Restore the First · Coalition
News & coalition statements.
Investigations, coalition statements, and updates from the plaintiffs of Finn v. Global Engagement Center and the partner organizations building this coalition.
October 2026 · Sayer Ji
The Separation of Medicine from State
The founders walled the church off from the state because conscience cannot be compelled. They left no wall around the body. No medical freedom without consent, no consent without information, no information without free speech.
Read the essay →
October 14, 2026
Labels In, Accounts Out
A federal regulator read 420,000 pages of the largest banks’ files. It found accounts closed over customers’ views, outside labels feeding the decisions, and customers never told why, on both sides of the aisle.
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October 12, 2026
Twelve Names and a Number That Was Wrong by a Factor of 1,300.
Facebook’s own analysts found the “Disinformation Dozen” statistic exaggerated by at least 1,300-fold. We built a public record of 241 documents — and the most important entries are the ones where we found nothing: no government payment to CCDH, no Gates grant in 41,686 checked, and seven trusts that never funded it. Four of those findings correct claims our own side was making.
Read the investigation →October 12, 2026
You can’t have informed choice without the First Amendment.
A new Zogby poll from coalition partner Health Freedom Defense Fund finds 80–88% of voters back medical autonomy, and 88.1% say doctors should be able to discuss vaccine concerns without fear of their medical boards. Why that result is a free-speech result, and what Congress needs to hear.
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October 2, 2026
One senator said no to KOSA.
On the Senate’s last night before the midterms, a unanimous-consent request would have passed the Kids Online Safety Act without a recorded vote. Rand Paul objected, read the First Amendment case into the Congressional Record, and sent the bill to the post-election session. Why this coalition is naming him a Restore the 1st Hero, what the sponsors said in reply, and what to ask your own senators in the next thirty days.
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September 20, 2026
The Fifth Estate: what it is, why it exists now, and why we made it a pillar.
The Fourth Estate was the press. The Fifth Estate is you: networked individuals publishing without permission, holding the other estates accountable. Thirteen writers we feature first, a graphic reading of the Web 1/2/3 → AI sequence from Sayer Ji’s Constitution Day panel, a dated history from the 1662 Licensing Act to Julian Assange’s return to X, an essay on why the labelers have lost their standing, and a pledge you can sign.
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September 20, 2026
Vote for Health Freedom: the electoral arm of the same fight.
Restore the First is the case, the coalition, and the legislation. Our sister coalition Stand for Health Freedom has built the ballot-box arm: a nonpartisan, single-issue voting bloc for bodily sovereignty, informed consent, and freedom from medical coercion. Where the fronts touch, we point our readers to it.
Read the feature →
September 20, 2026
The Licensed Press: why AI is a First Amendment battleground.
In 1662 the Crown licensed the printing press because punishing speech was not working — and kept licensing America’s presses for sixty years after England stopped. The First Amendment was the answer. A feature on the three-century record, Sayer Ji’s Constitution Day panel at CHD in DC, and the 2026 bills that would license the machine again.
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September 13, 2026
Why AI Is a First Amendment Fight.
Because compute is speech infrastructure — the physical layer through which speech is composed and published at scale — and a federal licensing regime for compute is prior restraint on the First Amendment, no different in principle than a federal licensing regime for printing presses.
Read the explainer →
September 12, 2026
The Next Censorship Won’t Look Like Censorship.
For a decade, they suppressed what you posted. Now they’re building the layer that writes what you say — and Congress is about to hand it to three companies. Restore the First adds a sixth pillar: Speech Infrastructure.
Read the coalition statement →Subscribe for updates →