A former Miss North Carolina beauty queen is suing the Miss USA Pageant for defamation after she was stripped of her title over old social media posts.
Brittany Boltinhouse said the organization targeted her unfairly because she is a Trump-supporting conservative Christian. 
The lawsuit does not claim that Miss USA doesn’t have the right to take away her crown. Instead, Boltinhouse is accusing the organization of “maliciously coordinating to publish a false public narrative portraying Brittany Boltinhouse as a racist, homophobe, transphobe, and intolerable bigot to be shunned from public life.&#8221;
The beauty pageant contestant is suing for loss of income, reputational harm, and emotional distress. 
“Brittany Boltinhouse was not merely stripped of a title. She was publicly branded with a scarlet letter, accused of some of the most despicable accusations that can be lodged against another person in modern society,” Boltinhouse’s attorney Patrick M. Mincey <a href="https://people.com/dethroned-miss-north-carolina-usa-sues-pageant-for-defamation-12061990">said</a> in a statement obtained by People.
Another attorney for Boltinhouse added, “While defendants enjoy a certain level of discretion to crown and remove titleholders, they cannot remove a titleholder for political reasons and then defame that titleholder to the public to hide their true motivations.”
The beauty pageant contestant’s title was stripped after old social posts from 2017 and 2019 resurfaced. The posts included racial slurs, which Boltinhouse has since apologized for. Her attorneys describe the posts as “the self-evident, colloquial use of the popular slang term.”
The lawsuit also states that other social posts &#8220;revealed she was a staunch supporter of President Trump, the assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk, and an open skeptic of President Biden’s &#8216;Transgender Day of Visibility.&#8217;”
&#8220;Defendants hid from the public the real reason they dethroned Brittany: she is a conservative Christian,&#8221; the lawsuit states.
The Miss USA organization announced that Boltinhouse was being stripped of her Miss North Carolina USA 2026 title in an Instagram statement shared on August 5.
Thom Brodeur, chairman and CEO of Miss USA and Miss Teen USA, said in a <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DbrYgANGQyw/?img_index=1">statement</a> the decision was made due to “conduct over an extended period of time.&#8221; Brodeur did not specify the conduct, but did state that the organization “does not tolerate racism, homophobia, transphobia nor language that strips any person of their dignity.”
&#8220;I believe I was stripped of my title because of my political stance and my belief system as a conservative Christian woman,” Boltinhouse said in an August 7 <a href="https://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusive-video-brittany-boltinhouse-miss-north-carolina-usa-sits-down-with-cj/">interview</a> with the Carolina Journal.

Miss North Carolina

Dethroned Beauty Queen Says She Was Targeted As Conservative Christian

Dethroned Beauty Queen Sues Miss USA, Claims She Was Targeted As Conservative Christian

brittany boltinhouse

conservative christian

defamation

free speech

miss usa

Torrey Pines High School is facing a <a href="https://timesofsandiego.com/education/2026/08/21/torrey-pines-high-students-sue-discipline-pro-trump/">lawsuit</a> alleging that teachers and administrators retaliated against two students who expressed pro-Trump views during a February protest — landing one of them in a psychiatric hospital on a mandatory hold.
Two students at Torrey Pines High School — identified in the suit only as A.F. and M.F. — attended a February 6 rally on the San Diego, California, campus meant to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but showed up instead to voice support for President Donald Trump&#8217;s administration, <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/08/23/us-news/san-diego-high-school-attacked-students-over-pro-trump-lgbt-poster-suit/">according</a> to the New York Post. M.F. carried a printout of the letters &#8220;LGBT&#8221; — each letter paired with an image: the Statue of Liberty for &#8220;L,&#8221; a rifle for &#8220;G,&#8221; a glass of beer for &#8220;B,&#8221; and a photo of Trump for &#8220;T.&#8221;
M.F. reportedly returned to class after the rally still carrying the flyer — prompting his teacher to become upset and immediately leave the classroom. Three days later, according to the suit, Assistant Principal Angela Guerrero called M.F. and another student into her office and informed them they would serve two days of detention because the flyers had &#8220;frightened&#8221; other students on campus.
That same week, M.F. was called into the vice principal&#8217;s office alone to face more serious accusations: that he&#8217;d made &#8220;disturbing searches&#8221; on a school computer, including &#8220;how to load a Glock,&#8221; &#8220;how to load a magazine,&#8221; and &#8220;how to dispose of a body.&#8221;
M.F. denied making the searches and said other students routinely use classmates&#8217; unprotected school computer logins. Guerrero apparently believed him and sent him back to class. The next day, however, five to six police officers arrived at the school and interrogated M.F. themselves.
&#8220;School officials refused to allow M.F.’s parents to see him, instead requiring them to speak with a crisis social worker. The crisis social worker stated that [M.F.’s teacher] requested the police because the searches made Defendant [Theresa] Barnes feel ‘scared’ and ‘unsafe,'&#8221; the suit claims.
M.F. was then taken into custody, and police delivered him to a mental health facility on a 5150 psychiatric hold.
While he was being held overnight, law enforcement executed a search of his home and his bedroom — but they found nothing to support the accusations against him.
&#8220;M.F. did not research how to load a ‘glock,’ did not confess to murder, was not watching homicide videos, and did not target the LGBT community. The claims were completely false, as school officials were fully aware,&#8221; the suit states.
The harassment, according to M.F., did not end there. Although police found nothing and he was allowed to return to school, administrators referred to him as an &#8220;LGBT bully,&#8221; barred him from playing varsity baseball, forced him into counseling sessions, and pushed him toward testing for &#8220;Special Education placement and ongoing mental health monitoring.&#8221;
The same school landed in hot water over a different protest when students were allowed to carry signs comparing ICE to the KKK — but one student was suspended over flyers that read, &#8220;We love I.C.E. — real Americans.&#8221; That suspension was later reversed by the district following pressure from the free speech group FIRE.

U.S. Economy Caught In Trump Tug-Of-War Over Reopening Schools

Student Committed To Psych Ward Over Pro-Trump Flyer, Lawsuit Says

School Got Teen Student Placed In Psych Ward Over Pro-Trump Flyer

lawsuit

politics

school discipline

torrey pines high school

A politician convicted of hate speech for sharing her Christian views on marriage said she was “blocked” from entering the United Kingdom to advocate for free speech. 
Finnish parliamentarian Päivi Räsänen said Tuesday that officials in the U.K. prevented her from traveling into Northern Ireland, where she was slated to speak at a conference on religious liberty. Räsänen said she was initially authorized to enter the country in June, but that approval was yanked in July. 
“It is shocking that the U.K. has blocked me, a democratically elected politician in an allied European state, from entering the country,” Räsänen said. “I was convicted of ‘hate speech’ in Finland for peacefully expressing my Christian views.”
Räsänen called on U.K. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to reverse course and allow her to enter the country. She currently plans to address the conference remotely on Wednesday and Friday. 
The denial of entry comes just a few months after Finland&#8217;s top court <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/a-politician-shared-traditional-christian-values-now-she-stands-convicted-of-hate-speech">found</a> Räsänen guilty of “hate speech” for sharing her Christian views on marriage in a 2004 church pamphlet. The court found her guilty of “making and keeping available to the public a text that insults a group.” The “text” she was charged over was a pamphlet explaining the Bible’s position on marriage and sexual ethics, published by Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola, who was convicted alongside her.
The Trump administration, which slammed Räsänen’s conviction, said the latest development showed the dangers of restricting free speech. 
“Paivi was prosecuted for quoting the Bible. A downstream effect of countries criminalizing speech is that systems designed to flag and filter ‘criminals’ trigger rippling second-order punishments [can] lead to debanking, visa denials, and more,” Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers said Tuesday. 
Throughout her legal battles, Räsänen has been represented by Alliance Defending Freedom International, which called for the U.K. to immediately approve her application. 
“This is not an isolated incident,” said ADF International lawyer Lorcan Price. “The UK has in the last year blocked a number of mainstream conservative individuals, politicians, and now even a member of the Finnish Parliament and a Lutheran bishop, from entering the country. This trend is yet another example of the severe and escalating censorship crisis in Great Britain.”
The U.K. itself has a troubled track record on free speech. In May, a pastor <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pastor-convicted-for-preaching-on-john-316-outside-hospital">was fined</a> for preaching on John 3:16 inside a so-called “Safe Access Zone” outside a Northern Ireland hospital that performs abortions.

MixCollage-19-Aug-2026-11-05-AM-2826

Politician Punished For Christian Beliefs Targeted Again

finland

hate speech

paivi rasanen

united kingdom

world

The WNBA’s double standard on free speech is officially out of bounds.
Women&#8217;s sports advocate Riley Gaines pulled no punches on Monday night, telling Fox News that league handlers tried to silence her support for Indiana Fever star Sophie Cunningham. Appearing on &#8220;Hannity,&#8221; Gaines said that arena officials asked her to put down a benign, completely non-political sign praising Cunningham while Left-wing propaganda was prominently displayed on the arena&#8217;s Jumbotron.
&#8220;The league often says they have a problem with people like Sophie bringing politics into sports. The league doesn&#8217;t have a problem with politics in sports. They have a problem with conservative politics in sports,&#8221; Gaines told host Sean Hannity.
Gaines recounted sitting in the Target Center during a Minnesota Lynx home game holding a small poster that simply read, “Sophie, thank you — a girl mom.” Despite strictly adhering to arena rules, an official approached Gaines and requested that she put the sign away.
Yet, as Gaines pointed out, Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve strolled the sidelines wearing a &#8220;Trans Kids Belong&#8221; shirt while others wore pro-trans shirts featuring an image of a knife even as the arena&#8217;s Jumbotron repeatedly highlighted fans draped in Pride and trans flags. &#8220;If Protect Women&#8217;s Sports is deemed political like they say, then so is Trans Kids Belong,&#8221; Gaines slammed.
After Gaines pushed back, she said she was ultimately allowed to keep the sign displayed, and the arena staffer returned and apologized.
The WNBA finds itself engulfed in an explosive culture war sparked by Cunningham, who has spoken out against allowing men to compete in women’s athletics. Cunningham ignited the firestorm by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/wnba-star-breaks-with-league-on-explosive-issue">telling</a> ESPN she wants to &#8220;protect young girls in a locker room,&#8221; later <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sophie-cunningham-triples-down-on-haters-with-ice-cold-instagram-post">doubling down</a> on Instagram with a blunt message to her critics: &#8220;I said what I said.&#8221;
While Cunningham’s common-sense stance has earned her praise from high-profile figures, including Gaines and White House Press Secretary <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/karoline-leavitt-rips-leftist-backlash-to-sophie-cunninghams-trans-sports-comments">Karoline Leavitt</a>, it has drawn intense hostility from leftist fans and league insiders. Gaines noted that Cunningham was relentlessly booed by the Minnesota crowd every time she stepped onto the hardwood.
Meanwhile, WNBA leaders continue to hide behind corporate double-talk. Asked point-blank about men in female sports, Fever head coach Stephanie White<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sophie-cunninghams-coach-asked-where-she-stands-on-men-in-womens-sports?author=Hank+Berrien&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=4&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Sophie+Cunningham%E2%80%99s+Coach+Asked+Where+She+Stands+On+Men+In+Women%E2%80%99s+Sports"> offered</a> a classic corporate dodge, claiming she wasn&#8217;t &#8220;educated enough from a scientific standpoint.&#8221;
The hostility has even boiled over into the stands. During a recent Fever road trip to Seattle, Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton was suspended from attending her team&#8217;s next five home games after <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/wnba-co-owner-accused-of-cursing-out-teen-girls-over-xx-xy-shirts?author=Hank+Berrien&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=8&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=WNBA+Co-Owner+Accused+Of+Cursing+Out+Teen+Girls+Over+XX-XY+Shirts">launching</a> an expletive-laden tirade against two 16-year-old female fans wearing gear in support of Cunningham&#8217;s position.
Despite the intimidation tactics, Gaines insists that Cunningham remains unshakable and uncancelable.

Riley Gaines

Riley Gaines Goes Off On WNBA, Says Staffer Tried To Take Away Sophie Cunningham Sign

riley gaines

sophie cunningham

transgender in sports

wnba

A tense Oxford Union debate on whether the West is right to be suspicious of Islam erupted into high-stakes confrontation when an Oxford student told far-Right activist Tommy Robinson that he was lucky the university provided security to prevent leftist protesters outside from attacking him.
Addressing Robinson, whose legal name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, the student highlighted the large demonstration gathering outside the union building. She warned him that without the security provided by the union&#8217;s leadership, he would be &#8220;quite literally cooked.&#8221;
&#8220;Stephen, there is a crowd outside rioting against you tonight,&#8221; she said, “and without the protection and generosity of the Muslim-Palestinian president and a mostly South Asian executive committee, you’d be quite literally cooked.”
Robinson had blamed leftist protesters for the unrest, arguing that it was his opponents, rather than his supporters, who were creating chaos and clashing with law enforcement outside the venue.
To justify suspicion of the religion, Robinson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aqzr_C9UZMw">pointed</a> to severe legal and social measures enforced across Muslim-majority nations. He highlighted that 24 countries where Islam is the state religion criminalize homosexuality, with eight prescribing the death penalty. Responding to an audience member who questioned where Islamic texts sanction such executions, Robinson insisted the argument belonged not with him, but with countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia that enforce these laws, as well as extremist groups like ISIS and Hamas.
Robinson further cited capital and corporal punishments across the Islamic world, pointing to canonical legal codes that mandate lashing and stoning for adultery. He cited a seminar by a prominent U.K. imam, saying, &#8220;In 2023, the head imam of the Green Lane Mosque, the head imam — you can watch this video — actually gives a seminar to his congregation on how we keep the modesty of the woman before we smash rocks at her head. You see, she has to be buried up to a certain level to preserve her modesty.&#8221;
Expanding his critique to religious minorities and civil rights, Robinson claimed that centuries of persecution following early Islamic precedents had virtually eliminated Jewish and Christian populations across the Middle East. He also targeted the issue of child marriage, pointing out that seven of the 10 nations with the highest rates of child marriage are Muslim-majority states due to the absence of a defined minimum marriage age in their laws.
Closing his address, Robinson framed his position as a defense of classical liberal values, saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, if you care about gay rights, if you care about women&#8217;s rights, if you care about children&#8217;s rights, If you care about human rights, or if you care about free speech, I urge you to support this motion.”

Far Right Groups Encourage Protest Over Death Of Henry Nowak

Leftist Student Warns Tommy Robinson He’d Be ‘Cooked’ Without Security At Oxford Union Debate

islam

oxford union

tommy robinson

Shiloh Hendrix 2

The Shiloh Hendrix Trial Was Even More Corrupt Than We Thought

first amendment

minnesota

NAACP

Rochester

Shiloh Hendrix

The Shiloh Hendrix Verdict Is A Horrifying Sign For America. Here’s Why.

Implicit Bias

Somalis

tim walz

A Minnesota jury found a woman guilty of disorderly conduct after she repeatedly used the racial slur &#8220;n*gger&#8221; during a confrontation at a playground. 
Thirty-seven-year-old Shiloh Marie Hendrix was captured on video as a bystander confronted her for allegedly directing the racial slur at an autistic child. Although the alleged remark itself was not captured on video, the bystander urged Hendrix to repeat it while recording the encounter.
Rochester City Attorney Michael Spindler-Krage charged Hendrix with two counts of disorderly conduct, one for her alleged behavior toward the child and the other for her confrontation with the bystander. A jury acquitted Hendrix on the first count but convicted her on the second, finding her guilty of disorderly conduct for directing the racial slur at Omar rather than the child. 
She was sentenced to one year of supervised probation, fined $1,000, and ordered to complete 200 hours of community service. She faces a 90-day jail sentence only if she violates the terms of her probation.
The man who recorded the confrontation, Sharmake Beyle Omar, was previously charged in a sexual assault case involving a 16-year-old girl. Prosecutors later <a href="https://www.kimt.com/news/charges-dropped-against-rochester-men-accused-of-sexually-abusing-a-teen-victim/article_461bf354-a3ff-11ed-bedb-d329b9d4dcb6.html">dismissed</a> those charges &#8220;in the interest of justice.&#8221; 
According to the criminal <a href="https://fromthegman.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Hendrix-Complaint.pdf">complaint</a>, the confrontation began after an eight-year-old autistic boy took an applesauce pouch from Hendrix’s diaper bag. Both Hendrix and the boy’s father chased the child as he climbed onto playground equipment in an attempt to get away. Hendrix allegedly shouted at him and repeatedly used the racial slur. 
While recording on his phone, Omar asked Hendrix why she called the child the racial slur, noting that the boy was autistic. Hendrix replied that she used the word because “he acts like one” and said he had taken her son’s belongings. When Omar continued confronting her, Hendrix responded, “I don’t give a sh*t and f*ck off.” 
Hendrix’s attorney blasted the verdict.
“I think it’s pathetic,” defense attorney Brian Karalus <a href="https://x.com/Tomhennessey69/status/2080543001323978782">said</a>. “I think it’s sad. I think it’s sick … this is a fraud upon the community.” 
Karalus argued the government was “prosecuting a young lady for language,” and this trial was the result of cancel culture. He added that Hendrix’s choice of words was inappropriate but that there is a difference between inappropriate and illegal. 
Prosecutor Nicholas Shabel argued jurors should consider both Hendrix’s conduct and her language.  
Shabel argued that Hendrix&#8217;s “screaming at the child, her demeanor, her language all speak to this. All of those are appropriate for your consideration,” said Shabel.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) set up a GoFundMe for the child, raising more than $340,000. 
The incident drew backlash from conservatives. 
The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh <a href="https://x.com/MattWalshBlog/status/2080623002824200284">said</a>, “The Shiloh Hendrix case isn&#8217;t even a close call or a grey area. She was charged and convicted of a crime for saying a word. If that&#8217;s not a violation of the First Amendment, nothing is. This is one of the most straightforward free speech issues we&#8217;ve seen in a long time.”

Screenshot 2026-07-24 at 3.59.23 PM

Playground Slur Case Takes Dark Turn For Free Speech

child

Court

Jail

language

Matt Walsh

Race

Racial Discrimination

U.S.

Free speech in Europe, and Britain in particular, has been a concern for the second Trump administration. At the 2025 Munich Security Conference, Vice President J.D. Vance gave European leaders both barrels over the issue. Since then, U.S. government figures such as Sarah Rogers have ceaselessly drawn attention to the ever-increasing infringements on free speech in the U.K.
In recent years, Britain has seen high-profile stories such as the jailing of mother-of-two Lucy Connolly for a swiftly deleted tweet about asylum seekers in the midst of the Southport riots in 2024, the arrest of comedian Graham Linehan over tweets about transgenderism, and police officers dismissed from their jobs over gallows humor in private WhatsApp groups. Much more could be said about “non-crime hate incidents” resulting in police visits, a proposed special ban on “anti-Muslim hostility,” and the Labour government’s clear desire to reduce digital freedoms through different forms of regulation, and even the outright banning of Elon Musk’s X.
To American readers who take pride in the First Amendment, this might sound unthinkable. It can seem as if Britain is a victim of its un-American political system. Unlike the United States, Britain has no single written constitution. Rather, it combines unwritten conventions and statutes passed by its elected Parliament. Free speech warriors in both the U.S. and the U.K. increasingly suggest that, to protect their liberties, they should adopt a written constitution or Bill of Rights to safeguard things such as freedom of speech.
However, Britain’s Parliament has never worked this way, nor should it start. The driving force of British politics has always been parliamentary sovereignty; that is, an elected Parliament can create and remove whatever laws it likes if it has a majority and the political will.
Crucially, this means that no Parliament can bind its successor. If a new government is elected with a mandate to overturn the laws of the last one, it can always do so. This is not the case in written constitutional systems, such as the United States, which are subject to a constitution that is incredibly difficult or even impossible to change. It is this reality that has left President Trump, even with a conservative majority in the Supreme Court, unable to make good on his central campaign pledge to end birthright citizenship. In a true British system, he could have passed that law on day one.
Britain’s free speech crisis is downstream of bad laws created by Parliament. This began with the Race Relations Act 1965, which, in the wake of tensions arising from post-World War II immigration, outlawed the expression of certain political beliefs. This was worsened by the Public Order Act 1986, which criminalized speech that was “likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.” Later, already confused communications offenses designed for the era of snail mail and telephone operators collided disastrously with public-facing social media, just as “hate speech” offenses began to appear on the books under Tony Blair. It is these laws and others that helped to shape Britain’s own strain of cancel culture.
But the British answer to bad speech laws is not a new written constitution that takes the question out of our Parliament’s (and therefore voters’) hands. Instead, it is to repeal the bad laws and, if necessary, replace them with good ones.
This is the approach outlined in <a href="https://x.com/Prosperity_Inst/status/2075135466974618075">Reversing Britain’s Free Speech Recession</a>, the latest report from the Prosperity Institute. Barrister Jon Holbrook, himself a vindicated survivor of cancel culture, has identified the laws that most need to be repealed or amended to restore a boom in the British free speech economy, with new legislation drafted and ready for implementation for a free speech government.
In the revived Britain imagined in this paper, laws criminalizing speech that merely causes “harassment, alarm or distress” will be repealed; communications speech will be criminal only if it is intentionally menacing and targeted; all so-called “hate speech” laws will be repealed. Interference with free speech in the civil sphere will no longer be a matter for contested anti-discrimination law, but a simple matter of tort law. Spurious allegations will be deterred by a new costs regime that protects those wrongly accused. A cultural shift will be needed, certainly. But we must start with the law.
English liberty gave the Western world its tradition of free speech. Yet lately, as Shakespeare wrote in Richard II, “That England, that was wont to conquer others, Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.” But it possesses all that it needs to liberate itself once again.
***
Rhys Laverty is Editorial and Research Director of the Prosperity Institute.

Celtic v Rangers – William Hill Premiership – Celtic Park

What Britain Can Do To Save Free Speech

Britain

DW Opinion

Free speech is America’s greatest protection against tyranny. It also creates one of our greatest vulnerabilities to foreign enemies. Our challenge is to defend that freedom without letting our enemies turn it against us.
The First Amendment protects free speech for good reason. Once government gets to decide which opinions are allowed, every other freedom becomes less secure. But the same openness that lets Americans criticize the government, organize movements, and argue for radical ideas can also be exploited by enemies who would never permit that freedom at home.
In America and the West, people are free to fund nonprofits, organize protests, build campus movements, and use social media to shape public opinion, even against the country’s own institutions. You wouldn’t be allowed to use those same tools to undermine the regime in China, Iran, Russia, or North Korea. Those governments keep a tight grip on their universities, media, and public square.
That asymmetry is how a free society becomes vulnerable. Every society produces fringe ideas. That’s normal. But potentially harmful ideas usually remain harmless as long as they stay fringe. They become dangerous and divisive when someone gives them money, legitimacy, and a way to spread.
Right now, self-destructive beliefs that once remained on the fringe are growing in popularity across America and the West. Some of these ideas surely started organically. But that doesn’t mean these ideas are spreading at this scale on their own. They can also be magnified by foreign money flowing into the universities, nonprofits, and platforms that shape the worldview of millions of Americans.
Take energy. Radical activists push to block pipelines, shut down nuclear plants, and eliminate coal in the name of saving the planet, while China keeps burning cheap coal to power its economy. Taken to its extreme, this agenda, dressed up as climate virtue, becomes a form of industrial self-destruction while handing our competitors a massive economic advantage.
Or take immigration. Done right, legal and controlled with real integration, it’s a strength. Done wrong, an unchecked open-borders policy is a recipe for national self-destruction. No rational state would allow indiscriminate migration on a scale that destabilizes its own society. Yet many Western constituencies now treat basic self-preservation as something shameful.
We don’t need to prove that foreign money is the main driver of every self-destructive belief spreading through America. The vulnerability itself is the problem. Hostile governments don’t need to invent these ideas from scratch. They only need to find the radical ideas already capable of tearing us apart and fund their growth. Adversaries who have spent decades studying how to weaken America would be foolish to pass up such an obvious opening. Why spend trillions trying to beat America militarily when a fraction of that can get Americans to do the work for them?
What can we actually do about this?
Not censorship of Americans. That would be the most dangerous response. Americans have every right to argue and protest against America itself. That’s part of the deal free speech gives us. If we answer foreign manipulation by giving the government the power to police what Americans believe, we expose ourselves to something worse than foreign influence: a government powerful enough to turn against its own citizens. The First Amendment has to stay fully intact.
The better answer is to extend a principle America already accepts: foreign money should not be allowed to shape American public life from the shadows. <a href="https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/foreign-nationals/">Foreign nationals</a> already can’t donate to American elections. <a href="https://www.justice.gov/nsd-fara">FARA</a> requires certain foreign agents to register and disclose their activities here. Those laws exist because America understands that foreign money can be weaponized, and that foreign influence can be restricted or exposed without touching any American’s right to speak.
We should apply that same logic more broadly to nonprofits, universities, and advocacy groups that shape American culture and politics. The distinction should stay simple: ordinary commerce is fine. Foreign money financing domestic influence is not.
Foreigners can buy products, hire American companies, or pay full price for their own children’s education here. That is foreign money exchanged for real goods and services, and it’s not the problem. The problem is foreign governments, foreign nationals, or foreign-controlled groups endowing chairs, funding programs, or financing research in ways aimed at shaping our culture, our politics, or how young Americans are educated.
If Americans want to fund radical climate activism or open-border movements, that’s their right. The First Amendment protects them. Americans are free to be wrong and free to be radical. But the First Amendment does not require us to let foreign adversaries bankroll our national self-destruction.
Perhaps a broad restriction is too blunt an instrument. We would welcome any narrower solutions that actually work. At the very least, full transparency about which foreign governments, foreign nationals, and foreign-controlled entities are funding our nonprofit institutions would be a good first step.
But transparency alone may not be enough. According to the <a href="https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-releases-latest-foreign-funding-disclosures-federally-funded-american-universities">Department of Education’s 2025 foreign-funding disclosures</a>, Qatar was the largest foreign source of reportable gifts and contracts to American universities, including Harvard and Carnegie Mellon, with China third. Qatar alone accounted for more than $1 billion. That fact is already public, since federal law requires universities to report large foreign gifts and contracts. Yet the money keeps flowing anyway. At some point, transparency must be followed by real restrictions on foreign money flowing into causes designed to reshape American society.
America does not need to become less free to protect itself. It needs to stop being naive. Our enemies understand that free speech in an open society can be used against it. We are under no obligation to give them the tools to turn our freedom against us. If we want free speech to survive, we need to defend not just our right to speak, but the society that makes that right worth having in the first place.
***
Rabbi Elie Feder, PhD, and Rabbi Aaron Zimmer host the “<a href="https://www.physicstogod.com/">Physics to God</a>” podcast.

100 US dollars on the background of the banknote of the Chinese yuan. The concept of a trade war between the USA and China

Free Speech Is The West’s Greatest Asset. It’s Also Our Greatest Vulnerability.

American Universities

Foreign Funding

Foreign influence

foreign nationals

The Supreme Court got this one right. In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, decided today, the court struck down the federal limits on coordinated expenditures between political parties and their candidates. The vote was 6–3, with Justice Kavanaugh writing for the majority, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett. For decades, these restrictions rested on a bizarre fiction, that a political party could somehow corrupt the very candidate it nominates. Nobody who has ever worked in politics believes that. Parties exist to elect candidates. The court has now said what practitioners have known all along: the government cannot punish them for doing so.
The court did not mince words. Justice Kavanaugh wrote that Colorado II’s “reasoning has been rejected by subsequent cases and is no longer good law in light of the court’s more recent precedents. To the extent that Colorado II has retained any vitality, it is now overruled.” That 2001 decision, FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, had upheld the coordinated-expenditure limits by a 5–4 vote over a powerful dissent by Justice Thomas — the only member of that court still serving. Twenty-five years later, his dissent has been vindicated. As the majority acknowledged, Justice Thomas “explained that ‘the ordinary means for a party to provide support is to make coordinated expenditures’” and that “‘breaking the connection between parties and their candidates inhibits the promotion of the party&#8217;s message.’”
I have some stake in saying so. As a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, I was at the commission when this litigation began. The Biden administration chose to defend the restrictions. When President Donald Trump returned to office, the solicitor general shifted the government’s position, rightly, in my view, and conceded the limits were unconstitutional. That was not a political stunt. It was an honest acknowledgment of what the First Amendment requires. Because the government declined to defend the law, the court appointed Roman Martinez, a former clerk to both Chief Justice Roberts and then-Judge Kavanaugh, as amicus curiae to argue in defense of the statute.
The history matters. When the case went to the en banc Sixth Circuit, a majority of the judges questioned the continued validity of Colorado II, considering later Supreme Court decisions, particularly McCutcheon v. FEC (2014) and FEC v. Ted Cruz for Senate (2022), but felt bound by the 2001 precedent. The Supreme Court freed them, and us, from that constraint.
Look at what these coordination limits did. They did not reduce the amount of money spent on politics. They just pushed spending away from political parties and toward outside groups. The court recognized this directly: the coordinated-expenditure limits imposed a “stifling effect on the ability of the party to do what it exists to do.” Meanwhile, donors sent their funds to Super PACs and other outside groups with a First Amendment right to spend unlimited money. The numbers are staggering: in the 2024 cycle, PACs raised over $15.7 billion, compared to $2.7 billion by political parties. A Super PAC run by consultants could spend without limit, but the Republican or Democratic party committee could not coordinate a mail piece with its own nominee. The First Amendment does not require that absurdity.
The majority applied what it called the “closely drawn” scrutiny from McCutcheon and Cruz, requiring that any restriction on political speech be “necessary,” “narrowly tailored,” and not “disproportionate” to the government’s interest. The only permissible interest in campaign finance restrictions, the court reaffirmed, is “preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption” — and only the narrow, quid pro quo kind. Not “influence.” Not “access.” Not “ingratiation.” The court wrote plainly: “Ingratiation and access &#8230; are not corruption,” but instead “embody a central feature of democracy.”
As for the government’s circumvention argument, the idea that donors would funnel money through parties to evade contribution limits, the court concluded that three existing tools already address that concern: base contribution limits to candidates, earmarking rules that treat directed contributions as direct donations, and robust disclosure requirements. The coordinated-expenditure limits were a “fourth line of defense” — a “prophylaxis-upon-prophylaxis” that was disproportionate to the interest it served. The majority pointedly observed that a majority of states “largely give parties free rein to make coordinated expenditures on behalf of their state-level nominees,” and yet “no evidence of corruption” via circumvention “has materialized.”
It is important to remember: parties disclose their donors. Their leadership is public. They file detailed reports with the FEC. The court itself emphasized that disclosure “offers much more robust protections against corruption” today than ever before, because of advances in technology and the Internet. If you care about transparency in elections, you should want more money flowing through parties, not less.
Critics will say this opens the floodgates. It does not. Contribution limits to the political parties still exist. Parties still cannot raise unlimited money the way Super PACs can. What changes is that parties can now spend what they raise in coordination with their candidates instead of pretending they operate independently. As the court stressed, the decision “treats all political parties equally” and will “allow all political parties, including the DNC and RNC and the respective Senate and House campaign committees, to participate more freely and compete more fully in the political process.” Some money will migrate back from Super PACs to party committees. That means more disclosure, more accountability, and more coherent campaigns.
Campaign finance reformers have spent decades getting this wrong. Every time Americans find a way to participate in political speech, the reformers’ knee-jerk response is the same: restrict it. They pushed for the coordinated-expenditure limits. They got them. The predictable result was that money flowed to outside groups while parties withered. The court has now corrected part of the problem by eliminating the coordination restriction, but the underlying contribution limits, themselves an unconstitutional restraint on political association, remain in place because the same misguided reform impulse that created them still dominates the conversation in Washington.
At bottom, this case asked a simple question: Can the government restrict political speech because regulators think there is too much of it? The answer is no. It has always been no. As the court reminded us, the “Framers were even more famously suspicious of government suppression of political speech” than they were of political parties. And it closed with the most powerful point of all: “For nearly 200 years after the ratification of the First Amendment, parties could spend on campaigns in coordination with candidates,” and no one suggests “that these elections were not functional or that they were marred by corruption.” The First Amendment is not a suggestion, and it does not come with a carve-out for election season.
That should not be a controversial statement. But in Washington, apparently it still is. Credit the court for moving the conversation in the right direction — toward freedom, and away from the reflexive assumption that government knows best when Americans speak about politics.
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Trey Trainor is a partner at Dhillon Law Group, Inc., board certified in Legislative and Campaign Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, and former Commissioner and Chairman of the Federal Election Commission.

Insider Trading

The Supreme Court Restores Some Common Sense To Campaign Finance

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A libertarian law professor who responded to FIRE’s recent <a href="https://www.fire.org/research-learn/free-expression-climate-self-censorship-national-survey-american-law-faculty">national survey of law faculty</a> offered a striking admission:
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Whether justified or unjustified, I regularly hide beliefs from colleagues who are openly discussing important topics in the public interest out of fear of retaliation, particularly as a junior faculty member.
</blockquote>
No administrator had disciplined him. No student had filed a complaint. Yet, by his own admission, he and another colleague routinely conceal their views at faculty meetings and other public events, not because anyone ordered them to stay silent, but because they worry that candor can exact professional costs.
That kind of silence is tricky to measure, but carries serious implications. And new data suggest it is relatively common in American law schools.
For a <a href="https://www.fire.org/research-learn/free-expression-climate-self-censorship-national-survey-american-law-faculty">report</a> released this week, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) surveyed 1,959 law faculty at 192 ABA-approved law schools. The findings reveal a profession caught in a contradiction: law professors overwhelmingly endorse free expression in principle, yet many describe an academic culture that discourages them from practicing it.
That should alarm anyone who cares about legal education. Law schools are supposed to be places that train students to make arguments they may not personally believe, stress-test ideas against the strongest opposing case, and examine precedents, doctrines, and historical cases that may offend some modern sensibilities. But that model depends on faculty willing to speak frankly and institutions willing to tolerate dissent.
More than half of the law faculty surveyed (56%) report that they at least occasionally feel unable to express their opinion because of how students, colleagues, or administrators might respond. And that number becomes even more striking when ideology is taken into account. Conservative law faculty, who are outnumbered three to one in the sample, were more likely than their liberal colleagues to report self-censoring (72% versus 50%), and three times as many conservatives, compared to liberals, reported at least occasionally hiding their political beliefs from other faculty in an attempt to keep their job (52% versus 17%).
The survey also found clear asymmetries in perceptions of institutional fit. While majorities of law faculty said a liberal individual would fit well in their law school, far fewer said the same about a conservative individual.
As one law professor put it:
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In my law school, students get only half the story in most of their courses. There are no conservatives as full-time professors, and only a few moderates. Students who are moderate to conservative rarely share their views in class.
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And this same professor connected that climate directly to his own choices:
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For the past 15 years, I&#8217;ve seen our law students become less prepared for the adversarial nature of legal practice. I&#8217;m partly to blame, as I have modified my exams and exercises to avoid potentially controversial fact patterns and claims.
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That self-indictment — “I’m partly to blame” — isn’t a complaint about administrators or colleagues (though they could be the other part). Rather, it’s an acknowledgment that retreating from difficulty is something he’s done, incrementally, over many years. All within the context of diminishing ideological diversity. Multiplied across a profession, that accumulation of small adjustments doesn’t just reflect the culture of law schools. It creates one.
Another law professor, a self-described strong Democrat, described the specific calculus self-censorship dynamics produce in his classes:
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I teach cases without ever saying what actually happened in the case because I&#8217;m afraid to say those words (notably some First Amendment cases address words I didn&#8217;t even know were slurs before reading the case).
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A First Amendment professor, self-censoring while teaching First Amendment cases. By this professor’s honest admission, we can see how his students are learning about free speech firsthand, but in this case by what isn’t being said. They are watching their professor decide that engagement with certain material is too risky, and filing that lesson away.
This is how habits can form and a culture can shift. Not necessarily through any speech code or disciplinary action (though it can come from there too). But through hesitation and daily acts of omission that students observe, absorb, and over time likely begin to mimic themselves.
Law students go on to become lawyers who argue cases in court, prosecutors who decide what charges to bring, judges who make rulings, policymakers who debate and enact laws and regulations. What they learn in law school isn’t just the law. It’s instinct. Habits. Principles. How to respond when an idea is uncomfortable. What to do when they’re on the unpopular side of an issue. Where to turn when silence is the path of least resistance.
In February 2024, the American Bar Association adopted <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/legal_education_and_admissions_to_the_bar/guidance-memos/2025/25-april-standard-208-guidance-memo.pdf">Standard 208</a>, which requires law schools to adopt, publish, and adhere to written policies that protect academic freedom and encourage free expression. More than 9 in 10 law faculty support free expression policies. But the professor who hides his views at faculty meetings already knows his school has a free expression policy. The policy is not the problem, and though it is a good step, it isn’t the complete solution either.
What we see from our new data from law faculty is that the culture within law schools appears to have taken a concerning turn. And written commitments alone don’t change cultures; people do. Through individual decisions about whether to speak or stay quiet. To participate in a debate, or pass. To publicly defend a colleague, or only offer private condolences. To prepare students for their professional careers by teaching the messy topics, or avoiding them in hopes of receiving better student evaluations. These decision points provide opportunities for faculty to model courage or model calculation.
Right now, for too many law faculty, silence appears to be winning… and their students are watching.
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Nathan Honeycutt is a research fellow and manager of polling and analytics at FIRE.

Lady Justice and Censorship

Law Professors Say They Support Free Speech. Many Are Afraid To Practice It.

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