The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech September 16, 2024 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]. The Courts Politico: TikTok launches fight for its life in court By Christine Mui .....TikTok heads to court Monday morning to fight for its survival in the U.S. — in a political environment sharply changed from just five months ago, when Congress overwhelmingly voted to ban or force a sale of the app. In a historically unusual targeting of a single company for its Chinese ties, the TikTok law passed in April with a wave of support from both Democrats and Republicans before being signed by President Joe Biden. Since then, TikTok and its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance have sued to block the law, as have other groups, saying it violates users’ First Amendment rights and that the government failed to provide sufficient proof of the app posing a security threat. Monday’s oral arguments in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will be the first chance for federal judges to weigh those claims. Ed. note: Stay tuned for a new episode of "Free Speech Arguments" covering the arguments later today.  New York Times: Activists Convicted of Conspiring to Act as Russian Agents By Patricia Mazzei .....An unusual federal trial detailing the inner workings of a Russian influence operation in the United States ended on Thursday with jurors convicting four members of Black power groups of conspiring to act as agents of the Russian government. The defendants were acquitted of failing to register as Russian agents, a more serious charge. Prosecutors had argued during the weeklong trial in Tampa that the defendants had engaged in a seven-year conspiracy to sow division in American politics. The defendants countered that the government was trying to criminalize their support of Russian ideology, which they argued was protected political speech. Speaking after the verdict on Thursday, three of the defendants and their lawyers said they considered the acquittal on the more serious charge a victory. They also vowed to appeal the conviction on the lesser charges. “The most important thing is they were unable to convict us of working for anybody except Black people,” Omali Yeshitela, the chairman of the Uhuru Movement, said on the courthouse steps, according to The Tampa Bay Times. “I am willing to be charged and found guilty of working for Black people.” The Media Reason (Video): Mike Pesca: How NPR Lost Its Way By Nick Gillespie .....Today's guest is Mike Pesca, who publishes The Gist podcast every weekday. The Gist, which launched in 2014, is a tight 30 minutes of news, interviews, and opinions on the biggest issues of the day. Pesca is a veteran of NPR and Slate—experiences that have made him an outspoken critic of legacy media, especially its willingness to overthrow longstanding commitments to objectivity and fairness in pursuit of progressive versions of "moral clarity." Reason's Nick Gillespie talks with him about his controversial 2021 separation from Slate after he defended a New York Times reporter's use of a racial slur, why once-vaunted newspapers such as The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times are rightly losing readers and money, and whether the old world of three broadcast TV networks and heavily gate-kept media had any value. Free Expression Fox News: Disabled veteran arrested at Rutgers after posting anti-Hamas flyers: ‘Not going to let anyone censor me’ By Nikolas Lanum .....A Rutgers Law School student who mounted a counter-protest against anti-Israel demonstrators on campus was arrested by police after he refused to stop posting flyers that labeled Hamas as "savages." Yiorgos "George" Maravelias, a disabled veteran who previously served as a United States Army First Lieutenant and deployed to Afghanistan, first engaged in campus activism in November 2023. He told Fox News Digital that after October 7, a vocal minority of law school students erected tables and hung flyers that criticized Israel's actions in Gaza... Maravelias said he then began hanging his flyers on walls and spaces that were riddled with anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian content. Soon after, a woman began ripping down his posters... The woman, who was later identified as distinguished professor of law and Chancellor's Social Justice Scholar Sahar Aziz, escorted Maravelias up to Dean Cate Lysionek's office with his crumpled papers in hand. Maravelias claimed that Aziz was informed that no such policy prevented him from engaging in political speech. New York Times: The Organizers Are Jewish. The Cause Is Palestinian. This College Won’t Be Hosting. By M. Gessen .....On the surface, this is a small story: A college canceled an event planned by a magazine. But it seems to be a story about something bigger: fear. Rather, it’s a story about many fears — including the fear of antisemitism, the fear of being accused of antisemitism, and the fear of controversy generally — and how they can combine to turn an institution designed to facilitate open discussion into something that makes open discussion impossible. The States Idaho Statesman: Jury issues verdict in Big City Coffee lawsuit against Boise State administrators By Angela Palermo .....Boise State University administrators owe Big City Coffee owner Sarah Fendley $4 million after a jury ruled unanimously in favor of Fendley and awarded her damages in her lawsuit, capping a three-week long trial that centered around the closure of her campus shop nearly four years ago… Fendley sued Boise State for $10 million after the campus shop closed in October 2020, a month and a half after opening next to the university’s library. She argued that the university forced her out of the location after a small group of students raised concerns about her pro-police views, including support of the “thin blue line,” the idea that police form the line between order and lawlessness. News & Observer: Harassment or free speech? NC appeals court vacates no-contact order against protester By Mary Helen Moore .....Do protests outside a county department head’s home and hundreds of text messages sent to a social worker in one night constitute harassment? If so, would the county be justified in severely curtailing those activists’ rights to protest? Those questions were at the heart of an appeal by Durham County activist Amanda Wallace, and last week, the N.C. Court of Appeals ruled it wasn’t yet clear. The appeals court vacated a protective order taken out against the protester and her “followers” in 2022 — which had already expired — and ruled it should be sent back to the trial court for another hearing. The order did not document the content of the protests and text messages, the court wrote, so the justices could not sort out whether they had a “legitimate purpose” or were intended to “terrorize.” The Ohio Star: Conservative Florida Attorney Appeals License Suspension, Denounces Political Censorship over Calling His Opponent ‘Corrupt’ and ‘Swampy’ By Rachel Alexander .....Chris Crowley, a conservative attorney in Florida, filed an appeal with the Florida Supreme Court last month contesting a 60-day suspension of his law license for exercising free speech during his political campaign for the state attorney’s office in Florida’s 20th Judicial Circuit. His attorney said this is the first time an attorney has been disciplined for partisan political speech in Florida, and likely anywhere in the U.S. Crowley, a decorated Gulf War veteran, said the Florida Bar should be subject to the state’s anti-SLAPP law, which prohibits using the courts to suppress free speech. SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. A Referee for the bar disciplined him for referring to his opponent Amira D. Fox, who eventually won, as “corrupt” and “swampy” and for observing that she had “close family ties to the [Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)] terrorist organization.” Miami Herald: Trial begins in alleged Florida election conspiracy that tilted a Miami Senate race By Charles Rabin .....A criminal case that opened a window to a plot to help Republicans win important 2020 Florida Senate races by propping up fake progressive Senate candidates with shadowy money is finally headed to trial, with a South Florida political operative fighting the charges. State prosecutors are expected to claim in court this week that former Miami state Sen. Frank Artiles, a Republican, masterminded a scheme to tilt the results of a tight race in Miami by recruiting and paying a straw candidate to siphon votes away from the Democratic incumbent. They’ll say Artiles puppeteered a machine-parts salesman who never campaigned but still shaped the outcome of the race — garnering more than 6,000 votes as an independent thanks to anonymous financial support and his last name, which he shared with the incumbent. Read an article you think we would be interested in? Send it to Tiffany Donnelly at [email protected]. For email filters, the subject of this email will always begin with "Institute for Free Speech Media Update." The Institute for Free Speech is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that promotes and defends the political rights to free speech, press, assembly, and petition guaranteed by the First Amendment. Please support the Institute's mission by clicking here. For further information, visit www.ifs.org. Follow the Institute for Free Speech The Institute for Free Speech | 1150 Connecticut Ave., NW Suite 801 | Washington, DC 20036 US Unsubscribe | Update Profile | Constant Contact Data Notice