Four civil liberties organizations filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas to challenge the constitutionality of a new law requiring the display of an explicitly Protestant translation of the Ten Commandments in all public-school classrooms.

Four civil liberties organizations filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas to challenge the constitutionality of a new law requiring the display of an explicitly Protestant translation of the Ten Commandments in all public-school classrooms.
#CBS News did nothing wrong. But its parent company still paid price. That's the moral of the #Paramount settlement story. And it's a story that keeps repeating itself in the #Trump era. #Paramount confirmed that it is paying $16 million to make Trump's legally dubious #60Minutes #lawsuit go away. Paramount did not agree to any apology — which was a major point of tension. But it did agree to help fund Trump's future #presidential #library. #censorship #law #maga #journalism #firstamendment
The #DOJ letters, along w/ interviews w/ several people close to the university, provide new details about the lengths the agency was prepared to go to to compel changes at #UVA — part of escalating actions by the #Trump admin to root out #DEI from institutions & reshape the country’s colleges & #universities.
letters: https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/9fd88174-ebf4-4878-9fce-cc20f23e6a9f.pdf
“Time is running short, & the Department’s patience is wearing thin,” read a June 17 letter from top #DOJ ofcls Harmeet K. Dhillon & Gregory W. Brown, both #UVA alumni. “Dramatic, wholesale changes are required, now, to repair what appears to be a history of clear abuses & breaches of our nation’s laws & our Constitution by the University of Virginia under its current administration.”
The letters, obtained by WaPo through a records request, revealed the agency’s increasing frustration at #UVA. They warned that a failure by the #university to take “immediate corrective action” could lead to punitive steps, including possible termination of federal #funding.
‘Time is running short’: Letters show growing #DOJ ire at #UVA
Over 2 months this spring, *#Justice* Dept officials sent 7 letters to the #UniversityOfVirginia, alleging possible *racial* #discrimination in #admissions & #hiring, inaction to address *#antisemitism* [#FreeSpeech] on campus, & a failure to cleanse #diversity, #equity & #inclusion efforts at the institution.
#law #democracy #Constitution #FirstAmendment #AcademicFreedom #tyranny #Trump
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/07/02/university-of-virginia-justice-department-investigation-letters/
#FreedomOfThePress Foundation, a #FirstAmendment group, has said it planned to file a lawsuit on behalf of shareholders against Redstone & the #Paramount board in the event of a settlement with #Trump; the group has retained the prominent litigator Abbe Lowell for its effort.
Paramount is planning to make changes to its board on Wednesday.
Many lawyers had dismissed #Trump’s lawsuit as baseless & believed that #CBS would have ultimately prevailed in #court, in part because the network did not report anything factually inaccurate, & the #FirstAmendment gives #publishers wide leeway to determine how to present information.
Pure #authoritarianism
#Trump repeatedly threatens to violate the #FirstAmendment: says he will prosecute #CNN for its reporting on an app, he plans to prosecute the creator of the anti-ICE app, & he will prosecute CNN for its reporting about the Iran bombing.
A recent comic on the US giving international tourists the Big Brother treatment
In light of this legal ruling, I hope every #Mennonite and #Quaker family with kids in public schools objects to compulsory patriotic indoctorination.
I also recommend that families with objections to #heteronormativity raise their objections, on religious grounds.
Why not? It's only fair.
Let's make #porn really forbidden and thus even more desirable to the very children who are sometimes the ones who are teaching their parents how to use a VPN. Let's make Airdrop and USB thumb drives great again. Omg, what if kids start hiding pictures snipped from magazines behind their math homework in a Pee-Chee folder at #school? That is certainly not how I first saw images of penetrative #sex while attending a middle school. Certainly not.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/27/nx-s1-5422424/scotus-texas-porn-law
The very short summary of the ruling in
#FreeSpeech Coalition v. Paxton: "The power to require age verification is within a State's authority to prevent children from accessing sexually explicit content."
So #SCOTUS is basically simplifying down to a #StatesRights issue.
Another section of the #law, which was blocked by a lower court, requires sites to post “sexual material health warnings” that make widely disputed claims that pornography is “potentially biologically addictive” & “proven to harm brain development.”
Sites that violate the law face fines of up to $10,000 a day.
“Kids can get online porn through gaming systems, tablets, phones, computers,” Justice Amy Coney #Barrett said. “Let me just say that content-filtering for all those different devices, I can say from personal experience, is difficult to keep up with.”
Shaffer told the justices that young people should be block from accessing #porn, but there were less intrusive ways of doing that than #AgeVerification. He suggested educating parents & using content-filtering software were better routes, but Justice Amy Coney #Barrett pushed back on that, citing her own children.
#privacy #Texas #law #SCOTUS #FirstAmendment
In response to statutes in #Texas & elsewhere, #Pornhub cut off service to states requiring #AgeVerification.
The #porn industry plaintiffs, who formed an association called the #FreeSpeech Coalition, sued to block the TX #law before it went into effect in 2023. Derek L. Shaffer, an attorney for the coalition, argued the lower court ruling allowing the law could “open the door to an emerging wave of #regulations that imperil #FreeSpeech online.”
The #Texas #law requires age verification for any site where more than one-third of the content is sexual material “harmful to minors.” Users must submit digital #identification, a government-issued ID or other forms of proof that they are 18 or older. The law bars the sites from retaining identifying #information, but it does allow them to transfer the #data for
verification purposes.
During oral arguments in January Justices indicated the landscape of the porn industry had rapidly transformed since the court last issued a major decision dealing with explicit material, about 20 years ago. Today, porn sites & smartphones allow easy access to adult content.
"We’re in an entirely different world,” #ClarenceThomas said. “Playboy was about squiggly lines on cable TV.” [he definitely knows]