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Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a measure into law Monday that gives him along with other Florida leaders the ability to label groups as domestic or foreign terrorist organizations and expel state university students who support them.
The law, criticized by free speech advocates, allows a top official at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to designate a group as a domestic or foreign terrorist organization, with the governor and three other members of the Florida Cabinet approving or rejecting the designation.
The plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden have won and received a court order vindicating their free speech rights. The dire predictions after the Supreme Court found insufficient standing to support a preliminary injunction in Murthy v. Missouri have failed to materialize. On March 25, the district court in Louisiana signed a consent decree in Missouri v. Biden admitting that the government wrongfully squelched Americans’ speech for years by strong-arming social media companies to eliminate disfavored speech. The decree allows New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) plaintiffs Jill Hines and Aaron Kheriaty, along with Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit and the Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general, to obtain sanctions should the surgeon general, CDC, or CISA attempt to do this again.
A Florida International University law student and former Miami Republican Party official has sued to stop the university from investigating his involvement in a group chat with fellow conservative students that was rife with racist and offensive language.
Abel Carvajal said in a lawsuit filed on Monday in Miami federal court that his speech in the group chat is protected under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment. Carvajal alleged that any disciplinary actions FIU pursues against him would be viewpoint-based discrimination.
Two weeks after introducing a policy that allowed administrators to secretly record faculty members during class, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill chancellor Lee Roberts told faculty he would nix the rule.
“The whole idea was to create clarity and reassurance,” Roberts said during a Faculty Senate meeting Friday. “That policy clearly has not achieved that aim.” Faculty members applauded at the news. During a Q&A, Roberts confirmed that no faculty members will be surreptitiously recorded until—and if—a new policy is put in place. Administrators will continue to evaluate whether the university needs such a policy, he said.
It’s like clockwork. War breaks out. Then come the calls for censorship. After the war with Iran began over the weekend, the group Columbia University Apartheid Divest tweeted “Marg bar Amrika” — Persian for “death to America.” The group is not a recognized student organization at Columbia University, and it’s unclear who operates its X account. But that didn’t stop demands for punishment.
The group’s tweet is unquestionably protected speech. The Supreme Court has twice held that even flag burning — often a visceral, symbolic expression of contempt for the nation — is constitutionally protected. As the Court famously declared, “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.”
The official charged with carrying out the Trump administration’s higher-education agenda has a particular diagnosis for what’s ailing colleges.
“We are here because the value of higher education is in question by too many — and at the center of that is our quality-assurance system,” Nicholas Kent, under secretary of education, said in a Tuesday interview. “It is undeniable that accreditors are failing institutions, they’re failing students, and they’re failing taxpayers.”
