David Cross folks.

Also this is a bribe.

Court-watchers confirm this cruel ICE agent has been reinstated. Last week, in the briefest moment of decency, violently throwing a woman to the floor was “beneath the men and women of ICE.” This week, it’s back to business as usual. The cruelty, after all, is the point.

Profiles in cowardice.

A wild story from Kentucky Public Radio alum Divya Karthikeyan about a man being detained by ICE based on a legal case his lawyers can't even find the existence of. theintercept.com/2025/09/26/i...

We are so humiliatingly deep into tinpot dictatorship territory. The government has just brokered the coerced sale of a major media platform to an ally of the president, who is openly boasting about converting it into (even more of) a partisan propaganda outlet.

The group behind the statue says a second permit, to reinstall the piece after Wednesday's removal, was revoked without explanation. It has since posted free 3D printable copies of the statue online.

Congress and the Supreme Court made this possible in the name of "national security"--by passing the federal TikTok ban and upholding it against a First Amendment challenge. Hope everyone feels secure.

Well, it’s a fitting day to announce a new @knightcolumbia.org project: We’ll be working with Prof. Madhav Khosla, a comparative constitutional law scholar, for the next two years on the role of the legal profession in an era of rising authoritarianism: knightcolumbia.org/content/madh...

if by wild you mean I want to vomit, then yes.

I was back at 26 Federal Plaza today, where an ICE agent violently threw this bereft woman to the ground in front of her kids. She had not touched him. She did not pose any threat. She had to be taken to the hospital. (🎥: Elias Eliahu)

Happy First Amendment Day!

I'd like to see the permit and hear the Park Police's explanation for its assertion that the statue did not comply with the permit - because this seems like a First Amendment violation.

With the FCC's "news distortion" rules back in the news, I thought I'd re-share this @techpolicypress.bsky.social piece from April about "news distortion" as the new "fake news". www.techpolicy.press/news-distort...

To support writers who have been targeted, we’ve created a guide on what to do if you’ve been doxed or placed on a watchlist. Please share it with anyone who needs it: pen.org/what-to-do-i... (2/2)

Why is this happening? I’ll explain. If the FCC approves Nexstar’s merger deal, the company’s reach would increase from 39% to more than 80% of US households. But the deal ALSO depends on the FCC eliminating the current 39% cap on reach. Sinclair has been lobbying for this change as well.

Is there a link to him saying this?

HHS Secretary RFK Jr. announced that the FDA will issue a physician’s notice about the risk of acetaminophen use during pregnancy and begin the process of initiating a safety label change. The drug is one of the few pregnant people can safely use to relieve pain or fever.

Breaking: Jimmy Kimmel to return Tuesday.

It says something about Trump’s all-out war on free speech that the New York Times couldn’t find a more credible person than “presidential historian” Craig Shirley to defend it. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/u...

What we need is a new national ethos, and we need political leaders willing to shape that with clarity in the hue and cry of the moment. @aoc.bsky.social is right about the need to robustly defend the First Amendment and for the public exercise their own power. Party leadership can’t be absent here.

Katie Fallow from @knightcolumbia.org said the new policy is part of “the Trump administration’s broader assault on free speech and press freedom.” “A reporter who publishes only what the government ‘authorizes’ is doing something other than reporting,” she said.

NEW: The Pentagon told journalists it will require them to pledge they won’t gather any information — even unclassified — that hasn’t been expressly authorized for release, and will revoke the press credentials of those who do not obey. @washingtonpost.com

This is my biggest fear, and each day another puzzle piece is added.

First Tony Perkins and now Ted Cruz www.politico.com/live-updates...

I experienced this last week & refused, saying I had never before been asked to provide the names of any analysts I was planning to quote to get a comment. Spox replied that maybe they were D donors. (In that case, it was 3 retired top military JAG officers.) I guess that was not a weird oneoff.

we wrote about this WH tactic recently. they’re asking journalists for expert source names and then using them to look up political donations in FEC records to try to discredit those sources as biased. www.npr.org/2025/08/18/n...

Tell your local station: Stop caving to Trump! The entire Free Press team rallied and built a tool that makes it easy to find your local ABC affiliate station and its phone number. Give them a call! A script is in this thread if you need it. CALL: act.freepress.net/call/kimmel-...

Pentagon lawyers tell Hegseth that the killing of fishermen in the Caribbean is an unlawful extrajudicial execution which is a violation of US and international law. Hegseth makes clear he could care less what the laws says because he's about "lethality, not legality." WSJ reports.

I find this extremely chilling: I spoke w a reporter this morning about Kimmel. (Reporter was / is great) They got back to me a short while ago to say they sought White House comment & WH demands to know first which experts they spoke with. I told reporter I'm happy to be quoted IN THE STORY but 1/x

After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.

If you haven't done it yet, you can give feedback to ABC about returning #Kimmel to the air here: support.abc.com/hc/en-us/art...

Further evidence that the Peter Thiel-bankrolled lawsuit against Gawker was a harbinger for the present-day use of money and power by the right to shut down critical reporting about the rich and powerful.

Few companies rely on—and benefit from—our constitutional freedoms as much as media empires like Disney and Paramount. It’s astonishing to see them trading away their freedoms and ours for short-term profits.

WSJ editorial: "Using Charlie's murder to justify retaliation against political rivals is wrong and dangerous. It will further divide and embitter our country. No good thing will come of it." www.wsj.com/opinion/they...

A good time to remember that a whole bunch of us are getting together to speak out against this authoritarianism -- I used to say creeping, but it's really now just a full gallop -- on October 18. Join us www.nokings.org

"A government official cannot coerce a private party to punish or suppress disfavored speech on her behalf" NRA v Vullo www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/b...

for sale: institutional spines. never used.

As a favor to me, if you write about this Administration’s free speech positions, avoid giving them too much credit by calling the “hypocrites.” They were NEVER SINCERE about freedom of speech as a value. It was only occasionally a useful cudgel for them to preserve societal and official power.

The context for Brendan Carr’s FCC threat. — bsky.app/profile/labu...

Oh a forced sale to regime allies? Shocker.

The lawsuit is a statement of contempt for truth, the American public, the judicial process, & everything that deserves our respect in the American tradition. To assess its legal defects (eg complaints about Fred Trump—a man who cannot be defamed) ignores its purpose: to suppress criticism of Trump.

“Trump’s lawsuit against The New York Times and Penguin Random House is his latest attempt to weaponize defamation law to silence legitimate journalistic criticism and accountability reporting." See @katiefallow.bsky.social's full statement on the news here: knightcolumbia.org/content/trum...

Trump’s chilling effect on Big Law firms taking on pro bono work has “been a nightmare,” said the president of a small nonprofit that investigates civil rights violations. “People don’t want to stand up, and because of that, people are suffering.” By @mtredden.bsky.social

This is exactly why ABC and so many others were wrong to bend the knee. It won't help them in the long run and they sell out everyone else in the process. We have to stand up together or there will be no one left standing.

The 3 stages of grief: denial, anger, ballroom

casual very disturbing email to receive from the university (no idea what happened here, reporters could probably run it down?)

his father was unavailable for comment

Trump Claims He Can’t Be Expected To Remember Every Birthday Card He Sends To Child Molesters https://theonion.com/trump-claims-he-cant-be-expected-to-remember-every-birthday-card-he-sends-to-child-molesters/