After 11 years as a sports columnist at The Seattle Times, Matt Calkins has resigned from the paper, saying editors refused to publish a column arguing that opposing biological males competing in women’s sports does not make someone “transphobic.”
The columnist <a href="https://x.com/Matt_Calkins/status/2090483833057751064">announced</a> his resignation Thursday, saying the decision was entirely his own but came after the newspaper declined to run his piece on the debate over biological males competing in women’s sports.
“The impetus was the Times declining to run a column I wrote from the perspective of two female student athletes who were opposed to competing against biological males,” Calkins wrote. “It was one of several pieces of mine that had been spiked, and I no longer felt like I could properly do my job as a columnist.”
The decision came after Calkins interviewed 16-year-old Ahnaleigh Wilson, a student-athlete who had lost to a biological male in a track race and attended a matchup between the Indiana Fever and the  Seattle Storm carrying a sign reading, “Thank You, Sophie For Speaking Up For Girls!” Wilson’s experience at that game became the catalyst for Calkins’ unpublished column.
During the game, Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/wnba-co-owner-accused-of-cursing-out-teen-girls-over-xx-xy-shirts">confronted</a> Wilson and another teenage girl who were supporting Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham, who has publicly opposed biological males competing in women’s sports. 
Keaton allegedly called the girls “f***ing insane” and told Wilson, “I hope Jesus can forgive you,” leaving the teenager in tears. The WNBA subsequently <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/wnba-co-owners-tirade-at-sophie-cunningham-fans-ends-in-fallout">suspended</a> Keaton from attending five home games and fined her over the incident.
For Calkins, the episode raised a question he believed deserved to be addressed by a sports columnist: Why should a teenage girl who believes women’s sports should remain female-only automatically be treated as hateful or bigoted?
Wilson told Calkins that she did not hate transgender people and simply believed girls should have their own sports. Another Washington student-athlete, Frances Staudt, told him she had faced verbal abuse at school after refusing to play against a biological male.
Calkins ultimately published the rejected column on his Substack under the title, “<a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-211906384">Agreeing with Sophie Cunningham’s stance doesn’t make you transphobic.</a>”
“Some people saw bigotry. I saw bravery,” Calkins wrote of Wilson. “I saw a teenage girl speaking up on an issue that so many adults shy away from.”
The column argued that the separation of male and female sports exists precisely because of biological differences in physical performance, and that supporting that separation does not necessarily amount to hostility toward transgender people. But the Seattle Times declined to publish it.
Calkins <a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-212028578">said</a> he initially submitted the column to his editor on July 31 and was told that editors were reviewing it. Several days later, he said, he was informed that the piece would not run because he had failed to notify his editor in advance that he was working on it.
“I didn’t buy this reasoning,” Calkins wrote. “If that were the case, the piece would have been killed on the spot, not passed through the hands of multiple editors over several days.” 
He resigned immediately afterward.
The decision was not, according to Calkins, simply about one column. He said the Times had previously spiked columns questioning whether the U.S. women’s soccer team was actually the victim of discrimination in its equal-pay lawsuit, criticizing cancel culture in sports, and defending a black high school basketball coach who urged Americans not to stereotype police following George Floyd’s death.
Calkins said the common thread was that the pieces challenged narratives that he believed a columnist should be willing to question.
 “I’ve always thought that it was a columnist’s duty to generate discussion on the most hot-button issues,” he wrote. “To avoid such topics was to leave the reader shortchanged.”
“I guess in the end, I just didn’t feel like I could do my job properly anymore,” he wrote.
Calkins acknowledged that leaving a long-established newspaper job without another position lined up was frightening. He said he has no idea what his career will look like in the coming years and joked that he could even end up working as a dental assistant.
But he said the uncertainty was preferable to self-censorship.
“To be honest, I’m scared sh—tless right now,” Calkins wrote. “But that fear beats the indignity of being muzzled.”

Indiana Fever v Seattle Storm

Sports Columnist Breaks Up With Paper Over Biological Reality

Censorship

Free Speech

Freedom of the Press

Indiana Fever

Media

Media Bias

Seattle

Seattle Storm

Sophie Cunningham

Transgender

Transgender Athletes

Women's Basketball

Women's sports

xx-xy athletics

Most people think persecution begins with laws. It doesn&#8217;t. It begins with pressure.
It starts when institutions learn that standing with Jews costs more than excluding them. Long before governments write discrimination into law, culture normalizes it. Long before rights are stripped away, voices are quietly pushed out of mainstream life.
I know this firsthand.
On August 20, Bell Bird Books in Nashville, Tennessee, was set to host the launch of my second book, “White. Blonde. Jew.: A Call to End Extremism, Speak Up, Reclaim Center.” This wasn&#8217;t a store that reluctantly agreed to carry me. The owner invited me. She read the manuscript and texted me afterward that it was &#8220;spot on,&#8221; &#8220;incredibly brave,&#8221; and that she was &#8220;so thankful it will be out in the world.&#8221; We built the event – marketing materials, promotional graphics, a shared sense that this conversation belonged in Nashville.
Then the pressure campaign started.
Within hours of the announcement, social media filled with demands that the store cancel. I was called a &#8220;Zionist,&#8221; a &#8220;Zionist genocide loving freak,&#8221; told that &#8220;a Zionist author is different than a Jewish author,&#8221; and – ironically – a &#8220;Nazi.&#8221; Customers told her they would not shop there as long as the store hosted me. The message was simple: stand with this Jewish author and pay for it.
I asked the owner directly: had anyone threatened violence?
No, she said.
This was not about safety. I had arranged armed security for the event as a standard operating practice so that I, the bookstore, and our guests would feel comfortable. She responded that she “wasn&#8217;t worried at all” and that it “sounded great.”
This was about reputation. This was about Gen Z and younger millennials&#8217; online mob of intimidation. This was about Southern housewives clutching their pearls. This was about the discomfort of being associated with a Jew who isn&#8217;t quiet. This is about what happens when your children become indoctrinated in college, graduate, and populate our cities.
The invitation was posted the afternoon of July 25, and the event was canceled less than three days later.
Her reason, explained to my literary agent: “the book was too big, too serious, for her small little store.” That reasoning doesn&#8217;t hold up under the timeline. Nothing about the book&#8217;s size or seriousness changed between her invitation and the event announcement — only the volume of online pressure did.
Then it got worse.
She contributed to a piece in The Tennessean on July 29 that led readers to believe she still stood behind the event — behind me — even though she had already canceled my launch less than 24 hours earlier. You cannot quietly remove a Jewish author from your store one day and let the public believe you defended her the next. If we&#8217;re going to be honest about intimidation, we have to start with honesty itself. And if we are being honest — how are bookstores allowed to claim independence when the online pressure campaign dictates who is shelved and supported?
History doesn&#8217;t judge institutions by the statements they issue to cover their cowardice. It judges them by what they do under pressure, when doing the right thing has a cost.
Many will read this as a small-business marketing decision. The Jewish community may recognize something else.
For nearly three years, Jewish writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers, public intellectuals, and photographers have been on the digital front lines of a fight most people still won&#8217;t name. We&#8217;re rarely part of the political conversation — until our books are published, our art exhibitions open, and our music debuts. Then we&#8217;re often first in line for the organized online campaigns built to make institutions decide we&#8217;re not worth the trouble.
This pattern should concern everyone, because it isn&#8217;t new. People think Nazi Germany&#8217;s persecution of Jews began with the Nuremberg Laws. It didn&#8217;t. It began with pressure campaigns, public shaming, humiliation, and exclusion. In 1933, radicalized university students organized the &#8220;Action Against the Un-German Spirit&#8221; against Jewish authors and intellectuals. Blacklists circulated. Books were publicly condemned. Publishers, theaters, and universities distanced themselves from Jewish voices before any law forced them to — because the pressure alone had already worked.
America in 2026 is not Germany in 1933. The Holocaust was a singular horror, and nothing should flatten that. But history doesn&#8217;t end there, and the radicalization pipeline looks familiar. Dr. Charles Asher Small, founder of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, has spent over a decade tracing how Middle Eastern funding — primarily from Qatar — flows into American universities without being reported as required by law. Small doesn&#8217;t mince words about who&#8217;s behind that money: Qatar, he&#8217;s said, is &#8220;<a href="https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/its-time-to-cut-off-qatars-unseen-hand-in-fueling-global-antisemitism/">the sanitized face of the Muslim Brotherhood</a>.&#8221; Students who pass through programs shaped by that funding graduate and carry the pattern with them: organized public intimidation, structured shaming, economic threats aimed at small businesses, institutions deciding a Jewish voice simply isn&#8217;t worth the inconvenience.
&#8220;Zionist&#8221; is part of the hate playbook. The word is used as a pejorative for &#8220;Jew&#8221; — not because the people using it know what it actually means, but because it functions the way a slur functions for any other marginalized group: it lets the person wielding it launder their own bigotry. Calling it &#8220;anti-Zionism&#8221; instead of antisemitism does the same work the N-word does for a racist — it sanitizes the speaker while it strips the target of their humanity. And it does something else, too: it severs Jews from the very communities we have stood shoulder to shoulder with through civil rights. Zionism, stripped of the slur, is simply the belief that Israel has the right to exist. But to a generation raised on the word as a weapon, &#8220;Zionist&#8221; has become a scarlet letter — a way to exclude us from the mainstream spaces we contribute to, before anyone has to engage with a single thing we&#8217;ve actually said.
My book isn&#8217;t even out yet.
The people demanding my event be canceled never read it. They judged the title. They judged the cover. A culture that judges books by their covers is one that will let history&#8217;s darkest chapters repeat.
“White. Blonde. Jew.” is about what happens when identity gets weaponized, including the rise of antisemitism, my life as a working photographer, my trips to Israel after October 7, and why bearing witness matters even when it&#8217;s uncomfortable. It argues for nuance and against extremism.
None of that mattered to the people who wanted me silenced.
This is bigger than one bookstore. According to the American Jewish Committee, 91% of American Jews now feel less safe in this country; nearly nine in 10. Artists Against Antisemitism members have lived through many of the examples I’ve described, and I am only one data point in a much larger reality: the Anti-Defamation League recorded roughly 6,000 antisemitic incidents last year, an average of 17 every day. And remember how small our community is. If 100 people in a room represented America, just two would represent the Jewish community. Yet those two are increasingly being pushed to the margins of the very mainstream spaces we have helped build. We feel the temperature of this moment every day. It is not heat; it is the cold shoulder.
In the end, the bookstore owner didn&#8217;t just cancel the event. She took down the post on July 30. A security justification followed, even though armed security had already been addressed and accepted before the cancellation. The timeline matters.
Jewish books no longer have to be burned to disappear from public life. They need only enough pressure for bookstores to decide they are too costly to defend against their peers.
When you choose to listen to the people doing the intimidating instead of the people being intimidated, you don&#8217;t hold the line. You move it. Every time an institution folds, it moves a little farther, one step closer to a pattern history has already shown us to be true.
***
<a href="https://www.instagram.com/alyssarosenheck/">Alyssa Rosenheck</a> is a bestselling author and photographer who brings creativity and clarity to today’s cultural conversation. Named one of Architectural Digest’s Top 50 photographers in the U.S., she blends visual storytelling with advocacy. Her upcoming book, “White. Blonde. Jew.” (August 2026), confronts contemporary antisemitism and calls for a return to truth-telling, intellectual courage, and Western values. Alyssa played a key role in the successful withdrawal of two BDS resolutions in her hometown of Nashville, Tennessee.

Alyssa Rosenheck Author of White Blonde Jew copy

Modern Antisemitism Is The Quiet Exclusion Of Jewish Voices

anti-Zionism

antisemitism

DW Opinion

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Last year, the Supreme Court reminded public schools of a truth too often forgotten: parents do not surrender their religious convictions at the schoolhouse door.
In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Court held that Montgomery County, Maryland, could not force parents to choose between their faith and participation in public education. The county introduced LGBTQ-inclusive storybooks for elementary students, initially offered notice and opt-outs, then rescinded those accommodations. The Court was right to say no.
Public education is a government benefit. It may not be conditioned on a parent’s willingness to expose a child to instruction that poses a real threat of undermining the religious beliefs that parents try hard to instill in their children.
But Mahmoud did not end the debate. It merely answered the first question: whether schools may compel exposure to certain materials over religious objections and without an opt-out. The next question is already here: who decides what materials belong in public schools in the first place — parents and locally elected school boards, or institutions operating largely outside meaningful parental oversight?
That question is now being litigated in Colorado. In Crookshanks v. Elizabeth School District, pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, plaintiffs challenge the Elizabeth School District’s decision to remove a small number of titles from its school libraries.
The district’s combined library collection includes more than 50,000 books. The challenged removals involved only a fraction of that collection — books the district says contained sexually explicit or age-inappropriate material, or material directly at odds with what many parents teach their children at home.
The constitutional issue is not whether every parent will agree about every book. They will not. Nor is it whether older students may encounter hard subjects in appropriate settings. Of course they will.
The issue is whether public institutions entrusted with children may disregard parents altogether when their decisions shape a child’s moral, religious, and civic formation.
The Supreme Court has long recognized that parents have a constitutionally protected role in directing the upbringing and education of their children. For example, in Meyer v. Nebraska, the Court protected parents’ ability to choose foreign-language instruction. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the Court rejected Oregon’s attempt to force all children into public schools.
In Wisconsin v. Yoder, the Court protected Amish parents from compulsory public school attendance that conflicted with their faith. And in Mahmoud, the Court reaffirmed that schools may not refuse religious parents an accommodation from materials that burden free exercise.
Those cases stand for a basic proposition: government may not displace parents as the primary authority over their children’s moral and religious formation. That principle matters no less in a school library than in a classroom.
A parent should not discover after the fact that a school has exposed his or her child to material that directly conflicts with the family’s religious convictions. And elected school board members should not be treated as censors simply for responding to parents’ concerns about age-appropriate content.
Political rhetoric these days too often obscures legal analysis. Invoking the specter of censorship is powerful and effective rhetoric, but when used to describe a school board removing sexually explicit material from its library, it is wrong.
A public school’s library is not a public bookstore. A curriculum is not an unlimited marketplace of ideas. Public-school officials necessarily decide which books serve educational purposes, which materials are suitable for minors, and which content belongs in a government-run school setting.
Removing a book from a school library is not the same as prohibiting a private publisher from selling it, preventing a family from buying it, or criminalizing its possession. Constitutional law should not treat every school-board selection decision as if it were state censorship of private speech.
That does not mean school boards have unlimited authority. They do not. Government may not use schools to punish disfavored viewpoints or to burden religious exercise. But courts should be equally careful not to disable locally elected school boards from making good-faith judgments about what is appropriate for children in public schools.
Democratic accountability is not a constitutional defect. It is one of the safeguards.
On the facts as described by the Elizabeth School District, the board used an accountable, responsible, and defensible process. It reviewed specific books, listened to parents and community members, considered student age and suitability, and de-selected only a handful of titles from a very large collection.
That’s not censorship. It’s democratic governance of public school materials for minors.
Make no mistake about it: the stakes are larger than one Colorado district or one set of books.
The country is, once again, confronting a fundamental question of constitutional governance: who exercises public authority over children’s education, and through what accountable process?
Remember former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe? He learned the hard way and lost his bid for re-election against Glenn Youngkin when he said in a 2021 debate, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Parents across Virginia, including Democrats, disagreed.
The answer, obviously, is that parents must not remain silent while educational bureaucracies decide what children will read, see, and learn. Nor can it be that courts should reflexively condemn elected school boards whenever they respond to parents’ objections.
Public schools serve families of many faiths and convictions. There are more than 13,000 regular school districts across this country. That diversity requires humility from government, respect for parents, and room for local communities to make reasonable judgments. If courts treat every age-appropriate library decision as censorship, they risk weakening the very constitutional protections that allow families of different beliefs to trust public education.
Mahmoud was an important victory for parental rights and religious liberty. Crookshanks presents the next test. Parents have rights. Children deserve protection. And elected school boards must retain the authority — and the responsibility — to ensure that public schools respect both.
***
Charles Stimson is a Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Kristina Celeste is a Paralegal in Heritage’s Legal Action Center.
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<div></div>

Books in a school library in North Carolina

The Next Parental Rights Fight Is In The School Library

Crookshanks v. Elizabeth School District

Mahmoud v. Taylor

Parental Rights

Religious Freedom

A book questioning the benefits of mass immigration is shooting to the top of the Amazon bestseller list after going viral when it was yanked from the site April 17.
All the leftists who shriek about book bans were notably silent when “The Camp of the Saints,” a 1973 dystopian novel written by French author Jean Raspail, became unavailable at the largest bookseller in the world. 
The work of fiction depicts the collapse of Western civilization after a horde of third-world migrants overtakes the country. The book’s publisher, Vauban Books, released a statement following the book being removed from Amazon on April 17.
An X post from Vauban Books on April 20 said, “On Friday, April 17th, Amazon US removed the paperback listing for our edition of Jean Raspail’s The Camp of the Saints (at this writing, the book remains available for purchase in Kindle and audiobook formats).” 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Our statement on Amazon&#8217;s suppression of The Camp of the Saints in the United States: <a href="https://t.co/JDTE5i4XbH">pic.twitter.com/JDTE5i4XbH</a>
— Vauban Books (@VaubanBooks) <a href="https://twitter.com/VaubanBooks/status/2046262858904641889?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 20, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
“We have since been informed by Amazon that the book is in violation of the company’s ‘offensive content’ policy,” the statement continued. “Amazon has supplied no information as to which portions of the book are offensive nor to whom.”
Vauban Books also noted that the book had been selling well after first being listed on Amazon in July 2025. “In the eight months since, Amazon has sold roughly 20,000 paperback copies of it.”
“The Camp of the Saints” was also said to have been “extensively reviewed in the American and international press” and found that its reviewers &#8220;have been unanimous in their assessment of its abiding importance and relevance to contemporary debates.”
“While we cannot say for certain has taken this extraordinary step, it may be no coincidence that the listing was removed one day after New York Magazine published a critical article on Vice President Vance that referenced the book.”
Following public outcry, Amazon reportedly <a href="https://x.com/VaubanBooks/status/2046621879574688215">shared a response</a> with Vauban Books courtesy of their media contact, stating, “We’ve resolved an error that briefly affected the availability of a paperback listing of The Camp of the Saints, and the title is now restored.'&#8221; 
The publisher said that Amazon &#8220;appears to be in damage control mode,&#8221; and again confirmed that the book was originally taken off the website due to their &#8220;offensive content policy.&#8221;

Amazon

Amazon Yanks Anti-Immigration Novel, Accidentally Sends It Rocketing Up The Charts

anti-immigration

Books

Conservatism

Entertainment

Fiction

Amazon Germany Services GmbH

The Return Of Wokeness? Amazon Banning Books Is Just The Start

Illegal Immigration

Leftists

Matt Walsh

Opinion

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
A patient recently stopped midsentence during a session. He was describing a routine disagreement at work — a minor conflict over scheduling and communication — when he suddenly froze, backtracked, and added an unnecessary disclaimer: “I know I’m saying this as a white guy…” The comment had nothing to do with race. But in his mind, race had already entered the room.
That moment reflects something I’m seeing more and more among successful adults, especially white professionals in elite settings. Ordinary conversations that should feel routine are now approached like potential danger zones. Before they even know whether what they’re about to say is remotely controversial, people are editing themselves, adding disclaimers, and mentally preparing for how they might need to explain or retreat. What they think is heightened social awareness is often something closer to chronic anxiety.
Race has become a psychological minefield. Therapeutic language and anxiety-driven habits have moved beyond the consulting room into everyday life, reshaping how people think, speak, and relate to one another.
The problem isn’t empathy, reflection, or a sincere desire to get it right. Those are healthy. The problem is when reflection turns into constant self-monitoring, when people overanalyze ordinary phrasing and start treating basic exchanges like potential liabilities. At that point, it’s no longer sensitivity. It’s anxiety.
In therapy, this is a familiar pattern. People rehearse conversations before they happen, over-monitor their wording in real time, and replay exchanges afterward searching for signs they crossed a line. In workplaces, schools, and social circles, race discourse now trains people into that same habit. The reality is, people aren’t becoming more honest. They’re becoming more afraid.
The clearest example shows up among white professionals who feel the need to preface even basic observations with disclaimers about identity or privilege. But it doesn’t stop there. Teachers start second-guessing harmless classroom discussions. Parents tense up talking about race in front of their children’s friends. Executives over-script routine feedback conversations. Friends replay things they said at dinner, wondering whether a phrase landed the wrong way. The pattern is the same: Ordinary speech starts to feel loaded before the conversation even begins. Silence becomes the coping mechanism.
That’s where this stops being just cultural and becomes psychological. Once people begin avoiding ordinary conversations because the fear of social consequences, avoidance itself becomes the habit. And once that habit takes hold, the anxiety only deepens.
What’s especially concerning to me as a therapist is how familiar the pattern is. Someone feels a spike of fear, adds a disclaimer, softens the phrase, or avoids the comment altogether, and immediately feels a sense of relief. That teaches the brain the wrong lesson: that the danger was real and that self-censorship is what prevented the fallout. So the next time a similar conversation comes up, the anxiety shows up faster and hits harder because the brain has started to associate silence and over-editing with safety.
Over time, people become so afraid of saying the wrong thing that ordinary conversation starts to feel risky. They check every sentence for possible offense, replay exchanges long after they’re over, and fall into habits such as disclaimers, over-prefacing, and moral throat-clearing, all meant to signal innocence before anyone has even accused them of anything. The irony is that the very habits meant to calm the fear only make race feel more dangerous to discuss honestly.
That is how a culture meant to encourage dialogue slowly trains people to avoid honest conversation.
Elite institutions have made this worse. In workplaces, schools, and media, people are trained to second-guess ordinary language and over-explain even basic observations. The result is a constant habit of second-guessing. People become so focused on how every word might land that real conversation disappears, and exchange gives way to performance. This doesn’t improve dialogue. It shuts it down.
Good therapy helps people tolerate discomfort, reality-test their fears, and speak honestly without assuming the worst. A healthy culture should do the same. It should make room for candid discussion, curiosity, and disagreement without teaching adults to treat ordinary language like danger.
What much of elite race discourse now produces instead is self-censorship, guilt, and a widening culture of silence. That may spare people short-term discomfort, but it’s also normalizing the same fear patterns we usually associate with anxiety. That is far from social progress. It’s a culture teaching healthy adults to think like anxious patients.
***
Jonathan Alpert is a psychotherapist in New York City and Washington, D.C., and author of the forthcoming book “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Therapy-Nation-America-Anxious-Divided/dp/1335000658" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Therapy Nation</a>.” Find him on X <a href="https://x.com/JonathanAlpert" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@JonathanAlpert</a>.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Why Saying The Wrong Thing Now Feels Like A Bigger Risk Than Staying Silent

Race

Upstream

It is easy to forget the dystopian excesses of the Covid era: business closures, shuttered schools, and mask and vaccine mandates. A new development in Missouri v. Biden, a Covid-era lawsuit, serves as an important reminder of how precarious our basic freedoms become in the face of a perceived disaster. For the past four years, a coalition of state attorneys general, courageous scientists, and First Amendment advocates waged a counterattack against the federal government’s efforts to strong-arm social media companies into silencing those espousing views contrary to the government-approved narrative. 
Last week, the plaintiffs and the federal defendants submitted a consent decree to the court for approval. The <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.477.1.pdf">proposed consent decree</a> is both a real win for free speech and a blueprint for further protections necessary to safeguard our First Amendment rights.
That need is underscored by another recent free speech victory by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/state-dept-reaches-censorship-settlement-with-daily-wire?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=undefined&amp;elementPosition=7&amp;row=3&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+News&amp;rowType=Vertical+Carousel&amp;title=Daily+Wire+Wins+Landmark+Free+Speech+Victory+In+Censorship+Lawsuit+Against+State+Department">The Daily Wire</a>, in which the State Department agreed to stop supporting efforts that targeted protected speech by American media outlets. That settlement also imposed ongoing compliance oversight, helping ensure the government cannot quietly return to the same tactics.
The core allegation in Missouri v. Biden was that senior officials across multiple federal agencies had engaged in an unprecedented campaign to coerce and pressure major social media platforms into censoring lawful speech. The plaintiffs argued that the Biden administration had effectively outsourced government censorship to private companies, leaning on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to suppress content related to Covid origins and treatments, the Hunter Biden laptop story, and election integrity.
<div id="attachment_869089" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-869089" class="size-large wp-image-869089" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-1915020320-864x576.jpg" alt="WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 10: Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, departs a House Oversight Committee meeting at Capitol Hill on January 10, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" />Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images</div>
For example, Rob Flaherty, the director of digital media in the Biden Administration, tried to coerce Meta into suppressing posts critical of the Covid vaccine on Facebook, accusing Meta of driving “vaccine hesitancy.” Flaherty even demanded that Meta explain what it would do to suppress anti-vaccine content on WhatsApp, a private messaging application. Flaherty made clear he was not speaking just for himself, but rather for, “the highest — and I mean the highest — levels of the White House.&#8221;
The case bounced between trial and appellate courts, including a stop at the Supreme Court, as judges evaluated the nuances of the thorny, at times novel, claims at issue in the case. With the change in presidential administrations, however, the federal government no longer was the adversary, though it was still the nominal defendant. 
On his first day back in office, President Trump signed an Executive Order entitled, “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,” which condemned the types of censorship the plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden had filed suit regarding. With a sympathetic administration in office, the plaintiffs were able to negotiate a consent decree rather than spend many more years embroiled in litigation.
The consent decree is focused on preventing the type of coercion, known as jawboning, that the federal government had used to do indirectly during Covid what it could not do directly: prevent Americans from speaking out in public about the major issues of the day. The parties agreed that the government would no longer take actions designed to bully social media companies into removing or suppressing content containing free speech. The consent decree further prohibits the government from directing or vetoing social media companies’ content moderation policies.
A critical limit in the consent decree, however, exposes the clear need for the government to take protective measures outside the confines of the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit. For technical legal reasons related to standing and jurisdiction, the consent decree is focused on the parties to the case. Rather than enjoin the federal government as a whole, the consent decree binds the Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which engaged in some of the most blatant jawboning efforts during the Covid period. The consent decree further protects only the plaintiffs in the case, that is, the states and individuals who sued the government. (In a bit of poetic justice, two of the plaintiffs, Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, withdrew from the case after accepting senior posts in the Trump administration.)
The Missouri v. Biden plaintiffs are not the only litigants who have prevailed in challenges to Biden-era free speech violations. As The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/state-dept-reaches-censorship-settlement-with-daily-wire">reported</a>, this week, a federal judge issued a consent decree in a challenge to the Biden-era State Department’s practice of partnering with outside organizations to label various outlets — including this one and the Federalist — as disinformation. The State Department agreed that it would no longer engage in efforts to suppress, censor, demonetize, or downgrade the constitutionally protected speech of Americans and domestic news outlets. 
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/state-dept-reaches-censorship-settlement-with-daily-wire?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=undefined&amp;elementPosition=7&amp;row=3&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+News&amp;rowType=Vertical+Carousel&amp;title=Daily+Wire+Wins+Landmark+Free+Speech+Victory+In+Censorship+Lawsuit+Against+State+Department"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-1070109 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/dw_vs._state_dept_16x9_720.png" alt="" width="720" height="405" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/dw_vs._state_dept_16x9_720.png 720w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/dw_vs._state_dept_16x9_720-300x169.png 300w" sizes=" (max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px" /></a>
While these consent decrees are real victories for the plaintiffs who had the courage to take on the federal government in court, they will not stop a future administration from engaging in similar tactics that we saw during Covid, in the wake of the 2020 election, and throughout the Biden Administration. Americans as a whole deserve the robust protections the Missouri v. Biden plaintiffs earned in that litigation. 
Congressional action of any sort is admittedly a difficult feat. But there are few bedrock principles more important than those embodied in the First Amendment. If Congress wants to protect Americans’ free speech rights, the proposed consent decree in Missouri v. Biden is a useful roadmap. All federal agencies and officials, not just the select handful named in the proposed consent decree, should be prohibited from trying to control speech by telling social media companies what content is and is not allowed. And all Americans should be able to speak on social media with the assurance that the government cannot tell social media platforms to silence them.
The plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden and their attorneys should be praised for bringing a landmark lawsuit in the face of tremendous government overreach and achieving a real victory in the process. Congress should follow suit by extending those protections to everyone else.
* * *
Jesse Franklin-Murdock is the Miles Visiting Fellow at the Center for American Liberty, and he is a partner at Sweigart Murdock, LLP in San Francisco, where he specializes in First Amendment and defamation law, political law, and civil rights.

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After Daily Wire Legal Win, Americans Shouldn’t Wonder Who’s Silencing Them Online

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The White House turns green today as Ireland’s prime minister (Taoiseach) Micheál Martin arrives for his annual St. Patrick’s Day meeting with the president. Every March, Americans put aside political differences and raise a pint of Guinness to the ballads, jigs and reels, and the rolling hills of their common ancestral homeland. In Chicago, the river turns green. In New York, the city shuts down for the largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the world. And in Boston – well, Boston is Irish all year round.
The last time the American media reported on Irishmen in Washington was only last month. Free speech expert Lorcán Price and comedian Graham Linehan <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-europe-plans-to-strangle-american-free-speech?author=Lorcan+Price&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=How+Europe+Plans+To+Strangle+American+Free+Speech">testified</a> before the House Judiciary Committee on the mass censorship regime sweeping Europe through its big tech hub in Dublin, Ireland. The American nostalgia of St. Patrick’s Day remembers a wholesome, Christian, culturally rich country that is now close to extinction. Ireland today is a left-wing, globalist hub and it offers a warning about the direction left-wing policies will lead the United States if the American Left regains control in Washington. Ireland’s fall from grace demonstrates how unelected bureaucracies and mass-immigration can reshape a nation.
<div id="attachment_1060857" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1060857" class="size-large wp-image-1060857" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2245192920-864x576.jpg" alt="DUBLIN, IRELAND - OCTOBER 31: The sun shines on a pint of Guninness that is being poured as people enjoy a drink in a bar in the city centre on October 31, 2025 in Dublin, Ireland. The city of Dublin, the capital of the Republic of Ireland, is located on Ireland’s east coast at the mouth of the River Liffey and is a popular destination for domestic tourists and with international visitors. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2245192920-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2245192920-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2245192920-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2245192920.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Matt Cardy/Getty Images</div>
While Elon Musk’s DOGE made some headway last year in exposing and trimming some of the worst excesses of America’s deep state, Ireland’s deep state is firmly embedded. There are <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/2024/10/19/why-so-many-charities-and-ngos/">32,000 NGOs</a> in Ireland — that’s one for every 155 people in the country. Despite the label “non-governmental,” this sector receives $7 billion (€6 billion) every year, not including additional funds from the European Union, USAID, and other governmental bodies around the world.
These organizations, for the most part, implement policies created by the European Union — another unelected bureaucracy — that are passed with little-to-no real scrutiny by the Irish parliament. In fact, according to an Irish member of European Parliament, <a href="https://gript.ie/fine-gael-mep-70-of-legislation-comes-from-europe/#:~:text=Many%20people%20in%20Ireland%20today,what's%20decided%2C%E2%80%9D%20he%20said.">70% of Ireland’s legislation</a> is created in this way.
The American Left would love to see that level of unaccountable NGO rule in the United States. The House DOGE Subcommittee <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/release/doge-subcommittee-chairwoman-greene-opens-hearing-on-ngos-use-of-federal-funds-to-advance-radical-agenda">found last year</a> that the Biden-Harris EPA had directed $20 billion to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. This provided taxpayer funds to NGOs to implement the Green New Deal. If Republicans lose in 2026, we can expect Democrats to push even larger sums of taxpayer dollars through similar programs with little oversight.
In Ireland, the government openly advertises that it reserves special benefits for <a href="https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/moving-country/asylum-seekers-and-refugees/services-for-asylum-seekers-in-ireland/direct-provision/#:~:text=Direct%20provision%20is%20the%20name,protection%20and%20are%20waiting%20for:">illegal immigrants who come to its shores</a>. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Ireland announced it would take in every Ukrainian refugee that arrived at Dublin Airport, with no upper limit. The government still provides housing and a weekly stipend many times larger than any other European country, but refuses to run any background checks on these alleged refugees. Dr. Eoin Lenihan explains in his book, Vandalising Ireland, that between 2022 and 2023, 8,975 individuals arrived in Ireland to seek asylum with no valid identification. Only one was prosecuted.
In 2022, a 23-year-old Irish schoolteacher, Ashling Murphy, was brutally stabbed 11 times in the neck while out for a run. Her murderer, Jozef Puska, was unemployed and receiving funds from a social welfare program. As an EU citizen (Puska moved from Slovakia in 2013), he had an automatic right to live in Ireland, despite being unemployed. Puska was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment, but he remains in the country without a deportation order. Ashling’s boyfriend, Ryan Casey, was accused of “incitement to hatred” by the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yg0ee65eqo">BBC</a> for raising concern about the unmitigated immigration regime that led to her murder. To date, the system has not been reformed to prevent similar tragedies.
<div id="attachment_1060839" style="width: 875px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1060839" class="size-large wp-image-1060839" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1237802580-865x576.jpg" alt="TULLAMORE, IRELAND - JANUARY 18: Pupils from Ashling Murphy's class hold photographs of her and red roses ahead of her funeral at St. Brigid’s Church, County Offaly on January 18, 2022 in Tullamore, Ireland. The murder of the beloved 23 year old school teacher has caused widespread anger and shock in Ireland, with tens of thousands of people attending vigils in recent days. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)" width="865" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1237802580-865x576.jpg 865w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1237802580-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1237802580-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1237802580.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 865px) 100vw, 865px" />Charles McQuillan/Getty Images</div>
The United States has seen similar tragedies as a result of the disastrous Biden-era immigration regime. Young girls like Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, and Kayla Hamilton bore the brunt of this policy. A new Democratic administration will certainly re-open the border and cause more pain and suffering, precisely because open borders — not the safety of young women — has become a defining policy priority of the Left.
Ireland’s Christian heritage has been politicized and defeated in a woke crusade. The last decade brought with it a wave of referendums that ripped Ireland’s conservative safeguards out of the constitution. Ireland voted in large numbers to create constitutional rights for same-sex “marriage” and abortion (with no restrictions). In 2024, the ruling parties put forward a vote to remove the word “woman” from the constitution and define “family” as any “durable relationship.” Only in a last-minute polling turnaround that indicated the Irish people are finally waking up to the destruction of their culture, did the government lose the vote. The star of that 2024 campaign, Maria Steen, was unceremoniously <a href="https://lawliberty.org/ireland-at-rock-bottom/">blocked from running for President</a> last year.
A nation’s politics necessarily impact its culture. The Irish culture Americans celebrate every March is deteriorating rapidly. The Gaelic language is confined to rural villages, and less than <a href="https://www.cso.ie/en/csolatestnews/pressreleases/2023pressreleases/pressstatementcensus2022resultsprofile8-theirishlanguageandeducation">2% of the population</a> speak it on a weekly basis. This year, the government perverted the celebration of the Irish Catholic St. Brigid by <a href="https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/ireland-is-playing-with-holy-fire/">casting her as a pagan goddess</a>. In the aftermath of the George Floyd debacle in Minnesota, Ireland eagerly joined the cancellation spree. Trinity College Dublin “denamed” (renamed) its Berkeley Library, previously named after a significant Irish-born philosopher, due to alleged ties to slavery.
While the United States has never passed a popular vote to create constitutional rights out of thin air, it repeatedly elects politicians who seek to protect made-up rights, misuse the law, and sell out their Christian faith. The last administration attempted to codify Roe v. Wade. It succeeded in codifying parts of Obergefell v. Hodges with bipartisan support in the “Respect for Marriage Act.” Thirty-four felony convictions nearly blocked Donald Trump from the ballot in 2024. In the United States, Christian faith is becoming increasingly politicized. Daily Wire’s Megan Basham has catalogued this bastardization of Christianity in the United States in her book, &#8220;Shepherds for Sale.&#8221; Renaming libraries and toppling statues has also become common under Democrat governance.
Ireland’s transformation did not happen overnight. It happened through bureaucrats, state-funded NGOs, and cultural elites who slowly replaced national identity with global ideology. Americans celebrating St. Patrick’s Day should remember: the country they toast tonight is not the one that exists today. Ireland shows what happens when elites, bureaucracies, and ideology override national identity. As Americans celebrate 250 years of independence, they should reflect on their own national identity as they head to the ballot box this year. After all, Ireland is the future the American Left wants.
* * *
Roger Berkeley works with mission-driven organizations to develop their political and communications strategies. Now based in Washington, DC, Berkeley has been politically active in his native Ireland since 2016, driving change on free speech and life issues.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Aerial view of St. Anne’s Church of Ireland in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, surrounded by cemetery and lush countryside, Traditional rural church architecture and Irish cultural landscape for editorial and travel use

Ireland Is The Future The American Left Wants

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X announced Friday that it is challenging a $140 million fine imposed by the European Commission under what critics call the bloc&#8217;s digital “censorship” law. 
The social media company was hit with a fine in December 2025 for alleged non-compliance with the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), a sweeping speech-regulation law that allows authorities to penalize companies for failing to remove so-called misinformation or other content deemed illegal. X filed an appeal on Monday in the E.U.&#8217;s General Court, arguing it was denied due process and faced a biased enforcement process. 
“This EU Decision resulted from an incomplete and superficial investigation, grave procedural errors, a tortured interpretation of the obligations under the DSA, and systematic breaches of rights of defence and basic due process requirements suggesting prosecutorial bias,” X’s Global Government Affairs team <a href="https://x.com/GlobalAffairs/status/2024803983093629298">said</a>. “X remains committed to user safety and transparency while defending our users&#8217; access to the only global town square.”
X&#8217;s move marks the first legal challenge to the Digital Services Act, which critics say enables political censorship and punishment of disfavored viewpoints. The law allows the European Commission to impose significant financial penalties on tech companies it claims are not doing enough to combat so-called disinformation.
The act relies on non-governmental organizations that advise regulators on whether online content may be deemed illegal for violating E.U. standards. It places significant reporting and compliance burdens on tech companies. In certain cases, American tech companies may be fined up to 6% of their global revenue if they violate specific conditions. 
The legal challenge is being supported by Alliance Defending Freedom International, which has spoken out extensively against the Digital Services Act. 
“X is where millions of people go to freely express their views. This is a crackdown on X by authorities who view a free speech platform as a serious threat to their total control of online narratives,” said Adina Portaru, a senior European counsel for ADF International. “By targeting X, they are targeting the free speech of individuals across the world who simply want to share ideas online free from censorship.”
Portaru said the legal challenge confronts what she described as the enormous power the European Commission wields to define the content moderation rules, launch investigations, and levy fines.
“If the Commission’s concentration of power goes unchallenged, it will further cement a highly problematic standard for speech control across the EU and beyond,” she said. 
In October, ADF International led a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/for-thursday-exclusive-free-speech-advocates-challenge-eu-over-pan-european-censorship-regime">letter</a> signed by more than 100 free speech advocates urging the European Commission to reconsider the law. In a November review, the commission claimed that the act was content-neutral. 
X owner Elon Musk called the fine against his company “bullsh*t” and, one day after it was issued, <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1997279325876367719">said</a> the European Union should be &#8220;abolished.&#8221;
Both the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have voiced opposition to the law.
“Look, Europe has to be very careful,” Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/europe-has-to-be-very-careful-trump-issues-stern-warning-after-eu-fines-elon-musks-x">said</a> while commenting on the fine back in December. “They’re doing a lot of things. … Europe is going in some bad directions. It’s very bad for the people.”
Last week, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bill-would-give-american-victims-of-foreign-censorship-power-to-sue?author=Leif+Le+Mahieu&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Bill+Would+Give+American+Victims+Of+Foreign+Censorship+Power+To+Sue">said</a> lawmakers are exploring legislation to protect American companies from penalties under foreign laws that regulate speech. The committee has released documents it says show the European Union pressured tech companies to create guidelines defining acceptable speech on topics ranging from mass migration to men competing in women’s sports.

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Elon Musk Escalates Fight With Europe Over ‘Speech Controls’

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Republican lawmakers will consider legislation that would allow American citizens to sue foreign entities that censor and violate their First Amendment rights.
House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) said Thursday that lawmakers were looking into proposals that would protect Americans from foreign censorship. The legislation would mirror proposals introduced in states like Wyoming that would protect Americans from being penalized for their opinions. 
“We are definitely looking at that,” Jordan responded when asked by journalist Michael Shellenberger if Congress would consider proposals similar to the Guaranteeing Rights Against Novel International Tyranny and Extortion (GRANITE) Act <a href="https://www.wyoleg.gov/Legislation/2026/HB0070">introduced</a> on February 5 in Wyoming. 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
BREAKING: Congress is considering stripping sovereign immunity of EU censorship officials, prohibiting social media from enforcing censorship orders, and enabling private lawsuits against foreign entities, says <a href="https://twitter.com/Jim_Jordan?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Jim_Jordan</a> echoing remarks made by <a href="https://twitter.com/UnderSecPD?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@UnderSecPD</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/DarrellIssa?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@DarrellIssa</a> <a href="https://t.co/AKjfbBJql9">pic.twitter.com/AKjfbBJql9</a>
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) <a href="https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/2019456842997338152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 5, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Jordan added that lawmakers were trying to find a “remedy” for foreign censorship, saying that “we&#8217;re taking a good look at that and seeing if there&#8217;s something we can do” regarding the GRANITE Act. 
The GRANITE Act would create a cause of action against foreign states and international organizations that implement censorship laws that violate the free speech rights of Americans, according to a summary of the bill. It would also prevent the state from working with entities that implement foreign censorship. 
Both Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) have already suggested that the United States should take action to protect Americans from being prosecuted under foreign censorship laws. 
Jordan’s comments come after the House Judiciary Committee <a href="https://x.com/JudiciaryGOP/status/2018683758006665352">released</a> documents showing that tech companies were restricting the speech of Americans under Europe’s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/for-thursday-exclusive-free-speech-advocates-challenge-eu-over-pan-european-censorship-regime">Digital Services Act</a> and other measures. 
The act empowers the European Commission to impose significant financial penalties on tech companies, which it says are not doing enough to combat so-called disinformation. In certain circumstances, American tech companies may be fined up to 6% of their global revenue if they violate specific conditions of the act.
According to the House Judiciary Committee, the European Union pressured tech companies to create guidelines on what was acceptable speech on topics from mass migration to men participating in women’s sports on the basis of their transgender identity. 
Americans&#8217; speech online has not just been censored by foreign bureaucrats, but also by the State Department. 
In February 2024, The Daily Wire, along with The Federalist and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daily-wire-texas-ag-ask-court-to-block-state-departments-domestic-misinformation-efforts">sued the State Department</a> over its Global Engagement Center’s relationship with anti-“misinformation” outfits like NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index (GDI). The suit alleges that those outfits were focused on suppressing American conservative media, and the Global Engagement Center’s support of these groups violated the First Amendment.

Former US Special Counsel Jack Smith Testifies Before House Judiciary Committee

Bill Would Give American Victims Of Foreign Censorship Power To Sue

House May Empower Americans To Sue Foreign Entities That Censor Them

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For most of its existence, Wikipedia has been hailed as a marvel of the digital age: a sprawling, collaborative encyclopedia written by anyone and corrected by everyone. An open marketplace of knowledge. A monument to the democratization of information.
But democracies — political or epistemic — rarely collapse in an instant. They erode from within. And what my team at the Media Research Center (MRC) has uncovered about how Wikipedia operates, and how carefully it conceals that machinery, should alarm anyone who believes a self-governing society depends on an open, honest information sphere.
<a href="https://mrcfreespeechamerica.org/blogs/free-speech/luis-cornelio/2025/11/17/how-wikipedia-infiltrated-colleges-train-next-generation">Our recent investigation</a> shows that Wikipedia and its educational partner, Wiki Education, have developed a vast, little-known system for shaping, and increasingly weaponizing, the content millions of Americans rely on every day. What we found is not simply concerning; it reveals the quiet architecture of an ideological project. It is also possible that, in attempting to hide its operations, Wikipedia has crossed legal lines that could carry serious consequences.
Wikipedia’s co-founder, Larry Sanger, has said openly that the platform no longer reflects its original mission of neutrality. It has become a curator of political narrative, amplifying the messaging of the left rather than serving as an impartial arbiter of knowledge.
<h2>The Blacklist(s)</h2>
Wikipedia is transparent about one thing: it blacklists right-leaning news outlets and conservative non-profits. But even this admission obscures more than it reveals. In reality, <a href="https://mrcfreespeechamerica.org/blogs/free-speech/luis-cornelio/2025/02/03/exclusive-wikipedia-effectively-blacklists-all-right">Wikipedia maintains three tiers of blacklists</a> — Blacklisted, Deprecated, and Generally Unreliable — each designed to exclude certain publishers from the encyclopedia’s information ecosystem.
The “Blacklisted” category is the most severe. Sources here are blocked entirely; links cannot even be submitted for review. This is Wikipedia’s “do not pass go” list. It includes outlets such as the Heritage Foundation, Breitbart News, and the Washington Examiner. Content from these organizations is not debated or fact-checked, it is simply turned away at the gate.
The second level, “Deprecated,” involves sources that are “generally prohibited.” Users attempting to cite to these sources receive warnings, before Wikipedia’s editors almost always reject the suggestions. LifeSiteNews, Newsmax, The Daily Caller, and Blaze Media fall here. The effect is the same as the first list, exclusion, just with a thin procedural layer.
The third category, “Generally Unreliable,” is essentially a blacklist with a tiny escape hatch. Wikipedia discourages use of these sources and directs contributors to “more reliable” outlets. The Daily Wire is stuck in this purgatory: technically citable, but heavily disfavored.
The disparities this system produces are staggering. The Daily Wire has been cited only 445 times across Wikipedia. The New York Times, by contrast, appears in more than 1.6 million citations — meaning Wikipedia cites the Times nearly 4,000 times for every single Daily Wire reference. Similar gaps exist with Newsweek, Politico, and The Washington Post, which are cited hundreds of times more frequently than their far more reliable conservative counterparts.
More broadly, <a href="https://mrcfreespeechamerica.org/blogs/free-speech/luis-cornelio/2025/02/03/exclusive-wikipedia-effectively-blacklists-all-right">MRC research shows</a> that Wikipedia cites to left-leaning outlets almost 20 times more often than to right-leaning outlets. <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/695762/trust-media-new-low.aspx">Trust in the media is at an all-time low</a>, specifically because of the bias injected into news stories. Wikipedia intentionally magnifies that bias, resulting in gross distortions of reality. We have documented Wikipedia’s smears against many political figures, including President Donald Trump, Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Charlie Kirk. 
When gatekeepers designate half the country’s media ecosystem — representing tens of millions of readers — as inherently “unreliable,” the result is not a pursuit of truth. It is a systematic silencing of outlets disfavored by the ideological left. The encyclopedia built on openness now thrives on exclusion.
<div id="attachment_1011409" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1011409" class="size-large wp-image-1011409" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-1079587192-864x576.jpg" alt="skynesher. Getty Images. Male teacher giving a lecture from desktop PC during a class at computer lab." width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-1079587192-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-1079587192-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-1079587192-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-1079587192-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-1079587192-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-1079587192-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-1079587192-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />skynesher. Getty Images.</div>
<h2>The Student Army</h2>
Yet the core of the MRC’s latest findings lies not in the blacklist itself, but in the machinery feeding content into Wikipedia: Wiki Education, a California nonprofit created as a spin-off of the Wikimedia Foundation, operating with its funding, personnel, and blessing.
Wiki Education recruits college professors to assign Wikipedia editing as coursework. Since 2010, more than 145,000 students have participated, generating over 120 million words of content. On the surface, this could be a civic success story — young people helping build a shared public resource.
But the reality, based on the courses Wiki Education recruits and supports, is far more ideological. Classes such as Queering Religion, Critical Race Feminisms, Queer of Color Critique, Gender and Identity in STEM, and similarly activist-oriented seminars are not fringe exceptions; they are typical of the curriculum Wiki Education promotes.
These disciplines are not merely academic; they are frameworks for political activism. And the content they generate — guided by ideology rather than neutrality — flows directly into Wikipedia. The encyclopedia becomes the final destination for arguments crafted within contemporary left-wing academic theory.
<h2>The Taxpayer Foots The Bill</h2>
Even more astonishing is that this ideological pipeline is largely underwritten by taxpayers. Because Wiki Education embeds itself in public universities, it leverages state-funded faculty, classrooms, and infrastructure to funnel student labor into Wikipedia. Students believe they are learning digital literacy; in practice, many are producing politicized content for a global platform.
The pattern extends to Wiki Education’s leadership. Every traceable political donation from its senior staff and board flows to Democratic candidates, progressive PACs, and left-aligned advocacy groups. While not illegal, it reveals the institutional alignment shaping the organization’s priorities.
<h2>A Potential Legal Problem</h2>
This coordinated system — Wikipedia funding Wiki Education, Wiki Education training student editors, students supplying content that reinforces Wikipedia’s ideological filters — creates not only an informational problem but potentially a legal one.
When Wikipedia spun off Wiki Education in 2013, the structural ties between the two organizations remained unusually close. Yet Wikipedia has insisted in court filings, sworn under penalty of perjury, that it is merely an “interactive computer service,” not a “publisher.” It did so to seek the liability protections of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
If Wikipedia effectively controls Wiki Education as an alter ego — training, directing, and financing its editorial labor — then it may have misrepresented its true operations under oath. Filing false statements in court is a crime under state and federal law. Attorneys general in jurisdictions where Wikipedia has invoked Section 230, like the state of Florida, may have ample reason to investigate those claims. And while the U.S. Department of Justice has its hands full unwinding the malfeasance committed during the Biden administration, Attorney General Pam Bondi might be interested in this, too.
<h2>Why It Matters</h2>
Wikipedia is not just a reference site. It is infrastructure. It consistently dominates Google search results — Google itself being a company that aggressively manipulates search results to push its own ideology. And modern AI systems, including chatbots, draw heavily from Wikipedia’s content pipelines. When Wikipedia’s entries tilt, so does the entire information ecosystem.
Its blacklist system also has downstream economic effects. Being labeled “unreliable” reduces an outlet’s visibility, decreases traffic, and predictably harms ad revenue. The encyclopedia’s judgments ripple outward into media markets and public perception.
Given these stakes, Congress should investigate. So should the Federal Trade Commission. And attorneys general, especially in cases where Wikipedia has defended its corporate structure under oath, should scrutinize whether the organization misrepresented how it operates.
Wikipedia has every right to express ideological preferences. But it does not have the right to cloak them behind false claims of neutrality to donors, to engage in deceptive or anticompetitive practices, or to misrepresent its structure in legal proceedings.
Transparency requires accountability. And it is long past time for the public to understand what Wikipedia has become.
* * *
Dan Schneider is Vice President for Free Speech at the Media Research Center.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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The European Commission “ignored” censorship concerns as it moved forward with the implementation of a sweeping digital platform law that free speech advocates say could impact everyone from Christian preachers to TikTokers.
On Monday, the European Commission <a href="https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/report-application-article-33-regulation-eu-20222065-dsa-and-interaction-regulation-other-legal" target="_blank" rel="noopener">released</a> its first-ever review of the Digital Services Act (DSA), a law that empowers it to impose significant financial penalties on tech companies that it says are not doing enough to combat so-called disinformation or take down “illegal content.” Alliance Defending Freedom International, which <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/for-thursday-exclusive-free-speech-advocates-challenge-eu-over-pan-european-censorship-regime" target="_blank" rel="noopener">has warned</a> that the Digital Services Act could bring about a “global censorship regime,”  told The Daily Wire that it was disappointed with the commission’s report.
“I think the concerns on free speech are very substantive, and they need a robust response, and we feel that the European Commission has not actually conducted a robust review in the sense of actually inviting all voices and all partners to the table,” Dr. Adina Portaru, a senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom International, told The Daily Wire in a phone interview from London.
“The DSA can impact anyone, can impact content creators and influencers and preachers and political dissidents and any kind of content online can be regulated by the DSA through its architecture,” she added.
The act relies on cooperation from non-governmental organizations that advise lawmakers whether someone’s online writings would be considered illegal. There would also be a high burden for reporting violations on tech companies. In certain circumstances, American tech companies may be fined up to 6% of their global revenue if they violate specific conditions.
The Monday assessment from the European Commission asserts that the act is in accordance with the “fundamental rights” recognized in the commission’s charter and that the act is “content agnostic.”
“It does not define what should be considered illegal or harmful content, it only establishes procedural obligations and safeguards where such content appears online,” the assessment said.
Portaru said that the “content agnostic” claim was a smokescreen and that the definition of illegal content in the act was broad enough to have global implications.
“Illegal content is defined in such a loose way as anything that is not in accordance with EU law or any law of any member state at any time. It can be today or in one week, depending on how the national laws change,” she said.
The Alliance Defending Freedom International led a letter signed by over 100 free speech experts in October urging the European Commission to address their concerns with the act. Another 50 non-governmental organizations signed a letter in September expressing concerns about the act.
Instead of bringing them to the table, the commission claimed to have broad consensus around the act when it was actually interpreted unilaterally, Portaru said.
“The European Commission had the opportunity to step into this space and constructively engage with these concerns coming from the U.S, as well as Europeans,&#8221; she said. &#8220;It failed to do so.&#8221;
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<div class="p-rich_text_section">Asked about whether the commission was concerned about free speech, Portaru said &#8220;they just simply ignored it.&#8221;</div>
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<div class="p-rich_text_section">The commission did respond to Alliance Defending Freedom International in a November 14 letter viewed by The Daily Wire that claimed it was committed to “upholding the right to freedom of expression and information” and asserting that the act was content neutral.</div>
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“The DSA ensures that lawful content protected by the fundamental right of freedom of expression, is safeguarded by establishing due process and transparency online. The DSA clarifies what online platforms are required to do when they moderate content to prevent the arbitrary removal of lawful content,” the commission wrote.
In a statement to The Daily Wire, a spokesman for the European Commission claimed that concerns about censorship were “completely unfounded.”
“The aim of our digital legislation, including the DSA, is to ensure that the Internet is a safe place. One that protects our fundamental rights. One where illegal content like terrorism or child abuse have no place,” the spokesman said, adding that online platforms have a role to “assess and mitigate risks to the freedom of expression.”
The spokesman added that the act provided a mechanism for people to challenge if their content has been removed.
Despite the European Commission’s claims, American officials have raised concerns about how the Digital Services Act could impact the United States. The State Department told The Daily Wire that it was reviewing the report on the Digital Services Act with &#8220;great interest.&#8221;
&#8220;Current EU laws, like the Digital Services Act, exacerbate concerning member-state speech laws that use vague language such as “harmful content” to target disfavored political and religious speech and can impose onerous financial burdens on U.S. companies seeking to do business in European markets,&#8221; a State Department spokesman told The Daily Wire. &#8220;European regulations such as the DSA can have outsized extraterritorial effects and place a disproportionate burden on major American technology platforms.&#8221;
&#8220;The United States believes that protecting freedom of expression is critical, particularly for any democratic, self-governing nation – this includes protecting voices that challenge the status quo or criticize the government,&#8221; the spokesman added. 
In September, European Union Ambassador Andrew Puzder said that he would be making formal submissions to the commission for changes to the act.
“The Europeans believe that [the rules] are less restrictive and less targeted than the U.S. believes, and I think we’re going to need to sit down and go through these acts with some care,” he <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/b6d9fb9c-901e-42e3-9610-5a449247fd49" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> the Financial Times.
That followed reports in August that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had <a href="https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/rubio-orders-us-diplomats-launch-lobbying-blitz-against-europes-tech-law-2025-08-07/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">directed</a> diplomats to lobby against the Digital Services Act.
&#8220;Posts should focus efforts to build host government and other stakeholder support to repeal and/or amend the DSA or related EU or national laws restricting expression online,&#8221; Rubio wrote in a cable obtained by Reuters.
Apart from broader censorship concerns, many European countries have already become notorious for restrictions placed on political and religious speech. For example, Finnish parliamentarian <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-bible-on-trial-christian-politician-goes-back-to-court-over-religious-beliefs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Päivi Räsänen</a> has faced a six-year-long legal battle for conveying her beliefs in Christian views of sexuality online. Pro-life advocates have been punished in Britain for silently praying and German citizens <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/02/21/world-news/germans-cant-insult-politicians-which-is-why-we-need-to-protect-free-speech-in-the-us/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">can</a> be punished for insulting politicians.

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Europe Union ‘Ignored’ Free Speech Concerns, Plows Ahead With ‘Global Censorship Regime’

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