Five U.S. Senators wrote President Joe Biden on December 15 to ask him to redouble efforts to protect journalists covering the war in Palestine, to protect their lives and to pressure Israel and Egypt to allow journalists to report freely and safely from the war zone.
Briefs filed in two cases before the Supreme Court that challenge Florida and Texas laws that regulate social media platforms argue that the Laws violate the First Amendment. Clay Calvert in AEIdeas, December 13, 2023, writes “The briefs vividly and comprehensively demonstrate the statutes’ numerous flaws and patent unconstitutionality by invoking multiple doctrines, principles, and concepts: chilling effect, compelled speech, content discrimination, editorial discretion, history and tradition, overinclusiveness, right not to speak, speaker discrimination, strict
Elon Musk’s platform X is enabling antisemitic posts to reach the mainstream from their origins on the fringe site 4chan. Among the AI generated hate memes was a post showing Taylor Swift in a Nazi uniform sliding a Jewish man into an oven. (The Washington Post, December 14, 2923, by Will Oremus)
A Idaho law marking it a crime for doctors to assist in the procurement of an abortion hit a roadblock as a district federal judge found that the law would chill speech. The law would require the revocation of a doctor’s medical license. (ABC News, August 1, 2023, by Gene Johnson and Ed Komenda of The Associated Press) The judge ruled that the Idaho attorney general’s interpretation of the law violated health care professionals’ First
A federal district judge placed a temporary injunction against an Arkansas law allowing criminal charges against booksellers and librarians who provide “harmful” materials to children. At record levels, states with conservative leadership have been introducing laws to ban or restrict books. (The Associated Press, July 29, 2023) “Harmful” was defined in the law as “as containing nudity or sexual content, appealing to a ‘prurient interest in sex,’ lacking ‘serious literary, scientific, medical, artistic, or political