Today’s biggest news comes from the U.S. Supreme Court, where a majority of justices on Monday appeared skeptical of a Republican-led effort to restrict communication between the federal government and social media companies on issues like elections, COVID-19 and national security, our D.C. bureau reported.
The lawsuit, filed in 2022 by two states and five social media users, accused the Biden administration of a coordinated push to censor free speech by urging platforms to remove posts it deemed false, misleading or dangerous. Sometimes, the companies acquiesced. Other times, the posts were left alone. Either way, those efforts did not violate the U.S. Constitution unless the government threatened the companies or tried to coerce them, argued Brian Fletcher, principal deputy solicitor general. And the states provided no evidence that it did, he added.
The companies “routinely said ‘no’ to the government,” Fletcher said. “They didn’t hesitate to do it, and when they said ‘no’ to the government, the government never engaged in any sort of retaliation. Instead, it engaged in more speech. Ultimately, the president and the press secretary and the surgeon general took to the bully pulpit. We just don’t think that’s coercion.”
Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguiñaga rejected that characterization, arguing that the federal government should combat disinformation publicly instead of “pressuring platforms in back rooms shielded from public view.”
That, he added, “is not using the bully pulpit at all. That is just being a bully.”
The sweeping argument did not impress the justices, who compared interaction between the government and social media platforms to an administration official warning a journalist that a pending story could endanger national security. Neither appeared to violate the First Amendment, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said. The court also questioned whether the plaintiffs even had the right to sue — and whether the states had been truthful in their record of the case.
“I have such a problem with your brief,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor told Aguiñaga. “You omit information that changes the context of some of your claims.”
Gun groups are embracing a comparably distorted view of the Second Amendment in New Hampshire, telling voters that a bill to restrict firearm sales to people with a history of mental illness is “insane” and “crazy,” the New Hampshire Bulletin reported.
The proposal, introduced two months after a former state hospital patient shot and killed a security officer, would add to a federal background-check database anyone involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital or deemed incompetent to stand trial. New Hampshire is one of only three states that withhold that information from the FBI.
It’s a seemingly straightforward and commonsense measure — unless you’re a member of the New Hampshire Firearms Coalition, in which case it is an affront to your “God-given” right to own a weapon. People who are involuntarily hospitalized because they’re a danger to themselves or others should not be denied weapons, the group argued. They should be locked up until they are no longer dangerous, after which they should be allowed to purchase as many guns as they like.
“[The legislation] would allow for violent people to be released on the street…and then say that they can’t own a gun,” read a flyer sent by the group to some House Republicans and their constituents. “If these people are so violent that they need to be disarmed, why are they released at all?”
On the opposite side, a single sentence: “Crazy is as crazy does.”
That language was a strategic choice, designed to reinforce the stereotype of people with mental illness as dangerous and violent criminals, said state Rep. Terry Roy, a Republican whose constituents received the flyer.
“It was insulting,” said Roy, the bill’s co-sponsor. “It was demeaning to anyone who has a mental illness, which a large portion of our population will at some point.
“I’m disappointed in the shortsightedness of the Second Amendment community,” he continued. “What they don’t seem to get is that we are better off not having dangerous people buying firearms because every time there is a mass shooting and someone has a mental health issue, there are calls for more restrictions on firearms.”
More than 30 gun control bills are awaiting signatures from Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, from sweeping restrictions on assault-style weapons and untraceable firearms to expansions of the state’s existing red-flag law. Youngkin, a Republican, had vetoed one proposal and voiced his displeasure with another by the afternoon of March 8, just hours after a man was fatally shot blocks away from the state Capitol, per the Virginia Mercury.
The incident did not spark a moment of reflection for Republican lawmakers, who instead harped on the fact that the shooting took place in a no-gun zone plastered with signs warning that weapons are prohibited. And the signs didn’t stop the shooting, now did they?
“Believe it not, this criminal with evil in his heart ignored those signs,” said state Sen. Mark Peake, a Lynchburg Republican.
Maybe if the signs had been “bigger or meaner-looking,” he added sarcastically.
This would be a great argument but for the fact that substantive gun control measures are not the same thing as, you know, signage. Perhaps if we’d done something years ago to restrict the proliferation of firearms, there’d be fewer firearms, resulting in fewer shootings and perhaps negating the need for signs (even the big, mean ones) altogether. Alas, that seems unlikely to happen in Virginia under Youngkin, who has made it clear he has no problem with the state’s current gun laws. The problem, he said, is violent crime, defined by the FBI as murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, none of which have anything to do with guns and can thus be solved without further restricting them. Like duh.
“I strongly urge the General Assembly to shift its focus towards proven strategies aimed at combating violent crime, mandatory minimums for armed criminals and the presumption against bail,” Youngkin said in a statement vetoing a bill that would have tightened rules requiring people credibly accused of domestic abuse to give up their firearms.
