October 17, 2024

In the News

Wall Street Journal: Unraveling the Presidential Election Fundamentals

By Kimberley A. Strassel

.....In a boost for free speech and parental rights, a panel for the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived a lawsuit brought by Moms for Liberty over a Florida school board’s censorship of comments at public meetings. A lower court had found the Brevard County School Board’s interruptions and removals of speakers allowable, but the three-judge appeals court panel found the board’s policies were “unreasonable” and “vague” and thus unconstitutional. The case, spearheaded by the Institute for Free Speech, is remanded to the lower court to try again.

The Courts

Wyoming Tribune Eagle: Federal judge hears argument regarding voters rights, free speech and electioneering

By Ivy Secrest

.....A federal judge heard arguments Wednesday regarding two competing First Amendment rights: the right to vote free of undue influence and the right to free speech.

A lawsuit, filed five years ago by Cheyenne resident John C. Frank in United States District Court for the District of Wyoming, brings into question the constitutionality of Wyoming’s no-electioneering buffer zones around polling places, with emphasis on the 100-foot boundaries around the Laramie County Governmental Complex...

Stephen Klein, Frank’s attorney, told the court Wednesday that although he supported voters' rights, they should not come at the expense of free speech.

Klein called the suit “historic,” as it is the first to directly address implementing censorship around early voting or in-person absentee polling places under the First Amendment.

Klein argued that these polling locations serve purposes outside of polling. The Laramie County Governmental Complex, for example, hosts a coffee shop and several court and other governmental services, such as the district attorney's office and the county clerk's office.

The Media

Wall Street Journal: Beef Up the Freedom of the Press

By Floyd Abrams

.....The press is the only commercial enterprise that is explicitly protected by the First Amendment. Both freedom of speech and the press are constitutionally guaranteed. But the press has received little constitutional protection in addition to that provided to other speech.

For the past two years, three colleagues and I have worked on a project at Yale Law School to assess whether freedom of the press has been fulfilled. After reviewing cases throughout U.S. history and conferring at length with journalists, media lawyers, historians and other scholars, our unequivocal conclusion is that it has not. Our report will be released this month.

The basic legal problem is that while free-speech protections remain robust in our nation, the press requires certain additional protections that aren’t applicable to other forms of speech. 

City Journal: The Plot to Manage Democracy

By Jacob Siegel

.....Continuous ideological curation is now the norm throughout most of the media and Internet. Sometimes it gets carried out indiscernibly, for instance by filtering search results and artificial intelligence “answer bots.” In other cases, it operates through the guise of nominally objective bodies, such as the modern fact-checking industry. A full accounting of how fact-checking became an enforcement arm of the party-state is needed, but two points are worth noting here...

The record of the modern fact-checkers proves that, for progressives, it has been money well spent. In 2020, the fact-checkers declared Hunter Biden’s laptop Russian disinformation, while “debunking” speculation that Covid-19 might have leaked from a laboratory. More recently, a chorus of fact-checkers decried speculation about Biden’s mental acuity, with headlines like “‘Cheapfake’ Biden videos enrapture right-wing media, but deeply mislead.” That headline ran on a Washington Post “fact checker” feature published on June 14, less than two weeks before Biden’s disastrous debate performance helped end his reelection campaign.

Free Expression

New York Times: Columbia Bars Vocal Pro-Israel Professor From Campus

By Vimal Patel and Sharon Otterman

.....Columbia University has temporarily barred a vocal pro-Israel professor from campus, saying he repeatedly harassed and intimidated the school’s employees…

In a statement on Tuesday night, the university said it respected Professor Davidai’s right to free speech and was not limiting it. It said that Professor Davidai had “repeatedly harassed and intimidated university employees in violation of university policy” and that it would temporarily limit his access to campus.

The statement did not specify precisely what behavior led to the decision, but university officials said Professor Davidai’s behavior toward employees on the anniversary of the attack was the cause.

The temporary restriction from campus does not affect Professor Davidai’s employment or salary. Professor Davidai, who was not teaching this semester, can continue to advise students and perform research, university officials said. He can return after he “undertakes appropriate training on our policies governing the behavior of our employees,” the statement said.

Online Speech Platforms

Washington Post: Don’t say ‘vote’: How Instagram hides your political posts

By Geoffrey A. Fowler

.....On Instagram, creator Mrs. Frazzled can get more than a million viewers for her goofy videos “parenting” misbehaving adults. One recent hit showed bartenders how to talk to drunk customers like they’re in kindergarten. But lately, she’s been frazzled by something else: Whenever she posts about the election, she feels as if her audience disappears.

It’s not just her imagination. I can show exactly how democracy dies on Instagram.

Washington Post (Tech Brief): TikTok fails a test of its ban on political ads

By Will Oremus

.....Less than three weeks before the presidential election, TikTok is still struggling to consistently enforce its long-standing ban on political advertising, a new report finds.

In September, researchers from the nonprofit Global Witness tested the political ad moderation systems of three leading social media platforms — TikTok, Facebook and YouTube — by submitting ads that contained election disinformation. Examples included ads falsely warning that citizens must pass an English language test to vote; claiming that Donald Trump is ineligible to run for president due to his felony convictions; and calling for a repeat of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Though the three platforms differ in their rules for political advertising, the ads were designed to violate the policies of all three, the researchers said. Global Witness shared its findings with the Tech Brief before publishing them Thursday.

Candidates and Campaigns

Florida Politics: Dan Backer: Scary question — does America spend more on elections or Halloween candy?

By Dan Backer

.....You will never hear that Hershey’s should be limited in how much they can spend on ads or that price controls should be imposed on decorations, and only childless cat ladies are giving out raisins.

But when it comes to spending money on something that does matter — the future of our country and how much we allow the government to intrude into our lives — big spending suddenly becomes a big problem.

And yet, by the end of this two-year presidential cycle, Americans will only have spent around $10.7 billion. That’s 10% less in two years than a single year’s Halloween! …

Right on cue, congressional Democrats are once again peddling “campaign finance reform” that vilifies PACs (they don’t control), dark money groups (other than labor unions), and any other group of Americans looking to exercise their right to political speech. Democrats’ attacks on “misinformation” are really about silencing the ability — by anyone who isn’t part of their political establishment fundraising machine — to raise and spend money to promote ideas, stifling the speech the left happens to oppose.

The States

Wall Street Journal: Musk’s SpaceX Sues California Regulator, Alleging Political Bias Over Rocket Launches

By Gareth Vipers

.....Elon Musk’s space company sued regulators in California after officials rejected a request to allow more SpaceX rocket launches, claiming the decision was politically motivated.

In a 284-page lawsuit, filed Tuesday in California’s central district, SpaceX accused regulators of overreaching their authority and violating Musk’s right to free speech.

The lawsuit marks the billionaire’s latest volley in a long-running feud with the Golden State.

The California Coastal Commission, a state agency that regulates development along the state’s coastline, Thursday rejected a request by the U.S. Space Force to give SpaceX permission to launch up to 50 rockets a year from Vandenberg Space Force Base near Santa Barbara, Calif.

The Federalist: Democrat-Friendly Licensing Boards Target Republican Attorneys General In Election Year

By Joy Pullman

.....Democrat-friendly lawyer licensing boards are targeting two Republican attorneys general in an election year under the pretext of “grievances” filed by political opponents. The years-long government litigation against Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita and Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen has racked up six-figure legal bills for taxpayers while punishing these elected officials for public speech on behalf of their voters’ priorities.