Meanwhile in Quebec. (Summary is via the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which says Quebec is drifting towards authoritarianism. ccla.org)

“The restrictions on immigration judges’ free speech rights are unconstitutional, and it’s intolerable that this prior restraint is still in place,” said Ramya Krishnan, a lawyer for the group and a senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute." www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/u...

Fallout of the TikTok ban, ruling, and divestment: - US now among the nations that ban media platforms to protect citizens from disfavored content - First Amendment doctrine significantly weakened - hugely popular media platform now under the direct control of Trump's ideological allies

SCOTUS has just rejected the government's application for a stay in Margolin v. NAIJ, our challenge to restrictions on the speech of immigration judges. It should reject the government's forthcoming cert petition, too. Full @knightcolumbia.org statement below. knightcolumbia.org/content/supr...

SCOTUS maybe can't be blamed for not predicting exactly this, but the First Amendment was intended to prevent this outcome by heading off its beginning. Its decision upholding the TikTok ban looks worse today than ever -- as @jameeljaffer.bsky.social & I wrote: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

My colleagues @katiefallow.bsky.social & Jake Carr on the Trump admin's heavyhanded efforts to control the White House and Pentagon press corps. riponsociety.org/article/jame...

TikTok is going to be controlled by a group of right-wing billionaires. Great job, Joe Biden and congressional democrats, who joined (and stoked) the moral panic that initiated and then fed the process that has ended up here.

Trump consolidating his influence over TikTok, a platform used by 170m Americans. If you doubt that this outcome serves American democracy or security, take it up with SCOTUS. www.axios.com/2025/12/18/t...

The New York Times published a few replies to Jeh Johnson's op-ed about Trump's boat strikes, including from the ACLU's Brett Kaufman and CCR's J. Wells Dixon. Worth reading! www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/o...

Dan Scavino, the President's former golf caddy and later his assistant tweeter.

The sanctions that Trump has imposed on the ICC and UN rapporteurs have been deterring American human rights advocates and scholars from exercising their First Amendment rights. This letter--obtained by @mesa1966.bsky.social & @knightcolumbia.org--should help. knightcolumbia.org/content/trum...

Boston stands with our immigrant neighbors.

Use our action center to tell lawmakers to stop the Trump administration from deporting Heng Guan, who helped journalists expose the horrors of Uyghur prison camps in Xinjiang, China. His life could be at risk.

Trump's $10b complaint that the BBC defamed him by making it seem like he endorsed violence and rioting would be marginally more compelling if he hadn't ratified the violence by pardoning the rioters.

The Supreme Court's TikTok decision was wrong, and developments since its issuance have only underscored how wrong it was. From @evelyndouek.bsky.social & me in @us.theguardian.com. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The fact that TikTok remains available “makes a mockery” of the government’s earlier national security claims that the platform was “an urgent national security risk – and of the court that deferred to those claims,” @evelyndouek.bsky.social and @jameeljaffer.bsky.social write in @theguardian.com.

Law Profs teaching First Amendment: I have put together a FREE, recently updated, and easy to use casebook for use in free speech classes. If you are interested in using such a casebook, send me an email or DM and I would be happy to share!

The "embarrassing, scandalous coda" of the Supreme Court's TikTok decision--new from @evelyndouek.bsky.social and me. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

From the brief just filed by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee in support of @knightcolumbia.org @weareoversight.bsky.social motions for release of Jack Smith's report. knightcolumbia.org/documents/d6...

We @knightcolumbia.org filed a motion calling for the release of the Special Counsel's report on Trump's hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Members of the House Judiciary Committee filed a brief today echoing our call for the report's release. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Trump doesn't have the power to preempt state AI regulation by executive order, even if he's surrounded by yes-men who tell him he does. www.techpolicy.press/why-trumps-a...

Note that it was the @aaup.org and faculty standing up for themselves, not UCLA as an institution, that successfully went to court to arrest Trump’s overreach here.

This is a great read by @joelsimonsays.bsky.social about whether Perez Hilton is a "journalist," and about what that term means, and why it matters www.cjr.org/feature/pere...

All of this--including the dismissal of this guy's eventual lawsuit against the ICE agents for racial profiling and the use of excessive force--is the product of Supreme Court doctrine. The phrase "Kavanaugh stops" captures just one aspect of it.

Just filed with #SCOTUS: @knightcolumbia.org brief on behalf of the National Association of Immigration Judges, opposing the government's application to stay the Fourth Circuit's mandate. (Background in next post.) knightcolumbia.org/documents/zc...

Grand juries. Who knew?

I should note that President George W Bush decried torture even as CIA and DOD interrogators were waterboarding, electrocuting, and tormenting prisoners in military prisons and black sites. See, e.g., this statement issued in June 2003. georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/release...

"For the first time in history, the United States voted against the UN General Assembly’s periodic resolution condemning torture. The only other countries to do so were Argentina and Israel." From @gaborrona.bsky.social @justsecurity.org www.justsecurity.org/126649/does-...

"Seldom has a bill exhibited the distrust evidenced here for citizens and non-citizens alike." (That was President Truman trying to nix the McCarran-Walter Act, but the same--or worse--might fairly be said about this new Trump policy.)

The burden of compliance falls on foreign visitors, but it's Americans who will become more isolated, more fearful, stupider. Presumably that's the point. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/t...

Fact checkers fact-check Marco Rubio's defense of his incoherent and unconstitutional new visa-vetting policy. www.poynter.org/news-release...

Listening to the SCOTUS arguments in the latest free speech challenge to campaign finance, NRSC v FEC, I am struck by the fact that the 1A is both a primary cause of the political hellscape in which we find ourselves AND one of the most powerful defenses against it www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-f...

Advocacy groups sue for release of Justice Department memo intended to legitimize murder. www.nbcnews.com/politics/jus...

Officials make all sorts of outlandish arguments to justify the withholding of info that would embarrass them, but this is pretty rich. Of course Hegseth is worried not just about embarrassment but about prosecution for murder, so he needs to be especially creative. www.politico.com/news/2025/12...

Today, a call to join the next era of LPE: a democratic, independent, member-led organization that will serve as a home for a broad array of LPE work.

This is a really good film about one of the most important free-speech and press-freedom cases of our time. Go see it if you can. (Disclosure: I'm in it. But that's not why it's good!) www.youtube.com/watch?v=70lv...

The EU fined X for lying to users about blue checks, failing to disclose basic info about ads, and impeding researchers from studying publicly available info. "This is not about censorship," says @daphnek.bsky.social, who'd be the first to call it out if it were. www.techpolicy.press/the-eus-fine...

“Constitutional law is not classified” is absolutely and obviously correct. I wish it had been the Obama administration’s position—it would have saved human rights lawyers a lot of time and energy. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/07/o...

Judge Young asked the parties to tell him how to remedy the serious constitutional violations he identified in his ruling over the summer--the ruling about the deportation of students for pro-Palestinian advocacy. Here's the government's proposal: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

And here is the Trump admin arguing that it would violate the First Amendment's protection against compelled speech for a court to order agencies to tell their employees that they can't constitutionally deport people based on their political advocacy. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

at a certain point we will move beyond the "war crimes" debate, since there is no war, and into a "murder" debate that asks not just whether these are individual murders but whether they are widespread & systematic attacks on civilians and thus constitute crimes against humanity.

Next Wednesday 12/10, 12:30 ET: Join our @knightcolumbia.org webinar to hear @natematias.bsky.social @penney.bsky.social @sarahbrayne.bsky.social talk about using social science to study chilling effects, and how courts use this kind of evidence: knightcolumbia.org/events/the-s...

This is a hugely important job at @knightcolumbia.org, and an opportunity to help chart the course of an unusually dynamic, effective organization that is already a leading defender of democratic rights, institutions, and values. Please send good people our way! knightcolumbia.org/page/chief-o...

In a 24-hour span, Trump spouts vile racism about Somalis, SCOTUS reinstates Texas’s racially gerrymandered maps, the Pentagon murders more black or brown fishermen—makes you wonder whether there’s some ugly unifying principle at work here

Knight First Amendment Institute's Carrie DeCell: "This policy is incoherent and unconstitutional."

And, if you are a non-US citizen who did this work, you and your entire family will be banned from the United States. (I know this is incredible, but read the order—that’s what it says!)

Fascinating new project from Nicholas Merrill, a brilliant and fearless privacy advocate whom I had the privilege of representing many years ago in one of the first challenges to the USA Patriot Act. www.wired.com/story/new-an...

This so idiotic I can barely bring myself to engage with it, but: People engaged in, e.g., fact-checking, aren't engaged in "censorship"--they're engaged in an activity the First Amendment was *designed to protect*. If you don't understand this, you shouldn't be in government or anywhere near it.

I’m glad the NYT is suing over this unconstitutional policy but a little surprised there aren’t other institutional plaintiffs. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/04/b...