Source: Reason
by Jacob Sullum
“Priscilla Villarreal was not arrested for ‘merely asking questions,’ Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton insists in a brief urging the Supreme Court to reject the Laredo news vlogger’s petition for review of her First Amendment case. Yet that is literally what happened to Villarreal in 2017, and the precedent set by that incident poses a threat to journalists across the country. Villarreal, who operates a locally popular news outlet on Facebook, alleges that local officials, annoyed by her ‘unfiltered style’ and periodic criticism of them, conspired to punish her by treating her journalism as a crime. After months of looking for ‘any excuse’ to arrest her, she says, they settled on an obscure, rarely used Texas law, located in a chapter targeting ‘Abuse of Office,’ that makes it a felony to ‘solicit’ nonpublic information from a government official ‘with intent to obtain a benefit.'” (12/17/25)