YouTube? More like BOO-Tube! Tinsel Town Tariffs, the FCC won’t let speech be, & more!

Bringing you the latest free speech news (10/5/25)

Stories of the week

• Why YouTube caving to Trump is cowardly by

  Angel Eduardo

Just as with Paramount, ABC, Meta, X, and even Trump’s “SLAPP” lawsuit against the Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer and The Des Moines Register (who, thankfully, have not rolled over), the YouTube settlement is another example of what we’ve been calling the extortion-industrial complex: The Trump administration’s intention to seize control of America’s media industry through the use and abuse of government powers.

• Trump’s ‘domestic terrorism’ memo chillingly targets people by ideology by

  Adam Goldstein

It may well be that some people who engage in politically motivated violence have anti-American beliefs, oppose the traditional family, or dislike organized religion. They should be prosecuted. And if there’s evidence of conspiracy or concrete steps toward violence, that may warrant an investigation. But we cannot start investigating other people simply because they happen to share those beliefs. Doing so would open the door to investigations of any political movement or ideology if any one of its adherents happened to engage in violence.

This week in

Expression

• Trump’s tinseltown tariffs threaten free speech by Tyler MacQueen

“Propaganda” carries an ominous connotation, one that those in power have often used to censor speech they dislike. But no matter what the president declares to be propaganda, whether movies or any other medium, it is still protected speech. That protection extends to both making and watching films, regardless of where they were produced, as the First Amendment safeguards not only the right to speak, but also the right to receive information and ideas.

• The government is now the leading threat to faculty expression by

  Sean Stevens
  &
  Chapin Lenthall-Cleary

• Jimmy Kimmel is back, but don’t get complacent by Garrett Gravley

This week on

So to Speak

This week,

Nico Perrino

spoke with FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez as well as FIRE General Counsel Ronnie London and Senior Counsel Bob Corn-Revere about the FCC’s regulatory powers, their limitations, and their impact on the press, broadcasters, and internet platforms.

This week in FIRE’s blog

• FIRE statement on the White House’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education

As FIRE has long argued, campus reform is necessary. But overreaching government coercion that tries to end-run around the First Amendment to impose an official orthodoxy is unacceptable. And the White House’s new Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education raises red flags.

FIRE in the press!

• Trump Memo Threatens to Expand Censorship of Political Speech (Bloomberg Law) by

  Aaron Terr

• Europe Learned Nothing From the Danish Cartoon Affair (Persuasion) by

  Jacob Mchangama

London Calling: Ronnie’s First Amendment Roundup

• American Association of University Professors v. Rubio

Stinging rebuke of Trump administration efforts to deport noncitizens for protected speech

(with thanks to guest author Conor Fitzpatrick)

The federal district court in Massachusetts released highly anticipated findings of fact and conclusions of law in a challenge by the American Association of University Professors and other faculty-representing organizations to the administration’s policy of targeting non-citizen pro-Palestinian activists for deportation based on protected speech. Following a July bench trial, Judge Young ruled in AAUP’s favor, though it held off on crafting a remedy with respect to continued effectuation of the policy by the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security and their charges. In a 161-page opinion, the court found “as fact and conclude[d] as a matter of law that Secretaries Noem and Rubio and their several agents and subordinates acted in concert to misuse the sweeping powers of their respective offices to target non-citizen pro-Palestinians for deportation primarily on account of their First Amendment protected political speech.” The Court recounted the administration’s targeting of activists like Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk, and Moshen Mahdawi, and testimony of administration officials, to find concerted effort to target noncitizens for deportation based on peaceful pro-Palestinian advocacy, in order to chill others from engaging in similar protected expression. The Court held that “nothing in the text, history, or tradition of the First Amendment suggests that persons lawfully present here may be subject to adverse action based on” protected political speech. And it stressed that “we are not, and we must not become, a nation that imprisons and deports people because we are afraid of what they have to tell us.” But as noted, the decision stopped short of the “and therefore” – musing that “when this Court denied the motion to dismiss [earlier in the year], it thought an effective remedy might be obtainable; today it is not so sure” – and instead invites additional briefing on what remedy should follow. But the merits represent a strong statement regarding the free speech rights of non-citizens lawfully present in the United States, just like FIRE has been arguing for months.

International free speech stories of the week

• Imgur blocks access to UK users after regulator warned of fine (BBC) by Liv McMahon

• The UK’s war on Apple encryption is back (The Verge) by Jess Weatherbed

The UK government is reportedly once again demanding that Apple provide it with backdoor access to encrypted iCloud user data, following claims that the effort had been abandoned in August. The Financial Times reports that a new technical capability notice (TCN) was issued by the UK Home Office in early September, this time specifically targeting access to British citizens’ iCloud backups.

• China launches campaign to keep killjoys off the internet (BBC) by Koh Ewe & Osmond Chia

• At Saudi Comedy Fest, American Free Speech Becomes the Punchline (New York Times) by Ismaeel Naar & Erika Solomon

Podcasts of the week

• It’s always a pleasure getting to talk to Derek Thompson, and this conversation we had on his ‘Plain English’ podcast was no exception.

• I also had a blast on the

  Jordan Harbinger
  Show. We talked about everything from the latest data on college students’ increasing tolerance for violence in response to speech, why hate speech laws don’t change minds and even backfire, and the then-breaking news about the Trump administration & FCC’s moves against Jimmy Kimmel. Enjoy!