gotta hand it to the us park police, i didn't expect to be filing a foia request about a trump-epstein statue removal/theft this am.

Three indie media outlets in Chicago have teamed up to boost the reach of their reporting on the ICE presence there. They're all on bluesky. The Triibe @thetriibe.com , Chicago Reader @chicagoreader.com , and Unravelled @unraveledpress.com L.A. TACO interviews them here: lataco.com/chicago-ice-...

Kudos to the Tribune’s decision to publish the video unredacted. When there is already a cover-up underway, no media outlets need to do DHS’s job for them by hiding their agent’s faces after they took a life.

Prosecutors conditioned dropping cases against @citybeatcincy.bsky.social journalists on their admitting there was probable cause to arrest them (which would harm their civil claims). They rightly refused. I told @link-nky.bsky.social that the fact they're worried about a lawsuit is telling.

Proposed ‘safety’ bill would undermine accountability for lawmakers "The bill’s provisions empowering lawmakers to scrub the internet of personal information about them would seriously harm speech and press freedom," FPF's @caitlinvogus.bsky.social writes.

Late-night comedy is definitely under threat of censorship. Comedians are always a line of attack for authoritarians. But so are other reporters & truth-tellers. Read my latest on the Mario Guevara case & the broader (daily) attacks on free speech by our admin: pressingissues.org/trumps-attac...

I filed a FOIA request with DHS back in May for a copy of the pitch for this show. They just denied it in full because releasing it could reveal trade secrets. lolol what trade secret? that America is nightmare bizarro land?

We hope that the bipartisan coalition of lawmakers who supported the Biden administration's TikTok ban, despite the warnings of free speech and civil liberties advocates everywhere, will be held accountable for the harm this causes.

ICE has already detained one journalist. Others could be next. Experts in immigration and media law told us what newsrooms need to do to prepare.

Trump says criticizing him should be illegal. Now, "he’s steering control of one of the country’s most popular social media platforms to his billionaire political allies. It would be naive to think they won’t censor Trump’s critics while boosting content that pleases him,” we told @aljazeera.com.

The Supreme Court has made clear for decades that journalists are entitled to lawfully obtain and publish government secrets. "That is essentially the job description of an investigative journalist," @seth-stern.bsky.social told @brianstelter.bsky.social.

We supplemented our prior ethics complaint against Brendan Carr to discuss the Jimmy Kimmel shakedown. It explains how Carr is behaving more like a member of the mob than a member of the bar. We're unfortunately not confident it'll be the last supplement. media.freedom.press/media/docume...

For anyone who thinks a secrecy law purportedly for officials’ safety won’t be distorted and abused… Tell congress you don’t want even more of this nonsense with our new action center tool below.

“Perhaps there are so many embarrassing documents... Maybe that’s why the administration is taking a wholesale approach to concealing records that may show wrongdoing, corruption and incompetence,” @seth-stern.bsky.social of @freedom.press told @theintercept.com theintercept.com/2025/09/21/d...

“This policy operates as a prior restraint on publication which is considered the most serious of First Amendment violations,” we told @kenbensinger.bsky.social “The government cannot prohibit journalists from public information merely by claiming it’s a secret or even a national security threat.”

We told @time.com that journalists shouldn’t trade their independence for access to Pentagon spin. “Agreeing not to look where the government doesn’t want you to look and, by extension, not to print what it doesn’t want you to print, is propaganda, not journalism.”

We’re just going to leave this here…

In some ways this is worse than the Pentagon Papers. At least then the government limited its censorship to specific documents that it (falsely) claimed posed a threat. This time they’re trying to restrict the press from publishing anything they don’t approve without even trying to justify it.

Case in point, two journalists from @citybeatcincy.bsky.social face trial in just a couple weeks for covering an obviously newsworthy protest of Soliman’s detention.

"Donald Trump knows full well that the suit lacks merit," @seth-stern.bsky.social said to the Tallahassee Democrat about Trump's $15 billion defamation suit against The New York Times. "The goal is to intimidate the media to potentially extract a settlement."

#USA Journalist Mario Guevara is in the country legally and was arrested for his journalism. Now he faces IMMININENT deportation after an appeals court ruled against him today. He must be released. rsf.org/en/usa-100-d...

NLG Chicago just released a statement condemning federal agents for unleashing "severe violence on people protesting at the Broadview detention facility." Legal observers saw an agent "unholstering his gun" and "a van driven by agents almost running over a protester," NLG says.

This order is great but it’s missing the sanctions part. Many courts have a restricted filers list requiring pre-screening of new cases filed by serial filers of frivolous lawsuits. I’m skeptical that these lists should exist. But for as long as they do, this president is a perfect candidate.

For anyone who thinks the current assault on free speech is limited to people who criticize Charlie Kirk…

Seth Stern points out that the issue I wrote about today at @abovethelaw.com -- Trump trying to RICO a handful of Code Pink ladies who chanted at him before dinner -- is not an isolated incident, but part of the right's strategy to "turn dissent into a felony."

Last week I wrote about how the absurd RICO case against Cop City protesters in Georgia threatened journalists, in addition to activists. Now the federal government wants to do the same -- weaponize conspiracy and racketeering laws to turn dissent into a felony. Things are moving fast...

Just when you think you've filed a comprehensive ethics complaint against Brendan Carr, he sends you right back to the drawing board...

Tell Congress not to grant itself the power to censor information about its members on the internet. Use our new, easy action center tool to stop lawmakers from sacrificing transparency for a false sense of security.

Today Raven Geary of @unraveledpress.com reports on the spate of kidnappings and violence against immigrants in the Chicago area over the past week or so including a man who was shot to death by ICE on Friday. www.welcometohellworld.com/theyre-kidna...

Great news that the absurd RICO charges against Cop City protesters got thrown out. Prosecutors called everything from talking to reporters to recording cops to using encryption part of a conspiracy. We wrote about the threat to press freedom in 2023.

📩 Read in our weekly newsletter (and subscribe): - Take action to stop attacks on journalists and transparency - CBS’s real bias monitor is Donald Trump - Will 9/11 records be declassified? - Judge isn’t buying excuses for attacks on LA reporters - Plus, get to know what we're reading...

Legacy media and cable news reduced Trump's aggression against Chicago to a question of whether troops would be sent immediately. When he said he was taking his fascist military spectacle elsewhere, those media players declared the situation over—while waves of federal agents attack our neighbors.

🔔 Join us to discuss first steps newsrooms need to take when ICE arrests a journalist, with @attorneynora.bsky.social, @scarletprim.bsky.social, @caitlinvogus.bsky.social, @writeralejandra.bsky.social, Samantha C. Hamilton, and Marium Uddin. 🕒 Sept. 15, 4 pm EDT RSVP: http://freedom.press...

Hi ICE killed a single dad at a traffic stop here on Friday Today they are disappearing people again in broad daylight, they are everywhere If you have any national platform at all Chicago is fucking begging you, please help us

I think there's this idea that since the national guard didn't show up, everything's OK. It's really not! ICE is spreading out over suburbs with large Latino populations and terrorizing them. It's really, really bad in lots of towns people forget about because they don't have money. It's bad.

Willian Gimenez was abducted by ICE yesterday in Chicago. He had been part of a lawsuit against off-duty police and Home Depot employees for abusing day laborers. Latino Union says he was targeted for advocating for his rights as a worker. @bloomekatz.bsky.social and I report.

Ominous

Important time to remember the federal government has been trying to claim that people filming officers amounts to “violence.” No. Their officers are the ones often committing violence. The people filming are the real heroes catching officers lying about it. Context:

The real bias monitor at CBS is Donald Trump. “The hiring of Kenneth Weinstein as an ombudsman hands the US president a seat at the editors’ desk,” FPF’s @seth-stern.bsky.social writes in the @theguardian.com.

If you’re a national news reporter who printed ICE’s bullshit version of events yesterday, you have a responsibility to also report the truth now that local independent journalists figured it out for you. And if you’re not, you can still donate to @unraveledpress.com

So the Feds spent months telling the world that Chicagoans are terrified of carjackings. But they thought it was a good idea to have plainclothes jump out boys in unmarked SUVs pulling guns on random drivers. How could they have known that’d go badly.

🔔 Join us to discuss first steps newsrooms need to take when ICE arrests a journalist, with @attorneynora.bsky.social, @scarletprim.bsky.social, @caitlinvogus.bsky.social, @writeralejandra.bsky.social, Samantha C. Hamilton, and Marium Uddin. 🕒 Sept. 15, 4 pm EDT RSVP: http://freedom.press...

Rain gave a brief respite, but ICE is now out again in Chicagoland today kidnapping more people. This comes after they shot and killed a man during a "traffic stop" yesterday afternoon, and tear gassed protesters outside the processing/detention center. Our entire metro is in crisis.

We spoke to @theintercept.com about how this and similar bills threaten journalists in particular. We already know from Rümeysa Öztürk's case that Rubio thinks criticizing Israel in a newspaper is actionable as support of terrorism.

I spoke to @theintercept.com about a bonkers bill that would let Marco Rubio, who thinks pro-Palestine op-ed writers are terrorists, revoke passports for whoever he deems a supporter of terrorism. It would also let a future Democratic administration target those it dislikes the same way.

The 9/11 Commission Report was released over 20 years ago, but many of its underlying records and other 9/11 documents remain classified. Investing in a centralized and automated solution could free these records, and many more.

Our local media infrastructure *is not built for this*, countless people have disappeared this week, misinfo is rampant and we are actually drowning—even seasoned reporters have no idea what's really happening This is the blitz. Dispersed chaos. Overwhelming. Border Patrol hasn't even started yet

If you are a journalist — or know one — who has been attacked, seriously threatened, denied access by a public official or targeted with a legal order in the course of reporting, let us know. You can now submit tips in English or Spanish. Email: tips@pressfreedomtracker.us

If CBS thinks the best person to monitor bias is a career partisan like Kenneth Weinstein, that’s not necessarily a first amendment concern. That changes when the monitoring is at the behest of the federal government, FPF's @seth-stern.bsky.social writes in @theguardian.com.

There is this thing that happens— Where all of national media ignores Chicago precisely *until* something like this happens, but we are expected to treat the coasts and their news updates as the center of the universe at all times No one listened And now a man is dead