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

The Hill: Twitter’s rebrand is a chance to recommit to free speech, even about abortion

.....The State Sen. Rachel Hunt (D) is running for lieutenant governor of North Carolina. Her opposition to the state’s recently passed 12-week abortion ban is central to her platform and her decision to run.

Hunt wants to explain her views to voters in a video campaign advertisement. However, because she intends to discuss abortion, Twitter, since rebranded as “X,” refuses to allow Hunt to use the site’s content promotion and advertising tools. 

The platform rejected Hunt’s advertisement in June, admitting that “the mention of abortion advocacy is the issue here.” Providing a glimmer of hope, a Twitter employee told Hunt’s campaign that the platform might have “some good news to share on that front” in the following weeks. 

It’s been almost two months now. If Elon Musk is genuinely committed to free speech, he should immediately change the policy prohibiting Hunt’s ad and repeal the political ad ban entirely.  

.....The right to criticize public officials and government employees lies at the heart of the First Amendment. Yet, for Hampden parent Shawn McBreairty, such criticism prompted the local school board to silence him.

That’s why the Institute for Free Speech has filed an amicus brief urging the First Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a federal district court ruling and declare unconstitutional the Regional School Unit 22 (RSU 22) policy prohibiting speakers at board meetings from criticizing school personnel.

In its brief, the Institute contends that the policy cannot survive constitutional scrutiny even under the more permissive rules that apply to speech restrictions in limited public forums.

.....At present, the Biden administration is engaged in a legal battle due to their past contact with tech companies like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter (now called X) to limit speech related to the 2020 election results, criticisms of COVID-19 measures, stories about Hunter Biden’s extracurricular activities, and more.

Federalist: Jack Smith’s Jan 6. Indictments Are An Attack On Political Speech

.....People keep assuring me the indictments aren’t really about the expression but rather about defrauding the government. Sorry, the entire case is predicated on the things Trump said or believed or didn’t say or didn’t believe. All of it should be protected under the First Amendment. “Spreading lies” — prosecutors leaned on the thesaurus hard, finding about two dozen ways of repeating this fact — or entertaining theories offered by crackpot lawyers, or trying to convince faithless electors to do things that people have been trying to convince faithless electors to do for a long time, are all unethical, not criminal.

Wall Street Journal: Another Troubling Trump Indictment

.....This is a remarkably broad theory of “conspiracy to defraud the United States,” and one with troubling implications far beyond the fate of Mr. Trump. Mr. Smith’s theory seems to be that if a President and his “co-conspirators” are lying, and then take action on that lie, they are defrauding the U.S.

New York Times: Trump Election Charges Set Up Clash of Lies Versus Free Speech

By Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman

.....Already, Mr. Trump’s lawyers and allies are setting out the early stages of a legal strategy to counter the accusations, saying that Mr. Trump’s First Amendment rights are under attack. They say Mr. Trump had every right to express views about election fraud that they say he believed, and still believes, to be true, and that the actions he took or proposed after the election were based on legal advice.

Washington Post (Technology 202): Disinfo researchers are under pressure from the right. They’re starting to push back.

By Will Oremus

.....In a legal brief filed last week, Stanford University and two of its internet researchers blasted a Louisiana federal judge’s order that limited the Biden administration’s ability to communicate with them about online misinformation. 

Stanford and the researchers, Alex Stamos and Renée DiResta of the Stanford Internet Observatory, claim that U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty’s July 4 ruling repeatedly quoted them as saying things they never said. Those “invented quotations,” they say, helped Doughty paint an inaccurate picture of their role in what Doughty deemed “censorship” of posts about the 2020 election and the covid-19 pandemic. The injunction he imposed “has cast a chill across academia” and violates Stamos and DiResta’s First Amendment rights, they argue...

Stanford joins the fray as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit is set to consider the Justice Department’s appeal of Doughty’s ruling, which the appeals court put on hold until it reaches a final ruling. 

Politico: The case for more AI in politics

By Ben Schreckinger

.....[Eric Wilson, managing partner at Startup Caucus, an incubator for Republican campaign tech:] The moral panic around AI, especially in politics, is way overblown. The way it’s going to be integrated into this cycle is very mundane, which is like helping write press releases and social media copy, and just speeding up the process as we’re seeing it in any other industry.

Wired: This Disinformation Is Just for You

.....“Generative AI lowers the financial barrier for creating content that’s tailored to certain audiences,” says Kate Starbird, an associate professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington. “You can tailor it to audiences and make sure the narrative hits on the values and beliefs of those audiences, as well as the strategic part of the narrative.”

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