Trump arraigned

Today was a long time coming for Topline readers who’ve been with us from the beginning. We’ve closely followed the various investigations of Donald Trump, from Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election…to the first impeachment over a quid pro quo made to Ukraine…to the second impeachment for incitement of insurrection…to the House select committee’s Jan. 6 investigation…to the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 and classified documents probes…to New York State’s tax fraud investigation…to the Fulton County, Georgia, case examining the ex-president’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Whew. In comparison to all of that, the “bare bones” indictment unsealed this afternoon in Manhattan is a bit anticlimactic. Trump is accused of falsifying documents in a “catch-and-kill” scheme that paid off individuals with potentially damaging information that could hurt his chances of winning the 2016 election. The hush money payments themselves aren’t actually the problem—as always, the elaborate conspiracy to cover them up is. There isn’t much new here, and it is arguably the least weighty of all the potential cases against Trump. But the law is the law, and Trump finally faced it today. —Melissa Amour, Managing Editor

• Republicans push for stricter election laws, despite scant proof of fraud —The Washington Post

• Wisconsin voters cast ballots in crucial state supreme court election —The Guardian

• Florida Senate approves six-week abortion ban as two Republicans vote ‘no’ —Politico

• Marjorie Taylor Greene says Democratic Party driven by pedophiles in controversial ‘60 Minutes’ interview —New York Daily News

• Former Arkansas GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson is running for president —ABC News

He surrenders 

There were no handcuffs. Or mug shot. Or live video from the courtroom. But there was plenty of quiet drama as Donald Trump pleaded not guilty today to 34 felony charges of falsifying business records in an alleged hush money scheme. The first former president ever indicted, Trump turned himself in to authorities and delivered his plea in a New York City courtroom this afternoon, before quickly departing by private plane back to Florida. The charging documents suggest that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is relying heavily on witness testimony, business records, and a recorded conversation between Trump and his then-attorney Michael Cohen. Though prosecutors have suggested January 2024, the presiding judge did not set a trial date. Stay tuned. —Politico

• The GOP reaction. Republicans are warning that the indictment sets a dangerous precedent that will put the nation on a precarious slippery slope to future political prosecutions (perhaps “Lock her up” was an acceptable exception?). Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene made the trek north to the courthouse to show her support for the ex-president. When she grabbed a bullhorn and tried to speak, she was drowned out by anti-Trump demonstrators blowing whistles and was forced to make a hasty retreat back to the safety of her SUV. —The Hill

• The White House reaction. There wasn’t one. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to weigh in, telling reporters, “It’s an ongoing case, so we’re just not going to comment. The president is going to focus on the American people.” She added that President Biden will “catch up on the news of the day” but reiterated that the president wasn’t focused on Trump’s legal challenges. —The Wall Street Journal

• The public reaction. It’s mixed. Sixty percent of Americans—including majorities across major demographic divides—approve of the indictment, according to a new poll. However, three-quarters of Americans say politics played at least some role in the decision to indict. A scant 10% see Trump as blameless, but Americans are divided about whether his actions were illegal or merely unethical. Fortunately, despite threats and incitement, so far there have been no incidents of violence connected to the indictment. —CNN

MORE: Mar-a-Lago evidence suggests possible Trump obstruction, people familiar say —The Washington Post

Bad news for Vlad

Finland has formally joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in a historic policy shift brought on by Russia’s war against Ukraine. Ironically, Russian President Vladimir Putin had cited opposition to NATO’s eastward expansion as one justification for invading Ukraine. Finland’s accession, ending seven decades of military non-alignment, roughly doubles the length of the border NATO shares with Russia and bolsters its eastern flank. “I congratulate all the people of Finland,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his evening address. “Russian aggression clearly proves that only collective guarantees, only preventive guarantees, can be reliable.” The Kremlin said Russia would be forced to take “counter-measures,” including strengthening its military capacity in its western and northwestern regions. —Reuters

MORE RUSSIA NEWS:

• Biden Administration to officially declare Wall Street Journal reporter as wrongfully detained in Russia —CNN

• Blinken: Russia must immediately free 2 detained Americans —Associated Press

• Brittney Griner calls for release of American reporter Evan Gershkovich —NPR

• Suspect in café attack that killed Russian blogger is jailed —Al Jazeera

• ‘He’s a war criminal’: Elite Putin security officer defects —Associated Press

Will Nashville bring gun law changes?

After the horrific school shooting in Nashville that left three 9-year-old students and three school employees dead last week, the president urged action on curbing gun violence. But anyone hoping for a watershed moment may be discouraged yet again. Hundreds of protesters packed the Tennessee Capitol last week calling for the Statehouse to pass gun control measures. But instead, Republican lawmakers took the first steps yesterday to expel three Democratic members from the House for leading chants during the protest. Former Republican Rep. David Jolly says it will continue to be an uphill battle. “We have a generation of Republican politicians who basically have been indoctrinated from the time they entered politics, alongside their gun lobby talking points,” he says. Count Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis among them. He just signed a bill that permits Floridians to carry concealed guns without a permit. —Associated Press

MORE: Sutherland Springs survivors haunted by an AR-15’s carnage, trauma —The Washington Post

Florida Is Where the First Amendment Goes to Die

By Aaron Terr

Reprinted from The UnPopulist

Wikipedia. Creative Commons. DonkeyHotey

In the 1925 case Gitlow v. New York, the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment binds not only the federal government, but state governments, too. If the Court were able to see 100 years into the future, it might have specifically noted, “That includes you, Florida.”

In the past few years, the Sunshine State has been the site of one attack on the First Amendment after another. It’s hardly the only place in America where free speech is in jeopardy, to be fair. But Florida is at the vanguard of efforts nationwide to suppress speech and enforce ideological conformity.

Attacks on Campus Free Speech

When Ron DeSantis became Florida’s governor in 2019, there was reason for optimism about an expansion of freedom of expression in the state. In April of that year, he called on Florida’s colleges and universities to adopt the “Chicago Statement.” It’s a resolution that my organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), endorses as the “gold standard” of institutional commitments to free speech on campus because it establishes, for example, that "it is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.” That move built on the progress made by passage of the state’s speech-protective Campus Free Expression Act in 2018, which codified that same principle.

But things started to go downhill last year when Gov. DeSantis signed the “Individual Freedom” Act (more commonly known as the “Stop WOKE Act”) into law. Ironically, the law abridges individual freedom by restricting how faculty at state institutions may speak about controversial subjects like race and sex in the classroom. It lists several concepts that faculty may not “espouse” or “advance,” such as the view that an “individual, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment to achieve diversity, equity, or inclusion.” That could, taking just one example, make it unlawful for professors to present arguments in favor of affirmative action or reparations for slavery. Whatever one thinks of the merits of those ideas, it’s well within a professor’s academic freedom to discuss, debate, and take positions on them in class.

FIRE sued to challenge the Stop WOKE Act’s higher education provisions on First Amendment grounds. In defending the law, Florida took the astonishing position that faculty at public universities are mere government mouthpieces, rather than scholars with constitutionally protected academic freedom, as the Supreme Court has recognized. That freedom is essential to a university’s fundamental mission to produce and disseminate knowledge.

In a ruling last November, a federal court agreed with FIRE (and the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which filed separate suits) and halted enforcement of key parts of the Stop WOKE Act. The court called the law “positively dystopian” and explained that the “First Amendment does not permit the State of Florida to muzzle its university professors, impose its own orthodoxy of viewpoints, and cast us all into the dark.” Of course, the state has appealed that decision.

But a court defeat didn’t stop Florida lawmakers from stepping up efforts to purge campuses of ideas they dislike. Last month, Florida state legislators introduced House Bill 999 and its Senate counterpart Senate Bill 266. Both are essentially the Stop WOKE Act on steroids. That’s right—they’re seeking to expand on a law declared unconstitutional by a federal court by adding more First Amendment violations into the mix.

The new legislation, which Gov. DeSantis previewed in January, would impose even more limits on the freedom of students and faculty to discuss and explore ideas in college classrooms and beyond. It would require faculty to censor their classroom discussion and materials in general education courses to avoid ideas “associated with Critical Theory, including, but not limited to, Critical Race Theory, Critical Race Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies, Radical Feminist Theory, Radical Gender Theory, Queer Theory, Critical Social Justice, or Intersectionality.” The House version would also ban majors and minors based on these subjects or that “promote” any of the Stop WOKE Act’s forbidden concepts.

HB 999 reaches beyond the classroom and curriculum, too. It would impose viewpoint-based funding restrictions that limit the ability of recognized student groups to receive assistance from their campus administrations for any activities—including distribution of student newspapers and other publications or hosting guest speakers—that promote certain disfavored views. The activities cannot promote the Stop WOKE Act concepts, advocate for DEI, or promote or engage in “political or social activism.” As with the Stop WOKE Act, if this legislation is enacted, a court should enjoin it before it goes into effect.

Under this legislation, faculty would be similarly restricted in their ability to organize panels, conferences, and other academic programming around these ideas. Meanwhile, student organizations and faculty engaged in activities in line with the government's views would remain eligible to partner with administrations. And if all that weren’t enough, HB 999 threatens to undermine academic freedom further by allowing the chairs of the boards of trustees to initiate a post-tenure review at any time—even without cause—effectively eliminating tenure. And it would give university presidents and politically appointed trustees significant control over hiring and firing decisions.

It isn’t just college students and professors whose expressive rights are under threat in Florida. Across the state, K-12 schools say they are clearing their library shelves of books for fear of running afoul of a new law targeting libraries. And Florida’s attack on First Amendment freedoms extends beyond the educational context.

Going After the First Amendment Rights of Big Tech

In 2021, the Florida Legislature passed Senate Bill 7072, which prohibits social media platforms from banning political candidates or restricting content from candidates and media organizations. Republicans have long raised concerns that Big Tech has an anti-conservative bias. Gov. DeSantis said the law will hold Big Tech accountable if they “discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology,” while Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez claimed the law would combat efforts to “silence, intimidate, and wipe out dissenting voices by the leftist media and big corporations.” Concerns about large social media platforms regulating their users’ speech in arbitrary or politically biased ways—with little process or transparency—aren’t something to brush aside. We’ve reached the point where a handful of companies have tremendous power to shape conversations about important public issues. But the solution is not to violate these private platforms’ own First Amendment right to exercise editorial judgment.

Social media companies are akin to “parade organizers and cable operators,” wrote the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in upholding an injunction against SB 7072’s key provisions, because they’re “in the business of delivering curated compilations of speech created, in the first instance, by others.” The decisions a private company like Twitter or Facebook makes about what content to remove, keep up, deprioritize, or promote are inherently expressive and thus protected by the First Amendment.

Recasting these decisions as unprotected censorship—as the Fifth Circuit did in regrettably rejecting a challenge to a similar Texas law—not only violates the rights of social media behemoths, it creates a framework that could reach smaller speech-hosting forums and websites that moderate content according to community rules. Taken to its logical conclusion, the Fifth Circuit’s reasoning could potentially justify a law forcing even brick-and-mortar establishments like bookstores and movie theaters to distribute speech against their will.

Protecting Public Figures, Exposing Ordinary Citizens

Florida’s government is justifying its edicts on social media companies on grounds that users are entitled to wide access to diverse political viewpoints. But if it truly wants to protect the rights of social media users, it should forcefully reject other bills introduced this year that would expose the same users to legal jeopardy for criticizing the powerful. HB 991 and SB 1220 would upend defamation law in defiance of well-established Supreme Court precedent protecting the right to speak freely about public issues. These proposals carve out exceptions to the “actual malice” standard, which requires public officials and figures suing for defamation to prove the speaker knew the words were false or had serious doubts that they were true. They would also hobble investigative journalism by creating a presumption that anonymous sources aren’t telling the truth. And they would neutralize Florida’s anti-SLAPP law, which discourages targets of criticism from bringing meritless lawsuits to intimidate their critics into silence.

The actual malice standard comes from the Supreme Court’s 1964 landmark decision New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. Gov. DeSantis has criticized the decision and said the proposed reforms are necessary to “stand up for the little guy against these massive media conglomerates.” But Sullivan safeguards the democratic function of free speech. It gives not only the media but ordinary citizens the breathing space necessary to participate in “uninhibited, robust and wide open” debate on public issues without risking financial devastation.

Whether you’re a liberal or a conservative, and whether you’re criticizing the president, your local school board, or any other public official, Sullivan protects you if you unwittingly get a factual detail wrong. The First Amendment doesn’t protect deliberate lies that damage a person’s reputation, but it recognizes that vigorous and messy public debate—which inevitably includes some inaccurate speech—is a basic feature of any healthy democracy.

Perhaps the most striking legislative proposal to come out of Florida recently is a Republican-sponsored bill that would force bloggers writing about state officials to register with the state within five days if they receive compensation for the post. The bill is a flagrant attack on both a free press and the right to speak anonymously. Fortunately, unlike the previously discussed bills, this unconstitutional proposal does not have the governor’s support.

Free Speech versus the Culture War

At this point, one would think I’ve covered every recent free speech debacle in the state. But wait, there’s more!

Last spring, Gov. DeSantis successfully called on the state legislature to revoke The Walt Disney Company’s special tax district status after Disney’s CEO expressed opposition to the “Parental Rights in Education Bill” (dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by critics). And Florida’s government has also been cracking down on drag shows, which DeSantis has said are “inappropriate” for minors.

Last December, the state tasked undercover agents with recording a performance of “A Drag Queen Christmas” in Orlando. The agents photographed three minors in the audience who appeared to be accompanied by adults. They reported that while some performers wore “provocative” outfits, the agents didn’t witness any “lewd acts.” But that didn’t stop Florida’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation from moving to revoke the venue’s liquor license for allegedly exposing children to sexual content. The Department also filed a complaint against the Hyatt Regency Miami for hosting the same event, and it’s going after a Miami restaurant for hosting a “drag brunch.”

Drag shows are a form of artistic expression protected by the First Amendment. They’re not everyone’s cup of tea, sure. But as one court aptly noted, “The First Amendment is not an art critic.” Although obscenity is a well-known First Amendment exception, there’s no evidence that anything at these performances remotely approached the Supreme Court’s high bar for obscenity. If “provocative outfits” and sexually tinged performances were all it took, the police could run onto the field at Hard Rock Stadium and haul away Miami Dolphins cheerleaders in handcuffs.

And while the government may regulate the so-called “secondary effects” of expression that includes nude dancing and/or sexually explicit performances (such as increased crime), it may not regulate these forms of expression based on objection to the content, nor may it regulate differently based on whether or not a performer is in drag.

Ain’t No Sunshine When Free Speech Is Gone

Florida has been keeping organizations like mine extremely busy, and not in a good way. The state stands out for the rate at which threats to free speech continue to proliferate, and many expect its governor to run for the presidency.

Unfortunately, Florida has a lot of competition for the crown. It’s all too easy to find similar efforts to roll back expressive rights in many other states—whether it’s bills and proposals targeting drag shows, public library collections, abortion-related speech, or what’s fair game for discussion in college classrooms; laws requiring websites to address “hate speech” and proposed “bias hotlines” that solicit complaints about constitutionally protected speech that someone might find offensive; increased attempts to sanction faculty members for merely saying something controversial; colleges and universities subjecting faculty to ideological litmus tests for hiring or promotion; or any number of other rights violations.

Fears that the entire country is entering a free speech recession are not overblown.

That’s why we all need to stay vigilant against threats to our most basic freedom. Disregarding the First Amendment for short-term political gain might be superficially appealing, but in the long term, this strategy will erode the foundations of knowledge-producing institutions and our democratic republic. For evidence, look at what’s happening in other countries around the world that lack freedom of speech.

As David French recently argued, we can clash over contentious political topics, but we need “a legal corollary to the golden rule: Defend the rights of others that you would like to exercise yourself.” We need a renewed national commitment to the First Amendment and free speech as a cultural value, not just for ourselves and our political allies, but for everyone.

Aaron Terr is director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

Republicans keep saying it is a mental health issue. Why then are people with mental health issues and illnesses allowed to buy guns? It seems a simple “duty to warn” to a national registry would have prohibited many of the prior mass shooters from legally buying any gun. —Ken G., Colorado

Another mass shooting (such a tragedy) in America, which means it is time to send thoughts and prayers. Because that’s working so well. It is pathetic that it’s the only solution, along with buying more guns, that some “geniuses” offer to the address the slaughter in this country. Of course, it is not the right time to try to solve the crisis, let alone discuss it, because there is never a “right time” for some.

I wish those who spew the phrase “guns don't kill people, people kill people,” would answer a few questions with details and not their usual rhetoric and sayings.

Do nukes kill people? Shouldn’t all countries have nukes since, according to you folks, it is not the weapon that kills?

How many guns are needed before we are finally safe? You keep telling us more guns will make us safer, yet the data and everyday life show otherwise, as the number of guns in private hands in this country increases by the day. By the way, using that genius logic, doesn't that mean that more nukes would make the world safer, too? If not, why not? For that matter, if groups like Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, and ISIS had nukes, would the world be safer? Please, enlighten us all.

How many times do we need to send thoughts and prayers before they finally work? We’ve been doing so for decades, and yet the mass killings continue. You claim this is all about “mental health” (please define it for us) and not about the weapons or the easy access to weapons of war. So please explain to us, in detail, how you screen for “it.” I am not making light of mental issues by any stretch; I’m just calling out the BS. Please tell us how a one-time screening of whatever you propose will “weed these people out,” and how it will work, because mental health, like physical health, is an ongoing and lifelong process. And anyone, at any moment, could cross the line, so to speak. Please explain.

And the bonus question. How many gun deaths would there be if guns did not exist? Go ahead, twist yourself in knots. Try replacing the word gun(s) with cancer, for example. If you think I'm some sort of anti-gun person, I am not, and I am a veteran, if it matters to anyone.

Here’s a suggestion. The GOP genius, Marjorie Taylor Greene, says President Biden should give up his security detail. Interesting, but why only him? I'll see your suggestion and raise you one. How about all of you in the House, Senate, and Supreme Court also give up your personal security details and live like the rest of us? If you did, my guess is we’d have a whole different discussion, and maybe some real solutions, with regard to gun-related deaths.

I’m listening. But I won’t hold my breath waiting. —Bill T., Arizona

The views expressed in "What's Your Take?" are submitted by readers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff or the Renew America Foundation.