To listen to the gun lobby, the Second Amendment provides an absolute constitutional right for an individual to own an array of armaments and ammunition free from regulation by the state. These advocates select from the amendments text only what supports their individual-freedom view, but they ignore entirely the imperative that precedes, the framing device of the whole thingto protect the security of a free State. Read in full, the text of the amendment is not a prohibition on gun regulations but, rather, a requirement of certain regulations necessary for protecting that security and freedom.

Gun-rights activists point to the 2008 Supreme Court decision in Heller v. District of Columbia as finally establishing, some 219 years after the ratification of the Second Amendment, an individual right to possess a gun in the home, which they proclaim extends to assault rifles and sundry other weapons enabling individual bearers to inflict mass destruction of human life. In their view, the ordinary citizen is bound by a constitutional covenant to suffer the risk that others might use their military-style weapons to murder childrenor churchgoers, or grocery shoppers, or concertgoers, but especially childrenbecause it is the person, not the gun, who does the killing in the Second Amendments name. We the people must endure this risk, we are told, because otherwise the rights of some to keep and bear Armseven against childrenoutweigh our collective need for safety and security. The constitutional protection of some to keep the weapons that they sometimes bear against us collectively is too important a right necessary for individual freedom to contemplate regulations that would, or even might, reduce our risk. We are told that the right to individual ownership of armaments like AR-15 platform assault weapons, with minimal or no real restraints on purchasing, is necessary for an armed populace to keep the threat of a tyrannical government at bay.

James C. Phillips and Josh Blackman: The mysterious meaning of the Second Amendment

Such a popularized version of our Constitutions meaning was in part vindicated by a conservative Supreme Court majority, whose opinion in Heller focused principally on the second half of the Second Amendment, which reads, The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Assuming that the term of art keep and bear means the same in modern English as possess and carry, and that the people refers to particular individuals rather than a political collective, as in We the People, which established the Constitution in the preamble, the right would seem to be fairly clear. (Or at least as clear as the First Amendment, which provides that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, under which the Supreme Court has nonetheless repeatedly found all manner of regulations permissiblesuch as those prohibiting incitement to violence, true threats, and advocacy for violent overthrow of the government, and those putting reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on speech, among many others.)

But this version of the Second Amendment ignores the first half, which reads, A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State. The Supreme Court barely contemplated the texts meaning in Heller, asking no more than whether it could be given a logical link or a purpose consistent with what it dubbed the operative clausewherein the amendment, in the Courts view, protects an individual right to possess a weapon. The first half of the Second Amendment is at times also anachronistically associated with the question of whether the right to possess a weapon is tied to service in a well regulated Militiaa view the Heller majority rejected. Missing from this reading, however, is any consideration of the constitutional significance of what is necessary to maintain the security of a free State. What does this security entail? Are Americans secure in a free state when they live in fear of the next violent act that might be perpetrated by the bearer of semiautomatic weapons? Are Americans secure in a free state when they are told that more resources should be spent on arming teachers, or training students to duck and cover and keep silent, as if in a new cold war, only this time the enemy is ourselves?

Diana Palmer and Timothy Zick: The Second Amendment has become a threat to the First

The gun lobby argues that the political, psychological, and emotional attachment to the ready availability of weapons for some is a value too precious to contemplate rethinking our collective approach to gun regulation. Any regulation that might lead to imposing far more restrictive licensing and background checks, or to limiting the availability of particular kinds of weapons, would be too costly to their selective understanding of constitutional freedoms. According to the gun lobby, individuals engaged in their own fantasy of the heroic citizen equipped to do battle against tyrannical government agents would suffer incalculable collective costs were Americans to restrict their access to weapons. If the choice were the lives of children or the political imagination of a vocal group of armament activists, whose costs should matter more? The inconvenience of some or the lives of others?

The Second Amendment provides an answer. The security of a free State matters. Our security is a constitutional value, one that outweighs absolutist gun-rights claims by NRA lobbyists, or Oath Keepers and other insurrectionist groups who hold their access to weapons dear for use in an imagined anti-tyranny quest. Meanwhile, the rest of us suffer the costs of the actual tyranny that living in a state of fear of mass gun violence creates.

Franklin D. Roosevelts 1941 Four Freedoms speech placed freedom from fear as one of four essential human freedoms. Translated to our modern gun crisis, this freedom can be realized only when individuals no longer have easy legal access to armaments that put them in a position to commit an act of [mass] physical aggression against any neighbor. Children today do not have this freedom from fear. Just to live in society and go to school, they must endure regular active-shooter drills, because the gun lobby has opposed any regulation that would keep weapons out of the hands of those whose activities remain legal up until the exact moment when they start shooting children and teachers. Proposals to make schools more like fortresses only add to the costs children bear rather than addressing the root constitutional problemthat insufficient regulation of guns impairs the liberties of all.

Protecting our freedom from fear does not mean that the government has complete authority to ban guns. To emphasize the amendments protections for security is not to abandon liberty. Rather, it is to recognize how excessive emphasis on the liberties of gun advocates undermines the many liberties of everyone else who seeks to live securely in a free state. The Second Amendment preserves a free state, not simply a security state.

When we Americans next hear that the Second Amendment protects a right against more effective regulation of weapons capable of imposing death on our neighbors, we should insist in response that the Second Amendment requires the opposite. It empowers a free people to regulate weapons as necessary to maintain their security and to protect their freedoms from fear and violence. We can be free, but only if we regulate gunsjust as the Second Amendment tells us.

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Don't Forget the First Half of the Second Amendment - The Atlantic

The US Supreme Court is poised to consider a question with seismic consequences for online speech. Over the past year, laws in Texas and Florida have set up a legal battle over whether the First Amendment protects social networks right to curate user-generated content or whether these sites should be treated more like phone companies, required to host nearly any speech their users post. The courts split reflects a deepening shift in how to interpret a basic constitutional right, filtered through a political culture war and backlash against large web platforms.

For years, sites like Facebook and YouTube have broadly assumed that moderation decisions are protected by the First Amendment. But, last month, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals made a surprise ruling over Texas HB 20, a law that bans large apps and websites from moderating content based on viewpoint. The court ruled against NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and let the law go into effect, sending the groups scrambling to file an emergency Supreme Court petition. That petition was granted temporarily blocking the law but also offering a preview of a seemingly inevitable Supreme Court battle.

I would be surprised if the court doesnt take this up, says Ari Cohn, counsel at the libertarian-leaning nonprofit TechFreedom one of roughly 30 groups that supported the petition. The Fifth Circuit still hasnt decided on the laws merits, but it seems highly sympathetic to Texas reasoning. And that reasoning conflicts directly with a May ruling from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which blocked Floridas similar law. Barring a sudden and massive shift, its almost inevitable this is going to create a circuit split and go up next term, says Cohn.

The central issue is whether the government can regulate how social networks sort and remove legal content. Opponents argue that curating posts and setting community standards involves private companies exercising a constitutional right to speak (or not speak, in the case of content bans). Supporters compare the sites to shopping malls or telephone networks, whose First Amendment rights are limited.

But both sides so far are leaning on old cases involving non-digital spaces and tech, and the Texas law in particular repurposes legal terms outside of even relatively recent judicial context. It designates social networks as utility-like common carriers, a label that federal rules explicitly avoid applying to internet service providers let alone websites. And it also bans viewpoint discrimination, a term the Supreme Court has used to describe unlawful government restrictions on speech but that Texas lawmakers have treated as synonymous with private companies moderating conservative content.

A Supreme Court ruling in favor of Texas could make that legal repurposing stick, and its implications would go far beyond Facebook banning former President Donald Trump. Democratic politicians have discussed punishing the spread of health misinformation or other harmful but legal speech. And, depending on how its written, the ruling wont necessarily just apply to the biggest social media companies. Even Texas law, which applies to services with 50 million monthly active users, would likely scoop up non-Big Tech sites like Yelp or Tumblr.

Texas and Florida politicians have also taken the unusual step of describing their bills as conservative weapons against the alleged liberal bias of tech companies. To Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at media advocacy group Free Press, that makes them a risky place even for good-faith debate over the First Amendment and makes any Supreme Court decision particularly fraught. This is not a great opportunity to talk about free speech, because this is not the way to appropriately regulate the First Amendment. There are ways that that can be done, Benavidez says. A states partisan interest in protecting certain speech is not one of those avenues.

Benavidez acknowledges real concerns around large social networks, which have tremendous power to shape speech online in some cases literally changing the way a generation talks. But a ruling that their community standards arent protected speech, she argues, would have catastrophic consequences. People who are supportive of HB 20 imagine that the law will help protect speech, she says. In reality, governments dictating what private actors can and cant do, and essentially picking and choosing speech that is acceptable, is a precursor in every country around the world to totalitarianism, authoritarianism, and the demise of democratic engagement.

For a hugely consequential law, however, HB 20 has moved between courts with a marked lack of explanation. The Fifth Circuit declined to offer a rationale for its decision, and the case flowed through the Supreme Courts shadow docket emergency petition system something NetChoice and the CCIA called a necessity after the Fifth Circuits abrupt decision but that resulted in only a short dissent from Justice Samuel Alito and no majority opinion.

This case has been anything but normal, says Cohn. There has definitely been a dearth of information from the majorities at every level except the district court level.

Thats left court watchers speculating about what last weeks 54 vote means. Its really hard to make predictions on the basis of the decision we have so far, because the majority didnt issue an opinion, says Alex Abdo, litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. Alitos dissent, which was co-signed by the Republican-appointed justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, emphasized that he hadnt reached a conclusion on the law. Former President Barack Obama appointee Justice Elena Kagan voted against the decision without signing a move several experts suggested might be a protest against the controversial shadow docket itself but also said was still open to interpretation.

Columbia Law School professor Philip Hamburger, who filed one of the two legal briefs supporting HB 20, believes that this early vote simply doesnt say much about the laws prospects. Justice Alito hinted that the Supreme Court vacated the stay simply because the case is so important, he tells The Verge. It did not resolve the constitutional question.

CCIA president Matt Schruers contends that theres little ambiguity. I think we have five members of the federal judiciary who have made unmistakably clear their views, and theyre all aligned that a Fairness Doctrine for the internet is not constitutional. He also disagreed with the idea that courts havent spoken clearly on the law. We have gone three for three in federal court, he said referring to district court opinions in Texas and Florida plus the appeals court decision in Florida, all of which have largely rejected the states reasoning.

Other critics of the law arent as optimistic. I dont agree with every First Amendment argument the platforms are making, but the central argument they make that they have a right and their users have a right for the platforms to enforce community norms of their choosing is an incredibly important right for free speech online. And the three justices in the dissent seem ready to reject that argument, says Abdo. Justice Thomas in particular is a well-known proponent of some novel legal theories about internet law, and he seems likely to favor arguments for regulating social media.

Beyond the pressing question of whether sites can be required to carry certain content, the court could address more nuanced questions about what the First Amendment might protect. As Will Oremus of The Washington Post discusses, the Eleventh Circuit let parts of Floridas law stand, saying that limited regulation like transparency requirements doesnt necessarily violate speech rights. The Knight Institute in particular has praised that nuance, saying it properly rejects the platforms argument that the First Amendment insulates them from all regulation.

The recent court decisions are part of a political and cultural landscape where the First Amendments interpretation may be increasingly up for grabs. In a recent University of Chicago Law Review Online analysis, law professors Evelyn Douek and Genevieve Lakier noted that First Amendment politics are more complicated, uncertain, and, well, just plain weird than they have been in a long time partly because of things like the Fifth Circuits surprising decision and partly because of larger cultural and technological shifts.

Abdo compares the brewing Supreme Court showdown over speech to the past decades fights over digital privacy and surveillance culminating in decisions that set a promising precedent for a new era. Over the past 15 years, the Supreme Court has been called on to answer the question of how the Fourth Amendment applies in the digital age. What are our privacy rights in the digital age? Do Supreme Court precedents from the 1960s and 70s and 80s decide the question of state power to surveil in the 2000s? he says. The Supreme Court said emphatically, no technology has changed. The governments ability to surveil has changed. Peoples expectations of privacy have changed. And we have to answer these questions.

In a best-case scenario, Abdo believes that could happen here. I think we may be witnessing something similar in the First Amendment context that courts will have to analyze anew how the First Amendment ought to apply to new technologies, he says. And what I hope they will keep as their guiding point is whether their interpretation of the First Amendment ultimately serves the values that free speech is meant to serve.

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A Supreme Court speech showdown is coming, and nobody knows what to expect - The Verge

On Monday, June 6 the Woonsocket City Council took up a routine request from Rebuild Woonsocket to get a permit to hold the second annual Pride celebration in the citys World War II Memorial Park. Last year, as Woonsocket city officials pushed back against the event the celebrationmorphed into a protest march. [See: First ever Woonsocket Pride celebration]

City officials such as Councilmember James Cornoyer and Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt, were offended by some of the statements made by those attending Woonsocket Pride last year and used the routine passage of the resolution granting organizers use of the city park to air their grudges and promise retaliation if speakers at the event were critical of of elected politicians.

Of course, the right to assemble and freedom of speech are two of the most important freedoms protected by the constitution of the United States. You would just never know it by the following conversation:

Councilmember James Cournoyer: Just on this one This is a request from Rebuild Woonsocket from Mr. Alex Kithes. I dont know if he or any of his group os here but Im just curious Is this an event to give speeches bashing elected officials in Woonsocket as transphobic and homophobic as has been the case in the past when weve had these types of events? Does anyone know?

Council President Daniel Gendron: Is there anyone here from this organization? Theres not.

Cournoyer: Okay.

Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt: I do want to make one comment. We did receive complaints through my office the last time that this park was utilized and families were upset because microphones were being used and there was vulgarity and chanting of vulgarity and things of that nature, with the children in the park. I find that I need to bring that to your attention.

Gendron: Thank you. Obviously thats always inappropriate. Its unfortunate that we have to start lecturing adults on whats appropriate in front of children, but I guess thats what happens with some people. So I guess we can just say we have to ask public safety to keep an eye on this and watch out for the children in the city. I dont know what more we can do.

City Solicitor John DeSimone: Table it?

Councilmember Roger Jalette: Thats just what I was going to say. How about if we table it per a meeting with the organization?

Gendron: Well, its for June 11th. So if we table it its beyond the

Councilmember Valerie Gonzalez: Is there any way we can amend it to include that there would be no use of profanity or vulgar language? I know its a new request

Gendron: I dont really feel comfortable with that because where does that end? I think that were just going to hope that they act like adults. I dont know what more you can say. Solicitor, arent we crossing a fine line there if we start dictating what people can say?

DeSimone: We can put a police detail there. You could put a police detail.

Gendron: And require them to pay for it, or

DeSimone: Or just do it at our ex- yeah, you can require them to pay for it. I dont know what financial means they have Either that we we just order a police detail to make sure that everything goes smoothly and the neighbors arent disturbed, if the council feels that way. I guess the Mayor feels that way. You know, however you want to handle it but

Baldelli-Hunt: I dont think we should have to expending our taxpayer dollars to monitor the behavior of someone whos being granted a privilege of using our park.

Gendron: Yeah. Thats why I said at their expense but

DeSimone: You could put it at their expense if you want I dont know if they

Cournoyer: My view is look it Weve had these events the last couple of years and, as I said, the first one was billed as a quote, celebration that was approved by the council seven to nothing and it turned into an attack on the city council, the mayor, etc. Then we saw the same activity from the steps of city hall down in Providence, in the states capitol. And it happens over again. So my view is Im happy to support this. I have no problem with these type of things. If the individual requesting [this resolution] behaves the way he has the last couple times, if Im on here again it will be the last time. So

Public Works Director Steven DAgostino: Im just going to say that if you review the charter, the parks fall under my purview and Im uncomfortable with this event. If it moves forward, it will not be with my blessing.

Gendron: I understand. I will say this though: I think the intended celebration is not the problem and its a good cause. Unfortunately the organizers are the ones that have the reputation of being bad apples. So I hate to take away the celebration from the other good people that want to enjoy this because of a few bad apples. Im reluctantly going to support it because I hope that the goodness outweighs the problems but Chief, if you could just ask your officers, if they hear of complaints to let us know and address that immediately, but let us know for future events that are requested.

Baldelli-Hunt: Council President, can you read section two please?

Gendron [reading]: Shall take effect upon passage by the city council and is subject to any conditions that the public safety department may impose and payment of all associated costs as determined by the Director of Public Works. The applicant will obtain a permit from the recreation director upon payment of fees.

Baldelli-Hunt: So that very clearly states any conditions put upon by the public safety director any public safety department anything they impose and payments associated determined by the Director of Public Works. So youre not prohibited from having oversight there. Their cost.

Gendron: What would you recommend then? Lets just If you want to add something I can ask somebody to make an amendment for what you would like to see happen. Im uncomfortable starting to impose details, again, because its one or two bad apples and not, hopefully, not the group that is organizing. Its the organizers, not the organization.

Gonzalez: So basically if we pass this were basically putting it in the court of the public safety director and the director of public works. Because it says both of them so whatever is imposed would be determined by the people who have already seen and worked with them What Im saying is approving this resolution would basically just give you the freedom to do what you feel is necessary to do. Correct?

Gendron: Yeah.

Gonzalez: So I would be in support of this. I actually like that we have a section two.

Councilmember David Soucy: Quick question: Is that section two always included in these agreements?

Gendron: Yes. Same thing for the other two we passed.

Cournoyer: Were not picking on anyone.

Soucy: We dont want to have that impression.

Gendron: No. No. No.

Cournoyer: God no.

Councilmember Jalette voted no. Councilmembers Cournoyer, Gendron, Gonzalez, Soucy, John Ward and Denise Sierra voted to approve.

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Woonsocket elected officials threaten to violate 1st Amendment rights if Pride organizers criticize them - Uprise RI

The leftists who wanted to force you to take a vaccine in order to keep your job and wanted to use a "Disinformation Board" to silence your First Amendment right to speak out against the government now want to eliminate your Second Amendment right to defend yourself and your family.

Our Bill of Rights, which includes the Second Amendment, is crucial to protect our personal liberties from an all-powerful federal government. If anyone questions the power of the modern federal government, think back to the power the federal bureaucracy seized to impose COVID mandates in the name of public safety while at the same time restricting your First Amendment right to challenge those mandates through censorship.

In the wake of the horrific tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, shameless politicians immediately pushed their political agenda of eliminating the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. President Joe Biden was behind a White House podium within hours to deliver a divisive political speech, claiming we have too many rights and telling us he must take away our rights to make us safer.

Leftists don't care about public safety they are in complete control of Baltimore and Chicago, two of the most dangerous cities in the world. Leftists made these cities more dangerous by releasing criminals during COVID and refusing to prosecute criminals as part of their "woke" agenda. Democrats keep our southern border open for gangs and drug cartels to pass through, and they refuse to cooperate with ICE to deport criminals. These soft-on-crime policies have created a crime wave, which has been exacerbated by the left's "Defund The Police" movement to cut police budgets. Leftist politicians who claim to care about student safety eliminated school resource officers, kicking police officers out of their schools.

These same leftists made children suffer with school closures, COVID lockdowns, and forced masking, which caused spikes in depression, drug use, and suicide. As we all suspected, the Biden administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention coordinated with national teachers unions to prolong remote learning and mask mandates for political reasons unsupported by "the science." Now, the Left is confusing children by telling them they have no gender, are not created in the image of God, and can experiment with puberty blockers to change their gender without consequence.

Children are suffering, and we face a mental health crisis in our country because the radical Left has spent decades attacking the role of God in our society, attacking the church, attacking the nuclear family, and dismissing the important role fathers play in raising their sons. The Left tells our children they do not come from God, they are not born for any purpose, and they cannot obtain salvation. The Left embraces abortion without restriction because life has no grand meaning to them, and the ability to create life is not treated with the awe and reverence it deserves.

Conservatives cannot back down under pressure from these radical leftists. We must be strong in defending the central pillars of our society and the constitutional rights of the people, including the Second Amendment. Leftists only care about taking away the rights of law-abiding citizens to make themselves more powerful and to make citizens powerless.

Americans have a fundamental right to keep and bear arms that "shall not be infringed." I will continue to defend our Second Amendment rights as a member of Congress, and I have never supported the Left's gun control agenda or their push for red-flag gun confiscation.

As you watch statements from leftist politicians and liberal media figures attacking the Second Amendment, remember that leftist politicians and celebrities are all protected by walls and guns because they know that walls and guns are effective at keeping themselves and their families safe. Leftists believe they have a right to defend themselves they just don't believe you should have the same rights they do.

In times of tragedy and evil, we turn to our faith in the Lord and are guided by what unites us. As Americans, we are united by our belief that our divine rights come from our creator. As Christians, we are united by a shared purpose to serve God above ourselves. We cannot let those who are attempting to destroy our society's central pillars of family, faith, and freedom succeed. We must work together to defend our rights, our freedoms, and our American way of life.

Rep. Mary Miller is a Republican representing the 15th District of Illinois. She runs a small family farm with her husband, Chris, and is a member of the House Freedom Caucus, Republican Study Committee, and House Second Amendment Caucus.

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Beware the Left's Second Amendment power grab - Washington Examiner

In this episode of The Jabot podcast, I speak with University of Buffalo Law professor Samantha Barbas. We chat about her new book, The Rise and Fall of Morris Ernst, Free Speech Renegade, and about this First Amendment pioneer turned enemy of civil rights. We also discuss the future of the First Amendment and the recent right-wing push to remake the pillar of free speech doctrine enshrined in New York Times v. Sullivan.

The Jabot podcast is an offshoot of the Above the Law brand focused on the challenges women, people of color, LGBTQIA, and other diverse populations face in the legal industry. Our name comes from none other than the Notorious Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the jabot (decorative collar) she wore when delivering dissents from the bench. Its a reminder that even when we arent winning, were still a powerful force to be reckoned with.

Happy listening!

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email herwith any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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Law Professor On The Future Of The First Amendment - Above the Law

Pro-Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol following a rally with President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C. They later went on to break in and attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election results. Samuel Corum/Getty Images hide caption

Pro-Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol following a rally with President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C. They later went on to break in and attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election results.

The House select committee on Jan. 6 holds its first hearing on Thursday, in prime time at 8 p.m. ET, promising to weave together a narrative from the findings of its year-long probe with "previously unseen material" about the attack on the Capitol.

Some committee members have teased that there will be "bombshells" and that the public will be surprised by what is revealed.

Pressed about the risk of overhyping the news, given that many details have already leaked out, committee member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told reporters this week: "We're not in the business of entertainment. We're in the business of trying to communicate to the American people the gravity and the immensity of these events."

The majority-Democrat committee, charged with investigating the insurrection that pro-Trump extremists hoped would help overturn the 2020 election, has interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, including members of former President Donald Trump's family and administration, as well as law enforcement officials and aides who were under siege for hours on Jan. 6, 2021.

Thursday's hearing, the first of six, will feature two live witnesses: Caroline Edwards, a U.S. Capitol police officer and the first law enforcement member injured by rioters on the West Front plaza; and Nick Quested, a filmmaker who accompanied those who breached the building and captured the chaotic scene. Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., will make opening statements and the panel will also show videotaped depositions from senior Trump White House, campaign and administration officials.

The committee is expected to issue a voluminous report with recommendations in September. Some members have already indicated they back changes to the Electoral Count Act, the law governing the process for Congress to count and certify electoral votes. While the committee has the power to make legislative recommendations, it cannot bring any criminal charges and can only make a criminal referral to the Justice Department.

Here are key areas the committee will discuss during the hearings.

Cheney has repeatedly raised questions about the lack of information about what then-President Trump was doing at the White House when violent protesters breached the Capitol. The rioters threatened lawmakers and the vice president, chanting to "hang Mike Pence," and there was a period of time with no response from Trump. Hours earlier he told his supporters on the Ellipse outside the White House, "We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." Trump suggested he would walk with his supporters to the Capitol but instead returned to the White House.

Former President Donald Trump greets the crowd at the "Stop The Steal" rally on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C. Trump supporters then marched to the Capitol and some violent protesters attempted to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 election. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images hide caption

Former President Donald Trump greets the crowd at the "Stop The Steal" rally on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C. Trump supporters then marched to the Capitol and some violent protesters attempted to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 election.

Several committee members point to 187 minutes that afternoon, where it's unclear what the president was doing, as a key focus of their investigation. They have worked to fill in the gap through interviews with multiple witnesses, including Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner. They've also subpoenaed documents, including the president's daily schedule and phone log.

According to select committee aides, Thursday's hearing will feature testimony from those inside the White House and the Trump campaign, including family members. These will be video clips of taped depositions.

The committee issued at least 20 publicly announced subpoenas tied to a wide-ranging scheme across several states to submit a slate of fake electors to Congress as a way of altering the results of the 2020 presidential election in the hopes of keeping Trump office.

The subpoenas included Kelli Ward, the chair of the Arizona Republican Party, in addition to two GOP political candidates in swing states. Committee demands for testimony and records were also issued to the Republican nominee to be Pennsylvania's next governor, Doug Mastriano, and the GOP candidate Mark Finchem, who is running to be the next secretary of state in Arizona.

In some cases, state officials helped organized events where members of Trump's legal team and others shared false claims of voter fraud. The effort continued up to the day of the attack. For example, Finchem said he had to deliver "evidence" to Pence to postpone the certification of the election results.

The committee also obtained details that then-Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani pressured state lawmakers to reject election results in Michigan. Giuliani also has testified before the committee.

The efforts have also drawn the attention of prosecutors in multiple states.

What the committee has learned about the financial story behind the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has remained one of the most closely held parts of the probe. However, it has shared some clues through publicly announced subpoenas and court filings.

For example, a Republican National Committee lawsuit revealed the panel was looking into a push by Trump for donations after he lost his 2020 bid for reelection.

The committee's Feb. 23 subpoena of RNC vendor Salesforce said the company hosted Trump emails asking for new donations that included false claims of election fraud.

It was part of a central question the panel hoped to answer: Did Trump find new ways after his loss to keep the money coming by shifting to a "Stop the Steal" effort?

The panel has also issued subpoenas for banking records and shared in letters to certain subpoenaed witnesses that it's trying to track down appearance fees for the Jan. 6 rally that is, whether any of the speakers collected payment that day.

A combination of dark-money groups, nonprofits and super PACs funded the rally before the attack, but the panel has also probed whether any of that money help aid the insurrection.

Protesters gather at the door of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images hide caption

Protesters gather at the door of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The committee has also taken strong interest in the extreme right-wing groups that breached the Capitol. Among their publicly announced subpoenas, the panel last year demanded testimony and documents from the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.

It also demanded testimony for Henry "Enrique" Tarrio, who on Jan. 6 was chairman of the Proud Boys; Elmer Stewart Rhodes, president of the Oath Keepers; and Robert Patrick Lewis, chairman of 1st Amendment Praetorian, a less well-known group that provided security at multiple rallies leading up to Jan. 6.

The groups were part of a larger organized network that helped launch the attack on the Capitol, the committee's members have said.

The interest in the groups and their leaders has also escalated in recent months in the criminal probe led by the Justice Department. Several members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys have also been charged with seditious conspiracy, and some have led to convictions with guilty pleas.

Select committee aides emphasize the "vast majority" of witnesses have cooperated and helped the committee amass "a mountain of new evidence."

But some senior former officials in the Trump administration and House of Representatives refused to appear or provide documents. Former adviser Steve Bannon refused to cooperate and was ultimately charged with contempt of Congress by the Justice Department last November. His trial is slated for this summer. Last week Peter Navarro, former trade adviser, faced a similar charge.

Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows initially cooperated and turned over a trove of emails and text messages, but then reversed course and refused to a closed-door interview and to turn over remaining materials the panel requested. Meadows sued the panel, and his attorney raised concerns about executive privilege, even though the Biden White House has waived any claims to that protection.

Former senior aide Dan Scavino also defied a subpoena. The House referred the refusals from both him and Meadows to the Justice Department, which informed the committee last week they would not pursue contempt charges against them news the panel criticized, arguing they had central information to provide in the investigation.

In a rare move, five sitting House Republicans were also subpoenaed for testimony and documents. Most notably, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who publicly talked about his phone conversation with Trump on the day of the attack, was asked to appear voluntarily and then given a subpoena. McCarthy along with Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., and Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz. have all pushed back against the subpoenas and demanding details about evidence and questions they would face, making it all but certain they will not participate in any fashion. It's unclear whether the panel would vote to hold any in criminal contempt, and if it did that dispute could end up in court.

For the latest updates on Thursday's hearing head over to NPR's live blog.

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5 key questions the Jan. 6 committee will tackle in its hearings - NPR

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press announced Tuesday the recipients of this years Freedom of the Press Awards, which recognize the accomplishments of leaders in the news media and legal fields whose work embodies the values of the First Amendment.

The honorees for 2022 are:

This years honorees are exceptional leaders in their fields, and their impressive bodies of work represent the best of our free press and those who defend it, said Stephen J. Adler, chair of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Were thrilled to recognize their dedication to standing up for the newsgathering rights of journalists and producing investigative and accountability reporting to inform communities across the country.

The 2022 Freedom of the Press Awards will be held on October 11, 2022, at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York City. The awards dinner is co-chaired by Chairman and Publisher of The New York TimesA.G. Sulzbergerand CEO of the Americas and U.S. Senior Partner at Brunswick GroupNikhil Deogun.

The dedication, tenacity and perseverance of this years Freedom of the Press Award winners are what make them stand out as leaders in journalism and media law, said Bruce D. Brown, executive director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. From their courageous reporting that challenges the status quo and better informs communities, to their decades-long dedication to bringing people the news they need and protecting journalists legal rights, each of our honorees embodies the First Amendment in their own way. Were so proud to celebrate them and their accomplishments.

The Reporters Committee will introduce several new award designations during this years Freedom of the Press Awards celebration.

SahanJournalwill be recognized with the Reporters Committees fourth Rising Star Award, which honors an up and coming journalist, media lawyer or organization that has already made great strides in defending freedom of the press or who has conquered significant roadblocks in the course of telling an important story. The nonprofit online news organization is dedicated to covering Minnesota immigrants and communities of color, and to chronicling how these communities are changing and redefining what it means to be a Minnesotan.Mukhtar M.Ibrahim, the founding publisher and CEO, is among the first trained journalists of Somali background in Minnesota and in the country. Before launching Sahan Journal, he worked as a staff writer for The Star Tribune and Minnesota Public Radio News. In 2021, he was recognized as the Institute for Nonprofit News Emerging Leader.

Thomaswill be recognized with the Freedom of the Press Local Champion Award, which honors a journalist, attorney or organization whose work has had a significant impact locally. She is the founding editor and publisher ofMLK50: Justice Through Journalism, an award-winning nonprofit newsroom in Memphis focused on poverty, power and public policy. A 2016 fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, Thomas has worked for The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal, The Charlotte Observer, The Tennessean and The Indianapolis Star. As part of ProPublicas 2019 Local Reporting Network, sheinvestigatedthe rapacious debt collection practices of a nonprofit hospital, which led the hospital to raise the pay of its lowest-paid workers to $15 an hour and erase nearly $12 million in hospital debt for more than 5,300 defendants. Her honors include the2020 Selden Ring Award, the 2019 National Association of Black Journalists Best Practices Award and being named the 2018 Journalism and Women Symposiums Journalist of the Year.

Khanwill be recognized with the Freedom of the Press Catalyst Award, which honors a journalist or organization whose reporting has had a significant impact. Her investigations forThe New York Times Magazine, the PBS seriesFRONTLINE, andBuzzFeeds investigations teamhave exposed major myths of war, prompting widespread policy impact from Washington to Kabul, and winning nearly a dozen awards. Most recently, her groundbreaking investigation examining civilian deaths resulting from U.S. airstrikes in the Middle East since 2014 for The New York Times, The Civilian Casualty Files, received the2022 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Khan is the Patti Cadby Birch Assistant Professor at Columbia Journalism School, where she is also the inaugural Director of the Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism, and co-founder of The Gumshoe Group. She also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Pulitzer Center and the Board of Governors of the Overseas Press Club of America.

BaineandWoodruffwill each be recognized with the Freedom of the Press Career Achievement Award, which honors an individual with a long history of upholding the value of freedom of the press throughout their career.

As one of the nations leading First Amendment attorneys, Baine has defended freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion in state and federal courts throughout the country, including the U.S. Supreme Court. In his more than four decades at Williams & Connolly, he has represented The Washington Post and other major news organizations and entertainment companies, including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, HBO, Sony Pictures and others in a variety of cases involving First Amendment issues. Baine has been recognized repeatedly by Chambers USA as one of two Star Individuals (Nationwide) in First Amendment Litigation.

Woodruffs career as an award-winning broadcast journalist has spanned more than four decades at NBC, CNN and PBS. She served as White House correspondent for NBC News from 1977 to 1982, followed by one year as chief Washington correspondent for NBCs Today Show. She first joined PBS in 1983 as chief Washington correspondent, and later anchored PBS award-winning documentary series, Frontline with Judy Woodruff. After moving to CNN in 1993, she served for 12 years as an anchor and senior correspondent, before returning to the NewsHour in 2007. In 2013, she and the late Gwen Ifill were named the first two women to co-anchor a national news broadcast. She is also a founding co-chair of the International Womens Media Foundation and has served as a longtime Steering Committee member of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

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Sahan Journal to be honored with Rising Star Award from Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. - Sahan Journal

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Longtime liberal radio host Bill Press wrote an op-ed Thursday calling for the Second Amendment to be outright repealed.

"The only effective way to deal with the Second Amendment is to repeal it and then replace it with something that makes sense in a civilized society," Press wrote for CNN in an article titled "Theres no way to fix the Second Amendment. Lets just get rid of it."

"I'm hardly the first person to say that the Second Amendment has been a disaster for this country. In fact, two Supreme Court justices justices appointed by Republican presidents have said as much," he added.

SUPPORT FOR ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN HITS ALL-TIME LOW FOLLOWING UVALDE SHOOTING: POLL

Press cited former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger, who in 1991 told PBS that "If I were writing the Bill of Rights now, there wouldn't be any such thing as the Second Amendment."

Burger, who also presided over Roe v. Wade, is quoted as calling the Second Amendment "one of the greatest pieces of fraud" in American history.

Press reiterated the claim and expounded on it. He wrote, "Indeed, you only have to read the Second Amendment to see what a fraud it's become."

He claimed that "there's no way you can logically leap" from the text of the Second Amendment "to the unfettered right of any citizen to buy as many guns and any kind of gun that they want, without the government being able to do anything about it."

NEW YORK ENACTS MICROSTAMPING GUN LAW IN PUSH TO CHANGE HOW FIREARMS ARE MADE

With loaded firearms in hand and flags all around people gather for a 5 Mile Open Carry March for Freedom organized by Florida Gun Supply in Inverness, Florida, U.S. . REUTERS/Chris Tilley

"It's clear from the wording of the Second Amendment itself that it has nothing to do with individual gun ownership; nothing to do with self-defense; and nothing to do with assault weapons. The amendment speaks, not to the rights of well-armed individual citizens, but only to citizens as members of a group, a well regulated militia," he wrote.

"The founders saw no need to mention guns in the original Constitution. As many constitutional scholars and American historians have shown, the Second Amendment was added later by James Madison as part of a deal to secure the support of Patrick Henry and other White racist Virginians for confirmation of the Constitution."

Press cited Carol Anderson, an academic who "describes the anti-Blackness at the heart of the Second Amendment."

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks during the Leadership Forum at the National Rifle Association Annual Meeting at the George R. Brown Convention Center Friday, May 27, 2022, in Houston. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke)

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He wrote that "the amendment has nothing to do with self-defense or allowing ownership of any kind of gun."

Press criticized Senator Ted Cruz as a "gun worshipper" for supporting the Second Amendment, which he claimed enabled the Uvalde shooter. "We are a sick nation indeed, if we allow that idiocy to stand," he wrote.

"We are condemned to more and more mass killings until we do the right thing: Stop arguing about the Second Amendment and just get rid of it."

Joe Silverstein is a production assistant for Fox News Digital.

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CNN op-ed calls for repeal of the Second Amendment: Let's just get rid of it - Fox News

False statements, misdirection, half-truths and outright lies: When promoted and repeated in the echo chambers of social media, they can shape attitudes, influence policy and erode democracy. As the psychologist Daniel Kahneman has said, you can make people believe in falsehood through repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.

Disinformation and misinformation have undermined trust in our electoral systems, in vaccines and in the horrific reality of the Uvalde school shooting. They began to swirl in the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the United States Capitol. Intelligence officials warn that with the midterm elections approaching, there will likely be a tsunami of extremist disinformation.

To better understand the phenomenon, lets first define our terms. Disinformation is false speech designed to deceive you. Misinformation is speech that is wrong. Disinformation is intentional; misinformation may not be.

Disinformation isnt new its been around as long as information. But, today, disinformation seems to be everywhere. With the instantaneous and mass distribution of user-generated content social media, there are no gatekeepers and no barriers to entry. Anyone can create disinformation, share it, promote it. Were all accomplices. Were all victims.

The largest funnel of disinformation is domestic yes, extremists and nationalist groups, but also your Uncle Harry. Especially your Uncle Harry. Disinformation flourishes in times of uncertainty and divisiveness. But disinformation doesnt create divisions it widens them.

Russias role in sowing disinformation around their annexation of Crimea in 2014 became a template for their interference in the American elections of 2016 and 2020. But Russia is by no means the only bad actor the Chinese and the Iranians are also in the game.

Here is a smart starter set of books on disinformation that help explain its history, its techniques, its effects and how to combat it.

The English word disinformation comes from the Russian dezinformatsiya, a Soviet-era coinage describing one of the tactics of information warfare. Rids Active Measures is a colorful history of modern Russian disinformation. From the beginning, he writes, the Russians saw disinformation as an attack against open societies, against a liberal epistemic order. It was meant to erode the foundations of democracy by undermining trust and calling into question what was a fact and what was not.

The brilliant insight of Russian disinformation is that it neednt be false the most effective disinformation usually contains more than a kernel of truth. Sometimes it can be a single bogus paragraph inserted into an otherwise genuine document.

In the 1980s, the Russians popularized the false claim that H.I.V. was created in a U.S. lab in Ft. Detrick, Md. But that canard required bribing obscure journalists in remote countries and took decades to reach a wide audience. Now, a young Russian troll in St. Petersburg can create a false persona and push out dozens of tweets in an hour at almost no cost with almost no consequence and reach millions of people in an hour. The internet, Rid writes, was optimized for mass disinformation.

The purveyors of disinformation exploit certain basic cognitive biases. The most often cited is confirmation bias, which is the idea that we seek information that confirms what we already believe. In The Misinformation Age, the philosophers OConnor and Weatherall show that even scientists, who by definition are seeking the impartial truth, can be swayed by biases and bad data to come to a collective false belief.

All human beings have a reflexive tendency to reject new evidence when it contradicts established belief. A variation of this is the backfire effect, which states that attempts to disabuse someone of a firmly held belief will only make them more certain of it. So, if you are convinced of the absurd accusation that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex trafficking ring from Cosmic Pizza in Washington D.C., you will double down when I explain how patently false the claim is.

The authors contend that mainstream media coverage can often amplify disinformation rather than debunking it. All the news stories about Cosmic Pizza likely confirmed the prejudices of the people who believed it, while spreading the conspiracy theory to potential new adherents. For decades, Russian information warfare and other state promoters of disinformation have exploited the presss reflex to write about both sides even if one side is promoting lies. This is a trap, the authors argue. Treating both sides of an argument as equivalent when one side is demonstrably false is just doing the work of the purveyors of disinformation.

The rise in disinformation aided by automatic bots, false personas and troll farms is leading some thinkers to conclude that the marketplace of ideas the foundation of modern First Amendment law is experiencing a market failure. In the traditional marketplace model, the assumption is that truth ultimately drives out falsehood. That, suggests Hasen in Cheap Speech, is hopelessly nave. Hasen, a law professor at University of California, Irvine, posits that the increase in dis- and misinformation is a result of what he calls cheap speech, a term coined by Eugene Volokh, a law professor at U.C.L.A. The idea is that social media has created a class of speech that is sensational and inexpensive to produce, with little or no social value.

In the pre-internet era, disinformation was as difficult and expensive to produce as truthful information. You still had to pay someone to do it you still had to buy ink and paper and distribute it. Now, the distribution cost of bad information is essentially free, with none of the liability of traditional media. In the age of cheap speech, the classic libertarian line that the cure for bad speech is more speech seems dangerously outdated.

Hasen puts forth a number of solid recommendations on how to combat disinformation more content moderation, more liability for the platforms, more transparency of algorithms but adds a very specific one: a narrow ban on verifiably false election speech. The idea is that elections are so vital to democracy that even though political speech has a higher standard of First Amendment protection, false information about voting should be removed from the big platforms.

Throughout history, mis- and disinformation have always been the tools of autocrats and dictators. Whats new in the 21st century, writes Nam, a political scientist, is the culture of post-truth. Post-truth is not untruth or lies it is the idea that there is no truth, that there is no such thing as objectivity or even empirical reality. This was beautifully described by Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism that people believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and nothing was true. Arendt published those words in 1951, but as Nam writes, the modern combination of technical empowerment and economic disempowerment has resulted in a frontal attack on a shared sense of reality.

Nam observes that what was different in Arendts day was that totalitarian rule was achieved through heavy-handed central control and censorship. Today, its accomplished through the opposite: radically open systems that can swamp the truth with falsehood, innuendo and rumor. Autocrats understand that social media is an unrivaled tool of populism and polarization. More information doesnt mean more democracy, as internet evangelists believed. Nam writes that the post-truth era was foreshadowed by 1980s intellectuals like Michel Foucault, who argued that knowledge and facts were a social construct manufactured by the powerful.

Each of these books sees disinformation as poison in the well of democracy. Each contains workable ideas for reducing the amount of disinformation in the world. All agree that the platforms should be neutral when it comes to politics, but not neutral about facts.

Yes, algorithms and bots and troll farms accelerate and increase disinformation, but disinformation is not just a supply problem its a demand problem. We seek it out. It would make things easier if we were all born with internal lie detectors until then, trust but verify, check your facts, beware of your own biases and test not only not only information that seems false, but also especially what you reflexively assume is true.

Richard Stengel was the under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs from 2013 to 2016, and is the author of several books, including, most recently, Information Wars: How we Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It.

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The Best Books to Read on Disinformation: Its History, Techniques and Effects - The New York Times

Lawyers for Gov. Ron DeSantis and Attorney General Ashley Moody are fighting an attempt to block a state law and regulations that limit the way race-related issues can be taught in public schools and in workplace training.

In a court document filed last week, the lawyers argued Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker should reject a request for a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit filed in April after DeSantis signed the controversial law (HB 7). Walker is scheduled to hold a hearing June 21 on the preliminary-injunction issue, according to a court docket.

Plaintiffs in the case allege that the law and regulations violate First Amendment rights and are unconstitutionally vague. But in the 60-page document filed last week, lawyers for DeSantis and Moody disputed that the restrictions violate speech rights in schools and workplaces.

Here, the act does not prevent the states educators from espousing whatever views they may hold, on race or anything else, on their own time, and it does not prevent students from seeking them out and listening to them, the document said. All it says is that state-employed teachers may not espouse or advocate in the classroom views contrary to the principles enshrined in the act, while they are on the state clock, in exchange for a state paycheck. The First Amendment does not compel Florida to pay educators to advocate ideas, in its name, that it finds repugnant.

But in an April motion for a preliminary injunction, lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that DeSantis and other Republican leaders banned teachers and employers from endorsing a litany of opinions about race that had been stuck in their craw, such as institutional racism, white privilege and critical race theory.

This constitutional challenge is not about whether these ideas are right or whether they should be taught throughout Floridas schools and workplaces, the 53-page motion said. Rather, it is about an attempt by Floridas conservative politicians to silence exchange of these ideas and win a so-called culture war through legislative and executive fiat.

DeSantis this year made a priority of passing the law which he dubbed the Stop Wrongs Against our Kids and Employees Act, or Stop WOKE Act. It came after the State Board of Education last year passed regulations that included banning the use of critical race theory, which is based on the premise that racism is embedded in American society and institutions.

The law, which is scheduled to take effect July 1, lists a series of race-related concepts that would constitute discrimination if taught in classrooms or in required workplace-training programs.

As an example, part of the law labels instruction discriminatory if it leads people to believe that they bear responsibility for, or should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of, actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin or sex.

As another example, the law seeks to prohibit instruction that would cause students to feel guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin or sex.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are two public-school teachers, a University of Central Florida associate professor, a child who will be a public-school student in the coming year and the president of a firm that provides workplace training.

In the motion for a preliminary injunction, the plaintiffs attorneys from the Jacksonville firm of Sheppard, White, Kachergus, DeMaggio & Wilkison, P.A. wrote that the law and regulations intrude on the free expression and academic freedom of Floridas teachers by imposing a pall of orthodoxy over the classrooms.

These provisions suppress a wide range of viewpoints accepted by academics for the sole reason that Floridas conservative lawmakers disagree with them, the motion said. Even if such disagreement could form a legitimate government interest, Governor DeSantis failed to identify any actual examples of what he calls critical race theory being taught in Florida public school classrooms.

The plaintiffs attorneys also alleged that the restrictions ensure students learn only a white-washed version of history and sociological theories that ignore systemic problems in our society that create racial injustices.

But in the document filed last week, the lawyers for DeSantis and Moody wrote that the plaintiffs who are educators have no constitutional right of academic freedom to override curriculum policies adopted by democratically elected lawmakers.

Plaintiffs First Amendment challenge to the educational provisions fails because the act regulates pure government speech the curriculum used in state schools and the in-class instruction offered by state employees and the First Amendment simply has no application in this context, the document said.

The states lawyers, who also separately filed a motion last week seeking to dismiss the case, argued in the preliminary-injunction document that the state restrictions are intended at stamping out discrimination.

The balance of the equities and the public interest weigh decisively against enjoining the act. (The) state has a compelling constitutionally imperative interest in ending discrimination based on race and other immutable characteristics, and enjoining the act will sanction conduct and curricular speech that Florida has determined, in the exercise of its sovereign judgment, is pernicious and contrary to the states most cherished ideals, wrote the states lawyers, including attorneys from the Washington. D.C. firm of Cooper & Kirk, PLLC.

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State fires back in race-related instruction fight - Palm Coast Observer