Podcast Episode 266: Sam speaks with Dr. Mary Anne Franks, author of ⁠Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment⁠, about what Trump and MAGA mean by "free speech" as they directly censor ...

How Linda McMahon’s latest “compact” would do deep and permanent harm to American higher education

The president insisted that U.S. District Judge Immergut—whom he appointed—should be “ashamed” of how she’d served him.

Authorities are investigating a fire at the home of a South Carolina judge who had reportedly received death threats in what could be the latest incident of political violence across the country.

Overnight on Tuesday, Sept. 30, federal agents from different agencies raided an apartment building on the South Side of Chicago, pulling men, women and children — some of them allegedly naked — from ...

Nicole Hemmer responds to Alex Gourevitch’s “The Right to Be Hostile.”

Paramount Skydance will be officially acquiring The Free Press and hiring its founder Bari Weiss as editor in chief of its CBS News division, with the deal to be announced this coming Monday, accordin...

An alternative version was advanced by a young campus crusader during a time of political repression.

The so-called “marketplace of ideas” doesn’t simply reward truth or the strongest arguments— it rewards power. Without guardrails, the strongest players dominate while minority views are sidelined. Mary Anne Franks, professor at George Washington Law, warns nowhere is this more apparent than under Trump, who owns his own social media platform and uses it as a propaganda megaphone. The marketplace, as an idea, Franks says, “is not designed to get us truth or democracy or autonomy or any of the things that we think the First Amendment is supposed to get us.” Dahlia Lithwick, Senior Editor at Slate, adds, about the First Amendment, “There's both too much law and not enough law and an immense amount of abuse of the space between the two.”

The same people who once posed as champions of “free speech” during the years when Donald Trump wasn't president are now demanding government sanction, criminal penalties, firings, and surveillance of those who criticize them. Open markets - including the marketplace of ideas - don’t just reward truth—they reward power. And without certain thoughtful intervention, stronger players dominate weaker ones, and minority views are trampled. That’s the world the second Trump era is ushering in - and if we don’t change our conception of the First Amendment, the loudest voices shouting “free speech” will continue to be the ones burying it.