A libertarian law professor who responded to FIRE’s recent national survey of law faculty offered a striking admission: Whether justified or unjustified, I regularly hide beliefs from colleagues who are openly discussing important topics in the public interest out of fear of retaliation, particularly as a junior faculty member. No administrator had disciplined him. No student had filed a complaint. Yet, by his own admission, he and another colleague routinely conceal their views at faculty meetings and other public events, not because anyone ordered them to stay silent, but because they worry that candor can exact professional costs. That kind of silence is tricky to measure, but carries serious implications. And new data suggest it is relatively common in American law schools. For a report released this week, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) surveyed 1,959 law faculty at 192 ABA-approved law schools. The findings reveal a profession caught in a contradiction: law professors overwhelmingly endorse free expression in principle, yet many describe an academic culture that discourages them from practicing it. That should alarm anyone who cares about legal education. Law schools are supposed to be places that train students to make arguments they may not personally believe, stress-test ideas against the strongest opposing case, and examine precedents, doctrines, and historical cases that may offend some modern sensibilities. But that model depends on faculty willing to speak frankly and institutions willing to tolerate dissent. More than half of the law faculty surveyed (56%) report that they at least occasionally feel unable to express their opinion because of how students, colleagues, or administrators might respond. And that number becomes even more striking when ideology is taken into account. Conservative law faculty, who are outnumbered three to one in the sample, were more likely than their liberal colleagues to report self-censoring (72% versus 50%), and three times as many conservatives, compared to liberals, reported at least occasionally hiding their political beliefs from other faculty in an attempt to keep their job (52% versus 17%). The survey also found clear asymmetries in perceptions of institutional fit. While majorities of law faculty said a liberal individual would fit well in their law school, far fewer said the same about a conservative individual. As one law professor put it: In my law school, students get only half the story in most of their courses. There are no conservatives as full-time professors, and only a few moderates. Students who are moderate to conservative rarely share their views in class. And this same professor connected that climate directly to his own choices: For the past 15 years, I’ve seen our law students become less prepared for the adversarial nature of legal practice. I’m partly to blame, as I have modified my exams and exercises to avoid potentially controversial fact patterns and claims. That self-indictment — “I’m partly to blame” — isn’t a complaint about administrators or colleagues (though they could be the other part). Rather, it’s an acknowledgment that retreating from difficulty is something he’s done, incrementally, over many years. All within the context of diminishing ideological diversity. Multiplied across a profession, that accumulation of small adjustments doesn’t just reflect the culture of law schools. It creates one. Another law professor, a self-described strong Democrat, described the specific calculus self-censorship dynamics produce in his classes: I teach cases without ever saying what actually happened in the case because I’m afraid to say those words (notably some First Amendment cases address words I didn’t even know were slurs before reading the case). A First Amendment professor, self-censoring while teaching First Amendment cases. By this professor’s honest admission, we can see how his students are learning about free speech firsthand, but in this case by what isn’t being said. They are watching their professor decide that engagement with certain material is too risky, and filing that lesson away. This is how habits can form and a culture can shift. Not necessarily through any speech code or disciplinary action (though it can come from there too). But through hesitation and daily acts of omission that students observe, absorb, and over time likely begin to mimic themselves. Law students go on to become lawyers who argue cases in court, prosecutors who decide what charges to bring, judges who make rulings, policymakers who debate and enact laws and regulations. What they learn in law school isn’t just the law. It’s instinct. Habits. Principles. How to respond when an idea is uncomfortable. What to do when they’re on the unpopular side of an issue. Where to turn when silence is the path of least resistance. In February 2024, the American Bar Association adopted Standard 208, which requires law schools to adopt, publish, and adhere to written policies that protect academic freedom and encourage free expression. More than 9 in 10 law faculty support free expression policies. But the professor who hides his views at faculty meetings already knows his school has a free expression policy. The policy is not the problem, and though it is a good step, it isn’t the complete solution either. What we see from our new data from law faculty is that the culture within law schools appears to have taken a concerning turn. And written commitments alone don’t change cultures; people do. Through individual decisions about whether to speak or stay quiet. To participate in a debate, or pass. To publicly defend a colleague, or only offer private condolences. To prepare students for their professional careers by teaching the messy topics, or avoiding them in hopes of receiving better student evaluations. These decision points provide opportunities for faculty to model courage or model calculation. Right now, for too many law faculty, silence appears to be winning… and their students are watching. *** Nathan Honeycutt is a research fellow and manager of polling and analytics at FIRE.

WASHINGTON — The United States government is investigating inexplicable “glowing orbs” that move at high speeds and have repeatedly appeared around the country over the past few years, newly released Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) documents show. The Daily Wire was briefed on these Unidentified Aerial Phenomena documents by senior administration officials ahead of the documents’ Friday release. This is the third tranche of documents released as part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to be transparent with the country on UAP activity. In the latest drop, numerous documents detail FBI interviews with people describing activity in the northeastern United States. Videos and interviews detail glowing orbs in the sky, both red and white, that move across the landscape. FBI agents also interviewed a former U.S. Army intelligence officer and four other members of his unit in June 2024 who described seeing a “potato” shaped, translucent but shimmering object in the sky that vanished after about two minutes. That incident took place near the Cheyenne Mountains in Colorado. In another account, which took place in the west, a currently serving senior U.S. intelligence officer describes how he and two pilots saw “glowing orbs” from up close and far away as they sought to investigate the orbs from a helicopter. He also says they saw a high-speed object moving low to the ground, which seemed to split in two and speed off in different directions. That official’s account, which was originally released in the first tranche of the UFO files on May 8, includes infrared imagery taken by federal officials from the ground. The North East UAP Sightings The FBI conducted interviews in February 2026 with two individuals who reported seeing bright orbs outside their home in the north east in 2025. As one of these individuals was returning to his home around 9pm at night and pulled into the driveway, that person noticed an “intense bright light hovering below the tree line in the middle of their backyard.” That person got out of the car and “stared at the strange light for a few moments before reaching back” into their car to get their phone and take a video of what they were seeing. Inside the house, their spouse was waiting for them to arrive home. When the second individual saw on the security camera that their spouse had arrived and was standing next to their car looking into the sky, the second person went outside to join them and see what they were looking at. NEW: According to the newly released UAP files, in July 2025, an eyewitness was returning home from work and “observed an intense bright light in their backyard as they parked their car.” “The light was hovering approximately 25 feet off the ground, below a tree line near the… pic.twitter.com/KhCKnV2DeN — Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) June 12, 2026 “[Redacted] described the light as a red sphere that was about one meter in diameter,” the FBI report states. “[Redacted] described the red color as being brilliant and beautiful, and that [redacted] had never seen anything that color of red before.” Inside the sphere, according to the viewers, “there appeared to be what [he/she] described as a ‘white plasmas sun’ about the size of a basketball.” As they watched, the orb moved up and to their left, they told the FBI. Then they noticed that there was a “second, identical orb, hovering above the first one.” “The orbs then moved together towards the west above the tree line. [Redacted] stated that from the start of the observation to when the orbs traveled out of sight, they exhibited both a change in altitude and a change in direction. The orbs were silent and moved in a smooth motion. They moved in tandem as if they were flying in formation or were tethered together.” As the orbs moved out of sight, the two individuals saw them either merge together or just become so close that they looked like one orb. The Department of War also released video footage that they captured of the orbs “beginning at the point when they were above the trees and moving away from their backyard.” Several weeks later, they said they saw several white orbs moving over the house from the west to the east, according to the FBI report, at a much higher altitude than the previous red orbs. They described these new ones “as appearing the size of a dime held at arm’s length.” In another incident, one of the two individuals who spoke to the FBI said they had witnessed something strange near power lines in 1987, describing a “red light circling around itself at night” that hovered and then landed near the power station. “Since then,” the report stated, “[redacted] has always been interested in the topic of UAP.”      Footage released by the department captured by a private citizen on an iPhone shows an incident in October 2024 in the northeastern United States where an eyewitness said that he or she observed “a light source below the horizon, hovering above a pond at an estimated distance of 2,700 feet.” “The luminous object resembled a ‘plasma-like sphere’ intermittently changing shape and luminosity,” the department says. “At times, the primary light source appeared to separate into smaller luminous points. A luminous point below the primary source hovered just above the water and did not appear consistent with a surface reflection.” “The object remained generally stationary for approximately 45 minutes before disappearing,” the description adds. “The eyewitness did not hear any sound from the objects.” The FBI found that individual to be “highly credible,” the War Department website notes. The Western UAP Sightings A senior U.S. intelligence officer documented how he and two pilots observed alarming UAP activity in the western United States in 2025. Aboard a helicopter, he was investigating “loud thuds heard in the mountains on the test range, which coincided with Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) sightings reported over the previous several nights.” They were looking for possible debris or objects that could explain recent “orb-like sightings.” Towards the end of their search, the senior intelligence officer says that he received a message from their Joint Operations Center (JOC) that radar had detected hits a few miles away from their position, where UAP activity had been noticed on previous nights. “I relayed this to the pilots, and we altered course to intercept,” he wrote. “What followed was a series of close UAP encounters lasting over an hour.” Ground teams were reporting that they had seen something “super-hot,” low to the ground, and moving at a high speed first east then south, then splitting in two and changing direction. When the helicopter arrived, they scanned the area, and then the ground team “suddenly radioed that the object had risen from the ground, approached within ten feet of the helicopter, dropped below us, and then sped away.” The pilots watched the object split into two, as a smaller object emerged from it, “before it accelerated out of sight.” “We briefly pursued but broke off, unable to match its speed,” the senior intelligence officer wrote. The Joint Operations Center informed them that several fighter jets that were already on a training mission in their area were headed their way to help identify the UAP. The JOC then directed the helicopter towards more nearby radar detections — and here the senior intelligence officer described something even more alarming. “We took up a hovering position at approximately 700 feet above ground level (AGL). In the distance, we saw countless orange orbs swarming in all directions against the backdrop of the mountain.” The officer and pilots could see the swarming orbs for about several minutes before they faded, he wrote. Then they were redirected to their previous position based on fresh radar hits. “I provided the coordinates to the pilots, and we moved to intercept, hovering again at 700 feet AGL. Through NVGx, the pilots and I (using the naked eye) observed two large orbs flare up side-by-side, close to the helicopter — stationary and just above the rotor disk to our right. They were oval-shaped, orange with a white or yellow center, and emitted light in all directions.” “After a few seconds,” he wrote, ” a third orb flared up below the pair, followed by a fourth below that, forming a total of four or five in a ‘T’ formation under the original view. The entire event lasted 10-15 seconds. I didn’t take photos, as I was focused on assessing what it was and whether it posed a threat.” As the pilots considered landing due the objects’ proximity, they could see the fighter jets approaching by their blinking navigation lights. Just then, the helicopter occupants spotted the orbs appearing again, “directly above the fighters.” “They flared up one at a time in a horizontal formation, matching the jets’ speed and flight path. After 10-15 seconds, they dimmed sequentially and disappeared. This repeated several times as the jets transited the airspace and eventually landed.” “I remarked to the pilots that it seemed the same orbs flaring up and down around us for several minutes, forming a distinct triangle before vanishing.” At this point, low on fuel, the helicopter decided to return to the JOC. “After landing, I briefly spoke with them — mostly to express thanks,” he said. “We were virtually speechless after these observations. I then entered the JOC for a quick debrief before driving home.” The Cheyenne Mountain Sighting Near the Cheyenne Mountains in Colorado in 2022, a former U.S. Army Intelligence officer and four other members of his unit said they observed a UAP as they exited their office building on a 50 degree day when there were no clouds and very little humidity. “The object was ‘potato’ shaped with distinct edges and appeared to look painted in a creamy/whitish opalescent color,” says an FBI forensic sketch interview dated June 2024. “It was somewhat translucent with a slight shimmer.” “The object was made up of what can best be described as articulating fish scales or panels that were non-symmetrical, non-overlapping, and irregular shaped,” the report continues. “The object itself was perfectly still but each panel on the object shifted in slow waves starting at different points of origin but at the same time.” The object vanished after about two minutes, according to the observers. They told the FBI that in the space of time it took to turn their heads, the object had vanished without a shadow. SCREENSHOT, war.gov/UFO: “This image is an artistic interpretation of a 2022 incident potentially involving unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) reported near Colorado Springs, Colorado.”

Students typically go to college to pursue higher education grounded in eternal principles, aiming to understand the good, the true, and the beautiful. Now they can also get abortions. Many schools across the country are providing abortion pills on campus for students, allowing them to kill their babies still in the womb. What’s even more depressing is the fact that many of these institutions are being forced to offer these life-ending drugs due to state law. How do pill abortions work? As Planned Parenthood describes, it starts with the patient taking mifepristone, which blocks necessary nutrients from getting to the “pregnancy.” Then a second pill, misoprostol, is taken shortly afterward, which causes cramping and bleeding to empty the woman’s uterus, describing it as “very similar to an early miscarriage.” It should be noted that most abortions in the formal healthcare system are now carried out through “medication,” with 63% of all abortions in 2023 done by pill, adding up to 642,700. For a student, this would likely be done in a shared dorm or restroom, with little to no support. Despite the fact that this “treatment” aims at killing a child and has also been proven to occasionally have injurious, if not deadly, consequences for the women using it, the Colorado legislature has deemed this “necessary” for student safety. For example, Colorado Governor Jared Polis recently signed House Bill 1335, requiring academic institutions with a health center to provide abortion medication to all students starting in August of next year. Although there is a religious exemption clause, many schools will begin stocking shelves with these drugs. However, this practice has been developing for almost a decade. In 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom signed the first bill of this kind, mandating that all public colleges in California offer the drugs. It applies to over 30 campuses and hundreds of thousands of female students. The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) advertises this service online, telling students, “Medication abortion services are now available at The Ashe Center for pregnancies up to 70 days (10 weeks).” Littered with Planned Parenthood graphics, instructions, and directions to the clinic, it aims to make killing one’s child as supportive as possible. UC Riverside even states “medications will be mailed directly to the patient for secure delivery,” with virtual follow-ups scheduled shortly after. In fiscal year 2024-2025 alone, the 10 University of California campuses facilitated a total of 297 chemical abortions, receiving $2,492,326.63 in reimbursements from the College Student Right to Access Act grant, according to the 2025 Report of the California Commission on the Status of Women & Girls. New York is even worse, as a bill signed by Governor Kathy Hochul in 2023 mandates “every campus of the state university of New York and every campus of the city university of New York provide access to medication abortion.” Senate Bill S1214B provides this access to campuses, including the Fashion Institute of Technology, which is 81% female. As of 2022, Massachusetts has also signed an extreme bill establishing a separate fund called the Public University Health Center Sexual and Reproductive Health Preparation Fund to assist in medication abortion readiness. It is administered by the Department of Public Health and tasked with providing grants to pay for the cost of direct and indirect medication abortion readiness, prioritizing schools. It pays for elements including equipment, facility and security upgrades, telehealth services, staff abortion training, and billing specialist consultation. It applies to public community colleges, state universities, and the University of Massachusetts campuses. Live Action News discovered that one of these campuses, Salem State University, offers the abortion pill up to 11 weeks of pregnancy, which is after the FDA-Approved 10-week gestational limit. Another state to pass similar legislation is Illinois, whose Governor JB Pritzker passed House Bill 3709, requiring each public institution of higher education with student health services to provide students with access to medication abortion, which started this past school year. These services can be provided through health services, telehealth, or other licensed external providers, but all schools with a pharmacy must provide them in person. It names schools, including the University of Illinois, Illinois State University, and Northeastern Illinois University, as participants. Other states, such as Delaware, Connecticut, Maryland, and Vermont, have less stringent laws, requiring “abortion access” in broader terms. On the West Coast, Washington is currently considering a bill that would “require public colleges and universities to provide students with access to medication abortion services through student health centers or coordinated referral and telehealth options.” It would start in the 2027-2028 academic year and apply to public four-year institutions, community and technical colleges, and other public postsecondary institutions. While legislation like this might come as a surprise to some, I don’t see why. It’s been evident for years that most of modern academia is a hotbed for leftist ideology and liberal professors. And since abortion is one of the top priorities of the modern Left and is advertised as a human right and a freeing act, it slowly seeps into students’ malleable minds. The numbers show that in 2025, there were an estimated 1.1 million abortions provided by U.S. clinicians, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute. Most importantly, the abortion rate for women aged 15-44 was 16.7 per 1,000, a stunning sum. The more colleges discuss the topic and masquerade taking a life-ending drug as a responsible act, the more of it you will have, and the greater the uproar will be when it is outlawed. Abortion has even infiltrated segments of American culture, with movies like Unplanned (2020) depicting abortion as a necessary evil, causing teenagers to cross state lines to receive one. There are even social media videos showing young mothers promoting it with celebration and applause, or justifying it on the grounds of unforeseen illnesses that could have complicated the child’s life. What makes abortion-enticing laws so immoral is not only the fact that they give students more access to this, but also the fact that they promote more premarital sex and the “hookup culture,” which often ruins people’s lives and promotes chaotic relationships. Why do prominent institutions and state legislatures feel the need to pervert an academic environment into something hedonistic and deadly? As I said at the beginning of this article, college is a place for students to learn about important topics that will not only assist their professional careers but also teach them how to be good, responsible adults and citizens. But being a citizen starts with the family, the prime building block of a community, and if students continue to be sexualized and then given a “quick fix” through abortion, our nation will shortly forget what it means to live the good life and rot in our carnal pleasures. *** Simon Olech is a student at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, studying politics and history. He is a freelance contributor and producer for The College Fix, and his work has appeared in publications including the Daily Wire and Washington Examiner.

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you. *** Welcome to the Bright Side, a weekly roundup of all the good news and ideas you might have missed from the past week. We’ve reached peak peony, y’all! Serving prime basic babe energy, summer’s lush pink peonies are flooding gardens and farmers markets across the U.S. My little shiplap-n-shabby chic heart can barely handle those delicate ruffled petals and sweet, citrusy fragrance. I’ll be living for $2-per-stem at Trader Joe’s until the last blooming minute. But if I lived near the University of Michigan, I would be Instagramming the heck outta the 10,000 blush blooms at the W.E. Upjohn Peony Garden right now. The most expansive collection of peonies in the nation provides the most romantic floral backdrop for a vibey English garden picnic, a watercolor painting session, or a casual stroll through the grassy grounds. Hello, did you know you can eat peony petals? Because I didn’t! Named after the French stage actress, ridiculously fluffy Sarah Bernhardt blooms infuse jellies, jams, cookies, and tea. Maybe TJ’s should stock a few peonies in the snack aisle. An adorable baby elephant doing baby elephant stuff Adding to my eternal fascination with elephants and their gentle giant energy, an endangered Thai Asian elephant was just born at the Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire, England. And at 3.3 feet tall and 243 pounds, he’s cute as a (really big) button.  A baby Asian elephant made his debut at a UK zoo on Wednesday at just two days old. On the eve of the FIFA World Cup, the baby boy was given a ball to play with and could be seen attempting a few dribbles and investigating with his trunk. pic.twitter.com/ExczEmk16y — The Associated Press (@AP) June 11, 2026 He has the fuzzy-haired, wrinkly forehead of an old man, but this little guy represents a hopeful future for his species. His older sister Nang Phaya was also raised by their attentive mother Donna (sounding like a ’90s butter mom). The baby of the family is in good hands. He has yet to be named, but just hours after being born, he was already trotting around and testing out his legs. Elephants technically walk on their tippy toes, but considering how well this lil fella already dribbles a ball, I’m thinking he could be named after famous Thai footballer Chanathip Songkrasin. Often compared to Lionel Messi, the soccer icon also goes by “Messi Jay.” Thank you for coming to my baby elephant-naming TedTalk.  Analog pride with an epic celebration of pencils If you’re into trad Punxsutawney Phil, you’re gonna love Minneapolis couple John and Amy Higgins’ annual pencil-sharpening festival every June. Never has “No. 2” had a more wholesome association. 

An 11-year-old girl and her 12-year-old brother operating a lemonade stand in Boston got a brutal lesson in urban lawlessness Wednesday afternoon when a pair of juvenile suspects robbed them at gunpoint. It was roughly 4:44 p.m. when the suspects first appeared, casing the stand with multiple walk-bys before finally approaching the children and asking whether they accepted Apple Pay. Before the kids could even answer, one suspect snatched the cash box right out from under them. The other made sure there was no resistance — lifting his shirt to flash a black firearm tucked into his waistband. The two then fled on foot. The cash box was later found nearby, empty. The take: approximately $50. The children’s father, Dave Byrne, described what happened: “One of them said, ‘we don’t have any money, but we’re going to see if my mother will Venmo me the money so I can pay for it.’ Next thing you know, they came back and said, ‘we’re just going to take this,’ and they took my son’s and daughter’s – their money, bank that they had all their cash in. And as they did that they flashed a gun that they had in their waistband.” “They called me, I’m at work, they’re hysterical, saying, ‘someone just came with a gun and took all of our money,’” their mother Jennifer recounted. Byrne added, “My kids immediately just put their hands up and said ‘take whatever you want.’ So, I’m proud of my kids for that and I’m proud of them for basically protecting each other, but also being smart in that bad situation.” That pride, however, came wrapped in fury. “This is appalling, this is grotesque. This is something that should not happen to young kids,” Byrne said. “Can’t have a gun and can’t be robbing lemonade stands. It’s as easy as that.” “The youngest one, my daughter, she was saying she’s scared to walk home from the bus stop, which is only two blocks away,” Jennifer noted. Boston police released surveillance footage of the two juvenile suspects Thursday, and District C-6 detectives are actively investigating. No arrests have been made. The story does have one redemptive note: City Councilor Ed Flynn announced that the stand will reopen Friday at 5:30 p.m, adding, “South Boston neighbors are helping these kids reopen their lemonade stand. Let’s show them how much love and support the Southie community has for them. It is also our understanding that 50% of proceeds will be donated to a local organization working to prevent gun violence.” Anyone with information is urged to contact detectives at (617) 343-4742.