America partied hard yesterday and celebrated its 250th birthday, so this weekend’s free speech update is going full revolutionary pamphlet-mode. We’ve got a shot of Thomas Paine via @reason, a bunch of Frederick Douglass cocktails via @TheFIREorg, @NicoPerrino on @freespeechtalk with Anthony Aycock, and assorted apertifs from @sarahemclaugh, @StrangelEdweird, @tyler_tone, @CarolynIodice, @FreeSpeech_AI, plus international free speech news from Australia and Uganda. Also: @damonroot's “A Glorious Liberty” is my book of the semisesquicentennial (a term that gives new meaning to “words fail”). Catch it all, here:

“Free speech is hanging by a thread globally, and that thread is Elon Musk … What's happening on 𝕏 right now is a change of consciousness and … the establishment is desperate to either shut it down or censor it … It is a central priority for the left.”

Free Speech means having the right to disagree with the government and also offend sensibilities, whatever your views on, say, sex and gender. Fortunately in the US there is constitutional protection. In Canada, there isn't. My newest piece in the WSJ.

Free speech is not subject to a popularity contest. SLF is challenging Colorado laws that create vague standards for protected expression and give government officials too much power to determine what can and cannot be said.

They Never Assessed The Free Speech Risk. GRIPT's Ben Scallan explains that the Department for Communications admitted it had not assessed the impact of proposed misinformation regulations on free speech.