Washington Post Ordered to Rehire Fired Columnist; The New York Times, August 24, 2026

Benjamin Mullin, The New York Times; Washington Post Ordered to Rehire Fired Columnist

"A private arbitrator has ordered The Washington Post to rehire the opinion columnist Karen Attiah, who was fired in September over her social media posts about the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. It also ordered the company to compensate her with back pay.

Sarah Miller Espinosa, the arbitrator, said in a written decision Thursday that The Post “did not have good and sufficient cause” to terminate Ms. Attiah and “violated” its labor agreement, according to a copy of the decision shared with The New York Times by Ms. Attiah’s lawyers.

“The Washington Post failed to establish the grievant engaged in gross misconduct,” Ms. Espinosa wrote.

In a statement, Ms. Attiah said that she hoped the decision “sends a message to journalists and media institutions everywhere that freedom of expression is always worth fighting for.” She said that she was “willing to go back” to her work at The Post, which she called “one of the world’s most storied newspapers.”"

Justice Department Subpoenas New York Times Journalists Who Reported About Trump's New Plane; Reason, July 13, 2026

 JOE LANCASTER , Reason; Justice Department Subpoenas New York Times Journalists Who Reported About Trump's New Plane

The government says the reporters are not targets of the investigation, but such subpoenas can still have a chilling effect on the press.

"Officials are often overly aggressive in pursuing leaks of classified information, but President Donald Trump remains in a league of his own.

"The Trump administration issued subpoenas on Friday to several journalists for The New York Times," Michael M. Grynbaum wrote Saturday for the paper, "after the news outlet reported this week on security concerns involving President Trump's new Qatari-donated Air Force One."

The subpoenas—which "in some cases" were "delivered by federal agents who showed up at reporters' homes"—"seek to force the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Wednesday," Grynbaum added. The summonses were issued by Jay Clayton, who currently serves as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and has been nominated as the next director of national intelligence.

"The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects," New York Times deputy general counsel David McCraw said in a statement. "This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.""

Kash Patel Keeps Suing the Press; The New York Times, June 14, 2026

 Erik Wemple, The New York Times; Kash Patel Keeps Suing the Press

"The suits constitute another front on which news organizations have been forced to spend time and money to defend their work in the Trump era."

‘Proactively fall in line’: Holocaust Memorial Museum quietly changed content after Trump returned to office; Politico, April 5, 2026

 IRIE SENTNER, Politico ; ‘Proactively fall in line’: Holocaust Memorial Museum quietly changed content after Trump returned to office

Two former employees said they believed the museum was altering its content preemptively to avoid unwanted negative attention from the Trump administration.

"In the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington quietly removed from its website educational resources about American racism and canceled a workshop about the “fragility of democracy.”

The changes, which have not been previously reported, came as Trump cracked down on what he called “corrosive ideology” at the Smithsonian Institution, demanding a slew of alterations at the world’s largest museum network to more closely align its content with his worldview. They also coincided with the administration’s efforts to remove content related to diversity, equity and inclusion from federal websites...

The museum pulled from its website a page called “Teaching Materials on Nazism and Jim Crow” at some point after Aug. 29, 2025, the last time the page was captured on the Internet Archive. That page provided lesson plans and resources about the connections between American de jure racism and the Nazi regime, including links to sites about “African American Soldiers during World War II” and “Afro-Germans during the Holocaust,” among other topics.

It also linked to a 2018 video on the museum’s YouTube channel featuring a conversation between a Holocaust survivor and a woman whose father was lynched in Alabama. That video is now unlisted, meaning it does not show up on the USHMM’s YouTube page but is still accessible via direct URL.

Leaders at the museum also renamed a one-day civic education workshop designed for college students from “Fragility of Democracy and the Rise of the Nazis” to “Before the Holocaust: German Society and the Nazi Rise to Power.” In an email, obtained by POLITICO, between a senior staff member at the museum’s Levine Institute for Holocaust Education and a staffer planning the workshop, the senior staff member said the change was necessary due to “concerns regarding how the term fragility may be perceived or interpreted in the current climate.”"

Boston University Pulls Pride Flags, Raising Free Speech Worries; The New York Times, March 23, 2026

 Alan Blinder , The New York Times; Boston University Pulls Pride Flags, Raising Free Speech Worries

The university said the flags broke a rule against hanging signs, a policy embraced by other campuses that cracked down on protests. Professors and others say such rules chill speech.

"Boston University removed Pride flags that were displayed in campus buildings this month, angering professors who believe school leaders may be suppressing expression because they fear the Trump administration.

University officials have suggested the displays could imply the school endorses them, violating its pledge to be evenhanded with its standards around speech.

The university’s decision is a new skirmish in academia about campus expression, and it comes after more schools across the country embraced so-called neutrality policies, curbing the views they express publicly. Universities have also imposed more stringent limits on protests in the years since demonstrations over the war in Gaza rocked campuses."

Censorship Comes for Stephen Colbert; The Atlantic, February 17, 2026

 David A. Graham , The Atlantic; Censorship Comes for Stephen Colbert

"Crackdowns on speech by prominent figures pave a way for the government to regulate speech more broadly, which should be concerning for people of any political leaning because the party and people in power can change."

Professors Are Being Watched: ‘We’ve Never Seen This Much Surveillance’; The New York Times, February 4, 2026

 Vimal Patel , The New York Times; Professors Are Being Watched: ‘We’ve Never Seen This Much Surveillance’

Scrutiny of university classrooms is being formalized, with new laws requiring professors to post syllabuses and tip lines for students to complain.

"College professors once taught free from political interference, with mostly their students and colleagues privy to their lectures and book assignments. Now, they are being watched by state officials, senior administrators and students themselves."

Trump administration prepares to fire worker for TV interview about SNAP; The Washington Post, November 13, 2025

 

Mariana Alfaro

 and 

Hannah Natanson

, The Washington Post ; Trump administration prepares to fire worker for TV interview about SNAP

"Debra D’Agostino, a federal employment lawyer, argued that Mei probably has a strong case against her dismissal. Mei’s speech was almost certainly protected under both the First Amendment and the Whistleblower Protection Act, D’Agostino said.

There have been at least two Supreme Court cases — Pickering v. Board of Education in 1968 and Department of Homeland Security v. MacLean in 2015 — in which the justices decided in favor of staffers accused by their employers of speaking out of turn, D’Agostino noted. In the first, the court ruled for a teacher who had written to a newspaper criticizing the superintendent, saying the educator had a right to speak on matters of public concern so long as she was not knowingly lying.

In the second, the court ruled for a Transportation Security Administration staffer who the government accused of revealing “sensitive security information” to a reporter. In that case, the court decided the staffer’s activity was covered by the Whistleblower Protection Act, which says federal workers can report lawbreaking or anything that poses a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety."

David Frum Accuses MSNBC Of Giving Into Fear Of Trump After Mika Brzezinski Apologizes On-Air For His Comment; Mediate, December 4, 2024

Alex Griffing , Mediate; David Frum Accuses MSNBC Of Giving Into Fear Of Trump After Mika Brzezinski Apologizes On-Air For His Comment

[Kip Currier: Mika Brzezinski's on-air apology yesterday is what self-censorship looks and sounds like.

Since last month's election of Donald Trump, MSNBC's Morning Joe program has been periodically engaging in what Yale University authoritarianism expert Dr. Timothy Snyder calls "anticipatory obedience", due to fear of potential retribution from an incoming Trump administration.

When media personalities like Brzezinski kowtow to perceived risks of reporting and engaging in constitutionally-protected free speech, we the public are well-advised to be skeptical of their integrity and commitment to showing and telling the truth. Brzezinski's servile appeasement is more about saving her own skin than having skin in the game of speaking truth to power.

Look for free and independent presses and journalists who don't surrender to fear to curry favor.]

[Excerpt]

"Mika Brzezinski, the co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, apologized on-air Wednesday for David Frum making a comment that “was a little too flippant” about Fox News earlier in the show. Frum then took to The Atlantic and accused MSNBC of capitulating to the fear felt in the media of President-elect Donald Trump’s promised retribution.

Frum’s article later elicited a response from MSNBC...

Frum’s article on the incident was titled, “The Sound of Fear on Air,” and ran with the subhead, “It is an ominous sign that Morning Joe felt it had to apologize for something I said.”

MSNBC comms exec Richard Hudock responded to Frum in a statement, saying, “Joe and Mika have consistently expressed their strong reservations and perspectives regarding Pete Hegseth’s nomination from the very beginning, and that stance remains unchanged. We would have responded in the same manner regardless of when these comments were made or what news organization was referenced.” Hudock also invited Frum back to discuss the topic on-air tomorrow.

In the piece, he recapped what had happened and commented on the current environment MSNBC finds itself in as viewers continue to tune out following Trump’s win...

“I do not write to scold anyone; I write because fear is infectious. Let it spread, and it will paralyze us all. The only antidote is courage. And that’s infectious, too,” he concluded.
Watch the clips above via MSNBC."

Ariana Grande, Guillermo del Toro, Padma Lakshmi and More Sign Open Letter Denouncing Book Bans and Their “Chilling Effect” (Exclusive); The Hollywood Reporter, September 19, 2023

 Abbey White, The Hollywood Reporter; Ariana Grande, Guillermo del Toro, Padma Lakshmi and More Sign Open Letter Denouncing Book Bans and Their “Chilling Effect” (Exclusive)

"The letter encourages signatories and readers to address challenges at the local level across U.S. school districts, while calling out book bans as “restrictive behavior” that is “antithetical to free speech and expression.” It also underscores the “chilling effect” these bans can have “on the broader creative field.”...

“It’s embarrassing that we are banning books in this country, in this culture, in this day and age. And it’s dangerous that a handful of individuals are deciding that any book with Black and queer people is divisive,” said Burton, executive producer of the 2023 documentary The Right to Read. “We are calling on everyone to join us in raising their voices to uphold artistic freedom, embrace multicultural history and put a stop once and for all to book bans.”"

‘There won’t be libraries left’: how a Florida county became the book ban heartland of the US; The Guardian, August 19, 2023

  Jordan Blumetti , The Guardian; ‘There won’t be libraries left’: how a Florida county became the book ban heartland of the US

"Clay county has become a flashpoint in the state of Florida on the topic of book challenges. According to recent tallies, more than 175 books have been permanently removed from its public school libraries – a number which ranks among the highest of any county in the US – and hundreds more remain unavailable to students due to a policy unique to the county, requiring that books are pulled from shelves as soon as a challenge form is filed with the school district. Conservative activists from two organizations have seized on that policy, often filing multiple challenge forms at a time, which inundates the systems and committees that process the claims.

“The biggest issue facing Clay county right now is the backlog of challenges and the huge political divide that’s driving it. No other county is dealing with a similar problem,” says Jen Cousins, co-founder of the Florida Freedom to Read Project (FFTRP) and a mother of four. “They’re creating fake outrage over what’s available in libraries.”"

An American editorial cartoonist has been fired for skewering Trump. He likely won’t be the last.; The Washington Post, June 15, 2018

Ann Telnaes, The Washington Post; An American editorial cartoonist has been fired for skewering Trump. He likely won’t be the last.

"...[W]ith the firing of Pittsburgh Post-Gazette cartoonist Rob Rogers, we now see that suppressing a free press can be accomplished without an authoritarian president’s orders. Michael Cohen isn’t the only “fixer” Trump has at his disposal.

Rogers has been the editorial cartoonist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for more than 25 years. Most working cartoonists have had an occasional idea spiked by his or her editor. But in the past few weeks, editorial director Keith Burris and publisher John Robinson Block have refused to publish six of Rogers’s cartoons, all criticizing Trump or his policies. Block and Burris have also rejected many of Rogers’s rough sketch ideas for several months.

This wasn’t the first time Block has used his position to defend President Trump’s actions; in January he demanded an editorial run in the Post-Gazette and the Toledo Blade (where he is also the publisher) supporting Trump’s use of the term “shithole countries.”"