While one might have thought that the Bill of Rights renders the entire United States a “free-speech zone,” at Georgia Gwinnett College, a state school, the term is applied only to two small areas, open only eighteen hours a day—where students are allowed to speak freely only after securing advance permission from the administration. Such activities as distributing pamphlets or holding up picket signs are elsewhere forbidden, or, at the very least, can be stopped by the authorities. On Monday, this policy was sharply rebuked by an eight-to-one Supreme Court ruling in the case of Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski. Dan McLaughlin comments:

Chike Uzuegbunam, an evangelical Christian student, was told that if he wanted to evangelize his faith to his fellow students, he would have to apply three days in advance for a permit, and then confine his activities to one of the two free-speech zones. After receiving the permit, he was told by campus cops that he could not share his faith even in one of the speech zones, because doing so violated a campus ban on “disturb[ing] the peace and/or comfort of person(s).” (Of course, these days, almost any opinion, especially on matters of faith, will make someone on campus uncomfortable.)

So he sued, represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom and supported by Jeff Sessions and the Trump Justice Department. In response, the college changed the policy and tried to get the lawsuit dismissed as moot. Eventually, the issue reached the Supreme Court. And . . . Justice Clarence Thomas delivered a clear victory for the plaintiffs.

Chief Justice John Roberts’s dissent, it’s worth noting, turned not on the majority’s interpretation of the First Amendment, but on a procedural issue. That the court ruled as it did, argues McLaughlin, makes its judgment’s significance for religious liberty much greater:

Uzuegbunam . . . sought “nominal damages”—a judgment of just enough money that he could show the world his rights had been violated, and set a precedent to deter Georgia Gwinnett and other colleges from violating other students’ rights in such a way going forward. The alternative—dismissing such a suit every time a college gets called out and changes its policy—does less to help protect the free speech of students who may not be determined enough to take their campus administrators to court.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.