ABOVE: Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, was cemented as a premier writer of late 19th century America with his works "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." Find out more about his life and writing in this video.
Shuttering the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting Will Undermine
Democracy, Endanger Communities
WASHINGTON — (FreePress) -- 8-5-2025 -- On Aug. 1 the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced that it would shut down operations later this year. The move follows Congress’ mid-July decision to claw back $1.1 billion in funding from the previously approved federal budget for the corporation, which provides federal support for the operations and programming at hundreds of NPR and PBS affiliates across the country.
CPB has reportedly told its employees that a majority of positions will be eliminated on Sept. 30 with a small transition team staying on through January 2026. “We now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” CPB president and CEO Patricia Harrison said in a statement.
Zeroing out federal funding for public media has been a dream of Republicans since the Nixon administration. But the congressional vote, which was prompted by a rescission request from the Trump White House, marks the first time they’ve succeeded. Past efforts ran up against an outspoken public — including people of every political persuasion — who believe federal funding for public media is taxpayer money well spent.
Hardest hit by the closure of CPB will be smaller and rural stations, some of which receive more than 50 percent of their budgets from the federal government.
Free Press Co-CEO Craig Aaron:
“The shuttering of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — and the many dedicated public servants losing their jobs — is devastating for this country. It puts vital outlets in communities all across the country in jeopardy and endangers essential educational programs, news coverage, and life-saving emergency alerts. The ripples will be felt far beyond Washington, D.C..
“The end of CPB is the direct result of the deep and corrupt failure of Congress and the Trump administration to invest in informing the American public. They have trashed decades of democracy-building work and will deny many journalists, artists, educators and creators the opportunity to be heard. The cost of their decisions is almost incalculable in terms of lost opportunities, untold stories, closed minds — and yes, the lives of people who won’t know about the next earthquake, wildfire or tsunami before it’s too late.
“Public broadcasting is far from perfect, and for too many years the leadership of institutions like CPB, NPR and PBS have tried too hard to placate the politicians who were committed to their destruction. Despite incredible popularity — and even greater public need — the public media system has been starved and sidelined by partisan attacks and poor choices. But the promise of public media is still worth fighting for, and so are the many journalists, producers, engineers and employees who have committed their careers to these institutions and produced incredible work under trying circumstances.”
“But this is about far more than one government agency or the embarrassingly low public investment the United States makes in public media compared to the rest of the world. The elimination of the Corporation of Public Broadcasting is about trying to end accountability, pump out propaganda, and sow the kind of chaos and disinformation under which authoritarianism thrives. We won’t stop that march with pledge drives and tote bags.
“It will take years of organizing to rebuild what the Trump regime has demolished in six months. And that will require a vision that goes far beyond what we lost today — one that doesn’t just replace what’s been lost but reinvents public media as a bulwark against authoritarianism that meets the civic needs of all our communities. This is about fighting for democracy and recognizing that if we don’t keep fighting we stand to lose a lot more than this.”
Background:
In February, Free Press Action Co-CEO Craig Aaron testified before the House Judiciary Committee about the Trump administration’s censorship of media viewpoints the president dislikes, calling it a “free-speech emergency.” In May 2024, he testified about false claims of bias at NPR and PBS. Free Press Action is leading grassroots efforts to craft public policy that supports local noncommercial news and information.
The Myth of the 'Bleeding
Heart Liberal' Never Dies
By Steve Rensberry
Commentary
RP News (OPINION) -- 7/19/2025 -- I read a comment yesterday from a conservative who shared a familiar trope. Liberals are soft; conservatives are hard. The gentleman said that when it comes to liberals he has always thought of them as people who have "big hearts but small minds." Conservatives, on the other hand, are intelligent and practical and not afraid to make the tough decisions, he said.
Ok, got it, the old "bleeding heart liberal" myth which I've heard repeated since about birth, is still alive. If only it wasn't such a malicious and mistaken characterization. Think about it. Conservatives show disdain for liberals because they care -- too much!! They should be meaner, crueler and more inhumane! But seriously, who decides exactly where that balance point is? The illiberal worries about people loving their neighbor too much, but the equally important question is: how insensitive is too insensitive? When is punishment just and when does it become cruel and unusual to the point of death?
On April 28, 2020, news organizations were conveying official reports of more than one million people who died from the covid infection in the U.S. Were those lives just collateral damage to keep capitalist society functioning? How fatalistic do we want to be? I'm not sure, but I'd prefer to be on the side of the people who care too much, rather than on the side of those who care too little.
On the same subject, I was also called a "libtard" yesterday, by a conservative -- the tired old and disgusting anti-liberal slur that never dies. It is, I suppose, an indication of the true state of existential being for conservatives, even here in 2025, making themselves feel strong and smart by thinking of those they despise as retarded or sub-par. Being a freethinker, skeptic and lover of truth apparently is a hill too steep to climb for those needing absolute metaphysical certainty, however dubious.
The 'libtard' comment came from a poor misguided soul on a social media page promoting the ultra rightwing and 'project 2025'-loving Hillsdale College, sadly located in my birth state of Michigan. "Warning, do not engage with a bored libtard who only has a keyboard for company," said 'Hati Mari,' urging another poster not to engage with me. Well of course, because unlike liberal institutions which teach students to learn and discover and think for themselves, this college does not teach people how to think independently or to engage independently, it teaches them to be obedient, in total thought, to a specific ideology. I really thought they were beyond using such a dumb word like 'libtard' that applies literally to no one, but Hillsdale's primary glue is an irrational, quasi-philosolphical, fundamentalist hatred for liberalism, secularism, and other religions beside the one they parrot, so I'm not surprised.
A brief summary from the rationalwiki site, a much more trustworthy info source in many respects than the college itself. "Hillsdale College is a far-right Christian college located in Hillsdale, Michigan. They are strongly against social justice, diversity, and multiculturalism. Hillsdale has a love-hate view when it comes to mass murderer and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. The college was in favor of the Euromaidan uprising in Ukraine, but they essentially support the Russian occupation of Crimea, as they claim that it was in opposition to NATO expansion. Hillsdale College also condemned the invasion of Ukraine, but they also see Putin as a conservative strong man."
Woman Fights 4-Year Prison
Sentence for Black Lives Matter Protest
ACLU of South Carolina Has Represented Martin Since 2023
COLUMBIA, S.C. (ACLU) — 7/15/2025 — A South Carolina woman who received a 4-year prison sentence for participating in a Black Lives Matter protest during the summer of 2020 is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review her case.
Brittany Martin is a Black woman, mother, chef, and activist who joined protests in Sumter following the May 2020 police murder of George Floyd. Local police arrested her after five days of nonviolent protest, and she was convicted of the South Carolina state crime of “breach of peace of a high and aggravated nature.” She was sentenced to four years in state prison. She was pregnant at the time of her conviction and gave birth to her daughter, Blessing, while incarcerated, prompting nationwide outrage and shows of solidarity. On Friday, July 11, Ms. Martin filed a petition for a writ of certiorari to the United States Supreme Court.
“I am praying that this case be overturned. This is a battle to exercise and uphold our constitutional rights,” said Brittany Martin. “They’ve got to give us some justice and let us know that we still have our First Amendment right to freedom of speech in this country. My case would be the perfect example of that.”
The ACLU of South Carolina has represented Ms. Martin since April 2023, arguing that Ms. Martin’s conviction for engaging in non-violent protest violated the First Amendment and that her four-year prison sentence for that illegal conviction was an outrage. The South Carolina Department of Corrections released Ms. Martin on November 27, 2024. She remains committed to fighting for justice in the courts and in her community.
“South Carolina’s conviction of Brittany Martin is yet another moment in a long and shameful history of the State using criminal enforcement to silence dissent. In multiple 1960s Civil Rights-Era cases, the Supreme Court had to intervene to correct South Carolina’s unconstitutional actions, and we have asked that it do so again here,” said Meredith McPhail, staff attorney for the ACLU of South Carolina.
The South Carolina Court of Appeals refused to consider Ms. Martin’s First Amendment arguments on appeal, ruling that they were not properly raised at trial. The petition asks the U.S. Supreme Court to grant review of Ms. Martin’s case and to clarify that procedural rules—like the one invoked by the SC Court of Appeals—cannot excuse state appellate courts from conducting the careful, independent review that the Supreme Court has long required in First Amendment cases. The court will now decide whether to take up the case.
“Courts play a critical constitutional role in protecting individuals who express viewpoints that are unpopular with government officials and majority sentiment,” said Cecillia Wang, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “In 1963, the Supreme Court stepped in to protect the First Amendment rights of Black civil rights protesters who were prosecuted and convicted in South Carolina for the same offense, for doing what Brittany Martin did in 2020. It’s time for the Supreme Court to reinforce the courts’ role in protecting freedom of speech.”
The petition highlights a lack of consistency in how different state courts decide whether to review constitutional facts in First Amendment cases like Ms. Martin’s. Because juries tend to reflect local majority opinions, courts have long held that independent appellate review is necessary to protect unpopular speech.
The arguments in this petition rely on a long record of court cases upholding the right to protest, including the landmark 1963 case Edwards v. South Carolina, which overturned the criminal conviction of Black students who were arrested on a breach of peace charge after refusing to disperse from a protest.
For more information and previous filings in Brittany Martin’s case, see the ACLU-SC case page for The State v. Brittany Martin.
Tarifflation Fallout: 39% of Global
Consumers Rethink Travel
BELLEVUE, Wash. -- (BUSINESS WIRE) -- 7/8/2025 -- Rising costs driven by tariffs are reshaping how global consumers live, shop, and engage with brands, according to a new study released recently by UserTesting. Conducted in partnership with Talker Research, the study surveyed 4,000 consumers across the U.S., U.K., and Australia and revealed that a growing number of people are scaling back spending, switching brands, and rethinking long-standing habits—from summer travel to everyday purchases.
Tariffs are no longer background noise, they’re triggering real lifestyle changes. Consumers across the globe are actively cutting back:- 42% are buying fewer products overall
- 27% are switching to generic or store-brand alternatives
- 18% are shopping second-hand more often
- 20% are traveling less
- And notably, 39% say tariffs caused them to reconsider their summer travel plans entirely
Price hikes are especially visible: 72% of U.S. consumers, 55% of Australians, and 68% of Brits report noticing tariff-related increases. Many are voting with their wallets—nearly half of U.S. and U.K. consumers who noticed these hikes say they’ve already switched away from their favorite brands to find better value.
As tariffs push prices upward, many consumers are reassessing where their products come from—bringing new awareness, and in some cases, a preference for domestically made goods. 54% of U.S. respondents, 61% of U.K. respondents and 64% of Australians reported they would be more likely to buy domestically manufactured products due to tariffs. Day-to-day, a majority of global respondents (53% across all three regions) show a preference for domestic brands, with only a small fraction preferring international alternatives. This suggests that tariffs aren’t just shaping wallets, but may be actively transforming how consumers think about product origin and brand loyalty.
The impact of tariffs goes far beyond bank accounts. Across all three regions surveyed, consumers report a growing sense of emotional strain—from stress and anger to sadness and feeling overwhelmed—as rising costs disrupt not just their budgets, but their sense of control.
In the U.S., the emotional weight appears to be hitting hardest. Over one-third of Americans say tariffs leave them feeling stressed (37%), with nearly a quarter feeling overwhelmed (23%) when hearing about economic changes tied to trade policy. Emotions are just as raw in other regions, with anger and frustration rising sharply in both Australia and the U.K.
Notably: - 31% of Australians and Brits alike say tariffs make them feel angry
- 26% of U.K. consumers report feeling sad about the current economic outlook, the highest across regions
As economic uncertainty stretches on, brands are now navigating an increasingly emotionally charged marketplace, where trust, tone, and transparency matter as much as price.
While many brands have raised prices, most consumers aren’t automatically assigning blame, yet. In fact, 54% (U.S.), 65% (Australia), and 55% (U.K.) say their perception of brands hasn’t changed.
The deciding factor? Honesty.- 72% of Americans,
- 82% of Australians, and
- 80% of Brits say that transparent communication about pricing changes is essential to maintaining their trust.
“Whether tariffs remain or not, it’s clear they’ve already reshaped consumer habits,” said Bobby Meixner, VP of Solution Marketing at UserTesting. “Consumers understand that price hikes may be out of a company’s control. What they’re looking for is honest, upfront communication—and they’re making purchase decisions based on it.”
A Global Shift in Sentiment- 78% of Australians and 62% of Brits believe U.S. tariff policy has negatively impacted their national economies.
- More than 25% of global respondents believe their country’s economy will never return to pre-tariff conditions.
- In the U.S. and U.K., a majority of consumers expect at least 19 months before they’ll see economic recovery.
- And 19% of consumers in the U.S. and U.K. say they’re considering a second job, side hustle, or longer hours just to keep up.
About the Study
The study was commissioned by UserTesting and conducted by Talker Research. A total of 4,000 consumers were surveyed between June 4 and June 12, 2025, including a nationally representative sample of adults (18+) across the United States (2,000), Australia (1,000), and the United Kingdom (1,000).
For more insights and the full report, click here.
