WHAT HAPPENS WHEN LEFT AND RIGHT READ THE SAME CONSTITUTION AND REACH VERY DIFFERENT CONCLUSIONS? Jed Shugerman and Ilan Wurman debate birthright citizenship and presidential removal power in two of the Supreme Court’s biggest cases this term. Bring popcorn.

ASKING AI ABOUT POLITICS IS NOT THE SAME AS BUYING BEER. THE GOVERNMENT DOES NOT NEED TO KNOW YOUR AGE: Age-verification laws could force Americans to identify themselves before seeking lawful information. 

FRANCE IS SAVING CHILDREN FROM SOCIAL MEDIA BY SAVING US ALL FROM PRIVACY! Its under-15 ban raises the usual age-verification threats: surveillance, privacy risks, and barriers to lawful information. Europe’s identity-gated internet marches on in this week’s update.

LOS ANGELES HAS DISCOVERED THE GOVERNMENT’S FAVORITE KIND OF SPEECH: APPROVED SPEECH. City officials banned the n-word and c-word from public comment and threaten nearly weeklong exclusions for using them. More in this week’s update.

THE LEFT HAS HOME-FIELD ADVANTAGE IN CAMPUS CENSORSHIP. Students and faculty drive most sanction campaigns from the left. The right more often brings political power in from public officials. FIRE’s latest data maps the divide in this week’s update.

THE CAMPUS SPEECH POLICE HAVE TOO MANY OFFICES. DEI bureaucrats are part of the problem, but the deeper threat is an entire administrative class built to investigate, regulate, and punish dissent. Higher education needs fewer ideological enforcers and more defenders of open inquiry.

THE FORGOTTEN FOUNDER BEHIND THE DECLARATION’S MOST FAMOUS WORDS. James Wilson’s arguments for popular self-rule may have helped inspire Thomas Jefferson’s immortal language. Jesse Wegman joins Jeffrey Rosen on the latest Blessings of Liberty.

EUROPE WANTS TO MAKE ANONYMITY A THING OF THE PAST. New age checks and identity-linked access are being sold as safety measures, but they could turn the open internet into a permanent checkpoint. See how in this week’s update!

THE LEFT AND RIGHT BOTH TRY TO CENSOR CAMPUS SPEECH, BUT THE LEFT ROUTINELY GETS AWAY WITH IT. They use different tactics to silence their opponents, and the outcomes are nowhere close to equal. This week’s update breaks down the data.

CANADA’S SPEECH RULES DESERVE A BORDER INSPECTION. America should be very careful about importing any system that lets officials convert “reasonable limits” into permission slips for dissent.

CANADA IS CONSIDERING LEGAL ACTION AGAINST CITIZENS WHO SPREAD “MISINFORMATION.” Apparently the cure for public error is to give politicians the power to make their own errors legally binding.

CANADA’S NEW PLAN FOR “MISINFORMATION”: Let the government decide what is true, then punish citizens who disagree. What could go wrong?

FREE SPEECH IS THE WAY THROUGH POLITICAL VIOLENCE. After Charlie Kirk was murdered at Utah Valley University, I went to the campus to speak with the UVU community about courage, open debate, and the First Amendment.

EXTREMISM HAS A MIRROR-IMAGE PROBLEM. For every political extreme, an opposing extreme often rises to meet it. David French joins Jeffrey Rosen on the Blessings of Liberty podcast to explain the pattern.

PRINCIPLES GET EXPENSIVE WHEN YOUR SIDE IS IN POWER. Real nonpartisanship means criticizing allies, crediting opponents, resisting ideological drift, and defending free speech without checking the speaker’s party registration first.

WHY SHOULD ANYONE TRUST AN IDEA THAT CANNOT SURVIVE AN ARGUMENT? John Stuart Mill’s case for free speech begins with a basic fact: You may be wrong, partly right, or fully right. That is “Mill’s Trident.”

PUNISH THE BAD DECISION, NOT THE TOOL. New laws regulating AI in hiring and health care may sound sensible. But when government singles out AI for warnings, audits, and design mandates, it risks burdening protected speech and information gathering.

CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES ARE EASY UNTIL THEY RESTRAIN YOUR SIDE. Sarah Isgur joins Jeffrey Rosen on the Blessings of Liberty podcast to explain why the Supreme Court’s tariffs ruling was about far more than Trump, Biden, or partisan advantage.

BRITAIN MAY BE COMING FOR VPNs NEXT: With new age restrictions already in place, officials are now promising a July update on possible VPN limits, all in the name of keeping children safe online. Plus, FIRE’s victory against the “Stop WOKE Act,” my latest in The Washington Post, and more!

KEN BURNS ON AMERICA AT 250, WITHOUT THE HAGIOGRAPHY OR THE DESPAIR: The American story has never been tidy enough for slogans, and it has never been so broken that the only honest response is to give up on the experiment.

AI IS FREE SPEECH’S NEXT FRONTIER, OF COURSE POLITICIANS ARE REACHING FOR THE LEASH. Tyler Tone lays out why FIRE is fighting AI laws that could turn a tool for knowledge into a tool for political control.

AMERICA WAS NOT BORN INEVITABLE: Fifty-six men, divided by faith, class, region, interest, and conscience, signed their names to an idea that could have cost them everything.

THE GLOBAL CENSORSHIP LAB IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS: While America recovers from its 250th birthday party, other governments are providing bracing reminders that “online safety,” “public order,” and “hate speech” can become very convenient labels for censorship.

AMERICA AT 250, STILL ARGUING ABOUT THE THINGS THAT MADE IT WORTH CELEBRATING: The fireworks have faded, the confetti is being swept from the floor, and America is back to doing what it has always done best and worst: arguing, loudly, about liberty.

THOMAS PAINE, THE FOUNDER WHO MADE POLITE PEOPLE NERVOUS: As America approaches 250, Matt Harwood argues that Paine is the Founding Father worth celebrating, without squinting too hard.