The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech June 29, 2023 Click here to subscribe to the Daily Media Update. This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected]. We're Hiring! Director of Development .....Institute for Free Speech is hiring a Director of Development responsible for developing and implementing a fundraising plan and managing all development efforts. IFS seeks a skilled development professional with a proven record of developing relationships with major donors, such as individuals or foundations, our donor network, and other supporters. This position demands a candidate passionate about free speech and an in-depth understanding of what drives people to support a cause. In short, you will help raise the funds needed to litigate important cases in court and win the fight for the First Amendment’s speech freedoms in the court of public opinion. This person will report to the president of the Institute for Free Speech and can be executed from Washington, DC or virtually from anywhere in the United States. You must have strong writing and networking abilities and have the ability to build and maintain trusted, positive, and productive relationships with donors. Supreme Court Wall Street Journal: A Resounding Reaffirmation of Times v. Sullivan By Lee Levine and Matthew L. Schafer .....Donald Trump said in 2016 that he wanted to “open up our libel laws” to make it easier to sue news organizations for defamation. Two Supreme Court justices later raised questions about the landmark ruling New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964). But on Tuesday the high court laid these questions to rest—in a case that on its face had nothing to do with defamation law. Counterman v. Colorado flew under the radar for most Americans, even journalists. The case posed the question of what state of mind the government must prove to secure a criminal conviction for speech that constitutes a “true threat” of unlawful violence. In deciding it, however, six of the nine justices reaffirmed the central holding of Sullivan. Congress Wall Street Journal: The Espionage Act’s Ugly, Un-American History By Vivek Ramaswamy .....Donald Trump is charged with violating the Espionage Act, one of the most un-American laws Congress ever enacted. President Woodrow Wilson set the tone in his 1915 State of the Union address: “There are citizens of the United States . . . who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the arteries of our national life; who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our Government into contempt,” he asserted. “Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out.” Congress obliged two years later by enacting the Espionage Act with the express purpose of quashing dissent. The law criminalized not only spying for enemies, but also any attempt to encourage “disloyalty” among military ranks. Prosecutors enforced the act aggressively, using it to imprison hundreds of antiwar activists and political dissenters. The Socialist former presidential candidate Eugene Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison in part for denouncing the Espionage Act itself. The law was also used to charge religious leaders who preached pacifism, newspaper editors who republished German accounts of the war, and even the producer of “Spirit of ’76,” a film about the Revolutionary War that portrayed Britain, a World War I ally, in an unfavorable light. News Channel 3: Senate passes Senator Peters' bipartisan Lobbying Disclosure Improvement Act .....Two bipartisan bills authored by U.S. Senator Gary Peters (MI), Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, to improve our nation’s ability to prevent foreign governments from attempting to influence U.S. policy have passed the Senate. The bills would close existing loopholes that foreign governments, including adversaries like the Russian and Chinese governments, can exploit to conceal their roles in lobbying efforts. Just the News: DHS outsourced censorship to third parties, then tried to cover it up: House Judiciary GOP report By Greg Piper .....The Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency outsourced its "censorship operation" to a nonprofit it funded following a First Amendment lawsuit by Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general, "implicitly admitting that its censorship activities are unconstitutional," according to an interim staff report by House Judiciary Committee Republicans shared with Just the News. Free Expression Washington Free Beacon: Stanford Law School Promised Free Speech Training. It Delivered a Campus Joke. By Aaron Sibarium .....After hundreds of students at Stanford Law School shouted down a sitting federal judge in March, school administrators went into damage-control mode. Among the measures they promised to promote a more open academic climate was a mandatory half-day training session on "freedom of speech and the norms of the legal profession." Many hailed the move as a sign that Stanford was turning over a new leaf and lavished praise on Jenny Martinez, the law school's dean, for her perceived defiance of the campus mob. But the promised training wasn't much of a crash course in free speech. Instead, it was an online program that required barely a minute's effort, according to five people who completed the training as well as screenshots and recordings reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. Students were given six weeks to watch five prerecorded videos, most about an hour long, then asked to sign a form attesting that they had done so. The videos could be played on mute, and the form—which could be accessed without opening the training—did not ask any questions about their content, letting students tune out the modules or skip them entirely. National Review: ‘Completely Unjustified’: Maryland District Closes School Board Meeting to Public amid Backlash against LGBT Curricula By Haley Strack .....Citing “safety reasons,” Maryland’s largest school district will limit public access to what is set to be a contentious Board of Education meeting, in which the board is scheduled to address a policy that bans parents from opting their children out of “inappropriate” gender and sexuality curriculum. “This is an attempt to stigmatize protests and it’s an attempt to stigmatize the families who are coming and showing up to show their support for restoring the opt-out option for parents,” said Ismail Royer, policy adviser for the parents’ group Coalition of Virtue. “It’s completely unnecessary for security. It’s just a way of demonizing defense.” New York Times: Historians Criticize Moms for Liberty Event at Museum in Philadelphia By Jennifer Schuessler .....A half-dozen scholarly groups, including the nation’s two largest associations of professional historians, have criticized the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia for renting space to Moms for Liberty, calling it a dangerous normalization of an organization that supports book bans and restrictions on teaching about race and gender. In a letter to the museum on Monday, the American Historical Association called on the museum to find a legal way to cancel the rental. Candidates and Campaigns Politico: One of the Most Effective Political Fundraising Pitches Is Actually a Scam By Tim Griffin .....Protecting people from scams and fraud is one of my most fundamental responsibilities as attorney general of Arkansas. Americans are used to scams perpetrated by fraudsters and con artists, but they don’t expect it from their elected leaders. The truth is politicians, political parties and PACs are deceiving unsuspecting victims who believe in our political system. And they’re doing it by fundraising with emails and text messages that falsely promise to “match” a contribution. This scam is not only unethical, it’s also potentially illegal — and politicians who use it may find themselves under legal scrutiny. The States Shore News Network: New Jersey Law Targets Frivolous Lawsuits Against Protected Public Speech By Phil Stilton .....Now, legislation sponsored by Senator Jon Bramnick that would establish an expedited process to dismiss SLAPP suits was approved today by the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee. Legislation sponsored by Sen. Jon Bramnick that would establish an expedited process to dismiss SLAPP suits was approved today by the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee. Nebraska Examiner: State Sen. Megan Hunt files defamation lawsuit against conservative group By Cindy Gonzalez .....Omaha Sen. Megan Hunt has taken legal action against a conservative political action committee, asserting that the Nebraska Freedom Coalition defamed her by publicly accusing her of sexually grooming and abusing her own child. The lawsuit was filed on Hunt’s behalf Wednesday by the Nebraska Legal Action Fund, a group founded by former State Sen. Adam Morfeld and created “to protect Nebraskans who are defamed by extremists.” ... Filed in Douglas County District Court, the lawsuit said that as a result of the Nebraska Freedom Coalition’s public statements on Twitter, Hunt received death threats and was bombarded with tweets, calls and emails calling her a pedophile and an abuser of her 13-year-old child. The “false lies” had “vicious consequences,” the lawsuit said. Read an article you think we would be interested in? Send it to Tiffany Donnelly at [email protected]. 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