Email from The Institute for Free Speech The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech October 8, 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]. In the News NH Journal: Court to Hear Bow ‘Pink Wristband’ Parent’s Request for TRO Tuesday By Damien Fisher .....After the Bow School District slapped them with a no trespass order over wearing pink wristbands to their daughters’ soccer game in support of girls-only sports, Anthony “Andy” Foote and Kyle Fellers filed a lawsuit defending their right to free speech. On Tuesday, Fellers will be in court asking a federal judge to remove the no trespass order banning him from his daughter’s activities, hours before her next home soccer game. The Institute for Free Speech and local counsel Richard Lehmann will argue in favor of a temporary restraining order to block the district’s ban. The hearing is set for 2:30 p.m. Tuesday in the United States District Court in Concord. The next Bow soccer game is scheduled for Tuesday at 6:45 p.m. “We just want a dad to be able to see his daughter play high school soccer,” Lehmann told NHJournal. “The idea that someone gets punished for holding views that are unpopular with people at the top of the local power structure is un-American, and it should end. Now.” Reason: Oklahoma's Push for Bibles in Schools Comes With a Trump-Sized Price Tag By Bekah Congdon .....At September's Oklahoma State Board of Education meeting, Walters requested an additional $3 million (for a total of $6 million) to purchase New King James Version Bibles. But when bids opened last week for 55,000 bibles, the specs had changed. According to the request for proposal (RFP), "only the King James Version" qualifies, and it "must include copies of The United States Pledge of Allegiance, The U.S. Declaration of Independence, The U.S. Constitution, and The U.S. Bill of Rights." Oh, and the Bible "must be bound in leather or leather-like material." The Oklahoman reported on Friday, that none of the 2,900 Bibles carried by Mardel Christian Bookstore meet Walters' qualifications. But the Trump-endorsed "God Bless the USA" Bible fits the bill like a grift-lined glove. A second Bible that fits the RFP was also identified: the We the People Bible, endorsed by Donald Trump Jr., available for $90… Walters didn't want the media to have access to the meeting where he made this budget request. In September, KFOR and the Institute for Free Speech filed a motion against Walters and his press secretary, Dan Isett, noting that "journalists have been refused access to public State Board of Education meetings." A judge granted a temporary restraining order allowing members of the press to be present for the meeting. Vendors have until Monday, October 14, to respond to the RFP with their bids. Supreme Court Bloomberg: Musk’s X Rejected by Supreme Court Over Secret DOJ Trump Warrant By Greg Stohr .....The US Supreme Court turned away an appeal by Elon Musk’s X Corp., steering clear of a clash over a secret Justice Department search warrant for records related to Donald Trump’s social media account. X argued unsuccessfully that the company, then known as Twitter, shouldn’t have been required to turn over the information to Special Counsel Jack Smith before having a chance to challenge the government’s nondisclosure order. The company said the order violated its free speech rights and deprived Trump of a chance to claim executive privilege. Trump wasn’t directly involved in the case and never asserted any privilege. Smith got the warrant as part of his investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The special counsel argued that secrecy was needed to avoid jeopardizing the investigation. A federal appeals court rejected X’s objections to the nondisclosure order. FCC NextGov/FCW: FCC commissioner warns of ‘heavy handed’ AI regulation in political ads By Alexandra Kelley .....Describing AI regulation as a potential generational issue, Carr said during a Monday forum hosted by the Federalist Society that his approach mirrors broader U.S. regulatory goals: balancing innovation with guardrails. “I don't think that we should go with a total sort of fundamentalist libertarian approach to the regulation of AI, but at the same time, I think we can go way too far in terms of heavy-handed regulation before we've seen how the technology can play out,” he said. “That heavy-handed regulation could either: tilt the playing field in favor of…established incumbents or the most established in an emerging field, which I think would be detrimental in the long run, or otherwise sort of suppress new and beneficial innovations.” Internet Speech Regulation Reason: Hillary Clinton Wants To Repeal Section 230 By Elizabeth Nolan Brown .....Hillary Clinton said on CNN this weekend that repealing Section 230 of federal communications law should be a top political priority. The former secretary of state's comments are a reminder that this vital protection for free speech is far from safe, even if we seem to be on the other side of peak anti-230 politics. For anyone who needs a quick refresher: Section 230 protects digital service providers and users from liability for the speech of others. It's really that simple, despite a lot of misinformation about Section 230 that gets thrown around. Section 230 is why Facebook isn't liable if someone uses its messaging system to set up a drug deal; it's why Reason isn't liable if one of our commenters posts an actionable threat. The law is vital for allowing free speech to flourish online, because without it companies would have a strong incentive to suppress much more user-generated content. It's vital for companies that want to rein in certain sorts of speech on their own specific platforms as well—allowing them to moderate and suppress spam, hateful rhetoric, pornography, or any other types of speech they find objectionable. (It does not require the moderation of these types of speech. It merely makes it OK for companies to do so without taking on additional legal liability.) Pessimists Archive: The 1912 War on Fake Photos By Louis Anslow .....Concern about deceptively edited photos feels like a very modern anxiety, yet a century ago similar worries were being litigated... Portrait photography gave rise to an industry of photo ‘retouching’ - analog ‘beauty filters’ - to flatter subjects in a way portrait painters once did. This trend lead to questions about technology distorting our perceptions of beauty, reality and truth: An 1897 issue of the New-York Tribune would declare the assumption “Photographs Do Not Lie” an “exploded notion”, saying: “…at the present time photographs may be and are made to lie with great frequency and facility.” Other commercial applications of photo retouching emerged: in 1911 tourists visiting Washington D.C. could acquire fake photographs of themselves posing with then President of the United States William Taft. This troubled Government officials. Upon discovering the practice in 1911, a United States Attorney ordered it stopped: Independent Groups New York Times: Musk’s Super PAC Offers $47 to Those Who Help It Find Trump Voters By Theodore Schleifer .....Elon Musk is dangling part of his fortune as part of a potentially expensive arrangement to identify likely voters for Donald Trump in seven battleground states. The super PAC founded by Mr. Musk, the billionaire head of Tesla and SpaceX, is circulating a petition in which voters pledge their support for the First and Second Amendments. And he is offering $47 for each voter recruited to sign it. The goal is “to get 1 million registered voters in swing states to sign in support of the Constitution, especially freedom of speech and the right to bear arms,” the petition says. If recruiters managed to find 1 million people to sign the petition, Mr. Musk would be on the hook for a staggering $47 million. Candidates and Campaigns Washington Post (Tech Brief): AI disclaimers in political ads backfire on candidates, study finds By Cristiano Lima-Strong .....Researchers at New York University’s Center on Technology Policy found that people rated candidates “less trustworthy and less appealing” when their ads featured AI disclaimers. The first-of-its-kind study examining how the labels affect views of candidates was shared exclusively with the Tech Brief... [T]he findings raise questions about how to maximize potential benefits from labeling, he said, such as building trust in political messaging, against potential costs, like discrediting those using AI for harmless reasons. The study also shed light on which disclosure rules most people may prefer. While more states have passed Michigan-style laws requiring disclosures when AI is used deceptively — such as portraying an opponent saying something he or she never did — participants singled out those labels as their least favorite approach, researchers said. Instead, they preferred when disclaimers were featured anytime AI was used in an ad, even when innocuous. Those preferences held for Republicans and Democrats. Researchers said the findings show that the precise wording of AI disclaimers matter, and that government officials should invest more time in developing what they should look like. AP News: Intelligence officials say US adversaries are targeting congressional races with disinformation By David Klepper .....It’s not just the presidential election: Foreign governments are targeting House and Senate races around the country in their effort to meddle with American democracy this election year, intelligence officials warned Monday. Reuters: Exclusive: Virginia congressional candidate creates AI chatbot as debate stand-in for incumbent By Greg Bensinger .....A long-shot congressional challenger in Virginia is so determined to debate the Democratic incumbent one more time that he created an AI chatbot to stand in for the candidate in case he's a no-show. The States Bloomberg Law: Judge Dubious That Robocalls to Black Voters Were Unlawful By Eric Heisig .....A Michigan Court of Appeals judge was skeptical on Monday that right-wing operatives’ robocalls to Black voters in 2020 constituted voter intimidation under a narrower definition recently set by the state Supreme Court. While the state’s criminal statute only bars “intentionally false speech that is related to voting requirements or procedures and is made in an attempt to deter or influence an elector’s vote,” Judge James Robert Redford said he was puzzled by how the robocall crafted by Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl still fits the charge under the definition. “I am having trouble understanding how the deplorable conduct of these two individuals—which is worthy of contempt, not in a judicial sense, but in a moral sense—but how is it related to the procedure of casting your absentee ballot, as opposed to a consequence thereof?” Redford asked Deputy Michigan Solicitor General B. Eric Restuccia during oral arguments on whether the case against the men should proceed to trial. MSNBC (The ReidOut Blog): DeSantis administration warns local TV stations to remove ads about abortion ballot measure By Ja'han Jones .....Investigative journalist Jason Garcia published a letter from the Florida Department of Health’s general counsel to the general manager of WFLA-TV, the NBC affiliate in the Tampa Bay area. The letter, dated Oct. 3, argues that the ad contains a “categorically false” claim about abortion in Florida — and warns that the ad is in violation of state law. “The advertisement is not only false; it is dangerous,” the letter reads. “Women faced with pregnancy complications posing a serious risk of death or substantial or irreversible physical impairment may and should seek medical treatment in Florida.” Read an article you think we would be interested in? Send it to Tiffany Donnelly at [email protected]. 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