First Amendment

The secretary of state has accidentally shed light on the burdensome restrictions that the State Department puts on its overseas employees and their families.

Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia denied the government's motion for a temporary restraining order to block distribution of the new memoir by former national security advisor John Bolton. Though Judge Lamberth ruled that "Bolton’s unilateral conduct raises grave national security concerns," he found that "the horse is out of the barn" regarding Bolton's memoir—which will be published on June 23—and wrote that, "For reasons that hardly need to be stated, the Court will not order a nationwide seizure and destruction of a political memoir."

Last week, a controversy in the National Basketball Association (NBA) ignited widespread public conversation about the perils of doing business in China. In a now-deleted post, Daryl Morey, who is the general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted a picture of an image that said “fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.” The Rockets’s owner pushed back, tweeting that Morey “does not speak for” Houston’s team.

On Tuesday, former intelligence and military officials filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the government's pre-publication review process, which requires former personnel to submit public writing for review before publication. The complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, is available in full here and below.