#first amendment

[eltristan]

Yup. Trump 45. Trump 47.

Also, this:

Reminder for when he “saves” it. He was the one who wanted this, and now he gets to be the hero and win favour with young constituents. Don’t give him the credit for fixing his own problem.

[bonesashesglass]

Just deleted TikTok. That Trump saving TikTok notification was the most overt propaganda I’ve ever seen in my entire life and no way am I sticking around after that. Moving to Rednote is the right move for everyone over there.

[theoneandonlyba]

Interesting, last I checked, you don’t become president until AFTER you are inaugurated.

[archive-pl]

The official narrative right now is that “wokeness” was a Chinese Propaganda effort through its influence on social media (TikTok). If you don’t believe this, “official MAGA” will call you a victim of Chinese psyops. (All of this is to redirect skepticism of Israeli psyops).

[kcinpa]

This is kind of brilliant, and necessary.

A group of adult entertainment actors is about to spend $100,000 in the next 29 days running anti-Project 2025/anti-Trump ads on adult websites targeting their male audiences in seven battleground states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada.

Why?

Page 5 of the 920 page Project 2025 manifesto says of pornography:

It has no claim to First Amendment protection. ... Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.

Now whether or not you approve of the porn industry, it's clear that Project 2025 is talking about a much broader thing: whatever these right-wing zealots determine to be "pornographic." Note how teachers and librarians are mentioned specifically. Some bookbanners have called children's books pornographic simply for featuring a lgbtq character.

Closer to tumblr's heart, smutty fanfic and fanfic sites would certainly be swept up if Project 2025 ever came to pass.

So kudos to the adult film stars for stepping up and spreading the word.

[crim50n-r8er-reblogs]

Senate Bill 686 of the 118th Congress (The Restrict Act)

I’m honestly a bit disappointed here at Tumblr for not talking about this bill more, so I’m going to share what I’ve learned about it with you all

The link above goes to a pdf file going over the entire bill that has only been introduced atm as shown in the image just above from congress.gov.

Now, people only see this as a means to ban Tiktok, but that’s just the mask this truly cruel bill is hiding behind.

To boil it all down, this bill lets the Secretary of Commerce to have the power to ban…basically ANYTHING on the internet.

This includes hardware like video game consoles or Wifi networks as well as software and applications such as VPNs.

It also gives the government the power to monitor, basically everything you do online, private messages, posts on social media, streams, you name it, they can monitor it.

And the punishment for using, say, a VPN to access Tiktok, will result in 20 years in prison with a 1/4 million fine, a full million if you did it on purpose.

Now, I please ask you all to go to your representatives and tell them about how you don’t want this bill to be passed whatsoever. Heck, if you have to, (passively) threaten them with supporting their opponent in the next primary in any way they can. Just remember to be respectful and civil.

If you don’t want to do that, I respect that decision, and I understand that you wouldn’t want to deal with politics. But, I at least ask you to signal boost this post by reblogging it to your own followers and give any other thoughts about this that you might have in the tags or just normally.

I don’t want this lovable hellsite we all call home and made such good friends and memories on to be under the eyes of those pedophilic heathens who can’t seem to even know how to unlock a smartphone.

I thank you all for reading this, and I hope you all have a good day/night.

[postmoderntongues]

I made a video breaking zero laws and violating zero terms of service stating that refusing to let Luigi Mangione use the restroom until he wet himself and then photographing him in his soiled clothing is a form of torture and it’s especially heinous because he hasn’t even been found guilty and TikTok dirty deleted I fucking hate that platform

[davidaugust]

It’s true.

[feminist-space]

"Wolfe, a reporter with Mississippi Today, a nonprofit, online news outlet, won the Pulitzer for detailing a disturbing $77 million welfare fraud scandal in the nation's second-poorest state, a scandal headlined by Mississippi's most famous athlete, Brett Favre.

The reporting described how, with then-Gov. Phil Bryant in office, Favre and a handful of others scored millions of dollars that were supposed to go to welfare families but were instead used on projects that included a college volleyball facility and a concussion drug company.

Favre's involvement elevated the story into national news, providing fodder for talking heads from Fox News to ESPN. In no time, some people were going to sarcastic extremes over the story, such as shirts that went on sale saying, in all capital letters, "Brett Favre stole money from poor people. Go Bears."

Bryant and Favre both have said they had no idea the money was designated for welfare families.

It was against that backdrop last spring, a month shy of her 29th birthday, that Wolfe won the Pulitzer and celebrated with family, friends and colleagues at Hal & Mal's, a Jackson institution. It was a moment that should have capped the journey on a story Wolfe had been chasing for five years.

Instead, not long after the Pulitzers were announced, the former governor sued Mississippi Today for defamation, setting off a battle that not only soured Wolfe's and Mississippi Today's moment but, more troubling to Wolfe, turned the focus away from the scandal itself.

That's because not only has Bryant's lawsuit not gone away despite Mississippi Today's insistence that its reporting is truthful, but the former governor also recently asked a circuit court to hold Wolfe and the news organization in contempt of court. The governor wants all of Wolfe's notes. He wants her emails. He wants her confidential sources. And the judge has ordered, at the very least, that Wolfe and Co. show him what they've got so he can determine its relevance to the case.

Mississippi Today has called the order "unconstitutional" and appealed to the state supreme court. Either way, Wolfe and her boss, Adam Ganucheau, have said there's no way they're giving up confidential sources. They say they would rather defy the court and face possible jail or, probably more likely, see their news organization get hammered with substantial damages.

What was once a story about poverty, power and Brett Favre, has now become a battle involving the First Amendment."

[bear-cubs-art-things]

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

-Evelyn Beatrice Hall, The Friends of Voltaire

The first amendment allows us to say what we want, whenever we want, without our government punishing us for our words. KOSA, therefore, is violating our first amendment rights. It's mass censorship of the internet, and our right to freedom of speech is being suppressed BY THE GOVERNMENT. Our founding fathers created this as THE FIRST AMENDMENT, and clearly thought this was important. Oh, wouldn't they be disappointed to see what their descendants are doing now. KOSA, a mass censorship bill that will contradict our constitution as we know it. KOSA, which instead of protecting the kids is in fact putting them in harms way. KOSA, which will put so so many people in danger. And we can stop it, but we have to fight. We MUST fight

To hear one voice clearly, we must have the freedom to hear them all

[reasonsforhope]

A federal judge appointed by Donald Trump ruled late Friday night that Tennessee’s Adult Entertainment Act (AEA), which would restrict drag performances in the state and threaten performers who violate the law with felony criminal penalties, is unconstitutional.

“The Tennessee General Assembly can certainly use its mandate to pass laws that their communities demand,” U.S. District Judge Thomas Parker wrote. “But that mandate as to speech is limited by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which commands that laws infringing on the Freedom of Speech must be narrow and well-defined. The AEA is neither.”

Parker, appointed to the bench in 2017, found after a two-day trial that the law — criminalizing “adult cabaret entertainment” performances anywhere “where the adult cabaret entertainment could be viewed by a person who is not an adult” — is unconstitutional on several grounds.

Parker did not shy away from the underlying issues, either.

“The word ‘drag’ never appears in the text of the AEA,” Parker wrote. “But the Court cannot escape that ‘drag’ was the one common thread in all three specific examples of conduct that was considered ‘harmful to minors,’ in the legislative transcript.”

After detailing that legislative history, as shown in four transcripts reviewed by the court, Parker found that “the legislative transcript strongly suggests that the AEA was passed for an impermissible purpose.”

That “impermissible purpose,” Parker found, was “chilling constitutionally-protected speech.”

-via Law Dork, 6/3/23

[culturevulturette]

Controversial, offensive and unpopular things.

[reality-detective]

Tulsi Gabbard Unveils the Disturbing Truth About the TikTok Ban

“It’s not really about TikTok at all. It’s about government being able to choose what platforms are acceptable and what are not.”

The potential implications for citizens are even more alarming. Imagine that you want to use a VPN to illegally download a forbidden app. 🤔

[jensorensen]

Where's the Crisis?

Only a few weeks ago, the world was aghast at Israel's killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in three separate vehicles, and an investigation revealed the IDF's AI targeting system that led to enormous numbers of civilian casualties. It's no mystery why students are protesting. Yet in American media coverage, the fact that these kids are protesting is treated like the far greater crisis, worse than the actual death and destruction being rained down on real human beings.

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[mollyringle]

Books are so dangerous! 😁

Ways to keep the freedom to read alive and well:

- support your local library by donating money, attending events there, and/or simply borrowing materials from them

- look up RECENTLY banned books (not To Kill a Mockingbird, we all know about that one and it's doing fine), buy copies, and talk them up

- if you're an author, join Authors Against Book Bans

- if you're not an author, join Unite Against Book Bans

Please add further ideas in comments/reposts!

[myupliftedsol]

I’m new to this platform. With the TikTok Ban going into effect tomorrow there’s something I need to say.

We The People are not angry enough.

We’re angry, don’t get me wrong, but we’re also scared. It’s hard to stoke the flames of rage when fear suffocates the fire. And we can’t let it.

We live in an oligarchy. Tomorrow, America goes dark. And if you think it stops at TikTok you’re wrong. Contacting your representatives doesn’t do anything, they’re bought and paid for. The guy who released the bill invested 1.1 million dollars into meta beforehand. Tom Cotton’s campaign was paid for by Zuckerberg. Our representatives are our billionaire oligarchs charity cases.

Peaceful protest isn’t working. They know how we feel. They know what we want. We’re just not the highest bidder.

So get angrier. What line has to be crossed before we get up?