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Mary Anne Franks

@maryannefranks.bsky.social

17K followers 1.3K following 390 posts

Law Professor at George Washington Law. President of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. Author of Fearless Speech (2024) and The Cult of the Constitution (2019). First Amendment, civil rights, technology, criminal law, family law, firearms law.

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Mary Anne Franks @maryannefranks.bsky.social · Feb 22

My book Fearless Speech celebrates those who risk harm to themselves to challenge power, fight injustice, & advocate for the truth, who practice what the ancient Greeks called parrhesia. I am gathering examples of fearless speech in this dark time- if you have some to share, please do so in replies!

Photo of excerpt from Mary Anne Franks, Fearless Speech, displaying the following text: "We can shift our resources and veneration
away from the reckless, cowardly speech of the privileged and powerful
toward the speech of the sincere, critical, and brave"

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Mary Anne Franks @maryannefranks.bsky.social · 8h

The Take it Down Act, which makes threatening to distribute nonconsensual intimate images a federal crime, was passed on May 19 of this year. According to reports, Mills made at least one threat after this date.

Quote from Daytona Beach News-Journal article: "In another message exchange, dated June 12, Langston said to Mills: "Leave me alone."

Mills replied: "Okay Linds. Get me his number and I can send him videos. Take care.""

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Mary Anne Franks @maryannefranks.bsky.social · 8h

Revenge porn is a crime both in DC & Florida, where the victim lives. It also became a federal crime to either commit or to threaten to commit image-based sexual abuse on May 19 of this year. It looks like at least one of Mills' alleged threats to expose the images occurred after that date.

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Mark Jacob @markjacob.bsky.social · 19h

If we write off all news media, we’re playing into Trump’s hands. Some outlets are doing well while others stink.
In this installment of my free Stop the Presses newsletter, I give letter grades to major media outlets. See if you agree.

I’m handing out pro-democracy grades to the media

The Guardian gets an A, the NY Times gets a C, CBS gets an F

www.stopthepresses.news

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Mary Anne Franks @maryannefranks.bsky.social · 1d

Thank you for inviting me on to your podcast, David, and for the wonderful discussion about my book!

David Palumbo-Liu @palumboliu.bsky.social · 1d

Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment shows how the First Amendment has been interpreted in ways that protect and extend racism, misogyny, religious fundamentalism, and corporate self-interest. It champions fearless speech and counter-publics to fight the status quo.

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Gregk Foley @gregk.co.uk · 3d

I am so sick of living in a world where certain groups insist art & culture be re-oriented to serve their tastes and whims when their own pitiful inability or unwillingness to critically engage with and contemplate creativity clearly demonstrate that art & culture are too good for them.

Conservatives Take Aim at ‘One Battle After Another’: “Year’s Most Irresponsible Movie”

While Paul Thomas Anderson's film is being heralded as a masterpiece by many, some conservatives accuse it of potentially inspiring left-wing violence.

www.hollywoodreporter.com

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-C-M-F- @chrispps.bsky.social · 3d

American 'conservatism' is basically people who never stop screaming about how all of society is expressly stacked against them simultaneously lecturing people whose ancestors were enslaved about how it is 'Marxist' to even imply that durable structural injustices are a thing that exists

Ryan Enos @ryanenos.bsky.social · 3d

Yep.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

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Bookshop.org @bookshop.org · 7d

$41 million: The amount of money we’ve raised for indie bookstores since 2020.

$0: The amount of money Amazon has raised for indie bookstores since 1994.

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Refuse Fascism @refusefascism.bsky.social · 7d

ICYMI this week Sam speaks w legal scholar @maryannefranks.bsky.social author of ⁠Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment⁠, about what Trump/MAGA mean by “free speech” as they directly censor critics. Sam shares why we need to FLOOD DC on 11-05 to demand TRUMP MUST GO NOW.

The Freedom to Silence You — Dr. Mary Anne Franks on Trump’s War on Dissent - Refuse Fascism

Podcast Episode 266: Sam speaks with Dr. Mary Anne Franks, author of ⁠Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment⁠, about what Trump and MAGA mean by "free speech" as they directly censor ...

refusefascism.org

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 7d

very cool that if you are working on behalf of right-wing culture warriors, you no longer need standing to have your claim adjudicated by the supreme court

Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 7d

It's not just that they're going to strike down a law against conversion therapy, it's that they're going to do it on behalf of made-up claims from a straw plaintiff who can't honestly show the law affected her at all

Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 7d

One thing about American's widespread distrust and disapproval of the Supreme Court is that mainstream news coverage mostly doesn't dwell on stuff like standing, so people don't even begin to grasp how rigged the Court truly is www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10...

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Mary Anne Franks @maryannefranks.bsky.social · 7d

"Academic freedom policies came from faculties, not the government. Governments are the enemies of academic freedom, not their protectors." Brilliant piece by @sivav.bsky.social about the Trump administrations' latest effort to censor universities newrepublic.com/article/2013...

Why This Essay Could Cause the University of Virginia to Shut Down

How Linda McMahon’s latest “compact” would do deep and permanent harm to American higher education

newrepublic.com

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Mary Anne Franks @maryannefranks.bsky.social · 8d

Thank you!

Mary Anne Franks @maryannefranks.bsky.social · 8d

"He shall break his judges if they cross his word;
He shall rule above the Law calling on the Lord.
He shall peep and mutter; and the night shall bring
Watchers ’neath our window, lest we mock the King—"

Rudyard Kipling, The Old Issue (1899)

www.thedailybeast.com/trump-public...

Trump Explodes at Judge He Put on the Bench

The president insisted that U.S. District Judge Immergut—whom he appointed—should be “ashamed” of how she’d served him.

www.thedailybeast.com

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Mary Anne Franks @maryannefranks.bsky.social · 8d

Weiss and other cancel culture warriors also like to claim the "heterodox" label, but given the conformity of their opinions not only with prevailing power structures but also with each other, "homodox" seems more apt www.etymonline.com/word/homodox

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Mary Anne Franks @maryannefranks.bsky.social · 8d

I joined the @refusefascism.bsky.social to talk about Trump's escalating campaign to suppress political dissent open.spotify.com/episode/6yIM...

The Freedom to Silence You — Dr. Mary Anne Franks on Trump’s War on Dissent

open.spotify.com

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Philip Eil @phileil.bsky.social · 9d

We really need to retire "contrarian" as a descriptor for Weiss immediately.

The reason she is getting this job right now is because of her *non-contrarian* sensibilities.

She espouses views that the US's current power structure likes.

NPR @npr.org · 9d

CBS' parent company will buy The Free Press and install Bari Weiss, its contrarian founder, as editor in chief of CBS News. n.pr/4o634cr

CBS' next top editor to be Bari Weiss of The Free Press

CBS' parent company will buy The Free Press and install Bari Weiss, its contrarian founder, as editor in chief of CBS News.

n.pr

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David Gilbert @davidgilbert.bsky.social · 9d

Over the weekend, Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller repeatedly attacked judges, calling them part of an "organized terrorist attack" on the US government....

On Saturday, the home of a judge who ruled against Trump, went up in flames

time.com/7323442/sout...

House of South Carolina Judge Criticized by Trump Administration Set Ablaze

Authorities are investigating a fire at the home of a South Carolina judge who had reportedly received death threats in what could be the latest incident of political violence across the country.

time.com

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digby @digby56.bsky.social · 11d

This ostentatious Christian with the big cross around her neck is really saying that people who cannot prove their citizenship in an emergency room should be left on the sidewalk to die. And that's what she believes.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 11d

Leavitt: "When an illegal alien goes to the emergency room, who's paying for it? The American taxpayer."

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Melissa Ryan @melissaryan.bsky.social · 12d

I always pay attention to what stories People Magazine and other consumer media outlets cover. That's how you can tell that something has broken through the usual political and news bubbles. This horrific Chicago story has broken through. people.com/ice-agents-o...

ICE Agents Rappel from Helicopter in Overnight Chicago Raid, Dragging Kids from Beds to U-Hauls

Overnight on Tuesday, Sept. 30, federal agents from different agencies raided an apartment building on the South Side of Chicago, pulling men, women and children — some of them allegedly naked — from ...

people.com

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Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 12d

The liberal-heterodox alliance over “free speech” engineered by people like Bari Weiss is precisely what has eased the way for the most authoritarian, anti-free speech government the United States has seen since the McCarthy era, argues @pastpunditry.bsky.social:

The actual politics of free speech is fueled by a right-wing political strategy. - Boston Review

Nicole Hemmer responds to Alex Gourevitch’s “The Right to Be Hostile.”

www.bostonreview.net

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Ida Bae Wells @nhannahjones.bsky.social · 12d

In case it wasn’t clear, the anti-DEI crusade has never been about merit. Zero news experience. Never been a reporter. Elevated to Editor in Chief of CBS News, one of the most storied news institutions in the nation. www.mediaite.com/media/news/p...

Paramount Officially Acquiring The Free Press and Making Bari Weiss CBS News Editor in Chief: Report

Paramount Skydance will be officially acquiring The Free Press and hiring its founder Bari Weiss as editor in chief of its CBS News division, with the deal to be announced this coming Monday, accordin...

www.mediaite.com

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Mary Anne Franks @maryannefranks.bsky.social · 12d

I call this the "dangerous snowflake narrative," and it's been a popular theme of the "campus free speech crisis" set for some time now.
scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcont...

Excerpt from Mary Anne Franks, The Second Amendment's Safe Space: "To the extent that the backlash against the student protest movement of the 60s and 70s diverges from the political correctness debates of the 90s, the current dangerous snowflake narrative more closely resembles the former. The contemporary “snowflake,” in contrast to the more one-dimensional sensitive PC wimp, is simultaneously ridiculed as weak and vilified as dangerous: critics are as likely to characterize leftists as puppy-hugging snowflakes as black-shirted “Antifa.” Similarly dramatic rhetoric about dangerous leftists helped justify the
use of force against student protesters in the Vietnam era, including the fatal shootings of students on the Kent State and Jackson State campuses in 1971. Indeed, one Republican lawmaker in Michigan invoked the Kent State shootings in response to the 2017 protests at University of California-Berkley over the invitation of rightwing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos to speak on campus. Dan Adamini, who serves as secretary of the Marquette County Republican Party, wrote in a Facebook post, “I’m thinking that another Kent State might be the only solution. . . .They do it because they know there are no consequences yet,”
and tweeted, “Violent protesters who shut down free speech? Time for another Kent State perhaps. One bullet stops a lot of thuggery.” Now, as then, students who dissent from institutional and political authority are portrayed as threats to public order who must be brought in line, with force if necessary."

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Ryan Enos @ryanenos.bsky.social · 13d

Loyalty oaths for universities. The thing of the Third Reich. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/u...

Trump Administration Asks Colleges to Sign ‘Compact’ to Get Funding Preference

www.nytimes.com

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Mary Anne Franks @maryannefranks.bsky.social · 14d

I've never seen anything quite like the first and last pages of this opinion by Judge William G. Young (a Reagan appointee) in AAUP v. Rubio. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Opening page of Judge William Young's opinion in AAUP v Rubio, featuring a copy of a handwritten postcard sent to chambers that reads, "Trump has pardons and tanks... what do you have?" followed by this typewritten response: "Dear Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People of the United States –- you and me -- have our magnificent Constitution. Here’s how that works out in a specific case –-"
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

Last page of the opinion: WILLIAM G. YOUNG
JUDGE
of the
UNITED STATES

I hope you found this
helpful. Thanks for writing.
It shows you care. You
should.

Sincerely & respectfully,
Bill Young

P.S. The next time you’re in
Boston [the postmark on the card
is from the Philadelphia area]
stop in at the Courthouse and
watch your fellow citizens, sitting
as jurors, reach out for justice.
It is here, and in courthouses
just like this one, both state and
federal, spread throughout our land
that our Constitution is most vibrantly
alive, for it is well said that “Where a
jury sits, there burns the lamp of
liberty.”

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 15d

It is important to see this sort of straight talking, precisely because of the executive order last week that conflated criticism of the government with terrorism.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 15d

Pritzker: "In any other country, if federal agents fired upon journalists & protesters when unprovoked what would we call it? If officials marched down streets harassing civilians & demanding their papers, what would we say? I don't think we'd have trouble calling it what it is: authoritarianism"

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Thor Benson @thorbenson.bsky.social · 15d

Wow their ideological spectrum goes all the way from the far-right to the right

Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 15d

Post’s new opinions editor explains how they support Republicans and Democrats at different points … with interesting examples

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