Email from The Institute for Free Speech The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech September 3, 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]. In the News Argus Leader: South Dakota one of 12 states without law protecting against speech-suppressing lawsuits, report says By Chris Mueller .....South Dakota is one of only 12 states with no law protecting residents against meritless, speech-suppressing lawsuits, putting their rights to speak or publish at "significant risk," according to a new report by the Institute for Free Speech. That's one takeaway from the 2025 Anti-SLAPP Report Card, which rates state-by-state legal protections against a type of lawsuit known as a “SLAPP,” an acronym that stands for "strategic lawsuit against public participation." … The Institute for Free Speech said in a news release that such lawsuits typically include claims that the questioned speech is defamation and target speakers to "harass, silence or force them to bear significant litigation costs." Supreme Court USA Today: Are vanity license plates protected speech? One woman is appealing hers to Supreme Court. By Maureen Groppe .....Texas wouldn’t let a critic of President Donald Trump have a custom license plate reading “JAIL 45.” College football fans in Michigan can’t request a vanity plate that says “OSUSUCKS.” Arizona allowed the religious message “JESUSNM.” But Vermont blocked “JN36TN”, a reference to the Bible verse John 3:16. States’ rules for what is and isn’t allowed on personalized plates are often unclear and can amount to a “dizzying array of censorship,” lawyers for a Tennessee woman have told the Supreme Court in a bid for the justices to get involved. Congress House Judiciary Committee: Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation .....The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Wednesday, September 3, 2025, at 10:00 a.m. ET. The hearing will examine European threats to American free speech and innovation. It will highlight how European online censorship laws-specifically the United Kingdom's (UK) Online Safety Act (OSA) and the European Union's (EU) Digital Services Act (DSA)-threaten Americans' right to speak freely online in the United States. Additionally, it will explain how the UK's Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCC) and the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) target American companies and hurt innovation. WITNESSES: The Rt. Hon. Nigel Farage, Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom Lorcán Price, Barrister, Legal Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom International Morgan Reed, President, The App Association Video The Courts Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Judge Barbara Lagoa (11th Cir.) Criticizes New York Times v. Sullivan By Eugene Volokh .....From Judge Lagoa's concurrence in Friday's Dershowitz v. CNN, Inc. (and see also Judge Charles Wilson's concurrence taking the opposite view): New York Times: Vail Settles Lawsuit After Canceling Artist’s Residency Over Gaza Views By Derrick Bryson Taylor .....The town of Vail, Colo., has settled a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado on behalf of a Native American painter whose artist residency was abruptly canceled last year after she posted to social media a painting about her views on the war in Gaza. Free Expression The Glinner Update: I just got arrested again By Graham Linehan .....The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting. Not one, not two—five. They escorted me to a private area and told me I was under arrest for three tweets. In a country where paedophiles escape sentencing, where knife crime is out of control, where women are assaulted and harassed every time they gather to speak, the state had mobilised five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer for this tweet (and no, I promise you, I am not making this up. Online Speech Platforms New York Times: How Elon Musk Is Remaking Grok in His Image By Stuart A. Thompson, Teresa Mondría Terol, Kate Conger, and Dylan Freedman .....Elon Musk has said Grok, the A.I.-powered chatbot that his company developed, should be “politically neutral” and “maximally truth-seeking.” But in practice, Mr. Musk and his artificial intelligence company, xAI, have tweaked the chatbot to make its answers more conservative on many issues, according to an analysis of thousands of its responses by The New York Times. The shifts appear, in some cases, to reflect Mr. Musk’s political priorities. Grok is similar to tools like ChatGPT, but it also lives on X, giving the social network’s users the opportunity to ask it questions by tagging it in posts. One user on X asked Grok in July to identify the “biggest threat to Western civilization.” It responded that the greatest threat was “misinformation and disinformation.” “Sorry for this idiotic response,” Mr. Musk groused on X after someone flagged Grok’s answer. “Will fix in the morning,” he said. The next day, Mr. Musk published a new version of Grok that responded that the greatest threat was low “fertility rates” — an idea popular among conservative natalists that has transfixed Mr. Musk for years and something he has said motivated him to father at least 11 children. Wired: A Dark Money Group Is Secretly Funding High-Profile Democratic Influencers By Taylor Lorenz .....In a private group chat in June, dozens of Democratic political influencers discussed whether to take advantage of an enticing opportunity. They were being offered $8,000 per month to take part in a secretive program aimed at bolstering Democratic messaging on the internet. But the contract sent to them from Chorus, the nonprofit arm of a liberal influencer marketing platform, came with some strings. Among other issues, it mandated extensive secrecy about disclosing their payments and had restrictions on what sort of political content the creators could produce. In their group chat, influencers debated the details. “Should we send a joint email (with all of our email addresses) … or, are we just going to send things separately and hope they change everything for everyone?” Laurenzo, a nonbinary creator in Columbus, Ohio, with over 884,000 TikTok followers, asked the group. Some joked about collective bargaining. “Any Newsies fans here?” Eliza Orlins, a public defender and reality TV star known for her appearances on Survivor, posted in the group. “‘We’re a union just by sayin’ so!’” The influencers in the chat collectively had at least 13 million followers across social platforms. They represented some of the most well-known voices online posting in support of Democrats, and they’re key to wherever the party moves next. But ultimately, the group didn’t make much progress. Archive link New York Times: An Online Group Says It’s Behind a Campus Swatting Wave .....An online group said that it was behind a number of recent hoax emergency calls that drew a heavy law enforcement response to college campuses across the United States and were timed to coincide with the start of the school year. The group, which calls itself Purgatory, highlighted news media coverage of the recent hoaxes in a public-facing channel on Telegram, an encrypted messaging service often used by criminals. The online group is suspected of being connected to several of the episodes, including reports of shootings, according to cybersecurity experts, law enforcement agencies and the group members’ own posts in a social media chat. The group’s claims could not be independently verified. Politico: AI is unmasking ICE officers. Can Washington do anything about it? By Alfred Ng .....An activist has started using artificial intelligence to identify Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents beneath their masks — a use of the technology sparking new political concerns over AI-powered surveillance. Dominick Skinner, a Netherlands-based immigration activist, estimates he and a group of volunteers have publicly identified at least 20 ICE officials recorded wearing masks during arrests. He told POLITICO his experts are “able to reveal a face using AI, if they have 35 percent or more of the face visible.” The AI-powered project adds a new twist to the debates over both ICE masking and government surveillance tools, as immigration enforcement becomes more widespread and aggressive. The States The National Law Review: The Persistent Pitfalls of Taxpayer Funded Campaigns By Joseph T. Burns of Holtzman Vogel Baran Torchinsky & Josefiak PLLC .....New York State’s experiment with public financing of state campaigns—touted as a way to curb corruption and amplify small donors—is facing growing scrutiny. Recent revelations, including allegations that a 2024 state senate campaign engaged in a straw donor scheme involving homeless individuals, highlight a fundamental vulnerability inherent in all public campaign finance systems. While supporters of public financing of campaigns might call these “growing pains,” the reality is more sobering: programs that funnel taxpayer dollars into political campaigns invite abuse, and scandals are not anomalies—they are the norm. Montana Free Press: Artificial intelligence offering political practices advice about robocalls in Montana GOP internal spat By Tom Lutey .....The robocalls to John Sivlan’s phone this summer just wouldn’t let up. Recorded messages were coming in several times a day from multiple phone numbers, all trashing state Republican Rep. Llew Jones, a shrewd, 11-term lawmaker with an earned reputation for skirting party hardliners to pass the Legislature’s biggest financial bills, including the state budget. Sivlan, 80, a lifelong Republican who lives in Jones’ northcentral Montana hometown of Conrad, wasn’t amused by the general election-style attacks hitting his phone nearly a year before the next legislative primary. Jones, in turn, wasn’t impressed with the Commissioner of Political Practices’ advice that nothing could be done about the calls. The COPP polices campaigns and lobbying in Montana, and the opinion the office issued in response to a request from Jones to review the robocalls was written not by an office employee but instead authored by ChatGPT. Read an article you think we would be interested in? Send it to Tiffany Donnelly at [email protected]. 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