Ben Saul points out, under international law, “globalize the intifada” and “from the river to the sea” are not intrinsically violent or hateful and are presumptively legitimate free speech, absent other indicators. Under English and ECtHR case law, there has traditionally been no right not to be offended. When discussing first principles, Jonathan Sumption sees criminalizing expressions of support for proscribed terrorist organizations in the same vein — an attack on the content neutrality of the law and a disproportionate infringement of free speech.

Conclusion

The direction of travel in Australia should serve as a cautionary tale for the UK and other countries. NSW, in particular, is a vivid reminder of what Conor Gearty witheringly called the fantasy of the civil libertarian common law. The English common law’s approach to freedom of expression was “hesitant and negative, permitting that which was not prohibited,” Lord Bingham summarized.

After the UK HRA came into force, it introduced new evaluative criteria, such as proportionality, for judges and other authorities with broadly positive implications for free speech and protest rights. While not a silver bullet, human rights laws generally “frontload rights-mindedness,” forcing greater consideration of rights ahead of any dispute. These considerations are perhaps in evidence in the comments of Prime Minister Starmer alluded to above.

In a 2018 lecture advocating for a federal human rights act, distinguished human rights expert Gillian Triggs concluded that “Australia has reached a position in which fundamental freedoms are diminished by a failure of the legal tools available to comparable countries.” Several other expert bodies in Australia have reached the same conclusion. Australia should chart a different course on free speech, protest, and its model of human rights protection.

Nick Queffurus is a law and policy researcher and consultant with interests in civil liberties and constitutionalism.

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