First Amendment News

Wired Magazine published six stories of censorship of online speech: songwriter Holly O’Reilly sued President Donald Trump for blocking her on Twitter; young-adult novelist Laura Moriarty’s latest publication was called a “white-supremacist novel;” former Google engineer James Damore was fired over his internal memo suggesting an open discussion of Google’s diversity policies; Writer Ijeoma Oluo was suspended from Facebook when, in a restaurant in Montana that seemed filled with hostile white people, to vent her

Trump critic, Arizona Republican Senator Jeff Flake plans to deliver a speech criticizing the president’s criticism of the news media. The speech is intended to counter Trump’s announcement on January 17 of his “fake news” awards to outlets he considered unfair. Last year Trump called the news media “the enemy of the American people.” (Denver Post, January 15, 2018, by Ed O’Keefe of The Washington Post) Flake’s statement will say, “The free press is the

As soon as Mitt Romney, former presidential candidate and Trump critic, announced his interest in running for the Utah U.S. senate seat of the retiring Orrin Hatch, Russian tweets with the hashtag #neverromney burgeoned. It is apparent that Russia will continue to support Trump during the midterm elections. (NextGov, January 4, 2018, by Max De Haldevang of Quartz) Although the Trump administration has not shown much concern about Russian influence in U.S. elections, the Democrats

After three years of protests, the Los Angeles Police Department released body cam videos of the controversial killing of a homeless man in 2015.   (Law & Crime, January 8, 2018, by Colin Kalmbacher) Although some 6,000 LAPD officers are equipped with body cams, the department has never before released videos from the cams. LAPD is drafting new rules regarding the body cams in the interests of greater transparency. (Los Angeles Times, January 8, 2018,

President Donald Trump is once again railing against libel laws calling them “a sham and a disgrace.” He pledged to do something about them after his lawyers threatened a suit against Michael Wolff’s wildly popular book, published January 5, about the operations of the Trump While House. With the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in place, Times v. Sullivan, it is unlikely that Trump could succeed in weakening the protections for libel defendants.  (CNBC, January