Trump-appointed judge appears to mock Kamala Harris

homesafetytechpros — Sat, 09 Nov 2024 03:42:35 +0000

Inset: Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally at Little Chute High School, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024, in Little Chute, Wis. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon). Background: U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty (YouTube).

A federal judge appointed by Donald Trump appears to have mocked Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday in an order related to a long-running and controversial social media censorship case.

“We now consistently proceed — burdened by what has been,” U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty wrote in the order, an apparent reference to one of the failed presidential candidate’s trademark and oft-repeated stump speech lines: “unburdened by what has been.”

Later in the order, the court also muses about “regime change” and how Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. might soon find himself in charge of a federal public health agency — calling that eventuality “relevant” and “wild.”

In the underlying case, Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri sued the Biden administration over a policy encouraging social media platforms to remove COVID-19-related misinformation — arguing that those requests violated the First Amendment.

On Independence Day in 2023, the district court issued a 155-page opinion and order that likened the Biden administration to an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth.” In an accompanying injunction, Doughty ordered federal officials and agencies to cease all contact with social media firms that could potentially interfere with free speech.

The administration appealed and lost — at first.

In September 2023, the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit agreed with Doughty that officials with the FBI, CDC, the White House, and the COVID-19 Response Team likely violated the First Amendment by “coercing and significantly encouraging” social media platforms to “censor disfavored” speech.

Days later, the Department of Justice went to the nation’s high court.

In the application for a stay pending appeal, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar rubbished Doughty’s original order as “an unprecedented injunction installing the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana as the superintendent of the Executive Branch’s communications with and about social-media platforms.”

More Law&Crime coverage: Justice Alito really wanted to hear what RFK Jr. had to say in social media censorship case to ‘prevent the irreparable loss of his First Amendment rights’

Originally stylized as Missouri v. Biden, the case was later refashioned into Murthy v. Missouri — and then remanded back down to the district court level, a victory for the government. The majority opinion by Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not get to the merits of the controversy, however, and instead dismissed the case using the conservative standing doctrine — a judicial theory created by judges in the 1920s who sought to dampen the use and limits of constitutional redress by making it difficult for individuals to sue the government over perceived violations of their rights.

“The primary weakness in the record of past restrictions is the lack of specific causation findings with respect to any discrete instance of content moderation,” Barrett wrote. “The District Court made none. Nor did the Fifth Circuit.”

The opinion goes on:

The plaintiffs, without any concrete link between their injuries and the defendants’ conduct, ask us to conduct a review of the years-long communications between dozens of federal officials, across different agencies, with different social-media platforms, about different topics. This Court’s standing doctrine prevents us from “exercis[ing such] general legal oversight” of the other branches of Government. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Fifth Circuit and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Now, on remand, Doughty is sticking to his guns.

“This case stems from Defendants’ violation of Plaintiffs’ First Amendment speech rights,” the order begins. “We held previously that Plaintiffs’ claims were likely meritorious and issued a preliminary injunction in their favor. The Fifth Circuit mostly agreed. But the Supreme Court did not.”

The heart of the order directs the parties to move forward with suggestions on how to accommodate “jurisdictional discovery.”

This, the court points out, is not merits-based discovery, but a way to suss out whether the claims can still be brought by finding a way to prove they do have standing. Doughty sums up the question facing the court as: “[W]hat is a district court to do when jurisdiction is neither certainly existent nor certainly non-existent?”

In real terms, the plaintiffs were given 14 days to come up with another bite at the apple, in terms of a standing argument; the defendants will then have 14 days to reply to those arguments.

Of course, the issues at stake in the litigation, the judge somewhat veeringly opines, might be rendered something not entirely unlike moot — though he does not use this exact legal term — in the near future.

“We end with the unignorable reality that regime change is imminent,” the order goes on. “However, to take dispositive action in this case based on regime change alone would be quintessentially speculative . . . speculation which is trebly prohibited by our standing requirements, our injunction requirements, and our discovery requirements. So we will not.”

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FCC commissioner says Kamala Harris SNL skit violated rule

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 03 Nov 2024 22:42:48 +0000

Inset: FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr (FCC). Background: Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris appears on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” with Maya Rudolph, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024 in New York (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin).

At least one government official was unamused by Kamala Harris‘ appearance on Saturday Night Live last night.

Senior Republican Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Brendan Carr said in a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter) that NBC violated the agency’s “Equal Time” rule.

“This is a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule,” Carr wrote. “The purpose of this rule is to avoid exactly this type of biased and partisan conduct – a licensed broadcaster using the public airwaves to exert its influence for one candidate on the eve of an election. Unless the broadcaster offered Equal Time to other qualifying campaigns.”

Carr was first nominated by Trump and then again by President Biden. He’s one of five commissioners, including a chairperson.

More coverage from Law&Crime: Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against CBS over Kamala Harris ’60 Minutes’ interview mocked as ‘outrageous violation of First Amendment principles’

Just days before Tuesday’s Presidential election, the Democratic nominee appeared on SNL opposite her impersonator Maya Rudolph for a skit as part of the show’s cold opening.

Generally speaking, the Equal Time rule requires broadcasters to provide the same amount of airtime for one candidate as the other. If one candidate appears on a broadcast channel, it must provide an opportunity for the other candidate(s) to appear for the same amount of time. News broadcasts, political ads and documentaries are exempted from the rule. According to Carr, the FCC chairman under the Obama Administration in 2016 election said the agency would enforce the rule. The stations filed equal opportunity notices when Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton appeared on the show, Carr said.

“Federal law requires that broadcasters provide comparable time and placement to all legally qualified candidates when the Equal Time rule is triggered,” Carr wrote. “With only days before the election, NBC appears to have structured this appearance in a way that evades these requirements. What comparable time and placement can they offer all other qualifying candidates?”

News of Harris’ appearance surfaced on Saturday night, just hours before the show. She was on the show for about three minutes and with Rudolph exclaimed the famed “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night” catchphrase. Carr pointed out that SNL creator Lorne Michaels told the Hollywood Reporter that he didn’t expect Trump nor Harris to appear on the show.

“You can’t bring the actual people who are running on because of election laws and the equal time provisions,” Michaels said. “You can’t have the main candidates without having all the candidates, and there are lots of minor candidates that are only on the ballot in, like, three states and that becomes really complicated.”

The Equal Time Rule comes up from time to time, especially with celebrities or TV personalities. Some TV stations pulled Mehmet Oz’s Dr. Oz TV show amidst his ultimately unsuccessful run for a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania.

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Trump-appointed judge appears to mock Kamala Harris

FCC commissioner says Kamala Harris SNL skit violated rule