This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected].  

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Court Rejects First Amendment Challenge to School District's Ban on Students "Misgendering" Classmates

.....From Chief Judge Algenon Marbley (S.D. Ohio) today in Parents Defending Education v. Olentangy Local School Dist. Bd. of Ed.:

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Federal Court Blocks Arkansas Law That Limits "Harmful to Minors" Books in Libraries and Bookstores, and Also Limits "Inappropriate" Books in Libraries

.....An Arkansas statute (Act 372) makes it a crime (in its section 1) for librarians and booksellers to "[f]urnish a harmful item to a minor." The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment does not protect the distribution of "obscenity," a narrow category that basically covers hard-core pornography. To be obscenity, a work must satisfy all three of the following elements, largely drawn from Miller v. California (1973), though with extra detail added by Smith v. U.S. (1977), Pope v. Illinois (1987), and Brockett v. Spokane Arcades, Inc. (1985):

New York Times: Lindsey Graham and Elizabeth Warren: When It Comes to Big Tech, Enough Is Enough

By Lindsey Graham and Elizabeth Warren

.....Our Digital Consumer Protection Commission Act would create an independent, bipartisan regulator charged with licensing and policing the nation’s biggest tech companies — like Meta, Google and Amazon — to prevent online harm, promote free speech and competition, guard Americans’ privacy and protect national security. The new watchdog would focus on the unique threats posed by tech giants while strengthening the tools available to the federal agencies and state attorneys general who have authority to regulate Big Tech...

Wall Street Journal: Hunter Biden, FARA and Unequal Justice

.....FARA is a long-ignored law dating to 1938 that special counsel Mueller brought out of mothballs in an attempt to pry information out of Donald Trump’s associates. It requires Americans acting as an “agent of a foreign principal” under most circumstances to register with the U.S. government. As we noted at the time, in the nearly half-century up to 2016 the Justice Department brought only seven criminal FARA cases and won three convictions. The rarity of prosecutions created much confusion about how and when the law applies.

Wall Street Journal: The Biden Administration’s Assault on Free Speech

By Philip Hamburger and Jenin Younes

.....Among the revelations in the so-called Twitter files was that government officials pressured social-media companies to censor posts unfavorable to the Biden administration. The White House has denied this, insisting that companies like Meta and Twitter adopted content-moderation policies on their own. But internal documents newly released by the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government prove that government pressure led Meta to go beyond what it otherwise would have in censoring user speech.

Court-ordered discovery in Missouri v. Biden has already revealed that the White House strong-armed platforms into more censorship than they considered justified—prompting the judge to declare that the administration had made “arguably the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” The new documents go further, showing that the administration drove much of Meta’s censorship.

The Hill: ‘Facebook Files’ show Biden’s administration even targeted jokes for censorship

.....The newly released “Facebook Files” revealed a concerted effort by the Biden administration to censor not just false information, but also true information, along with jokes that its functionaries simply found annoying. 

Months ago, I testified before Congress on censorship after Elon Musk’s release of internal Twitter communications, also known as the Twitter Files. I warned that the government was engaging in “censorship by surrogate,” using corporate allies to do indirectly what it is legally prevented from doing directly. 

Racket News: The Most Embarrassing "Facebook Files" Revelation? The Press, Exposed as Censors

.....We see repeatedly in internal communications not only in the email above, but in the Twitter Files, in the exhibits of the Missouri v Biden lawsuit, and even in the Freedom of Information request results beginning to trickle in here at Racket, that the news media has for some time been working in concert with civil society organizations, government, and tech platforms, as part of the censorship apparatus.

New York Times: D.E.I. Programs Are Getting in the Way of Liberal Education

By Christopher F. Rufo

.....These are not neutral programs to increase demographic diversity; they are political programs that use taxpayer resources to advance a specific partisan orthodoxy. After the publication of my reporting, Mr. DeSantis signed legislation abolishing D.E.I. programs in Florida’s public universities, arguing that they violated the principles of liberal education.

Axios: Microsoft's Xandr bans political ads

By Sara Fischer

.....Xandr, the advanced TV advertising company Microsoft acquired in 2021, on Thursday told advertisers that it plans to ban political ads beginning October 1, according to an email obtained by Axios.

New York Times: Researchers Poke Holes in Safety Controls of ChatGPT and Other Chatbots

By Cade Metz

.....When artificial intelligence companies build online chatbots, like ChatGPT, Claude and Google Bard, they spend months adding guardrails that are supposed to prevent their systems from generating hate speech, disinformation and other toxic material.

In a report released on Thursday, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the Center for A.I. Safety in San Francisco showed how anyone could circumvent A.I. safety measures and use any of the leading chatbots to generate nearly unlimited amounts of harmful information.

New York Times: $60 Million Refund Request Shows Financial Pressure on Trump From Legal Fees

By Maggie Haberman and Shane Goldmacher

.....The political action committee that former President Donald J. Trump is using to pay his legal bills faced such staggering costs this year that it requested a refund on a $60 million contribution it made to another group supporting the Republican front-runner, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Mediaite: Megyn Kelly Grills Ron DeSantis On Free Speech, Asks How His War Against Bud Light and Disney Isn’t ‘Viewpoint Discrimination’

By Candice Ortiz

.....Megyn Kelly grilled 2024 GOP hopeful Ron DeSantis over his continued war with various corporations and pointedly asked the Florida governor if he was “using government to punish citizens for political wrong think.”

Axios: Minnesota legalizes crypto contributions for state campaigns

By Torey Van Oot

.....Crypto contributions to state political campaign committees are now explicitly allowed under a law that took effect this month. Under the new rules, Minnesota campaigns must convert donations made via virtual currency to U.S. dollars within five days.

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