First Amendment News

The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that Minnesota’s law restricting political hats, T-shirts and pins in the polling places ran afoul of the First Amendment. The majority felt the law lacked the capability of  “reasoned application.” The law differed from those of other states in its broad application, barring voters from wearing names of candidates or parties and clothing referring to ballot measures or even T-shirts from groups with known political views such the National Rifle

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California will take another vote in July on the Delta water tunnel to meet challenges to their previous vote that came after alleged serial closed-door contacts between MWD directors, the governor and the state Department of Water Resources. FAC issued a demand to cure and correct and cease and desist to MWD May 7. With Food and Water Watch California, FAC alleged MWD’s vote to support the project with

Al Jazeera is the latest news outlet investigated under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) for acting as a propaganda tool of a foreign country, Qatar in this case. Congressional legislators are concerned about Al Jazeera’s alleged anti-Semitic and anti-Israel content. The network is an important source of news in the Middle East and has earned eight Peabody Awards and a Polk award for the reporting of its English-language branch. The Justice Department forced RT

With President Donald Trump tearing up documents he’s done with, a team of staffers find themselves preserving them as required by law by painstakingly taping them with clear Scotch tape. The Presidential Records Act requires all memos, letters, e-mails and papers going through the president to be preserved and sent to the National Archives. (Politico, June 10, 2018, by Annie Karni) The records act was passed in 1978 in response to President Richard Nixon’s refusal

In a sudden reversal of policy, the Justice Department seized the phone and e-mail records of a New York Times reporter continuing an aggressive stance begun under the Obama administration. Prosecutors seized Ali Watkins’ records as part of an investigation of a former Senate Intelligence Committee aide, James A. Wolfe, arrested for lying to investigators in an investigation of the leak of classified documents. (The New York Times, June 10, 2018, by Michael M. Grynbaum)