Daily Archives: May 24, 2021

The Inspiration4 astronauts are training hard for their private launch on a SpaceX rocket – Space.com

Posted: May 24, 2021 at 8:22 pm

Four private astronauts have been strapped into a centrifuge, climbing mountains and learning how to fly a spacecraft ahead of their flight to space the first-ever crewed space mission without any "professional astronauts" on board.

The crew is preparing to launch this upcoming September as part of the Inspiration4 mission aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. The mission, privately chartered by billionaire Jared Isaacman to support St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, recruited three crew members in addition to Isaacman for the trip which will fly around the Earth for several days. The crew includes Isaacman, St. Jude physician's assistant and childhood bone cancer survivor Hayley Arcenaux, data engineer Chris Sembroski and geoscientist, science communicator and artist Sian Proctor.

And, since the crew was announced, they have been nonstop training and preparing for the mission that they seem to be very excited about. "It's something you dream of your entire life," Proctor told Space.com.

While the crew is made up of "non-professional" astronauts, or people flying to space who are not affiliated with NASA or any other space agency, that does not mean that they don't need to prepare thoroughly for their mission to space.

"If you look at the definition of an astronaut, it is somebody who has been selected for and is training for a spaceflight mission, and that's exactly what we're doing," Proctor said.

Related: Meet the contest-winning crew of Inspiration4

To kick off the training for their spaceflight, the Inspiration4 crew began with a centrifuge. Soon after the crew was announced, the private astronauts strapped in, one at a time, to the centrifuge at The National Aerospace Training and Research (NASTAR) Center in Pennsylvania. In this training initiation, they were spun in circles and experienced the G-forces (gravitational forces) that they are expected to experience during their actual trip to space.

The centrifuge spin was "awesome," Proctor told Space.com. "Everything's awesome. I'm just gonna say that."

Following their ride in the centrifuge, the crew geared up for the next daunting step in their training: a perilous hike. The four private astronauts hiked up the side of Mount Rainier in Washington to a base camp thousands of feet above sea level. Backpacking trips like this are a tradition and an important part of training for astronaut crews ahead of their missions.

These outdoor trips put the crew into an environment that requires them to work together and cope with challenges and unexpected obstacles. While the side of a mountain is different from the inside of a spacecraft, such a trip can help crewmates to learn how to support one another, communicate and push through difficult circumstances together.

"NASA astronauts have a history of engaging in crew cohesion and bonding" through such trips, Proctor said. "You're doing something that's kind of unique and out of your comfort zone, then you get to the point where you're like, 'I don't know if I can continue,' but then you reach in deep and you move forward, and you keep going. And that is part of the bonding experience."

"It's not life-threatening. It's more just that whole idea of endurance and survival and relying on each other and, and bonding through that," Proctor added. Proctor likened the training to her many experiences as an analog astronaut, during which she has lived with crews of researchers in remote facilities on simulated space missions. Proctor once spent four months living in a simulated Mars mission at the HI-SEAS (Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation) research facility on the slopes of Mauna Loa in Hawaii.

After braving the elements together in Washington state, the crew all convened for the first time at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. There, they went on to begin the more in-depth training for the mission.

Proctor, who will be the mission's pilot, practiced and ran through what it will be like to actually fly SpaceX's Crew Dragon vehicle. "The Dragon capsule is autonomous," she said. So, "ideally, it's going to fly and do the mission and all of that and me as a pilot, my job is to make sure that everything that's supposed to happen in a nominal way does."

She added that she will work to fly the craft with Isaacman, who will command the mission. "Together we work the system," she said. "It's very similar to flying an airplane where he's in the left seat as the commander and then I'm in the right seat, but we're both pilots."

This training at SpaceX continued to build the bonds of the crew. "It's really important to back each other up," Proctor said, "and really understand how we work as a team."

"I think that's one of the things that, when people think about NASA and the astronauts, a lot of times we think of them as individuals, but really they're a crew. They've trained together to become this integrated system you understand what everybody's job is, but you also understand how to back up everybody," she added.

Now, with approximately four months until the mission is set to take off in September, the team still has a lot of training ahead of them to ensure that they are all as prepared as possible for their trip around Earth. One of the upcoming training that Proctor is specifically looking forward to is also something that NASA astronauts do ahead of their flights, which is training flying jet planes.

NASA astronauts have to log a certain number of hours flying T-38 jets and, according to Proctor, their training is heavily inspired by and modeled after NASA astronaut training. "As a kid, I always wanted to fly a fighter jet," she said, "so I'm really excited about the fact that this is part of our training."

Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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SpaceX: brothers had no idea they were rivals in dearMoon contest – Business Insider

Posted: at 8:22 pm

Sometimes competition is healthy but perhaps less so when you've unknowingly pitted yourself against your sibling for a chance to take part in a once-in-a lifetime opportunity.

Max and Charlie Denison-Pender are two brothers locked in rivalry for a place on Elon Musk's first civilian flight round the moon, which is slated for 2023. The trip is poised to last six days: three days to get to the moon and loop round the back of it, and three days to return to Earth.

It was first announced in 2018 that SpaceX planned to launch a private passenger named Yusaku Maezawa around the moon.

Earlier this year, Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire, released more details: he would be chartering the flight, now known as the dearMoon project, and was seeking eight people to join him.

He then announced an open competition for people to apply for the tickets. Originally, Maezawa said he would give the seats to artists but is now broadening the search.

The application process is simple and involves filling out a form that asks for basic information like name, email address, and country. It also asks the applicant which of Maezawa's social media accounts they follow.

Eager to acquire a seat on the flight, both brothers entered the competition separately.

Amid a few giggles, Charlie told Insider: "I wasn't expecting him to want to go to the moon because I've always been the one interested in space. I guess he has too but unknown to me."

When asked about their rivalry, Charlie said: "We're competitive, but in a very friendly way."

For Charlie, though, entering the competition means more than just traveling on a historic flight round the moon. As a student of aerospace engineering at Brunel University, Charlie has ambitions to transform the future of travel beyond Earth.

"The reason why I'm interested in going on the flight is because one day I hope to start a space airliner," he said.

He added that space travel, in his view, will mimic the nature of commercial travel in the future. He hopes to be one of the first people to contribute to that development. "Going on this trip would provide me with raw inspiration, adventure, but also a first-hand look into the sort of standards that you need to be meeting for commercial space travel," he said.

Meanwhile, Max, an artist, has been hard at work on his end-of-year exhibition. His interest in flying to the moon came as a complete shock to Charlie, given his creative background.

When asked how he'd feel if Max won the seat instead of him, Charlie answered: "I'd be secretly quite annoyed but also very happy for him at the same time."

But such travels are not without risks. Therehave been several failed landings of SpaceX Starship prototypes, although onedid finally land successfully this month. Arecent incident involved a rocket exploding upon landing, which sent debris flying in the air.

Also this month, pieces of a runaway Chinese rocket crashed down in the Indian Ocean. Although it was unmanned, it highlighted the dangers of space travel.

But Charlie seemsunbothered. "Generally, I'm pretty confident in Elon Musk and SpaceX, because he's been doing groundbreaking things for a long time and throughout the Starship prototypes and the testing, you can see the progress each time," he said.

He added: "I've always been quite adventurous and a bit of a risk-taker so even if there was a risk, I would still do it because I'm passionate about it. So, not too worried about things like that."

As previously reported by Insider, Maezawa said the mission will include 10 to 12 people in total, including the eight civilians he will select.

The crew members will be chosen at the end of June and training will begin shortly thereafter, the website for applications said. Preparation for the mission will last until "lift off," which is scheduled for the first part of 2023.

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SpaceX has been selected by Firefly Aerospace to send its Blue Ghost lunar lander to the moon in 2023 – Business Insider

Posted: at 8:22 pm

SpaceX has been selected by aerospace company Firefly to fly its Blue Ghost lunar lander to the moon in 2023, on a Falcon 9 rocket.

Blue Ghost will be carrying 10 payloads for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services. The mission forms part of a $93.3 million task order, as well as separately contracted commercial payloads, the space agency reported.

In an announcement, Shea Ferring, Firefly's SVP of spacecraft, said: "Firefly is excited to fly our Blue Ghost spacecraft on the highly reliable Falcon 9, which will deliver NASA instruments and technology demonstration payloads that support NASA science goals and NASA's Artemis program."

He added: "The high performance of SpaceX's Falcon 9 launch vehicle permits a lunar transit using minimal Blue Ghost propulsion resources, thereby allowing the lander to deliver more than 150 kg of payload to the lunar surface."

The NASA deal, which was agreed in February, involves the delivery of 10 research payloads, as part of the agency's mission to conduct experiments and other technology demonstrations on the moon to investigate surface conditions.

Texas-based Firefly is yet to launch anything but in June, it hopes to conduct rocket testing for small satellite launches, Space.com reported.

Named after a rare type of firefly species, Blue Ghost will land at Mare Crisium in the moon's Crisium basin and conduct operations for a complete lunar day, which is about 14 days on Earth.

Tom Markusic, Firefly's CEO, said in a blogpost:"Firefly is excited to leverage the performance and reliability of Falcon 9 to propel Blue Ghost on the first phase of its journey to the Moon."

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Brownsville sees impact throughout the years thanks to SpaceX – KGBT-TV

Posted: at 8:22 pm

BOCA CHICA BEACH, Texas (KVEO)- Without a doubt, SpaceX has brought a lot to South Texas, specifically to Boca Chica. But it has also had a major impact on the city of Brownsville.

Brownsville Mayor, Trey Mendez, visited memory lane when SpaceX was first starting out in Cameron County.

I remember in September of 2019, I was at the SpaceX facility for an event where Elon Musk spoke and really started to talk about starship and the plans for a starship and everything they were going to be doing, said Mendez.

Slowly but surely, everything SpaceX set out to do is slowly happening. Mayor Mendez said the city of Brownsville continues to grow and SpaceX has had a big part in that.

Weve seen a pretty big surge over the last couple years specifically over the last 6 months some of that has coincided with SpaceX growth theyve really ramped up operations theyve got about 1,400 employees right now and theyre looking for more, he said.

With SpaceX outside city limits, Mendez said Brownsville does not profit from tax revenues or property taxes. While that would also be a benefit for the city, Mendez adds they do see indirect benefits from their operations.

People that have moved here people that are purchasing houses people that eating locally or staying at hotels things like that so we do see an indirect impact and its a pretty big indirect impact, he said.

According to Mendez, now that SpaceX could have a contract with NASA in the near future, the possibilities could be endless and bigger than they anticipated.

Other space-related companies that are interested in coming to Brownsville as a result of whats happening out there that doesnt necessarily launch companies but that are involved in other facets of space or the space industry, said Mendez.

The focus for the city is to be the destination for the SpaceX industry. Mendez hopes this will bring more people down to Boca Chica Beach in different parts of Brownsville to enjoy the history of the city.

The last time they launched last week I saw probably a couple of hundred people on the side of the road between here and Port Isabel which I wasnt expecting so that was interesting to see families, real people of all ages with their eyes on the sky looking at what was happening, said Mendez.

As for the future of Brownsville, Mendez is excited for what the space industry will bring.

I certainly see this industry growing, space-related businesses are probably going to be a trillion-dollar industry by 2030 so we definitely want to capitalize on that and continue to grow, he said.

For now, space fanatics will be keeping their eyes on what SpaceX plans on next.

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Floridas ban on bans will test First Amendment rights of social media companies – TechCrunch

Posted: at 8:21 pm

Florida governor Ron DeSantis has signed into law a restriction on social media companies ability to ban candidates for state offices and news outlets, and in doing so offered a direct challenge to those companies perceived free speech rights. The law is almost certain to be challenged in court as both unconstitutional and in direct conflict with federal rules.

The law, Florida Senate Bill 7072, provides several new checks on tech and social media companies. Among other things:

The law establishes rules affecting these companies moderation practices; that much is clear. But whether doing so amounts to censorship actual government censorship, not the general concept of limitation frequently associated with the word is an open question, if a somewhat obvious one, that will likely be forced by legal action against SB 7072.

While there is a great deal of circumstantial precedent and analysis, the problem of are moderation practices of social media companies protected by the First Amendment is as yet unsettled. Legal scholars and existing cases fall strongly on the side of yes, but there is no single definitive precedent that Facebook or Twitter can point to.

The First Amendment argument starts with the idea that although social media are very unlike newspapers or book publishers, they are protected in much the same way by the Constitution from government interference. Free speech is a term that is interpreted extremely liberally, but if a company spending money is considered a protected expression of ideas, its not a stretch to suggest that same company applying a policy of hosting or not hosting content should be as well. If it is, then the government is prohibited from interfering with it beyond very narrow definitions of unprotected speech (think shouting fire in a crowded theater). That would sink Floridas law on constitutional grounds.

The other conflict is with federal law, specifically the much-discussed Section 230, which protects companies from being liable for content they publish (i.e. the creator is responsible instead), and also for the choice to take down content via rules of their own choice. As the laws co-author Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has put it, this gives those companies both a shield and a sword with which to do battle against risky speech on their platforms.

But SB 7072 removes both sword and shield: it would limit who can be moderated, and also creates a novel cause for legal action against the companies for their remaining moderation practices.

Federal and state law are often in disagreement, and there is no handbook for how to reconcile them. On one hand, witness raids of state-legalized marijuana shops and farms by federal authorities. On the other, observe how strong consumer protection laws at the state level arent preempted by weaker federal ones because to do so would put people at risk.

On the matter of Section 230 its not straightforward who is protecting whom. Floridas current state government claims that it is protecting real Floridians against the Silicon Valley elites. But no doubt those elites (and let us be candid that is exactly what they are) will point out that in fact this is a clear-cut case of government overreach, censorship in the literal sense.

These strong legal objections will inform the inevitable lawsuits by the companies affected, which will probably be filed ahead of the law taking effect and aim to have it overturned.

Interestingly, two companies that will not be affected by the law are two of the biggest, most uncompromising corporations in the world: Disney and Comcast. Why, you ask? Because the law has a special exemption for any company that owns and operates a theme park or entertainment complex of a certain size.

Thats right, theres a Mouse-shaped hole in this law and Comcast, which owns Universal Studios, just happens to fit through as well. Notably this was added in an amendment, suggesting two of the largest employers in the state were unhappy at the idea of new liabilities for any of their digital properties.

This naked pandering to local corporate donors puts proponents of this law at something of an ethical disadvantage in their righteous battle against the elites, but favor may be moot in a few months time when the legal challenges, probably being drafted at this moment, call for an injunction against SB 7072.

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Prince Harry’s First Amendment Aversion Is Funny; the Governments That Agree Are Scary – Reason

Posted: at 8:21 pm

The appropriate reaction to criticism of constitutionally protected rights by a member of the British royal family is certainly an eyeroll. After all, we fought a revolution to make sure British aristocrats would no longer have a say over the freedoms Americans exercise, so the reminder that we dodged a bullet on that front is no surprise. What is more concerning, though, is that opposition to free-wheeling speech is more widely shared among people who are in a position to impose a disgruntled prince's vision of good policy on the world at large.

Prince Harry's comments came on the May 13 episode of actor Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast. As the Hollywood- and Hollywood-adjacent celebrities commiserated about the awfulness of the paparazzi and their behavior, the wayward prince mused about the legal framework that allows intrusions into the private lives of famous people.

[42:50] I don't want to start sort of going down the First Amendment route because that's a huge subject and one which I don't understand because I've only been here for a short period of time. But you can find a loophole in anything. And you can capitalize or exploit what's not said rather than uphold what is said.If there's an ideology or you want to spread hate. Laws were created to protect people, right? That's how I see it.

[44:50] I've got so much I want to say about the First Amendment as I still don't understand it. But it is bonkers.

As difficult as it is to sympathize with wealthy people who make a living from high-profile lives whining about the folks who provide publicity, there's not much peril in them either. Prince Harry, after all, left the life of a human poodle in the United Kingdom to take on the role of a less-responsible show dog in the United States. He's no danger to our liberty, though he is a remarkably un-self-aware reminder that his ancestors once did pose a threat with similar sniffy views about "bonkers" freedoms.

But Prince Harry's old-school dismissal of free speech protections finds its echo among equally sniffy modern legal theorists who agree with inconvenienced aristocrats that the First Amendment is a Very Bad Thing and that speech should be subject to greater restrictions.

"Instead of thinking about content moderation through an individualistic lens typical of constitutional jurisprudence, platforms, regulators, and the public at large need to recognize that the First Amendmentinflected approach to online speech governance that dominated the early internet no longer holds," writes Harvard Law School lecturer Evelyn Douek in an April 2021 Columbia Law Review article. "Instead, platforms are now firmly in the business of balancing societal interests and choosing between error costs on a systemic basis."

The catalyst for this shift away from First Amendment-style speech protection by the tech giants was COVID-19, claims the Australian academic, who approves of the transformation. She sees lasting effects beyond social media. "The state of emergency that platforms invoked during the COVID-19 pandemic is subsiding, and lawmakers are poised to transform the regulatory landscape," Douek adds.

Douek cites a pre-pandemic paper by Harvard Law School's Jonathan Zittrain who unintentionally anticipated the impact of COVID-19 when he observed that the treatment of speech is moving to a "public health framework [that] is much more geared around risks and benefits than around individual rights."

Among the lawmakers treating speech as a health threat are French President Emmanuel Macron and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who have joined together with other political and tech leaders to demand tighter regulation of online speech. New Zealand's prime minister, in particular, wants digital media companies to implement "ethical algorithms" to steer people away from material of which the authorities disapprove and toward content that they prefer.

"Let's have that conversation around the ethical use of algorithms, and how they can use be used in a positive way and for positive interventions," Ardern last week told a conference of participants in Christchurch Call, which advocates for greater control over online content.

Ardern faces opposition at home, where the libertarian ACT party, which won 10 of 120 seats in the October 2020 election, makes free speech a major part of its platform and its opposition to the governing Labour Party. That was already a demanding job in a country that has an official national censorship office, and hasn't become easier in a pandemic-shocked world grown accustomed to "emergency" incursions into individual rights.

But Christchurch Call, co-founded by the governments of France and New Zealand, wins a friendly reception elsewhere. The European Union has long been on-board with speech controls and had no objection to endorsing the effort. Over 50 governments and most of the big tech companies have also signed on.

"YouTube is committed to the #ChristchurchCall," CEO Susan Wojcicki tweeted May 14. "We continue to strengthen our policies, improve transparency, and restrict borderline content. We look forward to continuing to work with the Call community."

Also endorsing the Christchurch Call is the government of the United States, land of "bonkers" constitutional protections for personal freedom.

"The United States endorses the Christchurch Call to Action to Eliminate Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content Online, formally joining those working together under the rubric of the Call to prevent terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting the Internet," the U.S. State Department announced on May 7. The statement went on to promise that "the United States will not take steps that would violate the freedoms of speech and association protected by the First Amendment," but that's going to be hard to square with a mandate for "ethical algorithms" intended to nudge people away from ideas frowned on by officialdom.

But a vision of a First Amendment somehow reconciled with restrictions on speech might just be bonkers enough to win the favor of resentful celebrities and displaced royals. Prince Harry apparently has some time on his hands and could be available as a spokesman for the cause.

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Face Masks and the First Amendment – The Wall Street Journal

Posted: at 8:21 pm

Why do we have to wear face masks? The official answer changes from week to week. Its a patriotic responsibility, for Gods sake, President Biden said when asked on April 30 why he still did despite being vaccinated against Covid-19. But last week he recast mask mandates as a coercive sanction against the unvaccinated. The rule is now simple: get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do, he tweeted Thursday.

In fact, no rule had changed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention merely issued guidance that if youre fully vaccinated, you can resume activities without wearing a mask ... except where required by federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial laws, rules, and regulations. Within days, many states relaxed their mask edicts, and Washington followed on Monday by applying its decrees only to unvaccinated people on most federal property. But California officials said theyd stand pat until June 15, and the White House and CDC still require universal masking on public transportation and at transit hubs, including airports.

Critics argue that masking has become a form of virtue signaling. Mr. Biden reinforced that claim with his appeals to patriotism, which began during last years campaign as a rebuttal to the mask-resistant President Trump. But if wearing a mask conveys a political message, mandating it is constitutionally suspect. No official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein, Justice Robert Jackson wrote in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), which held that forcing schoolchildren to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance violated their freedom of speech.

To wear a mask in public is to affirm a viewpoint no less powerful than the Pledge of Allegiance: that Covid poses a crisis so dire as to demand unprecedented government control of our lives and a transformation of the norms of interpersonal behavior. Ubiquitous mask mandates make assent impossible to avoid except by breaking the law or staying home.

Officials would argue that they are regulating conduct, not expression, and that they are doing so to protect public health. A few months ago that defense almost certainly would have prevailed. The pandemics severity, coupled with the lack of effective means to control it, would have persuaded most judges to defer to the governments contention that the danger of infection outweighed the right to dissent or any other rights (such as bodily autonomy) that plaintiffs might assert.

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First Amendment Confusion | Opinion | Northern Express – northernexpress.com

Posted: at 8:21 pm

Guest Opinion By Amy Kerr Hardin | May 22, 2021

Its amusing to watch folks on the far right clutch their pearls over their favorite orange leader being banned from social media, claiming its a free speech issue. They may want to Google First Amendment some time to attempt to find the elusive constitutional protection they claim. Its no surprise that those who so thoroughly misunderstand the Second Amendment might find themselves befuddled by the First the amendment that was so important, it got top billing.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R Colorado) put her Constitutional ignorance on full display when she recently Tweeted this: I guess Facebook thinks the first amendment only applies to leftists.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of Americans across the political spectrum who are confused about what constitutes protected speech. The First Amendment applies only to government bodies, including public schools, restricting speech. Social media outlets can ban anyone from their platform. They are privately-held entities. Think of it like throwing out a disruptive customer something weve seen plenty of over the past year.

In our zeal to curtail hate speech, we sometimes forget another important aspect of the First Amendment. In a 2017 ruling, the Supreme Court found that simply saying something hateful remains protected speech. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, States must prove more than the mere utterance of threatening words some level of intent is required. It must be proven to be a true threat. This is the standard prosecutors must follow when deciding to press charges. Hateful and hurtful speech rarely rises to the level of criminal recourse.

All eyes are on Traverse City Area Public Schools as they attempt to navigate the minefield of often conflicting and overlapping policies and statutes governing hate speech, electronic or not. No school district wants to be a test kitchen for constitutional law. To believe the path is clear and obvious is to misunderstand the complexities presented. These anti-bullying laws and policies are new on the books and have not been put through the kind of vigorous legal scrutiny that will eventually hone them and preferably keep them in step with the First Amendment.

There are a couple of important actions pending before the judiciary on the topic of free speech in public schools.

A case that went before the United States Supreme Court for oral arguments last month involves the use of social media and free speech. It was brought by a 14-year-old high schooler who dropped a number of precision F-bombs on her school after being bypassed for the softball team and the varsity cheer squad. Her posting occurred off-campus, but the school took disciplinary action against her when another student shared her post with a school coach.

Dubbed the mean girl case, a ruling is likely months away, but the oral arguments were illuminating as to how the high court was leaning. ACLU lawyer Witold Walczak argues that if schools can police students online speech, it will bleed over into censoring cultural, political, and religious communications. The justices expressed unease over the potential chilling effect on student free speech. Justice Samuel Alito said, Im quite concerned about the effect of this on freedom of speech. I think we need clear lines.

Comment from the high court did acknowledge that online bullying is a serious problem and might be a piece of the student speech issue. However, there is Supreme Court precedent that indicates the threats must be not only directed at the target but also credible. As to whether the courts would be willing to extend that to school policy positions remains untested for now.

Another interesting case is working its way through the federal courts. A popular white teacher was disciplined for hanging a Black Lives Matter banner outside her classroom door at Robert E. Lee High School in Jacksonville, Florida, a predominately black school, whose school colors are blue and gray Confederate colors and whose teams are named the Generals.

She did so to demonstrate that her classroom is a safe space for her students in the wake of one of them being killed by police. The district ordered her to remove the banner, claiming it violated school policy prohibiting employees from on-campus political speech. This beloved teacher refused and was subsequently reassigned to non-teaching duties.

A lawsuit was filed on her behalf by the Southern Poverty Law Center asserting the school district had violated her First Amendment rights. Though typically, public schools have measurable say over permissible employee speech, this case may be seminal to redefining some of those boundaries.

Rachel Arnow-Richman, a professor of labor law at the University of Florida, points out that a 2006 Supreme Court ruling endorsed governmental power to partially restrict public sector workers speech. However, a conflicting Florida law says that school districts are prohibited from infringing on employee Constitutional rights.

Thats not the only conflict. Richman describes the problem thusly: Thats to say, this general rule that public employees do not speak for themselves but speak for the government and lack First Amendment protections is at odds, I would say, with our societal interest in wanting teachers to have leeway to communicate and teach students about current issues, bringing to bear their expertise as educators.

Interpreting and protecting the First Amendment is fraught with uncertainty, but the least we can do as Americans is resist the temptation to morph our understanding of the Constitution to fit policy goals.

Amy Kerr Hardin is a retired banker, regionally known artist, and public-policy wonk. You can hear and learn more about the state of Michigan politics on her podcast,www.MichiganPolicast.com.

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The First Amendment and Mask Mandates Reason.com – Reason

Posted: at 8:21 pm

David B. Rivkin Jr. and James Taranto argue in today's Wall Street Journal that mask mandates are "content-based limits on speech" that must be evaluated under "strict scrutiny," which likely makes them unconstitutional:

Critics argue that masking has become a form of virtue signaling. Mr. Biden reinforced that claim with his appeals to patriotism, which began during last year's campaign as a rebuttal to the mask-resistant President Trump. But if wearing a mask conveys a political message, mandating it is constitutionally suspect. "No official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein," Justice Robert Jackson wrote inWest Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette(1943), which held that forcing schoolchildren to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance violated their freedom of speech.

To wear a mask in public is to affirm a viewpoint no less powerful than the Pledge of Allegiance: that Covid poses a crisis so dire as to demand unprecedented government control of our lives and a transformation of the norms of interpersonal behavior. Ubiquitous mask mandates make assent impossible to avoid except by breaking the law or staying home.

The government undoubtedly has a compelling interest in preventing infectious disease. But that doesn't necessarily imply a compelling need for mask mandates. If it did, they could be justified in perpetuity. Universal masking would reduce spread of the flu, the common cold and other infections, but that has never been thought to justify mandating it except during a pandemic.

I think this analysis is mistaken. There are many plausible arguments against various kinds of mask mandates; but the First Amendment compelled-expression argument just isn't one of them.

[1.] The First Amendment of course does protect certain kinds of inherently expressive symbolic conduct (such as waving a flag, wearing an armband, burning a flag, and the like), as well as refusal to engage in such conduct (such as refusing to salute a flag). American law has long treated such inherently symbolic expression comparably to verbal expression and visual expression; I wrote about this some years ago in my Symbolic Expression and the Original Meaning of the First Amendment article. Andcontent-based limits on inherently expressive conduct are indeed subject to strict scrutiny and presumptively unconstitutional; that's what the Court held in the flagburning cases, for instance.

[2.] But inRumsfeld v. FAIR(2006), the Court made clear that this applies only to "inherently expressive" conduct:

[W]e [have] rejected the view that "conduct can be labeled 'speech' whenever the person engaging in the conduct intends thereby to express an idea." Instead, we have extended First Amendment protection only to conduct that is inherently expressive.

And in particular,Rumsfeldheld, a university's excluding military recruiters doesn't qualify as First-Amendment-protected symbolic expression because

An observer who sees military recruiters interviewing away from the law school has no way of knowing whether the law school is expressing its disapproval of the military, all the law school's interview rooms are full, or the military recruiters decided for reasons of their own that they would rather interview someplace else.

Likewise, an observer who sees someone not wearing a mask has no way of knowing whether the person is expressing his disapproval of mask mandates, or is vaccinated and thinks he doesn't need a mask, or just finds masks uncomfortable. And while the person might explain why he's not wearing a mask, that's not enough to turn mask-wearing into protected expression: When "[t]he expressive component of actions is not created by the conduct itself but by the speech that accompanies it," it "is not so inherently expressive that it warrants protection."

[3.] But even if not wearing a mask was seen as inherently expressive (or wearing a mask was so seen), that would only lead tointermediate scrutiny, of a sort that isn't difficult to pass. That's what the Court held inU.S. v. O'Brien (1968), which upheld a ban on burning draft cards, because such a ban was justified by the government's interest in preventing destruction of government documents. (The ban didn't apply to burning copies of draft cards.) Whenthe "governmental interest is unrelated to the suppression of free expression," intermediate scrutiny applies, and under that scrutiny it's enough if the law even modestly advances the government interest.

Masks work not because of their expressive function, but because they have some tendency to stop the spread of communicable disease (or so at least some reasonable medical experts think). Indeed, the Journal op-ed acknowledges that "Universal masking would reduce spread of the flu, the common cold and other infections"; presumably it would reduce spread of COVID-19 as well, at least in some measure. That's enough for the law to be constitutional underO'Brien(even ifRumsfelddoesn't just categorically exclude the law from First Amendment scrutiny).

And the Court drew the same distinction in striking downthe flagburning bans in Texas v. Johnson (1989) and U.S. v. Eichman (1990). There, the chief government interest was in "preserving the flag as a symbol of nationhood and national unity, and that was indeed "related to the suppression of expression," "because the State's concern with protecting the flag's symbolic meaning is implicated 'only when a person's treatment of the flag communicates some message.'" Not so from the masks, which offer the same benefits (however modest some might think them to be at this point in the epidemic) regardless of the message they communicate.

[4.] What about the argument that "Universal masking would reduce spread of the flu, the common cold and other infections, but that has never been thought to justify mandating it except during a pandemic"? That's so, but not on the grounds that masking or refusing to mask are symbolic expression protected by the First Amendment.

Universal masking may be too burdensome as to those diseases; it may cause other countervailing problems; it may be a bad idea; some might even argue that it violates some liberty of dress protected by the Ninth Amendment or some such (I don't want to opine on that, but one can imagine such an argument). But those are the proper bases for evaluating masking, not the First Amendment symbolic expression argument.

[5.] There is a separate First Amendment argument that one can make: By making it harder for people to read facial expressions, masking may make it harder for people to communicate with each other (whether by making it harder to use lip-reading as a supplement to audio communications, by making it harder to hear people, or making it harder to gauge a person's emotional reactions to a statement). In this respect, a mask mandate might be like a content-neutral limit on using sound amplification.

That might get one to some level of First Amendment scrutiny, but only intermediate scrutiny, for the reasons given above. And I think that the mandates would pass such strict scrutiny, at least at this point in the epidemic (when we're still at over 600 deaths and over 30,000 new cases per day, though thankfully a much lower rate than it was during the April-May and January-February peaks).

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The First Amendment and Mask Mandates Reason.com - Reason

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OPINION: Prince Harry, allow me to explain the First Amendment – The Richmond Observer

Posted: at 8:21 pm

Recently, he took to Dax Shepards podcast Armchair Expert to put this talent on display, erm, give an interview. During the conversation, Harry called the First Amendment bonkers while simultaneously admitting he just couldnt quite wrap his head around its 45 words.

"Ive got so much I want to say about the First Amendment as I sort of understand it, but it is bonkers. I dont want to start going down the First Amendment route because thats a huge subject and one which I dont understand because Ive only been here a short time. But, you can find a loophole in anything. You can capitalize or exploit whats not said rather than uphold what is said."

Harrys remarks have of course ruffled the feathers of Americans, many of whom have pointed out the country fought a war to make sure the opinions of the British monarchy would never again have any bearing on our country or our laws.

To be fair, the ex-monarch lost his mother, Princess Diana in a media-involved incident. The press notoriously stalked her every move for years, and she ultimately died in a car wreck after being chased through the streets of Paris by paparazzi. Harrys wife has also frequently found herself the subject of the tabloids and is no darling of the press, frequently incurring disparaging headlines and invasive, embarrassing stories.

Given these factors, it is somewhat understandable (though nonetheless inexcusable) that Harry may take issue with a constitutional amendment that protects a free press. England, where free expression is deemed a qualified right, has much stricter laws on the books, which earned it a dismal 40th place on the World Press Freedom Index in 2018.

But its important to note that Harry took aim at the entirety of the First Amendment and not just the components that protect the press. His comments reveal a dangerous belief found all too often among the ruling class that the language of everyday people should be restrained to their liking. And make no mistake, this sentiment is found among American leaders as well though few are daft enough to say they dislike the First Amendment in an interview. Instead, they attack free speech with their policies.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) recently threatened to break Amazon up so their account could not send her what she labeled snotty tweets.

On the Republican side of the aisle, Florida GOP members passed a law that would fine private, social media companies should they remove political candidates from their platforms. And Senator Josh Hawley (R, MO) has made defeating the free speech of private tech companies his number one priority, frequently working to overturn Section 230 and suggesting breaking up the companies should be on the table.

These politicians dont have to say they hate free speech, in fact they often use it as a guise to push their anti-civil liberties views under, but their policies tell you everything you need to know.

And our political leaders are not necessarily out on a political limb; increasingly the American public does not understand or fully support free speech either. A 2020 Gallup / Knight Foundation poll found that 56 percent of Americans believe in the right to freely express views on social media meaning 44 percent of those polled...dont. This is a sharp decline from only one year prior.

Ask an American if they support free speech and its unlikely youll be told no. But the application of the principle seems to be where we lose people.

While Prince Harry, some Senators, and the American people may be confused about the First Amendment, the founders were not. They saw free speech and a free press as so essential to our system that they were the first civil liberties enshrined in the Constitution.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote, No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions.

And another founding father, Benjamin Franklin said, In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech; a thing terrible to public traitors.

They did not mince words, and for good reason. It is important to remember that historically, and in many places around the world today, people have been jailed for speaking out against their rulers or publishing ideas deemed controversial.

The Founders wrote the Constitution not long after Voltaire, a French Enlightenment writer, was forced to flee France for publishing works that criticized the monarchy without the approval of the royal censor. Similarly, the French philosopher Denis Diderot was imprisoned in 1749 for his opinions in "Philosophical Thoughts."

Without a free press and free speech the people have no way to investigate and hold their leaders accountable. It is no wonder that princes and politicians dislike the First Amendment as it is one of the few things keeping them in check and putting people on a more equal playing field.

While the Constitution has frequently failed to restrain our government and uphold natural rights as it was intended to, a cursory comparison of the U.S. and England shows our laws have done the better job of the two. (With some notable exceptions.)

The US may occasionally see private companies kick users off their platforms, an action most would consider a down side of private organizations exercising their freedom to draw their own boundaries on free speech. But in the UK, people are arrested for their social media posts and for showing vulgar dog tricks. It shouldnt be hard to pick the better scenario between the two.

Prince Harry loves to spout off about the monarchy, often taking to the airwaves to demean his own family members. One would think hed appreciate a key provision of the Constitution that ensures average citizens have the same abilityto criticize our own government without fear of government retaliation.

Hannah Cox is the Content Manager and Brand Ambassador for the Foundation for Economic Education. Republished from fee.org.

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OPINION: Prince Harry, allow me to explain the First Amendment - The Richmond Observer

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