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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / If It Makes Them So Godsdamned Nervous…

If It Makes Them So Godsdamned Nervous…

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Bold move by Texas to say that the First Amendment only applies during daylight hours.

[image or embed]

— Mike Masnick (@mmasnick.bsky.social) July 16, 2025 at 12:10 PM

Update: This article was published on June 5. Since then, Gov. Greg Abbott has signed Senate Bill 2972 into law. It will take effect Sept. 1.

Texas lawmakers trying to muzzle campus protests have just passed one of the most ridiculous anti-speech laws in the country. If signed by Gov. Greg Abbott, Senate Bill 2972 would ban speech at night — from study groups to newspaper reporting — at public universities in the state.

Ironically, the bill builds on a previous law passed in 2019 meant to enshrine free speech on Texas campuses. But now, lawmakers want to crack down on college students’ pro-Palestinian protests so badly that they literally passed a prohibition on talking.

We’re not exaggerating. SB 2972 would require public universities in Texas to adopt policies prohibiting “engaging in expressive activities on campus between the hours of 10 p.m. and 8 a.m.” Expressive activity includes “any speech or expressive conduct” protected by the First Amendment or Texas Constitution.

The overnight ban on expressive activities is unfathomably broad. Off the top of our heads, here are just a few examples of what such a policy would prohibit on campus between 10 p.m. to 8 a.m.: Meeting with other students to socialize or study, writing an email, working on a research paper, posting on social media, reporting for the student newspaper, wearing a T-shirt with a slogan, dancing, playing music, painting a picture, or praying at a sunrise service…

Gotta admit, my gutter mind went straight to a recent multi-media story in the Washington Post — “Finding hope at Drag University”: [gift link]

HOUSTON — The email said they’d spend the weekend in drag, so Chloe Montgomery packed the only dress she owned. It was white with a flower print, feminine in a way she found fresh. The first time Montgomery saw the dress, she’d felt the thrill of becoming herself. But eight months had gone by, and she hadn’t worked up the courage to wear it. Maybe this weekend, she told herself.

Montgomery had spent six weeks attending classes at Drag University, a free program that taught Black and Latino Texans not only how to lip sync and put together an outfit, but how to navigate life in a state that has long led the way in curtailing LGBTQ+ rights.

There was so much Montgomery was afraid of. She didn’t know how to dance or apply makeup. She worried she’d look bad in the dress. She hadn’t told most of her friends or colleagues she was transgender, and increasingly, both her state and the country were targeting people like her. In March, one Texas state lawmaker had introduced a bill to make transitioning a felony. It stalled. And President Donald Trump signed a slew of executive orders that targeted trans people, including one that deemed it the official policy of the United States that sex is not mutable — a stance shared by two-thirds of Americans.

The growing anti-trans sentiments terrified Montgomery, but this was Drag University’s final weekend and she knew she couldn’t waste it on her fears. The organizers had rented a bright and airy house with a pool and sprawling trees. Montgomery looked out across the expansive yard and told herself that this weekend, she would do the things that scared her. Soon, she and the others would graduate, and she would no longer have Drag U to buoy her each week. She would have to lift her own self up…

The group spent the first day of the getaway talking to a Harris County family court judge who presides over name changes. Though Texas has tried to outlaw many aspects of transitioning, for now, adults can still decide what to call themselves.

Your name, Judge Lillian Alexander told the group, is “what you want it to be. And I honor that. So I’d like each of you to tell me your name.”…

Reader Interactions

47Comments

  3. 3.

    hueyplong

    A hint that you’re dealing with cowards is that they get more, not less, thin-skinned as they gain power.

  4. 4.

    Old Man Shadow

    Well, I’m shocked… (SHOCKED!) to find free speech suppression in this party of free speech!

  5. 5.

    caroln

    What the judge said to them brought tears to my eyes. My mother’s name was Lillian and she would have told them the same thing.

  7. 7.

    trollhattan

    Keeping in mind what just happened in Texas, where lack of public alert infrastructure killed perhaps hundreds, California faces related consequences strictly due to Trump’s dismantling of the federal government.

    California lawmakers are growing increasingly concerned about federal staffing cuts at the National Weather Service, which they say are harming the state’s agriculture industry and putting critical fire operations in jeopardy.

    In a letter dated Wednesday and obtained by The Times, both U.S. senators from California, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, urged the Trump administration to reverse its considerable cuts to the nation’s leading weather agency, which has lost at least 600 employees to layoffs and buyouts this year.

    “The safety and lives of millions of Americans as well as the economic success of California depend on weather forecasts from the state’s NWS offices,” reads the letter, which was spearheaded by Schiff and addressed to Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce, and Laura Grimm, the acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the National Weather Service.

    “Protecting human lives from severe weather events is not a partisan issue, and it is important that the NWS has the workforce required to meet its core mandate to protect human life,” the senators wrote.

    Their letter follows a Times report which found that two of the six NWS offices in California — Hanford and Sacramento — are among the hardest-hit by federal cuts in the nation. The president and his unofficial Department of Government Efficiency have said the cuts will help save taxpayers money and reduce federal waste.

    Currently, Hanford is tied with Goodland, Kan., as the NWS office with the highest percentage of meteorologist vacancies in the country, with eight of 13 positions unfilled, or about 62%, according to The Times report, which used data from the National Weather Service Employees Organization. Sacramento is the next worse off, with half of its 16 meteorologist positions currently empty.

    The Hanford and Sacramento offices cover much of the Central Valley and Sierra Nevada — among the most fire-prone parts of California — and are responsible for providing extreme weather warnings to more than 7 million people. The offices no longer have enough staff to operate on their own 24 hours a day, The Times found.

    Read the whole thing, as the kids say.
    latimes.com/environment/story/2025-07-17/as-fire-season-heats-up-schiff-urges-trump-administration-t…

  8. 8.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    They that afraid of someone committing a thought crime, just shut down the schools. After all, the Legislators already have their education, so screw anyone else.

  9. 9.

    Steve LaBonne

    Those late night dorm bull sessions will have an extra transgressive thrill now! PS I miss the days when we could confidently expect something so blatantly unconstitutional to be struck down.

  10. 10.

    gene108

    I read somewhere this special session of the Texas legislature was to address problems from the recent flash floods.

    So far, nothing on the flash floods, but a bunch of culture war stuff being debated.

  11. 11.

    catclub

    Expressive activity includes “any speech or expressive conduct” [no longer ] protected by the First Amendment or Texas Constitution.

    FTFY

  15. 15.

    Martin

    It’s going to get pretty expensive for the university to remove all of their posted materials every night at 10PM – flyers, directions, street signs, names of buildings – and then reinstall them at 8AM.

  16. 16.

    artem1s

    IIRC playing football in TX during the day is generally not a good idea. I guess the quarterbacks, coaches, crowds and cheerleaders will have to use hand signals?

  17. 17.

    Reverse tool order

    So, the office hours and curfew provisions in the first amendment are finally recognized.

    You don’t say!

  18. 18.

    Ten Bears

    Don’t get distracted, there are still more pictures out there of Trump and Epstein together than there are trans-athletes in all of the world. Maybe all the trans=people in the world …

  23. 23.

    Ohio Mom

    @artem1s: I think hand signals could be expressive speech, think of deaf people and sign language.

    Blatantly unconstitutional and ridiculously unenforceable.

  24. 24.

    artem1s

    @Ohio Mom: Point is football is probably the most expressive activity they have on most TX campuses. But of course they aren’t enforce the ban on those expressions and everyone knows it.

  25. 25.

    hells littlest angel

    @artem1s: I guess the quarterbacks, coaches, crowds and cheerleaders will have to use hand signals?

     

    Sorry, that’s an expressive activity.

    Clearly, this is meant to be selectively enforced. Wearing a keffiyeh after 10:00 PM? Book ’em, Danno. Chanting Nazi slogans? I didn’t hear anything, did you hear anything?

  27. 27.

    Dangerman

    Does a group of people, all raising their middle fingers, count as speech?

    On the positive side, no political rallies at night and, since Citizens United was based on free speech, no donations to these stupid motherfuckers after the sun goes down.

  28. 28.

    Bokonon

    @Baud:Broad laws + Selective enforcement = Republican oppression

    Typical of Jim Crow style government everywhere.  Which seems to be the new-old model for MAGA.

  30. 30.

    Harrison Wesley

    I’m not convinced that making people shut up at night will prevent flash floods.

  31. 31.

    Bokonon

    @gene108: I read somewhere this special session of the Texas legislature was to address problems from the recent flash floods.

    So far, nothing on the flash floods, but a bunch of culture war stuff being debated

    Exactly. Because they intend to waste enough media cycles that people’s attention span will wander, and then they can avoid doing anything expensive that will address the flood problem (or assign accountability).  Same tactics the Texas legislature uses whenever there is a failure of governance, like the power grid …

  33. 33.

    mrmoshpotato

    Ironically, the bill builds on a previous law passed in 2019 meant to enshrine free speech on Texas campuses. But now, lawmakers want to crack down on college students’ pro-Palestinian protests so badly that they literally passed a prohibition on talking.

    Greg Abbott, like Ted Cruz, can lick John Oliver’s scrot.

  34. 34.

    Kirk

    So, the 10pm-8am limitation of speech in public common areas was in the 2019 bill this one is amending. Thing is, that one said

    an institution of
    higher education may adopt a policy that imposes reasonable
    restrictions on the time, place, and manner of expressive
    activities in the common outdoor areas of the institution’s campus
    if those restrictions:

    It’s gone from may to must, and only some of the following restrictions remain in the bill as a whole.

  35. 35.

    dnfree

    When I was in college in the early 1960s, we had women’s hours. We had to be in our rooms and locked in the dorms by 10:30 pm weekdays, a little later on weekends. I ordering late-night pizza for us! Our virtue was being preserved by the university in loco parentis. We used to joke that they must have thought college students might have sex in broad daylight!

  38. 38.

    Shakti

    I think the students should make them wish pro-Palestinian protests were the only thing the administration and the legislature had to worry about whether this bill passes or not, or is upheld or not.  I’m sure there are creative and nonviolent ways of doing this — that might even be technically legal even by these silly fools’ imaginations.

    Fuck outta here with slashing the hell out of aid, telling grown (enough) adults who took on life altering to ruining amounts of debt and then telling them they have to have a fucking quiet time bed time curfew.

     

    The overnight ban on expressive activities is unfathomably broad. Off the top of our heads, here are just a few examples of what such a policy would prohibit on campus between 10 p.m. to 8 a.m.: Meeting with other students to socialize or study, writing an email, working on a research paper, posting on social media, reporting for the student newspaper, wearing a T-shirt with a slogan, dancing, playing music, painting a picture, or praying at a sunrise service…

    I see that as targeting religious minorities, night owls, people who work night shift jobs to pay for school (some of them may even live in dorms, idk). I guess there’s no such thing as astronomy in the entire state of Texas — because of budget cuts. I’m sure the fundies in Texas must really hate Halloween.

  39. 39.

    Chip Daniels

    As with all authoritarian laws, the enforcement will be arbitrary depending on whatever displeases the authority.

    A raucous frat party? OK

    A quiet discussion of trans issues? Verboten!

  40. 40.

    evodevo

    @dnfree: ​
      LOL yep…same at Univ of KY at that time. When I told undergrads about that in the early ’80’s they couldn’t believe it…

  41. 41.

    Rusty

    “Your name, Judge Lillian Alexander told the group, is “what you want it to be. And I honor that. So I’d like each of you to tell me your name.”…”

    What is so hard about this kind of basic human decency?  Instead we get this reactionary oppression of a name.  It’s so little, so easy, and yet it is wildly too much to ask of these awful people.  Good on the judge for being kind and decent.

  42. 42.

    Gloria DryGarden

    Well, dang. I did most of my engineering and English composition homework down in the dorm cafeteria, between 10 pm and 3 am. It took hours.

    And I did speak with others when I needed help. My English was a mess that freshman year, I was just back from a year of speaking spanish, and my grammar was a wreck, my sentence structure was translated from the spanish. What if I couldn’t ask other students for feedback?

    wanting to call them names, these petty tyrant legislators, trying to control the masses…

  43. 43.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Shakti: targets engineering students, too. There’s no way students in such an academic track aren’t up studying late.

    I imagine all the science and math people. And the BFA students too. The art friends told me how much work they had to produce. It was as much work as I was doing in my course work.

  44. 44.

    Quantum man

    So I guess this means a faculty member could be fired for assigning calculus problems as homework for the next morning’s class. Students’ excuses for not doing the homework could include “The governor told me I could not do it”.

  46. 46.

    Kent

    I haven’t seen any explanation as to the rationale.

    But I would have to guess that this is an attempt to prevent protest encampments.  As in, OK, you can have your Gaza protest but at 10 pm you need to shut it down and go home or you will all be arrested.

    So no more protest occupations in Texas, period.

  47. 47.

    Miss Bianca

    Well, I’d like to read the Drag University article, but guess what? Ol’ WaPOop wants me to “create an account to redeem your gift article!”

    FUCK THAT NOISE, YOU FUCKS, IT’S A GIFT ARTICLE.

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