The measure, which takes effect Oct. 1, 2027, expands California’s long-running Safe at Home program to cover immigration support workers, following what Democratic lawmakers describe as a troubling increase in harassment and threats directed at immigrants and the advocates who assist them.

For Inland Empire residents who work in immigrant services — from legal aid attorneys to nonprofit volunteers — the change could offer new protections. But the law has also become a flashpoint in a broader political fight, with Republican critics arguing it tramples on constitutional free press protections.

Tensions boiled over last week in Sacramento, where Terry Schanz, chief of staff for Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, got into a heated, recorded confrontation outside the state Capitol with Nick Shirley, a conservative social media personality and vocal opponent of the legislation. In the exchange, which quickly spread across social media, Schanz hurled a crude insult at Shirley. Assembly officials have declined to say whether Schanz will face any disciplinary action.

What the law actually does

The legislation, Assembly Bill 2624, allows immigration support workers, employees and volunteers to enroll in California’s Safe at Home program. Enrollees — along with family members living in their household — can use an alternative mailing address issued through the California secretary of state’s office instead of disclosing their actual home address in public records. Participants are also permitted to vote confidentially.

The law further bars any “person, business, or association” from knowingly publishing online the home address, photograph or personal information of a program participant, or their spouse or child, with the intent of inciting someone else to cause serious physical harm. Violators could face civil penalties of up to $4,000.

Assemblymember Mia Bonta, who championed the bill, said the protections respond to real cases of intimidation.

“We heard directly from organizations whose staff and volunteers have been doxxed, harassed, followed and filmed at their workplaces and threatened, with that harassment sometimes reaching their families at home,” Bonta said during the bill’s final vote in the Legislature last week. “These are not hypothetical concerns. No one should have to fear that doing their job will put their family at risk.”

A program with a long history

California created Safe at Home nearly three decades ago to protect the identities of domestic violence survivors. Since then, lawmakers have steadily broadened who qualifies, adding survivors of stalking, sexual assault, human trafficking and elder abuse, as well as reproductive health care workers and, during the pandemic, public health officials.

Last year, the state extended the program to workers in gender-affirming care, using similar language barring the public posting of their addresses or personal details. That measure also passed largely along party lines, though it picked up some bipartisan support in committee votes.

How to enroll

To participate, applicants must live in California and schedule an appointment with a designated enrolling agency, where they’ll work with an application assistant to complete the paperwork. Applicants need to show evidence of credible threats — such as police reports or court records — and submitting false information is a misdemeanor.

Once the secretary of state’s Safe at Home program approves an application, participants receive an official ID card bearing their substitute address, which state and local government agencies are required to accept. Private businesses and the federal government, however, are not obligated to honor it. Enrollment lasts four years and can be renewed.

Republican pushback

Opposition from Republican lawmakers has been intense, with some vowing to challenge the law in court on First Amendment grounds. Assemblymember Carl DeMaio of San Diego, one of the law’s most vocal critics, has branded it the “Stop Nick Shirley Act,” claiming its real intent is to shield organizations from scrutiny by journalists and investigators like Shirley.

Shirley has built a following by investigating alleged fraud at child care centers, including a 2025 video accusing Minnesota facilities of wrongdoing that preceded a surge in federal immigration enforcement there. He also visited several Somali-run day care centers in San Diego this past February, alleging they were “ghost facilities” without children actually present.

“They’ve essentially created a protected class by calling this group — the immigration support service providers — saying that I and you cannot expose them,” Shirley told supporters at a rally outside the Capitol last week. “None of our money should be going towards illegal migrants, nor should it be going towards the nonprofits that are funded by your tax dollars.”

Jenny Rae Le Roux, a Republican running for California’s 47th Congressional District, called the law unnecessary, noting that inciting violence is already illegal. She also criticized the bill’s wording — including its use of the term “image” — as overly vague. Le Roux said she intends to keep investigating government spending regardless of the new restrictions, even inviting arrest under the statute.

“We will double down on our efforts … to expose waste, fraud and corruption wherever we find it, including immigration service providers,” she said at the rally. “And if Gavin Newsom doesn’t like it, he can come arrest me himself.”

Supporters of the bill reject the idea that it protects organizations from legitimate oversight. Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, a Santa Cruz Democrat who backed the measure, noted that no news organization has formally opposed the law.

“The opposition to AB 2624 has not come from them,” Pellerin said during the floor debate. “It has come from bad faith actors looking for an available vehicle to smear immigrant communities and the people who serve them.”

Original source: CalMatters

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Attorneys representing UC researchers say the admission is significant — proof, in their view, that the agencies unlawfully stripped nearly $2 billion in funding. It marks a pivotal moment in the ongoing lawsuit brought by UC researchers against the Trump administration, who are fighting to get their grants restored for good. The researchers’ legal team is now asking a federal judge to skip a trial altogether and rule outright that the White House repeatedly violated the Constitution, including the First Amendment. A hearing on that request is set for October 20.

The keyword admissions came in stipulations signed and filed last week in federal court in a case known as Thakur v. Trump, which has been working its way through the system since last spring.

According to those stipulations, the agencies “did not rescind any grant for alleged noncompliance with the terms of the grant itself.” Instead, plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote, the agencies applied “generalized criteria, rather than grant-specific evaluation of compliance or performance.” Lawyers for the UC faculty argue this reveals three sweeping constitutional violations.

First, by running keyword searches across hundreds of grants and canceling them in bulk rather than reviewing each one on its individual merits, the administration effectively targeted research it viewed as politically unfavorable — a violation of the First Amendment.

Second, by canceling 283 Department of Energy grants in states that voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election while leaving similar grants untouched in Republican-leaning states, the administration unfairly punished researchers simply for living in states it opposed politically.

Third, by canceling billions in grants without redirecting that money toward other approved funding opportunities, the administration failed to spend federal research dollars the way Congress specifically directed through the laws it passed — a violation in its own right.

On July 16, CalMatters asked the U.S. Department of Justice, which is defending the federal agencies in court, whether it agreed that the stipulations amounted to an admission that the Trump administration violated researchers’ constitutional rights. A department spokesperson had not responded by the time of publication.

A history of legal setbacks for the administration

U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin has repeatedly sided with UC researchers throughout the case, issuing a string of preliminary orders forcing federal agencies to reinstate grants while she considers the underlying legal questions. That has included restoring hundreds of grants at UCLA that the administration tried to freeze over allegations that the university tolerated antisemitism and allowed transgender women to compete on women’s sports teams.

Those same allegations later fueled a White House demand that UCLA pay $1.2 billion or face another wave of research funding freezes. But months before that demand was made, UCLA had already taken steps to address antisemitism on campus, including forming a task force to recommend ways to make the campus more welcoming for Jewish students.

Lin, a Biden appointee, criticized the administration in a separate but related preliminary order for ignoring those efforts. She wrote that the government’s justification for canceling the grants made no mention of the corrective steps UCLA had already taken to address the very concerns it cited.

Attorneys for the professors in the Thakur case are now asking Lin to issue a final ruling ordering the grants restored, rather than another preliminary order. Even so, the federal government could still appeal any decision Lin makes to a higher court.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote that the stakes are enormous. If the administration is allowed to pull this funding, they argued, “researchers, graduate students and program staff who depended on the grants to develop the work of their lifetimes will suffer significant harm to their reputations and their professional careers.”

The attorneys warned of potentially life-saving cures that may never be developed, new understanding of diseases that will go unexplored, and a decline in the nation’s standing as a global leader in publicly funded research.

Keyword searches used to flag disfavored grants

A CalMatters review of the newly filed court documents found that federal agencies used keyword searches in a variety of ways.

The Department of Transportation identified six grants worth roughly $42 million for cancellation because they sought to advance “transportation equity,” prioritized “disadvantaged communities,” or focused on “workforce diversification” in transportation and “equity” more broadly.

The cancellation of three of those grants, led by a UC Davis professor, forced 77 researchers to abandon 79 ongoing projects. Plaintiffs’ attorneys said the project leaders also had to lay off or scramble to find new funding for more than 40 graduate and undergraduate research assistants.

The National Institutes of Health admitted using an internal search tool to identify UC grants that referenced terms such as “health equity,” “workforce diversity,” “structural racism” and “sexual orientation.” NIH alone suspended or canceled more than 1,000 UC grants, including nearly 700 at UCLA, covering research on vaccines, cancer and disparities in health outcomes. That figure, recently disclosed in court filings, is notably higher than the roughly 500 NIH grant cancellations UCLA had previously reported last year. The health research agency also acknowledged that DOGE — the short-lived federal office once led by billionaire Elon Musk — may have used artificial intelligence to help identify grants for elimination.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys told the judge these admissions show that the agencies “identified the viewpoints they wanted to suppress, searched the grants they funded for those that expressed those viewpoints, and canceled those grants for that reason” — a direct violation of researchers’ First Amendment rights, they argued.

The Environmental Protection Agency, another defendant named in the case, is reportedly working toward a settlement with UC faculty attorneys to avoid further litigation.

Separately, a federal district judge in Massachusetts dealt the Trump administration a significant setback last week regarding its authority to cancel grants and withhold federal funding. The administration had leaned on a common legal justification for many of its funding cuts — that a grant “no longer effectuates agency priorities.” California and 22 other states sued, arguing there is no legal basis for the federal government to cancel already-awarded funding simply because the White House later decides it wants different program priorities. The judge agreed with the states.

Original source: CalMatters

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Attorneys representing the affected UC researchers say the admission amounts to hard evidence that nearly $2 billion in canceled grants were pulled illegally. The disclosure marks a significant turn in an ongoing lawsuit, Thakur v. Trump, in which UC scientists are suing the administration to have their funding permanently reinstated. Their legal team is now urging the presiding judge to bypass a full trial and rule outright that the White House violated the Constitution — including the First Amendment — in how it targeted the grants. A hearing on that request is set for Oct. 20.

The keyword admission surfaced in signed stipulations filed last week in federal court, part of a case that has been working through the system since last spring. According to those filings, the agencies acknowledged they did not terminate grants because of any specific violation of grant terms. Instead, they applied broad screening criteria rather than evaluating each award individually for compliance or performance, according to the plaintiffs’ attorneys.

Lawyers for the UC professors argue the admission points to three separate constitutional violations. First, by using keyword sweeps to mass-terminate grants instead of reviewing them case by case, the administration effectively targeted research based on its political content — a First Amendment issue. Second, the Department of Energy canceled 283 grants overwhelmingly concentrated in states that voted for Kamala Harris in 2024, while leaving similar grants in Republican-leaning states untouched, which the attorneys say improperly punished researchers based on where they live. Third, by canceling billions in awarded funding without redirecting it to other approved research purposes, the administration allegedly failed to spend money the way Congress had legally mandated.

CalMatters reached out to the U.S. Department of Justice, which represents the federal agencies in court, asking whether officials agree that the stipulations reflect constitutional violations. As of publication, the department had not responded.

**A case with a history of setbacks for the administration**

U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin, who is overseeing the case, has repeatedly ruled in favor of the UC researchers, issuing a series of preliminary injunctions ordering federal agencies to restore grants while the broader legal questions are resolved. That includes hundreds of grants at UCLA that the administration had tried to suspend over accusations that the university failed to adequately address antisemitism and allowed transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports.

Those same allegations were central to a separate demand from the White House that UCLA pay $1.2 billion or face further funding freezes. But months before that ultimatum, UCLA had already taken steps to respond to concerns about campus antisemitism, including forming a task force focused on improving conditions for Jewish students.

Lin, appointed by President Biden, criticized the administration for ignoring those efforts when she issued an injunction in a related case, noting that the government’s justification for pulling the grants failed to even mention the corrective steps UCLA had already taken.

Now, attorneys for the professors in the Thakur case are asking Lin to issue a final ruling — not just another temporary injunction — ordering the grants restored. Even if she does, the federal government could still appeal to a higher court.

The researchers’ legal team describes the stakes as severe. If the funding freeze is allowed to stand, they argue, scientists, graduate students and support staff who built their careers around this research will suffer lasting professional and reputational harm. They also warn of broader consequences: potential medical breakthroughs that never happen, diseases that go unstudied, and a decline in the United States’ global leadership in publicly funded research.

**How the keyword system worked**

A CalMatters review of the new court filings shows the agencies used keyword-based screening in several different ways.

The Department of Transportation, for example, identified six grants worth roughly $42 million for termination because the projects referenced “transportation equity,” focused on “disadvantaged communities,” or aimed at “diversifying the transportation workforce.” Three of those grants were led by a UC Davis researcher, and their cancellation forced 77 researchers to abandon 79 ongoing projects. According to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, the affected project leaders also had to lay off — or scramble to find new funding for — more than 40 graduate and undergraduate research assistants.

The National Institutes of Health acknowledged using an internal search tool to flag UC grants containing terms such as “health equity,” “workforce diversity,” “structural racism” and “sexual orientation.” The agency alone suspended or terminated more than 1,000 UC grants — including nearly 700 at UCLA — covering vaccine research, cancer studies and work on health disparities. That total is newly revealed in court records; UCLA had previously estimated closer to 500 canceled NIH grants. The agency also acknowledged that DOGE, the short-lived federal cost-cutting office once led by Elon Musk, may have used artificial intelligence tools to help identify grants for elimination.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs argue these disclosures show a clear pattern: the agencies identified viewpoints they wanted to suppress, searched their own grant databases for language reflecting those viewpoints, and terminated the funding accordingly — a direct violation of researchers’ First Amendment rights, they contend.

The Environmental Protection Agency, also named in the lawsuit, is reportedly working toward a settlement with the plaintiffs’ legal team to avoid further courtroom battles.

Meanwhile, a federal judge in Massachusetts dealt a separate setback to the administration last week in a related legal fight over funding cancellations. That case centered on a phrase the administration used repeatedly to justify pulling federal dollars — that funding no longer “effectuates agency priorities.” California, joined by 22 other states, argued there is no legal basis for canceling already-awarded federal funding simply because the White House’s goals had shifted. The judge agreed, siding with the states.

Original source: CalMatters

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U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez said artificial intelligence and deepfakes pose significant risks, but he ruled that the law likely violates the First Amendment.

“Most of AB 2839 acts as a hammer instead of a scalpel, serving as a blunt tool that hinders humorous expression and unconstitutionally stifles the free and unfettered exchange of ideas which is so vital to American democratic debate,” Mendez wrote.

The law took effect immediately after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it last month. The Democrat signed two other bills at the time aimed at cracking down on the use of artificial intelligence to create false images or videos in political ads ahead of the 2024 election. They are among the toughest laws of their kind in the nation.

Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for Newsom, said the laws protect democracy and preserve free speech.

“We’re confident the courts will uphold the state’s ability to regulate these types of dangerous and misleading deepfakes,” he said in a statement. “Satire remains alive and well in California — even for those who miss the punchline.”

But a lawyer representing YouTuber Christopher Kohls, who sued state officials over the law, called the ruling “straightforward.”

“We are gratified that the district court agreed with our analysis that new technologies do not change the principles behind First Amendment protections,” attorney Theodore Frank said.

The law was also unpopular among First Amendment experts, who urged Newsom last month to veto the measure. They argued that the law is unconstitutional and a government overreach.

“If something is truly defamatory, there’s a whole body of law and established legal standards for how to prove a claim for defamation consistent with the First Amendment,” David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, said in an interview in September. “The government is not free to create new categories of speech outside the First Amendment.”

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Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed Senate Bill 976 by state Sen. Nancy Skinner, which prohibits online platforms from knowingly providing an addictive feed to minors without parental consent. The law also stops social media platforms from sending notifications to minors during school hours and late at night — from midnight to 6 a.m. — while they sleep.

By Jan. 1, 2027, social media companies will have an obligation to know the age of their users and implement the requirements under SB 976, making children much safer on social media.

This law will save countless lives here in California, like our eternally 16-year-old son Sammy, who had a drug dealer driven to him by the algorithms on Snapchat, delivering a lethal dose of fentanyl to him like a pizza, after we were asleep. This law will help stop dangerous content from invading our homes through our children’s devices, help our kids pay better attention in school and get more sleep at night.

Although, like California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code Act passed two years ago, SB 976 will surely be challenged by the powerful lobbying groups funded by tech companies. It could be tied up in court for years.

Challenges to the law will likely be along the lines of a First Amendment violation or the oft-mentioned Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which essentially treats the internet like a blackboard. You can’t sue a blackboard for what someone writes on it, but the internet is far from whatever blackboard it may have resembled in 1996.

A recent ruling in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined that artificial intelligence and the algorithms they direct are not human speech and therefore not protected by the Constitution. It’s time for Congress to amend Section 230 and treat the social media industry like any other industry in our country, allowing parents like me to sue for negligence when our children die with the help of repeated social media messages inducing harm or pushing them toward illegal activities.

Harms such as suicide baiting, human trafficking, dangerous challenges like the “choking game,” and drug and firearm sales to minors will be minimized on social media thanks to SB 976, ultimately making California safer for our youth.

Its necessary sister bill, Assembly Bill 3216, authored by Assemblymember Josh Hoover and three others, was also just signed by our governor. School districts will be required to adopt a policy to limit or ban phones on school campuses by July 1, 2026, except in emergencies or with teacher permission as part of a lesson plan.

Smartphones turn into an addiction for many children. They check them incessantly, fidgeting with them in class when the teachers aren’t looking and easily miss important information. Grades may even improve if attention spans can return to normal.

Taken altogether, we can hope to see students more focused at school, learning more and feeling less anxious.

California has long been a leader in technology but that also makes it home to companies that helped create these dangers. Now the state can lead the way in cleaning up the mess we’ve made, helping keep other families from feeling the endless sorrow ours feels from the loss of our son.

Let’s hope these protections catch on around the country. Hopefully, as we say here: As California goes, so goes the nation.

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SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA — California’s representatives serving in the U.S House appear nearly united in response to the wave of protests at U.S. college campuses — including in Riverside County — that have erupted amid Israel’s actions in Gaza.

In a bipartisan move Wednesday, Riverside County’s Congressional members, along with their colleagues in California and across the nation, passed H.R. 6090, otherwise known as the Antisemitism Awareness Act.

Advocates say the legislation would empower the federal government to crack down on current campus protests by creating “a clear definition of antisemitism” that encompasses threats against Jewish people and certain criticisms of Israel. If it becomes law, the Education Department could use it to cut off funding to colleges that, for example, allow protests like those happening today.

First Amendment advocates, however, say the legislation is dangerous in that it would undo longstanding rights.

In a released statement Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union said H.R. 6090 “threatens to censor political speech critical of Israel on college campuses under the guise of addressing antisemitism.”

Christopher Anders, director of ACLU’s Democracy and Technology Policy Division, said, “Addressing rising antisemitism is critically important, but sacrificing American’s free speech rights is not the way to solve that problem. This bill would throw the full weight of the federal government behind an effort to stifle criticism of Israel and risks politicizing the enforcement of federal civil rights statutes precisely when their robust protections are most needed. The Senate must block this bill that undermines First Amendment protections before it’s too late.”

California has 52 House seats, with one vacancy. During Wednesday’s vote, 27 Golden State Democrats and 11 Republicans voted in favor of H.R. 6090. Eleven California Democrats cast no votes and two did not weigh in. With the exception of Mark Takano (D-39), all Riverside County representatives were in favor. Nationally, the bill was approved by a vote of 320-91, with a majority of Democrats — 133 — joining Republicans.

Congressman Darrell Issa (R-48) represents a large swath of Southwest Riverside County, as well as central and eastern parts of San Diego County. He released a statement following his yes vote. It read, in part, ” … after witnessing for more than six months a widespread and growing tide of antisemitism in America — much of it centered on the campuses of our colleges and universities – a bipartisan supermajority of the Congress took appropriate action.”

Republican Congressman Ken Calvert represents District 41, which stretches from Lake Elsinore to part of the Coachella Valley. After his yes vote, he posted a statement on X.

“I just joined a bipartisan majority of the House of Representatives in passing the Antisemitism Awareness Act on the first day of Jewish American Heritage Month. This bill reinforces Civil Rights Act protections for Jewish students who are subjected to antisemitism,” he wrote.

But in nearby San Diego, Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-51), who is Jewish, cast a no vote. In a released statement, she expressed deep concern about rising antisemitism but said H.R. 6090 is not the answer:

It’s unclear what the prospects are for the Antisemitism Awareness Act in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

As Washington debates the legislation, campus protests continue in California. Students at UC Riverside established a campus encampment Monday to protest Israel’s actions in Gaza. The students are calling for the school to end “all investments and endowments” benefiting the Jewish state.

“We are joining the student movement, the student Intifada,” a spokesperson for Students for Justice in Palestine, UCR chapter, told City News Service. “We are not leaving this encampment day and night until the university complies and meets with us to discuss our demands.”

There have been no reports of violence at UCR amid the protest, unlike others in the Golden State. A nine-hour standoff came to a tense and chaotic end at UCLA when police in riot gear breached and dismantled a pro-Palestine encampment at the school early Thursday, terminating a weeklong protest and taking over 100 into custody.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s legal team is characterizing his indictment in the special counsel’s 2020 election interference investigation as an attack on the former president’s right to free speech. But the case is not merely about Trump’s lies but also about the efforts he took to subvert the election, prosecutors say.

The early contours of a potential legal and political defense began to emerge in the hours after the charges were unsealed, with defense lawyer John Lauro accusing the Justice Department of having “criminalized” the First Amendment and asserting that his client had relied on the advice of attorneys around him in 2020. He also indicated he would look to slow the case down despite prosecutors’ pledge of a speedy trial.

But experts say there’s little legal merit to Trump’s First Amendment claims, particularly given the breadth of steps taken by Trump and his allies that prosecutors say transformed mere speech into action in a failed bid to undo the election. Those efforts, prosecutors wrote in the indictment, amounted to a disruption of a “bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election.”

“If all that this was about was lies or the alleged lies of President Trump, then he’d have a pretty good legal defense based on the First Amendment,” said Floyd Abrams, a longtime First Amendment attorney. “But the theory of the indictment is that the speech of the president and the falsehoods of the president were part of a general effort to steal the election.”

Lauro said Tuesday night in an interview with CNN that the indictment is an attack on “free speech and political advocacy.”

“And there’s nothing that’s more protected under the First Amendment than political speech,” he said.

The First Amendment does indeed give wide berth for all manner of speech, and it’s well established that lying to the public isn’t itself a crime. Special counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors seemed to have anticipated the First Amendment line of defense, conceding head-on in their indictment that Trump had the right to falsely claim that fraud had cost him the election and to legally challenge the results.

But they also said the conduct of Trump and six co-conspirators he’s alleged to have plotted with went far beyond speech.

“Saying a statement in isolation is one thing. But when you say it to another person and the two of you speak in a way and exchange information in a way that leads to action — that you want to take action to do something with that speech — then arguably it becomes unprotected,” said Mary Anne Franks, a law professor at George Washington University.

Those actions include enlisting slates of fake electors in seven battleground states won by Democrat Joe Biden to sign false certificates representing themselves as legitimate electors; trying to use the investigative power of the Justice Department to launch sham election fraud probes; and badgering his vice president, Mike Pence, to disrupt the ceremonial counting of electoral votes before Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.

That process was indeed disrupted when rioters fueled by Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election stormed the U.S. Capitol in a violent and chaotic clash with police.

“Insofar as he’s giving instructions, and planning to do things that are themselves illegal and involve action, like the signing of false certificates and so forth, that’s not a very good defense,” said Michael Dorf, a constitutional law expert at Cornell Law School.

Trump’s attorney has also suggested that his defense may at least partly focus on the idea that Trump was acting in good faith because he truly believed his bogus election fraud claims. But the indictment is careful to show how Trump was repeatedly told by people close to him that there was no truth to his claims and that his efforts to undermine the election were misguided.

And some of the comments detailed in the indictment suggest that Trump knew he had lost and that his actions were wrong. In one encounter days before the riot, Trump told Pence he was “too honest” after the vice president said he didn’t have the authority to reject electoral votes, the indictment says.

“I can imagine that prosecutors will use that line over and over and over in the trial, in their opening statement and closing argument, to show that he really didn’t believe the things he was saying,” said Brandon Fox, a former federal prosecutor who now works as a defense attorney.

Another challenge for Trump’s defense is that many of the witnesses he would want to call to the stand to say that they told Trump there was election fraud are co-conspirators who will likely be reluctant to testify.

“Typically in federal prosecutions, those unnamed co-conspirators are not that thrilled about testifying for the defense because they are worried about being charged in the future,” Fox said.

The legal proceedings will be presided over by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, an appointee of President Barack Obama who has stood out as one of the toughest punishers of rioters. She has also ruled against Trump before, refusing in November 2021 to block the release of documents to the House’s Jan. 6 committee by asserting executive privilege.

No matter the legal viability of the First Amendment arguments, Chutkan is nonetheless expected to let the defense lawyers raise those kinds of arguments and let a jury decide the line between permissible speech and illegal action, said John Fishwick, a former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia.

“The worry for a judge will be, ‘Well, if I don’t let this evidence come in, if I don’t let the present former president raise the defense of (the) First Amendment and he’s found guilty, then there’s the risk of another trial,’” Fishwick said.

“So a smart judge,” he added, “is always going to err on giving the defense as many breaks as that judge deems reasonable.”

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