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Tag: Censorship

  • Looks Like American TikTok’s Problems Are Sending Users Flocking to Alternatives

    According to Appfigures, the top five free iPhone apps right now in the U.S. are:

    1. ChatGPT
    2. JumpJumpVPN
    3. V2Box
    4. UpScrolled
    5. Threads

    Yesterday, Apple blogger John Gruber of Daring Fireball posted the overall most popular iPhone apps for all of 2025, and the top five were:

    1. ChatGPT
    2. Threads
    3. Google
    4. TikTok 
    5. WhatsApp

    I’m not the first person to point this out, but it’s not exactly a stretch to infer that the three apps that have suddenly squeezed in between ChatGPT and Threads are on the list due to dissatisfaction with TikTok. Two are VPN apps, which can theoretically be used to access TikTok from a virtual network in a country where the U.S. version of TikTok is unnecessary, and one, UpScrolled, is an Australian video and text sharing app that recently went viral.  

    To refresh your memory on what’s going on with TikTok, after years of trying to force Chinese-owned ByteDance to relinquish ownership and let a U.S.-friendly buyer take over, a legal entity was created earlier this month that can take ownership of TikTok, with Adam Presser as its new CEO. This allows TikTok to comply with a new U.S. law essentially requiring TikTok to be run by a U.S. company or be banned.

    But this entity, a complex joint corporate venture in charge of U.S. operations for TikTok, appears from the outside to be struggling to keep everything in order, amid the handoff from TikTok’s Singapore base of operations (U.S. TikTok data was already largely housed in the U.S., so it’s not clear if this transition actually involves any large, burdensome data transfers).

    According to an X post from TikTok, the problem is that there’s been “a major infrastructure issue triggered by a power outage at one of our U.S. data center partner sites,” and there may be various glitches, service slowdowns, failures, and issues with user metrics. Oracle has further clarified that the TikTok issue stems from a weather-related blackout at one of its data centers. Oracle owns 15 percent of the new TikTok U.S. venture.

    The issues TikTok is referring to dovetail nicely with the descriptions of problems described by users likw videos that sit in review indefinitely, and posts that get low or zero view counts, often despite high numbers for other engagement metrics like comments or shares. Other general issues that fit with a data center interruption include a possible lack of analytics in TikTok Studio, livestreamers apparently getting random messages saying they need to stop streaming immediately, and irrelevant search results.

    However, the hiccups at TikTok are, at least in part, being perceived as the technical consequences of a right-wing takeover. That’s in part because that 15 percent of TikTok U.S. now held by Oracle is controlled by the right-wing billionaire Larry Ellison, and the ownership transition is of course being shepherded along by the Trump Administration. And that’s not to mention the fact that the Biden-era push to ban TikTok emerged amid paranoia that it was turning the youth into Maoist, Hamas-supporting terrorists.

    But have the rules on TikTok tangibly changed? For all anyone knows, no. It has re-emerged in the past few days that at some point in the past, new TikTok CEO Adam Presser talked publicly about an idiosyncratic and clunky moderation practice around Israel—treating the word “Zionist” as hate speech if it carries negative connotations. But this isn’t some new TikTok policy rolling out to coincide with the transition to U.S. ownership (although, rather troublingly, at least one answer on X from Grok strongly implies that it is). It’s more likely part of a rule change around Zionism that apparently rolled out in 2024.

    Gizmodo reached out to TikTok’s U.S. joint venture for clarification about the causes of the platform’s recent problems. In a reply, we received links to statements on X, including the one from Oracle. We followed up, specifically asking if any content rules had been changed since the ownership transition. We will update if we hear back.

    Around Sunday, TikTok users started writing that they felt like their political posts were being censored.

    “TikTok has been under new leadership for like a day and I made a slideshow with posts from the ICE rally today and it immediately got out under review and is not being published,” wrote Bluesky user @pnwpolicyangel.bsky.social.  

    Instagram user erinmayequade wrote:

    “TikTok is cooked. They won’t even post my last two videos — I can see them, but anyone else who goes to my profile won’t even see them. Overnight, our federal government has silenced and suppressed dissent [on] one of our largest platforms. Not just content, but everything from certain people.”

    It would be corporate malpractice to roll out such insidious and restrictive policies right out of the gate like this, particularly amid the present backdrop of political upheaval. Once again, TikTok still has not commented on this speculation from some of its users.

    But if it’s true that users are flocking to other options for political reasons despite no hard evidence that the new TikTok U.S. joint venture has already begun some kind of crackdown on political speech, that also doesn’t necessarily mean they’re misled. They might just expect changes along the lines of what happened at Twitter when Elon Musk took over. Content standards there took a hard right turn very quickly. So with that in mind, some TikTok users might just be leaving preemptively at the first sign of an annoying glitch in order to avoid enduring even worse changes that they perceive to be on the horizon. 

    Mike Pearl

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  • Push for Censorship on Campus Hit Record Levels in 2025 | RealClearPolitics

    This year, the fight over free expression in American higher education reached a troubling milestone. According to data from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, efforts to censor speech on college campuses hit record highs and across multiple fronts – and most succeeded.

    Let’s start with the raw numbers. In 2025, FIRE’s Scholars Under Fire, Students Under Fire, and Campus Deplatforming databases collectively tracked:

    • 525 attempts to sanction scholars for their speech, more than one a day, with 460 of them resulting in punishment.
    • 273 attempts to punish students for expression, more than five a week, with 176 of these attempts succeeding.
    • 160 attempts to deplatform speakers, about three each week, with 99 of them succeeding.

    That’s 958 censorship attempts in total, nearly three per day on campuses across the country. For comparison, FIRE’s next highest total was 477 two years ago.

    The 525 scholar sanction attempts are the highest ever recorded in FIRE’s database, which spans from 2000 to the present. Even when a large-scale incident at the U.S. Naval Academy is treated as just a single entry, the 2025 total still breaks records.

    Twenty-nine scholars were fired, including 18 who were terminated since September for social media comments about Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

    Student sanction attempts also hit a new high, and deplatforming efforts – our records date back to 1998 – rank third all-time, behind 2023 and 2024.

    The problem is actually worse because FIRE’s data undercounts the true scale of campus censorship. Why? The data rely on publicly available information, and an unknown number of incidents, especially those that may involve quiet administrative pressure, never make the public record.

    Then there’s the chilling effect.

    Scholars are self-censoring. Students are staying silent. Speakers are being disinvited or shouted down. And administrators, eager to appease the loudest voices, are launching investigations, and handing out suspensions and dismissals with questionable regard for academic freedom, due process, or free speech.

    Some critics argue that the total number of incidents is small compared to the roughly 4,000 colleges in the country. But this argument collapses under scrutiny. While there are technically thousands of institutions labeled as “colleges” or “universities,” roughly 600 of them educate about 80% of undergraduates enrolled at not-for-profit four-year schools. Many of the rest of these “colleges” and “universities” are highly specialized or vocational programs. This includes a number of beauty academies, truck-driving schools, and similar institutions – in other words, campuses that aren’t at the heart of the free speech debate.

    These censorship campaigns aren’t coming from only one side of the political spectrum. FIRE’s data shows, for instance, that liberal students are punished for pro-Palestinian activism, conservative faculty are targeted for controversial opinions on gender or race, and speaking events featuring all points of view are targeted for cancellation. The two most targeted student groups on campus? Students for Justice in Palestine and Turning Point USA. If that doesn’t make this point clear, nothing will.

    The common denominator across these censorship campaigns is not ideology – it’s intolerance.

    So where do we go from here?

    We need courage: from faculty, from students, and especially from administrators. It’s easy to defend speech when it’s popular. It’s harder when the ideas are offensive or inconvenient. But that’s when it matters most.

    Even more urgently, higher education needs a cultural reset. Universities must recommit to the idea that exposure to ideas and speech that one dislikes or finds offensive is not “violence.” That principle is essential for democracy, not just for universities.

    This year’s record number of campus censorship attempts should be a wake-up call for campus administrators. For decades, many allowed a culture of censorship to fester, dismissing concerns as overblown, isolated, or a politically motivated myth. Now, with governors, state legislatures, members of Congress, and even the White House moving aggressively to police campus expression, some administrators are finally pushing back. But this push–back from administrators doesn’t seem principled. Instead, it seems more like an attempt to shield their institutions from outside political interference.

    That’s not leadership. It’s damage control. And it’s what got higher education into this mess in the first place.

    If university leaders want to reclaim their role as stewards of free inquiry, they cannot act just when governmental pressure threatens their autonomy. They also need to be steadfast when internal intolerance threatens their mission. A true commitment to academic freedom means defending expression even when it’s unpopular or offensive. That’s the price of intellectual integrity in a free society.

    Sean Stevens, Ph.D., is FIRE’s chief research advisor. He was previously director of research at Heterodox Academy.

    Sean Stevens, RCP

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  • EU warns of possible action after the US bars 5 Europeans accused of censorship

    BRUSSELS — France, Germany, the European Union and the United Kingdom on Wednesday hit out at a U.S. decision to impose travel bans on five Europeans the Trump administration accuses of pressuring tech firms to censor or suppress American views.

    The EU’s executive branch, the European Commission, which supervises tech regulation in Europe, warned that it would take action against any “unjustified measures.” It said it had requested clarification from the U.S. State Department, which announced the bans on Tuesday.

    The five Europeans were characterized by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio as “radical” activists and “weaponized” nongovernmental organizations. They include the former EU commissioner responsible for supervising social media rules, Thierry Breton.

    Breton, a businessman and former French finance minister, clashed last year on social media with tech billionaire Elon Musk over broadcasting an online interview with Donald Trump in the months leading up to the U.S. election.

    Rubio wrote in an X post on Tuesday that “for far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose.”

    “The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship,” he posted.

    The European Commission countered that “the EU is an open, rules-based single market, with the sovereign right to regulate economic activity in line with our democratic values and international commitments.”

    “Our digital rules ensure a safe, fair, and level playing field for all companies, applied fairly and without discrimination,” it said.

    French President Emmanuel Macron said on X that he had spoken to Breton about the U.S. move. “We will stand firm against pressure and will protect Europeans,” Macron posted.

    Macron said the EU’s digital rules were adopted by “a democratic and sovereign process” involving all member countries and the European Parliament. He said the rules “ensure fair competition among platforms, without targeting any third country.”

    He underlined that “the rules governing the European Union’s digital space are not meant to be determined outside Europe.”

    The four other Europeans banned by the U.S. are Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate; Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, leaders of HateAid, a German organization; and Clare Melford, who runs the Global Disinformation Index.

    German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said on X the entry bans, including on the leaders of HateAid, were “not acceptable.” He said Germany intended to address the U.S. “interpretation” of the EU’s digital rules with Washington “in order to strengthen our partnership.”

    EU Council President António Costa also called the U.S. bans “unacceptable between allies, partners, and friends.”

    “The EU stands firm in its defense of freedom of expression, fair digital rules, and its regulatory sovereignty,” Costa posted on X.

    The U.K. government said, “While every country has the right to set its own visa rules, we support the laws and institutions which are working to keep the Internet free from the most harmful content.”

    The Europeans fell afoul of a new visa policy announced in May to restrict the entry of foreigners deemed responsible for censorship of protected speech in the United States.

    Rubio said the five had advanced foreign government censorship campaigns against Americans and U.S. companies, which he said created “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the United States.

    The action to bar them from the U.S. is part of a Trump administration campaign against foreign influence over online speech, using immigration law rather than platform regulations or penalties.

    In a post on X on Tuesday, Sarah Rogers, the U.S. under secretary of state for public diplomacy, called Breton the “mastermind” behind the EU’s Digital Services Act, which imposes a set of strict requirements designed to keep internet users safe online. This includes flagging harmful or illegal content like hate speech.

    Breton responded on X by noting that all 27 EU member countries voted for the Digital Services Act in 2022. “To our American friends: ‘Censorship isn’t where you think it is,’” he wrote.

    ___

    Angela Charlton contributed to this report from Paris.

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  • China rolls out its version of the H-1B visa to attract foreign tech workers

    HONG KONG (AP) — Vaishnavi Srinivasagopalan, a skilled Indian IT professional who has worked in both India and the U.S., has been looking for work in China. Beijing’s new K-visa program targeting science and technology workers could turn that dream into a reality.

    The K-visa rolled out by Beijing last month is part of China’s widening effort to catch up with the U.S. in the race for global talent and cutting edge technology. It coincides with uncertainties over the U.S.’s H-1B program under tightened immigrations policies implemented by President Donald Trump.

    “(The) K-visa for China (is) an equivalent to the H-1B for the U.S.,” said Srinivasagopalan, who is intrigued by China’s working environment and culture after her father worked at a Chinese university a few years back. “It is a good option for people like me to work abroad.”

    The K-visa supplements China’s existing visa schemes including the R-visa for foreign professionals, but with loosened requirements, such as not requiring an applicant to have a job offer before applying.

    Stricter U.S. policies toward foreign students and scholars under Trump, including the raising of fees for the H-1B visa for foreign skilled workers to $100,000 for new applicants, are leading some non-American professionals and students to consider going elsewhere.

    “Students studying in the U.S. hoped for an (H-1B) visa, but currently this is an issue,” said Bikash Kali Das, an Indian masters student of international relations at Sichuan University in China.

    China wants more foreign tech professionals

    China is striking while the iron is hot.

    The ruling Communist Party has made global leadership in advanced technologies a top priority, paying massive government subsidies to support research and development of areas such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors and robotics.

    “Beijing perceives the tightening of immigration policies in the U.S. as an opportunity to position itself globally as welcoming foreign talent and investment more broadly,” said Barbara Kelemen, associate director and head of Asia at security intelligence firm Dragonfly.

    Unemployment among Chinese graduates remains high, and competition is intense for jobs in scientific and technical fields. But there is a skills gap China’s leadership is eager to fill. For decades, China has been losing top talent to developed countries as many stayed and worked in the U.S. and Europe after they finished studies there.

    The brain drain has not fully reversed.

    Many Chinese parents still see Western education as advanced and are eager to send their children abroad, said Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore.

    Still, in recent years, a growing number of professionals including AI experts, scientists and engineers have moved to China from the U.S., including Chinese-Americans. Fei Su, a chip architect at Intel, and Ming Zhou, a leading engineer at U.S.-based software firm Altair, were among those who have taken teaching jobs in China this year.

    Many skilled workers in India and Southeast Asia have already expressed interest about the K-visa, said Edward Hu, a Shanghai-based immigration director at the consultancy Newland Chase.

    Questions about extra competition from foreign workers

    With the jobless rate for Chinese aged 16-24 excluding students at nearly 18%, the campaign to attract more foreign professionals is raising questions.

    “The current job market is already under fierce competition,” said Zhou Xinying, a 24-year-old postgraduate student in behavioral science at eastern China’s Zhejiang University.

    While foreign professionals could help “bring about new technologies” and different international perspectives, Zhou said, “some Chinese young job seekers may feel pressure due to the introduction of the K-visa policy.”

    Kyle Huang, a 26-year-old software engineer based in the southern city of Guangzhou, said his peers in the science and technology fields fear the new visa scheme “might threaten local job opportunities”.

    A recent commentary published by a state-backed news outlet, the Shanghai Observer, downplayed such concerns, saying that bringing in such foreign professionals will benefit the economy. As China advances in areas such as AI and cutting-edge semiconductors, there is a “gap and mismatch” between qualified jobseekers and the demand for skilled workers, it said.

    “The more complex the global environment, the more China will open its arms,” it said.

    “Beijing will need to emphasize how select foreign talent can create, not take, local jobs,” said Michael Feller, chief strategist at consultancy Geopolitical Strategy. “But even Washington has shown that this is politically a hard argument to make, despite decades of evidence.”

    China’s disadvantages even with the new visas

    Recruitment and immigration specialists say foreign workers face various hurdles in China. One is the language barrier. The ruling Communist Party’s internet censorship, known as the “Great Firewall,” is another drawback.

    A country of about 1.4 billion, China had only an estimated 711,000 foreign workers residing in the country as of 2023.

    The U.S. still leads in research and has the advantage of using English widely. There’s also still a relatively clearer pathway to residency for many, said David Stepat, country director for Singapore at the consultancy Dezan Shira & Associates.

    Nikhil Swaminathan, an Indian H1-B visa holder working for a U.S. non-profit organization after finishing graduate school there, is interested in China’s K-visa but skeptical. “I would’ve considered it. China’s a great place to work in tech, if not for the difficult relationship between India and China,” he said.

    Given a choice, many jobseekers still are likely to aim for jobs in leading global companies outside China.

    “The U.S. is probably more at risk of losing would-be H-1B applicants to other Western economies, including the UK and European Union, than to China,” said Feller at Geopolitical Strategy.

    “The U.S. may be sabotaging itself, but it’s doing so from a far more competitive position in terms of its attractiveness to talent,” Feller said. “China will need to do far more than offer convenient visa pathways to attract the best.”

    ___

    AP writer Fu Ting in Washington and researchers Yu Bing and Shihuan Chen in Beijing contributed.

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  • Fired Indiana University Student Newspaper Adviser Claims Free Speech Violation in Federal Lawsuit

    A faculty adviser for Indiana University’s student newspaper filed a federal lawsuit Thursday arguing his free speech and due process rights were violated when he was fired for refusing to ensure no news stories appeared in the homecoming print edition earlier this month.

    A lawyer for the adviser, Jim Rodenbush, said it’s a case seeking “to have a court state that the First Amendment still matters.”

    Rodenbush, in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, seeks reinstatement to his job and monetary damages. He was dismissed Oct. 14 for his “lack of leadership and ability to work in alignment with the university’s direction for the Student Media Plan,” according to David Tolchinsky, dean of the university’s media school, who also ended the newspaper’s print product.

    “The question is if a university doesn’t like the content of the student newspaper, can it simply pull the plug on the student newspaper,” Rodenbush’s attorney, Jonathan Little, said.

    Phone and email messages were left for university spokespersons. The school issued a statement earlier saying it was shifting publication from print to digital platforms for educational and financial purposes, while the chancellor said in a statement that “free expression and editorial independence” were unfettered.

    Subsidized by $250,000 a year because of dwindling ad revenue, The Daily Student, regularly honored as among the nation’s best collegiate news organizations, had its weekly print editions reduced to seven special sections a year. Rodenbush said this fall, administrators questioned why the special sections still had hard news content.

    Rodenbush told Tolchinsky editorial decisions belonged to the student staff alone before Tolchinsky fired him and terminated future print editions.

    The dismissal came days before the scheduled publication of the paper’s homecoming edition, which would have greeted tens of thousands of alumni returning to Bloomington to celebrate the undefeated Hoosiers football team, currently ranked No. 2 nationally.

    “In a direct assault on the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, IU fired James Rodenbush when he refused the directive to censor student work in the campus newspaper and print only fluff pieces about the upcoming homecoming festivities,” the complaint reads.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

    Associated Press

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  • Biden calls these ‘dark days’ as he urges Americans to ‘get back up’

    Former President Joe Biden called these “dark days” as he urged Americans to stay optimistic and not to check out in response to what he says are attacks on free speech and tests on the limits of executive power by President Donald Trump.

    “Since its founding, America served as a beacon for the most powerful idea ever in government in the history of the world,” Biden said. “The idea is stronger than any army. We’re more powerful than a dictator.”

    Biden, 82, speaking publicly for the first time since completing a round of radiation therapy for an aggressive form of prostate cancer, addressed an audience in Boston on Sunday night after receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Edward M. Kennedy Institute.

    He said America depends on a presidency with limited power, a functioning Congress and an autonomous judiciary. With the federal government facing its second-longest shutdown on record, Trump has used the funding laps as way to exercise new command over the government.

    “Friends, I can’t sugar coat any of this. These are dark days” Biden said before predicting the country would “find our true compass again” and “emerge as we always have — stronger, wiser and more resilient, more just, so long as we keep the faith.”

    Biden listed examples of people who are standing their ground against threats from the current administration, citing the example of federal employees who resign in protest, and universities and comedians that have been targeted by Trump.

    “The late night hosts continue to shine a light on free speech knowing their careers are on the line,” he said.

    Biden also shouted out elected Republican officials who vote or openly go against the Trump administration.

    “America is not a fairy tale,” he said. “For 250 years, it’s been a constant push and pull, an existential struggle between peril and possibility.”

    He finished the speech by telling people to “get back up.”

    The Democrat left office in January after serving one term in the White House. Biden dropped his bid for reelection after facing pressure following a disastrous debate against Trump and concerns about his age, health and mental fitness. Vice President Kamala Harris launched her bid right after, but lost to Trump last November.

    In May, Biden’s post presidential office announced that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and that it had spread to his bones.

    Prostate cancers are graded for aggressiveness using what is known as a Gleason score. The scores range from 6 to 10, with 8, 9 and 10 prostate cancers behaving more aggressively. Biden’s office said his score was 9.

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  • ExxonMobil sues California over climate disclosure laws

    Exxon Mobil Corporation is suing the state of California over a pair of 2023 climate disclosure laws that the company says infringe upon its free speech rights, namely by forcing it to embrace the message that large companies are uniquely to blame for climate change.

    The oil and gas corporation based in Texas filed its complaint Friday in the U.S. Eastern District Court for California. It asks the court to prevent the laws from going into effect next year.

    In its complaint, ExxonMobil says it has for years publicly disclosed its greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related business risks, but it fundamentally disagrees with the state’s new reporting requirements.

    The company would have to use “frameworks that place disproportionate blame on large companies like ExxonMobil” for the purpose of shaming such companies, the complaint states.

    Under Senate Bill 253, large businesses will have to disclose a wide range of planet-warming emissions, including both direct and indirect emissions such as the costs of employee business travel and product transport.

    ExxonMobil takes issue with the methodology required by the state, which would focus on a company’s emissions worldwide and therefore fault businesses just for being large as opposed to being efficient, the complaint states.

    The second law, Senate Bill 261, requires companies making more than $500 million annually to disclose the financial risks that climate change poses to their businesses and how they plan to address them.

    The company said in its complaint that the law would require it to speculate “about unknowable future developments” and post such speculations on its website.

    A spokesperson for the office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an email that it was “truly shocking that one of the biggest polluters on the planet would be opposed to transparency.”

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  • Indiana University fires student newspaper adviser who refused to block news stories

    Tension between Indiana University and its student newspaper flared this week with the elimination of the outlet’s print editions and the firing of a faculty adviser, who refused an order to keep news stories out of a homecoming edition.

    Administrators may have been hoping to minimize distractions this homecoming weekend as the school prepares to celebrate a Hoosiers football team with its highest-ever national ranking. Instead, the controversy has entangled the school in questions about censorship and student journalists’ First Amendment rights.

    Advocates for student media, Indiana Daily Student alumni and high-profile supporters including billionaire Mark Cuban have blasted the school for stepping on the outlet’s independence.

    The Daily Student is routinely honored among the best collegiate publications in the country. It receives about $250,000 annually in subsidies from the university’s Media School to help make up for dwindling ad revenue.

    On Tuesday, the university fired the paper’s adviser, Jim Rodenbush, after he refused an order to force student editors to ensure no news stories ran in the print edition tied to the homecoming celebrations.

    “I had to make the decision that was going to allow me to live with myself,” Rodenbush said. “I don’t have any regrets whatsoever. In the current environment we’re in, somebody has to stand up.”

    A university spokesperson referred an AP reporter to a statement issued Tuesday, which said the campus wants to shift resources from print media to digital platforms both for students’ educational experience and to address the paper’s financial problems.

    Chancellor David Reingold issued a separate statement Wednesday saying the school is “firmly committed to the free expression and editorial independence of student media. The university has not and will not interfere with their editorial judgment.”

    It was late last year when university officials announced they were scaling back the cash-strapped newspaper’s print edition from a weekly to seven special editions per semester, tied to campus events.

    The paper published three print editions this fall, inserting special event sections, Rodenbush said. Last month, Media School officials started asking why the special editions still contained news, he said.

    Rodenbush said IU Media School Dean David Tolchinsky told him earlier this month that the expectation was print editions would contain no news. Tolchinsky argued Rodenbush was essentially the paper’s publisher and could decide what to run, Rodenbush said. He told the dean that publishing decisions were the students’ alone, he said.

    Tolchinsky fired him Tuesday, two days before the homecoming print edition was set to be published, and announced the end of all Indiana Daily Student print publications.

    “Your lack of leadership and ability to work in alignment with the University’s direction for the Student Media Plan is unacceptable,” Tolchinsky wrote in Rodenbush’s termination letter.

    The newspaper was allowed to continue publishing stories on its website.

    Andrew Miller, the Indiana Daily Student’s co-editor-in-chief, said in a statement that Rodenbush “did the right thing by refusing to censor our print edition” and called the termination a “deliberate scare tactic toward journalists and faculty.”

    “IU has no legal right to dictate what we can and cannot print in our paper,” Miller said.

    Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center, said First Amendment case law going back 60 years shows student editors at public universities determine content. Advisors like Rodenbush can’t interfere, Hiestand said.

    “It’s open and shut, and it’s just so bizarre that this is coming out of Indiana University,” Hiestand said. “If this was coming out of a community college that doesn’t know any better, that would be one thing. But this is coming out of a place that absolutely should know better.”

    Rodenbush said that he wasn’t aware of any single story the newspaper has published that may have provoked administrators. But he speculated the moves may be part of a “general progression” of administrators trying to protect the university from any negative publicity.

    Blocked from publishing a print edition, the paper this week posted a number of sharp-edged stories online, including coverage of the opening of a new film critical of arrests of pro-Palestinian demonstrators last year, a tally of campus sexual assaults and an FBI raid on the home of a former professor suspected of stealing federal funds.

    The paper also has covered allegations that IU President Pamela Whitten plagiarized parts of her dissertation, with the most recent story running in September.

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  • Appeals Court Backs Michigan School in Banning ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ Shirts

    SAND LAKE, Mich. (AP) — A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled in favor of a Michigan school district in a dispute over free speech and “Let’s Go Brandon” shirts, clothing that took a jab at then-President Joe Biden.

    The mother of two boys, who got the shirts as Christmas gifts, said her sons’ First Amendment rights were violated when they were told to take off the shirts at Tri County Middle School in 2022. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed in 2-1 opinion.

    “In the schoolhouse, vulgarity trumps politics. And the protection for political speech doesn’t give a student carte blanche to use vulgarity at school — even when that vulgarity is cloaked in innuendo or euphemism,” said judges John Nalbandian and Karen Nelson Moore.

    In 2021, an obscenity directed at Biden was being chanted at a NASCAR race, though a TV sports reporter said it was “Let’s Go, Brandon.” The line suddenly became popular among Biden’s conservative critics.

    The school said it wasn’t prohibiting political messages, just vulgar ones. There was evidence that some students wore clothing that said, “Make America Great Again,” or had messages supporting President Donald Trump.

    Judge John Bush disagreed with the majority opinion and said the wrong legal standard was applied.

    “The phrase at issue here is a euphemism for political criticism. It contains no sexual content, no graphic imagery, and no actual profanity,” he said. “To the extent that it implies an offensive phrase, it does so obliquely — by design.”

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

    Associated Press

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  • MIT President Says She ‘Cannot Support’ Proposal to Adopt Trump Priorities for Funding Benefits

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said Friday she “cannot support” a White House proposal that asks MIT and eight other universities to adopt President Donald Trump’s political agenda in exchange for favorable access to federal funding.

    MIT is among the first to express forceful views either in favor of or against an agreement the White House billed as providing “multiple positive benefits,” including “substantial and meaningful federal grants.” Leaders of the University of Texas system said they were honored its flagship university in Austin was invited, but most other campuses have remained silent as they review the document.

    In a letter to Trump administration officials, MIT President Sally Kornbluth said MIT disagrees with provisions of the proposal, including some that would limit free speech and the university’s independence. She said it’s inconsistent with MIT’s belief that scientific funding should be based on merit alone.

    “Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education,” Kornbluth said in a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon and White House officials.

    The higher education compact circulated last week requires universities to make a wide range of commitments in line with Trump’s political agenda on topics from admissions and women’s sports to free speech and student discipline. The universities were invited to provide “limited, targeted feedback” by Oct. 20 and make a decision no later than Nov. 21.

    Others that received the 10-page proposal are: Vanderbilt, the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, the University of Southern California, the University of Arizona, Brown University and the University of Virginia. It was not clear how the schools were selected or why.

    University leaders face immense pressure to reject the compact amid opposition from students, faculty, free speech advocates and higher education groups. Leaders of some other universities have called it extortion. The mayor and city council in Tucson, home of the University of Arizona, formally opposed the compact, calling it an “unacceptable act of federal interference.”

    Even some conservatives have dismissed the compact as a bad approach. Frederick Hess, director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, called it “profoundly problematic” and said the government’s requests are “ungrounded in law.”

    Kornbluth’s letter did not explicitly decline the compact but suggested that its terms are unworkable. Still, she said MIT is already aligned with some of the values outlined in the deal, including prioritizing merit in admissions and making college more affordable.

    Kornbluth said MIT was the first to reinstate requirements for standardized admissions tests after the COVID-19 pandemic and admits students based on their talent, ideas and hard work. Incoming undergraduates whose families earn less than $200,000 a year pay nothing for tuition, she added.

    “We freely choose these values because they’re right, and we live by them because they support our mission,” Kornbluth wrote.

    As part of the compact, the White House asked universities to freeze tuition for U.S. students for five years. Those with endowments exceeding $2 million per undergraduate could not charge tuition at all for students pursuing “hard science” programs.

    It asked colleges to require the SAT or ACT for all undergraduate applicants and to eliminate race, sex and other characteristics from admissions decisions. Schools that sign on would also have to accept the government’s binary definition of gender and apply it to campus bathrooms and sports teams.

    Much of the compact centers on promoting conservative viewpoints. To make campuses a “vibrant marketplace of ideas” campuses would commit to taking steps including “transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”

    The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Macron is set to appoint a new French PM in last-ditch move to tackle turmoil

    PARIS — PARIS (AP) — After a week of intense political turmoil, French President Emmanuel Macron is set to appoint a new prime minister Friday in his latest bid to break the political deadlock that has gripped the country for more than a year, as France struggles with mounting economic challenges and ballooning debt.

    The appointment is widely seen as the president’s last chance to revive his second term, which runs until 2027. With no majority in the National Assembly to push through his agenda, Macron faces increasingly fierce criticism, even from within his own camp, and has little room to maneuver.

    Outgoing Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu abruptly resigned Monday, only hours after unveiling a new Cabinet. The shock resignation prompted calls for Macron to step down or dissolve parliament again. But they remained unanswered, with the president instead announcing on Wednesday that he would name a successor within 48 hours.

    Over the past year, Macron’s successive minority governments have collapsed in quick succession, leaving the European Union’s second-largest economy mired in political paralysis as France is faced with a debt crisis. At the end of the first quarter of 2025, France’s public debt stood at 3.346 trillion euros ($3.9 trillion), or 114% of gross domestic product.

    France’s poverty rate also reached 15.4% in 2023, its highest level since records began in 1996, according to the latest data available from the national statistics institute.

    The economic and political struggles are worrying financial markets, ratings agencies and the European Commission, which has been pushing France to comply with EU rules limiting debt.

    Macron may turn to a figure from the left, which managed to form a coalition in the 2024 legislative elections, or opt for a technocratic government to sidestep partisan deadlock.

    In any case, the new prime minister will have to seek compromises to avoid an immediate vote of no confidence and may even be forced to abandon the pension reform that gradually raises the retirement age from 62 to 64. Macron fought fiercely for the deeply unpopular measure, which was enacted into law in 2023 despite mass protests.

    Lecornu argued that Macron’s centrist bloc, its allies, and parts of the opposition could still rally to form a working majority. “There’s a majority that can govern,” he said. “I feel that a path is still possible. It is difficult.”

    The stalemate stems from Macron’s shock decision in June 2024 to dissolve the National Assembly. The snap elections produced a hung parliament, with no bloc able to command a majority in the 577-seat chamber. The gridlock has unnerved investors, infuriated voters, and stalled efforts to curb France’s spiraling deficit and public debt.

    Without stable support, Macron’s governments have stumbled from one crisis to the next, collapsing as they sought backing for unpopular spending cuts. Lecornu’s resignation, just 14 hours after announcing his Cabinet, underscored the fragility of the president’s coalition amid deep political and personal rivalries.

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  • Macron Is Set to Appoint a New French Prime Minister in Last-Ditch Move to Tackle Turmoil

    PARIS (AP) — After a week of intense political turmoil, French President Emmanuel Macron is set to appoint a new prime minister Friday in his latest bid to break the political deadlock that has gripped the country for more than a year, as France struggles with mounting economic challenges and ballooning debt.

    The appointment is widely seen as the president’s last chance to revive his second term, which runs until 2027. With no majority in the National Assembly to push through his agenda, Macron faces increasingly fierce criticism, even from within his own camp, and has little room to maneuver.

    Outgoing Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu abruptly resigned Monday, only hours after unveiling a new Cabinet. The shock resignation prompted calls for Macron to step down or dissolve parliament again. But they remained unanswered, with the president instead announcing on Wednesday that he would name a successor within 48 hours.

    Over the past year, Macron’s successive minority governments have collapsed in quick succession, leaving the European Union’s second-largest economy mired in political paralysis as France is faced with a debt crisis. At the end of the first quarter of 2025, France’s public debt stood at 3.346 trillion euros ($3.9 trillion), or 114% of gross domestic product.

    France’s poverty rate also reached 15.4% in 2023, its highest level since records began in 1996, according to the latest data available from the national statistics institute.

    The economic and political struggles are worrying financial markets, ratings agencies and the European Commission, which has been pushing France to comply with EU rules limiting debt.


    Uncertainty surrounds the choice of the next PM

    Macron may turn to a figure from the left, which managed to form a coalition in the 2024 legislative elections, or opt for a technocratic government to sidestep partisan deadlock.

    In any case, the new prime minister will have to seek compromises to avoid an immediate vote of no confidence and may even be forced to abandon the pension reform that gradually raises the retirement age from 62 to 64. Macron fought fiercely for the deeply unpopular measure, which was enacted into law in 2023 despite mass protests.

    Lecornu argued that Macron’s centrist bloc, its allies, and parts of the opposition could still rally to form a working majority. “There’s a majority that can govern,” he said. “I feel that a path is still possible. It is difficult.”

    The stalemate stems from Macron’s shock decision in June 2024 to dissolve the National Assembly. The snap elections produced a hung parliament, with no bloc able to command a majority in the 577-seat chamber. The gridlock has unnerved investors, infuriated voters, and stalled efforts to curb France’s spiraling deficit and public debt.

    Without stable support, Macron’s governments have stumbled from one crisis to the next, collapsing as they sought backing for unpopular spending cuts. Lecornu’s resignation, just 14 hours after announcing his Cabinet, underscored the fragility of the president’s coalition amid deep political and personal rivalries.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Apple Took Down These ICE-Tracking Apps. The Developers Aren’t Giving Up

    Legal experts WIRED spoke with say that the ICE monitoring and documentation apps that Apple has removed from its App Store are clear examples of protected speech under the US Constitution’s First Amendment. “These apps are publishing constitutionally protected speech. They’re publishing truthful information about matters of public interest that people obtained just by witnessing public events,” says David Greene, a civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

    This hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from attacking the developers behind these ICE-related apps. When ICEBlock first rose to a top spot in Apple’s App Store in April, the Trump administration responded by threatening to prosecute the developer. “We are looking at him,” Bondi said on Fox News of ICEBlock’s Aaron. “And he better watch out.”

    Neither the White House nor ICE immediately responded to requests for comment.

    Digital rights researchers say that the situation illustrates the dangers when key platforms and communication channels are centrally controlled—whether directly by governments or by other powerful entities like big tech companies. Regardless of what is officially available through the Google Play store, Android users can sideload apps of their choosing. But Apple’s ecosystem has always been a walled garden, an approach that the company has long touted for its security advantages, including the ability to screen more heavily for malicious apps.

    For years, a group of researchers and enthusiasts have tried to create “jailbreaks” for iPhones to essentially hack their own devices as a way around Apple’s closed ecosystem. Recently, though, jailbreaking has become less common. This is partly the result of advances in iPhone security, but partly related to the trend in recent years of attackers exploiting complex chains of vulnerabilities that could potentially be used for jailbreaking for malware instead, particularly mercenary spyware.

    “The closed ecosystem motivation sort of dwindled as Apple added capabilities that previously required a jailbreak—like wallpapers, tethering, better notifications, and private mode in Safari,” says longtime iOS security and jailbreak researcher Will Strafach. “But this situation with ICE apps highlights the issue with Apple being the arbiter and single point of failure.”

    Stanford’s Pfefferkorn warns that while US tech companies are not state-controlled, they have in her view become “happy handmaidens” when it comes to “repressing free speech and dissent.”

    “It’s especially disappointing,” Pfefferkorn says, “coming from the company that brought us the Think Different ad campaign, which invoked MLK, Gandhi, and Muhammad Ali—none of whom would likely be big fans of ICE today.”

    Reece Rogers, Lily Hay Newman

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  • The Trump Administration Is Coming for Nonprofits. They’re Getting Ready

    Some organizations, says Stahl, are considering what it would mean to dissolve themselves and start up again as a limited liability company. In some ways, this would make moving money easier, especially for organizations that do international work. But it would also significantly reduce transparency around donations and how money is being spent. Moving an organization’s headquarters—and its bank accounts—to another country could theoretically protect its finances, but there’s no guarantee that it would be able to get money back into the US to continue work on the ground there. (Shortly before Trump’s inauguration, a Canadian law firm hosted a webinar for nonprofits considering relocating their headquarters to the country.)

    Reich says that several organizations are already talking about what ways an attack by the administration could be challenged legally. “Nonprofits will probably win in court and that will be in a year or two,” he says. But by that point the administration will have had ample time to spread narratives like the one shared by Ngo—as well as, perhaps, to tie up their resources in defending themselves in court. “The point is destroying [nonprofits’] reputations,” says Reich, “and having the power to dictate how and where money gets spent.”

    In the meantime, the uncertainty in the field means that foundations and funders are now looking to move money out more quickly—both to support organizations that may be feeling the pain of other donors pulling back and to ensure that the sector is ready for a more difficult operating environment than ever.

    “We’re moving money to meet grantee needs and needs in communities,” says John Palfrey, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which is a member of Unite in Advance. Palfrey noted other government funding cuts, including to the US Agency for International Development and other federal grants, have meant that organizations like the MacArthur Foundation are already racing to disburse money to their grantees to help plug the gaps.

    “We are telling the organizations we work with to be adamant with funders, that if they don’t fund us now there may not be a sector left,” says Ashleigh Subramanian-Montgomery, acting director of the Charity and Security Network, which works with nonprofits that operate in challenging conditions.

    Subramanian-Montgomery says her organization has advised the nonprofits it works with that they shouldn’t comply in advance, but that some organizations are already “removing stuff from their website that could make them at higher risk.” She says she’s worried, however, that even the threats of defunding could cause people to “really start self-censoring, then changing programming completely,” she says. “Then there wouldn’t even be a civil society to push back on government policy.”

    But what that civil society could look like is up in the air. “The Trump administration is going to set the sector on fire,” says Reich. “It’s going to need to be rebuilt.”

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  • Jane Fonda revives Cold War-era activist group to defend free speech

    NEW YORK — Drawing upon her personal and political past, Jane Fonda has revived an activist group from the Cold War era that was backed by her father and fellow Oscar winner, Henry Fonda.

    Jane Fonda announced she had launched a 21st century incarnation of the Committee for the First Amendment, originally formed in 1947 in response to Congressional hearings aimed against screenwriters and directors — notably the so-called “Hollywood Ten” — and their alleged Communist ties. Signers of the new organization’s mission statement include Florence Pugh, Sean Penn,Billie Eilish, Pedro Pascal and hundreds of others.

    Wednesday’s news comes in the wake of Jimmy Kimmel’s brief suspension by ABC over his on-air comments after conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination. President Donald Trump was among those who had wanted Kimmel to be fired.

    “The federal government is once again engaged in a coordinated campaign to silence critics in the government, the media, the judiciary, academia, and the entertainment industry,” the committee’s mission statement reads in part.

    “We refuse to stand by and let that happen. Free speech and free expression are the inalienable rights of every American of all backgrounds and political beliefs — no matter how liberal or conservative you may be. The ability to criticize, question, protest, and even mock those in power is foundational to what America has always aspired to be.”

    The Fondas each have had long histories of activism, whether Jane Fonda’s opposition to the Vietnam War or Henry Fonda’s prominent support for Democratic Party candidates, including John F. Kennedy, for whom the elder Fonda appeared in a campaign ad in 1960.

    Henry Fonda, who died in 1982, joined the 1947 First Amendment committee along with such actors and filmmakers as Humphrey Bogart, John Huston, Lucille Ball and Frank Sinatra. Although highly publicized at the time, the committee had a short and troubled history. Bogart and others would find themselves accused of Communist sympathies and would express surprise when a handful of the Hollywood Ten, including screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, turned to have been Communist Party members at one time or another.

    By the following year, Bogart had published an essay in Photoplay magazine entitled “I’m No Communist,” in which he confided that “actors and actresses always go overboard about things” and warned against being “used as dupes by Commie organizations.” Trumbo and others in the Hollywood Ten would be jailed for refusing to cooperate with Congress and found themselves among many to be blacklisted through the end of the 1950s and beyond.

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  • Ten Years of Censorship That Was Censored | RealClearPolitics

    For a decade, conservative voices were erased by tech giants-yet the media now pretends censorship began only when comedians faced suspension.

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  • A Disturbing Trend Has Taken Hold In Red States: ‘The Result Is Unprecedented’

    Thousands of books have been banned from schools over the last year, according to a new report, and just three red states account for the vast majority of the bans.

    Schools across the country banned 6,870 books between July 2024 and June 2025, says the report from PEN America, a nonprofit organization that advocates for free expression. The 2023-24 academic year saw a 200% increase in school book bans, bringing the total instances of book bans since 2021 to nearly 23,000.

    “Never before in the life of any living American have so many books been systematically removed from school libraries across the country,” Kasey Meehan, the director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program, said in a press release. “A disturbing ‘everyday banning’ and normalization of censorship has worsened and spread over the last four years. The result is unprecedented.”

    PEN America found that 3,752 unique titles have been banned in 87 different school districts across the country. The books the group identified as banned include those that have been prohibited entirely and those that have been removed during a review period, as well as those that have been restricted — for example, if they can only be accessed with parental permission or if they’ve been restricted to students in certain grades.

    Florida, which has been at the forefront of the effort to remove books from school libraries, led the nation in book bans, with 2,304 instances recorded last school year. Texas came in second place with 1,781 removals, followed by Tennessee, which had 1,622 bans.

    Like in years past, many of the banned books have LGBTQ+ themes, including “Last Night at the Telegraph Club” by Malinda Lo, which is about a teenage girl discovering her sexuality. The award-winning novel was one of the top five most-banned books last year. The most banned book last school year was “A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess, a satirical novel about a dystopian future.

    Conservative groups have baselessly claimed many of the affected works contain “sexually explicit” material, therefore making them inappropriate for students. It’s all a part of right-wing culture warriors’ efforts to dismantle and remake the nation’s public schools into a place where far-right ideology can thrive.

    Since the aftermath of the 2020 racial justice protests, far-right groups like Moms for Liberty, which was founded in Florida, have spearheaded a movement to install conservative school board members, censor teachers and remove books that contain LGBTQ+ or racial justice themes.

    Under Donald Trump, the movement has also reached the federal government. The Department of Defense removed nearly 600 books from schools on military bases, including those detailing the experience of transgender troops.

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  • Is Trump’s Attack on the Media Following Putin’s Playbook?

    In 2000, NTV, a Russian television channel known for its independent, muckraking coverage, was among the country’s most watched stations.The evening news reported on atrocities committed by Russian forces in Chechnya and on corruption schemes that implicated top officials in the Kremlin. Its correspondents had looked into the possibility that the F.S.B., the successor agency to the K.G.B., was behind a series of mysterious apartment bombings that had helped solidify Putin’s power. NTV’s owner, Vladimir Gusinsky, an oligarch who began his business career by founding one of the first for-profit worker coöperatives in the country, had faced all manner of governmental threats and attacks, most of which were thinly disguised as disputes over corporate debts.

    That May, days after Vladimir Putin was inaugurated to his first term as Russia’s President, a high-ranking Kremlin official conveyed a list of demands to NTV. If the channel hoped to survive, the official said, it must end its investigations into corruption in Putin’s entourage, abandon its unflinching coverage of the war in Chechnya, and more readily coördinate its editorial policy with the Kremlin.

    A final demand pertained to one of the more popular shows on NTV: “Kukly,” or “Puppets,” which featured caricatured puppet versions of various members of the country’s political and business élite. In one episode, which had aired a few months earlier, Putin’s puppet appeared in the role of Little Zaches, a character from an E. T. A. Hoffmann fairy tale, an allegorical satire of how readily people can be fooled by superficial charmers. Putin was portrayed as an unsightly troll, who, by an act of magic—a spell cast by the puppet version of Boris Berezovsky, the magnate who helped engineer his rise to the Presidency—comes to appear beautiful and virtuous, the subject of great adulation and deference.

    Putin, NTV journalists and editors learned, was incensed not just by the mocking tone and the implication that his popularity was based on P.R. hocus-pocus but also by the fact that his puppet was, like the character in the original Hoffmann story, short and rather ugly. “He took this as a personal attack, an anthropomorphic insult,” Viktor Shenderovich, one of “Kukly” ’s chief screenwriters, told me. The puppet’s short stature was a metaphor, Shenderovich said. “But where Putin got his education”—the late-Soviet-era K.G.B.—“they don’t believe in metaphors.” The official told the channel that the “first person,” meaning Putin, should disappear from “Kukly.”

    Shenderovich nominally complied. The next episode of “Kukly” featured Putin as God—only not in puppet form but as a burning bush and a storm cloud. (An updated version of the Ten Commandments made an appearance: “Thou shalt not steal, unless He permits it.”) In any case, NTV’s fate was set. Before long, a media holding company of the Russian state energy giant Gazprom took a majority stake in the channel, ending its independence and giving the Kremlin decisive influence over its editorial policy.

    Many at the channel, including Shenderovich, left; those who stayed quickly learned the new rules. “My greatest sorrow was that so many of my colleagues effectively helped Putin become who he did,” Shenderovich told me. “At first, Putin wasn’t strong enough to defeat everyone. He was far from omnipotent. But, by bending to him, they participated in creating what, over time, became his aura of unchecked power.” (Shenderovich left Russia in 2022, after a libel probe was opened against him at the request of a close Putin associate.)

    The takeover of NTV also set an important precedent. Many more individuals and institutions would be suborned and co-opted. With one of the country’s most influential media outlets brought to heel, Shenderovich told me, “everything else became possible.”

    I spent a decade living in Moscow, during which time independent journalists went from being intimidated and marginalized to being essentially outlawed. I wanted to ask the central players in the drama at NTV—who, at the time of their channel’s crisis, looked to the United States as a model of free expression and democratic values—what they made of the ongoing standoff between Donald Trump and the American media. Shenderovich noted that, for the health of a polity, its norms—what’s considered morally permissible—can often matter more than the laws that formally govern it. And those norms can change quickly, with much of society managing to adapt to a prolonged state of unfreedom. “People tend to accept new rules imposed from above quite readily,” Shenderovich said. “Unfortunately, it turns out the U.S. is no exception.”

    In July, CBS announced that it was cancelling Stephen Colbert’s late-night program, which the network said was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.” On September 17th, ABC suspended the late-night show hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, because of comments Kimmel had made in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder. Both Colbert and Kimmel have been frequent critics of Trump. And both of their networks had previously paid millions of dollars to settle lawsuits brought by the President. ABC paid fifteen million dollars to settle a Trump defamation suit stemming from comments made on air by George Stephanopoulos; Paramount Global, which owned CBS, paid sixteen million to settle a suit over a “60 Minutes” interview with then Vice-President Kamala Harris which Trump had claimed was unfair to him. In April, the executive producer of “60 Minutes” resigned, writing in a memo to staff that CBS’s corporate owners had undermined the program’s editorial independence: “It has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it.”

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  • YouTube Is Going to Regret This

    Earlier this week, YouTube gave an inch to the Online Right by announcing a plan to offer a chance at reinstatement to users who were previously banned from the platform for spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election. Today, the Online Right took a mile by hammering YouTube for almost immediately terminating new accounts created by the previously banned Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes.

    Jones, a conspiracy theorist who still owes the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting $1.3 billion after claiming it was a hoax, and Fuentes, a Christian nationalist and white supremacist who has denied the validity of the Holocaust, both reportedly created new accounts on YouTube after Republican Representative Jim Jordan released a letter from parent company Alphabet stating that the platform will “provide an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform” if they were removed for violating content policies that are no longer in effect. Both figures quickly had their new accounts terminated. That caused a fervor in the Online Right, who probably don’t even actually need Jones or Fuentes to appear on YouTube but do want to force the company to continue to engage in the humiliation ritual that it invited upon itself.

    YouTube previously said that the reinstatement process would be part of a “limited pilot project” that has not been launched yet. It reiterated that on Thursday, stating, “We’ve seen some previously terminated creators try to start new channels. To clarify, our pilot program on terminations is not yet open.” It even tried to respond to the Jones and Fuentes cases directly, replying to a viral post about the terminations to say “We terminated these channels as it’s still against our rules for previously terminated users to start new channels – the pilot program for terminations (that many folks referenced this week) isn’t available yet and will be a limited pilot program to start.”

    Unfortunately, that’s just not how the game is played with right-wing influencers. Vivek Ramaswamy grabbed hold of a tweet about the ban and called it un-American to “muzzle the peaceful expression of opinions.” Tim Pool posted about Alex Jones getting banned and snitch-tagged the House Judiciary Committee’s handle, suggesting he wants the government to force YouTube to allow Jones back onto the platform. Gizmodo reached out to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan’s office for comment, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.

    YouTube confirmed to Gizmodo that the new accounts of Jones and Fuentes were terminated, explaining, “It is against our Community Guidelines for previously terminated users to use, possess, or create any other YouTube channels.” Creators also aren’t supposed to allow terminated users to bypass their ban, but Patrick Bet David’s interview with Nick Fuentes uploaded on Tuesday remains live and has received more than 2.2 million views at the time of publication.

    YouTube told Gizmodo it plans on opening a pathway “for some terminated creators to start a new channel,” but indicated, “This will not be available to all creators, it will be a limited pilot.” Terminated users who are not a part of the pilot program will remain ineligible to create a new channel.

    The company clarified that its pilot will focus on users who were terminated for “repeated violations of COVID-19 and election integrity policies that are no longer in effect,” as it indicated in its letter to the House Judiciary Committee. (Rep. Jordan posted on X that YouTube would “offer ALL creators previously kicked off YouTube due to political speech violations to return to the platform,” but it seems that may be a bit of an overstatement.) YouTube did note that an additional subset of creators will also be eligible for reinstatement through the pilot, but did not provide details about who would qualify.

    Let’s be real: This will inevitably continue for YouTube. When a user doesn’t get invited to the pilot program, they’re going to hear from the Online Right. When they choose not to reinstate a creator for whatever reason, they’re going to hear from the Online Right. When a reinstated creator has a video taken down because it violates current content policies, they’re going to hear from the Online Right. The company has opened the floodgates now, and the Right will make a point of holding the company to a promise that it technically didn’t make, as “an opportunity” to rejoin the platform is not the same as a guarantee, nor is it an invitation to ignore the rules.

    AJ Dellinger

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  • Bonta demands FCC chair ‘stop his campaign of censorship’ following Kimmel suspension

    California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta on Monday accused Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr of unlawfully intimidating television broadcasters into toeing a conservative line in favor of President Trump, and urged him to reverse course.

    In a letter to Carr, Bonta specifically cited ABC’s decision to pull “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air after Kimmel made comments about the killing of close Trump ally Charlie Kirk, and Carr demanded ABC’s parent company Disney “take action” against the late-night host.

    Bonta wrote that California “is home to a great many artists, entertainers, and other individuals who every day exercise their right to free speech and free expression,” and that Carr’s demands of Disney threatened their 1st Amendment rights.

    “As the Supreme Court held over sixty years ago and unanimously reaffirmed just last year, ‘the First Amendment prohibits government officials from relying on the threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion to achieve the suppression of disfavored speech,’” Bonta wrote.

    Carr and Trump have both denied playing a role in Kimmel’s suspension, alleging instead that it was due to his show having poor ratings.

    After Disney announced Monday that Kimmel’s show would be returning to ABC, Bonta said he was “pleased to hear ABC is reversing course on its capitulation to the FCC’s unlawful threats,” but that his “concerns stand.”

    He rejected Trump and Carr’s denials of involvement, and accused the administration of “waging a dangerous attack on those who dare to speak out against it.”

    “Censoring and silencing critics because you don’t like what they say — be it a comedian, a lawyer, or a peaceful protester — is fundamentally un-American,” while such censorship by the U.S. government is “absolutely chilling,” Bonta said.

    Bonta called on Carr to “stop his campaign of censorship” and commit to defending the right to free speech in the U.S., which he said would require “an express disavowal” of his previous threats and “an unambiguous pledge” that he will not use the FCC “to retaliate against private parties” for speech he disagrees with moving forward.

    “News outlets have reported today that ABC will be returning Mr. Kimmel’s show to its broadcast tomorrow night. While it is heartening to see the exercise of free speech ultimately prevail, this does not erase your threats and the resultant suppression of free speech from this past week or the prospect that your threats will chill free speech in the future,” Bonta wrote.

    After Kirk’s killing, Kimmel said during a monologue that the U.S. had “hit some new lows over the weekend, with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

    Carr responded on a conservative podcast, saying, “These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

    Two major owners of ABC affiliates dropped the show, after which ABC said it would be “preempted indefinitely.”

    Both Kirk’s killing and Kimmel’s suspension — which followed the cancellation of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” by CBS — kicked off a tense debate about freedom of speech in the U.S. Both Kimmel and Colbert are critics of Trump, while Kirk was an ardent supporter.

    Constitutional scholars and other 1st amendment advocates said the administration and Carr have clearly been exerting inappropriate pressure on media companies.

    Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Law School, said Carr’s actions were part of a broad assault on free speech by the administration, which “is showing a stunning ignorance and disregard of the 1st amendment.”

    Summer Lopez, the interim co-chief executive of PEN America, said this is “a dangerous moment for free speech” in the U.S. because of a host of Trump administration actions that are “pretty clear violations of the 1st Amendment” — including Carr’s threats but also statements about “hate speech” by Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and new Pentagon restrictions on journalists reporting on the U.S. military.

    She said Kimmel’s return to ABC showed that “public outrage does make a difference,” but that “it’s important that we generate that level of public outrage when the targeting is of people who don’t have that same prominence.”

    Carr has also drawn criticism from conservative corners, including from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — who is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees the FCC. He recently said on his podcast that he found it “unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying.”

    Cruz said he works closely with Carr, whom he likes, but that what Carr said was “dangerous as hell” and could be used down the line “to silence every conservative in America.”

    Kevin Rector

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