Trump Fires Prosecutor For Not Bringing Charges Where There Were None:
The U.S. attorney investigating New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey said he had resigned on Friday, hours after President Trump called for his ouster.
Erik S. Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, had recently told senior Justice Department officials that investigators found insufficient evidence to bring charges against Ms. James and had also raised concerns about a potential case against Mr. Comey, according to officials familiar with the situation. Mr. Trump has long viewed Ms. James and Mr. Comey as adversaries and has repeatedly pledged retribution against law enforcement officials who pursued him.
President Donald Trump on Friday reiterated his claim that critical television coverage of him is “illegal” and pushed back on criticisms that his administration was taking actions that chill free speech.
“When 97 percent of the stories are bad about a person, it’s no longer free speech,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, complaining about an apparent asymmetry between his victory in the 2024 election and his treatment by media organizations. It was not immediately clear what statistics or laws he was referencing.
Some Rethugs, like Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson, are freaking out. For the wrong reason, of course:
“We shouldn’t be threatening government power to force him off air,” Cruz said. “It might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, but when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it.”
As if Democrats would use (cliche alert) every tool in their toolbox.
On September 19, 2025, the Pentagon announced sweeping new restrictions requiring journalists to pledge not to obtain or publish any information unless authorized by the government.
These restrictions follow moves by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Trump administration to limit press access, including removing major outlets from Pentagon offices and enforcing escorts.
The new regulations ban unprofessional behavior, limit reporters’ access and movement within the Pentagon, require them to exchange their badges for distinct passes, and empower the Pentagon to designate certain journalists as security risks and withdraw their press credentials.
The leader of the National Press Club criticized the new regulations as an attack on independent journalism, emphasizing its vital role in enabling public oversight of military activities and expenditures.
These measures could significantly reduce independent reporting on the military, limiting public access to vital information and resulting in coverage controlled solely by government-approved information.
Time For The ACLU To Weigh In. You too can weigh in with your contributions:
The government is villainizing and threatening to punish anyone who dares to express anything but unequivocal support for its political views. In the last week, lawmakers have bullied schools into taking disciplinary action against teachers who have criticized Charlie Kirk’s political views. Police officers are being put on leave for similar reasons. Federal agencies are disciplining public servants for expressing views contrary to those supported by the administration. Journalists and the media companies they work for have also felt a McCarthy-like pressure from the government, with popular late-night hosts losing their jobs after engaging with the ideas of a free speech provocateur whose tagline was “Prove me wrong.”
This forceful crackdown is part of a troubling pattern we’ve seen emerge during the Trump administration. In the last week, alone, administration officials — including Vice President JD Vance, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and Attorney General Pam Bondi — have encouraged the public to call the employers of anyone expressing views disfavored by the government; vowed to use every resource the Department of Justice and Homeland Security have to identify, disrupt, and destroy groups the administration perceives to be an enemy; and claimed that “there’s free speech and then there’s hate speech” while threatening to “absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”
At a moment when the government is using every tool at its disposal to push ideological conformity, here are five reminders about your First Amendment rights:
- The First Amendment protects the rights to free speech, belief, and association. The government may not retaliate against people or groups because they are criticizing someone’s political views — especially when the government is trying to silence views it doesn’t like.
- Censorship doesn’t change minds, but open conversation and debate do. To protect public debate, the First Amendment prohibits the government from punishing speech even when it is controversial or offensive. The Supreme Court put it best in Texas v. Johnson (1989): “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” Without that level of protection, any “debate” would be stale and stilted, taking away the opportunity for people to discuss ideas, persuade others, or make up their own minds.
- American law does not recognize “hate speech” as a legal category. While the First Amendment does not protect incitement — speech that is intended and likely to cause imminent violence, as established in Brandenburg v. Ohio, litigated by the ACLU — or true threats, an expression of a serious intent to commit a violent act against another person, speech considered to be hateful is not enough to qualify. Indeed, whether speech is hateful is typically a matter of opinion. As Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan II said in Cohen v. California (1971), “one man’s vulgarity is another man’s lyric.” Posting an offensive joke or condemning someone else’s views in harsh terms is generally protected by the First Amendment, regardless of how much someone else doesn’t want to hear it.
- The government cannot and should not respond to violence by infringing on First Amendment rights. Politically motivated killings not only take a loved one from their family and community, but also endanger the free and democratic exchange of ideas. Government actors should not further entrench that danger by using their power to suggest that certain ideas or criticism cannot be uttered in our society.
- Government officials calling for people who expressed their political views to lose their jobs or face other punishment is unconstitutional. As the Supreme Court ruled just last year in NRA v. Vullo — a case where a Democratic government official was pressuring businesses to not work with the NRA — government officials can’t use their power to pressure third parties into silencing or punishing speech they dislike. Full stop. Employers, media companies, and even state and local officials facing such pressure should remember that the First Amendment protects them from having to give in.
We close with words of, not wisdom, but, um, unintelligibility(?) from the Fascist-In-Chief:
On a day that the Washington Post posted this about Biden’s slowing decision-making process, we didn’t get this from the Washington Post:
That boy ain’t right.
What do you want to talk about?
