Last week TPM took JD Vance to task for suggesting during the VP debate that censorship – particularly, in his view, the supposed collusion between the Biden administration and Big Tech "to silence people from speaking their minds" about COVID – was a greater threat to democracy than Trump's attempts at subverting the 2020 election.
To fully understand the point Vance was trying to make would require immersion in a hyper-online world that sees all manner of content moderation as suspicious and a potential violation of First Amendment rights. Given that the Biden administration never forced social media companies to take down any content — and its practice of bringing election and COVID misinformation to the companies' attention was upheld in June by the Supreme Court's right-wing majority (more on them soon) — you could be forgiven for not seeing how this reached the level of democracy-threatening, government-sanctioned censorship.
If Vance had wanted to call out a more concrete example of the government violating First Amendment protections, he might have mentioned Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his administration's attempts to silence support for Amendment 4 – a proposal on the ballot in Florida this fall that seeks to codify abortion access into the state constitution, where abortion is banned after six weeks. After reports last month that plain clothes police were showing up at the homes of Florida residents who signed a petition to help get Amendment 4 on the ballot – claiming to be investigating potential signature fraud – DeSantis and crew appear to have upped the ante. In response to a TV ad put about by supporters of Amendment 4, where a woman named "Caroline" gives a first-person account of how her life is at serious risk under Florida's abortion law, DeSantis' Department of Health sent a letter to at least one local NBC affiliate suggesting employees could face criminal charges for airing the ad. In the letter, the Florida DOH argued, "The advertisement is not only false; it is dangerous," and that it violates the state's "sanitary nuisance" law — a law that typically applies to issues related to human waste and a misdemeanor offense punishable by up to 60 days in jail.
Calling the advertisement false is rich coming from an administration that's been using taxpayer dollars to fight Amendment 4 with political ads and a state-run website, which the ACLU of Florida and the Southern Legal Counsel filed a lawsuit to stop on the basis that they're disseminating "false and misleading information aimed at swaying voters and undermining the democratic process." More ironic is that, in threatening TV station personnel with misdemeanor charges for airing a political ad, the Florida DOH may have broken the law by denying First Amendment protections.
"The Department cannot criminalize media outlets running political advertisements with which it disagrees," Floridians Protecting Freedom, the group sponsoring Amendment 4, wrote in a letter responding to the Florida DOH,which they shared with TPM. "Speech criticizing the government in the context of a political campaign is the lifeblood of democracy and lies at the very heart of the First Amendment's protections."
In the eyes of Josh Marshall, "Florida has become the state where elements of a future, second-Trump-presidency America already come into view."
In retrospect, maybe Vance had a point. It just wasn't the point he was trying to make.
Of course Florida's near-total abortion ban wouldn't be possible without the Dobbs decision which overturned Roe v. Wade and removed federal protections for abortion rights. And it's possible that the Dobbs decisions wouldn't have happened without the votes of Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh — two right-wing justices whose confirmation processes prompted revelations of alleged past harms done to multiple women, who were confirmed anyway. This week after the release of a new Senate report on the FBI's 2018 "investigation" into allegations about Kavanaugh's past behavior showed that the FBI only interviewed 10 people after receiving over 4,500 tips, Kate Riga looked more closing at the parallels between the accusations against Kavanaugh and Thomas. Perhaps the most striking parallel was that in both cases, witnesses with the power to corroborate accusers' stories or potentially sink the nomination were silenced.
Speaking of the Supremes, the high court's new term started this week and, as Kate Riga reported, their fall calendar might double as a Fox News primetime lineup. On the docket: homemade guns, trans rights, minors' access to porn, along with continued attempts by right-wing and corporate plaintiffs to dismantle the administrative state and snuff out the power of federal agencies.
And on the podcast this week, Kate and Josh talk about the campaign vibes, Trump's misinformation campaign around recent hurricanes and the beginning of the Supreme Court term.
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