https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/52820-2

Pelosi Statement on Trump Social Media Executive Or
der
MAY 28, 2020 PRESS RELEASE

Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued this statement on the President’s Executive Order rolling back liability protections for social media companies over user-generated content:

“Allowing the proliferation of disinformation is extremely dangerous, particularly as our nation faces the deadliest pandemic in history. Clearly and sadly, the President’s Executive Order is a desperate distraction from his failure to provide a national testing strategy to defeat COVID-19. As we pray for the families of the 100,000 who have tragically lost their lives, we must focus all our energy on protecting lives and livelihoods, starting with making The Heroes Act law.

“The President’s Executive Order does nothing to address big Internet companies’ complete failure to fight the spread of disinformation. Instead, the President is encouraging Facebook and other social media giants to continue to exploit and profit off falsehoods with total impunity – while at the same time directing the federal government to dismantle efforts to help users distinguish fact from fiction.

“Again and again, social media platforms have sold out the public interest to pad their corporate profits. Their business model is to make money at the expense of the truth. Recently, rather than removing lucrative campaign ads, which contain debunked falsehoods, Facebook changed its rules to ensure that it can continue to allow and profit off these lies.

“While Twitter’s decision to put up fact checks of the President is an important first step to protecting the integrity of our elections, much more must be done to ensure that fact-checks are applied fairly and across all platforms.”

https://twitter.com/GeoffRBennett/status/1266111433395392518
Geoff Bennett @GeoffRBennett

The Michael Flynn-Amb. Kislyak calls that Grenell has declassified are written summaries of the calls, not audiotapes. The summaries are not full transcripts, leaving the reader unable to know what’s been left out, former Trump admin officials tell @JoshNBCNews and @carolelee.

4:57 PM · May 28, 2020

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/28/trump-social-media-executive-order/

By Tony Romm

May 28, 2020 at 4:30 p.m. EDT

President Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that could open the door for federal regulators to punish Facebook, Google and Twitter for the way they police content online, issuing a major broadside against Silicon Valley that quickly triggered wide-ranging political opposition and threats of a legal challenge.

Trump has portrayed the order, the early details of which were first reported by The Washington Post late Wednesday, as an attempt to stamp out political bias on the part of the country’s largest social media platforms. His directive comes days after Twitter steered viewers of some of the president’s tweets to news articles that fact-checked his claims, a move Trump said was a form of censorship.

“We’re here today to defend free speech from one of the greatest dangers,” Trump said before signing the document.

But advocates for the tech sector, lawmakers in Congress and a variety of legal experts from across the political spectrum Thursday doubted the legality of Trump’s draft proposal and feared its implications for free speech. Others questioned whether the U.S. government even could carry out the order as the president intended. Some in the tech industry even began quietly discussing their legal options, including a potential lawsuit challenging Trump’s order once it is signed, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because talks are early.

<snip>

Trump’s order would pave the way for U.S. agencies to revisit and potentially undo long-standing legal protections known as Section 230, which spares tech giants from being held liable for the content they allow online and their own moderation decisions. The directive specifically could open the door for the Federal Communications Commission to rethink the scope of the law, the people familiar with the document said. A change could have dramatic free-speech implications and wide-ranging consequences for a broad swath of companies reliant on doing business on the Internet.

The order also may channel complaints about political bias to the Federal Trade Commission, which would be encouraged to probe whether tech companies’ content-moderation policies are in keeping with their pledges of neutrality. It further creates a council along with state attorneys general to probe allegations of political bias, while tasking federal agencies with reviewing their spending on social media advertising, according to the people familiar with the White House’s thinking.

</snip>

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/28/masks-not-allowed-coronavirus/


Kevin Smith, owner of the Liberty Tree Tavern in Elgin, Tex., put up a sign banning customers from wearing face masks inside his bar. (Liberty Tree Tavern)

By Teo Armus

May 28, 2020 at 7:11 a.m. EDT

For 64 days, Kevin Smith had shut down the Liberty Tree Tavern to comply with government orders. Now he was cleaning and disinfecting and removing stools to cut seating by three-quarters as he prepared to reopen the bar.

Plexiglass screens had gone up at the supermarket checkout. His neighbors in Elgin, Tex., were still wearing masks outside, even after it was no longer mandated by the county. He did not think such a response was necessary, he said, and he wanted to push back.

“Sorry, no mask allowed,” read the poster taped to the front door of his bar Friday. “Please bare with us thru the ridiculous fearful times.”

As statewide coronavirus orders are easing, many stores and restaurants nationwide have taken the opposite route: They have made face coverings a requirement, kicking out those who fail to comply and even going to court to enforce their directives.

Yet in the emergent culture war over masks, a handful of businesses — the Liberty Tree Tavern among them — are fashioning themselves as fortresses for the resistance.

“If we’re only allowed to be at 25 percent capacity, I want them to be the 25 percent of people that aren’t p-----, that aren’t sheep,” Smith told The Washington Post. “Being scared all the time isn’t good for your health. It suppresses your immune system.”

</snip>

Trump's war on the media descends into murder claim, threat to "close down" Twitter (PressRun link)

Eric Boehlert

Trump is this close to demanding a show trial of MSNBC's Joe Scarborough.

Wallowing into the depths of the paranoid swamp that now surrounds the West Wing, Trump continues to try to politicize the death of a young Capitol Hill staffer who died from a heart attack 19 years ago in the office of then-Congressman Scarborough. Lobbying baseless claims about the cable TV host, Trump is barreling towards new lows this week, while simultaneously lashing out at Twitter, threatening to "close" down the social media giant after it finally fact-checked one of his ceaselessly false tweets. (Twitter needs to ban Trump outright.)

As for Scarborough, Trump has stressed that the statute of limitations on the case has not expired, suggesting he'd welcome his corrupt Department of Justice to launch an outlandish, partisan murder investigation in the middle of a presidential campaign. For anyone who scoffs at the idea of the president orchestrating a murder charge against a journalist as being out of the realm of possibility, consider that six months ago nobody thought the President of the United States would be using Twitter to accuse a TV host of killing someone, and doing it over the loud, public objections of the dead woman's family.

Yet here we are, and there's no telling where we're headed in terms of Trump adopting shocking, gutter tactics. On Thursday, he’s expected to sign an executive order that would unleash the federal government on Twitter, Facebook and Google for the supposed sin of silencing conservative voices.

The sad part is, all of this was inevitable because this is how authoritarians treat the press. They do everything in their power to destroy the power of the news media by relentlessly attacking its worth and undercutting journalists with assaults and insults. Unequivocally targeting reporters as the “enemy of the people,” Trump has signaled to the GOP and to the larger conservative movement that it’s open season on the news media.

</snip>

https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1265970626596081665
Jim Acosta @Acosta

WH draft of Executive Order expected to be signed by Trump today is aimed at some of the legal protections for social media companies under Section 230 of Communications Decency Act, CNN has confirmed. The WH has examined ways to target this provision in the past.

7:38 AM · May 28, 2020

https://twitter.com/costareports/status/1265790784596574208
Robert Costa @costareports

At a virtual fundraiser tonight, @JoeBiden said he hoped to name his running mate around Aug. 1, per
the pool report.

7:43 PM · May 27, 2020

https://twitter.com/rickwtyler/status/1265645503229956096
Rick Tyler-Still Right ✔@rickwtyler

The walls surrounding the cemeteries where the COVID victims lay, is exponentially longer than the new wall @realDonaldTrump completed on the southern border.

10:06 AM - May 27, 2020 · Virginia, USA

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/livingwhileblack-how-does-racial-bias-lead-to-unnecessary-calls-to-police

A profusion of national incidents in which white citizens have called police on black citizens engaged in everyday activities shows how racial bias can escalate into confrontation and even violence or death. Yamiche Alcindor examines the concerns, highlighted by hashtags and memes like #LivingWhileBlack, with NAACP president Derrick Johnson.

https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1265643235419906049
Yamiche Alcindor ✔@Yamiche

Two years ago, I talked w/ @DerrickNAACP about how national incidents in which white citizens called police on black citizens engaged in everyday activities shows how racial bias can escalate into confrontation & even death.

Still very relevant today.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/livingwhileblack-how-does-racial-bias-lead-to-unnecessary-calls-to-police …
#LivingWhileBlack: How does racial bias lead to unnecessary calls to police?
A profusion of national incidents in which white citizens have called police on black citizens engaged in everyday activities shows how racial bias can escalate into confrontation and even violence...

9:57 AM - May 27, 2020