Perspectives; Thoughts; Comments; Opinions; Discussions

Posts tagged ‘Jonathan Turley’

“We May Be Nearing” when “the Resistance Looks Completely Different”: Democrat Leaders Ramp Up Resistance Rhetoric

By: Jonathan Turley | October 24, 2025

Despite calls for many Democratic politicians and pundits to temper their inflammatory rhetoric, this week has proven a further escalation in this dangerous form of rage rhetoric. DNC Chair Ken Martin just told MSNBC’s “The Beat” that “we may be nearing” the moment when “elections don’t matter and then the resistance looks completely different.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on people to “forcefully rise up.” With political violence on the rise, these leaders are clearly fueling the mob in hopes that they and their party can ride the wave of rage back into power. History suggests that it is a foolish delusion. Today’s revolutionaries quickly become tomorrow’s reactionaries.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who pictures himself brandishing a baseball bat has previously called upon people to “fight in the streets.” California Governor Gavin Newsom previously declared, “I’m going to punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.” Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger called upon her supporters to “Let your rage fuel you.” She then refused to withdraw her support for the Democratic candidate for Attorney General, Jay Jones, who once expressed his desire to kill his political opponents and his children.

In his podcast with co-host Al Hunt, James Carville was again spewing unhinged hate. He returned to treating Trump and others as Nazis and their supporters as “collaborators.” I previously criticized Carville for that analogy. He later attacked me.

Doubling down, Carville declared

“You know what we do with collaborators? I think these corporations, my fantasy dream is that this nightmare ends in 2029 and I think we ought to have radical things. I think they all ought to have their heads shaven, they should be put in orange pajamas and they should be marched down Pennsylvania Avenue and the public should be invited to spit on them.”

To be sure that his menacing words were not lost, he then added “The universities, the corporations, the law firms, all of these collaborators should be shaved, pajamaed and spit on.”

There was no later push back by his co-host Hunt or anyone else associated with the podcast.

As one of those Carville has already attacked, I expect he has a haircut and public humiliation in mind for me and a significant number of others deemed insufficiently committed to the resistance.

Even with the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the attempts on Trump and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, these politicians and pundits are still fueling the madness. Even with the sniper attack on ICE officers, they are still calling these law enforcement officers “Gestapo” and “Nazis.”

In my book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I write about rage and the uncomfortable truth for many engaging in rage rhetoric:

“What few today want to admit is that they like it. They like the freedom that it affords, the ability to hate and harass without a sense of responsibility. It is evident all around us as people engage in language and conduct that they repudiate in others. We have become a nation of rage addicts, flailing against anyone or anything that stands in opposition to our own truths. Like all addictions, there is not only a dependency on rage but an intolerance for opposing views. … Indeed, to voice free speech principles in a time of rage is to invite the rage of the mob.”

The appearance of guillotines has become commonplace in left-wing protests. From protests against Trump to those against Israel, the symbol of the Terror is being rolled out as a warning to those with opposing views: “We got the guillotine, you better run.”

It is the ultimate expression of an age of rage. There is no question that it is protected speech. However, it is part of what I have called “rage rhetoric,” and it is meant to inflame others. It suggests that the only solution to these issues is what the French called “the razor of the Republic.” In the French Revolution, the irony is that those who turned the guillotine into the symbol of revolution were themselves beheaded on the same platforms. Robespierre and others would ultimately be dispatched in the same atmosphere of rage and revelry.

As my new book discusses, most revolutions are driven by establishment figures who seek to capitalize on the wave of popular rage to gain power. We are seeing that today with many Democratic leaders using rage rhetoric to appeal to the far extremes of their political bases. Some have. Protesters are burning cars, dealerships, and even lawyers and reporters on the left are throwing Molotov cocktails at police.

In the end, today’s pseudo-revolutionaries are likely to find themselves tomorrow’s reactionaries. Leading mobs is rarely a safe place to be as more radical elements take hold of a movement. The result is an inexorable pattern that runs throughout history as revolution devours its own.

Category:

Media, Political, Society

Tagged with:

“What am I Willing to Burn”? Howard Journalism Professor Calls for Whites to Emulate John Brown

By: Jonathan Turley | October 23, 2025

Stacey Patton, professor of journalism at Howard University, has caused an uproar with her advice to white people who want to oppose this Administration. Patton told them that they had to follow the path of John Brown, who led a bloodbath before the Civil War that included killing white slave owners and pro-slave settlers.

In a blog titled “John Brown Didn’t Ask Enslaved People How to Be a Good White Ally,” Patton told white liberals to stop asking how to be a better “ally” to minorities. She writes:

“It’s a question that always lands heavy. Not because I doubt their sincerity, but because the question itself is still a form of protection that centers the asker’s confusion instead of the target’s danger. It’s a request to be taught, forgiven, and reassured, again and again. It’s another round of homework assigned to the wounded…It’s exhausting as hell because it’s still a form of emotional outsourcing.”

Instead, she tells whites to become modern John Browns and presumably unleash a new era akin to “Bleeding Kansas” and the infamous Pottawatomie massacre.

Brown was a militant slave abolitionist during the pre-Civil War “Bleeding Kansas” period. In 1856, he orchestrated the Pottawatomie massacre. He and fellow abolitionists dragged five Kansas settlers, at least three of whom were pro-slavery sympathizers, out of their homes and executed them.

Brown was eventually captured after his raid on Harpers Ferry and hanged.

Patton wants whites to emulate Brown, who “saw the horror for what it was and decided that ending this racist f*ckery mattered more than being understood.” What clearly makes Brown stand out for Patton is his violence: “So when white allies ask, ‘What can I do?’ here’s the answer: Be like John Brown. Ask yourself, what am I willing to burn so somebody else can breathe?”

Of course, a hanging might be a bit stiff for many liberals longing to be Antifa. So, Patton acknowledges, “If you don’t want to die like John Brown, fine. But understand that somebody always does.”

Not surprisingly, the professor has little time for those who want to embrace the alternative, non-violent lessons of Martin Luther King:

“Now, white liberals love to quote Martin Luther King Jr. because he is a man that can be polished into civility. But John Brown doesn’t fit the script. He was a m’fukin’ gangsta! He didn’t ask for gradual change, or healing, or bipartisan cooperation. He saw a nation addicted to violence and knew that moral persuasion alone couldn’t sober it.”

Patton’s column comes after the controversy involving the John Brown Gun Club, which was connected to flyers appearing on campuses like Georgetown reading “Hey, Fascists! Catch!” The phrase was written on unused bullet casings found after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. It went on to proclaim, “The only political group that celebrates when Nazis die.”

The recent charges against Benjamin Song, an Antifa member, also raised the group. Song was charged with three counts of attempted murder of federal agents in addition to three counts of discharging a firearm stemming from an ambush-style shooting at an ICE facility in Alvarado, Texas. A dozen others were charged in the plot. He was also reportedly a member of the John Brown Gun Club.

Notably, this is a journalism professor in a school that has long been associated with advocacy journalism and the controversial hire of former New York Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones.

We previously discussed the release of the results of interviews with over 75 media leaders by former executive editor for The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward. They concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and even harmful. Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle, said it plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.”

Downie recounted how news leaders today.

“Believe that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading “bothsidesism” in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change and many other subjects. And, in today’s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.”

Now, objectivity is virtually synonymous with prejudice. Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor at the Associated Press, declared, “It’s objective by whose standard? … That standard seems to be White, educated, and fairly wealthy.”

Stanford journalism professor Ted Glasser insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.” He declared that “Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.”

Lauren Wolfe, the fired freelance editor for the New York Times, has not only gone public to defend her pro-Biden tweet but published a piece titled “I’m a Biased Journalist and I’m Okay With That.”

Former New York Times writer (and now Howard University Journalism Professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones is a leading voice for advocacy journalism.

Indeed, Hannah-Jones has declared, “all journalism is activism.” Her 1619 Project has been challenged as deeply flawed and she has a long record as a journalist of intolerance, controversial positions on rioting, and fostering conspiracy theories. Hannah-Jones would later help lead the effort at the Times to get rid of an editor and apologize for publishing a column from Sen. Tom Cotton as inaccurate and inflammatory.

Yet, Howard saw Hannah-Jones as perfect for a chair in its journalism school.

Professor Patton seems to have left not just neutrality but sanity behind with her implied support for violent action. It is unclear how such views impact her journalism courses at Howard University. However, she has featured prominently in The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Chronicle of Higher Education as well as ABC News, CNN, and MSNBC.

Category:

Education, political violence

Tagged with:

Jimmy Kimmel and Making Book Burning Fun Again

By: Jonathan Turley | October 21, 2025

Jimmy Kimmel is back on television by less than popular demand. Kimmel’s ratings are hardly robust (Kimmel pulls in 1.85 million in comparison to Gutfeld! at 3.2 million). Still, his suspension for spreading disinformation about the killer of Charlie Kirk became a cause celebre on the left. Kimmel continues to air nightly screeds against Trump and conservatives. Of course, he is hardly unique in appealing to an echo-chambered audience. However, this week Kimmel showed children being read Eric Trump’s book by a drag queen. What was most disturbing was not the use of the children to echo talking points on how great drag queens are but showing them throwing Trump’s book into a woodchipper. It appears that nothing is funnier for the modern left than a good book burning or chipping.

Trixie Mattel led the “Drag Queen Storytime” with a group of kids in the satiric treatment of Trump’s book. Mattel asked the kids questions like “Do I scare any of you?” eliciting a response: “You just look amazing. Why would that be scary?”

The children are given choices to read like Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich.

It may be the most bizarre element of the skit, even bordering on the ironically humorous. After all, Mattel was portraying the Trump Administration as Nazis but was about to show the children how to destroy books that have views that they do not like. That may not bring back memories of collectible Nazi spoons, but it does bring back memories of Nazi book burning.

The audience delights as one child says that she would “kick” Donald Trump “in the…” before the show bleeped out the rest of her response.

Mattel then shows the kids how to “make excellent confetti” out of a book that they do not like with a giant wood chipper outside of the studio. It is the type of comedic styling that would have had Joseph Goebbels rolling on the ground laughing.

For the free-speech community, there are few more disgraceful images as the burning or destruction of books because you do not agree with the author’s viewpoints. To see children participating in such an exercise is even more troubling. It is easy to dismiss this as simply another bizarre skit on a show struggling for ratings. However, some of us have been raising concerns for years about the embrace of the American left in effective (or even actual) book burning. Some on the right have also embraced book burning.

Cancel campaigns of conservative speakers were not enough for many on the left. They have pressured companies not to publish books by conservatives, including figures like Justice Amy Coney Barrett. It is far easier (and environmentally sound) to ban opposing books than to physically burn them. However, the sentiment is the same. Rather than responding to those who oppose you, you fight to silence them and prevent others from reading them.

Books by JK Rowling have been burned because of her opposition to certain transgender policies that she views as undermining women’s rights.

That is why the image of children happily tossing books into a woodchipper is so disturbing for many in the free speech community. This is not just satire but reality as many push to destroy books with opposing views. None of this means that there is any crime in this comedic sketch. Even book burning is protected speech. Yet, the humor is missed by many of us who have been objecting to the rise of a new generation of self-righteous book burners in America.

Category:

Media

Tagged with:

Antifa Denial: How a Violent Anti-Free Speech Group Became a Non-Entity in American Politics

By: Jonathan Turley | October 16, 2025

Below is my column on the rise of Antifa deniers in Washington. Once embraced and even marketed on the left, Antifa has become the group that must not be named as political violence rises across the country. It does not matter that radicals identify as Antifa, coordinate protests, carry Antifa flags, wear signature clothing, and espouse the same ideas from the “Antifa handbook.” There have even been people elected as Antifa representatives. Yet, the current spin is to pretend that they do not exist as a single organization to deflect the debate over violence on the left. Even with the past and current FBI directors saying that they exist as a group, politicians are mocking those who object to Antifa, even journalists and others targeted by its members.

This week, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) claimed that “nobody” knows what the left-wing terrorist organization Antifa is and that it does not exist. However, he previously promoted the “Antifa Handbook” in 2018 and praised the group as terrifying Trump. Now, however, he has joined the chorus of Antifa denials as political violence rises around the country.

Here is the column:

Roughly seventy years ago, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover famously declared, “There is no organized crime in America.” Hoover’s stubborn denial of the existence of the mafia continued despite ample evidence to the contrary, from arrests to congressional testimony.

Many have speculated on why Hoover maintained his stubborn denial. Perhaps, they say, he was trying to avoid the political embarrassment of long ignoring the single largest criminal network in the country.

Many today seem to be adopting a Hoover-esque wilful blindness about another violent group: Antifa. Politicians and pundits are denying that the left-wing anarchist group exists, mocking President Trump’s designation of Antifa as a terrorist organization.

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) seemed to morph into Hoover before our very eyes, including a posting in which he challenged anyone to “name one member of ‘Antifa.’” Former House Judiciary Chair Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) was widely ridiculed for denying the existence of Antifa. Others on the left have joined Goldman in this absurd claim. Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel committed part of his monologue to assure viewers that Antifa is no more than a mythical “chupacabra.” “You understand there is no Antifa,” he said. “This is an entirely made-up organization.”

I have testified about Antifa before Congress, run columns on the organization for over a decade, and wrote a book discussing Antifa. I did oppose declaring Antifa a terrorist organization due to free speech concerns, but I also know that it is very real.

By design, Antifa avoids typical leadership hierarchies and organizational structures. Antifa was first created in the 1920s, associated with the Weimar-era German communist group Antifaschistische Aktion.

It is easy to satisfy Goldman’s demand in naming some members, since they self-identify as members of Antifa. One such student came from my campus and proclaimed that Antifa was winning after his arrest for property destruction. When another radical was arrested after taking an axe to a congressional office, he self-identified as a member of Antifa. Before Kyle Benjamin Douglas Calvert, 26, implanted an IED device outside of Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office in downtown Montgomery, he put up stickers reading “support your local Antifa.” Numerous Antifa members have been arrested, including some who claimed to be journalists.

Many protesters belong to Antifa groups that have names like “Rose City Antifa” and offshoots like Love and Rage and Mexico’s Amor Y Rabia. Antifa members have been elected to the French and European parliaments.

Rutgers Professor Mark Bray’s “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” called by some the “Antifa bible,” explains that the group is united in its opposition to free speech. “Most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists,” he writes. “From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.”

Law enforcement officials like former FBI Director Christopher Wray have long debunked the deniers like Goldman. “Antifa is a real thing,” said Wray.

Ironically, when many on the left are not denying its existence, they are rallying their members or actually selling Antifa merchandise. Former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison — now the Minnesota attorney general — proclaimed that Antifa would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump. His own son, Minneapolis City Council member Jeremiah Ellison, declared his allegiance to Antifa in the heat of the protests this summer.

But ,with Antifa violence on the rise, Democratic leaders have gone back to denying its existence even as Antifa deploys its signature black hoodies and masks.

Indeed, some liberal activists admit to having coordinated violent protests with Antifa groups. For example, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Dwayne Dixon was a member of the radical gun club Redneck Revolt, a group recently referenced in flyers quoting the assassin of Charlie Kirk to rally the left. The flyers read, “Hey, Fascist! Catch! The only political group that celebrates when Nazis die.”

During a panel at Harvard University, Dixon reportedly admitted that an Antifa-linked group requested his gun club to provide security during the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia: “Prior to that day, as the planning for the defense of Charlottesville proceeded, the local Anarchist People of Color Collective … had requested that Redneck Revolt be present to secure Justice Park for a wide variety of activists who were expected to assemble.”

The denial of the existence of an actual group is meant to deflect the discussion of the rising violence from the left, as these same politicians fuel the rage with reckless rhetoric. But they’re not so good at keeping their story straight. While whipping up the mob with claims that democracy is dying and comparing their opponents to Nazis, they deny the existence of the very group that politicians like Ellison praise for targeting conservatives.

Hoover declined to admit the mafia existed until, on November 14, 1957, dozens of mobsters were found meeting in a farmhouse in Apalachin, New York.

What is different is that Antifa has repeatedly had such farmhouse moments, with prosecutions revealing a national movement with self-identified members. So why the denial? These are the shock troops for some politicians who think that they can use the violent group for political advantage. They are mistaken. Antifa is unlikely to have much use for establishment liberals once it gains more power.

Until then, Antifa can count on the Goldmans of the world to give them cover in denying that they exist.

In the film “The Usual Suspects,” the character Verbal Kint offered this explanation for the invisible villain Keyser Söze: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.”

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of the bestselling book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

Category:

Crime, Law, political violence

Tagged with:

“Race-Based Remedies Should Have an End Point”: Justices Appear Poised to Issue Historic Ruling on the Voting Rights Act

By: Jonathan Turley | October 16, 2025

Yesterday, the Supreme Court held the long-awaited argument in Louisiana v. Callais, considering an appeal of Louisiana’s congressional map. The two majority-black districts are being challenged under the 15th Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment as unconstitutionally gerrymandered on the basis of race. The case could result in a rejection of race-based congressional districting under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Notably, the Louisiana case was previously argued, but on the last day before the summer recess, the court issued an order setting the case for a second oral argument in the 2025-26 term. It later directed the litigants to file briefs addressing:

“whether the State’s intentional creation of a second majority-minority district violates either the 14th Amendment or the 15th Amendment, which bars the government from denying or restricting voting rights based on race.”

On Wednesday, I was addressing the annual conference of chief judges, speaking on the Supreme Court. I discussed some of the current cases, including Louisiana v. Callais. I noted that there may now be a majority in favor of a significant change on Section 2, but that some of us would be listening for Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett as indicators of the Court balance.

We did hear from Kavanaugh and Barrett and the challengers could take heart in the skepticism that they expressed over the indefinite use of race in such districting.

The oral argument took an interesting turn when Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson sought to push back on the need to show a discriminatory intent. She interjected:

“I guess I’m thinking of it, of the fact that remedial action, absent discriminatory intent, is really not a new idea in the civil rights laws. And my kind of paradigmatic example of this is something like the ADA. Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act against the backdrop of a world that was generally not accessible to people with disabilities.‘

“And so, it was discriminatory in effect because these folks were not able to access these buildings. And it didn’t matter whether the person who built the building or the person who owned the building intended for them to be exclusionary. That’s irrelevant.‘

“Congress said the facilities have to be made equally open to people with disabilities if readily possible. I guess I don’t understand why that’s not what’s happening here. The idea in Section 2 is that we are responding to current-day manifestations of past and present decisions that disadvantage minorities and make it so that they don’t have equal access to the voting system.’

“They’re disabled. In fact, we use the word disabled in Milligan. We say that’s a way in which you see that these processes are not equally open.”

Justice Jackson appears to be referring to this paragraph in Allen v. Milligan:

“Individuals thus lack an equal opportunity to participate in the political process when a State’s electoral structure operates in a manner that “minimize[s] or cancel[s] out the[ir] voting strength.” Id., at 47. That occurs where an individual is disabled from “enter[ing] into the political process in a reliable and meaningful manner” “in the light of past and present reality, political and otherwise.” White, 412 U. S., at 767, 770. A district is not equally open, in other words, when minority voters face—unlike their majority peers—bloc voting along racial lines, arising against the backdrop of substantial racial discrimination within the State, that renders a minority vote unequal to a vote by a nonminority voter.” (emphasis added)

The court was not making an analogy to the ADA (though, in fairness to Justice Jackson, she was not suggesting that it made that point). It is also worth noting that Chief Justice John Roberts wrote:

“We have understood the language of §2 against the background of the hard-fought compromise that Congress struck. To that end, we have reiterated that §2 turns on the presence of discriminatory effects, not discriminatory intent.”

Milligan was deeply fractured and the question is whether five justices would now elect to set aside or reframe some of these former rulings.

During the oral argument, Roberts seemed to do precisely that in the use of Milligan, remarking “That case took the existing precedent as a given, it was a case in which we were considering Alabama’s particular challenge based on … what turned out to be an improper evidentiary showing.”

Moreover, Justice Kavanaugh (who was one of the concurrences in Milligan) suggested that we might have reached “the end point” on such race-based districting: “[T]his Court’s cases in a variety of contexts have said that race-based remedies are permissible for a period of time, sometimes for a long period of time, decades in some cases, but … they should not be indefinite and should have a[n] end point.”

Now, back to the ADA analogy.

The disabled face permanent and ongoing physical disabilities in accessing buildings and spaces. While Jackson was stressing that intent does not matter when it comes to discrimination against the disabled, the question of the other justices is whether the use of race-based districts will continue indefinitely. The ADA is permanent because the disabilities are permanent. The analogy plays into the very point of justices like Kavanaugh on whether race-based districting would continue ad infinitum.

If the oral argument is a reflection of the eventual votes of the justices, there now seems to be a working majority of justices willing to bring “an end point” to race-based districting. The result would have tremendous legal and political impact.

Legally, one of the most litigated areas of elections would be largely curtailed. The Voting Rights Act would still be used to prevent measures to inhibit voting and to protect the right to vote for every citizen. However, the constant districting controversies over guaranteeing majority black districts would come to an end.

The move would also be a major additional move of the Roberts court to eliminate the use of race-based classifications in society from college admissions to election districting. In a 2007 case, Chief Justice John Roberts stated that position most succinctly by declaring that the “way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

Politically, any loss of such gerrymandering on the basis of race could impact the Democrats who hold the vast majority of these districts.

Of course, the Court could again fracture as it did in Milligan on the rationale for any opinion. What was notable about the oral argument is that there appeared to be at least five justices considering a threshold rejection of race-based districting under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Category:

Law

Tagged with:

Virginia Attorney General Candidate Jay Jones Accused of Additional Violent Rhetoric

By: Jonathan Turley | October 7, 2025

Jay Jones, Virginia’s Democratic attorney general candidate, is under fire for shocking statements that expressed a desire to kill political opponents and their young “fascist” children. Despite the violent rhetoric, Democrats like Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in Virginia, have stood by Jones and continue to campaign for his election. Now, however, Jones is accused of making disturbing comments about the benefit of killing a few cops as a warning to others. It is unclear whether the alleged comments were made in writing (as were earlier comments), and Jones has denied them.

Virginia has become a testing ground for rage rhetoric as Democrats stand by Jones and refuse to call for his withdrawal. Spanberger herself was criticized recently for calling on supporters to “Let your rage fuel you.”

What is notable about this latest allegation is that it is coming from the very same legislator who discussed the prior statements, which Jones admitted were true.

According to the New York Post, Republican Del. Carrie Coyner told Virginia Scope on Monday, Jones used a 2020 discussion about qualified immunity to suggest that a few dead cops might be a good thing. She recounted how Jones allegedly said, “Well, maybe if a few of them died, that they would move on, not shooting people, not killing people.”

Jones denied the new allegations: “I did not say this. I have never believed and do not believe that any harm should come to law enforcement, period.”

It is unclear whether Coyner has proof of the new alleged statements.

Jones has not threatened a defamation lawsuit over the allegation. If untrue, the statement could constitute defamation as impugning Jones’s reputation and veracity as a public figure. However, as a public official, he is subject to the New York Times v. Sullivan standard and would have to show a knowing falsehood or reckless disregard for the truth on the part of Rep. Coyner.

Category:

Law, Political, political violence

Tagged with:

“Let Your Rage Fuel You”: Politicians and Pundits Embrace Rage Politics

By: Jonathan Turley | September 29, 2025

Below is my column in the Hill on the rise of rage politics. There was barely a respite from the rage rhetoric after the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the sniper attack on the ICE facility. Gov. Gavin Newsom is back this week to calling his opponents “fascists” while other Democratic politicians are back to calling ICE “fascists.”

Here is the column:

“Let your rage fuel you.” Those words from Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger captured what I have called “rage politics” in America.

Across the country, politicians and pundits are fueling rage, encouraging voters to embrace it. If you turn on the television, you would think that Darth Sidious had taken over: “Give in to your anger. With each passing moment, you grow stronger.”

I do not think for a second that Spanberger supports violence. She was sharing with voters the “sage advice” of her mother, which she said she has applied in her political career. However, the anger is all around us.

Recently, I debated Harvard Law Professor Michael Klarman, who declared, “I am very angry” and “I am enraged.” In denouncing ICE as “thugs” and saying Trump supporters are “fascists,” Klarman explained that the rage had a purpose: “to shake people out of their insomnia.”

Rage, however, comes at a cost in politics. I recently wrote a book about rage and free speech, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.” It discusses our history of rage politics and how it has led to violence and crackdowns. Rage gives people a license to say and do things that they would not otherwise say or do. It is addictive, it is contagious, and it is dangerous.

We are seeing the result of rage rhetoric all around us. That includes the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the sniper attack on ICE agents in Texas this week, in addition to violent protests around the country. Rage allows you to deny the humanity of those you disagree with. Recently, two sisters were caught on video destroying a memorial to Kirk. Kerri and Kaylee Rollo were later arrested. However, they immediately opened a GoFundMe site to call for donations for “fighting fascism” and Kaylee wrote “my sibling was fired from her job.” Hundreds of donors gave the sisters thousands of dollars as a reward for the latest such attack on a Kirk memorial.

For many months, some of us have warned that violent rhetoric was crossing over into political violence. Democratic politicians have spent months ratcheting up the rhetoric against ICE agents, who have suffered more than a 1,000 percent increase in attacks, including the recent sniper attack.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), the day before that attack, signed a law that purports to bar ICE agents from wearing masks in California. He openly mocked them, asking, “What are you afraid of?“

Joshua Jahn answered that question the following day in Texas when he fired at ICE personnel, only to shoot three of their detainees.

Previously, Newsom had warned voters that Trump was building ICE into a personal army that might be used to suppress voting in the upcoming midterm elections. “Do you think ICE is not going to show up around voting and polling booths to chill participation?” he said.

Others added to the rage rhetoric by declaring the impending death of democracy and lashing out at ICE. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), who has used violent rhetoric in the past, declared that ICE agents were acting like “slave patrols” in hunting down immigrants in the streets.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) used a commencement address to denounce “Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo is scooping folks up off the streets. They’re in unmarked vans, wearing masks, being shipped off to foreign torture dungeons… just grabbed up by masked agents, shoved into those vans, and disappeared.”

Others, like Boston Mayor Michele Wu, echoed the claims that ICE personnel are “Nazis” and called ICE Trump’s “secret police.”

The rage rhetoric (and claims of a fascist takeover) has been adopted by a wide range of Democratic politicians, often using the same catchphrases of an “authoritarian playbook.” In our debate, Professor Klarman warned that this was all “authoritarianism rooted in old-fashioned white supremacy.”

As discussed in my book, politicians and pundits have long sought to ride the wave of rage into power or influence. Rage is a powerful narcotic. The problem is when it becomes an addiction. There is always a certain percentage of the population that will believe such hyperbolic claims.

Those are the people who end up trying to kill jurists like Justice Brett Kavanaugh or politicians like Trump. It was also seen in the assassination of Democratic politicians earlier this year in Minnesota.

With the recent assassination and attacks on ICE, some are expressing regret. One of the most telling was Hillary Clinton on MSNBC, who said that we should “stop demonizing each other” while blaming “the right” for most of the hate. It was a curious call from a woman who called Trump supporters “deplorables” and suggested that they should collectively be forced into “deprogramming” as a cult. Just before the interview, Clinton had embraced the “fascism” mantra and, during the interview, she went right back to attacking Republicans.

A new poll shows that 71 percent view political violence as a serious problem, but the rage rhetoric continues unabated.

The perfunctory calls for lowering the temperature after the latest shooting are unlikely to last. Key figures in public life keep injecting rage directly into the veins of American politics. It is hard to go “cold turkey” in breaking that addiction, but you first have to want to do so. There is no indication that our rage-addicts are anywhere near a step-program for recovery. If history is any measure, this fever will only break when voters clearly reject the politics of rage.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of the bestselling book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

Category:

Hate, intolerance, Media, Political, political violence

Tagged with:

“Unacceptable and Wrong”: Google Admits Censorship in Coordination with the Biden Administration

By: Jonathan Turley | September 24, 2025

Recently, I wrote a column about Meta’s restoration of free speech protections after the company admitted to censoring users on platforms like Facebook. The company also revealed that it was pressured by the Biden Administration to conduct such censorship. Now, Google has taken the same step in restoring a number of YouTube accounts and pledging to show greater respect for free speech.

Google made the disclosure in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH):

“Reflecting the Company’s commitment to free expression, YouTube will provide an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform if the company terminated their channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 and elections integrity policies that are no longer in effect.”

This is another major victory for free speech. Google specifically acknowledged past political censorship and stated that it “values conservative voices on its platform.”

The company, for the first time, admitted that it yielded to comprehensive pressure from the Biden Administration to censor Americans. It acknowledged that the Biden censorship pressure was “unacceptable and wrong” and pledged to resist such pressure in the future.

Meta has substantially reduced censorship by replicating the approach of Elon Musk at X. These changes are a testament to Musk’s legacy in the restoration of free speech on social media. As I previously noted, we need companies like Facebook and Google. These are companies that are big enough to stand up to the European Union (EU) and its unrelenting campaign against free speech.

The censorship on Google and YouTube had a harmful impact beyond the loss of free speech. It suppressed opposing views on Covid policies from the efficacy of masks to the need to shut down our schools.

The very figures claiming to battle “disinformation” were suppressing opposing views that have now been vindicated as credible. It was not only the lab theory. In my recent book, I discuss how signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration were fired or disciplined by their schools or associations for questioning COVID-19 policies.

Some experts questioned the efficacy of surgical masks, the scientific support for the six-foot rule and the necessity of shutting down schools. The government has now admitted that many of these objections were valid and that it did not have hard science to support some of the policies. While other allies in the West did not shut down their schools, we never had any substantive debate due to the efforts of this alliance of academic, media and government figures.

Not only did millions die from the pandemic, but the United States is still struggling with the educational and mental health consequences of shutting down all our public schools. That is the true cost of censorship when the government works with the media to stifle scientific debate and public disclosures.

The disclosure is also a blow to many Democratic members of Congress who long attacked witnesses, including myself, who testified against the coordinated censorship by corporate and government officials. Before the release of the Twitter files, members insisted that there was no evidence of such coordination. Some still deny such coordination despite multiple companies now confirming it.

The greatest challenge, however, still lies ahead for these companies. The EU remains the greatest threat to free speech facing Americans. After Musk purchased X with a pledge to restore free speech, figures like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded that the EU use its infamous Digital Services Act to force X to censor Americans.

The EU has threatened Musk with confiscatory fines that could surpass $1 billion, according to The New York Times.

The Trump administration has warned the EU about its efforts to censor Americans. Meta and Google can now join X in creating a formidable corporate alliance for free speech. For the first time, the free speech community might have a coalition of government and corporate allies that could stand up to the EU.

There will likely remain a degree of mistrust from the free speech community towards these companies after years of censorship and stonewalling. However, we also need to accept our allies where and when we can find them. Free speech is in a free fall in Europe and many on the left are encouraging similar censorship laws for the United States. We need these companies and should support them as they take meaningful actions in favor of free speech.

So, bravo, Google, bravo.

Here is the full letter: Google Letter

Category:

censorship, Democrats, Free Speech, Political

Tagged with:

Federal Judge Rules for Parents in Case Involving Concealment of Child’s Gender Changes

By: Jonathan Turley | September 19, 2025

There is a major ruling, Mead v. Rockford Public School Dist., a potentially precedent-setting case on parental rights in our public schools. Judge Paul Maloney (W.D. Mich.) ruled that Plaintiffs Dan and Jennifer Mead could move forward with their claims that the Rockford Public School district concealed changes to the gender identification of their biological daughter, identified as G.M. As I have previously written, parental rights are shaping up as a major battleground for the Supreme Court after years of decisions in the lower court undermining parental controls and disclosures.

A recent legal decision captured this growing divide. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit ruled last month that parents had no protected right to be informed when their children change their gender identity in public school.

In Foote v. Feliciano, Marissa Silvestri and Stephen Foote sued Baird Middle School in Ludlow, Massachusetts, after they learned that school administrators did not inform them that their 11-year-old child had self-declared as “genderqueer” and that teachers and staff were using a new name and new pronouns for the student.

The parents were initially told only that their child was experiencing mental health difficulties, including depression. Silvestri said they would seek mental health support for their child and asked that administrators “not have any private conversations with (the Student) in regards to this matter.”

The parents later learned that the school’s staff had continued to meet with their child without their knowledge, implemented the change in gender identity and took active measures not to reveal the change to them (including using the student’s birth name in communications with the parents). The school, without the parents’ knowledge, arranged for changes in everything from the use of male bathrooms to the exclusive use of the child’s new name in class.

The district court in Massachusetts denied the parents’ request for a trial and granted a summary dismissal in favor of the schools.

A century ago, the nation’s highest court ruled in Pierce v. Society of Sisters that “the child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”

In its 2000 Troxel v. Granville decision, the court recognized “the fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children.”

There is no greater natural right than the right to control the upbringing of our children. This right was not granted to us by the grace of the state. It rests with us as human beings. It is part of a panoply of natural rights embraced by the framers − a commitment made nearly 250 years ago in our Declaration of Independence.

The right prevailed in Michigan in this critical threshold ruling. While denying a free exercise claim, the court agreed that there was a viable Fourteenth Amendment claim:

The right of parents to direct their children’s upbringing originated from three Supreme Court cases: Meyer v. Nebraska (1923), Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), and Farrington v. Tokushige (1927)…. The Court affirmed the life of this right in Troxel v. Granville (2000). There, the Court held that “the interest of parents in the care, custody, and control of their children [] is perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interest recognized by this Court.” … In addition, parents have a fundamental right to control their child’s health. See Parham v. J.R. (1979). “The law’s concept of the family rests on a presumption that parents possess what a child lacks in maturity, experience, and capacity for judgment required for making life’s difficult decisions.” So “[s]urely, [a parent’s right] includes a ‘high duty’ to recognize symptoms of illness and to seek and follow medical advice.” …

The court noted that the parents were alleging a key element in the case that the district intentionally deceived them and found that these “allegations show some amount of coercion or interference from the district, which implicates Plaintiffs’ right to make fundamental decisions for G.M.”

Bravo, Judge Maloney.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

The Three Rs: Clinton and Weingarten Return to Republicans, Rage, and Recrimination

By: Jonathan Turley | September 19, 2025

Many people are calling out former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for a posting supporting American Federation of Teachers (AFT) chief Randi Weingarten’s new book in which she paints her political opponents as “fascists.” The timing was flagged as, at best, tone deaf in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a shooter who wrote fascist references on his bullets and was clearly radicalized by such rage rhetoric. For me, the timing was most notable in how Weingarten and Clinton are again pushing their extreme rhetoric as a new report emerged showing the utter failure of our schools to actually educate our children. Weingarten and Clinton cannot be bothered by the long-standing declines in education. They are returning to the three Rs: Republicans, Rage, and Recrimination.

Weingarten is “credited” with turning the teacher’s union into an extension of the Democratic Party, often appearing at political rallies with her signature high-volume screeds:

Clinton pushed the use of education to paint opponents as fascists: “Congratulations to my friend [Weingarten] on ‘Why Fascists Fear Teachers.’ From banning books to controlling curriculum, authoritarians go after public education because it’s a cornerstone of democracy.”

Schools have become the cornerstone of a political strategy as opposed to actual education. As Weingarten and Clinton were pushing the fascism attacks, a new study showed just how badly teacher’s unions and administrators have failed our students.

While Weingarten and other unions have poured millions into democratic and liberal campaigns, they have done little to improve education for millions of students.

High school students, especially 12th graders, hit record lows this year, according to a new report from the National Assessment of Education Progress. The new report, known as the Nation’s Report Card, shows almost half of high school seniors are now testing below basic levels in math and reading, and approximately 35% are at or above a proficient reading level, while 32% of them had a below “basic” reading proficiency. In math, only about 22% of 12th graders are performing at or above proficiency standards.

A review of eighth graders and their science ability found 31% of them were performing at proficient or above proficient standards.

However, it is time to again attack your opponents as fascists in the name of education.

Teachers and school boards are killing the institution of public education by treating children and parents more like captives than consumers. They are force-feeding social and political priorities, including passes for engaging in approved protests.

Faced with abysmal scores, particularly for minority students, school boards and union officials have called for lowering or suspending proficiency standards or declared meritocracy to be a form of “white supremacy.” Gifted and talented programs are being eliminated in the name of “equity.”

At the same time, we have previously discussed how schools have been dropping the use of standardized tests to achieve diversity goals in admissions. Cal State dropped standardized testing “to level the playing field” for minority students.

The result is that colleges and universities are dealing with students who lack proficiency in basic subjects. This year, Harvard University was forced to introduce remedial, high-school-level math courses for its students due to falling scholastic standards.

The problem with a new diatribe about fascists is that many of your students may have little understanding of that term. Social studies proficiency has also been failing for years.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Charlie Kirk and the Age of Rage

Commentary by Jonathan Turley | September15, 2025

Below is my column in the Hill on the murder of Charlie Kirk, the latest victim of our age of rage. The evidence of Antifa scribblings and indoctrination of the shooter came as no surprise. For months, some of us have been warning Democratic leaders about their dangerous rhetoric and how it would be received by the most radical elements in the Antifa movement.

Here is the column:

“Prove me wrong.”

For years, that tagline of Charlie Kirk and his group, Turning Point USA, enraged many on the left. In “an age of rage,” nothing is more triggering for the perpetually angry than an invitation to debate issues.

Indeed, someone has now killed him for it.

What is most chilling about the assassination is that it was not in the slightest degree surprising. This follows two attempted assassinations of President Trump and the killing of a pair of Minnesota politicians.

I heard of the assassination in Prague as I prepared to speak about the age of rage and the growing attacks on free speech. I was profoundly saddened by the news. I knew Charlie and respected his effort to challenge the orthodoxy on college campuses. We all have received regular death threats (and Charlie more than most), but there is still a hope that even the most deranged will leave these threats at the ideation rather than the action stage.This killer left Charlie’s wife, Erika, and her two young children as the latest victims of senseless violence against someone who refused to be silenced.

We do not have to know much about the shooter to recognize the rage. The person who killed Charlie did not view him as a father or even as a person. That is the transformative, enabling effect of rage.

In my book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I write about rage and the uncomfortable truth for many engaging in rage rhetoric: “What few today want to admit is that they like it. They like the freedom that it affords, the ability to hate and harass without a sense of responsibility. It is evident all around us as people engage in language and conduct that they repudiate in others. We have become a nation of rage addicts, flailing against anyone or anything that stands in opposition to our own truths. Like all addictions, there is not only a dependency on rage but an intolerance for opposing views. … Indeed, to voice free speech principles in a time of rage is to invite the rage of the mob.”

Charlie was brave, and he was brash. He refused to yield to the threats while encouraging others to speak out on our campuses.

He was particularly hated for holding a mirror to the face of higher education, exposing the hate and hypocrisy on our campuses. For decades, faculty have purged their ranks of conservatives and libertarians. Faced with the intolerance of most schools, polls show that a large percentage of students hide their values to avoid retaliation from faculty or their fellow students.

Charlie chose to change all that. TPUSA challenges people to engage and debate them. The response from some on the left has been to trash their tables and threaten the students. Recently, at UC Davis, police stood by and watched as a TPUSA tent was torn apart.

Charlie is only the latest such victim, and he is unlikely to be the last.

For months, some of us have warned about the rise in rage rhetoric. Some believe that they can ride a wave of rage back into power. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) has called for people to take to the streets to save democracy and posted a picture of himself brandishing a baseball bat.

Likewise, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) declared, “I’m going to punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.”

Various radical groups welcome such rage rhetoric, particularly Antifa. The most violent anti-free speech group in the U.S., Antifa has long attacked journalists and others with opposing views. In his “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” Professor Mark Bray noted that “most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists. … From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.”

Alleged shooter Tyler Robinson, 22, reportedly left telltale Antifa markings on evidence, including marking bullets inscribed with the lyrics: “Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao”(from an Italian anti-fascist anthem) and “Hey, fascist! Catch!”

I previously testified in Congress about the dangers of Antifa, and I discuss the group in my book. Despite such warnings, Democratic leaders have dismissed those dangers or actually embraced Antifa.

Former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison (D), now Minnesota’s attorney general, previously celebrated how Antifa would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump. Liberal sites sell Antifa items to celebrate the violent group, including onesies for “Antifa babies.”

Some politicians have privately expressed alarm at the rising violent speech in their ranks. One Democratic member told Axios, “Some of [our supporters] have suggested … what we really need to do is be willing to get shot.”

Protesters are burning cars and dealerships. Even lawyers and reporters on the left are throwing Molotov cocktails at police. Some on the left have rolled out guillotines and chanted, “We got the guillotine, you better run.”

Just before he was shot at Utah Valley University, Kirk rallied the group with its signature chant of “prove me wrong.” Someone responded by killing him.

Of course, the murder proved nothing except that senseless hate is sweeping over our country. Someone preferred to kill Kirk rather than engage with him or others who held opposing views.

It is precisely the lack of debate and dialogue that has triggered this type of violence. For those dwelling deep in the hardened silos of our news and social media, dissenting voices become increasingly intolerable.

Charlie is still exposing that hypocrisy. As I prepared to address Charlie’s murder in Prague, anti-free speech groups were already using his murder to justify even greater limits on free speech to combat hate and disinformation. This is the ultimate dishonoring of his life and his legacy. Charlie died in the fight for free speech, challenging speech codes and censorship.

Greater censorship will not make political violence less likely; it will only make the likelihood of another Charlie Kirk less likely. Europe shows that extremists flourish under speech controls. The neo-Nazis are having a banner year in portraying themselves as victims.

It is the rest of us that are deterred by speech codes. According to polling, only 18 percent of Germans feel free to express their opinions in public. Fifty-nine percent of Germans do not even feel free expressing themselves in private among friends. Only 17 percent feel free to express themselves on the internet.

Charlie was hated because he exposed the left’s intolerance of opposing views … all in the purported cause of achieving greater tolerance. By challenging others to debate, he triggered a generation of speech-phobics who are more interested in silencing others than speaking on their own account.

Charlie was hated for stripping away the pretense and self-delusion of those canceling, blacklisting, and attacking others for holding opposing views. He did so by standing in harm’s way.

The conservatives that Kirk coaxed out of the shadows can honor his memory by showing that they will not be silenced. They can step forward and renew his same challenge: “Prove me wrong.”

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of the best-selling “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

Category:

Crime, Hate, Law, political violence

Tagged with:

If You Want to “Stand with Charlie,” Stand with Free Speech

Commentary by Jonathan Turley | September 14, 2025

Below is my column that ran earlier on Fox.com on the calls for the termination of academics and others who have criticized Charlie Kirk or expressed satisfaction with his murder. Unfortunately, such hateful remarks are nothing new in academia. However, this is not about them. It is about us, and more importantly, it is about Charlie and what he fought for his entire life. We cannot allow our anger or sorrow to lead us into becoming the very people that Charlie denounced in his life. If you “Stand with Charlie,” you stand with free speech.

Here is the column:

“Stand with Charlie!” That message spontaneously appeared throughout the world after the unspeakable violent attack by an extremist. No, it was not the response to the murder of Charlie Kirk this week. It was ten years ago with the killing of staff at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. World leaders, including the French, German, and Turkish presidents, joined a march for free speech despite their own speech crackdowns, including prior targeting of the magazine and the victims.

The chief editor, Stéphane Charbonnier, had refused to be silenced by the French government and declared, “I would rather die standing than live on my knees.” He was the first person the gunmen asked for in their attack on the office, and he was one of the first to be killed.

At the time, I wrote about the breathtaking hypocrisy and noted that one of the few surviving editors of the magazine refused to join the march with those who relentlessly pursued them with criminal investigation. After the march, France, Germany, and other Western governments expanded their censorship laws and the prosecution of viewpoints deemed inflammatory or hateful.

In the ultimate dishonoring of the memory of the Charlie Hebdo staff, the French officials then proceeded to use their own murders to justify increasing prosecution of speech

The killing of Charlie Kirk in the United States ten years later is clearly different in one critical respect. There will be no “I am Charlie” campaign on the left. Some on the left have celebrated the killing while others, mouthing regret, attacked Kirk and suggested that he brought this upon himself.

That is hardly a surprise. Kirk spent his tragically short life exposing the hypocrisy and intolerance of the left, particularly in higher education. They hated him for it. Universities and colleges have long been bastions of the left with the purging of most conservative or Republican faculty from most departments and the maintenance of an academic echo chamber in classrooms.

Kirk challenged all that. He drove many mad by inviting them to debate issues. The response was often violence, including the trashing of tables of his group, Turning Point USA. Ultimately, he was killed for insisting on being heard.

However, we are facing the same danger of self-consuming hypocrisy — ten years after that other Charlie shooting. Some on the right are calling for people who denounce Kirk or celebrate his death to be fired. That ranges from professors to public employees.

I knew Charlie. While I cannot call myself a close friend, we spoke about the lack of free speech on our campuses and the efforts to cancel or fire those with opposing views. More than anyone today, Kirk brilliantly exposed that hypocrisy by putting himself and his group in harm’s way.

The way to honor Charlie Kirk’s life and legacy is not with hypocrisy and intolerance. That is what he died fighting against.

To fire people on campuses for speaking out against Charlie Kirk would make an utter mockery of his work and his death. It would be like banning LGBTQ groups in response to the assassination of Harvey Milk in 1978.

Charlie Kirk wanted unfettered debate. He wanted people to be able to express themselves regardless of how the majority felt about their views. He was the victim, not the advocate, of cancel campaigns.

There are instances where hateful views may raise grounds for termination. A secret service agent is under investigation after dismissing the assassination. Given the need to protect conservative as well as liberal figures (including those in the current administration), the bias in the postings can raise legitimate grounds for inquiry.

Likewise, those who use their official, academic, or corporate positions to espouse hateful messages risk termination.

However, many of these individuals were speaking as individuals outside of their positions, and their hateful commentary is not necessarily compromising or conflicting with their positions.

Hate speech in the United States is protected speech. The crackdown on speech deemed hateful, inflammatory, or intolerant has been the signature of the left, the very thing that Charlie campaigned against.

It is never easy to show restraint when you are angry or grieving. After all, many of those objecting to these cases today were silent or supported crackdowns on conservatives for years on and off campuses. They lack any self-awareness or shame in demanding protections that they rarely extend to others with opposing views. That is the value of an age of rage. It gives you license to silence and attack others for their views while insisting that you are the real victim.

However, we cannot become those we have long fought against in the free speech community. More importantly, we cannot become those whom Charlie fought against up to the very moment of his murder. We honor his legacy by protecting the thing that Charlie cherished the most. We need to “Stand with Charlie” and support free speech.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of the best-selling “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

Category:

political violence

Tagged with:

The Mark of Kaine: How a Senator’s Remarks Border on Constitutional Blasphemy

By: Jonathan Turley | September 8, 2025

Below is my column in The Hill on the controversial remarks of Sen. Tim Kaine (D. Va.) denouncing a nominee who believed in natural law and the concept of God-given rights. By the end of the hearing, Kaine effectively lumped Alexander Hamilton with Ayatollah Khomeini in his statement at the committee hearing.

Here is the column:

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) this week warned the American people that a Trump nominee for a State Department position was an extremist, cut from the same cloth as the Iranian mullahs and religious extremists.

Riley Barnes, nominated to serve as assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor, revealed his dangerous proclivities to Kaine in his opening statement when he said that “all men are created equal because our rights come from God, our creator; not from our laws, not from our governments.”

It was a line that should be familiar to any citizen — virtually ripped from the Declaration of Independence, our founding document that is about to celebrate its 250th anniversary. Yet Kaine offered a very surprising response in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

“The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government but come from the Creator — that’s what the Iranian government believes,” he said. “It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia (sic) law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities. They do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator. So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.”

The idea that laws “come from the government” is the basis of what is called “legal positivism,” which holds that the legitimacy and authority of laws are not based on God or natural law but rather legislation and court decisions.

In my forthcoming book celebrating the 250th anniversary, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, I detail how the Declaration of Independence (and our nation as a whole) was founded on a deep belief in natural laws coming from our Creator, not government. That view is captured in the Declaration, which states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Kaine represents Virginia, the state that played such a critical role in those very principles that he now associates with religious fanatics and terrorists. In fact, Kaine’s view did exist at the founding — and it was rejected. Alexander Hamilton wrote that “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”

Although the Framers were clear, Kaine seemed hopelessly confused. He later insisted that “I’m a strong believer in natural rights, but I have a feeling if we were to have a debate about natural rights in the room and put people around the table with different religious traditions, there would be some significant differences in the definitions of those natural rights.”

This country was founded on core, shared principles of natural law, including a deep commitment to individual rights against the government. The government was not the source but the scourge of individual rights. This belief in preexisting rights was based on such Enlightenment philosophers as John Locke who believed that, even at the beginning when no society existed, there was law, “The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone,” he wrote. “And reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind.”

Note that a natural law can also be based on a view of the inherent rights of human beings — a view of those rights needed to be fully human. Like divinely ordained rights, these are rights (such as free speech) that belong to all humans, regardless of the whim or want of a given government. They are still not “rights [that] come from our laws or our governments.”

The danger of legal positivism is that what government giveth, government can take away. Our prized unalienable rights become entirely alienable if they are merely the product of legislatures and courts.

It also means that constitutional protections or even the constitutional system itself is discardable, like out-of-fashion tricorn hats. As discussed in the book, a new generation of Jacobins is rising on the American left, challenging our constitutional traditions. Commentator Jennifer Szalai has denounced what she called “Constitution worship” and argued that “Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us. A growing chorus now wonders whether we need to be saved from it.”

That chorus includes establishment figures such as Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the Berkeley Law School and author of “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.”

Other law professors, such as Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale, have called for the nation to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”

That “reclamation” is easier if our rights are based not in natural law, but rather in the evolving priorities of lawmakers like Kaine. Protections then become not the manifestations of human rights, but of rights invented by humans. Kaine’s view — that advocates of natural law are no different from mullahs applying Sharia law — is not just ill-informed but would have been considered by the founders as constitutionally blasphemous.

He is, regrettably, the embodiment of a new crisis of faith in the foundations of our republic on the very eve of its 250th anniversary. This is a crisis of faith not just in our Constitution, but in each other as human beings “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and a best-selling author whose forthcoming“Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution” explores the foundations and the future of American democracy.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Former Arizona Ethics Professor Sues University for Alleged Termination for Speaking Out Against Gender Policies

By: Jonathan Turley | September 2, 2025

Former University of Arizona professor Daniel Grossenbach is suing the school over alleged retaliation over his views on gender policies in his children’s school district. Grossenbach, who taught ethics as an adjunct instructor from 2020 to 2023, was a contract faculty member (as opposed to tenured faculty) and was terminated after a cancel campaign over his voicing objections to the policies. The lawsuit presents a familiar free speech controversy in higher education, where conservatives or libertarians are targeted for their views outside of universities, while those on the left are rarely subject to such campaigns.

Daniel Grossenbach says the university was pressured to terminate his contract in November 2023 after receiving anonymous complaints about his parental rights advocacy in his children’s school district. Grossenbach is the father of two students at Catalina Foothills School District (CFSD) and founded a parental rights group called SaveCFSD in 2023. The group fought “policies and practices of hiding minors’ mental health information as a violation of fundamental parental rights.” The impetus of the group was gender identity surveys of students that allegedly led to lists of students who preferred different names and pronouns without notifying parents.

Grossenbach’s advocacy is clearly protected speech under the First Amendment. Grossenbach alleges that he was fired due to anonymous complaints accusing him of leading an “anti-gay hate group,” engaging in anti-LBGTQ speech on social media, and spreading “misinformation.” However, the university insisted that his position was eliminated because of funding for new full-time roles.

The problem is that, after he was terminated, the school posted other openings for adjunct professors in the ethics department and Grossenbach alleges that the university withheld documents showing that administrators were responding to the complaints. The lawsuit paints a rather conflicted picture for the university. While we have not seen the university’s answer to the complaint, the pattern is a familiar one.

The support enjoyed by faculty on the far left is in sharp contrast to the treatment given to faculty with moderate, conservative, or libertarian views. This includes blocking figures from speaking on campuses due to their political views. Conservatives and libertarians understand that they have no cushion or protection in any controversy.

The treatment of faculty based on their ideology is striking and disturbing. I have defended faculty who have made similarly disturbing comments on the left, including “detonating white people,” abolish white people, denouncing police, calling for Republicans to suffer, strangling police officers, celebrating the death of conservatives, calling for the killing of Trump supporters, supporting the murder of conservative protesters and other outrageous statements. I also defended the free speech rights of University of Rhode Island professor Erik Loomis, who defended the murder of a conservative protester and said that he saw “nothing wrong” with such acts of violence. (Loomis was later made Director of Graduate Studies of History at Rhode Island).

Even when faculty engage in hateful acts on campus, however, there is a notable difference in how universities respond depending on the viewpoint. At the University of California campus, professors actually rallied around a professor who physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display.

When these controversies arose, faculty rallied behind the free speech rights of the professors. That support was far more muted or absent when conservative faculty have found themselves at the center of controversies. The suspension of Ilya Shapiro is a good example. Other faculty have had to go to court to defend their free speech rights. One professor was suspended for being seen at a controversial protest.

The University of Arizona’s lack of transparency and conflicting record raise very serious free speech questions in this case. The litigation could create an important precedent if allowed to proceed into discovery and trial.

He is represented by Liberty Counsel, which is alleging violations of the First and 14th Amendments, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and Arizona’s public records law.

Category:

Free Speech, Law, LGBTQ+ AND TRANSGENDER, Political

Tagged with:

The Return of “Transportation” Sentencing? Australia Seeks to Ship Illegal Aliens to Small Pacific Island

By: Jonathan Turley | September 2, 2025

It has been 157 years since the last ship taking convicts from the United Kingdom landed in Australia. Now, in a crushing historical irony, Australia is contracting with the small Pacific Island of Nauru to resettle foreign-born criminals who the courts have ruled cannot be imprisoned indefinitely. The court rulings show how our allies are facing the same dilemma in dealing with people who enter the country illegally and then oppose efforts to deport them for years in litigation.

Starting with the “First Fleet” in 1788, English courts regularly sentenced convicts to “transportation” to Australia, where they were used for labor in the then-British colony. For years, the British left prisoners in rotting warships called “hulks” in the Thames River. Under Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, the government solved the problem with the use of Australia. Convicts dreaded the common sentencing line issued by British judges: “The sentence of the court upon you is, that you be transported beyond the seas for the term of your natural life.” It became so common that Historian K. S. Inglis noted that “The founders were not a chosen people except in the old Australian joke that they were chosen by the best judges in England.”

The current move is not to use immigrants for labor, but to remove individuals without a technical deportation. The move follows the 2023 decision by Australia’s High Court that non-citizens who have no viable resettlement options outside of Australia must be released. These deportees are largely individuals who engaged in criminal conduct. However, the court ruled that some countries, such as Afghanistan, are considered unsafe for their nationals to be repatriated, while others, like Iran, simply refuse to accept them back if they are being transported involuntarily.

One such individual was identified as NZYQ in court papers and came from Myanmar through a smuggler and proceeded to rape a child soon after being released into the Australian community. After serving a prison sentence, he was held by authorities until he was ordered to be released again into the population.

The government is reportedly moving to introduce legislation to strip the right of fairness from deportation decisions under the new Nauru deal. It would negate canceled visas that are under appeal in court.

Like Australia, the United States needs to address an immigration process that allows individuals to game the system for years despite orders of removal. The system is simply not working and, with millions allowed into the country under the Biden Administration, Congress needs to streamline the system for expedited removals.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

New Study Raises Concerns Over Universal Basic Income Plans

By: Jonathan Turley | August 6, 2025

In my forthcoming book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, I explore how the American republic can survive in the 21st Century given unprecedented economic, technological, and political changes. The book addresses the increasing calls for a universal basic income (UBI). Various Democratic cities are already implementing UBI systems. Now, a new study finds (as did some prior studies) that UBI systems have not achieved significant improvements and may actually have some negative consequences for recipients.

A working paper with the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that UBI recipients did indeed spend more money, including a 13 percent increase on child-related expenses. There was also a slight increase in parental supervision of children. However, there was no improved school performance and a slight increase in reported developmental and stress-related problems with children. Stanford’s Basic Income Lab is tracking more than 160 UBI projects in the U.S.

So far, the results are at best mixed. One study in Compton showed that many recipients of the $500 monthly payment quit working part-time jobs. Likewise, reports indicate that “a $400 monthly payment in Chelsea, Massachusetts, increased food spending and did not measurably reduce work, but it failed to produce results for the research team’s “primary downstream outcomes”—namely self-reported health and child school attendance.”

This follows earlier reports about the OpenResearch Unconditional Income Study (ORUS), an experiment in which lower-income Americans were given $1,000 a month for three years. The result was a reduction in work and an increase in leisure activities. There was also an increase in spending on health care but not an increase in health outcomes.

It is still early in studying these outcomes, but these programs are not showing the downstream benefits predicted by some. Indeed, they may be impacting work hours negatively for recipients in some areas. As various cities like New York move toward socialist candidates and programs, these studies offer a cautionary tale as officials push UBI payments.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Georgia Judge Rules Against Democrats Blocking Republicans on Board of Elections

By: Jonathan Turley | August 6, 2025

Democrats in Georgia have lost their effort to block two Republican commissioners from sitting on Fulton County’s Board of Elections because of their political views. What is most striking about this effort was not just the raw partisanship but the utter lack of legal authority of Democrats to refuse to recognize the duly selected GOP members.

For months, the board has blocked two Republican nominees: Jason Frazier and Julie Adams. Fulton County Commissioner Marvin Arrington declared that “I think the Republican party ought to take a look at their people and not nominate people that are on the far right and nominate people that are in the center.”

While self-proclaimed defenders of democracy often seem to have no qualms about curtailing democratic choices from ballot cleansing to jurisdiction flight, this is particularly raw and outrageous. There is no law supporting this action and the state law is clear on the need to seat the GOP commissioners. Under the state law, two members are appointed by the Democratic party, two are appointed by the Republican party, and a chairperson is selected by the Fulton Commissioners.

On Monday, Fulton County Superior Court Senior Judge David Emerson crushed the claims by the majority that they possessed a veto over GOP commissioners despite the law saying that the commissioners “shall” be seated. It is difficult to see how any competent lawyer would support this legal claim.

Emerson stated the obvious that the Fulton County Commission did “not have the discretion to disapprove an otherwise qualified nominee.” The court points out that higher courts have repeatedly rejected the argument of the Board that “shall” does not mean “shall.” Instead, they claimed that it is merely “directive” and allows them to choose who the other party will sit on the board.

The frivolous character of the Board position is captured in this line: “The court also notes that the appointment statute contains no provision to support the respondents’ position that it should have the power to veto any given nominee and force the county chairperson to submit other nominees.”

The two challenged commissioners have been denounced as far right or “election deniers” by Democrats. In other words, the commissioners are claiming that they can bar members based on their political views to force the GOP to select commissioners that they consider acceptable. Commissioner Mo Ivory insisted in the board’s meeting that “It’s not possible to work with folks trying to sow discord and chaos”

Judge Emerson had enough, writing that “the lack of these appointments harms the election process and deprives the nominating party of representation on the BOE.”

Here is the order: Fulton County Board of Elections Order

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Democrats Pledge a Gerrymander War

By: Jonathan Turley | August 5, 2025

Democrats are struggling to convince the public that they are outraged that there is gerrymandering afoot in Texas. It is no easy task, particularly after Texas Democrats selected Illinois as their sanctuary state, a state considered the most gerrymandered in the country. Trump received 45 percent of the vote in the state, but Republicans have only 14 percent of the congressional seats. Even the New York Times admitted that gerrymandering has favored Democrats across the nation. However, the winner of the Claude Rains award must be Marc Elias, who has expressed disgust over the notion of gerrymandering despite the fact that his group was denounced by courts for outrageous gerrymandering efforts.

The origin of the term was based on re-districting associated with Elbridge Gerry, a Founding Father, vice president, and governor of Massachusetts. He signed off on a district designed to guarantee a seat for the precursor of today’s Democratic Party. The district resembled a salamander, so the Boston Gazette deemed it the “Gerry-mander.”

That effort pales in comparison to what was done in Illinois to deny Republicans a fair share of congressional seats. This is the Illinois map:

The 13th congressional district stretches from East St. Louis to Springfield, 90 miles away. It then takes a sharp turn east to grab Decatur and Champaign. This monstrosity was approved by Democrats who are now insisting that they will respond to Texas with a gerrymander war, as if they were political pacifists until a few days ago.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker portrayed his party as the victim of conniving pols and pledged to respond in kind. Yet, it was Pritzker who approved the redistricting that guaranteed that, while Republicans represent almost half of the voters, they will receive less than twenty percent of the congressional seats.

The same is true in California, where Governor Gavin Newsom is also pledging to retaliate despite previously engaging in rampant gerrymandering. Republicans constituted roughly 40 percent of the congressional vote in 2024 but received only about 17 percent of the House seats. Across the country in 17 blue states, the Dems won 56.7 percent of the popular House vote but secured 143 of the 185 House seats — 77.7 percent. New York has achieved that same enhanced democratic representations despite the fact that Trump received 45 percent of the vote. Republicans are confined to a small handful of districts.

I have long opposed gerrymandering by both parties. However, the claims of disgust and outrage by Democrats border on the comical.

That brings us to Marc Elias, who is again trying to raise clients and donations off the outrage.

Elias has not only been sanctioned in past litigation, but past courts have also criticized his group. In Maryland, Elias filed in support of an abusive gerrymandering of the election districts that a court found violated not only Maryland law but the state constitution’s equal protection, free speech and free elections clauses. The court found that the map pushed by Elias “subverts the will of those governed.”

Elias is currently looking at a likely demand for testimony in the new grand jury investigation into the Russian conspiracy. He featured prominently in the filings of Special Counsel John Durham. It was Elias who made the key funding available to Fusion GPS, which in turn enlisted Steele to produce his now discredited dossier on Trump and his campaign. During the campaign, reporters did ask about the possible connection to the campaign, but Clinton campaign officials denied any involvement. Weeks after the election, journalists discovered that the Clinton campaign hid payments for the Steele dossier as “legal fees” among the $5.6 million paid to Perkins Coie.

New York Times reporter Ken Vogel said at the time that Elias denied involvement in the anti-Trump dossier. When Vogel tried to report the story, he said, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.”

It was not just reporters who asked the Clinton campaign about its role in the Steele dossier. John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, was questioned by Congress and categorically denied any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Sitting beside him was Elias, who reportedly said nothing to correct the misleading information given to Congress.

With the likes of Marc Elias leading the cause against gerrymandering, the Democrats have reached a level of hypocrisy that knows no equal.

For the public, this growing war should support a movement to put an end to gerrymandering by all parties. Politicians will then have to look to voters, not maps to maintain their power.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Rep. Ramirez Under Fire After Declaring “I’m a proud Guatemalan before I’m an American.”

By: Jonathan Turley | August 5, 2025

Democrat Rep. Delia Ramirez (D., Ill.) is locked into a fierce fight with the White House over controversial remarks at the second annual Panamerican Congress held in Mexico, including declaring, “I’m a proud Guatemalan before I’m an American.” Ramirez does not deny making the remarks but insists that there is a double standard for “my white colleagues [who] identify as Irish-American, Italian-American, or Ukrainian-American to honor their ancestry.” Ramirez was also criticized for her criticism of the United States as being “addicted to war” and threatening the world with its “imperialism, militarization, conquest, control, competition in its attempt at domination.”

The White House criticized Ramirez as well as the appearance of other high-profile Squad members, Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA): “These Democrats’ comments are despicable and underscore their commitment to putting Americans last.”

The comments of Ramirez have clearly struck a nerve on both sides. For my part, I am very proud of both my Irish-Sicilian background. My Sicilian grandparents came to this country at the turn of the century. They were deeply proud of their heritage but always insisted that their children identify as Americans first and foremost. As I discuss in my forthcoming book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution (Simon & Schuster 2026), we share a common identity of a people who are joined by core principles of liberty and individual rights. This country is unique because it is composed largely of people who came here to embrace a new identity of shared values.

I was surprised that Ramirez did not simply say that ranking was a poor choice of words. There is a difference between calling oneself a Guatemalan-American and saying that you are Guatemalan first and an American second. She has often publicly discussed how she is “the wife of a DACA recipient. I am the daughter of Guatemalan working immigrants,” including a mother who crossed the Rio Grande while pregnant. It is a harrowing story of many who came to this country to seek a new identity and a better life. My grandparents came to this country in the filthy hold of a wooden ship where immigrants died and two gave birth. What drove them was the promise of a new start in a nation based on freedom and opportunity. This country has never had prouder Americans.

The anger over Ramirez is not about how she defines herself, but about what it is to be an American. It is a shared identity, an article of faith that defines us all. That does not mean that Ramirez does not love this country. You can criticize this country and still love it. However, she should also realize how her ranking insults many citizens who cherish their heritage but embrace their core identity as Americans.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

The Reveal: The Public is Finally Learning How Democrats Pulled Off the Greatest Political Trick in History

By: Jonathan Turley | August 1, 2025

Below is my column in Fox.com on the release of the last declassified material on the origins of the Russian collusion investigation. After the release, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wrote in the New York Times insisted that they never relied on the Steele dossier. The column only reaffirmed the level of dishonesty and duplicity that marked their tenures in office. (The Times still printed this claim despite being demonstrably untrue).

The documents quote Brennan in overruling career analysts and intervening to include the dossier in the intelligence assessment. Moreover, the column echoes the media spin that the investigation was about an attempted Russian interference while dismissing the collusion claim that consumed much of the first term. (Even after leaving office, Brennan continued to push the false collusion claim). Both countries routinely hacked each other’s emails — that is why we have the most recent incriminating evidence on the Clinton campaign’s funding and spreading the false collusion claims. We hacked their emails. We have also regularly tried to influence the elections of other nations. The key to the dossier and the Russian investigation was the allegation of collusion and the central role of the Clinton campaign in creating the narrative that Trump was a Russian asset.

Here is the column:

This week, Washington was rocked by new releases in the declassification of material related to the origins of the Russian investigation. The material shows further evidence of a secret plan by the Clinton campaign to use the FBI and media to spread a false claim that Donald Trump was a Russian asset. With this material, the public is finally seeing how officials and reporters set into motion what may be the greatest hoax ever perpetrated in American politics. There never was a Russian collusion conspiracy. This is the emerging story of the real Russian conspiracy to manufacture a false narrative that succeeded in devouring much of the first term of the Trump Administration.

What is emerging in these documents is a political illusion carefully constructed by government officials and a willing media. The brilliance of the trick was getting reporters to buy into the illusion; to own it like members of an audience called to the stage by an illusionist.

The effort closely followed the three steps of the classic magic trick: The Pledge, The Turn, and The Prestige.

The Pledge

The trick began with the pledge, the stage where the public is set up by showing ordinary events with the suggestion that it is about to transform into something extraordinary. The key is to make something seem real that is actually not.

The Clinton campaign delivered the pledge by secretly funding the Steele dossier, using Fusion GPS and a former British spy named Christopher Steele, to create a salacious account of Trump being an agent of Russia. New emails state that Hillary Clinton personally approved the operation.

It was Elias who was the general counsel to the Clinton presidential campaign when it funded the infamous Steele dossier and pushed the false Alfa Bank conspiracy. (His fellow Perkins Coie partner, Michael Sussmann, was indicted but acquitted in a criminal trial.)

During the campaign, a few reporters asked about the possible connection to the campaign, but Clinton campaign officials denied any involvement in the Steele Dossier. After the election, journalists discovered that the payments for the Steele dossier were hidden as “legal fees” among the $5.6 million paid to Perkins Coie under Elias.

When New York Times reporter Ken Vogel tried to report the story, he said, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.”

Later, John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, appeared before Congress for questioning on the Steele dossier. Podesta emphatically denied any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Sitting beside him was Elias, who reportedly said nothing to correct the misleading information given to Congress.

The FEC ultimately sanctioned the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee over the handling of the funding of the dossier through his prior firm.

The Turn

The next step is the turning point when the ordinary becomes something extraordinary. This required the involvement of the government. The Clinton team worked behind the scenes to feed the dossier to the FBI. It would be the criminal investigation that would transform the ordinary accounts, like Carter Page speaking in Moscow, into an elaborate Russian plot. Even though the FBI was warned early on that Page was a CIA asset, not a Russian asset, the Clinton team found eager officials in the Obama Administration to assist in the illusion.

The newly disclosed evidence shows how the turn was made. In July 2016, Brennan briefed former President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s “plan” to tie then-candidate Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” The original Russia investigation — funded by Clinton’s campaign — was launched days after this briefing.

Months later, it would be Brennan who overruled his own CIA analysts in his ordering of a second last-minute assessment at the end of the Obama Administration in support of the Russian allegations. It would help make the turn with the all-consuming Russian investigation that would follow.

Career analysts were not buying the turn. They objected that the reliance on the Steele dossier “ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment.” One CIA analyst told investigators that “[Brennan] refused to remove it, and when confronted with the dossier’s main flaws, [Brennan] responded, ‘Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?’”

That is the key to the turn; it needs only to be enough to fool the audience.

The Prestige

The final stage is called the Prestige, where the magician faces the toughest part of the trick. As explained in the 2006 movie “The Prestige,” the viewer is “looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled.” However, “making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back.”

The difference is that this trick was designed to derail Trump and it worked. In the end, however, the Special Counsel and Inspector General both rejected the Russian collusion claims. The public then reelected Trump. Now, the prestige may be revealed by the CIA.

Reports indicate that the CIA is about to declassify material showing that foreign sources were also in on the trick. The information reportedly indicates that foreign sources were aware of the move to create a Russian collusion scandal and expected that the FBI would play a role in the plan. That was before the bureau launched its controversial Crossfire Hurricane probe. One source said the foreign intelligence predicted the move “with alarming specificity.”

The most recently declassified material shows that the Russian actors in 2016 hacked emails from the Open Society Foundations, formerly known as the Soros Foundation. The emails reveal a broader network of activists and allies who were aware of the Clinton conspiracy.

Leonard Bernardo, who was the regional director for Eurasia at the Open Society Foundations, explained that “during the first stage of the campaign, due to lack of direct evidence, it was decided to disseminate the necessary information through the FBI-affiliated…from where the information would then be disseminated through leading U.S. publications.”

Bernardo added, “Julie (Clinton Campaign Advisor) says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump. Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. Later, the FBI will put more oil into the fire.”

The media (including the Washington Post and New York Times, which won Pulitzer prizes for reporting on the debunked claims) are apoplectic in dismissing these disclosures. The last thing they will do is report on how they helped sell a political hoax. The problem is that they never said it was a trick. They said it was the truth. That is why they cannot honestly cover the story. To do so would not be coverage, it would be a confession.

It appears that everyone was in on the trick: the U.S. government, the media, even foreign governments. The only chumps were the American people. Now they are about to see how it was done.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

Category:

Crime, Law, Political

Tagged with:

The World’s Most Dysfunctional Body? Cory Booker Captures the Decline the United States Senate

By: Jonathan Turley | July 30, 2025

When President James Buchanan declared that the United States Senate is the “world’s greatest deliberative body,” he clearly had not envisioned Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.). In yet another tirade on the floor, Sen. Booker attacked not just President Donald Trump but his Democratic colleagues for voting for a bipartisan bill on law enforcement. Behind the “I am Spartacus” theatrics is a more troubling trend in the United States Senate as it devolves into a more populist, impulsive institution.

In 1872, Moncure Daniel Conway published an account of a meeting between Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. Jefferson questioned Washington’s support for the creation of a second or upper house in the form of the Senate. Washington asked:

“Why…did you just now pour that coffee into your saucer, before drinking?”

“To cool it,” answered Jefferson, “my throat is not made of brass.”

“Even so,” rejoined Washington, “we pour our legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it.”

These days, it seems like legislation goes to the Senate to heat up. The Senate is losing its constitutional and cultural moorings as the cooling saucer for our heated politics. Instead, it is becoming more like . . . well . . . the house.

The role of the Senate is key to the Madisonian design in forcing compromise and deliberation. Senators were given longer, six-year terms to insulate them from the immediate political demands that often motivate the House.

That has changed with the 24-hour media-saturated political environment. It has changed in this age of rage. Cue Corey Booker:

Putting the claims of “secret police” and, once again, the imminent collapse of democracy, Booker was immediately set upon by his colleagues after he moved to block the bipartisan bill by fellow Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.) and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.). Klobuchar effectively accused Booker of grandstanding and hypocrisy:

“I will note that Sen. Booker objected to my police reauthorization bill, the cops funding, the Clinton cops funding, long before Donald Trump came into office. So, this is not just about this. This is a long dispute over this type of funding.”

She also snapped back at Booker saying that he could not make a key hearing on the drafting of the bill because of a conflict, noting “I can’t help it if someone couldn’t change their schedule to be there.”

Cortez Masto struck back at the notion that Democrats should simply refuse to cooperate with the Administration or that working with Republicans is what Booker calls “complicity.”

Booker is clearly maneuvering for a possible presidential run and seeking to tap into the rage growing on the far left. He is also the inevitable result of the rising rhetoric of figures like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in pandering to the far left of his party. Democratic senators are now being denounced as “establishment” as Booker and others tack to the left to lead “the resistance.”

Booker just raised the anger ante for Democrats. They must either join the resistance and the rage or face the ire of their party. In the interim, the constitutional system will suffer. We need the House of Representatives as the “people’s house.” We do not need two Houses of Representatives. The Senate ideally moderates, not magnifies, the pressures and passions in the political system.

Booker’s tirades clearly resonate with some on the far left, but it is likely to come at a cost for the institution itself. As tensions build on the Democratic side, Teddy Roosevelt’s quip seems to be coming true in voting for bipartisan legislation: “When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‘Present’ or ‘Not guilty.””

Category:

Law, Political

Tagged with:

“I am Not a Trump Fan”: Disturbing Public Statements Surface from Brennan’s Hand-Picked Head of Controversial Assessment

By: Jonathan Turley | July 29, 2025

We have been discussing the recently declassified material related to the Russian investigation, including disclosures of the role of former CIA director John Brennan at the end of the Obama Administration to reinforce the unfounded allegations of Russian collusion and influence. After an earlier intelligence assessment rejecting the narrative was effectively quashed, Brennan reportedly hand-picked the team to do a second rushed 2016 U.S. intelligence community assessment in the final days. We are now learning more about the person Brennan selected to head that team. Just the News and other outlets are revealing not just the extreme political bias of Susan Miller, but her remarkably poor handle on some key facts. The one unassailable fact that comes out of her postings is her declaration that “[I] am not a Trump fan.”

A review of Miller’s social media postings reveals intense hostility toward Donald Trump and his supporters, including calling the President a “dictator” and MAGA supporters “Nazis.” What is particularly notable is that she still maintains that the widely ridiculed Steele Dossier, secretly funded by the Clinton campaign, “might be true.” Despite the findings of the Special Counsel and various investigations, she has insisted that Trump may indeed be a “Russian asset” or a “Kremlin asset”

Miller recently retired but says that she continues to train CIA officers.

Brennan choose wisely if he wanted to ensure that a reliable political ally would draft the assessment. However, she has said that there were others in the CIA who wanted an actual finding that Trump’s election was illegitimate. That was the narrative pushed by Hillary Clinton and many Democrats after the 2016 loss. She suggested that that may still be true, a form of election denial that is still accepted on the left as they criticize Trump for his questioning of the 2020 defeat.

Miller appears to be one of the last diehards claiming that the Steele dossier could have also repeatedly still proved correct in its allegations.

Some interviews are striking in their conflicting elements, like insisting “all of us went in with a completely open mind” but that “they [the Russians] definitely wanted him [Trump].”

Miller also seemed to view the CIA’s role as part of a resistance, or at least counterforce to Trump: “I headed up the report team. … I wanted people who would speak truth to power.”

On social media, Miller comes across as unhinged at times in responding to stories with screeds like “This is awful! Further proof that Trump is a dictator.” She also wrote, “Good grief. As if we needed proof that MAGA types are nazis…”

She responded to a foreign poster by saying, “Yes….the Hitler analogy is not lost on a bunch of us…..sadly….”

In one of the most bizarre series of statements, Miller accuses Trump, Barr, and Durham of putting “me on trial” because she was interviewed in the various investigations.

She insisted in an interview with Times Radio in July that Trump got Barr and Durham “to open a trial on us…I spent 8 hours on trial; other team members also had trials. Not unexpectedly, nothing criminal was found.”

Just the News notes that Miller said again in June that “Trump put me on trial….criminal complaint after inauguration.” There is no indication of what that criminal complaint entailed, where it was filed, or what happened to it.

Miller appears to be struggling to make the case against Brennan and herself in carrying out this intelligence assessment. It is telling that, within the entire CIA establishment, Brennan would select Miller for this controversial report. What is even more chilling is that top intelligence officials would continue to cling to debunked sources like Steele. It is the kind of intransigence common among those living in echo chambers created by news and social media sites. CIA analysts are supposedly trained to avoid such confirmation bias.

All of this makes for a great pitch to join figures like Clapper or McCabe with MSNBC or CNN contracts. It is less compelling in defending the work product of the CIA on this report.

Category:

censorship, Crime, Law, Political

Tagged with:

Silence of the Lambs: The Media Ignores Declassified Documents on the Manufacturing of the Russian Conspiracy

By: Jonathan Turley | July 22, 2025

Consider this story: An outgoing president and his top officials are told that there is no evidence of Russian collusion or influence in the national election. The White House then moved to suppress the intelligence assessment and reverse the conclusions, while false claims were leaked to the press.

That is not just a major but a Pulitzer-level story, right?

Apparently not. The legacy media has largely ignored the declassified evidence and possible criminal referral on the Obama administration seeding the Russian collusion narrative just before the first Trump Administration. It supports allegations in the real Russian conspiracy: the conspiracy to create a false Russian collusion scandal to undermine the election and administration of Donald Trump in 2016.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard suggested last week that intelligence was “manufactured and politicized” despite countervailing conclusions from American intelligence that there was no collusion or influence on the election. Critics have noted that CBS only covered the story to refute it.

The release of this information is historically significant, as it finally allows the public to see how this effort began with the Clinton campaign and was then actively cultivated by Obama officials. We previously learned that the Clinton campaign spent millions to create the infamous Steele dossier and then hid their role from the public.

Attorney Marc Elias, the general counsel to the Clinton presidential campaign, pushed the false Alfa Bank conspiracy. (His fellow Perkins Coie partner, Michael Sussmann, was indicted but acquitted in a criminal trial.) During the campaign, reporters asked about the possible connection to the campaign, but Clinton campaign officials denied any involvement in the Steele Dossier. When journalists discovered after the election that the Clinton campaign hid payments for the Steele dossier as “legal fees” among the $5.6 million paid to Perkins Coie, they met with nothing but shrugs from the Clinton staff.

New York Times reporter Ken Vogel said at the time that Elias denied involvement in the anti-Trump dossier. When Vogel tried to report the story, he said, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.”

Elias was back when John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, was questioned by Congress on the Steele dossier and denied categorically any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Sitting beside him was Elias, who reportedly said nothing to correct the misleading information given to Congress.

Not only did Clinton reportedly spent over $10 million on the report, but Obama was briefed that she was going to create a Russian collusion narrative as part of her campaign. Aware of that Clinton effort, these new documents suggest that Obama and his aides actively sought to affirm the allegations just before Trump’s inauguration. The FBI then ramped up its own efforts despite also being told that the Steele dossier was unreliable and contradicted.

I disagree with the use of the charge of treason being thrown around with this release. Based on this evidence, it would be hard to make a criminal case against Obama, let alone the specific charge of treason. However, there are good-faith allegations raised about prior congressional testimony of key players in the Obama Administration. There may be viable criminal allegations ranging from perjury to obstruction to making false statements to federal investigators.

It is too early to gauge the basis for possible criminal charges. However, the release of this new evidence is both historically and legally significant. There is now a legitimate concern over a conspiracy to create this false narrative to undermine the incoming Administration. It proved successful in derailing the first Trump Administration. By the time the allegations were debunked, much of the first term had been exhausted. That is worthy of investigation and the public has a right to expect transparency on these long-withheld documents.

The silence of the legacy media is hardly surprising, given the key role the media played in spreading these false claims. Most media outlets find themselves in an uncomfortable position, having fostered an alleged conspiracy for years. Most reporters are not keen on making a case against themselves in spreading of these false claims.

Category:

Crime, Law, Political

Tagged with:

The State Media is Dead — Long Live the State Media?

By: Jonathan Turley | July 21, 2025

Below is my column in the Hill on the termination of funding for National Public Radio. Now that we have ended government-sponsored media, the question is whether the media will cease acting like a state media. The good news is that the market could force a correction that the media has largely refused to make.

Here is the column:

With the final elimination of public funding for National Public Radio as part of a $9 billion savings package, the era of the American state media will technically come to an end. However, what makes for state media is not state support alone.

So, the state media is dead — long live the state media.

That variation of the traditional mourning cry of the British monarchy will be heard more in whispers than proclamations this week in Washington. The government subsidy for NPR has long been a subject of controversy. Many opposed NPR for its open bias in reporting news, a record that thrilled the left and outraged many on the right. Just before the final vote, NPR CEO Katherine Maher gave another interview that left many agape. She denied any such bias and asked whether anyone could point to a single story that showed a political or ideological slant.

Ignoring a myriad of such examples, Maher then went from defiant to delusional, insisting that NPR was trying hard to “understand those criticisms.”

It was a bit late for Maher to feign surprise or confusion, particularly as a CEO whose selection to take over the struggling NPR many of us opposed. Her glaring and overt bias did not seem like the antidote to NPR’s shrinking audience and revenue. In 2024, NPR had a window to actually “understand” the criticism and make adjustments. Instead, it treated the government subsidy as an entitlement, backed by Democratic members in Congress. The board would have done better to select a neutral journalist. Instead, it doubled down, hiring a candidate with a long record of far-left public statements against Republicans, Trump, and others.

This is the same CEO who attacked respected senior editor Uri Berliner when he tried to get NPR to address its bias and restore greater balance on the staff. Berliner noted that NPR’s Washington headquarters has 87 registered Democrats among its editors and zero Republicans.

Maher slammed the award-winning Berliner for his “affront to the individual journalists who work incredibly hard.” She called his criticism “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.” Berliner resigned after noting how Maher’s “divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR” that he had been pointing out.

But I have argued that NPR’s well-established bias and publication of baseless conspiracy theories are not the real reasons for taking away its federal funding. The truth is, NPR represented an embrace of a state media model used in other countries that Americans thoroughly reject.

Maher bizarrely tried to rally support for government funding by insisting that we must “keep the government out” of the media. Congress just did precisely that by clawing back NPR’s funding.

The government has occasionally supported the media, but generally to benefit all media outlets. For example, in 1791, Madison declared that Congress had an obligation to improve the “circulation of newspapers through the entire body of the people” and sponsored the Post Office Act of 1791, giving newspapers reduced postage rates.

Notably, those same Democrats in Congress who decried the reduction of funding for NPR would have revolted over funding for more successful radio outlets, such as Fox Radio. Indeed, some of the same members had previously pushed cable carriers to consider dropping Fox News, the most popular cable news channel.

What Congress did with prior funding of a single preferred media outlet was wrong. Liberals and Democrats fought to protect the funding even though NPR’s shrinking audience is now overwhelmingly white, affluent, and liberal.

However, the end of government subsidies will not necessarily mean the end of an effective state media. As I noted in my book “The Indispensable Right,” we have seen how the media can create the same effect as state media by consent rather than coercion. For years, media outlets have echoed the same party line, including burying negative stories and repeating debunked stories. Actual readers and listeners abandoned the mainstream media in droves. “Let’s Go Brandon” became a national mantra mocking journalists for their inability even to see and hear if the sights and sounds don’t fit their preconceived narratives.

Just as Maher has expressed utter confusion on how anyone could view NPR as biased, these editors and journalists will cling to the same advocacy journalism, rejecting the principles of objectivity and neutrality. However, there is still one hope for restoring traditional journalism: the market.

Now that NPR is off the public dole, it will have to compete fairly with other radio outlets for audiences and revenue. It is free to alienate most listeners who have center-right viewpoints, but it will have to sustain itself on a smaller share of the market.

Other outlets are facing the same dire choice. Recently, the Post encouraged writers and editors to leave if they were unwilling to get on board with a new direction at the newspaper. Previously, Washington Post publisher and CEO Will Lewis had told his writers that the newspaper was experiencing massive losses in readers and revenues because “no one is reading your stuff.” It triggered a revolt on the staff, which would have rather run the paper into insolvency than return to objectivity and neutrality.

The same preference was seen with the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show. What had been David Letterman’s formidable program had become a shrill echo chamber for the far left as Colbert engaged in nightly and mostly unfunny diatribes against Trump and Republicans. As its ratings and revenues fell, Colbert was unmoved. At the same time, Fox’s Greg Gutfeld continued to crush the competition as viewers abandoned CBS and other broadcast networks.

The year’s second-quarter ratings showed Fox News’s “Gutfeld!” drawing an average of three million viewers. Gutfeld’s more conservative takes on news remain unique among these late-night shows. In comparison, “The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert came in second last quarter with an average 2.42 million viewers, despite being a far more costly program.

As liberals expressed outrage over the cancellation and alleged that CBS’s owner, Paramount, was seeking to garner favor with the Trump Administration, even CNN admitted that the show under Colbert had become “unfortunately unprofitable.” Colbert’s show was reportedly losing $40 million a year with a bloated staff and declining audience.

Paramount issued a statement insisting that Colbert’s cancelation was “not related in any way to the show’s performance.” Perhaps, but media companies are hardly in the habit of cancelling profitable, high-performing programming.

Ultimately, the market is correcting what the media would not. Roughly half of this country is center-right, and 77 million people voted for Trump. They are turning to social media and new media rather than remain a captive audience to a biased legacy media committed to advocacy journalism.

As media outlets fail, there may also be more pressure on journalism schools to return to core principles rather than crank out social justice warriors no one wants to read or hear from.

In the meantime, Maher and NPR can continue to stay the course and try to make up in pledge drives what they lost in public subsidies. However, the whole thing will now have to pay for itself without passing along costs to the rest of the non-listening country.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

Category:

Media, Political

Tagged with:

Admission Against Interest: Valley State University Honors College Director Brags About Race-Based Admissions

By: Jonathan Turley | July 9, 2025

“We accept virtually all students of color.” Those words from Professor Roger Gilles, director of the Frederick Meijer Honors College, may seem a bit odd to Supreme Court justices who believe that they ended racial discrimination in admissions years ago in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023). The college is part of Grand Valley State University in Michigan and still apparently uses race as not just one factor but an overriding factor in admissions. Gilles’s April 4, 2022, email to colleagues could prove the ultimate admission against interest. As detailed by the College Fix, he explained to the faculty that “we accept virtually all students of color, except in cases in which the student’s writing is such that we’re convinced they would struggle far too much in our first-year sequences.” He even boasted that “This year, in fact, we accepted a ‘Signature Saturday’ student with a high GPA but an SAT score of 880..!” That score would put a student below the 25th percentile. Gilles also said that race was the predominant factor in aid, stating ‘[w]ith the cooperation of Jodi in Admissions and Michelle in Financial Aid, we’ve tried hard to give most of the limited number of Honors-specific scholarships we award to students of color. This has been the case going back to Dr. J.” Dr. J is a reference to Professor Jeff Chamberlain, who was hired by the University of North Florida to perform the same function and is now an academic program manager for the University of Oregon.

The College Fix alleges that the university redacted portions of the email where the discrimination on the basis of race was discussed.

Despite Gilles appearing to defy the Supreme Court ruling in the Students for Fair Admissions case, it was clearly not enough for some. Professor Melanie Shell-Weiss wrote that “[f]rom a diversity standpoint, the needle effectively hasn’t moved.”

In 2017, Chief Justice John Roberts declared: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

In 2023, Roberts wrote in Students for Fair Admissions that “[universities and colleges] have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

These admissions could trigger a response from the Departments of Justice and Education under Title VI, which prohibits preferential treatment based on race or ethnicity. The government loves admissions against interest, particularly in the area of college admissions where most faculty and administrators rarely publicly acknowledge race-based selections.

Category:

Education, Law, Political

Tagged with:

“Shameful”: Federal Judge Rules in Favor of Trump Administration but Adds His Own Personal Condemnation

By: Jonathan Turley | July 9, 2025

The Trump administration notched another victory this week when U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington granted a motion to dismiss a case brought by five organizations to stop the cancellation of more than 360 grant awards by the Justice Department. However, in reaching this relatively straightforward conclusion, Judge Mehta opted to follow a pattern set by other judges in adding his own personal commentary on the wisdom of the policy change. Judge Mehta easily found that he lacked jurisdiction over such questions. However, he then vented his own personal views on the policy:

“Defendants’ rescinding of these awards is shameful. It is likely to harm communities and individuals vulnerable to crime and violence. But displeasure and sympathy are not enough in a court of law.”

Actually, neither the court’s displeasure nor sympathy should be part of the decision of a court of law. With all due respect to Judge Mehta, some of us find it shameful that judges are using these opinions to express their political viewpoints. I previously wrote about this pattern of extrajudicial commentary, particularly among the judges of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee who previously presided over Trump’s election interference case, was criticized for failing to recuse herself from that case after she made highly controversial statements about Trump from the bench. In a sentencing hearing of a Jan. 6 rioter in 2022, Chutkan said that the rioters “were there in fealty, in loyalty, to one man — not to the Constitution.” She added then, “[i]t’s a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.” That “one person” was still under investigation at the time and, when Trump was charged, Chutkan refused to let the case go.

Later, Chutkan decided to use the bench to amplify her own views of the pardons and Jan. 6. Like Judge Mehta, she conceded that she could not block the pardons but used the cases to express her personal disagreements with President Trump and his policies. She proclaimed that the pardons could not change the “tragic truth” and “cannot whitewash the blood, feces and terror that the mob left in its wake. And it cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power.”

Judge Mehta has also been criticized for conflicted rulings in Trump cases and a bizarre (and ultimately abandoned) effort to banish January 6th defendants from the Capitol.

I fail to see how being assigned this case gives a judge license to hold forth on their own views of the merits of these grants or the implications of their suspension. He is tasked with deciding the legal questions in the case, which he did so correctly.

Category:

Law

Tagged with:

“Have You Tried Gasoline?”: Democrats Admit Followers are Embracing Violent Rhetoric

By: Jonathan Turley | July 8, 2025

“What we really need to do is be willing to get shot.” Those words to a Democratic member are part of a chilling Axios story on the rising violent rhetoric on the American left. As alleged Antifa members are arrested in Texas for the attempted murder of ICE agents, Democratic members are beginning to express private concerns over unleashing uncontrollable rage after their election defeat.

Axios reported on conversations with Democratic members who admit that followers are turning to violence and rejecting messages of political reform.

One House member explained that there is a “sense of fear and despair and anger” among voters that “puts us in a different position where … we can’t keep following norms of decorum.” The member does not address how Democratic leaders are fueling the rising violent rhetoric and imagery (including the most recent posted picture of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) brandishing a baseball bat).

One House Democrat told Axios, “Some of them have suggested … what we really need to do is be willing to get shot.”

Yet another admitted that constituents have told them to prepare for “violence … to fight to protect our democracy.” Others reported that liberals are talking about the need “to storm the White House and stuff like that.”

One explained that “They’re angry beyond things.” Another said, “It’s like … the Roman coliseum. People just want more and more of this spectacle.”

Some are discussing triggering or staging violence. One member said, “What I have seen is a demand that we get ourselves arrested intentionally or allow ourselves to be victims of violence, and … a lot of times that’s coming from economically very secure white people.”

We have recently seen such performative acts with members like Sen. Alex Padilla (D., Cal.) heckling a press conference by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Democratic members storming an ICE facility.

In one encounter, a lawmaker told Axios: “I actually said in a meeting, ‘When they light a fire, my thought is to grab an extinguisher’. And someone at the table said, ‘Have you tried gasoline?’”

The answer is clearly yes.

Across the country, Democratic leaders are resorting to what I have called “rage rhetoric” in my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.” We have already seen violent protests and planned assassinations directed against Trump Administration figures. Democrats ratcheted up claims of a “coup” and called for Democrats to “fight in the streets.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D, Mass.) declared, “Elon Musk is seizing the power that belongs to the American people.” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D, Md.) claimed on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” that Musk and Trump were conducting a “rapidly expanding and accelerating coup.”

Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) appeared to be working off the same talking point and declared that a “coup” was being carried out. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) warned that Musk was “taking away everything we have.” Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Cal.) said, “We are here to fight back.” Sen. Cory Booker (D., NJ) called on citizens to “fight” and declared, “We will rise up.”

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D., TX) yelled, “We are gonna be in your face, we are gonna be on your a–es, and we are going to make sure you understand what democracy looks like, and this ain’t it.” Rep. LaMonica McIver (D., N.J.) added: “God d—it shut down the Senate!…WE ARE AT WAR!” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., called for Democrats to fight “in the streets.””

Such rhetoric can inspire unhinged citizens who actually believe that this is a war against a coup. It is the type of rhetoric that can prompt anti-Republican Nicholas John Roske to try to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh or Sanders supporter James T. Hodgkinson to try to massacre Republican members playing softball.

This week, the Department of Justice announced the arrest of ten alleged Antifa members who are being charged in an ambush of ICE agents in Alvarado, Texas, on July 4. Democratic members have long played a dangerous game in dismissing the violence or even the existence of groups like Antifa. Despite the denial of its existence by figures like Rep. Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.), I have long written and spoken about the threat of Antifa to free speech on our campuses and in our communities. This includes testimony before Congress on Antifa’s central role in the nationwide anti-free speech movement. We have continued to follow the attacks and arrests of Antifa followers across the country, including attacks on journalists.

Nevertheless, former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison, now the Minnesota attorney general, once said Antifa would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump. Ellison’s son, Minneapolis City Council member Jeremiah Ellison, declared his allegiance to Antifa in the heat of the protests this summer.

Liberal sites have sold Antifa items, including baby outfits, to celebrate the violent group.

Now, Democratic leaders are privately expressing alarm that their followers are demanding violence and rejecting moderate language. Yet, many are fueling that rage and few of their colleagues are speaking out against them. The party is attempting to ride this wave of rage to victory. However, history shows that the enablers of the mob today often find themselves the enemies of the mob tomorrow.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the best-selling author of “The Indispensable Right.” and the forthcoming book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.

Category:

Political, political violence

Tagged with:

The Icarian Gene: The Rise and Fall of the Expert Class

By: Jonathn Turley | June 26, 2025

Rad more at https://jonathanturley.org/2025/06/26/the-icarian-gene-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-expert-class/

The warning was stark. At issue was a privileged class that has long dictated policy despite countervailing public opinion. At issue, the luminary warned, is nothing short of democracy itself. No, it was not the continued rallies of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., VT) to “fight oligarchy.” It was Justice Clarence Thomas rallying his colleagues to fight technocracy, or government by experts. He warned against allowing “elite sentiment” to “distort and stifle democratic debate.” Yet, the story is even more profound of an elite class which succumbed to the Icarian gene and fell to Earth due to hubris and excess.

In his concurrence in United States v. Skrmetti, a case upholding Tennessee’s ban on adolescent transgender treatments, Thomas called for his colleagues to stand against an “expert class” that has dictated both policy and legal conclusions in the United States. The reference to “experts” is often used to insulate an opinion as self-evidently true on a given question when they speak as a group. It distinguishes the informed from the casual; the certifiably authoritative from the merely interested. Yet, what constitutes an “expert” can be little more than an advanced degree, and the “overwhelming opinion of experts” can be little more than groupthink.

Thomas warned his colleagues that “[t]here are particularly good reasons to question the expert class here, as recent revelations suggest that leading voices in this area have relied on questionable evidence and have allowed ideology to influence their medical guidance.”

Indeed, those “good reasons” have become increasingly obvious to those outside of the Beltway. The public saw experts line up during the pandemic to support mandatory uses of surgical masks, shutting down schools, and requiring the ruinous six-foot rule of separation. Many of these rules were later found lacking in scientific support. At the same time, dissenting experts, including the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration, were blacklisted, censored, or fired for challenging these views.

We have seen the same orthodoxy on issues ranging from gender dysphoria to COVID measures.

In his concurrence, Thomas lashed out at the virtual mantra in court papers and the media of an “overwhelming medical consensus” in favor of transitioning children. This is often cited as the conclusive judgment of experts as opposed to citizens who overwhelmingly oppose treatments for children, including castration or surgical removal of genitalia. Thomas insisted that “so-called experts have no license to countermand the ‘wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices.’”

For decades, citizens largely identified the government with bringing modern approaches to programs eliminating long-standing social ills from poverty to illiteracy to inequality. Roughly 100 years ago, the New Deal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt transformed the government’s role in American life. A generation of experts brought new ideas of electrification, education, and economics to the country.

This veneration was furthered by Kennedy’s assemblage of “the best and the brightest” and Johnson’s “Great Society” reformers.

The courts later followed with greater and greater deference afforded to these experts, including the establishment of the “Chevron doctrine” insulating agency decisions from substantial judicial review. The Supreme Court ruled that courts were poorly equipped to second-guess the expertise of agency experts.

The Reagan Revolution challenged those assumptions. Reagan famously told voters that “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”

Over the years, the mystique took on a more menacing aspect for many in the country as they watched academic and scientific groups become more advocates than experts. There seemed to be a shift from making for a better life to making us better people through progressive social agendas.

The result has been a dramatic change in trust for higher education and, by extension, the supremacy of the expert class. According to Gallup, only a third of Americans today have great confidence in higher education and roughly the same number have little or no confidence. That is a drop of over twenty percent in the last ten years.

Other polling shows drops in the trust for state and local public health officials as well as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The decline of the expert class can be traced to the changes in higher education over the last couple of decades. As I discuss in my book The Indispensable Right, an orthodoxy has taken hold of most universities with a purging of conservative, libertarian, and dissenting faculty. Within these ideological echo chambers, appointments, publications, and grants often seem to turn on conclusions that favor political agendas.

Over the years, dissenting faculty members have been forced out of scientific and academic organizations for challenging preferred conclusions on subjects ranging from transgender transitions to COVID-19 protections to climate change. Some were barred from speaking at universities or blacklisted for their opposing views.

As shown during COVID, many of the exiled experts were ultimately proven correct in challenging the efficacy of surgical masks or the need to shut down our schools and businesses. Scientists moved like a herd of lemmings on the origin of the virus, crushing those who suggested that the most likely explanation is a lab leak (a position that federal agencies would later embrace).

Scientists have worked with the government in suppressing dissenting views. At the end of last year, The Wall Street. Journal released a report on how the Biden administration suppressed dissenting views supporting the lab leak theory, as dissenting scientists were blacklisted and targeted. When experts within the Biden Administration found that the lab theory was the most likely explanation for COVID-19, they were told not to share their data publicly and were warned about being “off the reservation.”

British pediatrician Hilary Cass published a review for NHS England that cast doubt on gender-identity treatments for children and young people. The research reportedly led to an aggressive campaign by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) to suppress the results.

The gravitational pull of social agendas has overwhelmed not just scientific judgment but common sense. For example, there has been a push to treat gender as a socially constructed myth. A University of Pittsburgh anthropology professor declared that you cannot tell the gender of an individual from their bones – a widely ridiculed assertion.

The editor-in-chief of Scientific American Laura Helmuth made her own contribution to gender ideology by tweeting out a statement with a 2017 article in Audubon Notebook stating “White-throated sparrows have four chromosomally distinct sexes that pair up in fascinating ways. P.S. Nature is amazing[.] P.P.S. Sex is not binary.”

Various experts cried fowl and noted that her point was ideologically driven and scientifically absurd. (Helmuth later resigned after posting a profanity-laden attack on social media calling Trump voters “fascists” and bigots).

In many cases, dissenting views on social or political issues are treated as disqualifying for any research. At Cornell, professors signed a letter denouncing “informed commentary” critical of violent protests as racist.

In 2020, Harald Uhlig, the senior editor of the prestigious Journal of Political Economy and the Bruce Allen and Barbara Ritzenthaler Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago, criticized Black Lives Matter and the movement to defund the police. The response was a campaign to remove Uhlig from the Journal. Writers like economist Paul Krugman insisted that he was now “yet another privileged white man” attacking the “less fortunate.”

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center removed Associate Professor of Medicine Norman Wang from his position as Program Director of the Electrophysiology Fellowship after he wrote an article in a peer-reviewed journal questioning the use of affirmative action in medical schools admissions. (Later, the Supreme Court would declare such use of race as unconstitutional race discrimination).

Another controversy arose in 2024 just before the Supreme Court considered access to mifepristone, one of two drugs used for abortions by mail. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk relied on two studies that showed harm from the use of the pill.

The Sage journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology was widely criticized by abortion advocates for publishing the studies. One month before the oral argument, the studies were conveniently retracted and a review published that found the conclusions “invalidated in whole or in part.”

Justices and judges will often take favorable studies as gospel in supporting their legal conclusions. In her dissent in the University of North Carolina affirmative action case, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson triggered a controversy in citing a 2020 study from a friend-of-the-court brief by the Association of American Medical Colleges. Jackson claimed that race-based admissions “saves lives” because having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood of the survival of high-risk Black babies. The claim of the brief and the flawed methodology of the study was shredded by critics.

The fact is that it is easy to produce near uniformity of experts since most universities now run from the left to the far left. The combination of biased hiring practices has left most departments with few or no conservative faculty members. As a result, the media can report that liberal positions are supported overwhelmingly by “experts.”

For example, it is now common for the media to report signed letters or petitions of law professors denouncing conservative positions or rulings. It rarely mentions that most law schools have only a couple of conservative faculty members. It is like getting a pro-papal petition from the College of Cardinals. Nevertheless, the coverage leaves the impression that opposing views on transgenderism, gun rights, or other subjects are absurd and rejected by virtually all “experts.”

Both the courts and the public, however, appear to be losing their awe for the expert class. The Supreme Court recently tossed the Chevron Doctrine and called for courts to resume their prior scrutiny of agency decisions.

None of this means that courts or the public should disregard science or experts. Indeed, many experts still follow core principles of unbiased inquiry and discourse. However, good science requires open inquiry and a diversity of viewpoints. Citizens are rejecting science by plebiscite, the self-authenticating petitions where academics purported to speak for an expert class.

The expert class lost the public when they replaced objectivity with orthodoxy. No matter how many experts claim that gender is a social myth, the public is not likely to dispense with reality. The rise and fall of the expert class is a story of the costs of arrogance and excess. Higher education has created a privileged class of social warriors who abandoned core principles of neutrality and objectivity in research. It is an Icarian generation of scholars who flew too close to the sun and fell to Earth in the eyes of the public.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University where he teaches a course on the Supreme Court. He is the best-selling author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” and the forthcoming Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution (Simon & Schuster 2026).

Category:

Law, Political

Tagged with:

ICE, ICE Baby: Denver City Council Ends Car Theft Tracking System to Protect Illegal Immigrants

By: Jonathan Turley | June 27, 2025

The Denver City Council has voted unanimously to shutter a highly successful anti-theft auto license plate tracking system. The system was not closed due to concerns about privacy or finances. It was shut down because Democratic members believed that ICE could use the data to deport illegals.

In May, the council refused to renew the $666,000 contract with Flock for camera monitors around 70 Denver intersections to screen for car theft. That system resulted in the recovery of 170 stolen cars and 300 arrests. It is also credited with key evidence in the investigation of hit-and-run and murder cases.

However, it could also be used to assist ICE, and that is all that matters. Councilman Kevin Flynn explained it is all about Trump’s election: “We know that it can help solve crime. But I think since maybe Jan. 20 of this year, those concerns are greatly heightened and have a new reality about them.”

Council member Sarah Parady added:

“We’re living in an era where just this last week, actually, an executive order came out instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to look for reasons to prosecute local elected officials and activists who they believe are, quote, unquote, obstructing ICE enforcement. This kind of surveillance technology is a gift if you have that kind of ill intent, and the federal government has that ill intent right now.”

Mayor Mike Johnston also stated that they need to halt these arrests because “today’s environment is much different than when the pilot began in early 2024, and there are new community concerns surrounding this technology.”

The police are obviously not happy, but car thieves are thrilled. If this seems utterly insane, keep in mind that this was a unanimous vote of the city council.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

“Where You At?”: California Vice Mayor Under Investigation After Calling on Gangs to Protect Their “Turf” Against ICE

By: Jonathan Turley | June 25, 2025

The Vice Mayor of Cudahy, Cynthia Gonzalez, is reportedly being investigated by the FBI after she posted a video urging criminal organizations like the 18th Street and Florencia 13 gangs to protect their “turf” against ICE. The call for gang action is disgraceful, particularly as ICE reports a 500 percent increase in attacks on its officers. However, I do not believe that the comments can be the basis for a criminal charge and would be considered protected speech.

Gonzalez has now taken down the video below, but she earlier called for these gangs to move against ICE:

“Not for nothing, but I wanna know where all the cholos are at in Los Angeles? Eighteenth street, Florencia, where’s the leadership at? Because you guys are all about territory, and this is 18th Street and this is Florencia, you guys tag everything up — claiming hood, and now that your hoods being invaded, by the biggest gang there is, there ain’t a peep out of you…It’s everyone else who’s not about the gang life that’s out there protesting and speaking up, we’re out there like fighting our turf, protecting our turf, protecting our people, and like where you at?”

This is not the first time that Democratic politicians have enlisted violent groups as political allies.

Some Democrats have played a dangerous game in supporting or excusing the work of Antifa. Former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison, now the Minnesota attorney general, once said Antifa would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump. This was after Antifa had been involved in numerous acts of violence, and its website was banned in Germany.

Ellison’s son, Minneapolis City Council member Jeremiah Ellison, declared his allegiance to Antifa in the heat of the protests this summer. During a prior hearing, Democratic senators refused to clearly denounce Antifa and falsely suggested that the far right was the primary cause of recent violence.

The problem with being a free speech advocate is that you are often compelled to defend speech that you find grotesque and reprehensible. Gonzalez would shake the faith of any free speech champion. However, her speech would be considered protected under the First Amendment. First, it is sufficiently vague on what she is suggesting to counter a charge of a call for imminent violence. Second, the Supreme Court held that even violent speech is protected.

Indeed, in Brandenburg v. Ohio, a 1969 case involving “violent speech,” the court struck down an Ohio law prohibiting public speech that was deemed as promoting illegal conduct. It supported the right of the Ku Klux Klan to speak out, even though it is a hateful organization. Likewise, in RAV v. City of St. Paul in 2011, it struck down a ban on any symbol that “arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender.” In Snyder v. Phelps, also in 2011, the court said the hateful protests of Westboro Baptist Church were protected.

The video may not be criminal, but it is still an indictment of how some Democratic politicians continue to pander to violent groups for political purposes. It is a dangerous game. History has shown that those who fuel extreme groups often find themselves later targets as mob rule takes hold. Gonzalez may find that she is also unwelcomed on their “turf.”

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Trump Critics Face the “Nightmare” of Peace Breaking Out in the Midst of an Impeachment Effort

By: Jonathan Turley | June 28, 2025

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) announced this morning that he would oppose the introduction of his war powers resolution on Iran if the ceasefire held. He described the resolution as a moot point if peace is restored. That is clearly not going to satisfy colleagues like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) who is struggling to maintain her call for impeachment.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez seemed a tad adrift when asked about the ceasefire, offering a rambling explanation on why it does not change a thing in terms of impeachable conduct:

“I think that the president of the United States, admitting that he unilaterally brought the United States into a war without congressional approval, is a very grave public admission. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional…And, and so for me, while the president is posting something about a ceasefire, I think what he also posted was an official acknowledgement that this was war. And I think that is something that should be taken into very serious consideration.”

It was an obvious blow to many democrats. You get all dressed up for an impeachment and then peace suddenly breaks out.

If it is any solace, there was never a plausible impeachment in the making. If so, you could have impeached presidents going back to Thomas Jefferson. Barack Obama dropped over 26,000 bombs in 2016 alone from Syria to Libya to Somalia to Pakistan to Afghanistan to Iraq. Democrats did not rise up and demand impeachment after Obama was hitting targets around the world.

Nevertheless, you could also taste the palpable disappointment for many.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Ninth Circuit Rules for Trump on National Guard Deployment

By: Jonathan Turley | June 20, 2025

California Gov. Gavin Newsom just lost a major ruling in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which ruled that President Donald Trump is likely to prevail in his deployment of National Guard troops. Newsom and various Democratic politicians have insisted that Trump’s order is unlawful and that Newsom has to agree to any request for deployment. The Ninth Circuit ruled on Thursday that Newsom does not have such a veto over deployments.

The Ninth Circuit blocked the injunction of District Court Judge Charles Breyer who suggested in open court that Trump was acting like another “King George.” He then wrote an opinion that included many Democratic talking points — suggesting, for example, that Trump was creating disorder by calling out the National Guard to deal with disorder. Breyer further indicated that the violence in Los Angeles was relatively minor, despite potentially deadly attacks on law enforcement, arson, and looting.

Breyer gave the Administration little time to appeal his ruling, but it was enough for the Ninth Circuit.

Title 10 provides:

Whenever—

(1) the United States, or any of the Commonwealths or

possessions, is invaded or is in danger of invasion by a

foreign nation;

(2) there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the

authority of the Government of the United States; or

(3) the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States;

the President may call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard of any State in such numbers as he considers necessary to repel the invasion, suppress the rebellion, or execute those laws. Orders for these purposes shall be issued through the governors of the States or, in the case of the District of Columbia, through the commanding general of the National Guard of the District of Columbia.

10 U.S.C. § 12406.

In his decision, Judge Breyer took the extreme position that Trump could not use subsection 3 if there was any possibility of executing federal laws absent the use of the National Guard troops:

[T]he statute does not allow for the federalizing of the National Guard when the President faces obstacles that cause him to underperform in executing the laws. Nor does the statute allow for the federalizing of the National Guard when the President faces some risk in executing the laws. . . . The statute requires that the President be “unable” to execute the laws of the United States. That did not happen here.

In its decision, the court rejected this premise and held that “Section 12406 does not have as a prerequisite that the President be completely precluded from executing the relevant laws of the United States in order to call members of the National Guard into federal service, nor does it suggest that activation is inappropriate so long as any continued execution of the laws is feasible.”

It concluded that “it is likely that the President lawfully exercised his statutory authority” in federalizing control of the guard. It also rejected Newsom’s claim of a veto on deployment.

Here is the opinion: 25-3727_order-for-pub

Category:

Crime, Law, political violence

Tagged with:

More Heat Than Light: New York Judge Blocks ICE Access to Rikers Island Over Alleged Adams Conflict

By: Jonathan Turley | June 17, 2025

This week, New York Judge Mary Rosado issued an opinion in Council of City of N.Y. v. Adams. The court is blocking the city from allowing the federal government to maintain office space at Rikers Island. The reason is that Rosado agreed that Mayor Eric Adams had a conflict of interest and likely bargained away the access as part of a quid pro quo arrangement to get the Justice Department to drop criminal charges against him. The opinion is quite extraordinary and, in my view, fundamentally flawed. The opinion generated more heat than light on the proper handling of a conflict of interest.

The court recounts the testimony of Danielle R. Sassoon, Esq., Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, regarding a January 31, 2025, meeting with President Donald J. Trump’s Deputy Attorney General, Emil Bove, and the mayor’s criminal defense counsel. She claimed that “Adams'[] attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with [immigration] enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed.”

After that meeting, on February 3, 2025, Mayor Adams’ criminal defense attorney, Alex Spiro, wrote to Bove that the prosecution of the mayor will “become increasingly problematic as the Trump administration seeks to aggressively enforce immigration laws and remove undocumented immigrants …. [T]he federal government cannot possibly rely on Mayor Adams to be a fully effective partner in all situations in ongoing public-safety missions while he is under federal indictment ….”

One week later, on February 10, 2025, Bove directed federal prosecutors to dismiss with prejudice the pending criminal charges against Mayor Adams. The plaintiffs allege that these negotiations traded away city policies or privileges in exchange for the dropping of the charges, a charge that Adams vehemently denies. On February 13, 2025, after meeting with the Administration’s “Border Czar,” Thomas Homan, Mayor Adams announced that he would issue an executive order allowing federal immigration authorities to be present on Rikers Island. The next day, the Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss all pending criminal charges against Mayor Adams.

After the announcement, a number of deputy mayors resigned in protest. Adams then appointed Randy Mastro as First Deputy and delegated to him the authority to “[p]erform any function, power or duty of the mayor in negotiating, executing and delivering any and all agreements, instruments and any other documents necessary or desirable to effectuate any of the matters” related to public safety.

On April 8, 2025, Mastro issued Executive Order No. 50, authorizing the Department of Corrections to enter a Memorandum of Understanding with federal law enforcement agencies allowing them to maintain office space on Department of Corrections property, specifically Rikers Island.

The timing of these actions raised objections from many, both inside and outside City Hall. That included United States District Judge Dale Ho, who agreed to dismiss the criminal charges with prejudice, but not after lashing out at the administration. Ho wrote that “[e]verything here smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the [i]ndictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions.” He further warned that the suggestion “that public officials may receive special dispensation if they are compliant with the incumbent administration’s policy priorities … is fundamentally incompatible with the basic promise of equal justice under law.”

I disagreed with Judge Ho’s use of the order to opine on an alleged quid pro quo that was not established in the record or even material to his decision. Ho agreed that he could not “force the Department of Justice to prosecute a defendant” and agreed to dismiss the matter with prejudice. That was the correct and only decision that he could make. However, he further strongly suggested the need for an investigation but lamented that he “did not have the authority to appoint an independent prosecutor.”

I do not question Judge Ho’s sincere objections or the good-faith basis of many in raising this allegation. However, I do not believe that judges or justices should use their positions to opine on political or ethical issues that are not clearly before them. The issue before Judge Ho was solely the dismissal of a criminal case and he had no record, or in my view license, to hold forth on his unsupported suspicions in the case.

The matter, however, was raised and litigated directly before Judge Rosado by the city council, which sought to nullify the Executive Order as being violative of city ethical rules. Specifically, the city council cited New York City Charter § 2604(b)(3), which provides in pertinent part that “[n]o public servant shall use or attempt to use his or her position as a public servant to obtain any … privilege or other private or personal advantage, direct or indirect, for the public servant or any person or firm associated with the public servant.”

Judge Rosado found a likelihood of prevailing on the merits, citing Baker v. Marley, 8 NY2d 365, 367 (1960), that an action must be declared null and void when the action “directly or immediately affects him individually.” She specifically found:

Plaintiff-Petitioner has shown a likelihood of success in demonstrating, at a minimum, the appearance of a quid pro quo whereby Mayor Adams publicly agreed to bring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) back to Rikers Island in exchange for dismissal of his criminal charges. This showing is grounded in (1) Mayor Adams’ public statements; (2) Mayor Adams’ criminal defense attorney’s written overtures to the Department of Justice; (3) the temporal proximity between these overtures and Mr. Bove’s directive to dismiss the criminal charges against Mayor Adams; (4) statements from former Acting United States Attorney Danielle R. Sassoon and Assistant United States Attorney Hagan Scotten; (5) Mr. Homan’s statement that he will “be in [Mayor Adams’] office, up his b ___, saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’” and (6) the written findings by United States District Judge Dale Ho.

Although Defendants-Respondents deny any quid pro quo in conclusory fashion, this is insufficient and almost expected. As wisely stated by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the quid pro quo need not be stated in express terms “for otherwise the law’s effect could be frustrated by knowing winks and nods. The inducement from the official is [violative] if it is express or if it is implied from his words and actions ….” Based on the record, Plaintiff-Petitioner has made a sufficient showing of an implied, if not an express quid pro quo based on Mayor Adams, Mr. Spiro, Mr. Bove, and Mr. Homan’s words and actions.

In my view, the decision is wrong on a number of key elements.

Who decides?

First, Judge Rosado heard this case despite the fact that there is a process for such allegations to be raised and adjudicated before the Conflict of Interest Board. Rosado recognizes the obvious problem and admits that

“[t]o be clear, the Conflicts of Interest Board is the preferred and proper forum for many garden variety conflict of interest disputes, such as those involving improper gifts, failures to disclose financial interests, and other financial conflicts.‘

“However, the Conflicts of Interest Board is not equipped with the powers and tools to grapple with the case, which involves the promulgation of an Executive Order at lightning speed, upending a decree of New York policy barring federal law enforcement authorities from maintaining a presence on Department of Corrections property.”

I found the court’s logic on this portion of the opinion to be conclusory and counterintuitive. There is nothing in the law or regulations that defines the Board as focused on “garden-variety” conflicts. It is the system created by the city council to address conflict allegations and, while Judge Rosado believes that she can do better than the board, that is hardly a convincing basis to circumvent the process for the adjudication of such claims. Rosado ignores that this is a specialized body expressly tasked with such conflicts. It is unclear how the court is “better equipped” with its own limited staff to address such matters, other than having the ability to issue judicial injunctions.

Deception or Delegation?

Putting aside this act of judicial overreach, there is also the problem that the order was ultimately issued not by Adams but by Mastro. There are very compelling public policy reasons for taking this action. The city is struggling with the massive demands of its undocumented immigrant population. Before he was ever charged, Adams was viewed as a moderate on such questions who was open to greater federal enforcement. Many states and cities cooperate with federal authorities in this way as a matter of public policy.

Judge Rosado admits that there is a valid question of whether the delegation constituted a type of recusal or cleansing of the decision. However, she maintained that Mastro is not independent because he was appointed by Adams and reports to him. Moreover, she cited New York City Charter § 2604(b)(3), which states that delegating oversight or management does not necessarily erase a conflict of interest. She notes that Adams said publicly that he did not recuse himself and found:

“The Defendants-Respondents’ hyperbolic argument that if Mayor Adams cannot delegate to First Deputy Mayor Mastro, then there is nobody he can delegate to, is without merit. First Deputy Mayor Mastro, although an accomplished and highly educated attorney, is not independent of Mayor Adams and therefore cannot be considered impartial and free from Mayor Adams’ conflicts. First Deputy Mayor Mastro reports directly to Mayor Adams, is appointed by Mayor Adams, and can be fired by Mayor Adams. He is Mayor Adams’ agent.”

It is not clear, however, who would be sufficiently free of Adams’ authority to allow for them to make the myriad of decisions vis-a-vis federal authority. In this matter, Mastro and the Mayor’s office are arguing that he made an independent judgment on the merits of the policy. More importantly, Judge Rosado ignores the implications of her order. She never explains how the city is to function if any order dealing with the federal government could be viewed as part of a quid pro quo. There are a host of joint operations and programs with the federal government. Where does one draw the line and who then makes these decisions ranging from housing to prisons to voting? Rosado seems to shrug and say that anyone reporting to the Mayor or subject to his authority is not sufficiently independent.

The Order

Judge Rosado ultimately finds against Adams, but includes rhetoric exulting the prior pro-immigration policies that further undermines the opinion:

The Court finds that Plaintiff-Petitioner has demonstrated imminent and irreparable harm for purposes of obtaining a preliminary injunction. The harm to intangible assets such as damage to reputation, loss of goodwill, and brand tarnishment are routinely found sufficient to grant injunctive relief. New York City, which thrives as a global hub due in large part to its reputation as being a welcoming home for immigrant communities from around the world, risks having this goodwill and invaluable reputation irreparably damaged as a result of an Executive Order borne out of Mayor Adams’ alleged conflict of interest. New York City, through legislation and decades of policy, has established a reputation as a “Sanctuary City.” This reputation, and the goodwill built from decades of policy decisions, and which have provided New Yorkers with numerous intangible cultural and economic benefits, risks being irrevocably tarnished. The harm to New York City’s reputation as a Sanctuary City, and the goodwill with numerous communities that flows from that reputation, is best preserved through a preliminary injunction prohibiting Defendants-Respondents from acting on Executive Order No. 50.

…

The Court is also cognizant of threat of irreparable harm in a more concrete sense—that is the threat to detained New York State and City residents and their dignity. There is ample evidence that there is already a serious, imminent and ongoing risk that immigrant New Yorkers, and even foreign tourists to New York City, are being wrongfully detained. There are documented reports of individuals being deported to stranger third-countries, and New York City residents are taken into custody for expressing political views contrary to the federal government’s agenda. Residents who are here seeking asylum are being deported to countries they claim to have previously faced persecution for their sexuality, politics, or religion. And this concrete harm flows to the Plaintiff-Petitioner…

I was frankly astonished by the direct discussion of the mayor’s criminal charges in the conjunction with negotiations over enhanced federal enforcement. While I understand the defense counsel’s job to seek any lawful avenue for relief, I would have immediately cut off such discussions as inappropriate from the perspective of the Justice Department. If such discussions occurred, there is a legitimate concern over a quid pro quo. However, this is not how courts should address such allegations. I believe both Judge Ho (who ruled correctly) and Judge Rosado (who did not) exceeded the parameters for their opinions with extraneous commentary. That is particularly the case with Judge Rosado. More importantly, I believe that Judge Rosado is simply wrong in circumventing the designated board for addressing conflicts of interest and issuing this sweeping opinion.

This is not an easy matter for any board or court. These meetings and the timing of these decisions raise obvious concerns. However, courts are not allowed to engage in conjecture. It is not just plausible but likely that Adams would have extended the access to Rikers Island even without any change in his criminal case.

I do not see the limiting principle in this decision. Adams is still the mayor and may have independent and good-faith reasons for orders that are favorable for the federal government. Indeed, his order was the correct one on the merits. While Judge Rosado never explores the countervailing benefits while writing at length on the costs to a city of immigrants, they are obvious and cannot be ignored. In other words, Adams had every reason to support federal enforcement as a Mayor who ran on making New York a safer city.

This matter should have been left to the Conflicts of Interest Board, and the decision itself is ill-considered and incomplete.

Category:

Crime, Law

Tagged with:

Jonathan Turley Op-ed: Assassination Sweepstakes: The Shooting of Minnesota Politicians Unleashes Partisan Finger Pointing

Commentary by Jonathan Turley | June 15, 2025

It is arguably the most disheartening aspect of the “Age of Rage.” Almost immediately after the shooting of Minnesota politicians and their spouses, the press, pundits, and politicians leaped to capitalize on the tragedy by blaming the other side for political violence. There is a sick, almost hopeful, quality to the commentary as political pundits hope that they win this round of the assassination sweepstakes with a criminal associated with the other party. Initial reports fueled such speculation on both sides. Some are now saying that Boelter suffered from “MAGA disease” while others are claiming that he is a “far left” goon. Still others insist that he is “a far right, MAGA, left wing loon,”

Both sides found just enough to weaponize the shootings. Vance Luther Boelter has connections to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who reappointed him to a state board. He is also someone who reportedly voted for Trump and opposed the abortion movement.

As we have discussed, there is a rise in political violence in this country. From January 6th to attempted assassinations of both President Donald Trump and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, there is a radicalization that is occurring within our society. It is the license of rage that I discuss in my book where unhinged individuals believe that any means are now justified to counter a political threat.

The fact is that rage rhetoric has been common on both sides of the political spectrum for years. Politicians continue to fan these flames, including many who insist that democracy is about to die in this country, or call Trump the new Hitler. Leaders on both sides have called their opponents “traitors” and threats to the nation.

The fact is that we still know little about Boelter. He had “No Kings” literature in his car but that does not mean that he was motivated by those protests. We still do not know what is contained in a reported manifesto left by the shooter.

The only thing that is likely is that Boelter is another unstable loner who took his anger out on others. There are reports that he was in difficult financial straits and suffered a series of setbacks. He was the CEO of an international NGO called the Red Lion Group, which appears to have run out of funding. There are reports that he was holding a variety of odd jobs to sustain himself.

The fact is that we have a significant number of people who are mentally unstable or delusional. Anger in their lives is easily translated into a lethal obsession for public officials or public figures, particularly when leaders call on people to resist opponents labeled as traitors or tyrants.

The rush to claim Boelter as a devotee of the left or right only shows how these critics are engaging in the very rage rhetoric that they are supposedly condemning.

We should know the actual facts soon, including the contents of this manifesto. So here is a novel idea: perhaps we should wait for those facts rather than engage in this frenzy of recrimination and rage.

Category:

Crime, political violence, Society

Tagged with:

Monarchy Malarkey: Democrats Revive Claim that Democracy is Dying in the “No Kings” Protests

By: Jonathan Turley | June 16, 2025

Below is my column in the Hill on resumption of the claims that “democracy is dying” as part of the “No Kings” protests. When this column posted, I was inundated with the usual threats and profanity. However, the emails and messages were particularly vehement this week. (One on Father’s Day explained that when a bullet is put in my head, my children would celebrate). For self-professed champions of democracy, there is nothing more deflating and demoralizing than being told that democracy is not dying. “No Kings” is the ultimate virtue signal, but it requires a monarch to make the self-image complete. There are obviously important issues to debate and to protest. However, we can have that debate without the absurd claims that our constitutional system is failing, as claimed by many politicians and pundits.

Here is the column:

Across the nation today, thousands of protests are being organized by left-wing groups, unions, and other organizations, with chants of “No Kings, No Kings, No Kings.” The mantra is a calculated campaign to cement the notion that Donald Trump has assumed dictatorial powers. It is a curious campaign, since every indication is that our constitutional system is operating precisely as designed.

Courts have ruled both in favor of and against the Trump administration. Congress has held hearings and passed legislation on various issues. We have the oldest and most stable constitutional system in the history of the world. The Constitution is not only designed for times like these — it was written in a time like this.

The superficial appeal of such campaigns is evident in the triggering event that sparked the protests. The Trump administration is holding a parade to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States Army — the kind of celebration that is common among our closest allies, from France to Great Britain.

Since this anniversary coincides with Trump’s birthday, it is claimed that it is nothing more than a royal birthday bash, even though Trump has been calling for such military parades since his first term.

The well-funded protests are being fueled by Democratic leaders, who are resuming their claims that citizens must either protest this weekend or accept tyranny in the United States. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.) went so far as to declare, “If we don’t show up, Democracy dies.”

The Democrats seem to believe that the “death of democracy” theme that failed spectacularly in the last election can now rescue their party from record-low polling. In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson (who is at 6 percent popularity with his constituents) announced, “I am counting on all of Chicago to resist in this moment.”

Even some judges appear to have picked up on the mantra. Before issuing his order to stop Trump’s use of the National Guard in Los Angeles this week, District Court Judge Charles Breyer declared in open court that Trump was another “King George.” He then wrote an opinion that included in it many Democratic talking points — suggesting, for example, that Trump was creating disorder by calling out the National Guard to deal with disorder. Breyer further indicated that the violence in Los Angeles was relatively minor, despite potentially deadly attacks on law enforcement, arson, and looting.

Many of us have noted that there are good-faith arguments on both sides of this issue. However, since the Madison Administration, the Supreme Court has warned lower courts not to second-guess the basis for deployments. Rather than confine himself to the relative authority of the federal and state governments on ordering deployments, Judge Breyer eagerly entered the political fray on these collateral issues. The impression is that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) had Breyer at hello.

The “No Kings” mantra is meant to implant this image in the public psyche, despite the lack of evidence that democracy is in any real danger. It is called the illusory truth effect, whereby the repetition of a false claim can create an impression of truth. Ironically, it is a technique denounced by some of these very same critics as a common means of disinformation. They cite the effect as a justification for censorship of opposing views.

Yet, what is disinformation to some is information to others. “Democracy is dying” may be an absurdity, but it is also their advocacy — and it is protected speech, no matter how disinformative.

The danger is that these Democratic politicians are fueling the most radical and violent elements in our country with their “rage rhetoric.” The images reinforce the “no holds barred” message.

People watch unhinged members such as Rep. LeMonica McIver (D.-N.J.) hitting federal officers and forcing her way into federal facilities and the lessons are not lost on them. They see Rep. Maxine Waters (R-Calif.), who has fueled the anger in prior riots, accusing California Guardsmen of coming to shoot people in Los Angeles and telling them, “You better shoot straight.”

Many are fueling the rage as a license to oppose Trump by any means. What they will not admit is that they need the rage. They like it.

That was evident in the disruption of a press conference by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) who not only yelled at Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, but resisted efforts of security to move him into the hall. He then claimed to be a victim of authoritarianism.

The right to disrupt has never been a basis for democracy, but it is a basis for anarchy. The Democratic Party has finally embraced the philosophy of former Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), who famously pulled the fire alarm in order to prevent a vote from happening on the House floor.

Before he was voted out of office, Bowman was shown on videotape screaming about gun control in the Capitol as his colleagues left the floor following a vote. Various Democratic members, including former House Majority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), tried to calm Bowman. However, when Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) asked Bowman to stop yelling, Bowman shouted back: “I was screaming before you interrupted me.”

These politicians and pundits will not tolerate such interruptions this weekend. Whatever unfolds, it’s Trump’s fault. There is a national rave planned, and the republic be damned.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

Category:

Free Speech, Political

Tagged with:

Second Circuit to Hear Trump Appeal from New York Criminal Case

By: Jonathan Turley | June 11, 2025

Today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will hear oral arguments on a threshold issue in the criminal case against President Donald Trump in New York. The case is still pending in the New York court system after his sentencing, but President Trump wants the case removed to federal court. He is relying on last year’s presidential immunity decision and arguing that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg tripped a wire by calling former White House aides as witnesses.

Last year, the Supreme Court issued a historic decision in Trump v. United States defining the scope of presidential immunity.

The Court found that there was absolute immunity for actions that fall within their “exclusive sphere of constitutional authority,” while they enjoy presumptive immunity for other official acts. They do not enjoy immunity for unofficial, or private, actions.

The Court has often adopted tiered approaches in balancing the powers of the branches. For example, in his famous concurrence to Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952), Justice Robert Jackson broke down the line of authority between Congress and the White House into three groups where the President is acting with express or implied authority from Congress; where Congress is silent (“the zone of twilight” area); and where the President is acting in defiance of Congress.

Here, the Court separated cases into actions taken in core areas of executive authority, official actions taken outside those core areas, and unofficial actions. Actions deemed personal or unofficial are not protected under this ruling.

Trump is arguing that he is protected by presidential immunity and that this matter should be heard in federal court. He is citing Bragg’s calling of former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks and former executive assistant Madeleine Westerhout as witnesses to discuss matters occurring in the White House and during Trump’s first term.

Bragg is arguing that it is too late for such removal. Trump’s prior efforts at removal have failed.

The argument will be heard before Judges Raymond J. Lohier, Susan L. Carney, and Myrna Perez.

This is a difficult case to make at this stage of the case. If Trump loses, the criminal case will continue through the state system and may eventually find its way to the Supreme Court.

I have long been a critic of the case and there are strong grounds to appeal.

For example, Judge Juan Merchan effectively guaranteed a conviction by telling jurors that they did not have to agree with specificity on what had occurred in the case to convict Trump. The only way to get beyond the passage of the statute of limitations on the dead misdemeanor for falsifying business records had been to allege that the bookkeeping violation in question occurred to conceal another crime. Bragg did not bother to state clearly what that crime was, originally alluding to four different crimes.

It was not until the end of the case that Merchan would lay out three possible crimes for the jury. All the way up to the final instructions in the case, legal analysts on CNN and other outlets expressed doubt about what the actual theory of the criminal conduct was in the case.

Despite spending little time on these secondary crimes at trial, Merchan told the jury that they could convict if they believed that invoices and other documents had been falsified to hide federal election violations, other falsification violations or a tax violation.

Those are very different theories of a criminal conspiracy. Under one theory, Trump was hiding an affair with a porn actress with the payment of hush money before the election. Under another theory, he was trying to reduce a tax burden for someone else (that part was left hazy). As a third alternative, he might have falsified the documents to hide the falsification of other documents, a perfectly spellbinding circular theory.

If those sound like they could be three different cases, then you are right. Yet Merchan told the jurors that they did not have to agree on which fact-pattern or conspiracy had occurred. They could split 4-4-4 on the secondary crime motivating the misdemeanors and just declare that some secondary crime was involved.

Many of us are eager to see the New York system move this case, as well as the equally grotesque case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. The cases, however, continue to move forward at a glacial pace in the notoriously slow New York legal system.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Always Ready, Always There: Democrats Mobilize Against the National Guard Deployment

By: Jonathan Turley | June 9, 2025

Below is my column in Fox.com on the deployment of National Guard in Los Angeles. Another round of court challenges is unfolding, but the escalation is likely to continue on both sides. While the Guard’s motto is “Always Ready, Always There!” California Democrats do not want them between rioters and federal law enforcement.

Here is the column:

Gov. Gavin Newsom was in his element this week. After scenes of burning cars and attacks on ICE personnel, Newsom declared that this was all “an illegal act, an immoral act, an unconstitutional act.” No, he was not speaking of the attacks on law enforcement or property. He was referring to President Donald Trump’s call to deploy the National Guard to protect federal officers.

Newsom is planning to challenge the deployment as cities like Glendale are cancelling contracts to house detainees and reaffirming that local police will not assist the federal government.

Trump has the authority under Section 12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code to deploy the National Guard if the president is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.” The Administration is saying that that is precisely what is unfolding in California, where mobs attack vehicles and trap federal personnel.

Most critics are challenging the deployment on policy grounds, arguing that it is an unnecessary escalation. However, even critics like Berkeley Law Dean Erwin have admitted that “Unfortunately, President Trump likely has the legal authority to do this.”

There is a fair debate over whether this is needed at this time, but the President is allowed to reach a different conclusion. Trump wants the violence to end now as opposed to escalating as it did in the Rodney King riots or the later riots after the George Floyd killings, causing billions in property damage and many deaths.

Courts will be asked to halt the order because it did not technically go through Newsom to formally call out the National Guard.

Section 12406 grants Trump the authority to call out the Guard and employs a mandatory term for governors, who “shall” issue the President’s order. In the memo, Trump also instructed federal officials “to coordinate with the Governors of the States and the National Guard Bureau.” Newsom is clearly refusing to issue the orders or coordinate the deployment.

Even if such challenges are successful, Trump can clearly flood the zone with federal authority. Indeed, the obstruction could escalate the matter further, prompting Trump to consider using the Insurrection Act, which would allow troops to participate directly in civilian law enforcement. In 1958, President Eisenhower used the Insurrection Act to deploy troops to Arkansas to enforce the Supreme Court’s orders ending racial segregation in schools.

The Trump Administration has already claimed that these riots “constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” In support of such a claim, the Administration could cite many of the Democratic leaders now denouncing the claim.

After January 6th, liberal politicians and professors insisted that the riot was an “insurrection” and, in claiming that Trump and dozens of Republicans could be removed from ballots under the 14th Amendment. Liberal professors insisted that Trump’s use of the word “fight” and questioning the results of an election did qualify as an insurrection. They argued that you merely need to show “an assemblage of people” who are “resisting law” and “using force or intimidation” for “a public purpose.” The involvement of inciteful language from politicians only reinforced these claims. Sound familiar?

Democrats are using this order to deflect from their own escalation of the tensions for months. From Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz calling ICE officers “Gestapo” to others calling them “fascists” and “Nazis,” Democratic leaders have been ignoring objections that they are fueling the violent and criminal responses. It did not matter. It was viewed as good politics.

While Newsom and figures like Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) have called these “peaceful” protests, rocks, and Molotov cocktails have been thrown at police as vehicles were torched. Police had to use tear gas, “flash bang” grenades, and rubber bullets to quell these “peaceful” protesters.

There appears little interest in de-escalation on either side. For the Trump Administration, images of rioters riding in celebration around burning cars with Mexican flags are only likely to reinforce the support of the majority of Americans for the enforcement of immigration laws.

For Democrats, they have gone “all in” on opposing ICE and these enforcement operations despite support from roughly 30 percent of the public.

Some democrats are now playing directly to the mob. A Los Angeles City Council member, Eunisses Hernandez, reportedly urged anti-law enforcement protesters to “escalate” their tactics against ICE officers: “They know how quickly we mobilize, that’s why they’re changing tactics. Because community defense works and our resistance has slowed them down before… and if they’re escalating their tactics then so are we. When they show up, we gotta show up even stronger.”

So, L.A. officials are maintaining the sanctuary status of the city, barring the cooperation of local police, and calling on citizens to escalate their resistance after a weekend of violent attacks. Others have posted the locations of ICE facilities to allow better tracking of operations while cities like Glendale are closing facilities.

In Washington, Jeffries has pledged to unmask the identities of individual ICE officers who have been covering their faces to protect themselves and their families from growing threats.

While Democrats have not succeeded in making a convincing political case for opposing immigration enforcement, they may be making a stronger case for federal deployment in increasingly hostile blue cities.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Is DEI DOA? Supreme Court Unanimously Rejects Added Burden for Whites in Discrimination Lawsuits

By: Jonathan Turley | June 6, 2025

Yesterday, the Supreme Court handed down three major cases with unanimous decisions. One, Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, raises additional questions over diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs that have been widely used in higher education and businesses. There is no reason to believe that DEI measures are DOA, but the decision is likely to accelerate challenges based on reverse discrimination after the Court rejected the imposition of an added burden for members of any “majority group” including straight, white males.

The immediate question before the Court was a circuit split over the standard that applies to a member of a “majority” group who claims that he or she was treated unfairly based on majority characteristics. The Sixth Circuit, along with four other circuits, held that such litigants must shoulder additional pleading burdens under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Many of us have long argued that this long-standing rule was itself discriminatory and at odds with both constitutional and statutory authority. It was a bizarre interpretation of a law that barred employees from discriminating based on “race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.” That would ordinarily require a plaintiff to support a claim of disparate treatment by showing that she applied for a position for which she was qualified but was rejected under circumstances giving rise to an inference of unlawful discrimination. However, judges began to add their own burden of white, male or straight litigants in requiring them to show additional “background circumstances” that show the defendant is an “unusual employer” that discriminates against majority groups.

In this case, Marlean Ames, a heterosexual woman, claimed that she was demoted at the Ohio Department of Youth Services after Ginine Trim, a gay woman, replaced her supervisor. Trim hired a younger gay man allegedly based on sexual orientation. Both the district court and the Sixth Circuit dismissed the complaint because Ames failed to identify any other “background circumstances” that demonstrated her employer discriminated against heterosexual women. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote for a unanimous Supreme Court that reversed the Sixth Circuit and rejected the “additional circumstances” test as at odds with the plain text of Title VII.

“As a textual matter, Title VII’s disparate-treatment provision draws no distinctions between majority-group plaintiffs and minority-group plaintiffs. Rather, the provision makes it unlawful “to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” The “law’s focus on individuals rather than groups [is] anything but academic.” Bostock v. Clayton County (2020). By establishing the same protections for every “individual”—without regard to that individual’s membership in a minority or majority group—Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone.”

Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Gorsuch, filed a concurrence that chastised lower courts and “judges creating a textual legal rules and frameworks.”

The opinion has broader implications for businesses and higher education where DEI has been used to brush aside such reverse discrimination claims. Often such claims are mocked as suggesting that members of a majority group are “victims.” While not imposing this specific “add-on,” these controversies involve much of the same bias against reverse discrimination claims. Litigants complain that they often face greater demand and resistance to their claims as opposed to employees who are part of minority groups.

Various legal groups insisted that the Sixth Circuit was correct and that majority-group litigants should shoulder an added burden, including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, National Women’s Law Center, Latino Justice, National Employment Law Project and Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. The views of these groups could not garner a single vote on the Court.

The Ames decision is a welcome development in bringing greater uniformity in the treatment of discrimination claims. It is also a shot across the bow of businesses and universities that have used DEI to dismiss the countervailing interests and claims of majority-group employees.

Here is the decision: Ames v. Ohio Dep’t of Youth Services

Category:

Law, Political

Tagged with:

British Blasphemy Prosecution: London Man Convicted After Burning Qur’an

By: Jonathan Turley | June 4, 2025

We recently discussed how the United Kingdom has continued its erosion of free speech by pushing an effective blasphemy law. Now, a London man has been convicted of a “religiously aggravated public order offence.” Hamit Coskun, 50, a Turkish-born Armenian-Kurdish atheist was arrested after burning a Qur’an.

Coskun was protesting the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Ankara over his embrace of radical Islamic principles. Exclaiming “f**k Islam” and “Islam is religion of terrorism,” he burned the Qur’an and was then slashed by a Muslim man with a knife. Critics were outraged that the man (who later pleaded guilty) was released while police continued to hold Coskun.

Despite arguing that his protest was protected speech, District Judge John McGarva convicted him and declared that his actions were “highly provocative” and that they were “motivated at least in part by a hatred of Muslims.” Judge McGarva made clear that his views of Islam would not be tolerated in the United Kingdom:

“After considering the evidence, I find you have a deep-seated hatred of Islam and its followers. That’s based on your experiences in Turkey and the experiences of your family. It’s not possible to separate your views about the religion to your views about the followers.’

“I do accept that the choice of location was in part that you wanted to protest what you see as the Islamification of Turkey. But you were also motivated by the hatred of Muslims and knew some would be at the location.”

Coskun later correctly condemned the decision as “an assault on free speech” and added:

“Christian blasphemy laws were repealed in this country more than 15 years ago, and it cannot be right to prosecute someone for blaspheming against Islam. Would I have been prosecuted if I’d set fire to a copy of the bible outside Westminster Abbey? I doubt it.”

For years, I have been writing about the decline of free speech in the United Kingdom and the steady stream of arrests, including in my book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.

A man was convicted for sending a tweet while drunk referring to dead soldiers. Another was arrested for an anti-police t-shirt. Another was arrested for calling the Irish boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend a “leprechaun.” Yet another was arrested for singing “Kung Fu Fighting.” A teenager was arrested for protesting outside of a Scientology center with a sign calling the religion a “cult.”

Nicholas Brock, 52, was convicted of a thought crime in Maidenhead, Berkshire. The neo-Nazi was given a four-year sentence for what the court called his “toxic ideology” based on the contents of the home he shared with his mother in Maidenhead, Berkshire. Judge Peter Lodder QC dismissed free speech or free thought concerns with a truly Orwellian statement:

“I do not sentence you for your political views, but the extremity of those views informs the assessment of dangerousness.”

Lodder lambasted Brock for holding Nazi and other hateful values:

“[i]t is clear that you are a right-wing extremist, your enthusiasm for this repulsive and toxic ideology is demonstrated by the graphic and racist iconography which you have studied and appeared to share with others…”

The fear is that an expanded hate speech law that includes criticism of Islamophobia will operate like a British blasphemy law. In 2008, the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel were abolished in England. This new effort could constructively restore such prosecutions as they relate to Islam.

Category:

Crime, Free Speech, International Politics, Law, Religion

Tagged with:

Christian Group Attacked by Radicals in Seattle…Mayor Criticizes the Christians

By: Jonathan Turley | May 25, 2025

On Saturday, Antifa and other radicals launched another violent attack on conservatives. Pastors were holding what they described as a permitted Christian worship event in a park when black-clad Antifa members tried to storm and tear down a barricade. To their credit, the Seattle police moved in and arrested the radicals. However, what happened next is even more concerning: Mayor Bruce Harrell seemed to blame the Christian group and demanded to know why they were given a permit at all for an event in the area.

Police in Seattle are shown in videotapes taking down several black-clad and masked individuals who tried to overcome the fencing and storm the stage. That is clearly an improvement over the “summer of love” approach previously in Seattle.

SEATTLE: Attendees of the praise and worship gathering hosted by MayDay USA tell @choeshow it's time for church-goers to share the love of Jesus Christ in the darkest places of the world.

Their message comes amid Antifa, transgender activists, and other far-left militants'… pic.twitter.com/NKJbnZSKWH
— FRONTLINES (@FrontlinesTPUSA) May 25, 2025

Seattle is proud of our reputation as a welcoming, inclusive city for LGBTQ+ communities, and we stand with our trans neighbors when they face bigotry and injustice. Today’s far-right rally was held here for this very reason – to provoke a reaction by promoting beliefs that are inherently opposed to our city’s values, in the heart of Seattle’s most prominent LGBTQ+ neighborhood.

When the humanity of trans people and those who have been historically marginalized is questioned, we triumph by demonstrating our values through our words and peaceful protest – we lose our voice when this is disrupted by violence, chaos, and confusion.

While there are broad First Amendment requirements around permitting events under free speech protections, I am directing the Parks Department to review all of the circumstances of this application to understand whether there were legal location alternatives or other adjustments that could have been pursued. The Police Department will complete an after-action report of this event, including understanding preparation, crowd management tactics, and review of arrests and citations.

We have discussed other Democratic politicians like Nancy Pelosi demanding reviews or revocation of permits going to Christian or conservative groups. The problem is that conservative or religious views are treated as triggering — a common claim in higher education.

I do not know anything about this Christian group, but they were clearly the victims, not the cause, of this violence. The suggestion that the location was too triggering for transgender activists is yet another example of a failure of leadership on the left.

These two groups clearly disagree on transgender policies. Fine. Protest and counterprotest. However, the police showed how to maintain a principled line. They did not take sides. They protected the free speech rights on both sides and confined their role to maintaining the peace.

Democratic politicians and pundits continue to legitimate Antifa and even align themselves with the vehemently anti-free speech group. This includes selling Antifa gifts on popular sites.

As discussed in my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I explore the history of Antifa as a movement that began in Germany. Despite the denial of its existence by figures like Rep. Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.), I have long written and spoken about the threat of Antifa to free speech on our campuses and in our communities. This includes testimony before Congress on Antifa’s central role in the anti-free speech movement nationally.

As I have previously written, it has long been the “Keyser Söze” of the anti-free speech movement, a loosely aligned group that employs measures to avoid easy detection or association. Yet, FBI Director Chris Wray repeatedly pushed back on the denials of Antifa’s work or violence. In one hearing, Wray stated, “And we have quite a number” — and “Antifa is a real thing. It’s not a fiction.”

We have continued to follow the attacks and arrests of Antifa followers across the country, including attacks on journalists.

Ellison’s son, Minneapolis City Council member Jeremiah Ellison, declared his allegiance to Antifa in the heat of the protests this summer. During a prior hearing, Democratic senators refused to denounce Antifa. Likewise, Joe Biden has dismissed objections to Antifa as just “an idea.”

Democratic leaders are playing a dangerous game in pandering to these extreme elements of their party. In the end, they will fare no better than their enemies as this mob turns on enabling establishment figures.

Category:

censorship, Crime, Free Speech, Hate, political violence

Tagged with:

A Judge of Her Peers? Judge Dugan Assigned a Judge Previously Rebuked for Political Comments

By: Jonathan Turley | May 21, 2025

Five years ago, I wrote about a federal judge who, in my view, had discarded any resemblance of judicial restraint and judgment in a public screed against Republicans, Donald Trump, and the Supreme Court. The Wisconsin judge represented the final death of irony: a jurist who failed to see the conflict in lashing out at what he called judicial bias in a political diatribe that would have made MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell blush.

His name is Lynn Adelman.

I was wrong in 2020. Irony is very much alive.

This week, a judge was randomly selected to preside at the trial of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan. A critic of Trump’s immigration policies, Dugan is accused of obstructing federal law enforcement and facilitating the escape of an unlawful immigrant.

The judge assigned to the Dugan case? You guessed it. Lynn Adelman, 85.

A judge is expected to come to a case like this one without the burden of his own baggage. Judge Adelman is carrying more baggage than Amtrak in Wisconsin.

The selection of Adelman shows how political commentary by judges undermines the legitimacy of the court system. Now, in a case that has divided the nation, the public will have to rely on a judge who discarded his own obligations as a judge to lash out at conservatives, Trump, and conservative jurists.

Adelman was a long-standing Democratic politician who tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to run for Congress during his 20-year tenure in the Wisconsin Senate. For critics, Adelman never set aside his political agenda after President Bill Clinton nominated him for the federal bench. Adelman was sharply rebuked for ignoring controlling Supreme Court precedent to rule in favor of a Democratic challenge over voting identification rules just before a critical election. Adelman blocked the law before the election despite a Supreme Court case issued years earlier in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 553 U.S. 181 (2008), rejecting a similar challenge.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued a stinging reversal, explaining to Adelman that in “our hierarchical judicial system, a district court cannot declare a statute unconstitutional just because he thinks (with or without the support of a political scientist) that the dissent was right and the majority wrong.”

Adelman, however, was apparently undeterred. In 2020, he wrote a law review article for Harvard Law & Policy Review, titled “The Roberts Court’s Assault on Democracy.”

Adelman attacked what he described as a “hard-right majority” that is “actively participating in undermining American democracy.” He also struck out at Trump as “an autocrat… disinclined to buck the wealthy individuals and corporations who control his party.”

Adelman was later admonished by the Civility Committee for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals for his public political attacks as “inconsistent with a judge’s duty to promote public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary and as reflecting adversely on the judge’s impartiality.”

The costs of such extrajudicial commentary became vividly clear this week. Judge Dugan is being called a “hero” by Democratic politicians and pundits for helping an individual evade federal arrest. At least one judge has pledged to do the same in her courtroom. On the other side, many are appalled by Dugan’s conduct as fundamentally at odds with the role of a jurist in either the state or federal system.

There are weighty issues in the case and the public has a right to expect a fair trial with a judge who will not be swayed by his own political viewpoints. Dugan already had the advantage of a trial before a jury taken from one of the most liberal districts in the country. She will now have a judge who was himself sanctioned for political statements and reversed for ignoring controlling precedent.

This problem is growing within our courts, including at the Supreme Court. I recently wrote about public commentary by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan that created distractions this month in cases before the Supreme Court. The public has a right to expect more from jurists. The price of the ticket to the bench is to set aside one’s political agenda and political commentary. When you don that robe, you must discard your politics. Some, however, seem to cling to both the bias and the bench.

The message for the public could not be worse this week. In a case involving a Democratic judge accused of discarding basic judicial principles, a random selection produced a Democratic judge reversed for discarding basic judicial principles.

For conservatives, these cases reaffirm a view of a dual-track legal system. Lawfare has been raging in blue cities like New York where President Trump faced judges denounced for their political associations or past commentary. In Washington, Trump was assigned a federal judge who previously appeared to lament that Trump was not a criminal defendant in her courtroom. She was then randomly assigned Trump’s case after he was charged by Special Counsel Jack Smith.

We have the greatest legal system in the world, but it cannot survive long without the faith and support of the public. That is why judicial ethics rules bar not just conflicts of interest but the appearance of a conflict of interest. The perception of political bias robs our courts of their inherent legitimacy and authority for citizens.

Just as Adelman lashed out at most of the Supreme Court as lacking credibility, he can hardly expect conservatives and Republicans to find him a credible choice in the Dugan case. That is why I was wrong five years ago. Irony is not entirely dead. It is just uniformly ignored.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

Category:

Law, Political

Tagged with:

The Red Line: Democratic Officials Claim a Dangerous License for Illegality

By: Jonathan Turley | May 20, 2025

Across the country, a new defense is being heard in state and federal courtrooms. From Democratic members of Congress to judges to city council members, officials claim that their official duties include obstructing the official functions of the federal government. It is a type of liberal license that excuses most any crime in the name of combating what Minn. Gov. Tim Walz called the “modern-day Gestapo” of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The latest claimant of this license is Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ), who was charged with assaulting, resisting, and impeding law enforcement officers during a protest at Delaney Hall ICE detention facility in Newark, New Jersey. McIver is shown on video forcing her way into an ICE facility and striking and shoving agents in her path.

This was not a major incursion, but these state and federal officials joined a mob in briefly overwhelming security and breaching the fence barrier after a bus was allowed through the entrance. Federal officials were able to quickly force back the incursion.

McIver and House Democrats insisted that McIver’s forcing her way into the facility might be trespass and assault for other citizens, but she was merely exercising “legislative oversight.” Rep. Alexandria Ocacio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) declared “You lay a finger on someone – on Bonnie Watson Coleman or any of the representatives that were there – you lay a finger on them, we’re going to have a problem.”

Rep. Eric Swallwell (D., Cal.) promised more such actions: “I promise you there’s gonna be more un-noticed visits by my colleagues where they show up and they better be let in.”

Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) even ominously warned the federal government that Democrats would bring down the house if it tried to charge McIver: “It’s a red line. They know better than to go down that road.”

Well, the red line was crossed in a big way after Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba charged McIver with a felony under Title 18, United States Code, Section 111(a)(1). The ACLU called the charge “authoritarianism” and insisted that these state and federal politicians “have every right to exercise their legally authorized oversight responsibilities for expanded immigration detention in New Jersey.”

The problem with the oversight claim is that McIver’s status as a member of Congress does not allow her access into closed federal facilities. Congress can subpoena the Executive Branch or secure court orders for access. However, members do not have immunity from criminal laws in unilaterally forcing their way into any federal office or agency. If that were the case, Rep. Alexandria Ocacio-Cortez would not have posted images of herself crying at the fence of an immigrant facility, she could have climbed over the fence in the name of oversight.

Conversely, Republicans in the Biden Administration could have simply pushed their way into the Justice Department to seek the files on the influence-peddling scandal.

Yet, the point of the claim is less of a real criminal defense and more of a political excuse.

It is the same claim being heard this week from Worcester City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj who was shown in a video shoving and obstructing ICE officers attempting to arrest a woman on immigration charges. Two other individuals (including a Democratic candidate for a school board) were arrested, but not Haxhiaj who claimed that she was merely protecting “a constituent.” After the melee, the city manager issued an order preventing city police from assisting in any way in the carrying out of such civil immigration enforcement efforts by the federal government.

Even judges are claiming the same license. In Wisconsin, Judge Hannah Dugan has been charged with obstructing a federal arrest of an illegal immigrant who appeared in her courtroom. Dugan heard about agents waiting outside in the hallway to arrest the man and went outside to confront the agents. She told them to speak to the Chief Judge and that they needed a different warrant. The agents complied and the Chief Judge confirmed that they could conduct the arrest. In the interim, however, Dugan led the man out a non-public door and facilitated his escape (he was arrested after a chase down a public street).

Judge Duggan also claimed that she was carrying out her duties even though her hearing was over, the charges were not part of state matter, and the arrest was being carried out outside of her courtroom. She was declared “a hero” by Democratic politicians and pundits.

As Democratic leaders like Walz engage in rage rhetoric and paint Republicans (and federal law enforcement) as Nazis, political violence is on the rise across the country. Many of the people burning Teslas and engaging in such crimes claim the same type of license that the ends justify the means. That includes affluent professionals who are now shoplifting from Whole Foods as a “protest” against Jeff Bezos meeting with Trump.

When the Administration sought to investigate those burning Teslas and dealerships, Rep. Dan Goldman (D., N.Y.) denounced it as a “political weaponization” of the legal system. The comments suggest that such arson is somehow a form of political expression on the left.

House Minority Leader Jeffries was correct that a “red line” was crossed but not the one that he was thinking of in threatening consequences for any charges. The red line is the one separating political expression and criminal conduct.

Border Czar stressed repeatedly to political leaders that they can protest and refuse to help but “you can‘t cross the line” into obstruction and interference with their operations.

If oversight means that members can force their way into any federal facilities, we would have 535 roaming inspectors general who could wander at will through the executive branch.

Rep. McIver would be better to claim a different type of oversight, in allowing her passion to briefly overwhelm her judgment in rushing into the facility.

In the end, however, McIver and Duggan may have a license of a different kind.

Both have the advantage of being charged in liberal districts where they would appear before sympathetic jurors. They need to just convince a single jury to engage in “jury nullification,” to vote based on the cause, not the crime, in the case.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

A shorter version of this column appeared in the New York Post.

Category:

Law, Political

Tagged with:

“A Modest Request”: The Supreme Court Hears Challenge to National or Universal Injunctions

By: Jonathan Turley | May 15, 2025

Today, the United States Supreme Court will hear three consolidated cases in Trump v. CASA on the growing use of national or universal injunctions. This is a matter submitted on the “shadow docket” and the underlying cases concern the controversy over “birthright citizenship.” However, the merits of those claims are not at issue. Instead, the Trump Administration has made a “modest request” for the Court to limit the scope of lower-court injunctions to their immediate districts and parties, challenging the right of such courts to bind an Administration across the nation.

The case is the consolidation of three matters: Trump v. CASA out of Maryland; Trump v. Washington out of Washington State, and Trump v. New Jersey, out of Massachusetts. These cases also present standing issues since the Administration challenges the argument that there is a cognizable “injury” to individuals who may travel to the states bringing the actions.

However, the main question is the scope of injunctions.

As I have previously written, district court judges have issued a record number of injunctions in the first 100 days of the Trump Administration. Under President George W. Bush, there were only six such injunctions, which increased to 12 under Obama. However, when Trump came to office, he faced 64 such orders in his first term.

When Biden and the Democrats returned to office, it fell back to 14. That was not due to more modest measures. Biden did precisely what Trump did in seeking to negate virtually all of his predecessors’ orders and then seek sweeping new legal reforms. He was repeatedly found to have violated the Constitution, but there was no torrent of preliminary injunctions at the start of his term.

Yet, when Trump returned to office, the number of national injunctions soared again in the first 100 days and surpassed the number for the entirety of Biden’s term.

This is a rare argument. First, it is a shadow docket filing that usually results in summary decisions without oral argument. Moreover, this matter came after what is commonly viewed as the final day for oral arguments. The Court granted a rare late oral argument, reflecting that multiple justices view this matter sufficiently serious to warrant a break from standard operating procedures.

Rather than arguing a “question presented” on birthright citizenship, the Administration is solely looking for limits on the district courts as appeals continue on the “important constitutional questions” raised by birthright citizenship.

The Administration argues that the Constitution does not give judges the power to issue universal injunctions and that courts are limited to addressing the cases before them in a given district. The Administration acknowledges that class actions can create the basis for universal injunctions, offering a moderate resolution to the Court. In such cases, if the parties can meet the standard for a national class, they can seek a national or universal injunction.

In today’s arguments (which I will be covering for Fox and on X), we can expect to hear from justices who have previously been critical of universal injunctions, including Justice Clarence Thomas, who, in his concurring opinion in Trump v. Hawaii, called them “legally and historically dubious.”

Likewise, Justices Gorsuch and Alito have criticized such injunctions. In a prior dissent to an emergency filing in Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, Alito was joined by Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh in stating that the government “has a strong argument that the District Court’s order violates the principle that a federal court may not issue an equitable remedy that is ‘more burdensome than necessary to’ redress the plaintiff’s injuries.”

Many of us will be watching three members the most closely: Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett. Roberts is the ultimate institutionalist, and we should see in his argument how he views the impact of such injunctions on the court system as a whole. He is very protective of the courts’ inherent authority but may also have misgivings about the scope of these orders.

During the Biden Administration, Justice Kagan has previously criticized universal injunctions. In an interview at Northwestern University Law School, Kagan flagged the “forum shopping” by litigants in filing cases before favorable courts:

“You look at something like that and you think, that can’t be right. In the Trump years, people used to go to the Northern District of California, and in the Biden years, they go to Texas. It just can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years that it takes to go through the normal process.”

Justice Barrett previously joined with Kavanaugh in stating that the power of district courts to enter a universal injunction “is an important question that could warrant our review in the future.”

The argument today will start at 10 am and I will be doing a running review of the arguments on X.

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer will argue the government’s case.

Jeremy Feigenbaum, New Jersey’s solicitor general, will argue for the state and local governments and Kelsi Corkran, the Supreme Court director at Georgetown’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, will argue for the private individuals and groups.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University where he teaches a course on the Supreme Court and the Constitution.

Category:

Law, Political

Tagged with:

Federal Judge Rules Against Student Who Wore a “Let’s Go Brandon” Shirt

By: Jonathan Turley | Jonathan Turley.org | May 14, 2025

Read https://jonathanturley.org/2025/05/14/federal-judge-rules-against-student-who-wore-a-lets-go-brandon-shirt/more at

We previously discussed how schools were making students remove sweatshirts reading “Let’s Go Brandon.” I have argued that the shirts should be treated as protected speech. However, United States District Court Judge Christopher Boyko just delivered another blow to free speech in rejecting a claim for such protection, at least as the basis for injunctive relief, in Conrad v. Madison Local School Dist—Bd. of Ed.

In the prior Michigan case with the sweater shown below, Judge Paul Maloney in D.A. v. Tri County Area Schools (W.D. Mich.) ruled that a “Let’s Go Brandon” T-shirt could be the basis for punishment:

A school can certainly prohibit students from wearing a shirt displaying the phrase F*** Joe Biden. Plaintiffs concede this conclusion. Plaintiff must make this concession as the Supreme Court said as much in Fraser … (“As cogently expressed by Judge Newman, ‘the First Amendment gives a high school student the classroom right to wear Tinker’s armband, but not Cohen’s jacket [which read {F*** the Draft}].’”) The relevant four-letter word is a swear word and would be considered vulgar and profane. The Sixth Circuit has written that “it has long been held that despite the sanctity of the First Amendment, speech that is vulgar or profane is not entitled to absolute constitutional protection.” …

If schools can prohibit students from wearing apparel that contains profanity, schools can also prohibit students from wearing apparel that can reasonably be interpreted as profane. Removing a few letters from the profane word or replacing letters with symbols would not render the message acceptable in a school setting. School administrators could prohibit a shirt that reads “F#%* Joe Biden.” School officials have restricted student from wearing shirts that use homophones for profane words … [such as] “Somebody Went to HOOVER DAM And All I Got Was This ‘DAM’ Shirt.” … [Defendants] recalled speaking to one student who was wearing a hat that said “Fet’s Luck” … [and asking] a student to change out of a hoodie that displayed the words “Uranus Liquor” because the message was lewd. School officials could likely prohibit students from wearing concert shirts from the music duo LMFAO (Laughing My F***ing A** Off) or apparel displaying “AITA?” (Am I the A**hole?)…. Courts too have recognized how seemingly innocuous phrases may convey profane messages. A county court in San Diego, California referred an attorney to the State Bar when counsel, during a hearing, twice directed the phrase “See You Next Tuesday” toward two female attorneys.

Again, I strongly disagreed with that decision. However, it has now been replicated in Ohio.

In his complaint, C.C. details how he was wearing a shirt with the phrase “Let’s Go Brandon” on November 25, 2024, underneath a flannel shirt. He alleges that teacher (and registered Democrat) Krista Ferini was bothered after spotting the shirt and ordered him to “button that up. I know what that means.” C.C. did so, but later, he was in a classroom that lacked air conditioning, so he took off his flannel shirt. That is when allegedly Ferini proceeded to write him up for the infraction. Principal Andrew Keeple then instructed C.C. to wear the flannel the rest of the day and never to wear the shirt to school again.

C.C. defied that order and wore the shirt again in January of 2025. While no one else complained, Ferini was reportedly irate and again wrote up C.C. Keeple declared that C.C. had once again violated the school’s dress code and that the shirt constituted a vulgar expression even though it contained no vulgar terms. He stated that further discipline would follow if C.C. continued to wear the shirt.

On March 24, 2025, C.C. wore the t-shirt again. While no one complained, he received a detention from Keeple. C.C. was disciplined on two other occasions for wearing the shirt.

The court ruled:

“While this case presents serious questions of student free speech versus a school’s interest in protecting students from vulgar and profane speech, the Court finds Plaintiff has not met his high burden to show a substantial likelihood of success on the merits by clear and convincing evidence. While the D.A. case was on summary judgment and presented facts that are different than those before this Court, Defendant’s burden on summary judgment was a preponderance standard which is a lesser burden than Plaintiff’s here. Moreover, that case presented fact issues going to the reasonableness of the school’s interpretation. Here, as Defendants point out, Plaintiff acknowledges in his Verified Complaint that “Let’s Go Brandon” is a euphemism for F*#% Joe Biden. “In school speech cases where a school limits or restricts a student’s expression, courts must determine whether the school’s interpretation of the expression is reasonable.” “The student’s expression must be considered in the proper context but the student’s motivation or subjective intent is irrelevant.”

Given the strong interests of both sides, the unique characteristics of speech in a school setting, the finding by at least one court in this circuit that the school’s interpretation of the phrase as vulgar was reasonable, and the acknowledgment in this case by Plaintiff that the phrase is a vulgar euphemism, the Court finds Plaintiff has not shown a substantial likelihood of success on the merits to support injunctive relief. This does not mean Plaintiff cannot win on the merits of the claim as discovery will likely provide clearer evidence on the reasonableness of the interpretation. But given the high standard for injunctive relief, the Court finds against Plaintiff….”

“Let’s Go Brandon!” has become a similarly unintended political battle cry not just against Biden but also against the bias of the media. It derives from an Oct. 2 interview with race-car driver Brandon Brown after he won his first NASCAR Xfinity Series race. During the interview, NBC reporter Kelli Stavast’s questions were drowned out by loud-and-clear chants of “F*** Joe Biden.” Stavast quickly and inexplicably declared, “You can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go, Brandon!’”

“Let’s Go Brandon!” instantly became a type of “Yankee Doodling” of the political and media establishment.

This teacher was clearly put out over the political messaging of the shirt. However, we should encourage students to be politically aware and expressive. Moreover, if schools are allowed to extrapolate profane meaning from non-profane language, it is hard to see the limits on such censorship.

So, what if students now wear “Let’s Go Krista” shirts? How many degrees of removal will negate the profane imputation. Does that mean that the use of “let’s go” in any shirt is now prohibited?

C.C. and his family should continue to litigate and, if necessary, appeal this worthy case in the interests of free speech for all students.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

Category:

Education, Free Speech, Law, Political

Tagged with:

The Baby Hoax: Reporters Repeat False Narrative Over Child Deportations

By: Jonathan Turley | May 1, 2025

For years, the mainstream media has been criticized for open political bias, including repeating false narratives and claims. There is little evidence that that will change despite falling revenues and audiences. That was evident this week as leading journalists continued to raise a dubious claim about the Trump Administration deporting children, including cancer patients.

The media has been promulgating a false claim that children as young as four are being deported. The Administration immediately stated that the decision rested with the mothers on whether they would take the children or leave them in the United States with family.

Many of the same figures accused of promulgating false stories quickly picked up the spin from the Washington Post.

On NBC’s Meet the Press, Kristen Welker pursued the narrative with Secretary of State Marco Rubio:

KRISTEN WELKER: Let’s talk now about some new reporting that came in overnight. I want just to go through it with you and for our audience. Three U.S. citizen children have been deported with their mothers. Now this is according to The Washington Post. The family’s lawyer says one of them is a 4-year-old with Stage 4 cancer, deported without medication or ability to contact doctors. The family’s lawyers are also saying their clients were denied communication with family and legal representatives before being deported, and it’s raising concerns about the issue of due process. That it’s being violated. So let me ask you, is everyone on U.S. soil, citizens and non-citizens, entitled to due process?

MARCO RUBIO: Yes, of course. But let me tell you, it looks- in immigration standing, the laws are very specific. If you are in the country unlawfully, you have no right to be here and you must be removed. That’s what the law says. Somehow over the last 20 years, we’ve completely lost this notion that somehow- or completely adopted this idea that yes, we have immigration laws but once you come into our country illegally it triggers all kinds of rights that can keep you here indefinitely. That’s why we were being flooded at the border, and we’ve ended that. And that’s why you don’t- you see a historically low number of people not just trying to cross our border, trying to cross the border into Panama, all the way down in the Darien Gap. I mean- i it’s been a huge help for those countries as well. On the headline- that’s a misleading headline. Okay? Three U.S. Citizens, ages 4, 7 and 2 were not deported. Their mothers who were illegally in this country were deported. The children went with their mothers. Those children are U.S. citizens- they can come back into the United States- there’s- their father or someone here who wants to assume them. But ultimately who was deported was the mother- their mothers who were here illegally. The children just went with their mothers. But it wasn’t like- you guys make it sound like ICE agents kicked down the door and grabbed the 2-year-old and threw them on an airplane. That’s misleading. That’s just not true.

That would ordinarily leave a journalist looking at their shoes in embarrassment, but Welker decided to double down and add the claim that children are being denied “due process”:

WELKER: Just to be clear, because I do want to get to the overhaul at the State Department. Is it the U.S. policy to deport children, even U.S. citizens, with their families- and I hear what you’re saying- without due process? Just to be very clear there.

RUBIO: Well- no, no, no. No, no. Again, if someone is in this country unlawfully, illegally, that person gets deported. If that person is with a 2-year-old child or has a 2-year-old child and says “I want to take my child with you- with me,” well then you have two choices. You can say yes, of course, you can take your child whether they’re a citizen or not because it’s your child or you can say yes, you can go, but your child must stay behind. And then your headlines would read, “U.S. holding hostage 2-year-old, 4-year-old, 7-year-old, while mother deported.”

There is a great deal of litigation working through the courts on the level of due process required for deportations. The public overwhelmingly supports the deportation of unlawful immigrants and elected Trump based on his pledge to carry out such deportations. Unlawful immigrants often spend years in this country despite orders of deportation or removal. The level of review depends on their status. If they have previously entered unlawfully, they are subject to expedited removal.

The critical point, however, is that the children were the ones being deported. If they were born in this country, they are still treated as U.S. citizens (though the Administration is challenging birthright citizenship in the courts). Having a child in the United States does not make parents immune from removal or afford them special legal status over other deportees.

Over at CBS, Margaret Brennan (who was criticized for her “fact checks” in the presidential debate) also jumped on the narrative in interviewing Border Czar Tom Homan on Face the Nation:

MARGARET BRENNAN: On Friday, there were three American citizen children, born here, who were deported along with their mothers from Louisiana down to Honduras. And according to advocates, one of them is a 4-year-old child with Stage Four cancer. A rare form of metastatic cancer who was sent back to Honduras without getting to talk to a doctor and without medication. I understand this child’s mother entered this country illegally. But isn’t there some basis for compassionate consideration here that should have allowed for more consultation or treatment?

TOM HOMAN: Well, it certainly is discretionary. I’m not aware of this specific case. But no U.S. citizen child was deported. Deported means you gotta be ordered — reported by the immigration judge. We don’t deport U.S. citizens.

BRENNAN: The mother was deported along with the children.

HOMAN: These children- Children aren’t deported. The mother chose to take the children with her. When you enter the country illegally and you know you are here illegally and you choose to have a U.S. citizen child, that’s on you. That’s not on this administration. If you choose to put your family in that position, that’s on them. But having a U.S. citizen child, after you enter this country illegally, is not a “get out of jail free” card. It doesn’t make you immune from our laws. If that’s the message we send to the entire world, women are going to keep putting themselves at risk and come to this country. We send a message: you can enter the country illegally, that’s okay, you can have due process at great taxpayer expense, get ordered to move, that’s OK. Don’t leave, but have a U.S. citizen child and you are immune from removal? That’s not the way it works.

BRENNAN: So, you don’t think there should be compassionate consideration for a 4-year-old child undergoing treatment for cancer?

HOMAN: I didn’t say that. I said ICE officers do have discretion-

BRENNAN: That was the question.

HOMAN: ICE officers do have discretion. I’m not familiar with the specific case. I don’t know what facts surround this case. I was just made aware of this when you mentioned it this morning. I was not aware of that case.

Brennan correctly noted that a court recently found a lack of due process in a child’s case. However, Holman had a reasonable response in citing the mother’s election in this one case to leave with her child.

BRENNAN: On Friday, a federal judge who was appointed by President Trump said a 2-year-old American citizen child had been sent to Honduras with the mother. But the judge said, quote: “there was no meaningful process.” So again, this is another similar situation and dynamic. Shouldn’t there be special care when the deportation cases involve small American-born children?

HOMAN: First of all, I disagree with the judge. There was due process. That female had due process at great taxpayer expense and was ordered by an immigration judge after those hearings. So she had due process. Again, this is Parenting 101. And you can decide to take that child with you or you can decide to leave the child here with a relative or another spouse. Having a child doesn’t make you immune from our laws of the country. American families get separated every day by law enforcement- thousands of times a day. When a parent gets put in jail, the child can’t go with them. If you are an illegal alien and you come to this country and you decide to have a U.S. citizen child, that’s on you. You put yourself in that position.

BRENNAN: Well, when it came to this particular case, you just pointed out that they could have made arrangements. The father tried, actually, to make arrangements as we understand it through our reporting. But he and the mother who were separated, since she was in detention after showing up for her appointment, was only allowed a very brief phone call. The father tried to petition to get the child handed over to an American citizen relative. So the mother had to make this decision and took the child with her. It just seems like there could be some more time frame here around due process allowed. That’s what the judge is saying, is saying- there should have been more of a process here.

HOMAN: There was due process. The 2-year-old baby- the two year old baby was left with the mother because the mother signed a document requesting her 2-year-old baby go with her. That’s the parent’s decision. I don’t think the judge knows the specifics of this case. The 2-year-old went with the mom. The mom signed a paper saying, “I want my 2-year-old to go with me.” That’s a parent’s decision. It’s not a government decision; it’s a parent’s decision.

BRENNAN: The father wrote a note. Anyhow, we have to leave it there, Director. Thank you for your time today. We’ll be right back.

It is important to note that these are two very different cases that were blended into the coverage. In the second case, the government insists that there was no prior arrangement for the child to be left with the family and that the mother made this decision.

ICE should endeavor to accommodate such requests and there should always be an inquiry into allegations that these women were prevented from making arrangements for their children to remain in the country. However, there will also be practical limits in addressing those issues in the midst of a removal.

If Holman is correct, the mother was in the system long before the actual removal. The father “sending a note” at the end of that process is worth looking into, but it is hardly surprising that the removal proceeded with the mother’s consent.

The same narrative was playing over at ABC as Martha Raddatz had this exchange with former DOJ spokesperson Sarah Isgur:

MARTHA RADDATZ: Sarah, I want to turn here to some information that has been in The Washington Post about deportations of very young children who are American citizens. A 2-year-old, a 4-year-old, a 7-year-old sent back to Honduras. Is that legal?

SARAH ISGUR: This is something our immigration system deals with nearly every day. U.S. citizen children have to make that decision with their parents of whether they’re going to stay. The parent has the decision. We do not allow illegal alien parents to stay just because they have custody over U.S. citizen children, and at least one of these cases with the 2-year-old, the mother was the one who made the decision to take her daughter with her. The father is the one saying he wanted the daughter to stay here. Often times, it’s going to look more like a custody dispute than an immigration question.

Again, as Isgur correctly points out, this is the election of the parents who are being removed.

Critics have pushed back on these interviews, noting how the media seemed only marginally interested in thousands of children lost in the system under the Biden Administration as millions poured over the border. Thousands of unaccompanied children were pushed over the border and then lost by the government, according to the Trump Administration. Many may have ended up with sex traffickers or criminal gangs. The coverage suggested that children were being thrown on planes to be dumped in some foreign land.

The Washington Post, which is cited for the story, has been repeatedly accused of pushing misleading or false narratives. There was a recent riot in the newsroom when owner Jeff Bezos demanded that the newspaper return to more balanced coverage.

The most telling condemnation came from Post columnist Philip Bump, who wrote “what the actual f**k.” Bump has been repeatedly accused of false claims and previously had a meltdown in an interview when confronted about past false claims. After I wrote a column about the litany of such false claims, the Post surprised many of us by stating that it stood by all of Bump’s reporting, including false columns on the Lafayette Park protests, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and other stories. That was long after other media debunked the claims, but the Post stood by the false reporting.

We have previously discussed the sharp change in culture at the Post, which became an outlet that pushed anti-free speech views and embraced advocacy journalism. The result was that many moderates and conservatives stopped reading the newspaper.

In my book on free speech, I discuss at length how the Post and the mainstream media have joined an alliance with the government and corporations in favor of censorship and blacklisting. I once regularly wrote for the Post and personally witnessed the sharp change in editorial priorities as editors delayed or killed columns with conservative or moderate viewpoints.

Last year, that culture was vividly on display when the newspaper offered no objection or even qualification after its reporter, Cleve Wootson Jr., appeared to call upon the White House to censor the interview of Elon Musk with former President Donald Trump. Under the guise of a question, Wootson told White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre “I think that misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign issue…it’s an America issue.”

The baby hoax shows that little has (or likely will) change. In the meantime, the public is moving on. New media is rising as mainstream media audiences shrink. Journalists and columnists are increasingly writing for each other as polling shows trust in the media is at an all-time low.

Robert Lewis, a British media executive who joined the Post, reportedly got into a “heated exchange” with a staffer. Lewis explained that, while reporters were protesting measures to expand readership, the very survival of the paper was now at stake:

“We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around,” Lewis said. “We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”

It simply does not matter. The media continues to vigorously saw on the branch upon which it is sitting.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Back with a Vengeance: Nina Jankowicz Calls on Europeans to Oppose the United States

By: Jonathan Turley | April 23, 2025

Nina Jankowicz, the former head of Biden’s infamous Disinformation Governance Board, was “back with a vengeance.” After the outcry over the board led to its elimination, Jankowicz did what many of the displaced disinformation experts have done: she peddled her dubious skills to Europeans and others like a wandering rōnin without a master. Now, Jankowicz has appeared before one of the most anti-free speech bodies in the world — the European Union — to call upon those 27 countries to fight against the United States, which she called a world threat.

How the “Mary Poppins of disinformation” came to alight upon Europe is a familiar tale. The European Union has become the global hub for censorship efforts and, after she departed from the government, Jankowicz made a beeline for Europe.

I have been a long critic of Jankowicz, who became an instant Internet sensation due to a musical number in which she sang “You can just call me the Mary Poppins of disinformation” in a TikTok parody of the song “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” After the Biden Administration reluctantly disbanded her board, she later moved to join a European group as a foreign agent to continue her work to block views that she considers disinformation.

The false portrayal of the United States as a lawless, autocratic nation no doubt thrilled the Europeans. In announcing her heading a private disinformation group called the American Sunlight Project, Jankowicz used the same hysteria to attract donors, insisting that “Disinformation knows no political party. Its ultimate victim is our democracy.”

Of course, Jankowicz herself has been accused of disinformation that served one particular party. She was previously criticized for allegedly spreading disinformation and advocating censorship.

The ultimate irony is that Jankowicz knows that she can count on many of us in the free speech community to support her right to spread such sensational and inflammatory information. She has every right to trash this country and the results of the election.

Jankowicz has clearly found a home with globalists in Europe where our “Mary Poppins of Disinformation” is “practically perfect in every way”

Jonathan Turley is the author of best-selling book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

Category:

International Politics, Political

Tagged with:

Federal Judge Halts Trump Administration’s Deportation of Half a Million Biden “Parolees”

By: Jonathan Turley | April 15, 2025

The intense struggle between the Trump Administration and federal judges continued this week with another court ordering a halt to a nationwide program. In Massachusetts, District Judge Indira Talwani is preventing President Donald Trump from canceling a Biden program granting parole and the right to work to immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV). Judge Talwani’s order would require individual hearings for the half of a million individuals allowed into the country under this program by President Joe Biden.

Under the announcement published in the Federal Register, the Department of Homeland Security officially moved to terminate the CHNV Program. The announcement followed an Executive Order, signed on Trump’s first day in office, entitled “Securing Our Borders,” directing the DHS to end the CHNV program. Under the notice, DHS said that the parole status would expire in 30 days “unless the Secretary makes an individual determination to the contrary.” It further mandated that parolees who had not obtained a legal basis to be in the United States, such as a green card or other visa, must depart the United States before their parole expires.

In the prior hearing, Judge Talwani indicated that she would not allow that to happen, stating that the Administration’s interpretation of the law was “incorrect” and that “[t]he nub of the problem here is that [Homeland Security Secretary Krisit Noem], in cutting short the parole period afforded to these individuals, has to have a reasoned decision.”

In her opinion, Judge Talwani wrote:

“If their parole status is allowed to lapse, plaintiffs will be faced with two unfavorable options: continue following the law and leave the country on their own, or await removal proceedings. If plaintiffs leave the country on their own, they will face dangers in their native countries, as set forth in their affidavits.”

The court also noted that leaving would cause family separation and jeopardize their ability to seek a remedy based on the Administrative Procedure Act.

The Administration argued that it did have a “reasoned decision” to end the CHNV program and weighed the cost to the parolees. It noted that the parolees were always going to face family separation and costs since this was just a temporary, two-year program. It asserted that it did weigh alternative periods for winding down the program. While the court may disagree with its conclusions, it asserts that it has the same discretion used by President Biden in creating the program.

There was another pressing reason for the change. If the parolees were allowed to run the course of the full period, those who did not obtain legal status could force formal removal proceedings rather than the expedited removal under the program.

The Justice Department maintained:

“DHS’s decision to terminate the CHNV program and existing grants of parole under that program is within this statutory authority and comports with the notice requirements of the statute and regulations,” they wrote. “Additionally, given the temporary nature of CHNV parole and CHNV parolees’ pre-existing inability to seek re-parole under the program, their harms are outweighed by the harms to the public if the Secretary is not permitted to discontinue a program, she has determined does not serve the public interest.”

All of this presents another novel legal question. Parole is not a legal status under immigration laws. It is a status created by executive action and is now being curtailed under that same authority. However, these individuals came to the country under the promise of a two-year period. The question is whether a temporary program created by executive fiat can be treated as creating a type of vested right.

If Judge Talwani prevails, individual determinations of half a million cases would be an overwhelming burden on the Administration and easily run out the time granted under the program for these individuals. Indeed, for many of the individuals, the appellate process could exceed that period.

The court is not weighing the harshness of the decision but the president’s discretion in making such a decision. Judge Talwani suggests that, once created by President Biden, the program cannot be curtailed or shortened by President Trump. That question could very well find itself on the Supreme Court’s ever-lengthening docket.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Biden’s Administration May Have Suppressed COVID Evidence Contradicting Chinese Claims

Commentary by Jonathan Turley | April 14, 2025

Below is my column in the Hill on recent disclosure that the Biden Administration may have withheld evidence contradicting the Chinese on the origins of COVID. Millions of Americans lost loved ones and would like to know who was responsible. It appears that our government and many experts were less motivated to find that answer.

Here is the column:

Imagine a world war that left more than seven million dead, hundreds of millions became ill, wrecked the global economy, and left a generation with lasting psychological and developmental injuries. We have seen such wars in history. What is different in this circumstance, however, is that all of that happened, and yet, years later, we still have no agreement on the original cause or possible culprits behind a pandemic that ravaged the world.

Worse yet, many politicians, experts and journalists do not seem inclined to find the answers. This is like fighting World War II and then shrugging off the question of what actually started it.

New questions are being raised over long-withheld evidence on the origins of COVID, information that contradicted the accounts of not just the Biden administration but also allies in academia and the media.

The Chinese first reported the outbreak in December 2019 and insisted that it came from a wet market in Wuhan — a natural or “zoonotic” transfer from bats sold at the market. Others were skeptical and pointed to the nearby Wuhan government virus lab, known to have conducted coronavirus studies with bats. This lab had a history of safety and contamination concerns.

The “lab-leak theory,” which was always the most obvious explanation, was further reinforced by scientists who saw evidence of possible manipulation of the virus’s genetic code, particularly the “spike protein” that enables the virus to enter the human body in a “gain of function” operation. There was (and still is) a serious controversy over the origins of the virus, but any debate was quickly scuttled in favor of the natural theory.

The Chinese immediately moved to crush any speculation of a lab-leak. Wuhan scientists were gagged and the Chinese refused to allow international investigators access to them or the lab in question. The Chinese also used their considerable influence over the World Health Organization and other groups to dismiss or downplay the lab theory..

Now, a long-withheld military report has finally been released by the Trump administration. It appears to confirm what was once denied by the Biden administration: U.S. military service members contracted COVID-19-like symptoms after participating in the World Military Games in October 2019 in Wuhan.

That contradicts China’s timeline. It suggests a longer cover-up in that country, which allowed the virus to spread not only to the U.S. but to countries around the world. Other nations also reported that their military personnel had fallen ill after attending the same games, suggesting that the virus was not only spreading but already raging in the area at that time.

The most disturbing aspect of this report is not the alleged conduct of the Chinese government, but that of our own. Rumors of U.S. military personnel coming down with the virus had long been out there. Republicans in Congress repeatedly asked the Biden administration about any report on the outbreak. Then-Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told The Washington Post in June 2021 that the military had “no knowledge” of COVID-19 infections among the troops participating in those games.

Even as the illness associated with the games became known, the Biden administration repeatedly refused to confirm the U.S. cases, and a 2022 report was withheld from both Congress and the public. If true, the level of duplicity and dishonesty is shocking. In the U.S. alone, more than 1.2 million died and more than 111 million were made sick by this virus. Yet the Biden administration is accused of withholding this information from the world. Why?

This disclosure follows an equally troubling disclosure that scientists in the Biden administration actually found support for the lab theory but were silenced by their superiors.

Last December, the Wall Street Journal released an alarming report on how these scientists supported the lab theory on the origin of the COVID-19 virus. Not only were the FBI and its top experts excluded from a critical briefing of Biden, but government scientists were reportedly warned that they were “off the reservation” in supporting the lab theory.

As scientists were being attacked publicly and blacklisted for supporting the lab theory, experts at both the FBI and the Energy Department found the lab theory credible. Although no theory could be proven conclusively, it was deemed a more likely scenario than the natural-origin theory. The CIA also found the lab theory credible.

What the public was hearing was entirely different. They were hearing the same narrative laid out by the Chinese government in December 2019. The Chinese relied upon western scientists to form a mob against anyone raising the lab-leak theory as a possible explanation. Many were enlisted to sign letters or publish statements denouncing the idea. It became an article of faith — a required virtue signal among university scientists. The western media were equally primed to quash the theory.

After President Trump embraced the lab theory, the Chinese had the perfect setup. The media was on a hair-trigger in opposition and denounced his comments as not only unfounded but also racist. MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace mocked Trump and others for spreading “conspiracy theories.” MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt insisted that “we know it’s been debunked that this virus was manmade or modified.”

MSNBC’s Joy Reid called the lab leak theory “debunked bunkum.” Over at CNN, reporter Drew Griffin criticized the “widely debunked” theory and host Fareed Zakaria told viewers that “the far right has now found its own virus conspiracy theory” in the lab leak.

The Washington Post was particularly dogmatic. After Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) raised the lab-leak theory, he was chastised for “repeat[ing] a fringe theory suggesting that the ongoing spread of a coronavirus is connected to research in the disease-ravaged epicenter of Wuhan, China.”

The Post’s “fact checker” Glenn Kessler mocked Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) for entertaining the theory. “I fear @tedcruz missed the scientific animation in the video that shows how it is virtually impossible for this virus to jump from the lab,” he posted. “Or the many interviews with actual scientists. We deal in facts, and viewers can judge for themselves.”

Even in 2021 when countervailing evidence was surfacing, the unrelenting attacks continued. New York Times science and health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli urged journalists not to mention the “racist” lab theory. Social media companies also enforced the narrative and, with the coordination of the Biden Administration, experts raising the lab theory were targeted, censored, and blacklisted.

It now appears that the COVID outbreak may have occurred months before the alleged wet market release — months that could have been used to contain the virus. Instead, China is accused of suppressing the news and allowing the virus to spread worldwide. Our military personnel alone went home from the Wuhan games to 25 states, potentially carrying it with them. When information on these infections connected to the games was reported around the world, China even suggested that the U.S. used the games to release the weaponized virus.

In 2020, I wrote a column on why China seemed poised to avoid any liability for what might be the greatest act of negligence in history. The sheer size of the disaster somehow seemed to insulate China. As Joseph Stalin had once said, “a single death is a tragedy” and “a million deaths is a statistic.”

Try more than seven million, and you have a statistic that was not worth confronting the Chinese over. What was done was done.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

Category:

Education, International Politics, Media, Political

Tagged with:

“Coercive Control”: Parents Could Lose Custody Under Proposed Colorado Law for “Misgendering”

By: Jonathan Turley | April 10, 2025

Parental rights are emerging as one of the major civil liberties movements of this generation — and one of the greatest conflicts between the right and the left in this country. For example, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled schools can hide a change of gender in young children from their parents. Now, Colorado is poised to pass a law that would threaten the custody rights of parents who “deadname” or “misgender” their own children. If a parent does not adopt a child’s new pronouns or name, they could be found to have exercised “coercive control” and lose custody in divorce proceedings in favor of a more enlightened parent.

As someone who grew up in an Italian family, I must confess that I thought “coercive control” of a parent was called . . . well . . . parenting. I can still remember my Sicilian mother brandishing a broom in front of our door to prevent one of my sisters from going out with a boy that she did not like. She simply declared “I gave you life, I can take it away” and my sister went back upstairs.

I admit the Italian parental style can be a bit shocking for outsiders and misunderstood by many. (My Irish father would sit bemused in the kitchen). In reality, it was all drama, but you knew that it conveyed not anger but love.

Under the new proposal, House Bill 25-1312, Colorado would use the “Kelly Loving Act” to make “deadnaming” and “misgendering” children a factor in child custody disputes. Referring to your child’s biological gender or given name or pronoun would now be considered harmful and abusive, inviting a court to take your child away from you as a coercive parent.

“Section 2 provides that, when making child custody decisions and determining the best interests of a child for purposes of parenting time, a court shall consider deadnaming, misgendering, or threatening to publish material related to an individual’s gender-affirming health-care services as types of coercive control. A court shall consider reports of coercive control when determining the allocation of parental responsibilities in accordance with the best interests of the child.”

So, the state will require parents to adopt a gender, name, and pronoun that they believe are harmful for their children. Many such parents may believe that a young child should proceed slowly and not make such changes as they consider the implications of such decisions.

One question is whether this would be limited to custody proceedings or eventually expand to families generally. If this is deemed abusive or harmful during custody battles, it would also be presumably abusive or harmful outside of such proceedings. The fear is that the underlying conclusions could support a view of a household being abusive and not being in the best interests of the child.

Notably, the Supreme Court will now be considering a Colorado case involving a ban on counselors offering “conversion therapy” for children. Under the state rule, a counselor can lose her license if she agrees to such counseling at the request of her parents. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit tossed the challenge, ruling that conversion therapy is harmful and the rule is part of an effort to regulate the healthcare profession.

Rep. Lorena Garcia, D-Denver, insisted that:

“This bill is the bare minimum of what we can do as a state, and the fact that we have to legislate for people to not bully and misgender and deadname people because of whatever insecurities they might have is sad to me. Why can’t we just respect one another? Why can’t we just understand that someone else’s identity has nothing to do with me or you?”

The bill passed the committee on a straight party vote with Republicans in opposition. I believe that the Democrats are not just ignoring parental rights but political realities. They will find that this is not a partisan issue. It is a primal issue. For parents, Democratic politicians like Garcia fail to “understand” that it has a lot “to do with them.” They are the parents of these children. If Democrats do not “understand” that, they are likely soon to find that out.

Category:

Education, Family, Law, LGBTQ+ AND TRANSGENDER, Political

Tagged with:

Conservative Legal Scholars Debate Response to Liberal Judges’ Overreach on Injunctions

By: George Caldwell | April 07, 2025

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Prominent conservative legal scholars on Monday debated the proper legal response to liberal federal judges’ injunctions against actions by the Trump administration. From legislation that would alter the judiciary’s powers to introducing articles of impeachment, the commentators offered varying solutions to the current controversy over the separation of powers in a panel discussion at The Heritage Foundation.

Central to the discussion was Washington, D.C.-based U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg’s injunction against deportation flights leaving the United States, which the panelists unanimously criticized. George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley was in the camp of urging Congress and the White House to refrain from combating the judiciary too fiercely.

“Where I’ve been critical of the administration is often on the rhetoric, and I think it has committed some unforced errors,” said Turley. “They’ve got to really pick the hills to fight on.”

The judicial scholars at a panel discussion Monday were unanimously critical of federal Judge James Boasberg’s injunctions against the Trump administration. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Turley added that he does not support impeaching judges, and that he thinks the legal system will sort out judicial overreach. A number of members of the House of Representatives have already introduced articles of impeachment against judges who have issued injunctions against Trump administration actions.

“I also don’t agree with limiting jurisdiction or limiting funds. I believe we have the world’s greatest judicial system, and it’s working. Injunctions have been lifted. The Supreme Court just recently again ruled in favor of the Trump administration,” Turley said.

Additionally, the GWU law professor warned against what he sees as a dangerous precedent of ignoring court rulings, which would likely continue in future administrations. However, Mike Davis, the president of the conservative advocacy group Article III Project, disagreed with Turley. Davis argued that the scope of injunctions was so beyond the norm that impeachments were necessary.

*Mike Davis of the Article III Project (Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)*

Davis spoke at length of Boasberg’s order for American deportation flights to be returned to the United States. He described that as an “unacceptable” instance of judicial overreach that damages “the president’s ability to conduct foreign affairs.”

“It’s a red line, and that’s the reason I have called for the impeachment of Judge Boasberg. I have called for the Trump administration to ignore his order. I’ve never done this before” he said. “This is a very serious matter for the judiciary’s legitimacy.”

One point of agreement uniting all of the panelists, however, was that the judges were in the wrong for their far-reaching rulings. Turley indicated he was open to supporting legislation that would require more than one judge to sign off on national injunctions against a president’s executive orders.

“I would like to see at a minimum, any class action has to go through a separate three-judge panel with very narrow conditions, under which a national injunction can be held. I would also like to see Congress collapse the time for appeal,” Turley said.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., have introduced legislation that would require that nationwide injunctions be approved by a three-judge panel.

Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, agreed with the case for allowing Congress to limit judges’ authority and requiring multiple rulings for there to be a nationwide injunction. He alluded to laws passed by Congress during the civil rights movement to enforce equal voting laws, arguing that these establish a precedent for the proposed legislation.

“When the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 … they didn’t trust some of the federal judges in the Southern courts who had been put forward by the Democratic Party, that they would rule the right way on certain voting cases, and so they set up a system of a three-judge panel … and so, we’ve done this before. It’s something that could be done again.”

Category:

Law, Political

Tagged with:

Perspectives; Thoughts; Comments; Opinions; Discussions

Posts tagged ‘Jonathan Turley’

By: Jonathan Turley | October 24, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | October 23, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | October 21, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | October 16, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | October 16, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | October 7, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | September 29, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | September 24, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | September 19, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | September 19, 2025

Share this:

Commentary by Jonathan Turley | September15, 2025

Share this:

Commentary by Jonathan Turley | September 14, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | September 8, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | September 2, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | September 2, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | August 6, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | August 6, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | August 5, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | August 5, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | August 1, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | July 30, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | July 29, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | July 22, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | July 21, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | July 9, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | July 9, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | July 8, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathn Turley | June 26, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | June 27, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | June 25, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | June 28, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | June 20, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | June 17, 2025

Share this:

Commentary by Jonathan Turley | June 15, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | June 16, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | June 11, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | June 9, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | June 6, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | June 4, 2025

Share this: