Free Speech Under Attack: Congress Ignores Bills To Protect Press And Critics
from the what-free-speech dept
Earlier, Karl wrote about a bill from Senator Ron Wyden which would put pressure on big telcos to actually protect our privacy (following the news of Chinese hackers abusing backdoor access to our wiretapping systems to spy on tons of people). Sadly, despite the obvious need in the wake of this massive privacy breach, that bill appears doomed, with the next FCC likely to move in the opposite direction and reduce oversight of telecom security practices.
But there are also two other Wyden bills that are incredibly important to free speech, and both look like they will also be ignored. The first is the journalist shield law, the PRESS Act, which would establish a federal shield law for journalists, and the second is the Free Speech Protection Act, a federal anti-SLAPP bill. Unfortunately, despite bipartisan support in the House, Congress appears unlikely to pass either in the face of opposition from former President Trump and his allies.
At a time when press freedoms and the right to criticize the powerful are under threat, Congress is poised to shamefully abandon two crucial bills that would offer vital protection.
The PRESS Act would protect journalists and their sources, which is so important as we enter an era when whistleblowers are going to be so critical. As we mentioned last month, this bill had widespread bipartisan support. It passed the House unanimously (which is crazy). But Donald Trump ordered Republicans to kill the bill, more or less admitting that he wants to intimidate both whistleblowers and reporters from revealing what he’s up to.
Last week, Senator Wyden went to the floor of the Senate to try to get the Senate to vote on the bill as well, calling out its unanimous support in the House. But Senator Tom Cotton, an ever-loyal Trump extremist, blocked the bill from going forward by spewing some nonsense about the “deep state.”
“Passage of this bill would turn the United States Senate into the active accomplice of deep-state leakers, traitors, and criminals, along with the America-hating and fame-hungry journalists who help them out,” Senator Cotton said. “Contrary to what members of the press may think, a press badge doesn’t make you better than the rest of America.”
This is utter nonsense. The PRESS Act is not about aiding traitors or criminals — it’s about ensuring that journalists can protect their sources and carry out their constitutionally critical role of holding the government accountable. Whistleblowers who expose government wrongdoing are not “deep-state leakers,” they are concerned individuals exercising their First Amendment rights. And journalists who report on these revelations are not “America-hating,” they are fulfilling their duty to keep the public informed and holding the government to account.
Now why would Senator Cotton not want that, I wonder? It sure seems that Cotton’s scaremongering is a transparent attempt to shield those in power from legitimate scrutiny and oversight.
The other bill is a federal anti-SLAPP bill. This one was led by Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin in the House, along with Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley. But Wyden introduced the companion legislation in the Senate (I heard that an effort was made towards getting a Republican Senator to sign on, and none did, which is truly unfortunate).
We’ve been writing about anti-SLAPP laws for so long now, including multiple attempts to get a federal anti-SLAPP law, all of which have gone nowhere. Once again, this bill is also going to go nowhere, and that’s going to literally destroy lives.
We’ve seen a growing trend of the rich and powerful (including many people who are now about to run the federal government) filing totally bogus SLAPP suits to punish critics and intimidate others from ever criticizing them. A federal anti-SLAPP law would be a huge boost for free speech, allowing those who are sued for no legitimate reason to get rid of those lawsuits faster and (in some cases) to have the plaintiff have to pay their legal fees.
The actual bill, The Free Speech Protection Act, is not perfect, but it’s very good and would protect many people from chilling, vexatious, censorial litigation.
So of course Congress is ignoring it.
It’s deeply hypocritical for those like Trump who complain about “lawfare” to then turn around and block these obviously commonsense bipartisan bills to prevent exactly that. The chickenshit political class is missing a chance to actually protect free speech. They’re cowering in the face of a vengeful incoming administration that has made it clear that it intends to engage in widespread lawfare and to threaten critics repeatedly. Congress could stand up against that and actually protect free speech.
But it won’t.
Senator Wyden and Representatives Raskin and Kiley should be commended for their efforts to protect press freedom and the right to criticize the powerful. It’s a damning indictment of the rest of Congress that, given the opportunity to defend core First Amendment values, they are instead allowing these crucial bills to wither.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, anti-slapp, federal anti-slapp, free speech, free speech protection act, jamie raskin, journalism shield law, kevin kiley, press act, ron wyden, shield law, slapp
Comments on “Free Speech Under Attack: Congress Ignores Bills To Protect Press And Critics”
Every Republican who says they’re a “champion of free speech” but doesn’t vote to pass these bills is proving this axiom about conservatives true: Every self-imposed label, a rejection thereof.
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Couldn’t that be true of Dems as well?
If so, why word it the way it is?
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Despite being a bunch of cowards in general, Democrats tend to support free speech—including the free press—far more than Republicans do. If’n you don’t believe me, look at who currently leads the GOP: Donald “open up the libel laws” Trump, who is notorious for attacking the press whenever it writes about him in ways that can only be described as “telling the truth about Donald Trump”.
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How much of it comes down to just not seeing the political need to control the media, though? A big part of maintaining Republican status quo involves controlling the narrative, which is something the Dems have by all counts never felt the need to (because they’ve primarily focused on policies over media depictions). A lot of Republican policy sounds utterly insane (because it is) on the face of it, which is also why they all but need the media to angle it. You don’t really need to angle ‘Medicare for all’ to get people to agree to it the way you need to angle it to make people disagree with it. It’s less that they support free speech, but more so that they’ve no real reason to start coming down on it because free speech doesn’t run the same risk to their policymaking as it does Republicans.
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If 2024 has taught us anything, Democrats aren’t great at protecting free speech, either.
Nearly every Democratic Senator voted in favor of the Kids Online Safety Act, ignoring criticism against the bill from civil liberties advocates and even children who were brought to the Capitol to express their opposition to it that it would lead to online censorship, especially if Trump got elected since the bill was modified to shift the “duty of care” provisions from state AGs (most of which are Republicans) to FTC, based on whatever definition of material the government deems harmful to kids they apply (including its potential to be abused by a Trump administration as part of the GOP’s culture wars against anti-racism, abortion and transgender issues).
A large number of Democrats joined the vast majority of Republicans to pass the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which, come January 19 (barring Supreme Court intervention, since the D.C. Circuit Court panel’s review of the facial constitutional issues surrounding the law was inadequate compared to what other judges undertook in the two other TikTok-related laws), will result in a legally sanctioned mass violation of the speech and expression of 170 million Americans, based on speculative national security claims and apparent retaliation against legitimate criticism of a foreign war that the U.S. funded, by shutting down a major social media platform. Many of them failed to realize that they likely inadvertently helped advance a goal of Project 2025, all but a few (like Jared Moskowitz and bill co-author Raja Krishnamoorthi, who both advocated for banning TikTok outright) believing the law would lead to a divestiture of TikTok, when it was clear Republicans wanted to ban it.
52 House Democrats joined Republicans to vote in favor of the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, which would have allowed the government to strip tax-exempt status from nonprofits deemed to be supporting “terrorism”, which critics feared would disproportionately target pro-Palestinian groups (whom quite a few Democrats scrutinized for their support of Palestinian civilians that became collateral damage in Israel’s campaign against Hamas, in some ways highlighting latent anti-Palestinian sentiment among the centrist/Blue Dog wing). They failed to see how it could be weaponized against any dissent until Trump (who made clear during his campaign that his administration would weaponize criticism of him and Israel) got elected, resulting in support among Dem Reps dropping to just 15 members when it came up for a revote a week later.
Dems and Reps
I’ll admit to having voted Dem in the last couple of elections, but that’s because I vote issues, not people. I won’t go into that here because it’s not as relevant as:
DEMOCRATS and REPUBLICANS are two parties of people with various viewpoints, and we all can agree or not with some or all of them. HOWEVER, ELECTED OFFICIALS ARE CORRUPT PIECES OF CRAP.
So you can be a Kari Lake. Or a Donald Trump. Or a Tom slytherin Cotton. Or a Mitch “Put whom up for a vote?” McConnell. Or a MTG. Or that witch Don Junior just cheated on but she’s going to be the US ambassador to Greece… or any of them.
If you’re an elected official then the second you “win” that election is the last second you’re responsible to be ethical, not self-dealing, not a thief, and doing ANYTHING useful for the electorate.
And then there’s Ron Wyden. He’s given decades of his life in public service, and a lot of what he’s done I greatly ADMIRE and RESPECT.
But why is it that of 645+ politicians in Congress… he stands alone?
Please, I know I say things some of you find outrageous… but could you please answer me this one question? Why does Ron Wyden stand alone… and stands for US, and stands for all the things I learned about in elementary school (in the US) that our government is all about.
Color me… naive. Elucidate.
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It’s quite simple – Ron Wyden is the only Democrat who understands (or even cares to understand) what digital rights are and how they work.
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I mean, these specific bills were sponsored by Raskin and Kiley in the House, so in this particular instance he…doesn’t?
Gee, I wonder why they'd fear honest reporting so much...
The PRESS Act is not about aiding traitors or criminals — it’s about ensuring that journalists can protect their sources and carry out their constitutionally critical role of holding the government accountable.
When the head of your party is a convicted felon and a core pillar of said party is that any criticism against either you or it is an illegal attack and should be treated as such ‘journalists holding the government accountable’ and ‘traitors and criminals’ become the same thing.
When reality and truth are seen and treated as crimes ‘journalists’ is just another name for ‘traitor’.
This is also true with a lot of profession, starting with being a Senator.
Mmm, concerning. Gonna be difficult for them to try and silence EVERY critic and journalist out there at this rate, though.
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Republicans don’t need to silence every critic and journalist—just enough of them that the rest get the message and become stenographers for the regime.
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Great, wonderful.
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Please don’t drag me into your anxiety spiral.
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Oh no, don’t worry, I won’t. That was all I was gonna say.
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“Journalists” don’t deserve special protection in the U.S. They have the same rights as everyone else and should face the same consequences for doing disreputable things like being lying scumbag propagandists.
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Why are so many rignt-wing politicians, journalists and influencers still running free, then?
You know they lie, it’s objective truth.
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So you agree that Fox News should be continually sanctioned for its continuous and ongoing pattern of lying.
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You’re correct, anyone engaging in acts of journalism, whether professionally or not, should have the same legal protections from governmental abuse.
I’m curious to know what you think the consequences should be for such 1A-protected activity. And should those consequences apply equally to people spreading propaganda you agree with? Coz your rhetoric has a pretty partisan tone to it.
Everything will be all joy and happiness in Republican-ville, until they realize that the Number One targets of many foreign spies will be (or already are!) he (allegedly) most important decision makers…. i.e. the CongressCritters themselves.
A pool is starting as to how long it takes for them to come back to reality and start making/passing the laws that Wyden has been proposing for something like 3 decades.
Let me paraphrase what S. T. Stone has said in the recent past:
Every security claimant, a future victim.
i thought the “Deep State” was supposed to be leaked.
I think I’ve said it before, but – how is it we’re repeating the stupid mistake the Soviet Union made? If you want a clue as to the power of a free press, read Psychological Warfare by Dr Linebarger, at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm
Re: Of course a free press is powerful, why else do you think they want to leash and/or kill it?
Oh that’s depressingly simple to answer: Basically all of the ‘mainstream’ media is either on the side of the fascists outright, too cowardly to call them out lest they risk being accused of ‘bias’ and end up with a (potentially literal given who they’d be criticizing) target on their backs, too greedy to call them out lest they lose those sweet sweet advertising dollars, have bought into the ‘Both sides’ rubbish to such an extent that they feel they must treat everything as equally valid and credible, or a mix of the above.
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Well, one of our two major parties being under the control of Vladimir Putin might have something to do with it.
The tinfoil hat in me wonders how the powers that be are going to try and spin up benign journalism as connecting to ‘national security’ or ‘terrorism’ to try and circumvent this bill.
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Simply tell a judge that it’s related to National Security without expanding on how or why seems to do the trick a fair amount of the time.