This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected].  

Wall Street Journal: Elect the GOP to Keep IRS Auditors From Knocking on Your Door

.....These pages have called attention to last year’s massive breach of taxpayer privacy, when personal data ended up in the hands of the left-leaning news site ProPublica. It’s been nearly 17 months since that improper disclosure was used by ProPublica, as well as the administration and Democrats in Congress, to advance a wish list of liberal tax policies. Yet there has been no accountability for the breach or demand for answers from Democrats in power. At best, that’s a reckless lack of oversight; at worst, it condones an outrageous violation of America’s privacy rights.

Washington Examiner: House GOP asks Elon Musk to hand over info on Twitter censorship of Hunter Biden laptop

.....A top House Republican investigator is calling on Twitter owner Elon Musk to hand over any and all company records related to the social media giant’s decision to suppress stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop hard drive ahead of the 2020 election.

Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, called on Twitter’s new billionaire owner to cooperate with the congressional request after the Republican says the company’s former CEO, Parag Agrawal, ignored a document preservation request back in April.

CT Mirror: Connecticut ‘captive audience’ law challenged in federal lawsuit

By Mark Pazniokas

.....Connecticut’s ban on “captive audience” meetings, which unions say are used to thwart organizing, is unconstitutional and a preemption of federal labor law, a coalition led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce claimed in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Hartford.

The lawsuit, joined by the Connecticut Business and Industry Association and trade groups representing retailers and others, says the ban violates free-speech and equal-protection rights under the Constitution by “chilling and prohibiting employer speech” with their workers.

ProPublica: How the Biden Administration Caved to Republicans on Fighting Election Disinformation

By Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz

.....On his first full day in office, President Joe Biden directed his national security team to make a plan to confront domestic terrorism. In their ensuing report, Biden’s advisers homed in on “a crisis of disinformation and misinformation.” The new administration, they pledged, would work to “counter the influence and impact of dangerous conspiracy theories that can provide a gateway to terrorist violence.”

Daily Caller: Americans Defeated Government Censorship In The 1800 Midterms – We Can Do It Again In 2022

By Nathan Richendollar

.....James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” wrote a scathing critique of the Sedition Act that torched the common-law argument, the Federalists’ narrow construction of the First Amendment, and the appeals to the “Necessary and Proper” clause to regulate the speech of individual citizens. But Madison’s most substantive critique argued that a representative Republic needs free speech, and that criminalizing political speech supplied those most interested in suppressing criticism the needed excuse to censor opponents. 

Chicago Tribune: Billionaire Gov. J.B. Pritzker uses trust to skirt contribution limits in Illinois Supreme Court races

.....Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker is using his personal trust fund to circumvent contribution limits in two races that will determine whether his party maintains its 4-3 majority on the Illinois Supreme Court.

Link via Killeen Daily Herald

GBH News: Can elected officials oust citizens from public meetings for being rude?

By Paris Alston, Jeremy Siegel and Daniel Medwed

.....In December 2018, at one of these meetings, the board recognized a local resident named Louise Barron to speak during the public comment portion of the meeting. She proceeded to criticize the town for certain increases to its budget, and then she condemned the board itself for some purported violations of the state open meeting law. At that point the chair allegedly cut her off, threatened to terminate the meeting, and accused her of slander. Barron then responded by saying something to the effect of, you need to stop being a Hitler. At which point the chair said that she would be forcibly removed unless she left on her own accord. She then did leave on her own volition and later filed a lawsuit for the infringement of her rights.

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