Your government would like a word - by David Josef Volodzko

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FIREwire<br>Your government would like a word<br>ABC campaigns against the FCC probe, the Supreme Court considers age-gating, and Japan gets touchy about its flag.

David Josef Volodzko<br>Jun 27, 2026

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FCC Chairman Brendan Carr<br>FIREwire is a roundup of the free speech stories shaping the news — including curated essays, podcasts, history, and data — delivered weekly.

“Nothing could be less compatible with the Communications Act and the First Amendment limits embedded therein than the spectacle of an FCC chairman, at the president’s behest, calling out particular news reports and specific reporters and threatening regulatory repercussions, including license revocation.”<br>— Robert Corn-Revere on the FCC’s campaign against ABC.<br>ABC campaigns against FCC probe

ABC’s The View became the week’s most significant media free speech story by transforming its FCC investigation into an on-air First Amendment campaign. The show aired ads featuring Barbara Walters encouraging viewers to “use your voice” and submit comments opposing the FCC inquiry, making the regulatory dispute itself part of the program’s editorial content and prompting widespread debate over government oversight of broadcast journalism.<br>Supreme Court considers age-gating case

The Supreme Court is deciding whether to reinstate a pause on Texas’ App Store Accountability Act while a constitutional challenge to the act is litigated. The law requires parental consent and age verification before minors can download apps, potentially redefining how First Amendment protections apply to children in the digital era.

Below the fold

Algeria’s media regulator is warning outlets to blunt their criticism of the country’s World Cup team after its 3-0 defeat at the hands of Lionel Messi and Argentina “and to prioritise institutional support for the national team.”

Japan’s ruling party is pushing a bill criminalizing “publicly damaging, removing, or defacing” Japan’s flag in a “way or situation that evokes significant discomfort or disgust in people.”

This year, the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary. To commemorate the occasion, FIRE is proud to present the limited series “Figures of Speech,” looking at the heroes and villains of free speech in American history. We began with Joseph McCarthy, the senator who scared America silent. Then we looked at Thomas Paine, American history’s winter soldier, and Woodrow Wilson, our worst president for free speech. Today we turn to Ida B. Wells, a journalist, activist, civil rights icon, and free speech hero.<br>In 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. received a suspicious package. Inside was an audio recording and a letter denouncing him as “a complete fraud and a great Liability to all of us Negroes.” The letter accused King of “countless acts of adultery and immoral conduct lower than that of a beast,” before ending with a chilling message: “King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days.”<br>The package had not come from a disillusioned admirer. It came from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. King suspected as much and understood the ultimatum as an invitation to kill himself before his private life was exposed.<br>The episode was part of the FBI’s broader campaign of surveillance and harassment against King, which included wiretapping his home and offices and planting hidden microphones in his hotel rooms. Whether the bureau hoped King would take his own life or merely withdraw from public life, it was attempting to silence the nation’s leading voice for racial equality.<br>This was J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. Continue reading...

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Artificial intelligence is far from an authorless machine, argues Tyler Tone in his latest essay, “How does the First Amendment apply to AI?,” but rather a long chain of human editorial and creative decisions — from selecting training data to writing system prompts — and it therefore deserves First Amendment protection as expressive speech.<br>Far from a simple probabilistic machine, AI models are the direct result of human judgments about what information they should absorb, what values they should prioritize, what tone they should adopt, and what kinds of answers they should avoid.

Chris Henke / FIRE<br>In 1845, abolitionist Cassius Clay founded an anti-slavery newspaper in Lexington, Kentucky, just one block from one of the nation’s largest slave markets. Clay knew it would make him a target. But as threats mounted, he didn’t back down. Instead, he turned his newsroom into a fortress, defending the freedom of the press and keeping the fight against slavery alive by any means necessary. As Angela Erickson writes, that included “two brass cannons, iron-barred windows, and an arsenal of Mexican lances and pikes.” Read his incredible story here.

In the frame

The Secret Service has reportedly contacted shock-metal band Gwar over its latest stage show, in which...