Congress
Washington Post: Senate Democrats eye new vote on voting rights before summer break as party faces pressure to act
By Mike DeBonis
Senate Democrats are scrambling to map out their next moves on voting rights as the clock ticks toward a key deadline this month, with Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) eyeing a potential second vote on election legislation in the coming days…
[K]ey senators have continued to work behind the scenes after Republicans blocked Democrats’ marquee elections-and-ethics bill, the For the People Act, in late June in hopes of writing a narrower bill that could consolidate Democratic support and apply new pressure on Republicans to compromise.
That effort has yet to produce a final product, but multiple Democrats who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe the talks, said they expect an agreement within days. That, they said, could tee up a new vote in the Senate before the summer recess likely begins next week.
The talks continued Wednesday in an evening meeting that involved Schumer and several other senators. Two Democrats familiar with the negotiations said Schumer has signaled that additional votes on voting rights are likely before the Senate breaks for the summer.
Independent Groups
New York Times: In a new ad, a Democratic group pointedly pushes Biden on voting rights and the filibuster.
By Nick Corasaniti
A major Democratic nonprofit group is taking aim at President Biden in a new television ad, urging the president to take a more aggressive and concrete stand on overhauling the filibuster to pass federal voting legislation…
“This moment calls for presidential leadership, and we’re asking President Biden to fight like heck and use every tool available to him, including using his relationships in the Senate, to call for a reform to the filibuster to protect this sacred right,” said Tiffany Muller, the president of End Citizens United and Let America Vote Action Fund.
National Review: Brennan Center Judicial Nominee Benefits from Democrats’ Dark-Money Double Standard
By Carrie Campbell Severino
Myrna Pérez, [President Biden’s] nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, has spent the past 15 years at…the Brennan Center for Justice…
The Brennan Center is not required to disclose its donors. It has extensive ties to other liberal dark-money groups, in addition to being one itself…
In July, President Biden nominated Jennifer Sung, who spent two years as a Skadden Fellow at the Brennan Center, to the Ninth Circuit.
Not surprisingly, neither nominee has raised any Democratic eyebrows, including those of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who fixates on dark money when the organizations reside on the far more modestly funded conservative side. During Pérez’s nomination hearing, Whitehouse’s questions focused on bringing out his agreement with the nominee on the Voting Rights Act and jury trials and their shared aversion to originalism. Missing was any intimation of the nominee’s dark-money background, never mind any of the notorious charts the senator likes to use for his paranoid attacks on groups he does not like.
Free Speech
Washington Post: Activist says Southwest told her to cover Biden sign because ‘many’ were offended
By Soo Youn
On Friday, Jenny Grondahl flew from Phoenix to San Diego, carrying a souvenir: a cardboard sign she wanted to frame when she got home to Southern California. It read “Arizonenses Con Biden” with a cactus and was made by an artist named Javier Torres.
It marked an accomplishment for the labor organizer — outreach to Latinos in Arizona to vote for Joe Biden for president in 2020…
When she got to the gate, Grondahl said, a Southwest Airlines employee told her, “Many customers are offended by your sign.” The agent asked her to either cover it with white paper and tape or to fold it to put underneath her seat.
Then Grondahl asked what would have happened if she had been wearing a T-shirt supporting Biden and Vice President Harris. The agent told her that she would have had to turn it inside out to board the flight.
Instead of covering up the sign, Grondahl folded it and placed it under her seat…
Southwest would not comment directly on the situation, but the airline denied it would censor political expression…
“What if it’s a Chicago Cubs shirt, and you’ve got a bunch of Yankee fans on the plane, are they going to whine to the flight attendant? Make him turn his shirt inside out?” [Chicago-based lawyer Tom Demetrio asked.]
Discourse Magazine: Living Together with Deep Divides
By Benjamin Klutsey
[In his book “Confident Pluralism,” John] Inazu argues that pluralism requires the toleration of dissent. While this does not mean being passive in the face of discrimination and hate, it does mean accommodating an extremely broad range of opinions, even those one finds personally repugnant. That is why freedom of speech and association are critical to a pluralistic society: Our fellow citizens have the right to dissent and disagree with trends they see, even if the majority believes these trends indicate progress. This tension will always remain, but it creates an opportunity to perfect our ability to live in pluralism.
Online Speech Platforms
Tech Policy Press: New report finds asymmetry in social media moderation favors dominant groups
By Justin Hendrix
This week, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal assuring the reader that that her company is “working to protect our community while enabling new and diverse voices to break through.” But a new report from the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, entitled Double Standards in Social Media Content Moderation, finds that social media companies such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter often apply content moderation polices in a manner that disadvantages marginalized groups with mass takedowns of content, “while more dominant individuals and groups benefit from more nuanced approaches like warning labels or temporary demonetization.”
National Review: Setting the Record Straight on Reining in Big Tech
By Philip Hamburger and Clare Morell
Last weekend, we published an essay in the Wall Street Journal arguing that Big Tech services and platforms that function as conduits for the speech of others can constitutionally be subject to state civil-rights statutes barring viewpoint discrimination. One reason for this is that they are akin to common carriers. State antidiscrimination statutes would merely impose a small portion of the common-carrier duties that Big Tech has thus far evaded…
On Monday, Charles Cooke took issue with our argument, claiming that we “want the federal government to superintend websites such as Twitter and Facebook” and that we “are running directly at the First Amendment.” Neither is true…
Our point is merely that these companies could be treated by statute as common carriers for purposes of applying antidiscrimination principles — a modest point that follows from long-established antidiscrimination precedents. That’s very different from saying that they generally are common carriers, let alone that they should be subjected to standard common-carrier regulation, such as rate-setting.
An argument about the limits of the First Amendment is not an argument against the First Amendment. Nobody thinks the First Amendment is unlimited. All sorts of antidiscrimination laws have been upheld as consistent with the First Amendment, and this is most clearly correct concerning common carriers, which serve as conduits for the speech of others. So it is singularly unhelpful to caricature our position as being anti–First Amendment. That misstates not only our position but also the underlying question.
The States
Bradenton Herald: Is Ron DeSantis governing, campaigning or both? That depends on whom you ask.
By Ana Ceballos
Gov. Ron DeSantis has a stable of taxpayer-paid staff that works to arrange logistics, security and messaging for his events, and just in the last month that has included: A mission to the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas, a prime-time Fox News Town Hall on Cuban relations, and a closed-door discussion on mask wearing that his “official” political team used in a fundraising email.
For DeSantis, who has not officially announced his reelection bid, the official events highlight the fine line he walks between governing and campaigning. His official state business is increasingly being promoted and used for fundraisers by his independent political action committee, taking advantage of narrow state laws that separate coordination between campaigns and outside groups.
