Free speech

Changes Begin At Twitter After First Full Day Under Musk

October 31, 2022 By Evan Symon 3 Comments

Musk tweets that many will be unbanned for minor offenses soon

Many changes coming to Twitter were teased by the company on Friday, a day after billionaire Elon Musk took over the company. Many who had previously been banned or temporarily banned by the social media site praised the changes while employees had a more mixed reaction.

The sale of Twitter to Musk for $44 billion was made official on Thursday, completing one of California’s largest company ownership transfers ever. Many users who had been banned in the past over certain tweets made called the sale a victory for freedom of speech and noted that a huge shift was already being felt.

Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro simply tweeted a gif of Champagne popping as well as “We can only hope that other social media bosses (cc: Mark Zuckerberg) follow Musk’s lead.”

Others tweeted that they hoped that the sale meant that former President Donald Trump, radio show host Alex Jones, and commentator Milo Yiannopoulos would be allowed back to the platform.

Later on Friday Musk announced that Twitter would be forming a content moderation council similar to the one in place at Facebook to stop automatic bans and to go through them when needed. But he also said that anyone frozen from Twitter for minor or ‘dubious’ reasons would be unblocked as soon as possible and hinted at fewer bans in the future.

“Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints,” said Musk in a series of tweets on Friday. “No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes. Anyone suspended for minor & dubious reasons will be freed from Twitter jail.

“Comedy is now legal on Twitter.”

The news led to Twitter’s largest bannee, Donald Trump, to send out a message on his own social media site, Truth Social, praising Musk and the sale of Twitter.

“I’m very happy that Twitter is now in sane hands following Musk’s takeover,” said Trump on Friday. “Truth Social has become somewhat of a phenomena. It also looks and works better to my eye. I like Elon and I wish him a lot of luck. I hope he does well with it.”

However, he also confirmed via a Fox News interview later on Friday that he would be staying on Truth Social for now, adding, “I am staying on Truth. I like it better, I like the way it works, I like Elon, but I’m staying on Truth.”

Twitter employees in San Francisco had a different view of the sale on Friday, with many now divided in the way that the company is now going.

“Some people are really happy that Musk now owns us while others are now updating their resumes and getting ready to bail,” explained “Morgan,” a Twitter employee who wished to remain anonymous, to the Globe on Friday. “A lot of people also think that Musk is insane and think he is going to drive Twitter off a cliff.”

“I can’t say for sure what the split is, but since this has been what we’ve been talking about for a lot of the year, I’d say that more here are worried about this than not. I mean, they’ve fired a lot of management in the past few days, so it’s hard to know where exactly we’re going.”

“And we’re in San Francisco, so a lot of people are seeing right-wingers praise this deal and are horrified at that. Others have pushed for Twitter to be more open with view points too. Policies are shifting, and I can bet you’ll be seeing the type of employee shifting here too. Something the party has ended, others think its now beginning, others think that the party is back after it was shut down for awhile.

Click here to read the full article in the California Globe

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Elon Musk, Free speech, Twitter

Berkeley Report on Free Speech Blames Conservatives for Campus Unrest

May 14, 2018 By Joel B. Pollak 5 Comments

The University of California Berkeley has conducted an investigation of problems related to free speech on campus — particularly surrounding events where conservatives (or even insufficiently left-wing “progressives”) are invited to speak on campus and met with violence and disruption by left-wing activists.

Bizarrely, the report of the Commission on Free Speech concludes that conservatives, not the left, are to blame for the violence on campus.

In one passage, the report states: “[O]ur conclusion is that the rise of ultra-conservative rhetoric, including white supremacist views and protest marches, legitimized by the 2016 presidential election and its aftermath, encouraged far-right and alt-right activists to ‘spike the football’ at Berkeley.”

It insists: “Contrary to a currently popular narrative, Berkeley remains a tolerant campus.”

And it blames student groups who invite conservative speakers onto campus, while simultaneously denying that Berkeley is denying conservatives their free speech rights:

All the 2017 events that led to disruption were sponsored by very small groups of students working closely with outside organizations. Although those speakers had every right to speak and were entitled to protection, they did not need to be on campus to exercise the right of free speech. Indeed, at least some of the 2017 events at Berkeley can now be seen to be part of a coordinated campaign to organize appearances on American campuses likely to incite a violent reaction, in order to advance a facile narrative that universities are not tolerant of conservative speech.

While insisting that the commission does not condone the sort of violence that greeted then-Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos last year, the commission warned students against inviting speakers with provocative views:

That said, the Commission recommends that all members of the campus community be mindful of one another and do unto others as they would want done to themselves. There are better ways to expand the political dialogue on campus than to invite a shock jock performance artist, as Professor Rossman characterized Yiannopoulos, to belittle historically oppressed communities.

The report said that student organizations should be “balancing their right to hold events with their responsibility to the community.”

As Megan McArdle notes in the Washington Post:

They have plenty of harsh words, however, for the conservatives who were targeted. “Many Commission members are skeptical of these speakers’ commitment to anything other than the pursuit of wealth and fame through the instigation of anger, fear, and vengefulness in their hard-right constituency.” Their invitations to speak represented “the assertion of individual rights at the expense of social responsibility by a handful of students.” As a result, the commission finds speech of this kind “hard to defend, especially in light of the acute distress it caused (and was intended to cause) to staff and students.”

In the report, conservatives are active, provoking and triggering. The left-wing activists who set things on fire appear in passive voice, that great grammatical machine for sanitizing the indefensible. Left-wing groups have reasonable fears for their safety from conservative speakers, and the police needed to defend them (from what? Further deponent sayeth not.) Conservative students “allege” that their beliefs make them targets for left-wing professors. And when it comes to the remedies, it’s clear who the commission thinks ought to change their ways.

She concludes: “[T]hus the ancestral home of the free-speech movement inches as close as it dares to advocating for censorship of any speech that offends a powerful majority — or even any minority that’s decently armed.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named to Forward’s 50 “most influential” Jews in 2017. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

This article was originally published by Breitbart.com/California

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Berkeley, Free speech

California Republicans Try to Undo Campus Free Speech Restrictions

May 27, 2017 By Adelle Nazarian 5 Comments

California’s increased crackdown on free speech on several of its college campuses has pushed several Republicans, and even some Democrats, to push back.

Bill Nielsen, a 72-year-old Republican cattle farmer, and Nicolas Tomas, a 26-year-old vegan Democrat, have joined forces. According to the Los Angeles Times, Nielsen has proposed a bill that would “reaffirm that outdoor spaces on campus are public forums. Institutions would only be able to impose reasonable restrictions on the time, place and manner of speech, such as barring demonstrations with bullhorns in front of the library during finals week.” The Times adds, “School policies would also need to allow for spontaneous assembly and distribution of literature, so students can react to breaking news events.”

The bill, sponsored by Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez (R-Lake Elsinore), is called the Campus Free Speech Act. It would prevent schools from disinviting speakers because thy are “controversial” and would reportedly establish disciplinary action for anyone who infringes on the free speech right of others.

“You’re not allowed to just disinvite people because they’re controversial,” Melendez told the Times. “You can’t have mob rule.”

Earlier this month, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam signed the eight page Campus Free Speech Protection Act into law, making the “Volunteer State” on the first to pass legislation designed to stem the assault on free speech at its public universities.

Breitbart News previously reported:

The law mandates that public colleges and universities in Tennessee adopt free speech policies consistent with the University of Chicago’s 2015 Stone Report. Chaired by Chicago Law Professor Geoffrey Stone, the report’s findings were adopted last year to great fanfare. Despite his emphasis on campus free speech, Professor Stone is hardly a right-wing ideologue. He clerked with archliberal Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, chaired the Board of the American Constitution Society, a leading lefty-leaning lawyers’ association, and served on the National Advisory Council of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Meanwhile, the University of California has reportedly estimated that enforcing Nielsen’s measure could add millions of dollars of costs for administrative, security and legal fees to the system.

However, Joe Cohn, the legislative director at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), told the Times that argument was bogus. “The idea that the bill will add costs to the state is silly on its face,” Cohn reportedly said. “They already have this same liability and same legal obligation, regardless or not if the bill passes.”

Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

This piece was originally published by Breitbart.com/california

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Campus Free Speech Protection Act, Free speech, Melissa Melendez

Compelled Speech is Not Free

May 17, 2017 By Joel Anderson 3 Comments

At first glance, Senate Bill 226 may seem harmless. It is portrayed simply as an effort to provide voters with the comfort of additional “transparency” in the election process.

But we must look closer. The simple transparency that SB266 claims to provide will actually undermine our fundamental first amendment rights to political speech, and that’s why I opposed this bill on the Senate floor.

Our founders very wisely understood that self-government relies on an informed populace. As citizens, we rely on the free exchange of ideas so that we may sift through the information that comes our way and decide for ourselves which facts and opinions will inform our voting decisions. It is the responsibility of government to assure this free flow of information is not disrupted.

However, if the information we receive during that election is actually controlled or compelled by government, can we really call it a free exchange of ideas?

The answer is obvious, and it is exactly why government bureaucrats have no business micromanaging what information we are allowed to see, what information we must see, nor how information is presented to us.

Yet that’s exactly what SB226 will do. It compels those who produce political mailers to include specific information demanded by the government, and mandates precisely how that information will be presented.

SB226 requires that when “slate mailers” are sent by organizations representing the view point of public safety officials, the number of members the organization represents must be stated on the piece. SB226 also compels slate mailers to follow arbitrary mandates as to what font size, type face, formatting, and contrasting colors must be used.

While the bill may not seem like a burden on free speech on its face, SB226’s mandates mean there is less room for the organization to share their message with voters. Thus, its impact in the free exchange of ideas could be limited when compared to others who are not subject to the same restrictions.

If the government can mandate the inclusion of specific information when it comes to one issue, such as public safety, what’s to stop it deciding it must craft similar restraints for other topics, such as climate change, or education? If government can restrict the messages on one medium, in this case slate mailers, we can reasonably anticipate the restrictions will eventually spread to other mediums, such as newspaper ads, or blogs, or social media posts.

Allowing government to decide for us what we can be exposed to, and in what manner, is a very dangerous threat to our First Amendment rights. It is similar to campus officials at public universities deciding which speakers and messages students are allowed to hear, and which messages they must be “protected” from. It is the business of government to assure that all messages can be heard, not to decide for itself which messages are safe for us to hear, or what information must accompany the message.

Compelled speech is not free speech. True freedom, including freedom of expression, can be a messy business. But freedom sure beats the alternative. SB226 is the alternative.

Sen. Joel Anderson represents the 38th District in the California State Senate.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Senate, First Amendment, Free speech, Joel Anderson, SB266

Conservative Free Speech Survives Attack by AG Harris

April 27, 2016 By Alex Tomescu 21 Comments

Photo courtesy of Steve Rhodes, flickr

California Attorney General Kamala Harris, in an attempt to burnish her credentials as the liberal successor to Senator Barbara Boxer, has continued the Left’s long tradition of harassment of private citizens when their political views are not aligned with the progressive agenda. Since 2013, Ms. Harris has demanded that national nonprofits turn over their IRS Form 990 Schedule B lists, which gives the names and addresses of donors who contribute $5,000 or more per year. This assault on free speech and democracy was thwarted last Thursday, when a federal judge issued a permanent injunction against Ms. Harris’ order that the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a well-known nonprofit dedicated to free market principles, turn over its list of major donors or stop soliciting contributions in California.

Under current law, nonprofits like the AFP Foundation, are required to file the Form 990 Schedule B identifying major donors with the IRS. The IRS, in turn, is supposed to keep that form confidential. Anyone familiar with the machinations of President Obama’s politicized IRS and the actions of Lois Lerner are well aware of how seriously the IRS considers the confidentiality of private citizens. These nonprofits are also required to register with the state of California, but never before have they been required to submit the IRS forms in California. The AFP Foundation, along with numerous other nonprofit groups, challenged Ms. Harris’ demands in court, and won a significant victory for the First Amendment principles of free speech and free association.

U.S. District Court Judge Manuel L. Real, in his 12-page ruling, stated that “setting aside the Attorney General failure to establish a substantial relationship between her demand for AFP’s Schedule B and a compelling government interest, AFP would independently prevail… because it has proven that disclosing its Schedule B to the Attorney General would create a burden on its First Amendment rights.” In other words, notwithstanding Ms. Harris’ inability to adequately explain why the government needs these records, the resultant chilling effect on free speech that the records demand would ensure, were enough to convince the judge that a permanent injunction against the Attorney General’s order was necessary to protect AFP’s First Amendment rights.

Ms. Harris’ office maintained that the information was required for compliance with California tax law. However, California law already provides the power to obtain donor information via subpoena – in the event that the nonprofit is being investigated for wrongdoing. Nowhere in Ms. Harris’ demands for this donor information was there an indication that any wrongdoing occurred; rather Ms. Harris was advancing the Democrats’ tactic of publicly outing political opponents so that they can be subject to intimidation and retaliation by government officials and the liberal media, to the point where renouncing their views or shrinking away from the public debate are the only available options.

Not so long ago, dissent was considered “the highest form of patriotism.” Now, Democrats are no longer satisfied with personal attacks in the vein of comparing climate change skeptics to Holocaust deniers, or forcing the resignation of business executives for holding unfashionable social views (regardless of their adoption of corporate policies that run counter to those personal views). The latest strategy is to criminalize dissent – witness the actions of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, joined by other Democratic attorneys general, who is attempting to coerce certain energy firms to submit to the current climate change consensus through the threat of investigations and possible fraud and racketeering charges. In another time (and under Republican administrations), the use of prosecutorial powers as a political cudgel would send liberals into convulsions of rage, intoning about dark, Nixonian tactics or vague insinuations of the impending theocracy.

Now, while these maneuvers by Democratic attorneys general will likely not end in prosecution for those energy firms, they do fall in line with what Ms. Harris is attempting here in California, specifically an attempt to suppress and silence their political opponents. That is why the decision last week in federal court was so important to not only AFP, but to the preservation of a free and robust political debate in California and across America. Private citizens should be emboldened to participate in public policy debates, and if their preferred method of civic engagement is a financial donation to an organization with the time and resources to advance certain policies, then those citizens should be able to exercise that right without fear of retribution from government officials.

Kamala Harris will no doubt continue to attempt to curtail the First Amendment should she succeed Barbara Boxer in the Senate – that is where Harry Reid spends his time trying to police political speech, when he is not busy getting into, and losing, fights with exercise equipment. But last Thursday’s decision should serve as a reminder to Ms. Harris that politicians should strive to protect the First Amendment rights of the citizens that they serve, not attempt to intimidate them into silence. Hopefully, AFP and other civic-minded organizations will use this resounding victory to continue to remind her and others of that fact.

Alexander Tomescu is an associate attorney at Wewer & Lacy, LLP, focusing in the practice of election and campaign law.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Americans for Prosperity, Barbara Boxer, Free speech, Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris’ Attack on Freedom of Opinion Stymied

April 23, 2016 By Walter Olson 7 Comments

At Overlawyered, I’ve repeatedly covered California Attorney General Kamala Harris’s audacious demand for the donor lists of nonprofits that carry on activities in California, a step likely to lead to both private and public retaliation against individuals and groups revealed to have donated to unpopular or controversial causes. So this is good news: a federal district judge in California has ruled that her crusade violates the Constitutional rights of one such group, Americans for Prosperity Foundation.

As the WSJ notes in an editorial, U.S. District Judge Manuel Real “declared her disclosure requirement an unconstitutional burden on First Amendment rights,” finding that there was scant evidence the disclosures were necessary to prevent charitable fraud, and that, contrary to assurances, her office had “systematically failed to maintain the confidentiality” of nonprofits’ donor lists, some 1,400 of which Harris’s office had in fact published online. As for retaliation against donors, “although the Attorney General correctly points out that such abuses are not as violent or pervasive as those encountered in NAACP v. Alabama or other cases from [the civil rights] era,” he wrote, “this Court is not prepared to wait until an AFP opponent carries out one of the numerous death threats made against its members.”

An ally of the plaintiff’s bar and unions as well as a candidate for U.S. Senate, Harris recently surfaced as a key player in the alliance of state attorneys general intent on using criminal investigatory powers to probe so-called climate denial at non-profit research and advocacy groups as well as at energy companies like ExxonMobil. That makes at least two episodes in which Harris personally has signaled interest in novel, aggressive steps to pry open the internal workings of private advocacy organizations that take positions opposed to hers.

It’s hard not to see an ongoing pattern here. Aside from the climate subpoenas, which are widely predicted to expand beyond the Competitive Enterprise Institute to other advocacy groups, powerful politicians have been demanding that the Securities and Exchange Commission use its regulatory powers to turn up pressure against advocacy by shareholder-held businesses, and in particular to investigate what they say on issues of regulation and policy – invariably, when they take the opposite side from the politicians’ own views. Earlier this month I covered such a ploy by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and New York City official Letitia James recently tried something similar with Sturm Ruger, demanding that the SEC punish the gunmaker for not being more cooperative with the demands of various gun control advocates.

The pattern here is that the formidable power of law enforcement and regulatory discretion is being openly enlisted to identify, flush out, and punish what remains of dissenting opinion in the business community itself as well as among uncooperative nonprofits. Recall that in 2010 Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius vowed “zero tolerance” for health insurers spreading supposed “misinformation” about ObamaCare, in particular by blaming its provisions for rate increases, no small threat from an official wielding immense regulatory discretion over those insurers.

The WSJ’s Kim Strassel had a great column the other day asking why so few business leaders are willing to speak out against coercive and destructive economic measures. Given the amount of effort that goes into identifying and retaliating against dissenting pro-capitalism opinion these days, should we really be surprised?

This piece was originally published by the Cato Institute

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Cato, Free speech, Kamala Harris