Email from The Institute for Free Speech The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech January 17, 2025 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]. Ed. note: The Daily Media Update will return Tuesday, Jan 21. In the News Law & Crime: ‘Nothing more than a bullying effort’: Central Park Five seek to keep ACLU, free speech advocates from weighing in on defamation lawsuit against Trump By Jerry Lambe .....On Wednesday, a coalition of organizations “with free speech interests” sought to file an amicus brief, meaning that while they are not party to the case, the group believes their information or arguments may help the court come to proper legal conclusions. In this case, the amicus curiae did not take a position on the merits of the case for either side, but argued that the state’s anti-SLAPP statute, which provides immunity and fee-shifting for defendants who have to litigate frivolous lawsuits, should apply to the Central Park Five’s suit against Trump. Supreme Court Reuters: US Supreme Court upholds law banning TikTok By Andrew Chung and John Kruzel .....The U.S. Supreme Court upheld on Friday a law banning TikTok in the United States on national security grounds if its Chinese parent company ByteDance does not sell the short-video app by Sunday, as the justices in a 9-0 decision declined to rescue a platform used by about half of all Americans. The justices ruled that the law, passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress last year and signed by Democratic President Joe Biden, did not violate the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment protection against government abridgment of free speech. The justices affirmed a lower court's decision that had upheld the measure after it was challenged by TikTok, ByteDance and some of the app's users. Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): TikTok, HamHom, and the First Amendment By Eugene Volokh .....I was having a conversation with my Stanford colleague Diego Zambrano, and this perspective on the TikTok case emerged. I'm not positive it's a sound perspective; but I thought I'd pass it along and see what people thought about it. [1.] Let's imagine for a moment that there was a social media platform, HamHom, that was run by Hamas. Hamas is a designated foreign terrorist organization, so the federal material support statute outlaws "knowingly provid[ing] material support or resources" to it. That includes providing "communications equipment" and general "facilities" or "service[s]." It seems to me that it would therefore be illegal for, say, Google and Apple to carry the HamHom app in their app stores, or to provide internet hosting services for HamHom. And this application of the material support statute to HamHom would be constitutional, given Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (2010). Holder upheld parallel provisions of the material support statute that banned providing "training" and "expert advice or assistance" to designated foreign terrorist organizations. The Courts The Tennessean: Gag order against prominent Nashville attorney can remain in place, judge rules By Angele Latham .....A gag order against a prominent Nashville attorney can remain in place, preventing him from speaking out on social media about CoreCivic, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday. Senior Circuit Court Judge Julia Gibbons of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, who was specially assigned to the case at the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, dismissed a lawsuit brought by attorney Daniel Horwitz and the nonprofit public interest law firm Institute for Justice. The two filed a First Amendment lawsuit in October after U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffery Frensley issued a gag order on Horwitz in July 2022 to delete tweets about a legal case. Biden Administration Washington Post: Biden warns of the rise of a new American ‘oligarchy’ By Toluse Olorunnipa and Cleve R. Wootson Jr. .....President Joe Biden used his final address from the Oval Office to deliver a somber warning about the threat posed by the “dangerous concentration of power” in the hands of wealthy and well-connected individuals, a thinly veiled reference to billionaire technology executives who have been increasingly signaling their desire to work closely with President-elect Donald Trump. “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” Biden said during his farewell speech, days before he steps down from a four-year presidency and a lifetime in public office. “We see the consequences all across America, and we’ve seen it before.” AP News: Biden won’t enforce TikTok ban, official says, leaving fate of app to Trump By Zeke Miller .....President Joe Biden won’t enforce a ban on the social media app TikTok that is set to take effect a day before he leaves office on Monday, a U.S. official said Thursday, leaving its fate in the hands of President-elect Donald Trump. Free Expression Intelligencer: The Free-Speech War Inside the ACLU When should a core value change? By Jordan Heller .....“Free-speech restrictions are like poison gas,” said Glasser when we first spoke last winter, arguing that the ACLU’s failure to take a free-speech case is tantamount to approval of the restriction in the first place. “They seem like a terrific weapon when you’ve got the gas in your hands and you’ve got your particular target in sight. But the wind has a way of shifting, and when it does, it blows the restrictions back on you. That’s why the progressives have their heads up their asses. I know they’re freaked out about the strength of the right wing these days. I know they’re freaked out about Trump. I’m freaked out, too. But when you allow one power the power to decide who gets to speak, you are deciding that all power has that power. And it’s not gonna always be you or the people you like in power. That has been the entire history of this country. Anybody who’s a progressive or liberal, and whose position is that the government should get to decide who should speak, has to ask themself a single question: What are you going to do if Trump gets reelected?” Candidates and Campaigns Politico: ‘Everyone’s trying to kiss the ring’: Trump’s inauguration devours corporate cash, smashing records By Alice Miranda Ollstein, Caitlin Oprysko and Irie Sentner .....Not only are companies giving far larger amounts than they did to Trump’s first inauguration — when they didn’t have a firm grasp of how to handle misgivings about the mercurial politician — they’re doing so in a far more public fashion, announcing the donations months before they have to be reported to federal regulators. “The stigma of a Trump donation, which was out there to some degree eight years ago, is no longer there,” said Brian Ballard, a longtime fundraiser for Trump who’s raised money for the Presidential Inaugural Committee. “Who knows what’s going to happen two months from now? But for today, up and down, corporate America is solidly pro-Trump.” It’s also a far cry from as recently as four years ago, when much of corporate America made a show of cutting ties with Trump over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The States NY Daily News: NYC mayoral hopeful Scott Stringer proposes ban on donations from lobbyists, city contractors By Chris Sommerfeldt .....In one of his first major policy announcements, mayoral hopeful Scott Stringer is promising he would seek to ban city political candidates from accepting donations from lobbyists and city government contractors — a restriction he argues would restore public trust amid a series of corruption scandals rocking City Hall. Stringer, an ex-city comptroller who himself has taken plenty of donations from lobbyists and contractors over the decades, acknowledged in an interview this week that such a ban would make it harder for candidates to finance their campaigns. In each city election cycle, lobbyists and contractors pump hundreds of thousands of dollars into the campaign coffers of various political hopefuls. A Daily News review of Stringer’s filings show he has himself accepted donations to his 2025 and 2021 mayoral campaigns from employees of some of the city’s largest lobbying firms, including Capalino, Greenberg Traurig and Pitta, Bishop & Del Giorno. Asked about those contributions, he said: “I have respect for contractors and lobbyists and they work hard on their craft, but it just take a few bad apples to bring down our government, and when you think about corruption, it isn’t just a failure of governance, it is a betrayal of people…It’s time for us collectively to own up to the fact that City Hall should be leading on these reforms.” National Review: West Virginia’s New Governor Bans DEI from State Institutions with Day One Order By James Lynch .....Morrisey enacted a flurry of executive orders after being sworn in Tuesday, including a DEI ban across all state institutions to prevent racial and gender discrimination, and preferential treatment for certain groups. Any West Virginia government office or entity receiving state funds is now prohibited from funding DEI staff or programs, mandating DEI trainings and statements, requiring people to declare loyalty to certain viewpoints, or forcing people to disclose their personal pronouns. 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