The House Judiciary Committee recently released an detailing the efforts of the Biden White House to censor constitutionally protected speech and books by pressuring large tech companies. While the report covers some of the same ground as previous reporting, it adds new, damning conversations among high‐​ranking tech executives, as well as more censorial demands from the White House.  And while it’s great that we are finding out about these new developments—where reporters and congressional committees can slowly extract bits and pieces of what the government demanded and how companies fel ..read more

Two bills in the California State Legislature propose to transfer wealth from social media companies to local news providers. Although the rhetoric behind these bills sounds worthy, their ultimate effect will be to lower the barrier between the state and a free press envisioned in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. The narrative underlying these bills is well known to media consumers: internet behemoths have sucked the life out of local journalism, depriving residents of information about local governments and community organizations. By taxing firms like Google and Meta and dist ..read more

Listen to this article in public schools, and while has been paid to what books public school libraries stock to begin with since Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom published our October analysis of viewpoint balance , what books libraries acquire has still received scant attention relative to book removals. This prompted us to search for more titles using our nationally representative, random sample of school districts. We looked for twenty‐​five titles and book collections, the latter including particular authors or series. In theory, this encompassed ninety‐​seven titles, but as soon as ..read more

For decades, US government officials have secretly coerced and prodded media distributors into withholding news and information, sometimes even and coverups. Historically, government officials dubbed this government‐​media collaboration “ .” The House Judiciary Committee this month released , mostly internal emails from social media companies, showing how “voluntary censorship” and government coercion operate today. The emails challenge conservatives’ and the government’s views about social media companies. The May 1 House Judiciary Report on social media content moderation. Both conserva ..read more

Two legal developments in the prosecutions of former President Donald Trump have understandably commanded widespread attention in recent days, the start of the New York “hush‐​money” trial last week, and the Supreme Court’s oral argument Thursday over the proper scope, if any, of presidential immunity. But another recent item on the Trump docket from early in the month deserves at least a bit of attention. It passed as a one‐​day story that drew no real notice from legal commentators, and it tends to confirm that one of the most vocally argued‐​over issues in the Trump prosecutions h ..read more

After years of legislative false starts, a TikTok ban bill has passed Congress. Notionally, the bill uses the threat of a ban to force a sale of the Chinese‐​owned app—thus allowing members of Congress to claim that it is  is that China would rather stop US operations altogether than allow a sale to an immediate competitor. The legislation has been remarkably rushed; the bill was introduced in March and passed in April. During that time, no general and open hearings on the bill have been held and no unambiguous evidence of Chinese tampering with US user data has been s ..read more

Last week, some headlines stated that the US had passed a “TikTok ban” as part of the foreign aid package, likely eliciting panic from many of the millions of American individuals and businesses who use the popular social media app. But the actual proposal is more nuanced, and the exact questions of what will happen are likely to take months—if not years—to settle. So, what should Americans expect now that the proposal is law? In the next few months users are unlikely to notice changes. Calling the proposal that was signed into law a “TikTok ban” is a bit of a misnomer although that ..read more

Senator Ted Cruz’s (R‑TX) staff on the Senate Commerce Committee recently published that investigates several instances of what it calls “Online Service Providers … silencing conservatives” by relying “upon biased left‐​wing organizations.” While these specific examples may be viewed as mere anecdotes, the report dives deeper than many other accusations of political bias and tries to understand how exactly these companies reached their decisions to de‐​platform various conservatives.  The report concludes that “The ideal solution is for market forces to correct Online Service Providers’ d ..read more

Watching the events in Israel and Gaza—the horrors of war inflicted on both sides—it is impossible to not be moved. Watching the anger and, sometimes, violence on college campuses across the country also, understandably, spurs powerful emotions, including in the halls of Congress. But understandable feelings do not mean that the federal government should inject itself into debates largely occurring in civil— society. It is not the proper federal role, and it threatens to reduce rather than promote harmony. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives took its most concrete action to date, largel ..read more

The challenge for those persons charged with controlling campus unrest is to safeguard protesters’ right to free speech while ensuring that they don’t infringe on the equal rights of others. The difficulties are twofold: First, to identify and enforce legitimate limitations on protected speech; and second, to properly delineate those other rights that may not be violated. We begin by examining the First Amendment. It directs that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” That text raises two threshold questions. First, it refers to “Congress,” thus sug ..read more