Substack Says It'll Legally Defend Writers 'Targeted By the Government' (theverge.com) 55
Substack has announced it will legally support foreign writers lawfully residing in the U.S. who face government targeting over their published work, partnering with the nonprofit FIRE to expand its existing Defender program. The Verge reports: In their announcement, Substack and FIRE mention the international Tufts University student who was arrested by federal agents last week. Her legal team links her arrest to an opinion piece she co-wrote for the school's newspaper last year, which criticized Tufts for failing to comply with requests to divest from companies with connections to Israel. "If true, this represents a chilling escalation in the government's effort to target critics of American foreign policy," Substack and FIRE write.
The initiative builds on Substack's Defender program, which already offers legal assistance for independent journalists and creators on the platform. The company says it has supported "dozens" of Substack writers facing claims of defamation and trademark infringement since it launched the program in the US in 2020. It has since brought Substack Defender to writers in Canada and the UK.
The initiative builds on Substack's Defender program, which already offers legal assistance for independent journalists and creators on the platform. The company says it has supported "dozens" of Substack writers facing claims of defamation and trademark infringement since it launched the program in the US in 2020. It has since brought Substack Defender to writers in Canada and the UK.
It wont help (Score:5, Insightful)
What good is a lawyer filing a writ in court on your behalf when you have already been renditioned to a prison in a foreign country?
Re:It wont help (Score:5, Informative)
Note: referencing the case of Abrego Garcia who was accidentally sent to El Salvador -the US government has admitted in court that it was an "administrative error", but said "it's not like we can get him back".
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Note: referencing the case of Abrego Garcia who was accidentally sent to El Salvador -the US government has admitted in court that it was an "administrative error", but said "it's not like we can get him back".
So far El Salvador has been pretty accommodating to this Administration. I imagine if the U.S. simply asked, El Salvador would return him -- but that would require slightly more effort than shrugging it off.
Re:It wont help (Score:4, Insightful)
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who in 2019 was granted protected status by an immigration judge, prohibiting the federal government from sending him to El Salvador. https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/01... [cnn.com]
Something something party of law and order.
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An immigration judge eventually granted Abrego Garcia withholding of removal, meaning he could suffer persecution if removed from the US to El Salvador. He was still considered removable; it just couldn’t be to El Salvador.
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In error. Not accidentally.
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Oh they can *definately* get him back.
The range of enforcement options the United States has is vast and terrifying.
What they meant to say was they dont *want* to get him back.
Judges have a few enforcement options too. Be interesting to see how all this contempt of court lasts before the judge starts sending marshalls out...
Tie up government lawyers (Score:3)
Tie up enough government lawyers and all the cases will have to keep being extended because there's too much work and not enough lawyers thanks to all the firings.
Then, when the case has gone on for years and still hasn't gone to trial, you can claim you're not get a speedy trial and want the case dismissed.
Re: Tie up government lawyers (Score:2)
this was my exact thought. All they are doing, is tying the system up and knots. It is a lose lose for everyone, because the point is the chaos. drain both the government and the people of its resources and time.
Re: Tie up government lawyers (Score:2)
If the government is considered evil, then why is paralyzing it considered bad?
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Waaaaaa and (Score:1)
Judicial pushback is not sustainable (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultimately, the only thing that will work long term is educating and creating a culture that respects the human right to free speech, and more importantly due process. Judges can be replaced after all. Every human regardless of situation and circumstance is entitled to due process, which is the ability to defend themselves fairly against being punished for accusations. If you don't want to respect that, then you should pray there's no God. Pray there's no future mechanism by which your soul may be thrust into such predicament. We already have a government snatching foreigners off the street, with no prior notification that their visa was revoked, and may eventually be selling them as slaves to work camps. And don't think a future government won't seize born or legitimately naturalized citizens off the road after arbitrarily revoking citizenship. They are already revoking the ability guaranteed birth right citizenship .. this is so that they have mechanisms to challenge political rivals. Remember Trump not only questioned the citizenship of Barack Obama, but also John McCain -- the descendent of war heroes. Even if you and your family members can prove you were born here (we know databases are unhackable right?) .. if we have a system by which the state can utilize plain clothes unidentifiable enforcement agents to snatch people off the street .. that same system will get used against citizens eventually. It may start with being used against pedophiles, who would argue against that? Then murderers, surely murderers should be deprived of citizenship. Or, maybe they will make it so that if you say something negative about the government or the US that is treason, and a citizenship revocable action. And that can happen to anyone. Remember Elon Musk called Mark Kelly .. who is a combat veteran, a traitor because he visited Ukraine. It's virtually guaranteed corrupt politicians will abuse the combined power of citizenship revocation and the ability to catch and expel non-citizens to unaudited prison camps with no due process.
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100% guaranteed most of your own posts are political. You guys on the right are such hypocrites. Only concerned with securing for yourself the rights which you attempt to deny others.
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"100% guaranteed most of your own posts are political. You guys on the right are such hypocrites. Only concerned with securing for yourself the rights which you attempt to deny others."
Then why is the leftwing propaganda rated +5 Insightful while the perspective of the right is rated at -1 Troll? I remember a time when either both would be modded as flamebait/offtopic or they would have been rated according to how good an argument of each perspective they were with a few +5 insightful/interesting examples o
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Do you believe every person has the innate right to free speech? If you don't then you are evil. If you do, then why do you have a problem respecting it?
Do you believe every person has the innate right to due process? If you don't then you are evil. If you do, then why do you have a problem respecting it?
I'm not saying we need to go secure free speech for people living in Timbuktu or something, I'm saying when someone is within our control we should respect their rights. Is that fucking difficult? We don't
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Why are you such a cheerleader for authoritarianism when it's your team doing it? The comment is on-topic for the story. You just want opinions you disagree with suppressed.
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A generic rant against Trump and border enforcement is not ontopic for the story.
There is no reasoning or content in the post, it's a bunch of overtly false claims. Most of it is just paranoid rambling about some highly unlikely dystopian collapse of society... all based on a handful of illegal aliens being deported, something which has largely bipartisan support and a legal interpretation of the 14th amendment which is both historically accurate and well founded with a good chance of being upheld by the su
Re:Doing the bidding and rioting for the Dems (Score:4, Interesting)
was of course a stupid action of that student.
She "co-wrote an opinion piece for the school's newspaper." That hardly counts as "rioting." In fact, I'd call it "free speech." You know-- the stuff that the constitution protects?
No country accepts such behavior from foreign students.
Should the US be as good as the best countries in the world? Or do think it's ok to be as bad as the worst?
It's our choice.
Oh, and also, not a riot [Re:Doing the bidding..." (Score:2)
"You know-- the stuff that the constitution protects?"
The Constitution is for protecting Americans
Turns out the bill of rights, and due process of law, applies to everybody in the US, not just citizens. There have been a number of Supreme Court cases ruling exactly this.
and defending/advocating terrorism isn't legally protected speech.
Turns out defending terrorism is free speech. Advocating terrorism is not. But this case was neither. The person in question co-wrote an editorial "which criticized Tufts for failing to comply with requests to divest from companies with connections to Israel." That's not defending terrorism.
"Should the US be as good as the best countries in the world? Or do think it's ok to be as bad as the worst?
As good as countries which imprison their own citizens for free speech on the internet?
Exactly. We should do better than countries
Not defending terrorism, and also, not a riot (Score:2)
Turns out the bill of rights, and due process of law, applies to everybody in the US, not just citizens. There have been a number of Supreme Court cases ruling exactly this."
The supreme court has ruled all sorts of things over time. There is no constitutional basis for the position that those subject to the jurisdiction of a foreign state are entitled to have their rights protected under the constitution of the United States.
The Supreme Court is the court that has the authority to rule on how the constitution is interpreted. You, on the other hand, are not.
Turns out defending terrorism is free speech. Advocating terrorism is not. But this case was neither. The person in question co-wrote an editorial "which criticized Tufts for failing to comply with requests to divest from companies with connections to Israel." That's not defending terrorism."
It is defending terrorism
Your opinion is so bizarre that I don't even have any response other than to repeat that no, criticizing the investments of Tufts University is not by any plausible stretch of interpretation "defending terrorism."
The rest of your opinions seem to be either uninformed about constitutional rights or making editorial comments about the middle East, so I am not going to wasting m
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Your opinions are so bizarre that I don't have any response.
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Civil forfeiture says hello, as do the increasing number of incidents like the ones brought up in this very article. You guys just keep telling yourself how great you are because you have no point of comparison.
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Should the US be as good as the best countries in the world?
Which countries? They ALL repress speech to a greater extent. Should the USA soar above them until it leaves the atmosphere? Giving 8 billion (mostly hostile) people the right stay in the USA is not being the best it's being the craziest.
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Should the US be as good as the best countries in the world?
Which countries? They ALL repress speech to a greater extent. Should the USA soar above them until it leaves the atmosphere?
Yes.
If the constitution says freedom of speech shall not be infringed, yes, we should do better than countries which repress free speech.
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was of course a stupid action of that student.
She "co-wrote an opinion piece for the school's newspaper." That hardly counts as "rioting." In fact, I'd call it "free speech." You know-- the stuff that the constitution protects?
No. It wasn’t only the op-ed - not even close. She led or participated in groups that committed vandalism, bigoted harassment, and building takeovers. Although it’s likely I’ll get mass downvoted for this, here’s Marco Rubio about the case:
If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student, and you tell us the reason you're coming to the US is not just because you want to write op-eds but because you want to participate in movements like vandalizing universities, har
Long and irrelevant post [Re:Doing the bidding...] (Score:2)
Not a single word in that long and irrelevant post says that she did anything other than co-write an editorial critical of Tufts.
Marco Rubio wasn't even involved in any way; I'm not sure why you quoted seven paragraphs of his opinions.
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Not a single word in that long and irrelevant post says that she did anything other than co-write an editorial critical of Tufts.
Marco Rubio wasn't even involved in any way; I'm not sure why you quoted seven paragraphs of his opinions.
Huh? Marco Rubio is the Secretary of State - he couldn’t be any more relevant or informed. But your “just wrote an op-Ed” narrative? That’s essentially actual propaganda promulgated by partisans and willfully ignorant folks.
There is a long history of such foolishness, these are the same type of amoral or ignorant partisans that clapped like seals when Chavez claimed he was saving Venezuela, when Chomsky said reports of the Killing fields were “exaggerated right wing propaganda
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Not a single word in that long and irrelevant post says that she did anything other than co-write an editorial critical of Tufts. Marco Rubio wasn't even involved in any way; I'm not sure why you quoted seven paragraphs of his opinions.
Huh? Marco Rubio is the Secretary of State
Bingo! And the arrest was by the Department of Homeland Security.
Which is not part of the State Department.
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Ignorance, denial, and deflection will certainly get you invited to upper west side cocktail parties. Congrats! But that same type of silly narrative-trumps-facts “Bingo!” clapter not only arose
when Chavez claimed he was saving Venezuela, when Chomsky said reports of the Killing fields were “exaggerated right wing propaganda”, and when Walter Duranty got a Nobel Prize for pretending the Holodomor wasn’t happening.
but also when:
- FDR and the Dem party praised Mussolini and his fascism (up until Italy joined the axis)
- Obama and Biden called both Romney and McCain foolish for considering Putin to be a threat
- Churchill was excoriated as naïve for warning about Bolsheviks
- Mao started his cultural revolution
- Fi
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Wow, you win a prize for irrelevant posts.
Re:Doing the bidding and rioting for the Dems (Score:4, Informative)
Horseshit. Writing an article criticising policy is protected speech in the US. Not only is she permitted, the founding fathers wrote a whole-ass constitution forbiding the govt from retaliating against it.
Which is exactly the same as in most modern countries. How tf do you think journalism works if you cant criticise the government? Hell, even chinese newspapers run articles criticizing the govt from time to time, and nobody ever accused them of having proper free speech.
Right... (Score:1)
"If true, this represents a chilling escalation in the government's effort to target critics of American foreign policy," Substack and FIRE write.
Escalation only in the minds of those who've hallucinated such an effort in the first place. The 'ministry of truth' is dead.
She's here on a visa - and visas can get cancelled (Score:2)
She's here on a visa - and visas can get cancelled. I doubt she will win this.
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There's due process for doing so, and that has not been followed. This is probably because in similar cases going back decades, when that process was followed, the courts (including the supreme court, including in cases of actual communist rabble rousers), has ruled that free speech is free speech and doesn't depend on one's visa status.
So, if this plays out as it has repeatedly in the past, her visa gets un-canceled. But, the point wasn't to get rid of one student who wrote an article. The point was to
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There's due process for doing so, and that has not been followed. This is probably because in similar cases going back decades, when that process was followed, the courts (including the supreme court, including in cases of actual communist rabble rousers), has ruled that free speech is free speech and doesn't depend on one's visa status.
So, if this plays out as it has repeatedly in the past, her visa gets un-canceled. But, the point wasn't to get rid of one student who wrote an article. The point was to inflict fear in all the other students who might one day think about saying something out of line. The government using extra-legal fear as a weapon... that's the scary part for all of us.
This is really about the mess of protests and harassment that happened on college campuses last year where the college administrations did little in response. They are sending a message that guests in our country who misbehave can and will be sent home.