Tennessee's ban on drag shows when children are present will remain in effect, as the Supreme Court earlier this week refused to hear a challenge to the law brought on by a drag performance group, a move the state's Republican attorney general heralded as "another big win for Tennessee."
The state's Adult Entertainment Act, passed in 2023, does not allow "adult-oriented performances" in public spaces, or anywhere where minors may see them.
"Free speech is a sacred American value, but the First Amendment does not require Tennessee to allow sexually explicit performances in front of children," Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said in a post on X. "We will continue to defend TN’s law and children."
A federal judge ruled that the law, which specifically targets drag shows, was "unconstitutionally vague and substantially overbroad," temporarily halting enforcement. However, in July, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision, asserting that the Memphis-based theater company that filed the lawsuit – Friends of George’s Inc. – lacked standing to challenge the law.
Another lawsuit challenging the ban filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is still underway on behalf of Blount County Pride, another LGBTQ+ advocacy group, after then-Attorney General Ryan Desmond threatened to prosecute anyone violating the ban during the 2023 pride festival.
Fox News Digital reached out to Friends of George's Inc. and the ACLU but did not receive a response by publication time.
Violators who do not adhere to the Adult Entertainment Act could be prosecuted for a Class A misdemeanor, while a second or third offense is a Class E felony. Both could result in fines and jail time anywhere from 11 months to six years.
"I’m proud that the United States Supreme Court has upheld yet another Tennessee law protecting our children. SB 3 ensures that Tennessee children are not exposed to sexually explicit entertainment," state's Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson said in an X post. Johnson was one of the sponsors of the bill in 2023.
The Supreme Court already has another case in front of them brought by the ACLU challenging a Tennessee law prohibiting transgender medical treatments and procedures for minors.
In that case, the court is weighing whether the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause, which guarantees equal treatment under the law for individuals in similar circumstances, prevents states from banning medical providers from offering puberty blockers and hormone treatments to children seeking transgender surgical procedures.
"It seems like the momentum has really shifted almost culturally on these issues. And when you see people trying to rewrite laws through creative judging, through creative regulating, that alienates the people from the laws that bind them, and it's bad for America."
"We'll know what the Supreme Court does when the Supreme Court does it," he added.
The high court is expected to rule on that case by June.
Nearly a year after his speech was disrupted by an angry mob of student protesters, Kyle Rittenhouse will return to the University of Memphis on Wednesday evening to talk about the Second Amendment and his controversial 2021 trial.
The University of Memphis chapter of Turning Point USA re-invited Rittenhouse to speak after the university and Rittenhouse's lawyers worked out a deal to ensure an adequate security presence this time, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorney Mathew Hoffmann told Fox News Digital.
"The bottom line is universities cannot allow hostile students and other people to shut down speakers that they don't like," Hoffmann said. "That's enshrined in Tennessee law and the First Amendment. The mob forced him to cut his speech short, and he left not being able to communicate his message."
Intervening on Rittenhouse's and TPUSA's behalf, ADF sent a demand letter in October asking the university to reschedule the event and "reimburse TPUSA an unconstitutional security fee it was forced to pay after the event was shut down." The university did reschedule it, but did not refund the $1,600 fee "for security that stood idly by and allowed the mob to shut down the event."
"They did change their security fee assessment system. The university has committed in advance of the event to give a short statement about promoting respectful dialogue and how disruption will not be tolerated," Hoffmann said.
Rittenhouse was acquitted during a high-profile case in 2021 of five charges after fatally shooting two people and injuring a third during unrest in Kenosha on Aug. 25, 2020. His defense attorneys argued he acted in self-defense after being attacked. The decedents, Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, both had criminal records, including allegations of domestic abuse, child molestation and disorderly conduct.
Donald Trump's lawsuits against publishers carry new weight with his new term in office.
Jim WATSON / AFP
Donald Trump is threatening publishers again.
A New York Times editor who's out with a new book says we need to take him seriously.
A landmark free speech case could be at risk.
Donald Trump, who is used to suing journalists and media companies about stories he doesn't like, says he's going to do more of it.
In a post published on his Truth Social platform Wednesday, Trump vowed to "sue some of these dishonest authors and book publishers, or even media in general," arguing that they make up stories about him and "a big price should be paid for this blatant dishonesty."
"I'll do it as a service to our Country," Trump added. "Who knows, maybe we will create some NICE NEW LAW!!!"
Complaining about people who say or publish unflattering things about him, threatening to sue them, and actually suing them are nothing new for Trump. And up until recently, it was relatively easy for media companies and journalists to shrug off those complaints and threatened suits. Even when Trump did lodge a claim, he rarely won in court.
And while Trump's threat to create a law about defamation seems like a reach — in the US, laws are hard to pass, even when the same party controls the White House, the House, and the Senate — the direction he's headed is worth taking very seriously.
That's the underlying message of "Murder the Truth," a coming book from The New York Times' editor David Enrich, which details an ongoing push to tear down the legal underpinnings that support freedom of speech in the US. Enrich is specifically focused on New York Times v. Sullivan, a 1964 Supreme Court ruling that established the basic framework for defamation law in the US: In short, it should be very hard to successfully sue someone because you don't like what they say.
As Enrich notes in his book, this was both a landmark ruling and a popular one, cherished by free speech advocates across the political spectrum. But that has started to change in recent years.
There are multiple reasons for that, but the main one is Trump himself, Enrich told me on this week's episode of my "Channels" podcast.
On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump mused about wanting to "open up our libel laws, so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money." Which, again, was easy to dismiss at the time, for multiple reasons. But Trump kept coming back to the idea — and as we're seeing now, he has already had success on the payments front.
And those stories unsettle me and other observers. But they're ultimately about access, not about limiting what the press — who, as Elon Musk likes to remind us, is everyone now — actually says, writes, and publishes. Threatening lawsuits, filing lawsuits, and extracting settlements from lawsuits are very much about that. Actually changing the law to make those suits that much more powerful is something that should alarm all of us.
As part of his acquisition of Twitter in 2022, Elon Musk called on the social media giant's CEO to detail what he accomplished during the work week – years before he employed the same tactic on federal employees while serving in his capacity as chair of the Department of Government Efficiency under the Trump administration.
Musk roiled the federal workforce on Saturday when he posted to X that employees would need to list their accomplishments for the previous week or risk losing their jobs.
But this isn't the first time Musk has used the tactic: He did the same amid his purchase of Twitter in 2022, before he overhauled the social media behemoth, including axing top brass.
"What did you get done this week," Musk had texted former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal in April 2022, months before he purchased Twitter and ultimately renamed it X.
Musk helped resurrect the text exchange over the weekend on X, when he responded to an account that shared a "how it started, how it’s going" post that showed a screenshot of Musk’s text to Agrawal, accompanied by a screen shot of a Musk X post on Saturday directed at federal employees.
"Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week," Musk wrote on X on Saturday. "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation."
"To be clear, the bar is very low here," Musk wrote. "An email with some bullet points that make any sense at all is acceptable! Should take less than 5 mins to write."
Musk, who positioned himself as "free speech absolutist" amid the Twitter purchase, bought the social media platform in 2022 after it came under fire from conservatives and free speech advocates for censoring conservative viewpoints.
The tech giant had "permanently" banned former President Donald Trump from the platform in 2021, drawing ire from conservatives and free speech advocates. It also blocked the New York Post’s 2020 story on Hunter Biden’s notorious laptop – and suspended some conservative accounts from the site, such as satire website Babylon Bee in 2022 after it awarded transgender Biden administration official Rachel Levine a fictitious "Man of the Year" award.
Musk’s text to the then-Twitter CEO asking what he accomplished for the week came as the two sparred over Musk’s critical messages aimed at the social media platform, including asking publicly that year, "Is Twitter dying?" The text messages were revealed in court documents released in 2022.
Months later, in October 2022, Musk officially acquired Twitter in a $44 billion deal, making waves when he entered its headquarters that month carrying a bathroom sink in a video he posted to X with the caption, "Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!"
Musk went on to fire the social media company’s top executives, including Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and general counsel Vijaya Gadde. Musk explained on X recently that Agrawal was fired due to reported productivity issues.
"Parag got nothing done. Parag was fired," he posted to X on Saturday.
All in, roughly 70% to 80% of Twitter's approximate 8,000 employees were fired or exited the company following Musk’s purchase. Musk took a hatchet to the company’s work from home policy, and remarked that the company was overstaffed and needed to be trimmed of staffers who did not contribute much to its operations.
"We just had a situation at Twitter where it was absurdly overstaffed," Musk said on Fox News in 2023. "Turns out you don't need all that many people to run Twitter."
"If you're not trying to run some sort of glorified activist organization and you don't care that much about censorship, then you can really let go of a lot of people, turns out," he said at the time.
Musk’s comments reflect those he’s made in the second Trump administration as the chair of DOGE, which is in the midst of auditing various federal agencies in the search for overspending, corruption and mismanagement.
DOGE’s work comes as President Donald Trump ordered the federal workforce to return to the office after five years of remote work stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, and has vowed to clean house of bad actors within the government and ax overspending.
Musk said on Saturday that federal employees would receive an email directing them to list their accomplishments from the week prior, with the DOGE leader adding later that day that the assignment should take less than five minutes to accomplish.
Employees have until 11:59 pm on Monday to send the list or lose their employment, according to emails regarding Musk's directive that were sent by the Office of Personnel Management.
Musk's message followed Trump remarking that he has been pleased with Musk and DOGE's work investigating various federal agencies for government overspending, fraud and mismanagement, but that he would like to see Musk "get more aggressive."
Some Democratic lawmakers, unions and activists have called for federal employees to buck the order, while a handful of government departments and agencies, such as the FBI and Department of Defense, told staff to hold off on responding to the email, as respective officials will handle auditing their own staffers.
"This is a good opportunity for mass civil disobedience. Musk has no authority to do this," Illinois Democratic Rep. Sean Casten, for example, posted to X on Saturday evening. "Encourage all federal employees to report to work, prepare GFY letters and continue to demonstrate the public service and patriotism he lacks." The acronym GFY is internet slang typically meaning "go f--- yourself."
"It takes a remarkable combination of arrogance and stupidity to think that this is the best use of time for our intelligence officers, VA workers, air traffic controllers, and everyone else we depend on to do their job well," he continued.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to hear a pro-life challenge against protest restrictions around abortion clinics in Illinois, as activists argued the laws infringe on their First Amendment rights, a decision met with a fiery dissent by Justice Clarence Thomas.
The court rejected appeals from Coalition Life, which describes itself as "America's Largest Professional Sidewalk Counseling Organization" in New Jersey and Illinois, which had challenged previous lower court rulings that dismissed their lawsuits.
Pro-life activists in the case argued that "buffer zones" – which were established after a previous Supreme Court decision in Colorado to shield patients from harassment – around abortion clinics violate their First Amendment rights to free speech.
Thomas and fellow conservative Justice Samuel Alito dissented, with Thomas arguing SCOTUS should have taken up the case, Coalition Life v. City of Carbondale, Illinois. Alito did not explain his reasoning in writing.
The votes of four justices are required to grant a writ of certiorari to bring a case up for review.
Thomas said Hill v. Colorado "has been seriously undermined, if not completely eroded, and our refusal to provide clarity is an abdication of our judicial duty." He added that he would've used the Coalition Life case to override the Hill decision.
"This case would have allowed us to provide needed clarity to lower courts," Thomas wrote in his dissent.
In that case, decided in 2000, the Supreme Court upheld a Colorado statute that prohibited individuals from "knowingly" approaching within eight feet of another person within 100 feet of a healthcare facility entrance, without consent, for purposes such as passing out literature, displaying signs, or engaging in oral protest, education, or counseling.
The court determined this law was a content-neutral regulation of the time, place and manner of speech, serving the state's interest in protecting individuals entering healthcare facilities from unwanted communication. The decision was 6-3, with Justices Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy dissenting.
The City of Carbondale, in southern Illinois, saw an uptick in pro-life protests after two clinics opened following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. As such, the city passed ordinances modeled after Colorado's statutes.
Urging the court to revisit the Hill precedent, Thomas quoted from an excerpt in Alito's majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Center – the case that overturned Roe v. Wade – where he noted that abortion-related cases on other legal precedents had "distorted First Amendment doctrines."
One key case that followed Hill v. Colorado is McCullen v. Coakley, where the Supreme Court ruled in 2014 on a Massachusetts law that established a 35-foot buffer zone around abortion clinics. The high court found that while the state had a legitimate interest in protecting patients and staff from harassment, the law was overly broad, included too much space and infringed on free speech rights.
The court struck down the law, distinguishing it from the Hill decision.
In 2019, New York upheld a 15-foot buffer zone law outside of clinics, and similar laws have been debated in states like California, Maryland and Washington.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Coalition Life for comment.
Brazilian justice Alexandre de Moraes was sued by the owner of Truth Social and Rumble.
Thomson Reuters
President Donald Trump's media company sued a Brazilian judge in a Florida court on Wednesday.
The lawsuit accused Justice Alexandre de Moraes of undermining First Amendment rights.
The lawsuit comes after Moraes received an indictment related to former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.
President Donald Trump's media company sued a Brazilian Supreme Court judge, claiming that he censored right-wing voices on social media.
Trump Media & Technology Group, the owner of Truth Social; and Rumble, an online video network platform, accused Justice Alexandre de Moraes of censoring political discourse in the United States and claimed that he undermined the First Amendment.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Tampa, Florida, on Wednesday and was first reported by The New York Times.
The legal action came as de Moraes was deciding whether to arrest former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.
Brazil's chief prosecutor brought five charges against Bolsonaro, a Trump ally. They include allegations that he planned to kill de Moraes and poison President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
TMTG and Rumble, which say they are bastions of free speech and are popular with MAGA supporters, said in the lawsuit that de Moraes had "issued sweeping orders to suspend multiple U.S.-based accounts."
The plaintiffs said the judge wanted to remove accounts he labeled "anti-democratic" and targeted high-profile conservative social media users. They seek a jury trial and permanent injunctive relief.
De Moraes has styled himself as a protector of democracy with his rulings.
Martin De Luca, the Boies Schiller Flexner partner representing Rumble in the lawsuit, said: "We have asked the court to determine whether a foreign judge can unilaterally dictate what speech is allowed in the United States."
He added that the case was about "protecting America's digital sovereignty."
Brazil's chief prosecutor brought charges against former president Jair Bolsonaro.
Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters
Joseph Russomanno, an emeritus professor specializing in First Amendment and media law at Arizona State University, told Business Insider by email that he couldn't comment on the part that international and Brazilian law might play in the case.
However, he said that the complaint "seems to have a good chance of succeeding largely because of the First Amendment element."
A key consideration would be the plaintiffs' ability to demonstrate that de Moraes' gag order lacks legitimacy, particularly regarding the First Amendment's protection of press freedoms.
The plaintiffs have argued that legitimate political discourse was censored — and "political speech generally has the highest level of protection," Russomanno said.
Another factor would be why de Moraes issued the orders, he said: "For example, does the content of these organizations endanger public safety?"
This type of lawsuit was not unprecedented, Russomanno said, pointing to a 1976 Supreme Court ruling — Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart — that could offer guidance.
Vice President JD Vance slammed U.S. bureaucracy that has "corrupted" aid programs to foreign nations amid the Trump administration’s investigation into USAID waste, directing his ire at a recent revelation that the government had funded a program to promote atheism — or disbelief in God or gods — in Nepal.
"In recent years, too often has our nation's international engagement on religious liberty issues been corrupted and distorted to the point of absurdity," Vance, who is Catholic, said at the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. "Think about it: How did America get to a point where we're sending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars abroad to NGOs that are dedicated to spreading atheism all over the globe? That is not what leadership on protecting the rights of the faithful looks like."
Vance did not mention the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) by name in his speech to the religious crowd and those working to advocate for religious liberty in the U.S. and around the world.
The forum was held as USAID faces an apparent dismantling as Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) pore over the agency’s financial records to suss out government overspending and corruption.
USAID’s website was shut down in early February, replaced with a message on Tuesday evening outlining how "direct-hire personnel" will be placed on leave Friday, except those on "mission-critical functions, core leadership and specially designated programs."
Vance’s comment focusing on nongovernmental organizations using taxpayer funds to promote atheism around the globe is likely referring to a $500,000 grant solicited by the State Department in 2021, under the Biden administration. The grant hit the nation’s radar in 2024, when Republican House lawmakers sounded the alarm that the State Department was participating in a "pattern of obfuscation and denial" related to efforts to promote atheism on the world stage.
Reps. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, Chris Smith, R-N.J., and Brian Mast, R-Fla., wrote in a letter sent to then-State Department Deputy Secretary Richard Verma in May 2024: "We write to address what the Department has now acknowledged were its misrepresentations made to Congress about the scope and nature of programming that – for the first time in US diplomatic history – has sought to promote atheism overseas under the guise of ‘religious freedom.'"
The lawmakers were referring to the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor grant for $500,000, titled "Promoting and Defending Religious Freedom Inclusive of Atheist, Humanist, Non-Practicing and Non-Affiliated Individuals." Fox News Digital reviewed an archived web link for the grant on Thursday, which detailed that the U.S. was working to "support Religious Freedom globally," including to "combat discrimination, harassment and abuses against atheist, humanist, non-practicing and non-affiliated individuals of all religious communities."
The State Department’s announcement for the grant reads: "DRL’s goal is to ensure everyone enjoys religious freedom, including the freedom to dissent from religious belief and to not practice or adhere to a religion. By not adhering to a predominant religious tradition, many individuals face discrimination in employment, housing, in civil and criminal proceedings, and other areas especially in the context of intersectional identities."
The grant was awarded to Humanists International, a UK-based group that works to promote secularism and humanism, a philosophy that does not include a belief in God.
The State Department’s funding announcement opportunity detailed how the program was expected to increase "capacity among members of atheist and heterodox individuals to form or join networks or organizations."
Fox News Digital reached out to Humanists International on Thursday morning regarding the grant and Vance's comments but did not immediately receive a reply.
"But this administration is intent on not just restoring, but on expanding the achievements of the first four years, and certainly in the last two weeks," he continued. "And in this short period, the president has issued orders to end the weaponization of the federal government against religious Americans."
"Pardon pro-life protesters who were unjustly imprisoned under the last administration," he said. "And importantly, stop the federal censorship used to prevent Americans from speaking their conscience and speaking their mind, whether it's in their communities or online."
"Now, our administration believes we must stand for religious freedom, not just as a legal principle, as important as that is, but as a lived reality both within our own borders and especially outside," he continued.
Vance’s speech was followed by a virtual address from actor Rainn Wilson, who played Dwight Schrute in "The Office," to discuss his Baha’i faith and the persecution of fellow adherents in Iran.
Government funding directed to left-wing initiatives through agencies such as USAID or the State Department has come under the microscope recently, as DOGE launched investigations to cut government fat. Secretary of State Marco Rubio took over as acting director of USAID on Monday, telling the media that the agency needs to fall in line with Trump’s "America First" policies, which includes using taxpayer funds to strengthen U.S. communities rather than sending cash overseas.
Democrats have seethed over DOGE’s work, holding protests outside government offices in Washington, D.C., and across the country to declare that they will fight the efforts tooth and nail.
"What we are witnessing here is the biggest heist in American history," Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said on Tuesday during one rally.
"This is the most corrupt bargain we've ever seen in American history: Elon Musk gives $250 million to elect Donald Trump, and Donald Trump turns over the keys to United States government to Elon Musk and his billionaire friends and his cronies," Van Hollen continued in his remarks outside the Treasury Department.
"We have to fight this in the courts, we have to fight this in the Congress, we have to fight this in the streets. We need to fight this all over America."
Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., added, "Shut down the city! We are at war!"
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., said during a news interview of DOGE’s work at USAID, "The level of disrespect actually is criminal, because there are crisis-response teams that are around the world that really rely on having access to their emails – having access to apps that they can utilize if there’s danger to them."
Protesters have slammed Musk as a "fascist" who was not elected to federal office yet holds sway with the White House in his role at DOGE.
Musk trolled Democrats and government employees amid the protests on Wednesday when he changed his X bio to state that he is working as "White House Tech Support" as his DOGE team reviews the federal government's various computer systems.
Donald Trump filed a series of lawsuits against tech and media companies before he won his second election. Since then, he's started extracting settlements from some of the biggest companies in the world.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
First Disney, then Meta. Now it looks like Paramount is planning to settle a Trump lawsuit.
In normal times, Trump's suits against media and tech companies that upset him would face a steep challenge.
But since Trump won in November, things have changed. Is this how business will work for the next four years?
Disney paid Donald Trump $15 million. Meta paid $22 million.
Next question: How much will Paramount pay?
The question after that: How many more giant tech and media companies will pay the president of the United States to settle lawsuits?
And the truly big question hanging over all of this: Is this just going to be how business works during Trump 2.0?
Here's the context: Donald Trump has a history of filing lawsuits — or at least threatening to file lawsuits — against people and companies he says have besmirched his image. But until he won his second presidential election in the fall, he had only scattered success when he did that.
There are some differences between the suits. The Disney suit, for instance, was a somewhat straightforward defamation claim, focused on comments ABC's anchor George Stephanopoulos made during a live interview. The Meta case revolved around Trump's argument that the company had violated his First Amendment rights.
The Paramount and Gannett filings accuse those companies of election interference and consumer fraud, respectively. Trump was specifically unhappy with the way Paramount's "60 Minutes" program handled an interview with Kamala Harris, and about a poll Gannett's Des Moines Register published before the election that projected he would lose in Iowa.
What all those suits had in common: lots of skepticism and eye-rolling from legal experts who said Trump would have a very difficult time making his case.
But as it turns out, when the person making that case turns out to be the most powerful man in the world, the equation gets reworked.
In Paramount's case, both its current owner — Shari Redstone — and the man who wants to buy it — Oracle's founder Larry Ellison, on behalf of his son, David — are aligned with Trump to varying degrees. But that deal requires federal approval, and Brendan Carr, Trump's pick to run the Federal Communications Commission, has already said he intends to scrutinize the way Paramount's CBS handled the "60 Minutes" interview. Technically, Trump's suit and the FCC's approval of the deal are considered separate issues. But it's easy enough to draw a dotted line.
It's also easy to see a stark pattern emerging: Powerful companies with enormous legal resources are deciding that they're better off making a payment — in the form of a donation — to Trump than fighting him.
If you're reading this, that suggests you have some interest in the news. For people who care about news — or any of the protections the First Amendment provides — all of this likely sounds chilling. But even if you're a press/media/Big Tech skeptic or foe, you might worry about the lawsuits and settlements, and the precedent they set. What happens when Donald Trump — or a future president — comes after a company or industry you care about?
Legal experts, privacy groups and parents alike applauded the Supreme Court's Friday ruling upholding a federal law banning TikTok unless it is divested from its Chinese parent company ByteDance, while others deemed it as "anti-democratic."
The ban is set to go into effect on Sunday.
"There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community," the court wrote in the unsigned ruling. "But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary."
Former Vice President Mike Pence turned to X and called the decision "a victory for the privacy and security of the American people."
"This law was the result of a bipartisan cooperation and I commend it's authors and supporters in Congress for enacting this vital law for our national security," he continued. The CCP has been put on notice that the American people’s data is no longer for the taking. The incoming Trump administration must be prepared to uphold this TikTok divestment law and put the privacy and security of America first."
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., likewise said the Supreme Court "correctly rejected TikTok’s lies and propaganda masquerading as legal arguments" in a post on X.
"ByteDance and its Chinese Communist masters had nine months to sell TikTok before the Sunday deadline," the senator wrote. "The very fact that Communist China refuses to permit its sale reveals exactly what TikTok is: a communist spy app. The Supreme Court correctly rejected TikTok’s lies and propaganda masquerading as legal arguments."
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., said the decision was "unsurprising,and the answer is that the Chinese government needs to give up control of TikTok."
Carrie Severino, President of Judicial Crisis Network, echoed Cotton's sentiments, also saying in a statement that the high court "rightly recognizes the danger of the Chinese Communist Party being able to access and maliciously deploy the data of hundreds of millions of Americans."
President Biden notably maintained his stance that he would enforce the law banning the social media app and would instead punt the implementation to President-elect Donald Trump and his incoming administration.
Severino stated she hopes "that President Trump's incoming administration vigorously enforces this important national security law."
Executive Director of American Parents Coalition Alleigh Marré also posted on X reacting to the holding. "This is a huge win for parents! Kids will be free from TikTok’s poison, its powerful, dangerous algorithm and compromising influences."
"I am incredibly proud to see that the highest court in the land has agreed that our elected officials hold the power to protect our national security from our most powerful foreign adversaries," said Michael Lucci, Founder and CEO of State Arumor, in a statement. "This decision is a vindication of the tireless work of so many patriotic groups, including State Armor, have done over the last year to make the public and lawmakers aware of the dangers that TikTok poses."
Lucci continued on to call for TikTok's sale to an American company "or immediately cease all operations within the United States, per the Supreme Court’s decision."
Others reacted to the Supreme Court's decision with disappointment, including Electronic Frontier Foundation Civil Liberties Director David Greene who called the holding "anti-democratic."
"Shutting down communications platforms or forcing their reorganization based on concerns of foreign propaganda and anti-national manipulation is an eminently anti-democratic tactic, one that the U.S. has previously condemned globally," he said in a statement released.
Likewise, Dean of UC Berkeley School of Law Erwin Chemerinsky told Fox News Digital in a statement that he believes the Court was "wrong" in its decision.
"Although unanimous, I think the Court was wrong," Chemerinsky said. "It accepted uncritically the government’s argument that China being able to gather information would harm national security; it never explained what kind of information is likely to be gathered to what effect.
"The impact on speech is staggering to ban a platform used by 173 million people in this country," he continued.
Just last year, Congress required that TikTok's China-based parent company ByteDance divest the company by Jan. 19. The law was subsequently signed by Biden.
When the law was passed, Congress specifically noted concerns over the app's Chinese ownership, which members said meant the app had the potential to be weaponized or used to amass vast amounts of user data, including from the roughly 170 million Americans who use TikTok.
Fox News Digital's Breanne Deppisch contributed to this report.
The Supreme Court on Friday heard oral arguments in a fast-tracked case over the future of TikTok, a Chinese-owned social media app that will be barred from operating in the U.S. in just nine days barring divestiture or eleventh-hour intervention from the high court.
At issue is the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, a law signed by President Biden that passed Congress in April with bipartisan approval. The act gave TikTok either nine months to either divest from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, or be removed from U.S.-based app stores and hosting services.
On Friday, lawyers for the Biden administration reiterated their argument that TikTok’s Chinese ownership poses a "grave" national security risk for American users.
U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar cited risks that China could weaponize the app, including by manipulating its algorithm to prioritize certain content or by ordering parent company ByteDance to turn over vast amounts of user data compiled by TikTok on U.S. users.
"We know that the PRC has a voracious appetite to get its hands on as much information about Americans as possible, and that creates a potent weapon here," Prelogar said. "Because the PRC could command ByteDance [to] comply with any request it gives to obtain that data."
"TikTok's immense data set would give the PRC a powerful tool for harassment, recruitment and espionage," she added.
Earlier in oral arguments when TikTok was presenting its case, justices on the bench as a whole appeared skeptical of the company's core argument, which is that the law is a restriction of speech.
"Exactly what is TikTok's speech here?" Justice Clarence Thomas asked in the first moments of oral arguments in an early sign of the court's apparent doubt that the law is in fact a First Amendment violation.
At the conclusion of oral arguments, it remained unclear as to how the Supreme Court might proceed in the matter — though a ruling or order is expected before the Jan. 19 ban comes into force.
The Supreme Court and its 6-3 conservative majority have been historically deferential to Congress on matters of national security.
The divestiture law in question passed Congress last year with strong bipartisan support — as well as the guidance of top Justice Department officials, who worked directly with House lawmakers to write the bill and help it withstand possible legal challenges.
But the argument also comes at a time when President-elect Trump has signaled possible support for TikTok. His attorneys filed an amicus brief last month, urging the Supreme Court to delay the ban until he is sworn in as president.
If the goal of China and ByteDance, through TikTok, is "trying to get Americans to argue with each other," said Chief Justice John Roberts, "I’d say they are winning."
Noel Francisco, TikTok’s lawyer, on Friday sought to frame the case primarily as a restriction on free speech protections under the First Amendment, which the company argues applies to TikTok’s U.S.-based incorporation.
First Amendment protections must be considered under strict scrutiny, which requires the government to sustain a higher burden of proof in justifying a law's constitutionality. More specifically, the law must be crafted to serve a compelling government interest and be narrowly tailored to achieve that interest — a test TikTok says the law fails to meet.
It's a difficult legal test to satisfy in court. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit used it last month in considering the divestiture law, and still voted to uphold it — meaning that justices could theoretically consider the case under strict scrutiny and still opt to uphold the law — and the looming Jan. 19 ban.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Friday noted that the case before them appears to be the first one to be heard by the court centered directly on the ownership of a platform or app, rather than speech.
The liberal justice also questioned whether the court might consider the divestiture requirement under the law as a data control case, not properly a free-speech issue, as TikTok's legal team has sought to frame it.
Weighing the case as a data control case would trigger a lower level of scrutiny — a point that Francisco also acknowledged.
Francisco told justices in oral arguments on Friday that the U.S. government has "no valid interest in preventing foreign propaganda," and that he believes the platform and its owners should be entitled to the highest level of free speech protections under the U.S. Constitution.
Francisco told Chief Justice John Roberts that he believes the court should grant TikTok First Amendment protections because it is operating as a U.S.-incorporated subsidiary.
The TikTok attorney was also grilled over the Chinese government’s control over the app, and ByteDance’s control over the algorithm that shows certain content to users.
Asked by Justice Neil Gorsuch whether some parts of the recommendation engine are under Chinese control, Francisco said no.
"What it means is that there are lots of parts of the source code that are embodied in intellectual property, that are owned by the Chinese government" and which a sale or divestiture would restrict, he said. "It doesn't alter the fact that this is being operated in the United States by TikTok incorporated."
Unless justices intervene, or TikTok’s owners agree to sell, the app will be barred from operating in the U.S. by Jan. 19.
Oral arguments center on the level of First Amendment protections that should be granted to TikTok and its foreign owner, ByteDance.
This is not the first time the Supreme Court has grappled with whether full First Amendment protections should be extended to foreign speakers. In previous cases, they have ruled that speech by a foreign government or individuals is not entitled to the full protections.
The Biden administration, for its part, will argue that the law focuses solely on the company’s control of the app, which attorneys for the administration argue could pose "grave national security threats" to Americans rather than its content.
Lawyers for the administration will also argue that Congressdid not impose any restrictions on speech, much less any restrictions based on viewpoint or on content, and therefore fails to satisfy the test of free speech violations under the First Amendment.
The court’s decision could have major ramifications for the roughly 170 million Americans who use the app.
Justices agreed in December to hold the expedited hearing and will have just nine days to issue a ruling before the ban takes place on Jan. 19.
The Supreme Court on Friday will hear oral arguments about a U.S. law requiring TikTok to either divest from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, or be banned from operating in the U.S. It's a heavily followed case that pits national security concerns against free speech protections for millions of Americans.
The court agreed in December to hold an expedited hearing on the case, giving it just nine days to decide whether to uphold TikTok's request to halt or delay the ban passed by Congress before it takes effect Jan. 19.
It is unlikely the court will take that long, however, and justices are expected to issue a ruling or order in a matter of days.
The case comes as TikTok continues to be one of the most popular social media apps in the U.S. with an estimated 170 million users nationwide.
President-elect Trump has also signaled support for the app, putting the case further into the national spotlight in the final weeks before his inauguration.
Ahead of Friday's oral arguments, here's what to know about the arguments and how the Supreme Court might act.
TikTok arguments, alleged free speech violations
TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, are urging the court to either block or delay the enforcement of a law Congress passed with bipartisan backing in April.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act gave TikTok nine months to either divest from its Chinese parent company or be removed from U.S. app stores and hosting services. Its owners have said repeatedly they will not do so. It also grants the president a 90-day window to delay the ban if TikTok says a divestiture is in progress.
TikTok, ByteDance and several users of the app swiftly sued to block the ban in May, arguing the legislation would suppress free speech for the millions of Americans who use the platform.
Lawyers for TikTok argued that the law violates First Amendment protections, describing it as an "unprecedented attempt to single out applicants and bar them from operating one of the most significant speech platforms in this nation" and noting that lawmakers failed to consider less restrictive alternatives compared to an outright ban.
"History and precedent teach that, even when national security is at stake, speech bans must be Congress’s last resort," attorneys said in a reply brief filed last month to the high court.
National security concerns
Congress has cited concerns that China, a country it considers a foreign adversary of the U.S., could use TikTok to download vast troves of user data and push certain Chinese government-backed content onto users, prompting it to order the divestiture last spring.
The Biden administration also echoed these concerns. In a Supreme Court brief, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar noted the law focuses solely on China’s control of the app, which the Biden administration argued could pose "grave national security threats" to Americans, rather than its content.
Beijing could "covertly manipulate the platform" to advance geopolitical interests in the U.S., Prelogar noted, or use the vast amount of user data it has amassed for either espionage or blackmail.
Lawyers for the administration will argue Friday that Congress did not impose any restrictions on speech— much less any restrictions based on viewpoint or on content — and failed to satisfy the test of free speech violations under the First Amendment.
The Biden administration also filed under seal classified evidence to the court that it argued "lends further support" to its conclusion that TikTok under ByteDance ownership should be banned.
That evidence has not been released to the public.
Political pressures
The Supreme Court's decision to fast-track the case comes as President-elect Trump has signaled apparent support for the app in recent months.
In December, Trump hosted TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at his Mar-a-Lago resort, telling reporters during a press conference his incoming administration will "take a look at TikTok" and the divestiture case.
"I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok," Trump told reporters.
Attorneys for the president-elect also filed a brief with the Supreme Court last month, asking justices to delay any decision in the case until after Trump's inauguration Jan. 20.
The brief did not signal how Trump might act.
Still, attorneys for TikTok have cited that relationship directly in their Supreme Court filings. Last month, they argued an interim injunction is appropriate "because it will give the incoming Administration time to determine its position, as the President-elect and his advisors have voiced support for saving TikTok.
"There is a strong public interest that this Court have the opportunity to exercise plenary review.
The case also comes amid a groundswell of support from some lawmakers in Congress.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.; Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass.; and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., filed a brief Thursday urging the Supreme Court to reverse the ban, arguing the lawmakers do not have sufficient evidence needed to outweigh free speech protections granted under the First Amendment.
In the brief, lawmakers referenced the nation's longtime reliance on national security claims as a means of justifying censorship, citing examples from the Sedition Acts of the 18th and 20th centuries and Cold War-era free speech restrictions. Banning TikTok due to "speculative concerns" about foreign interference, they argued, is "unconstitutional and contradicts fundamental American values."
They argued the U.S. could adopt less drastic measures that would effectively address any data security concerns posed by the app while also not infringing on First Amendment rights.
Others remained deeply opposed.
Sen. Mitch McConnell blasted TikTok's arguments as "unmeritless and unsound" in a filing of his own, noting that Congress explicitly set the Jan. 19 date for the divestiture clause to take force since it "very clearly removes any possible political uncertainty in the execution of the law by cabining it to an administration that was deeply supportive of the bill’s goals."
MAGA Republicans are offering an outpouring of support for TikTok ahead of a ban looming over the social media platform that is set to take effect later this month.
"Trump won the election because he listened to first-time voters like myself and joined TikTok to get his message to us directly," RNC Youth Advisory Council Chair Brilyn Hollyhand told Fox News Digital of the impending ban. "He didn’t need paid influencers or cringey trends like his failed opponent. All he had to do was go where Gen Z was, TikTok, and lay out his plan."
Representatives of TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, are set to deliver arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to request the nation’s highest court to delay a ban on the app that is set to take effect a day ahead of the inauguration. President Biden signed legislation into law in April that gave TikTok's parent company until Jan. 19 to sell it or face a U.S. ban.
If the Supreme Court does not halt the ban, U.S. TikTok users will no longer be able to download the app, and internet providers will be prohibited from allowing access to the site.
The looming ban originated out of concern that American users’ data is gathered by the Chinese government, but MAGA Republicans and content creators who spoke with Fox Digital balked at the reasoning as insincere.
"I have done, if not, the deepest possible dive on all of the concerns associated with the platform, especially for my daily show when I share my opinions and commentary on what's going on in culture and politics," TikTok creator and TPUSA commentator Isabel Brown, who has more than 500,000 followers on TikTok, told Fox Digital in a phone interview. "And we've confronted this potential ban of the platform for at least nine months to a year now … the complaints that I'm hearing, from particularly politicians, largely center around national security."
"But I have a very hard time believing that the true argument to censor TikTok is based in a national security concern when we still have documented evidence of virtually every single American social media company. Meta, Twitter, YouTube, etc, selling your data under the table to your own government and/or the Chinese Communist Party and even the Russian government as well."
"Heck, we even have records of Airbnb selling American data to the Chinese Communist Party. So there doesn't seem to be a lot of willingness to truly protect the cyber and personal information security of American citizens from the government en masse, it seems to only be focused on TikTok as a platform itself," Brown continued.
President-elect Donald Trump's supporters praising TikTok comes after the former and upcoming president made big inroads with Gen Z, especially young male voters, in the last cycle. A Fox News Voter Survey published after the election found that men aged 18-44 supported Trump at 53% compared to Vice President Kamala Harris at 45%.
"We're talking about an app that nearly 200 million Americans, 75% of whom are Gen Z, use every single day as our primary source of news, and according to some studies, even as our primary web browser search tool, so more than Google … and I have found that the opportunity for virality – to have a conversation with as many people as possible – on Tiktok is unparalleled on any other social media platform," Brown said.
A Republican strategist told Fox News Digital that TikTok is by all intents and purposes a "conservative platform."
"By all means, TikTok is a conservative platform now - if you take a look at how Trump dominated his competition, there’s no argument against the value this platform has, and I don’t think there’s a world where Trump doesn’t fulfill his promise to save it," the strategist said.
The GOP insider added that "the fact that [Sen. Mitch] McConnell and [former Vice President Mike] Pence want to ban this thing means it needs to be saved."
Ahead of the new year, Sen. Mitch McConnell filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, urging justices to reject ByteDance’s request to delay the ban.
"The topsy-turvy idea that TikTok has an expressive right to facilitate the CCP censorship regime is absurd," McConnell’s counsel Michael A. Fragoso wrote in the friend of the court brief. "Would Congress have needed to allow Nikita Khrushchev to buy CBS and replace The Bing Crosby Show with Alexander Nevsky?"
While former Vice President Mike Pence’s nonprofit, Advancing American Freedom, filed a similar amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court last month.
"The CCP does not respect free speech, either in China or in America. The First Amendment is not, and should not be read as, a means of granting the Chinese government the power to do what the American government could not: manipulate what Americans can say and hear," the group wrote.
Advancing American Freedom President Tim Chapman told Fox News Digital that Trump's first administration "had this right the first time" when Trump initially worked to ban TikTok before the former and upcoming president reversed his opinion on the app.
"The Trump administration had this right the first time when they planned to ban TikTok through executive authority for the very same concerns that exist today. Political strategists salivating over clicks and followers does not mean that the national security implications have changed," Chapman said.
Emily Wilson, political commentator and host of podcast "Emily Saves America," told Fox News Digital that she can see both sides of the argument surrounding the looming TikTok ban but that instituting a ban would be "hypocritical against free speech."
"The TikTok ban is controversial, I see two sides to it. I see it as an app that’s very left leaning and consumes way too much of people’s time but it is sometimes the only place I get info about stories that should be breaking world wide. At the same time it can be dangerous. It can radicalize young people. One day you wake up on TikTok and young Americans are saying they’re supportive of Osama bin Laden," Wilson told Fox Digital.
"It seems to be an app leaning towards being anti-American and brainwashing young kids. At the end of the day, if I say to ban it it’s hypocritical against free speech. I just don’t want it harming young people," she added.
Trump himself has made a 180-degree turn on TikTok. Under his first administration, in 2020, Trump tried to ban the app from the U.S. market over national security concerns. His executive order, however, was eventually blocked in federal court.
Fast-forward to 2024 amid the campaign cycle, and Trump joined the app in June during the campaign cycle and has since racked up nearly 15 million followers and 107 million likes as supporters flocked to his content on the platform. Trump also filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court last month, which supported neither party in the case, arguing the fate of the platform should be left up to his administration.
"Today, President Donald J. Trump has filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court asking the Court to extend the deadline that would cause TikTok’s imminent shutdown, and allow President Trump the opportunity to resolve the issue in a way that saves TikTok and preserves American national security once he resumes office as President of the United States on January 20, 2025," Trump spokesman and incoming White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told Fox News Digital last month.
"President Donald J. Trump (‘President Trump’) is the 45th and soon to be the 47th President of the United States of America," the brief states. "On January 20, 2025, President Trump will assume responsibility for the United States’ national security, foreign policy, and other vital executive functions."
Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman, Paul Steinhauser and Morgan Phillips contributed to this report.
President-elect Trump says he should be the one to make the decision on whether TikTok can continue operating in the United States due to the unique national security and First Amendment issues raised by this case, he said in an amicus brief Friday.
Trump’s argument comes in an amicus brief "supporting neither party," filed Friday, weeks before the Supreme Court is expected to hear oral arguments on Jan. 10, 2025 on the law that requires a divestment of TikTok from foreign adversary control.
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a company based in Beijing and connected to the Chinese Communist Party.
"Today, President Donald J. Trump has filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court asking the Court to extend the deadline that would cause TikTok’s imminent shutdown, and allow President Trump the opportunity to resolve the issue in a way that saves TikTok and preserves American national security once he resumes office as President of the United States on January 20, 2025," Trump spokesman and incoming White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told Fox News Digital.
"President Donald J. Trump ("President Trump") is the 45th and soon to be the 47th President of the United States of America," the brief states. "On January 20, 2025, President Trump will assume responsibility for the United States’ national security, foreign policy, and other vital executive functions."
Trump argues that "this case presents an unprecedented, novel, and difficult tension between free-speech rights on one side, and foreign policy and national-security concerns on the other." "As the incoming Chief Executive, President Trump has a particularly powerful interest in and responsibility for those national-security and foreign-policy questions, and he is the right constitutional actor to resolve the dispute through political means.
President Trump also has a unique interest in the First Amendment issues raised in this case," the brief states. "Through his historic victory on November 5, 2024, President Trump received a powerful electoral mandate from American voters to protect the free-speech rights of all Americans—including the 170 million Americans who use TikTok."
"President Trump is uniquely situated to vindicate these interests, because ‘the President and the Vice President of the United States are the only elected officials who represent all the voters in the Nation,’" the brief continues.
Trump argues that due to his "overarching responsibility for the United States’ national security and foreign policy— President Trump opposes banning TikTok in the United States at this juncture, and seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office."
"On September 4, 2024, President Trump posted on Truth Social, ‘FOR ALL THOSE THAT WANT TO SAVE TIK TOK IN AMERICA, VOTE TRUMP!’" the brief states.
Trump argues that he "alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the Government—concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged."
"Indeed, President Trump’s first Term was highlighted by a series of policy triumphs achieved through historic deals, and he has a great prospect of success in this latest national security and foreign policy endeavor," the brief states.
Trump notes that the 270-day deadline imposed by the new TikTok law "expires on January 19, 2025—one day before President Trump will assume office as the 47th President of the United States."
That legislation, which was signed into law in the spring, requires a sale of TikTok from ByteDance by Jan. 19. If ByteDance does not divest by the deadline, Google and Apple are no longer able to feature TikTok in their app stores in the U.S.
"This unfortunate timing interferes with President Trump’s ability to manage the United States’ foreign policy and to pursue a resolution to both protect national security and save a social-media platform that provides a popular vehicle for 170 million Americans to exercise their core First Amendment rights," the brief states. "The Act imposes the timing constraint, moreover, without specifying any compelling government interest in that particular deadline."
Trump points to the law, which "contemplates a 90-day extension to the deadline under certain specified circumstances."
Supreme Court Justices said they will hold a special session on Jan. 10 to hear oral arguments in the case -- an expedited timeline that will allow them to consider the case just nine days before the Jan. 19 ban is slated to take effect. The law allows the president to extend the deadline by up to 90 days if ByteDance is in the process of divesting.
"President Trump, therefore, has a compelling interest as the incoming embodiment of the Executive Branch in seeing the statutory deadline stayed to allow his incoming Administration the opportunity to seek a negotiated resolution of these questions," the brief states. "If successful, such a resolution would obviate the need for this Court to decide the historically challenging First Amendment question presented here on the current, highly expedited basis."
TikTok and ByteDance filed an emergency application to the high court earlier this month asking justices to temporarily block the law from being enforced while it appealed a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Lawyers for TikTok have argued that the law passed earlier this year is a First Amendment violation, noting in their Supreme Court request that "Congress's unprecedented attempt to single out applicants and bar them from operating one of the most significant speech platforms in this nation" and "presents grave constitutional problems that this court likely will not allow to stand."
TikTok, last year, created its "Project Texas" initiative, which is dedicated to addressing concerns about U.S. national security.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew says "Project Texas" creates a stand-alone version of the TikTok platform for the U.S. isolated on servers in Oracle’s U.S. cloud environment. It was developed by CFIUS and cost the company approximately $1.5 billion to implement.
Chew has argued that TikTok is not beholden to any one country, though executives in the past have admitted that Chinese officials had access to Americans' data even when U.S.-based TikTok officials did not. TikTok claims that the new initiative keeps U.S. user data safe, and told Fox News Digital that data is managed "by Americans, in America."
Trump has signaled support for TikTok. Earlier this month, he met with Chew at Mar-a-Lago, telling reporters during a press conference ahead of the meeting that his incoming administration will "take a look at TikTok" and the looming U.S. ban.
"I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok," Trump told reporters.
The U.S. Supreme Court issued several major decisions over the course of 2024.
Its rulings include those that have pushed back on the Biden administration's attempted change of Title IX protections for transgender students, reversed a 40-year precedent that had supported what conservatives have condemned as the administrative state in Washington, and considered the constitutionality of Republican-controlled state efforts to curtail what they define as liberal Silicon Valley biases online.
The high court also ruled on presidential immunity at a consequential time for current President-elect Trump during the 2024 election – and sided with a Jan. 6 defendant who fought a federal obstruction charge.
Here are the top cases considered by the justices over the past year.
The Supreme Court on Aug. 16, 2024, kept preliminary injunctions preventing the Biden-Harris administration from implementing a new rule that widened the definition of sex discrimination under Title IX to include sexual orientation and gender identity, while litigation over the rule continues.
After the Fifth and Sixth Circuit Courts of Appeal denied the administration's request to put a stay on the injunctions, the Department of Education turned to the Supreme Court, arguing that some parts of the rule should be able to take effect. The Supreme Court rejected their request.
"Importantly, all Members of the Court today accept that the plaintiffs were entitled to preliminary injunctive relief as to three provisions of the rule, including the central provision that newly defines sex discrimination to include discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity," the court's unsigned opinion said, concluding that the Biden administration had not "adequately identified which particular provisions, if any, are sufficiently independent of the enjoined definitional provision and thus might be able to remain in effect."
In April, the Department of Education issued the new rule implementing Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, arguing that expanding the definition of discrimination to include "sexual orientation and gender identity" would protect LGBTQ students. Louisiana led several states in suing the DOE, contending the new rule "violates students' and employees' rights to bodily privacy and safety."
Title IX implemented the long-standing athletics regulation allowing sex-separate teams decades ago, and Republicans contended Biden’s new rule would have significant implications on women- and girls-only spaces and possibly legally back biological males playing in women’s sports. Separate court injunctions blocked the rule from taking effect in 26 states.
"I’m grateful that the Supreme Court agreed not to block our injunction against this radical rewrite of Title IX," Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement at the time. "Other than the 19th Amendment guaranteeing our right to vote, Title IX has been the most successful law in history at ensuring equal opportunity for women in education at all levels and in collegiate athletics. This fight isn’t over, but I’ll keep fighting to block this radical agenda that eviscerates Title IX."
The Supreme Court on July 1, 2024, kept on hold efforts by Texas and Florida to limit how Facebook, TikTok, X, YouTube and other social media platforms regulate content in a ruling that strongly defended the platforms’ free speech rights.
Writing for the court, Justice Elena Kagan said the platforms, like newspapers, deserve protection from governments’ intrusion in determining what to include or exclude from their space. "The principle does not change because the curated compilation has gone from the physical to the virtual world," Kagan wrote in an opinion signed by five justices. All nine justices agreed on the overall outcome.
The justices returned the cases to lower courts for further review in broad challenges from trade associations for the companies.
While the details vary, both laws aimed to address long-standing conservative complaints that the social media companies were liberal-leaning and censored users based on their viewpoints, especially on the political right.
The Florida and Texas laws were signed by Republican governors in the months following decisions by Facebook and Twitter (now X) to cut then-President Trump off over his posts related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Trade associations representing the companies sued in federal court, claiming that the laws violated the platforms’ speech rights. One federal appeals court struck down Florida’s statute while another upheld the Texas law, but both were on hold pending the outcome at the Supreme Court.
In a statement made when he signed the Florida measure into law, Gov. Ron DeSantis said it would be "protection against the Silicon Valley elites."
When Gov. Greg Abbott signed the Texas law, he said it was needed to protect free speech in what he termed the new public square. Social media platforms "are a place for healthy public debate where information should be able to flow freely – but there is a dangerous movement by social media companies to silence conservative viewpoints and ideas," Abbott said. "That is wrong, and we will not allow it in Texas."
NetChoice LLC has sued Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
"The judgments are vacated, and the cases are remanded, because neither the Eleventh Circuit nor the Fifth Circuit conducted a proper analysis of the facial First Amendment challenges to Florida and Texas laws regulating large internet platforms. NetChoice's decision to litigate these cases as facial challenges comes at a cost," the court wrote. "The Court has made facial challenges hard to win. In the First Amendment context, a plaintiff must show that 'a substantial number of [the law's] applications are unconstitutional, judged in relation to the statute's plainly legitimate sweep.' So far in these cases, no one has paid much attention to that issue."
The court said its analysis and arguments "focused mainly on how the laws applied to the content-moderation practices that giant social-media platforms use on their best-known services to filter, alter or label their users' posts, i.e., on how the laws applied to the likes of Facebook's News Feed and YouTube's homepage," but the justices said they "did not address the full range of activities the laws cover, and measure the constitutional against the unconstitutional applications."
The Supreme Court on July 1, 2024, ruled that former presidents have substantial protection from prosecution, handing a major victory to Donald Trump, the former president who at the time was the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and is now president-elect.
Trump had moved to dismiss his indictment in a 2020 election interference case based on presidential immunity.
The court did not dismiss the case, but the ruling did ensure the 45th president would not face trial in the case before the November 2024 election.
In a 6-3 decision, the court sent the matter back down to a lower court, as the justices did not apply the ruling to whether or not Trump is immune from prosecution regarding actions related to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
"The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. "The President is not above the law. But Congress may not criminalize the President’s conduct in carrying out the responsibilities of the Executive Branch under the Constitution. And the system of separated powers designed by the Framers has always demanded an energetic, independent Executive."
Trump, having won the 2024 presidential election, will take office Jan. 20, 2025.
In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court on June 28, 2024, overruled the 1984 landmark decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council.
Known as Chevron deference, the 40-year-old decision instructed lower courts to defer to federal agencies when laws passed by Congress were too ambiguous. It had been the basis for upholding thousands of regulations by dozens of federal agencies, but has long been a target of conservatives and business groups who argue that it grants too much power to the executive branch, or what some critics call the administrative state.
Roberts, writing for the court, said federal judges must now "exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority."
The ruling does not call into question prior cases that relied on the Chevron doctrine, Roberts wrote.
The reversal makes it so executive branch agencies will likely have more difficulty regulating the environment, public health, workplace safety and other issues.
The case came about when Atlantic herring fishermen sued over federal rules requiring them to pay for independent observers to monitor their catch. The fishermen argued that the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act did not authorize officials to create industry-funded monitoring requirements and that the National Marine Fisheries Service failed to follow proper rulemaking procedures.
In two related cases, the fishermen asked the court to overturn the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine, which stems from a unanimous Supreme Court case involving the energy giant in a dispute over the Clean Air Act. In that case, the court upheld an action by the Environmental Protection Agency under President Ronald Reagan.
In the decades following the ruling, Chevron has been a bedrock of modern administrative law, requiring judges to defer to agencies’ reasonable interpretations of congressional statutes.
The current Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, has been increasingly skeptical of the powers of federal agencies. Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch have questioned the Chevron decision. Ironically, it was Gorsuch’s mother, former EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch, who made the decision that the Supreme Court upheld in 1984.
The Biden administration argued that overturning Chevron would be destabilizing and could bring a "convulsive shock" to the nation’s legal system.
The Supreme Court on June 28, 2024, ruled in favor of a participant in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot who challenged his conviction for a federal obstruction crime.
The case stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Joseph Fischer – a former police officer and one of more than 300 people charged by the Justice Department with "obstruction of an official proceeding" in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. His lawyers argued that the federal statute should not apply, and that it had only ever been applied to evidence-tampering cases.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court held to a narrower interpretation of a federal statute that imposes criminal liability on anyone who corruptly "alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding."
The ruling reversed a lower court decision, which the justices said swept too broadly into areas like peaceful but disruptive conduct, and returned the case to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Justice Department argued that Fischer’s actions were a "deliberate attempt" to stop a joint session of Congress directly from certifying the 2020 election, thus qualifying their use of the statute that criminalizes behavior that "otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do" and carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.
However, Roberts said the government stretched the law too far.
"January 6 was an unprecedented attack on the cornerstone of our system of government – the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next. I am disappointed by today’s decision, which limits an important federal statute that the Department has sought to use to ensure that those most responsible for that attack face appropriate consequences," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement reacting to the ruling.
"The vast majority of the more than 1,400 defendants charged for their illegal actions on January 6 will not be affected by this decision," he said.
Fox News’ Chris Pandolfo, Bill Mears, Shannon Bream, Brooke Singman, Brianna Herlihy and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A State Department agency – which has been chided by conservatives for its alleged blacklisting of Americans and news outlets – is set to be refunded in the continuing resolution (CR) bill currently being hammered out among lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
The Global Engagement Center has been included in page 139 of the CR. Although it doesn’t specify its budget allocation, a previous Inspector General report shows the agency’s FY 2020 budget totaled $74.26 million, of which $60 million was appropriated by Congress.
The provision in the CR can be found under "Foreign Affairs Section 301. Global Engagement Center Extension," and comes despite the State Department saying in response to a lawsuit that it intended to shut down the agency by next week.
The GEC, according to reporter Matt Taibbi, "funded a secret list of subcontractors and helped pioneer and insidious—and idiotic—new form of blacklisting" during the pandemic.
Taibbi wrote last year when exposing the Twitter Files that the GEC "flagged accounts as ‘Russian personas and proxies’ based on criteria like, ‘Describing the Coronavirus as an engineered bioweapon,’ blaming ‘research conducted at the Wuhan institute,’ and ‘attributing the appearance of the virus to the CIA.’"
"State also flagged accounts that retweeted news that Twitter banned the popular U.S. website ZeroHedge, claiming it 'led to another flurry of disinformation narratives.'" ZeroHedge had made reports speculating that the virus had a lab origin.
Elon Musk previously described the GEC as being the "worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation."
"They are a threat to our democracy," Musk wrote in a subsequent tweet.
The GEC is part of the State Department but also partners with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Special Operations Command and the Department of Homeland Security. The GEC also funds the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab).
Taibbi offered various instances in which the DFRLab and the GEC sent Twitter a list of accounts they believed were engaged in "state-backed coordinated manipulation." However, a quick glance from Twitter employees determined that the list was shoddy and included the accounts of multiple American citizens with seemingly no connection to the foreign entity in question.
DFRLab Director Graham Brookie previously denied the claim that they use tax money to track Americans, saying its GEC grants have "an exclusively international focus."
A 2024 report from the Republican-led House Small Business Committee criticized the GEC for awarding grants to organizations whose work includes tracking domestic as well as foreign misinformation and rating the credibility of U.S.-based publishers, according to the Washington Post.
The State Department, in response to a lawsuit, said it intended to shut down the agency on Dec. 23. But the CR provision means, if passed, it will continue to operate.
The lawsuit was brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Daily Wire and the Federalist, who sued the State Department, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and other government officials earlier this month for "engaging in a conspiracy to censor, deplatform and demonetize American media outlets disfavored by the federal government."
The lawsuit stated that the GEC was used as a tool for the defendants to carry out its censorship.
"Congress authorized the creation of the Global Engagement Center expressly to counter foreign propaganda and misinformation," the Texas Attorney General’s Office said in a press release. "Instead, the agency weaponized this authority to violate the First Amendment and suppress Americans’ constitutionally-protected speech.
The complaint describes the State Department’s project as "one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation.’"
The lawsuit argued that The Daily Wire, The Federalist, and other conservative news organizations were branded "unreliable" or "risky" by the agency, "starving them of advertising revenue and reducing the circulation of their reporting and speech—all as a direct result of [the State Department’s] unlawful censorship scheme."
Meanwhile, America First Legal, headed up by Stephen Miller, President-elect Trump’s pick for deputy chief of staff for policy, revealed that the GEC used taxpayer dollars to create a video game called "Cat Park" to "Inoculate Youth Against Disinformation" abroad.
The game "inoculates players … by showing how sensational headlines, memes, and manipulated media can be used to advance conspiracy theories and incite real-world violence," according to a memo obtained by America First Legal.
Mike Benz, the executive director at the Foundation For Freedom Online, said the game was "anti-populist" and pushed certain political beliefs instead of protecting Americans from foreign disinformation, per the Tennessee Star.
A State Department spokesperson said the agency does not comment on pending legislation when asked for comment by Fox News Digital.
Fox News Digital reached out to the GEC for comment on its potential refunding but did not immediately receive a response.
Fox News Nikolas Lanum and Louis Casiano contributed to this report.
A satanic "nativity" display involving an occult statue erected on Concord city property near the New Hampshire State Capitol was destroyed shortly after several vandalism incidents last week. Now, Democratic state Rep. Ellen Read is saying that the temple "probably should" get to erect a new display in its place.
"I think they probably should, because I think the vandalism and the hatefulness shouldn’t go without a response. But it’s up to them," Read said, the Catholic News Agency reported.
Read told the outlet she came up with the idea to suggest that The Satanic Temple (TST) put up the Christmas display, which was a statue of Baphomet – despite significant pushback from local officials – arguing that a Catholic groups' Nativity scene of Jesus should not be the only decoration there. She also said she is a member of TST but has not participated in any of its meetings or events.
According to its website, TST's mission "Is To Encourage Benevolence And Empathy, Reject Tyrannical Authority, Advocate Practical Common Sense, Oppose Injustice, And Undertake Noble Pursuits."
"We have publicly confronted hate groups, fought for the abolition of corporal punishment in public schools, applied for equal representation when religious installations are placed on public property, provided religious exemption and legal protection against laws that unscientifically restrict people's reproductive autonomy, exposed harmful pseudo-scientific practitioners in mental health care, organized clubs alongside other religious after-school clubs in schools besieged by proselytizing organizations, and engaged in other advocacy in accordance with our tenets," the website states.
Avoiding a legal dispute over the First Amendment, the Concord City Council approved the organization's permit to show the display, despite the mayor saying earlier this week he wished the city had not approved it.
"I opposed the permit because I believe the request was made not in the interest of promoting religious equity but in order to drive an anti-religious political agenda, and because I do not respond well to legal extortion, the threat of litigation," Concord Mayor Byron Champlin said during the council's meeting last Monday. "Some on social media have celebrated the Satanic Temple’s display as a victory for religious pluralism and a reflection of our growing diversity as a community. I disagree with this. This is about an out-of-state organization cynically promoting its national agenda at the expense of the Concord community."
Meanwhile, the city put out a statement saying that due to the First Amendment and the potential for a lawsuit, the city was forced to choose between banning all holiday displays or allowing TST's statue.
"After reviewing its legal options, the City ultimately decided to continue the policy of allowing unattended displays at City Plaza during this holiday season and to allow the statue," the city said in a statement. "It is anticipated that the City Council will review next year whether permits for unattended holiday displays should be allowed at City Plaza."
Read rebuked the mayor in an interview with the Catholic news outlet this week, saying, "I think it’s the narrow-mindedness of the mayor, who can’t seem to wrap his head around that this represents a large percentage of the community and its beliefs."
In a video posted to Facebook, two TST representatives unveiled the statue Monday. One spokesperson recalled the group's core tenets, before chanting, "Hail Satan!" and showcasing the statue.
Concord Deputy Police Chief John Thomas told a local news outlet that the investigation into who vandalized TST's property is ongoing.
TST has erected several holiday displays near city or state properties, often alongside traditional Christian exhibits, in recent years. In 2022, the Illinois chapter of TST installed a holiday display in the state Capitol rotunda, which featured a crocheted serpent atop a book and a pile of apples. In December 2023, the Iowa TST chapter set up a Baphomet statue at the state Capitol, which was also vandalized shortly after its placement.
Though the account has since been reinstated, a representative for the company told Fox News Digital that "despite multiple attempts to reach Facebook to discuss the matter, to date we have not had direct communications with any of their staff members."
The gun company, which is headquartered in Maryville, Tennessee, said staff suddenly received a notification from Facebook on Nov. 22 stating that their official Smith & Wesson account had been "suspended indefinitely."
"No warnings of a page suspension were previously communicated by Facebook," said the representative.
The representative said Facebook referenced five posts dating back to December 2023 that they "suggest did not follow their community guidelines."
"The posts in question included consumer promotional campaigns, charitable auctions, and product release announcements," the Smith & Wesson representative explained. "While Facebook’s policies are ever-changing, which creates a burden for users to comply with, we do not believe this content violated any of Facebook’s policies or community guidelines, and similar posts have been published in the past without issue."
Facebook’s commerce policy prohibits the promotion of buying, selling and trading of weapons, ammunition and explosives. However, according to Facebook’s parent company Meta’s website, there is an exception for legitimate brick-and-mortar and online retailers, though their content is still restricted for minors.
According to the representative, the page was reinstated on Nov. 27 after the gun manufacturer made a public statement about the incident on X.
In the post, which has 3.1 million views, Smith & Wesson criticized Facebook and thanked Elon Musk and X for supporting free speech amid what it called ongoing attacks against the First and Second Amendments. The company encouraged its 1.6 million Facebook followers and fans to "seek out platforms" that represent the "shared values" of free speech and the right to bear arms.
Despite the page eventually being reinstated, the representative told Fox News Digital that the company has still had no contact with Meta and "no rationale was given for the reinstatement beyond a comment on social media from a Facebook representative stating that the suspension had been ‘in error.’"
That same Meta staffer, Andy Stone, also directed Fox News Digital to the X post positing that Smith & Wesson’s suspension was an accident. In the post, Stone said "the page was suspended in error and we’ve now restored it. We apologize that this happened."
Through it all, the Smith & Wesson representative said the manufacturer is "grateful to Elon Musk for having created a public square platform that respects the right for Americans to voice their opinions, ALL opinions, and not just those that coincide with one agenda or another – especially as it relates to our constitutional rights guaranteed under the 1st and 2nd Amendments."
The spokesperson said that since their account was suspended, they have become aware that many other social media users have been similarly silenced and de-platformed.
"While we were encouraged by the reinstatement of our account, we were similarly disappointed by the number of other users reacting to our statement on X that commented that they have had very similar experiences with their accounts being de-platformed without warning," said the representative. "While we obviously do not know the details of those instances, we encourage Meta to continue working towards a more inclusive platform which allows the freedom for respectful dialogue from all viewpoints, which is a hallmark of American society."
Founded in Norwich, Connecticut, in 1852, Smith & Wesson is one of the most recognized gun brands in America and reported $535.8 million in sales in the 2024 fiscal year.
After its Facebook account was suspended, the popular American gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson thanked Elon Musk and X for supporting free speech amid what it called ongoing attacks against the First and Second Amendments.
Andy Stone, a representative for Facebook's parent company, Meta, told Fox News Digital that the account had been suspended in error and that it has since been restored.
In a Friday post on X, however, Smith & Wesson emphasized the importance of Musk's stance on free speech, criticizing Meta for suspending their account after the platform flagged several of its posts for promoting the sale of weapons.
Founded in 1852 in Norwich, Connecticut, today Smith & Wesson is based in Maryville, Tennessee, and is one of the most recognized gun brands in America, reporting $535.8 million in sales in the 2024 fiscal year.
Smith & Wesson said that "despite our extensive efforts and resources spent on trying to adhere to Facebook’s ever-changing community guidelines on firearms, our account was suspended indefinitely on Friday, November 22nd, 15 years after its original creation."
The manufacturer shared a screenshot of the suspension notice it had received from Facebook in which the platform said several posts dated Nov. 22, 13 and July 18 violated the rules on promoting weapons.
Facebook’s commerce policy prohibits the promotion of buying, selling and trading of weapons, ammunition and explosives. However, according to Facebook’s parent company Meta’s website, there is an exception for legitimate brick-and-mortar and online retailers, though their content is still restricted for minors.
Although its account has since been reinstated, Smith & Wesson encouraged its 1.6 million Facebook followers and fans to "seek out platforms" that represent the "shared values" of free speech and the right to bear arms.
"In an era where free speech and the right to bear arms are under constant attack, we want to thank Elon Musk and X for supporting free speech and our constitutional rights guaranteed by the 1st and 2nd Amendments," said Smith & Wesson.
Musk responded to the post by saying, "[we] believe in the Constitution." He also pointed out that X had resumed allowing users to post the gun emoji after it was replaced by a water gun by Twitter in 2018.
The National Association for Gun Rights, which is a Second Amendment advocacy group with over 4.5 million activists, also chimed in, saying, "Thank you for giving us a place to shelter in this storm of Constitution-hating companies."
In a separate post, the association called X one of the last holdouts for free speech and gun rights.
"It is becoming clear that X is one of the last major bastions of 2A and Firearms content on social media," said the group, adding, "the noose is slowly tightening everywhere else, seeking to squeeze us out entirely."
This article was edited to reflect new information from Meta about the Smith & Wesson account being suspended in error.
U.S. Reps. James McGovern, D-Mass., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., wrote a letter to President Biden calling on him to pardon WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to "send a clear message" that his administration will not target journalistic activity.
Assange, an Australian publisher, pleaded guilty in June and was sentenced to time served as part of a deal he reached with the U.S. Justice Department to end his imprisonment in London over charges for publishing classified U.S. military documents leaked to him by a source. Assange had spent years attempting to avoid extradition from the U.K. to the U.S.
"We write, first, to express our appreciation for your administration's decision last spring to facilitate a resolution of the criminal case against publisher Julian Assange and to withdraw the related extradition request that had been pending in the United Kingdom," the lawmakers wrote to Biden. "This brought an end to Mr. Assange's protracted detention and allowed him to reunite with his family and return to his home country of Australia."
Before his plea deal, Assange, 53, was facing 17 counts under the Espionage Act for allegedly receiving, possessing and communicating classified information to the public, as well as one charge alleging conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. The agreement helped him avoid the potential of spending up to 175 years in an American maximum security prison.
The charges were brought by the Trump administration's Justice Department over WikiLeaks' 2010 publication of cables leaked by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, and the Biden administration had continued to pursue prosecution until the plea deal. The cables detailed alleged war crimes committed by the U.S. government in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detention camp, as well as instances of the CIA engaging in torture and rendition.
WikiLeaks' "Collateral Murder" video showing the U.S. military gunning down civilians in Iraq, including two Reuters journalists, was also published 14 years ago.
The lawmakers told Biden, who is set to leave office in January, that they are "deeply concerned that the agreement that ended the case required Mr. Assange to plead guilty to felony charges under section 793 of the Espionage Act," highlighting that the decision to prosecute Assange under the Espionage Act "set off alarms" among members of Congress, as well as advocates for freedom of expression and freedom of the press.
In 2013, the Obama administration decided not to indict Assange over WikiLeaks' 2010 publication of classified cables because it would have had to also indict journalists from major news outlets who published the same materials.
President Obama also commuted Manning’s 35-year sentence for violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses to seven years in January 2017, and Manning, who had been imprisoned since 2010, was released later that year.
"Put simply, there is a long-standing and well-grounded concern that section 793, which criminalizes the obtaining, retaining, or disclosing of sensitive information, could be used against journalists and news organizations engaged in their normal activities, particularly those who cover national security topics. This risk reportedly informed the Obama administration's decision not to prosecute Mr. Assange," McGovern and Massie wrote.
Assange had been held at London's high-security Belmarsh Prison since being removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy on April 11, 2019, for breaching bail conditions. He had sought asylum at the embassy since 2012 to avoid being sent to Sweden over allegations he raped two women because Sweden would not provide assurances it would protect him from extradition to the U.S. The investigations into the sexual assault allegations were eventually dropped over lack of evidence.
He was the first journalist to be charged under the Espionage Act.
"The terms of Mr. Assange's plea agreement have now set a precedent that greatly deepens our concern," the letter reads. "A review of prosecutions under the Espionage Act makes clear that Mr. Assange's case is the first time the Act has been deployed against a publisher."
The congressmen said they share the view of Jodie Ginsberg, the chief executive of the Committee to Protect Journalists, who reacted to the plea agreement by saying: "While we welcome the end of his detention, the US’s pursuit of Assange has set a harmful legal precedent by opening the way for journalists to be tried under the Espionage Act if they receive classified material from whistleblowers."
"We therefore urge you to consider issuing a pardon for Mr. Assange," the lawmakers wrote. "A pardon would remove the precedent set by the plea and send a clear message that the U.S. government under your leadership will not target or investigate journalists and media outlets simply for doing their jobs."
Last year, as Assange was still in prison in London fighting extradition to the U.S., McGovern and Massie led a letter to Biden signed by a bipartisan group of congressional colleagues urging the president to drop the case against Assange.
Assange's brother, Gabriel Shipton, is returning to Washington, D.C., in January as part of a campaign calling on Biden to pardon the WikiLeaks founder before leaving office.
Shipton and Assange's wife, Stella, have asked Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who before the plea deal had called for an end to Assange's prosecution and said he had raised the case with Biden, to urge the president to issue a pardon in his farewell phone call with the outgoing commander in chief.
As a condition of his plea, Assange was required to destroy classified information provided to WikiLeaks.
During his sentencing hearing in June in federal court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Pacific, U.S. District Judge Ramona Manglona noted that the U.S. government admitted that there is no evidence that WikiLeaks' publications put anyone in harms way.
"The government has indicated there is no personal victim here. That tells me the dissemination of this information did not result in any known physical injury," the judge said at the time. "These two facts are very relevant. I would say if this was still unknown and closer to [2012] I would not be so inclined to accept this plea agreement before me. But it's the year 2024."
