Nico Perrino

The judge expresses some frustration with the government for not backing up Rubio's earlier pubic suggestion that there was more to this story than an op-ed:

"To date, the government has neither rebutted the argument that retaliation for Ms. Ozturk’s op-ed was the motivation for her detention nor identified another specific reason for Ms. Ozturk’s detention … “

BREAKING: The judge in the Rümeysa Öztürk case just issued his written opinion after ordering her release from the bench last week.

The photo doesn't come close to the legal standard for a true threat.

Even still, the government will surely make Comey's life miserable for the foreseeable future.

As former FBI Director, he will be familiar with all the ways it can do so.

In short, the government still hasn't "put up" anything to suggest this case is about anything more than Khalil's protected speech.

Instead, it cites cases involving true threats and fighting words, which Khalil isn't alleged to have engaged in.

Maybe the government knows Khalil didn't do anything that would meet the Supreme Court's "Davis" standard for peer-on-peer discriminatory harassment?

No evidence. Nothing. The government just demands we assume its conclusion.

But, even if we assume the government's conclusion, the DOJ doesn't actually cite any legal standard for discriminatory harassment.

Thus far the government hasn't "reported" any unlawful conduct in the case, so I was hopeful there might finally be some concrete evidence introduced.

Alas, I was disappointed.

The government simply alleges Khalil "fostered a hostile environment for Jewish students."

The DOJ filed another revealing brief in the Mahmoud Khalil case late yesterday.

I was naturally interested in the section titled "Khalil’s As-Applied Challenged Does Not Account for His Reported Conduct."

DOJ 'weaponization' group will shame individuals it can't charge with crimes, new head says As Jeanine Pirro prepares to become U.S. attorney in D.C., Trump loyalist Ed Martin is taking over the Justice Department's effort to investigate Trump's investigators.

Perverting language is endemic to politics.

Here, the feds are weaponizing government in the name of opposing its weaponization.

It is not DOJ's proper role to play a modern day Joseph McCarthy and use the power of the state to engage in cancel culture.

Local Chicago guy calls for free speech during first press conference in new gig.

I was asked about this article by Michael Moynihan during a discussion at the Comedy Cellar.

Here was my response:

“Freedom has its risks,” he said. “Suppression of freedom is a prescription for disaster.”

So, are we obligated to defend someone else's rights? No.

Should we? Yes.

As Thomas More famously said in A Man for All Seasons — "I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”

Because he knew that minority groups like his own depend on a robust protection of individual rights for all.

Neier believed that “the chances are best for preventing a repetition of the Holocaust in a society where every incursion on freedom is resisted.”

Our rights are inextricably tied to the rights of others.

Nobody understood this better than former ACLU Executive Director Aryeh Neier.

He fled the Holocaust at age two and would later defend the rights of neo-Nazis to rally in Skokie, Illinois, then home to 6,000 Holocaust survivors.

Why?

In researching my forthcoming book on 20th century civil libertarianism, it's amazing how many of the advances for individual rights were led by Jewish men and women: Floyd Abrams, Ira Glasser, Nadine Strossen, David Goldberger, Norman Siegel, Harvey Silverglate, Nat Hentoff, the list goes on ...

There's an old saying, "If you call the ACLU with a free speech problem and a Jewish man with a Brooklyn accent answers the phone, you know you're in good hands."

Nobody is obligated to defend anybody else's rights.

Nevertheless, there is a proud tradition within the Jewish civil libertarian community of defending free speech rights for all speakers.

Some will argue that Rümeysa Öztürk has no free speech rights the government is bound to respect.

On the contrary, the whole premise of America is that certain rights are "unalienable" and that we establish governments to preserve these rights.

The court just ordered the government to provide an update at 5 p.m. today as it "continues to review its database and files for any other invocations."

It came up with three examples. And the Khalil rationale is low on evidence and high on vague allusions (incl. to clearly protected speech).

The court in the Khalil case ordered the gov't to report every instance where a Secretary of State invoked the "serious adverse foreign policy consequences" statute for a deportation action.

But as Cato's Will Duffield points out, the IEEPA was amended in 1988 and 94 to prohibit regulating "informational materials" under the IEEPA.

So Trump's tariff on foreign films is likely prohibited by the Constitution and federal statute.

President Trump's "national security" claim suggests he's assuming authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which he used to justify his earlier tariffs (even though the IEEPA doesn't explicitly mention a tariff power).

This is a tax targeting speech, which the First Amendment forbids.

The Stamp Act of 1765 was also a protectionist tax on speech — and its backlash inspired the American Revolution and our constitutional safeguards for free speech and a free press.

Some context:

President Trump's repeated targeting of Harvard's tax-exempt status is blatantly illegal under federal law.

The IRS must not be weaponized to target political and ideological opponents — not under Nixon, not under Obama, and not under Trump.

This is the same censorial game by a different name.

Don't fall for it. Stand up for free speech, regardless of who is censoring.

But even if it weren't, having an opinion — or reporting on others' opinions — is protected by the First Amendment.

How quickly we went from the "misinformation" justification for censorship to the "tortious interference," "consumer fraud," and "news distortion" justifications.

It's not "tortious interference" for The New York Times to report that Trump's lawsuit against Paramount is baseless.

Because it is.