This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Western standards for free speech repeatedly have come under attack in recent years in a number of court cases, and now the conviction of one protester in the United Kingdom has highlighted how close that nation has come to the full restoration of blasphemy prosecutions, which were abandoned in 2008.
Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University and counselor to Congress on constitutional issues, is warning about "how the United Kingdom has continued its erosion of free speech by pushing an effective blasphemy law."
The most recent development was the conviction of a London man of a "religiously aggravated public order offence" for burning a Quran.
It was Hamit Coskun, 50, a Turkish-born Armenian-Kurdish atheist, who was arrested for protesting the Islamic rule of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Ankara.
For his statements, he was slashed by a Muslim man with a knife, and because he was attacked, a judge, John McGarva, claimed his actions were "provocative" and were "motivated at least in party by a hatred of Muslims."
"Judge McGarva made clear that his views of Islam would not be tolerated in the United Kingdom," Turley explained, noting the judge claimed: "After considering the evidence, I find you have a deep-seated hatred of Islam and its followers. That's based on your experiences in Turkey and the experiences of your family. It's not possible to separate your views about the religion to your views about the followers. I do accept that the choice of location was in part that you wanted to protest what you see as the Islamification of Turkey. But you were also motivated by the hatred of Muslims and knew some would be at the location."
Turley said there's "fear" that such laws attacking "hate" and that outlaw criticism of Islam will "constructively restore" blasphemy prosecutions in the U.K.
The Free Speech Union, representing Coskun, promised an appeal.
"A Turkish political refugee has been convicted of a criminal offence in Britain for burning a copy of the Koran outside the Turkish Consulate in London. The Free Speech Union (FSU) funded his defence. Now we need your help to fund his appeal. Hamit Coskun, who spent nearly 10 years in prison in Turkey for his political activism, was found guilty of a religiously aggravated public order offence. The case turned on a deeply troubling point: one of the Crown's main arguments was that because a bystander attacked him with a knife, he must have caused 'harassment, alarm or distress'. This is a dangerous precedent. It effectively creates a heckler's veto by violence, and opens the door to the return of blasphemy law in all but name. We're supporting Hamit not because we're anti-Islam, but because no one should be compelled to observe the blasphemy codes of a faith they do not share. Free speech includes the freedom to criticise religion. We will take this case to appeal. With your support, we can defend a fundamental principle of liberal democracy: no religion is beyond criticism."
Conservative politician Kemi Badenoch joined with a comment that "de facto blasphemy laws will set this country on the road to ruin."
The The Gateway Pundit reported that man who slashed Coskun, Moussa Kadri, later pleaded guilty to the assault.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Computer tech is advancing in a lot of ways these days, what with multiple artificial intelligence programs now ready and able to enhance, and change reality.
One example is a new video with President Donald Trump explaining a plan to use dinosaurs to protect America's border.
Velociraptors on the ground, carrying mounted Border Patrol agents.
And pterodactyls in the sky.
Twitchy monitors comments on X, and said, "Imagine if we had our own Jurassic Park spanning the length of the border. We could have guard towers and towering Tyrannosaurus Rexes patrolling the border. Those T. Rexes would be known as the 'short arms of the law.'"
Trump is shown talking about the biotech company that "resurrected" dire wolves.
"If they can bring back wolves, they can bring back dinosaurs. Terrible lizard. That's what dinosaur means if you break it down," he said, citing the benefits of velociraptors on the ground: "They'll tear your head clear off."
Other social media reactions:
"You can't just fake something like this. Don't try to gaslight me … it won't work."
"Brilliant."
"Finally … weaponozed (sic) T. rex."
"grok, this is fake, right?"
"I'm sad that this is satire. I want CBD on mpunted Dinos."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
'Not a single child should continue to suffer because of the previous administration's failures'
The administration of Democrat Joe Biden failed to investigate 65,000 cases of children flagged for "concern" when they arrived at the southern U.S. border and tried to enter, according to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
A report in the Washington Examiner said the cases were noted by the government workers and contractors who addressed the situations of unaccompanied immigrant children in government custody after they crossed the border.
Grassley, chief of the Senate Judiciary Committee, shared with the Examiner documents he obtained from the Department of Health and Human Services.
They confirmed the administration of President Donald Trump has identified a backlog of 65,000 reports filed by workers about children in custody or their sponsors who "warranted concern."
Instead of investigating, the report said, the Biden administration prioritized the "expeditious release of children to sponsors."
"The 65,000 flagged cases were not addressed before children were released to adults in the United States between 2021 and 2024," the report said, and now Grassley wants the Trump administration to work on the problem.
"Not a single child should continue to suffer because of the previous administration's failures," Grassley told HHS chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The report noted more than 500,000 children crossed the border unaccompanied under Biden's regime.
Often they encountered Border Patrol, then were turned over to HHS.
"As they interviewed children and looked into applications of adult sponsors, HHS workers and contractors flagged countless cases as being of concern," the report said, noting the 65,000 cases included 56,591 as triggering concern, 7,346 raising questions about human trafficking and 1,688 showing evidence of fraud "in terms of an adult posing as a related family member."
Grassley previously has raised evidence, and concerns, about the poor results of the HHS's Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is supposed to vet sponsors who take children.
His work has revealed records showing children were placed with suspicious sponsors, leading to concerns about trafficking and smuggling.
The report noted that during the Biden regime, two-thirds of the subpoenas issued for oversight were ignored.
In fact, Biden officials at the time ordered employees to refuse to answer questions.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A new media narrative has emerged claiming the president's speech patterns show that he likely is suffering "cognitive decline" – but the president with the supposed problem is the 47th, not the 46th.
Amid increasing agreement in establishment media that Joe Biden was not serving with a full deck in the White House, now the Daily Beast is hoping to shift that diagnosis to President Donald Trump.
Writes the site's chief national correspondent, David Gardner: "Donald Trump's rambling speeches and stream-of-consciousness press briefings could be symptoms of his 'cognitive decline,' according to one of America's top rhetoric experts."
Noting Trump's age when he began his second term, 78, Gardner notes, "His father, Fred, was reportedly diagnosed with dementia in the early 1990s and died of pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease at age 93 in 1999."
The Daily Beast quotes Jennifer R. Mercieca, professor of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University:
"His lack of focus makes it seem as though he's experiencing cognitive decline, that his brain is not well-disciplined, and he's unable to maintain a thought and carry it through to a logical conclusion," she said.
Mercieca, the author of "Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump," added: "Trump sees himself as someone who is unscripted and not teleprompted. He likes to brand himself as a 'truthteller' who can and will say anything that comes to mind.
"Unfortunately, that makes his speeches difficult to follow as he digresses from thought to thought – seemingly connecting ideas at random."
The irony of Mercieca's analysis was not lost on X users. On posted: "Daily Beast From 2021-2025: The President is doing back flips and differential calculus just out of sight … we can barely keep up with him. Daily Beast Today: Forget what we just said."
X user Rusty Rockefeller addressed the premise of the report, saying, "You wouldn't know cognitive decline if it was shoehorned through a primary, and was in the White House for 3 and a half years only to be tossed on the curb after crumbling for a woman without any accomplishments."
Another user referenced an oft-mentioned excuse for Biden's speech difficulties: "It's just a stutter."
Meanwhile, the Daily Caller reported Wednesday that Trump has already become one of the "most accessible" presidents in modern history, with 111 media appearances in 138 days as president.
Reports the site, "The president's easy accessibility is a stark contrast from Biden, who held the fewest number of press conferences in modern times and had been hidden from the press by his aides to hide his cognitive decline, according to 'Original Sin,' a book written by CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios' Alex Thompson."
Trump responded to 1,009 questions from journalists in his first month in office, which was seven times the amount of questions answered by Biden in that same period.
Notably, the 47th president does not use note cards with the names, photos and affiliations of reporters as a tool in press conferences, as did his predecessor.
The Daily Beast insists, however, "Trump has shocked audiences with sudden changes of subject and repeated topics and claims," specifically citing his weekend address to the graduating class at West Point.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
An Illinois man is fighting a subpoena from officials in Riverview, Missouri, who have demanded he appear before them and answer questions on their claims of "inciting violence" and "cyber bullying" after he went online and posted a joke about the town mayor, Michael Cornell.
And now the Institute for Justice, which has successfully fought similar battles, has written to the mayor and the town board warning them it appears as if they are retaliating against the man, James Carroll, based on his speech in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
The legal team explained it has written to Riverview officials with the message, "The First Amendment is a bulwark against thin-skinned government officials abusing their authority to punish their critics."
It was IJ lawyer Ben Field who added, "You can understand why an elected official would be tempted to retaliate against somebody making a joke at their expense, which is why the Constitution stands in their way."
The IJ is calling for officials to rescind their subpoena and halt their retaliation.
"Joking about elected officials is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, making Riverview's attempt to punish James a flagrant violation of his constitutional rights and an affront to a core tenet of American democracy," the IJ noted.
"James wrote his joke poking fun at Cornell on the website Nextdoor in early April. Days later, on April 15, and again on April 16, James found a subpoena on his door from the city of Riverview. The subpoena demanded James appear at a Riverview meeting to testify on several allegations, including that he cyber bullied Riverview residents, threatened a city official, and that he defamed someone's character," the organization revealed.
James sued the city to quash the subpoena, and a hearing is scheduled soon.
"The First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring protected speech. That includes retaliating against the speaker. The courts have been clear about this issue. In a very similar case to this—one which IJ argued—the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a joke published online was fully protected by the First Amendment," the IJ said.
In that case, the court said, "[t]he First Amendment's protections apply to jokes, parodies, satire, and the like, whether clever or poor taste."
Field explained to city officials: "It appears that Mayor Cornell issued this subpoena in response to Mr. Carroll's online joke—putatively to investigate the joke, but also with the (likely intended) side effect of inconveniencing Mr. Carroll by compelling him to travel to Riverview to attend a hearing where he would be confronted by City officials about his joke. If that is correct, and the subpoena was indeed retaliation against a joke about a public official, then it is plainly a violation of the First Amendment."
The letter said, "The subpoena hints at some categories of speech that are not constitutionally protected, but it is obvious that none of them applies to an innocuous joke like Mr. Carroll's. For instance, the subpoena mentions '[s]lander and [d]efamation.' But when it comes to public figures like an elected mayor, there can be no defamation without 'actual malice—that is, with knowledge that [the statement] was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.' Here, Mr. Carroll's joke made no statement of fact at all—at most, it implied an opinion based on prior allegations against Mayor Cornell. The subpoena also hints that Mr. Carroll's joke was somehow responsible for '[i]nciting violence.' But, as for defamation of a public official, the constitutional standard for incitement is demanding. It is satisfied only when 'advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.' A (rather mild) online joke comes nowhere near meeting that high bar."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Members of Congress are discussing whether they'll use their power of subpoena to compel testimony from officials, and former officials, of ActBlue.
That's a massive online fundraising scheme used by Democrats in recent years to raise billions of dollars.
One problem is that there have been accusations that some of the money has come in, illegally, from overseas sources. Further, there have been complaints of single donors, sometimes seniors on fixed incomes, donating thousands of times over the course of a year adding up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, suggesting it operates as a money laundering scheme.
A report from Just the News now explains that three committee chiefs are threatening to issue subpoenas after officials for ActBlue refused to testify voluntarily in the congressional investigation that is started.
The publication said it obtained evidence that the witnesses "initially agreed to voluntary, transcribed interviews," but then suddenly that backed out.
That happened when President Donald Trump asked the Department of Justice to investigate them, the report said.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., confirmed in the report the problem.
"As we have explained, the Committees are examining allegations that ActBlue, a leading political fundraising organization, allowed bad actors, including foreign actors, to exploit the company's online platform to make fraudulent political donations," the three wrote to witnesses.
That could end up being "criminal conduct," they said.
The flip-flops, the report said, involved former chief revenue officer Peter Slutsky.
A lawyer representing him first said an interview was possible, then "changed course."
Similar suggestions appear in letters to nearly all the witnesses who got letters, the report said.
"The relevant precedent is clear that the mere existence of state or federal law enforcement investigations has no bearing on Congress's oversight power," the committee chiefs explained. "As such, an Executive Branch investigation into matters related to oversight by the Committees is not a legitimate basis on which you may decline our request."
The committees allowed the witnesses until May 29 to schedule an appearance, or be faced with a subpoena.
The same members of Congress had raised their concerns when Joe Biden still was in the White House, pointing out that there were concerns that "U.S. adversaries may have donated through the platform."
There was no response.
At the time, they demanded access to "Suspicious Activity Reports" related to money passing through ActBlue.
Steil also has pushing for the Secure Handling of Internet Electronic Donations (SHIELD) Act to set bars to foreign money being injected into American politics.
ActBlue has denied any wrongdoing.
WND previously reported that a congressional committee already has written to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi explaining that its investigation shows that the security measures used by ActBlue are weak.
Earlier, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the chief of the House Oversight Committee, explained, "We're investigating ActBlue the same way we investigated the Bidens. … We're starting with the suspicious activity reports — bank violations that flag financial crimes. And let me tell you, the evidence is overwhelming."
Several attorneys general from states also have begun investigating.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Yet another lawsuit has been filed against the state of Colorado over its years-long agenda to impose anti-Christian beliefs on Christian people and organizations.
The state, run by leftist Democrat Gov. Jared Polis, Democrat-majority House and Senate bodies, and an all-Democrat state Supreme Court that in pursuit of its partisan agenda tried to bar President Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential election ballot, has taken actions dating back years already in its pro-LGBT, pro-abortion ideologies.
The problem is they conflict with the Constitution, as the Supreme Court already has ruled multiple times.
A new report at the Christian Post explains the latest action comes from a national grassroots group, Defending Education, which sued Colorado over its new law that also punishes parents who don't support transgender beliefs adopted by their children.
A new state law makes it "a discriminatory act to refuse to call trans-identifying individuals by their chosen name."
The group was joined by Colorado Parent Advocacy Network, Protect Kids Colorado, Do No Harm and Dr. Travis Morrell in the lawsuit over House Bill 25-1312.
Nicki Neily, the founder and president of Defending Education, told the Christian Post she believes that the new law "compels speech on sex and gender and punishes citizens who disagree."
Neily explained, "Citizens cannot be forced to say what the government wants them to say. That's why we have a First Amendment."
Morrell, a medical doctor, has discussions with patients on difficult topics like "alcohol abuse, smoking, anxiety, body dysmorphia, self-harm, and, relevant here, gender dysphoria," the lawsuit says.
"In these cases, it is vital that he be able to address the root cause," including the negative impacts of cross-sex hormones and body-mutilating surgeries that are part of the transgender beliefs.
"For example, sex-change surgeries can result in 'extensive scarring,' and patients who take testosterone may experience 'severe cystic acne.' The suit argues that Morrell must be permitted 'to provide accurate information regarding the risks associated with these interventions,'" the report explains.
The state already has lost twice at the Supreme Court in its agenda to force Christian business operators in Colorado to spout the pro-LGBT agenda in their dealings, once with a cake baker and once with a web designer. A third similar case is pending before the Supreme Court now regarding the state's attempts to control the beliefs and speech of counselors. In the first case, the Supreme Court scolded the state for its "hostility" to Christianity.
Colorado taxpayers already have been stung for millions of dollars in legal expenses in the failed ideology imposed on them by leftist leaders.
Further, another lawsuit was filed against the state just days ago.
It involves a policy change by the Colorado Department of Early Childhood that is trying to force a longtime Christian youth camp to promote the anti-Christian mindset of transgenderism.
In direct violation to its religious beliefs and constitutionally protected religious rights.
"The government has no place telling religious summer camps that it's 'lights out' for upholding their religious beliefs about human sexuality," said ADF lawyer Andrea Dill. "Camp IdRaHaJe exists to present the truth of the Gospel to children who are building character and lifelong memories. But the Colorado government is putting its dangerous agenda—that is losing popularity across the globe—ahead of its kids. We are urging the court to allow IdRaHaJe to operate as it has for over 75 years: as a Christian summer camp that accepts all campers without fear of being punished for its beliefs."
The ADF announcement confirmed it has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Colorado on behalf of IdRaHaJe, which takes its name from the hymn, "I'd Rather Have Jesus."
The state policy change would, in fact, force all licensed resident camps in the state to believe and teach the fiction that boys can be girls and girls can be boys.
Such transgender ideologies exploded under the promotions adopted by Joe Biden when he was in the White House.
For those who follow the science, such ideology in fact is a myth, as being male or female is embedded in the human body down to the DNA level.
The camp has operated in the Bailey, Colorado, area, southwest of Denver, since 1948.
Colorado also recently embedded an abortion "right" in its state constitution.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Billions of dollars from the American economy are sent outside of its boundaries every year.
They are remittances sent by workers inside the United States, legal or not, to recipients, mostly families, in those other countries.
For example, the World Bank documents that those remittances account for about 17% of the entire GDP of Northern Central America.
India gets some $32 billion a year.
In Mexico, those funds make up a full 4.5% of the nation's entire GDP.
Those interests, obviously, oppose a plan being considered by Republicans in Congress to tax that cash stream.
"Remittances are the fruit of the efforts of those who, through their honest work, strengthen not only the Mexican economy but also the United States', which is why we consider this measure to be arbitrary and unjust," charged Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
But according to a report from the Daily Caller News Foundation, it's under consideration.
The present version of the GOP reconciliation bill to implement Trump's policies would tax those funds 5%.
That would be for non-citizens or foreign national senders who dispatch money outside the U.S.
"The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the tax will generate more than $22 billion in revenue over a decade, which Republicans expect will help fund other parts of President Donald Trump's agenda, including extending the tax cuts enacted during Trump's first term," the report explained.
Not only is the idea seen as raising revenue for America, but combatting drug trafficking and illegal immigration as well.
"It's a two-fold win: taxing remittances will help slow down the cash flow to cartels and will also create a new revenue source we can use to build the wall and secure our border," Rep. Kevin Hern, of Oklahoma, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. "We must be using every tool at our disposal to combat the cartels smuggling fentanyl into this country."
Remittances to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras all have soared from up to 20% in just the past few months, the report said.
White House spokesman Alex Pfeiffer said the tax plan would reduce the "pull" factor of attracting illegals to the U.S.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
In a stunning decision Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court, with support even from leftists like Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, gave a green light to President Donald Trump's efforts to deport hundreds of thousands of individuals given special protected status by Joe Biden.
The court's only leftist to oppose the move was Ketanji Jackson, Biden's appointee and a known opponent to just about anything that Trump proposes.
The Star-Advertiser explained decision allows the White House to strip temporary protected status from Venezuelans living in the U.S., who under Biden's leftist ideologies, had been protected.
The massive victory for Trump comes "as the Republican president moves to ramp up deportations as part of his hardline approach to immigration," the report explained.
The court agreed to the Justice Department's request to overturn an order from Edward Chen, a trial court judge in California who had halted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's decision to terminate a Temporary Protected Status program.
The court did leave open a door to challenges by migrants.
And the Department of Homeland Security documented that 348,202 Venezuelans were given the special protection by Biden. They claimed at the time was that Venezuela was an unsafe country.
The report noted the program is a designation under U.S. law for nations experiencing war or other disasters, giving those protected permission to stay in the U.S.
"The U.S. government under Biden, a Democrat, twice designated Venezuela for TPS, in 2021 and 2023. In January, days before Trump returned to office, the Biden administration announced an extension of the programs to October 2026," the report said.
Noem then rescinded that decision.
Chen had claimed, at the time he decided to take over the decision-making process for the executive branch, "Generalization of criminality to the Venezuelan TPS population as a whole is baseless and smacks of racism predicated on generalized false stereotypes."
It was that fault by Chen that Department of Justice lawyers had pointed out to the Supreme Court.
They explained, "The (lower) court's order contravenes fundamental Executive Branch prerogatives and indefinitely delays sensitive policy decisions in an area of immigration policy that Congress recognized must be flexible, fast-paced, and discretionary."
The report said, "In a separate case on Friday, the Supreme Court kept in place its block on Trump's deportations of Venezuelan migrants under a 1798 law historically used only in wartime, faulting his administration for seeking to remove them without an adequate legal process."
Trump pointed out over the weekend that decision was "a bad and dangerous day for America."
The Daily Mail said the latest decision was a "major immigration win" for Trump, "as he seeks to speed up mass deportations."
This issue has been one of a multitude on which judges in entry-level courts to the federal judiciary repeatedly have taken control of executive branch decisions with nationwide injunctions, a separate issue that also is pending before the Supreme Court.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Sonia Sotomayor, one of the nine members of the Supreme Court bench, long has been known to be demanding.
She's complained that she's traumatized when her liberal agenda doesn't win at the court.
And she's known to try to influence factors outside the court's jurisdiction, recently telling lawyers at a leftist conclave meeting while President Donald Trump is in office that "we" cannot lose the battles "we are facing."
Such a public alignment with one side on multiple cases that will appear before the high court was a stunning alteration to the neutrality expected from judges.
Now, during a hearing on the constitutionality of the 600 federal judges across the nation all having the right to dictate and control executive branch decisions on the management of its agencies, she's even drawn a public reaction from Chief Justice John Roberts.
He had to rein her in, during the hearing that also addresses Trump's interpretation of birthright citizenship to mean that those children born of parents not legally entitled to residency in the United States are not automatically U.S. citizens.
Fox News noted it was after "repeated interruptions" by Sotomayor of lawyers arguing for the executive branch that Roberts had to interrupt, too.
"Can I hear the rest of his answer?" Roberts added to the conversation.
The report described Roberts has having "reined in" Sotomayor.
"Sotomayor dominated questioning for several minutes at the outset of Thursday's argument after taking over from Justice Clarence Thomas. She pressed U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer for President Donald Trump's administration on several points relating to the authority for federal courts to issue nationwide injunctions, often speaking over the lawyer and interrupting him."
The report said Sotomayor was actually arguing against the executive branch's constitutional authority, insisting that his order invalidating birthright citizenship violated four Supreme Court precedents.
And she was arguing on behalf of the challengers to the president's policy that that justified a federal judge granting an injunction stopping executive branch actions nationwide.
"You are claiming that not just the Supreme Court, that both the Supreme Court and no lower court, can stop an executive from universally violating holdings by this court," she charged.
"We are not claiming that because we're conceding that there could be an appropriate case only in class only," Sauer said.
"But I hear that …," Sotomayor interrupted.
Then Roberts stepped in.
Sauer then elaborated on the president's position that federal courts can intervene on behalf of specific plaintiffs before them, but not nationwide, except that the Supreme Court can do that in some circumstances.
Trump's lawyers have argued nationwide injunctions exceed the authority of the district courts, which are the entry level courts to the federal system.
They violate equitable authority and create a wide range of problems, he said.
Universal injunctions "require judges to make rushed, high-stakes, low-information decisions," Sauer said. "They operate asymmetrically, forcing the government to win everywhere," and "invert," in the administration's view, the ordinary hierarchical hierarchy of appellate review. They create the ongoing risk of conflicting judgments," Fox explained.
The decision in the fast-tracked case, expected in weeks or even days, could impact the more than 310 federal lawsuits that leftists and others have launched against Trump during his second term in office.
WND has reported on Sotomayor's well-established reputation as a leftist on the court, supporting all manner of Democrat causes and opposing Trump.
Her activism moved into new territory recently when she told a leftist conference, "Right now we can't lose the battles we are facing."
Without identifying specific "battles," she said, "In all of the uncertainty that exists at this moment, this is our time to stand up and be heard."
"If you're not used to fighting losing battles, don't become a lawyer. Our job is to stand for people who can't do it themselves," she said.
Actually, according to constitutional expert Jonathan Turley, who not only has testified before Congress as an expert on the Constitution but has represented members in court in constitutional disputes, Sotomayor previously has been scorched for "making public comments that some viewed as overly political or partisan."
That topic included her demands that law students organize to support abortion rights, a subject that has been before the court many times and undoubtedly will appear there again.
Turley noted Sotomayor's blasts "presumably" targeted President Trump.
"Sotomayor made a number of inspiring comments to encourage lawyers to pursue justice despite the odds or challenges," Turley explained.
But they "appeared to veer into more partisan territory."
Her reference to "we" was a surprise, he said, and many viewed it as a rallying cry for "the left."
He explained, "Clearly, such comments are subject to different interpretations. Newspapers like the New York Times made the obvious connection, stating that it was made 'against the backdrop of immense stress on lawyers and the legal system from the Trump administration.'"
Leftist lawyer Marc Elias, a key part of the fabricated 2016 conspiracy theory assembled by Democrats that alleged "Russia collusion" on the part of Trump's campaign then, credited Sotomayor with "solidarity" with leftist ideals.
"She understands that while we must bring difficult cases and be willing to lose, we must always fight to win. And by lending her voice in 'solidarity,' she affirmed that it is 'our time to stand up and be heard," he said.
Turley noted that Sotomayor previously lobbied publicly for abortion, telling students, "You know, I can't change Texas' law, but you can, and everyone else who may or may not like it can go out there and be lobbying forces in changing laws that you don't like. I am pointing out to that when I shouldn't because they tell me I shouldn't. But my point is that there are going to be a lot of things you don't like" and require public action.
He said Sotomayor's calls to "fight this fight" were injudicious.
"The court is set to hear a number of key cases on the Trump policies, including a key argument next week on the rapidly expanding number of national injunctions imposed by district courts. This is not the time to be seen as speaking in 'solidarity' with one side," he said.