Trump’s First defense. A brief filed by lawyers in the ex-president’s second impeachment trial asserts he played no role in inciting the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and that his remarks that day were protected by the First Amendment.
■ The House’s earlier brief contended Trump’s words “exhorted [the mob] into a frenzy, and aimed them like a loaded cannon down Pennsylvania Avenue.”
■ ProPublica goes “Inside the Secret Chat Where Far-Right Extremists Devised Their Post-Capitol Plans”—led in part by a suspect whose lawyer says he, too, plans to invoke a First Amendment defense.
‘A public town hall. An elected official. A reporter doing a job then kicked out.’ A former Radio Television Digital News Association board member condemns U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for the treatment of a reporter who tried to ask her a question.
■ Without naming her, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell criticized Greene for propagating “looney lies.”
■ White House reporters complain to The Daily Beast: “Biden Team Wanted Our Questions in Advance.”
‘First they came for our Free Speech … next they’ll come for our Free Shipping on orders $50 or more.’ On Twitter, election-denying freshman North Carolina Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn pivoted from defending the First Amendment to plugging free shipping on his merchandise website.
■ Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan hails CNN’s Pamela Brown for “a devastating interview” with Cawthorn.
■ The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s civil liberties director: “The Old Media and the New Must Work Together to Preserve Free Speech Values.”
■ Digital journalism pioneer Dan Froomkin: Time to rebrand D.C. “political reporters” as “government reporters”—freed “to cover what is happening in Washington in the context of whether it is serving the people well, rather than which party is winning.”
Art—or a billboard? A local New York State zoning board is deciding whether artist Nick Cave’s wrapping of a building with the colossal words “Truth Be Told” is protected by the First Amendment or subject to legal regulation.
■ A Confederate flag-waving group is suing the mayor of an Arkansas town on First Amendment grounds because the town ordered that “no flags, other than the American flag … should be present” on floats in its holiday parade.
■ Alaska is reviewing its license-plate review system after first approving and then recalling plates reading “FUHRER” and “3REICH.” (Photo by Matt Tunseth.)
■ A lawmaker who defended the plates has been yanked from a state discrimination board.
■ The journalist who flagged one of those plates: “If you want to be a Nazi, I’ll defend to the death your right to do so; but … I’m also going to use those same free-speech rights … to eradicate your brand of hatred from the planet until the day I die.”
■ Digital-rights activist Malkia Devich-Cyril in Wired: “Banning White Supremacy Isn’t Censorship, It’s Accountability.”
‘I can say f— you as many times as I want to and there’s nothing you can do about it.’ The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals says a drunk, cursing man’s speech was protected—but his conduct wasn’t.
■ A new guide from the Free Speech Center offers college professors counsel on how to teach students more about their First Amendment freedoms.
