Legal briefs

Free speech

Last week, Donald Trump said that if elected President, he will push to criminalize burning the American flag. As abhorrent and nauseating as burning the American flag is, making it a crime is an unconstitutional infringement on free speech. We are in an era when the fundamental right of free speech is under attack. Some believe the government should decide what is “true” and regulate speech for “misinformation.” That is a dangerous proposition. The response to that cannot be to offer additional free speech restrictions.    

More free speech

Over the last several years, many college campuses have become hostile to free speech. Conservative speakers have been harassed and cancelled. Students and some faculty have adopted an oversensitivity to things like so-called micro-aggressions. Some universities have clamped down on free expression. At the same time, the university environment is radically politicized. You may recall the campus protests following the October 7 attack on Israel. I wrote about them here. At the time, too many universities embraced, or at a minimum allowed, discrimination and outright hostility to Jewish students.  

There is some sign things are changing, though. This week, Vanderbilt University began the school year with the Chancellor, Daniel Diermeier, addressing the entire student body. You can read about it here. He opened by saying, “Everything we try to do is guided by our purpose and our core values..one of which is free expression.” Free expression on campus, he said, will be guided by three pillars: open forums, institutional neutrality and civil discourse.

According to Diermeier, that means no cancelling of conservative speakers. It means the university will not be taking a stance on political issues that do not directly impact the functioning or operations of the school. And it means that students and faculty must treat one another with respect and dignity.

More of this, please.    

Still more free speech

Mark Zuckerberg released a letter this week describing how the Biden Administration has pressured Facebook to censor conservative speech. Zuckerberg explains that, “In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree.” Zuck went on to say, “I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it.”

The Facebook founder expressed further regret over the way his company handled the Hunter Biden laptop-Russian disinformation hoax. In the letter, Zuckerberg says that the Administration used the FBI to warn Facebook that the laptop was Russian disinformation. Facebook “demoted” stories about the Hunter laptop relying on those claims. The claims were untrue, and there is mounting evidence that the FBI and other officials promoting the Russia line knew it was false.

Finally, Zuckerberg committed Facebook to changing behavior. He insists they will resist pressure from government officials to censor and expose those that attempt it. He claims that Facebook will not demote content without knowing more. And he asserts that the company and he personally will not be making political statements or contributions.

This type of government censorship of speech is pernicious and leads down a dark path. I hope Zuckerberg is true to his words in the letter. I also hope other companies and organizations follow suit, though I remain skeptical. For instance, I wanted to provide a link to the actual letter in this post, but Google won’t show it, and no mainstream news outlet will link to it. You’ll have to go on Facebook or X to read it. So, there’s that.

Separation of powers

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an interim order barring the Biden Administration from continuing to pursue its most recent student loan “forgiveness” plan. The Court simply continued the stay put in place by the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals while the case makes its way through the federal appellate court system. I have written extensively about the Administration’s efforts in this area. You can read those posts here. The Administration’s actions are clearly an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers, as multiple courts have now pointed out. Nonetheless, following the Supreme Court’s order this week, a White House spokesperson pledged that the Administration will continue fighting. C’mon man.

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