Or perhaps someone else can buy this paper from Bezos—since he seems to view it as an albatross—and donate it to a foundation established to run it as a nonprofit. Bezos gets a capital loss, the buyer/donor is a hero, the rest of us get a world class newspaper. The Knight Institute is ready to help.

The biggest threats to journalism in this country, and to the possibility of an informed and empowered electorate, stem from the political economy of the media. www.theguardian.com/media/2026/f...

King George III vibes

Excellent, worth reading. www.theunpopulist.net/p/the-fashio...

A list, in no particular order, of just some of the moves that the Trump administration has made in its ongoing campaign to suppress and deter journalism essential to democracy: Arrest Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for covering an anti-ICE protest. Raid the home of a Washington Post reporter, ...

A list, in no particular order, of just some of the moves that the Trump administration has made in its ongoing campaign to suppress and deter journalism essential to democracy: Arrest Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for covering an anti-ICE protest. Raid the home of a Washington Post reporter, ...

Anyway congrats to our Free Speech Champions(tm) who helped usher in the most censorious American government since the Palmer Raids

The arrests of Lemon and Fort are intended to deter journalists from doing work we need them to do, and that the First Amendment was meant to protect. DOJ should drop these prosecutions or the courts should throw them out. knightcolumbia.org/content/knig...

It was just last week, remember, that the FBI raided a Washington Post journalist’s home and seized her phones in connection with a leak investigation. This administration views journalism as a crime. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/u...

The purported justification for the proposed war with Iran changes by the hour. Trump, Rubio, and Hegseth don't even pretend to have a plan beyond bombing, and they're not even sure what exactly they want to bomb. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/u...

Jeff Bezos should be a hero and donate the Washington Post to a charity. Bezos would get a big charitable deduction; the rest of us would get a newspaper dedicated to the public interest. This post from Steven Waldman is from a year ago but it's still a great idea. www.cjr.org/opinion/wald...

The TikTok law was supposedly motivated by concerns about Chinese censorship and surveillance so it is interesting that US-controlled TikTok is a few days old and already generating censorship and surveillance scandals. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/u...

My former ACLU colleagues have filed suit over the Venezuela boat strikes, which they (properly) characterize as “murders, ordered by individuals at the highest levels of government.” www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/u...

If Air Canada can get me to Nova Scotia, I'll be delivering this lecture at Dalhousie on Wednesday. The lecture expands on an argument that I made in an essay for the NYT a year ago. www.eventbrite.ca/e/horace-e-r...

This is a great paper. SCOTUS was not just wrong to uphold the TikTok ban but deeply, consequentially, historically wrong. Holmes and Brandeis are turning in their graves.

Standing with 65 of my UMN Law colleagues (and counting) to condemn ICE’s lawless conduct towards Minnesotans: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

The official policy of the government of the United States of America is that they will murder anyone they want, that they will tell any lie necessary to justify that murder, and that no one who resists them has any rights they are bound to respect. /1

Judge William Young, who invalidated Trump's policy of arresting & deporting students for their pro-Palestinian advocacy, is 85-years old and was appointed to the bench by President Reagan 41 years ago. Here's how he concluded his "annotated judgment" in the case. knightcolumbia.org/documents/k4...

Laird v Tatum was a terrible decision that continues to haunt our democracy half a century later.

This country is in the middle of a third Red Scare, as @qjurecic.bsky.social wrote in the Atlantic a few weeks ago. There's no better evidence for it than the trial record from this case. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/u...

Newly unsealed evidence makes it even clearer that Rubio and Noem knew they were targeting students based solely on their political speech and that they knew this policy was unconstitutional. They just didn’t care. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/u...

Judge William Young ends his order protecting noncitizen students targeted for deportation for their activism or speech with this quotation. It’s by Ronald Reagan, who appointed him to the bench four decades ago.

Almost as if allowing the government to broker the terms for the continued operation of a major communications platform is a bad idea and a democratic threat and something there should be a constitutional bar against www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/t...

Statements here. knightcolumbia.org/content/fede...

Judge Young's final "annotated order" in AAUP v. Rubio, just issued. A huge First Amendment victory. Very proud of my colleagues @ramyakrishnan.bsky.social @alexabdo.bsky.social @georgewang.bsky.social & grateful to our clients @aaup.org @mesa1966.bsky.social. knightcolumbia.org/documents/k4...

Congratulations to all the dupes who got suckered by a ludicrous moral panic and helped convert yet another social media platform into a MAGA propaganda outlet. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/t...

“The effect of the court’s ruling has been to give our own government enormous power over the policies of a platform used by millions of Americans every day – a result that is an affront to the first amendment and a national security risk in its own right” www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Do more fact checks like this, please. ⚖️👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾 #immunity

Mark Carney's remarks at Davos are worth reading in their entirety. This is the kind of leadership the world needs. paulwells.substack.com/p/the-carney...

Makes me think of that classic of Soviet humor: in a labor camp in Siberia, one prisoner turns to the other and says "if only comrade Stalin knew..."

Israeli human rights group B'Tselem says that Israeli prisons "continue to function as a network of torture camps"--part of Israel's "coordinated onslaught on Palestinian society." Here's their list of Palestinians killed in custody since Oct 7, 2023. statistics.btselem.org/en/all-fatal...

"Donald Trump is fundamentally a bully who wants to dominate everyone around him. Trying to placate him with concessions is a fool’s errand: he despises weakness and those who display it."

What kind of news organization decides to publish a government official's comments in full before it even hears the comments? www.nytimes.com/2026/01/17/b...

If you're wondering what Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, has said publicly in response to the FBI's raid of a Washington Post reporter's home last week, the answer is nothing.

One crucial point made here is that DOJ almost certainly justified the search of Natanson’s home by asserting that *she* (and not just the contractor) was violating the Espionage Act. Of course, if she’s violating it, so is every other national security reporter. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/16/o...

This was an intense hearing. Judge Young, an 85-year-old Reagan appointee who has served on the federal bench for 47 years, didn't mince words. He closed the hearing by reading from Lincoln's address at Gettysburg. Some of the people in the courtroom were in tears. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/u...

"Talking straight here, the big problem in this case is that the cabinet secretaries and, ostensibly, the president of the United States are not honoring the First Amendment,” Judge William G. Young said. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/u...

The FBI's raid of a Washington Post reporter's home comes amid a broader pattern of attacks on the media, including lawsuits, funding cuts, and increasing media and technology consolidation.

There’s no obvious reason why the search warrant & affidavits should be categorically withheld, and there are lots of reasons to be skeptical that the search was consistent with constitutional, statutory, and regulatory limits. Glad to see this motion from @rcfp.org medialaw.org/wp-content/u...

The import of this ruling: Foreign citizens in the United States—including green card holders—can be arrested for political speech and imprisoned for months or even years before being given a meaningful opportunity to challenge the constitutionality of their arrest and imprisonment.

“These universities say over and over again, ‘These deals do not compromise our autonomy, our independence, our academic freedom.’ Of course that’s not true.” www.chronicle.com/article/rand...

Thanks to @democracynow.org for inviting me on. Always a privilege to do this show but especially when the other guest is the Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi.

Judge William Young already held that the Trump admin violated the First Amendment by arresting and trying to deport these students for their pro-Palestinian advocacy. Today he’ll consider @aaup.org & @mesa1966.bsky.social’s request for an injunction and other relief. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/u...

After a 9-day trial, Judge William Young held that the Trump admin is violating the First Amendment by arresting and trying to deport students for pro-Palestinian advocacy. We're back in court tomorrow to ask for an injunction. A reminder of why we filed the case: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

"Searches of newsrooms and journalists are hallmarks of illiberal regimes, and we must ensure that these practices are not normalized here," says @jameeljaffer.bsky.social, calling on the Justice Department to publicly explain its actions. See our full statement: knightcolumbia.org/content/fbi-...

Newsroom raids and searches of journalists are hallmarks of illiberal regimes, usually intended to intimidate journalists from reporting and to deter their sources from sharing information with them. We need to make sure these practices aren't normalized here. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/u...

“A world in which the powerful no longer feel the need to justify themselves is not merely unjust. It is barbaric . . . . That world does not have a legal order at all. It has only force, guided by one man’s whims.”

Congrats to all of the very cool people just named to the FOIA Hall of Fame. brechner.org/2026/01/13/s...

Everyone knows what's going on here, but good for Powell for saying it, and for refusing to go quietly.

I have four tickets to see Brad Mehldau in NYC on Thursday that tragically I can't use because I have to be in Boston for a hearing. Smoke Jazz Club, 7:30. Tickets were $80/each. If you're interested, DM me.