First Amendment News

Just as with the Sandy Hook, Parkland and other mass shootings, false claims proliferated online about the shootings at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. The usual claim was that the shooting was staged but also that the gunman was living illegally in the U.S. or transgender. The claims block real discussion of the problem of gun violence and allow people to avoid reality and fix blame. (The Associated Press, May 26, 2022, by David

The Wall Street Journal hailed the recent 6-3 Supreme Court decision in FEC v. Cruz as a victory for free speech. The decision rejects a part of the McCain-Feingold law of 2002 limiting repayment of a loan by a candidate to his own campaign to $250,000. Justice Roberts wrote that the law burdened “core speech” (Herald Democrat, May 22, 2022, opinion by The Wall Street Journal) Ian Millhiser in Vox, May 16, 2022, writes that

After it emerged that the suspect in the Buffalo shooting rampage was an adherent of “replacement theory” that there is a conspiracy to replace native-born Americans with non-white immigrants, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer denounced Rupert Murdock and Fox News for “reckless amplification” of the theory. (Deadline, May 17, 2022, by Ted Johnson) Columnist Margaret Sullivan, The Washington Post, May 17, 2022, writes that the rampage “was fueled by a burgeoning ideology of the radical

Online attacks have derailed Homeland Security’s effort to fight false information related to homeland security. The new head of the Disinformation Governance Board, Nina Jankowicz, a leading expert in disinformation and extremism, resigned under an avalanche of harassment and abuse. (The Washington Post, May 18, 2022, by Taylor Lorenz) “These smears leveled by bad-faith, right wing actors against a deeply qualified expert and against efforts to better combat human smuggling and domestic terrorism are disgusting,

The Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act, introduced in the Senate and passed by the House Judiciary Committee, would require an ethics code and stronger recusal rules, transparency for Justice’s finances and a view of the ways lobbyists and dark money attempt to sway the Court. (End Citizens United, May 16, 2022, press release) “At a time when the judiciary has outsized power — over our personal privacy and health care decisions, over who