First Amendment
Gizmodo (Earther): Criminalizing Protests Is a Dangerous Idea
By Yessenia Funes
Despite the Constitution granting us the right to peaceful assembly, many states have been pushing forth laws to make that a crime. That’s not only a bad idea but an incredibly dangerous one.
Legal experts note that these bills and laws-which 38 states have considered and 21 have passed-threaten democracy at large by scaring the public into silence on key issues like climate change. What’s more, state legislators in Kentucky, South Dakota, and West Virginia have stealthily passed anti-protest laws during the coronavirus pandemic.
“The most important point there is that the government should not be exploiting this temporary situation to make long-lasting decisions, including passing legislation, while knowing that the community is unable to be as vocal as it likely would be in opposition to these sorts of measures, whether that’s by physically being able to gather in protest… or simply by reaching out to legislators or being able to provide testimony,” Vera Eidelman, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told Earther.
Washington Post: The pursuit of liberty does not mean a license to endanger others
By Editorial Board
Public fatigue with stay-at-home orders to fight the novel coronavirus pandemic is inevitable and understandable. Not understandable, nor forgivable, is the president of the United States inciting disrespect for his own government’s guidelines, which are unquestionably essential for the public health…
The protesters in the United States carried signs such as “Live Free or Die in Lockdown” and “Re-Open Now.” Some of them set a bad example, without masks or social distancing. But what was most concerning was the message that somehow all this sacrifice can be quickly abandoned in the name of liberty and rights. This is wrong. The pursuit of liberty does not mean a license to endanger the lives of others.
Media
Washington Post: The Trump administration is muzzling government scientists. It’s essential to let them speak candidly to the press again.
By Margaret Sullivan
Kathryn Foxhall remembers a time when reporters could call up any doctor or researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and ask them questions on the record. A journalist might even get them to open up for a “background” interview, offering candid information on the condition the expert’s name would not be used.
“There was the official story and then there was everything else,” the former editor of the Nation’s Health, an industry publication, told me…
Foxhall watched with dismay as that openness disintegrated radically over the past two decades. Federal agencies, including the CDC, began to require media inquiries to go through a public information officer. Direct contact was minimized and tightly monitored. Interviews might take place with a “minder” present.
When the coronavirus pandemic arrived, the situation got much worse.
Suddenly, the filter between journalists and experts became even more opaque – and much more politicized. Who got to speak publicly, including to the news media, was controlled by Vice President Pence’s office after he was put in charge of the administration’s pandemic response.
The new restrictions are dangerous, said Anna Diakun, staff attorney with the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which this month sued the CDC for the release of records about White House and CDC policies that may keep the agency’s employees from speaking to the press and public…
She told me what’s happening amounts to a “gag order” on the very experts that the public needs to hear from directly. And it may be a violation of constitutionally protected free speech.
Cato: How JFK Censored Right-Wing Radio
By Paul Matzko
In the early 1960s, President Kennedy’s administration launched one of the most successful censorship campaigns in U.S. history. The subjects of Kennedy’s ire were conservative radio broadcasters, who constantly attacked the administration’s policy proposals. Worried about his reelection chances, Kennedy instructed the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to target the offending broadcasters with tax audits and heightened regulatory scrutiny. Within a few years, this censorship campaign had driven conservative broadcasters off hundreds of radio stations; it would be more than a decade before the end of the Fairness Doctrine enabled the resurgence of political talk radio.
Online Speech Platforms
Wall Street Journal: Facebook Puts Limits on Protest Organizers
By Georgia Wells and Andrew Restuccia
Facebook is banning posts and groups promoting anti-lockdown protests that don’t comply with government health directives, as organizers of those events seek to recruit new members on social media…
Facebook’s prohibition doesn’t explicitly target posts promoting anti-lockdown protests; rather the company said it is barring content that advocates for in-person gatherings that don’t follow government health guidance. A spokeswoman for the social media giant said it is also taking down claims designed to discourage treatment for coronavirus infection or taking appropriate precautions against its spread.
Facebook removed content related to anti-lockdown protests planned in California, New Jersey and Nebraska.
“Unless government prohibits the event during this time, we allow it to be organized on Facebook,” the spokeswoman said in a statement. “For this same reason, events that defy government’s guidance on social distancing aren’t allowed on Facebook.” …
While some governors have asked protesters to stay home, President Donald Trump expressed his support for their actions in tweets over the weekend.
Politico: Coronavirus protests test Facebook’s free speech pledges
By Steven Overly
Facebook’s partial takedowns [of content promoting protests] were still enough to bring a political brushback from some Republicans…
President Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., accused Facebook of “colluding with state governments to quash peoples free speech,” calling its actions “chilling & disturbing.” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) asked rhetorically of the company’s decision: “Because free speech is now illegal America?”
“Given Big Tech’s history of bias and censorship, I’m deeply concerned that they and government officials are partnering not to protect public health, but to shut down views with which they disagree,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in a statement Monday evening. “Now, more than ever, companies like Facebook should focus on connecting people, not shutting down communities because they hold different views.”
But Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal praised the company’s move Monday night, tweeting: “Powerful special interests are using astroturfing & dangerous tactics to undermine the fight against COVID-19. Facebook is right to take a stand against harmful misinformation.” …
“Facebook, which controls a platform for the speech of billions, should not be censoring political speech online,” said Vera Eidelman, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, despite the public-health stakes at play on mass gatherings held during a pandemic. “This is especially true now, when questions of when and how to reopen the country are among the central political questions, and online platforms are the main vehicle for expression.”
American Prospect: From Virtue Signaling to Politics
By Micah L. Sifry
A decade and a half ago, many of us thought that the rise of personal computing and the openness of the web would lead to the democratization of politics. We celebrated how ordinary citizens made use of these tools. We cheered as bloggers challenged powerful politicians and we evangelized for social media, telling everyone we knew that they had to get on Facebook and Twitter. There have been many beneficial outcomes from the rise of the networked age, no doubt. Groups that were previously marginalized by mainstream media, especially women and people of color, now have more voice. Candidates who choose to avoid dependence on big money, such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have learned how to amass small donors and run for office with fewer constraints.
But as the authors of two valuable new books, Eitan Hersh of Politics Is for Power, and Sabeel Rahman and Hollie Russon Gilman of Civic Power, make clear, merely opening up the media floodgates and lowering the barriers to participation have not led to the power shifts the early evangelists for tech-enabled democracy expected. Meaningful participation, the kind that ensures that ordinary people can influence the decisions that affect their lives, requires far greater attention to how power is organized and structured.
Washington Post: The Technology 202: Coronavirus could change how social networks approach public health
By Cat Zakrzewski
The coronavirus is transforming how social networks approach public health, and some of those changes will persist even after the pandemic is over.
YouTube chief executive Susan Wojcicki told CNN that the virus has been “an acceleration of our digital lives.” It’s also accelerating changes at the video-streaming service, which is now doing more to spread authoritative public health information – changes Wojcicki said may have otherwise been years away…
YouTube has been adjusting its policies to make sure it’s blocking the latest falsehoods gaining traction online. For instance, the company recently prohibited videos making false claims that 5G is the source of the coronavirus…
But actually enforcing these policies and removing the videos is a major challenge. Especially because the crisis forced the companies to send many of their content moderators home. YouTube and Facebook have been relying more on machines to do content moderation, which are not yet as equipped as people to make difficult decisions about what posts violate company policies.
The companies have acknowledged this could lead to more mistakes, both in leaving up content that should be removed and over policing posts that don’t break the rules. That could cause major problems as more people are spending more time online while stuck at home.
Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Attempt to Vanish (Cubed) Post Critical of the Sandy Hook Hoax Libel Judgment
By Eugene Volokh
Lenny Pozner, the father of a boy (Noah Pozner) killed in the Sandy Hook shooting, sued James Fetzer and Mike Palacek, who co-wrote the book “Nobody Died at Sandy Hook.” …
Pozner said this libeled him, and in June 2019 a Wisconsin judge agreed, and granted Pozner summary judgment on liability. In October, the jury awarded Pozner $450,000 in damages, and in December, the judge issued an injunction barring Fetzer “from communicating by any means” these libelous statements…
But in October, a request was submitted to Google, in Pozner’s name, seeking to deindex material that simply discussed the case and criticized the court decision… The court’s judgment of course didn’t find these items (posted in response to the judgment) to be libelous, and it offers no basis for Google to deindex them.
In November, I wrote about this, and in January I learned that Amazon Web Services had gotten a takedown demand (which Amazon didn’t act on) to remove that post. So I wrote about that, and today I learned that Google had gotten a request to deindex that post, also submitted under the name “Leonard Pozner.” So we now have an attempt to vanish a post about an attempt to vanish a post about an attempt to vanish posts critical of the Sandy Hook hoax libel judgment…
Of course, there’s no real basis for this deindexing request… My posts do criticize the earlier vanishing requests, but of course nothing in the court order can preclude such criticism, or purports to preclude such criticism.
I’m pretty sure Google won’t do anything about this deindexing request, but I thought I’d mention it just to illustrate how some people are trying to vanish criticism from the Internet.
PACs
Roll Call: Trips to ski slopes, beaches and golf courses popular with House leadership PACs
By Chris Marquette
House and Senate members use leadership PACs to raise and spend money separately from their principal campaign accounts. Created before courts opened the door to the super PACs that are not subject to contribution limits, leadership PACs were intended to be for “party building,” a way for members to tap their networks to raise money for their parties and other House and Senate candidates.
Yet one study found some lawmakers spend so much raising money, there’s not always much left to give away.
Lawmakers are prohibited from using political contributions for personal use and must be able to verify the resources were appropriately spent.
But to Robert Maguire, research director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, leadership PACs are “slush funds.”
Michael Beckel, research director at the the advocacy group Issue One, sees them as a prime example of why rules need to be tightened.
“It’s clear that the political fundraising industry is capitalizing off of a broken political system in which wealthy donors get special access to lawmakers under the guise of fundraising events in which they are enjoying ski trips or fishing trips or fine wine and food together,” he said.
Candidates and Campaigns
Politico: Bloomberg’s final bill: $1B for a 104-day campaign
By Zach Montellaro
Mike Bloomberg ended his ill-fated presidential bid on March 4, but his campaign still shelled out nine figures last month anyway, taking his total spending over $1 billion in a losing run for the Democratic nomination.
The billionaire’s campaign spent $176 million in March, according to the campaign finance report Bloomberg filed with the FEC on Monday. That pushed his spending north of $1 billion for a campaign that lasted a bit over four months.
It isn’t unusual for campaigns to spend some money after they end – but the staggering size of Bloomberg’s post-dropout spending illustrates the unusual scale of his campaign, which ultimately saw the media mogul win only one contest: American Samoa. He did net delegates on Super Tuesday as well, but he spent more than $17 million for each delegate acquired.
The States
San Diego Union-Tribune: Why weren’t protesters cited despite stay-home orders? Officials point to a ‘delicate balance’
By David Hernandez
Despite a ban on gatherings, scores of protesters frustrated with stay-home orders intended to fight the spread of COVID-19 took to the streets in San Diego and Encinitas over the weekend.
Many stood within six feet of others and didn’t wear masks, flouting public-health measures.
Although San Diego police and county Sheriff’s Department officials have issued warnings about shifting from education to enforcement of local and state orders, and followed through with more than 100 citations in recent weeks, no one was cited during either protest over the weekend.
Some observers questioned why…
San Diego police and county Sheriff’s Department officials offered an explanation Monday, saying in a joint statement that they are attempting to maintain a “delicate balance” between respecting people’s First Amendment right to protest and enforcing laws that aim to protect the public.
In the statement, the departments left open the possibility that protesters, particularly organizers, could still be prosecuted.
“While no citations were issued at the protests, that does not mean prosecution will not be sought, especially to the organizers of these events,” the statement read.
Associated Press: Lt. Gov. Forest uses campaign money for COVID-19 help
By Gary D. Robertson
Lt. Gov. Dan Forest has given nearly $200,000 from his gubernatorial campaign fund to people and businesses needing assistance due to the economic downturn caused by COVID-19, according to his campaign committee.
Forest campaign manager Hal Weatherman disclosed the donations on Monday in a video in which he criticized Democratic incumbent Roy Cooper for a recent fundraising plea by his campaign. The two won their primaries last month and will face each other in the fall.
As Cooper was “pressuring people to help you meet your political fundraising goals, (Forest) gave targeted financial assistance directly from his campaign account,” Weatherman said. “Most of the people he assisted he had never met. Most did not even know he was the lieutenant governor or running for governor of this great state.” …
Forest campaign spokesman Andrew Dunn said state law allowed Forest to expend campaign funds as donations to individuals and businesses. He cited provisions allowing expenditures resulting from being a candidate and holding public office, as well as donations to charity. Dunn also cited a 2006 opinion from the then-state elections director saying it’s permissible to give “gifts” under certain circumstances.
