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When President Biden began assembling his Cabinet, several commentators predicted that his presidency would be something of an Obama third term. But now Biden has broken further from those predictions in his budget proposal by gutting the Hyde Amendment a long-held and popular policy that prevents federal taxpayer dollars from directly funding abortions.

The Obama administration maintained this commonsense compromise even when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress; and if theyre smart and reasonable, some congressional Democrats today will wake up and do the same.

The Hyde Amendment first passed in 1976 with bipartisan support. In fact,a majorityof the House members who voted for it were Democrats. The Supreme Courtupheldthe provision in 1980, and its been a point of strong agreement for many Americans, both pro-life and pro-choice, long since.

AsSlatedetailedin the debate sparked by Bidens 2019 flip-flop, poll after poll shows that a strong majority of Americans consistently support the Hyde Amendment.Slatefound that the average [polling] gap between the pro-funding and anti-funding positions is 19 percentage points, and that, even among self-identified Democrats, the polling gap inoppositionto the Hyde Amendment lingered in mere single digits. This data is well-reflected in state abortion policy, too. Efforts to channel state tax dollars (which are not touched by the Hyde Amendment) directly toward abortions have succeeded in onlyseven state legislatures.

President Biden has stepped far beyondRoe v. Wadesright to privacy when he defends Hyde bysayingabortion-seeking women also need the ability to exercise their constitutionally protected right via taxpayer financial support. This logic doesnt hold at all.

America is a free country where we enjoy a great many rights, such as a First Amendment right to publish paid ads promoting our policy views free from government censorship, and a Second Amendment right to own a handgun. But it does not follow that we also have a right to force other people to pay for those activities. No serious person believes that. And this principle certainly holds true for forcing Americans to pay for abortions.

The logical inconsistency trend in anti-Hyde abortion activism extends tomanywidely-readcommentatorstrying to discredit the Hyde Amendment by calling it a decades-old or decades-long ban, as if that is a discrediting factor or an indication of bad policy. Should we also pejoratively refer toRoe v. Wadeas decades-old? These journalists and activists would surely say no. The double standard is clear.

The radicals trying to repeal the Hyde Amendment are not pro-choice. They are simply pro-abortion.

DeniseBurkeis senior counsel atAlliance Defending Freedom(@Alliance Defends).

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Biden's new proposal on the Hyde Amendment is illogical, unpopular | TheHill - The Hill

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. Today, Fair Elections Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit to challenge Florida Senate Bill 90, an omnibus voting rights bill that, among other things, requires civic organizations engaged in voter registration activities to provide misleading information to voters that the organization might not submit their registration application on time and to direct voters to the online registration portal. The law imposes this requirement even though Florida already has some of the most onerous third-party voter registration laws in the country, imposes hefty penalties for non-compliance, and has not had any significant issues with untimely applications across the state.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Harriet Tubman Freedom Fighters, Corp. and HeadCount, two nonprofit, nonpartisan organizations that focus their registration efforts on new voters, particularly youth, communities of color, and returning citizens. The complaint challenges the new laws misleading disclaimer and disclosure requirements and alleges that the new law is void for vagueness under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, compels speech in violation of the First Amendment, and prevents organizations from exercising their First Amendment expressive and associational rights.

"HeadCount has served Florida voters for 16 years, and our volunteers have established deep roots and trust throughout the state." said Tappan Vickery, Director of Voter Engagement for HeadCount, "We believe that peer-based community voter registration outreach is essential to democracy and groups like ours must meet voters where they are. The new requirements not only discredit our work but put democracy itself at risk."

Voter registration organizations serve their communities by building trusted relationships with Floridians for whom voting and participation may not otherwise be accessible, said Michelle Kanter Cohen, policy director and senior counsel at Fair Elections Center. We are bringing this lawsuit to protect our clients right to organize through voter registration activities, communicating their message that our democracy works better when all our voices are heard. According to one of Harriet Tubman Freedom Fighters founders and officers, Sheila Singleton, Florida Senate Bill 90 is just the latest attempt by the politicians in Tallahassee to entrench their power by making it more and more difficult for people to vote. Registering to vote is the first critical step in having ones voice heard and this law creates serious obstacles to people trying to do just that. Harriet Tubman Freedom Fighters, along with our partners across the state, will continue to challenge this unconstitutional law and stand up for the voting rights of all Floridians.

Unfortunately, Floridas legislature has a history of targeting community voter registration organizations with unconstitutional and irrational regulations that violate the First Amendment. SB 90 is no different, especially considering its enactment during a legislative session marked by little public input and other laws criminalizing Floridians exercise of their First Amendment freedoms, adds Emma Bellamy, senior staff attorney for voting rights at the Southern Poverty Law Center. We hope the Court recognizes that protecting the First Amendment and voter registration activities is a non-partisan issue and vital for the continuation of a robust and free democracy.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida. Read the complaint here.

Continued here:
Voting Rights Groups Sue to Block New Restrictions that Make Voter Registration Much Harder in Florida - Southern Poverty Law Center

American democracy is in danger, and American journalism needs to respond with more than slogans.

Editorials are a good start and the Boston Globe has now set the bar awfully damn high.

But the mightiest weapon in the journalistic arsenal isnt opinion columns its relentless news coverage.

Journalists have the unique ability to ask questions on behalf of the public, demand answers, assess truthfulness, decry stonewalling and do it all again the next day.

To rescue and revive democracy, news organizations dont need to take sides with one party or another, they dont need to publish articles full of opinions.

What the top editors in our top newsroom must do, however, is set the agenda. They need to decide what is newsworthy, and then bring their resources to bear accordingly.

Thats the true power of the press.

And those editors should start with an easy one by relentlessly covering the Justice Departments recent outrageous seizures of reporters communication records. That means news stories every day until the public is able to fully understand how they were authorized and by whom, how they were allowed to proceed, and what will prevent similar occurrences in the future.

Assaults on freedom of the press arent inside baseball. These are the front lines. This is a huge story. As David Boardman, dean of the journalism school at Temple University, tweeted:

The formerly secret subpoenas were for records from reporters at the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN, in order to identify their confidential sources. Two of the subpoenas were accompanied by outrageous gag orders. (Gag orders on news organizations!)

Their overdue public disclosure by the Justice Department in recent weeks made fairly major headlines and spawned a number of angry opinion pieces.

But with the notable exception of the Times, theres been relatively little news coverage since. (The Times on Thursday night continued its streak with a barnburner report that Trumps DOJ similarly subpoenaed communications records of Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee.)

Whats particularly missing even from the Times coverage is the application of pressure on the current Justice Department leadership to fully explain what happened, when, why and how. That should be the drumbeat, every day.

Although the various leak investigations originated during the Trump administration, they extended well into Bidens. A huge element of this story is why those investigations werent immediately abandoned and condemned and why the Justice Department under Merrick Garland wont come clean about what happened.

Some of the opinion pieces were powerful, particularly the one from the normally invisible Washington Post publisher, Fred Ryan.Ryan appropriately pointed out that the Biden Justice Department not only allowed these disturbing intrusions to continue it intensified the governments attack on First Amendment rights before finally backing down in the face of reporting about its conduct.

In fact, it was the Biden administration that imposed the gag order on the New York Timess lawyer, preventing him from disclosing the governments efforts to newsroom leaders or the four reporters whose email logs were at issue. [UPDATE June 13, 12:30 PM: Technically, the gag order was imposed by a federal magistrate judge, responding to an application from the Justice Department. The March gag order amended a January order that had fully gagged Google from talking to anyone about the records request. The March order allowed Google to tell the Timess lawyer, but imposed a gag on him as well.]

This escalation, on Bidens watch, represents an unprecedented assault on American news organizations and their efforts to inform the public about government wrongdoing, Ryan wrote.

The Justice Department on June 5 announced that it would no longer use subpoenas or other legal methods to obtain information from journalists about their sources, eliciting some new headlines.

But that should not have placated anyone in the news business. What it should have prompted is a slew of additional questions about how this new policy would be applied in an accountable fashion.

As Anna Diakun and Trevor Timm wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review, the new policy is a significant improvement to the DOJs previous approach. Still, there are questions to be answered. When will the DOJ officially update its news-media guidelines to reflect this change? And as the Timesnoted, the DOJs statement appears to leave some wiggle room surrounding the circumstances in which the policy applies, limiting it to when journalists are doing their jobs. What exactly does this mean?

Their final, critical question: Who will DOJ count as a member of the news media?

None of the news reports I saw about the policy shift showed any of the appropriate skepticism. For that, you had to be watching television interviews with some of the reporters who were directly targeted.

On CBS Now, for instance, Times reporter Matt Apuzzo made the crucial point that theres no reason to take the Justice Department at its word until it fully explains itself. First we have to understand what happened How did it happen? Why did it happen?

This is becoming a bipartisan pattern, Apuzzo said.

Journalism groups are justifiably concerned. Bruce D. Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said in a statement that serious unanswered questions remain about what happened in each of these cases.

And by coincidence, the esteemed free-press advocate Joel Simon announced this week that he will step down after 15 years as the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. He told the Times: Governments are increasingly taking aggressive action toward journalists, and there are very few consequences.

In addition to the three demands for records in leak investigations, we also learned in the last few days about a Biden-era demand from the FBI that deserves more coverage. The FBI issued a subpoena to USA Today, demanding it hand over the identifying information about readers who had accessed a particular story online during a 35-minute window.

The request related to a Feb. 2 article about the shooting death of two FBI agents while serving a warrant in a child exploitation case in Florida. The 35-minute window in question was more than 12 hours after the shooter had killed himself inside his barricaded apartment.

The request was bizarre, inexplicable, and should have been blocked by superiors. Instead, it was only withdrawn after investigators found the person through other means, according to a notice the Justice Department sent to USA TODAYs attorneys Saturday.

How could that have happened?

Some of the ideally relentless news coverage would also involve questions for the news executives who were subpoenaed.

Why did New York Times lawyer David McCraw honor such an obviously absurd gag order? (The gag order, imposed in March, related to records that were four years old, evidently as part of a fishing expedition aimed to show that former FBI director James Comey disclosed a secret document that was most likely a hoax. I am not making that up.)

Why, once McCraw was allowed to discuss the request with Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger and CEO Meredith Kopit Levien, did they honor the gag order? Why didnt they just call a press conference?

And there are much tougher questions for CNN, which in its own reporting buried the fact that it caved to the Justice Departments request for email logs for reporter Barbara Starr for June and July 2017.

CNN lawyer David Vigilante, honoring a gag the whole time, apparently fought the Justice Departments request from May 2020 all the way through January 26. He even won a court ruling that CNN shouldnt have to turn over the logs of emails that were internal to the company.

But that, apparently, was what CNN cared about most. So six days into the Biden administration, CNN turned over a list of Starrs external email contacts during the specified time period to the Justice Department.

CNNs official line is that those were essentially records that the government already had from its side of these communications.

Sorry, that doesnt cut it.

Transparency and accountability for everyone!

See the article here:
The journalistic crusade to save democracy starts with the First Amendment - Press Watch

Republicans on campus shouldnt be stereotyped or afraid to speak up.

Ryan Adams for the Daily Iowan

Anti-mask protesters stand in the rotunda of the Iowa State Capitol building before the opening of the 2021 legislative session on Monday, Jan. 11, 2021. Despite Gov. Kim Reynolds emergency proclamation mandating masks worn when social distancing indoors is not possible, house republicans made the announcement last week that masks would not be required during the session.

My former professor said any kid who identifies as gay or lesbian and grows up in a conservative household will be oppressed.

This accusation makes it seem like you cannot be queer and conservative, and all conservatives are homophobic. However, Peter Thiel, a conservative who identifies as gay, spoke at the Republican National Convention after the 2016 election. As someone who cant have biological kids, Ill be happy with either a queer or straight kid. Its not right to automatically label a conservative transphobic or homophobic without asking about their views first.

Despite people assuming conservatives are transphobic or homophobic, many of us support LGBTQ rights. For example, a survey found 61 percent of Republicans support anti-discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations for gay and transgender people. According to a 2020 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute, over half of Republicans support same-sex marriage.

Conservatives need to add to diversity of opinion on campus by speaking out, but people also need to stop stereotyping us.

Micah Broekemeier, a UI junior majoring in history who is conservative, said conservatives need to speak out more. He said he wore MAGA hats and Trump shirts on campus and did not receive any hate on-campus for doing so.

During the election cycle, whatever candidate I supported, I wore it on my sleeve, Broekemeier said.

While Im glad Broekemeier has never felt any hate toward him because he is a conservative, there have been incidents of conservative beliefs being silenced at other universities. At the University of Northern Iowa, their student government denied a Student for Life group a chance to register as a student organization based on the claim they included hateful rhetoric.

UNI president Mark Nook overruled the senators decision. However, a conservative group of students should not have to go through all this trouble to have their First Amendment rights granted.

At my first homecoming at the University of Iowa in 2018, the UI College Republicans (UICRs) talked about how they were going to get booed and spit on while marching in the parade. On May 4, the UICRs drew chalk drawings, and students poured water on them.

Later on, the University of Iowa released a statement and updated chalk policy to reflect a change in the state Board of Regents policy manual to protect free speech on campus.

I understand conservatives not speaking up due to fear of mistreatment. The hate stems from people making assumptions about conservative without hearing us out. Instead, we should be asked about our beliefs rather than just people making assumptions.

Despite many generalizations such as Republicans being called ableists, Im pro-life because I think its heartbreaking so many others with disabilities are denied a chance at life because of abortion.

While conservatives may be the minority political party on campus, we shouldnt be stereotyped without asking our beliefs first. Conservatives on campus shouldnt be afraid to speak about their beliefs because theyre worried people will make assumptions about us such as being homophobic.

Liberals and conservatives need to contribute to diversity of speech. Liberals need to become more open-minded and accepting of conservatives, and Republicans on campus need to start speaking up.

Columns reflect the opinions of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Editorial Board, The Daily Iowan, or other organizations in which the author may be involved.

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Opinion | It's up to all of us to increase political freedom of speech on campus - UI The Daily Iowan

When you really stop and think about it, what was done was unconscionable.

The Justice Department of the United States of America went after the phone and email records of journalists from some of the nations most respected news outlets. Not only that, they did so in secret.

The journalists had done nothing wrong. They broke no laws. And yet in an effort to root out leaks within the government, as well as who knows what else, the DOJ targeted the records of journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN.

And, I repeat, this happened in the United States of America, where the very First Amendment of the Constitution includes the freedom of the press. It started under the Donald Trump administration but apparently continued under Joe Bidens first couple months as president.

On Monday, CNN Pentagon reporter Barbara Starr wrote that the time was finally right to speak out on the Trump administrations months-long efforts to secretly gain access to tens of thousands of my 2017 work and personal emails and my work and personal phone records.

As Starr pointed out, she was not the subject of an investigation, and there was no suggestion that she had done anything wrong. The same goes for the other reporters targeted. Starr said she had no idea what the Trump administration was looking for.

Biden said reporters records will no longer be seized in his administration, and new policies will be put in place. The New York Times Charlie Savage wrote, In testimony last week, (Attorney General Merrick) Garland said the new policy will be the most protective of journalists ability to do their jobs in history. But many details remain unresolved, including how broadly the new protections will apply and whether he will implement it via a method that is easy or difficult for a future administration to roll back.

Or, as Starr wrote, Unless new protections are codified, this could all happen again to any journalist.

Starr added she is genuinely horrified by what happened. All of this is a sheer abuse of power in my view first against CNN and myself, since our work is and should always be protected by the First Amendment. But more importantly and more significantly, it is an abuse against the free press in this country, whether you are a television network correspondent or a reporter at a small town newspaper uncovering wrongdoing.

John Demers, the head of the Justice Departments National Security Division, announced to staff he will step down at the end of next week. Demers is a holdover from the Trump administration and was expected to step down eventually. But, The New York Times Katie Benner wrote, Mr. Demerss departure also comes as Democrats and First Amendment advocates have attacked the Justice Department following revelations that prosecutors supervised by Mr. Demers seized the records of reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN and of top House Democrats while investigating leaks of classified information.

On Monday, Garland met with leaders of the three news organizations whose journalists had their records confiscated.

The meeting included New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger and deputy general counsel David McCraw; Washington Post publisher Fred Ryan along with executive editor Sally Buzbee and general counsel Jay Kennedy; and CNN was represented by Washington bureau chief Sam Feist and general counsel David Vigilante.

Bruce D. Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, spoke on behalf of the news organizations, adding that the meeting was off the record. Brown added, We are very encouraged by what we heard inside the meeting.

Sulzberger put out a statement that said, In todays meeting, we sought a full accounting of what happened and requested that the Department of Justice codify that it will no longer seize journalists records during leak investigations. We were encouraged by Attorney General Garlands statements but we will continue to push until our concerns are addressed.

In his statement, Ryan said, It was encouraging to hear the Attorney Generals commitment to the first amendment rights of all Americans. While we welcome the new policy to refrain from using compulsory legal procedures to seize reporter records in leak investigations, we feel steps must be taken to ensure it is durable and binding on future administrations. It is also essential that there be a full and complete public accounting of all the actions taken against our news organizations, including the secret subpoenas and gag orders, and an explanation as to what has been done with the information that was seized.

Its a little curious that three news organizations fighting for press rights would agree to an off-the-record conversation. According to The Washington Posts Matt Zapotosky, Brown said, We wanted to have a conversation inside the building where all sides could fully and freely share views.

In a statement, the Justice Department said, In the coming weeks the Attorney General will develop and distribute to the field a memo detailing the current policy. The Attorney General committed to working with members of the news media to codify the memo setting out these new rules into regulation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin being interviewed by NBC News. (Courtesy: NBC News)

During an exclusive interview with NBC News Keir Simmons, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed accusations that the Russian government or hackers were behind cyberattacks in the U.S.

Putin told Simmons, We have been accused of all kinds of things. Election interference, cyberattacks and so on and so forth. And not once, not once, not one time, did they bother to produce any kind of evidence or proof. Just unfounded accusations.

In addition, Putin denied putting out a hit on political rival Alexei Navalny, but would not guarantee that Navalny would get out of prison alive.

Look, Putin said, such decisions in this country are not made by the president.

When asked whether it was a coincidence that several other political rivals had been assassinated in recent years, Putin said, We dont have this kind of habit of assassinating anybody.

In an article for NBCNews.com, Simmons, Corky Siemaszko and Yuliya Talmazan wrote, Throughout the interview, Putin relied on the Kremlins time-tested strategy of deflecting criticism by pointing out Americas failures, suggesting that criticism from the West was hypocritical because every country, including Russia and the U.S., acts in its own self-interest.

Also notable were Putins kind words for Donald Trump. Putin told Simmons, Mr. Trump is an extraordinary individual, talented individual. Otherwise he would not have become U.S. president. He is a colorful individual.

NBC News interview comes as Biden and Putin prepare to meet this week in Geneva.

I mentioned last week how all the major news anchors ABCs David Muir, CBSs Norah ODonnell and NBCs Lester Holt will be anchoring tonight from Geneva ahead of the summit. In addition, Fox News Channels John Roberts also will be in Geneva, anchoring America Reports (1 to 3 p.m. Eastern) today and Wednesday.

Ahead of Wednesdays meeting, here are some notable works to get you ready:

I actually found this to be a brilliant headline despite the you dont say aspect to it. The headline in The Washington Post: Coronavirus infections dropping where people are vaccinated, rising where they are not, Post analysis finds.

The report from Dan Keating, Naema Ahmed, Fenit Nirappil, Isaac Stanley-Becker and Lenny Bernstein also says, States with lower vaccination also have significantly higher hospitalization rates, The Post found. Poorly vaccinated communities have not been reporting catastrophic conditions. Instead, they are usually seeing new infections holding steady or increasing without overwhelming local hospitals.

While that might be encouraging, the Post wrote, But experts worry that unvaccinated people are falling into a false sense of security as more transmissible variants can rapidly spread in areas with a high concentration of unvaccinated people who have abandoned masking and social distancing.

Its a detailed report that requires your attention.

Christiane Amanpour. (Photo: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Christiane Amanpour, CNNs chief international anchor and host of PBSs Amanpour & Company, said on-air Monday that she has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She said she had major surgery and is now undergoing several months of chemotherapy for the very best possible long-term prognosis, and Im confident.

Amanpour told viewers, Im telling you this in the interest of transparency but in truth really mostly as a shoutout to early diagnosis to urge women to educate themselves on this disease, to get all the regular screenings and scans that you can, to always listen to your bodies, and of course to ensure that your legitimate medical concerns are not dismissed or diminished.

Amanpour, 63, has been with CNN since 1983 and is widely recognized as one of the top journalists in the world. Her career also includes moderating ABC News This Week and being a reporter for CBS News 60 Minutes. Bianna Golodryga, CNNs senior global affairs analyst, had been filling in for Amanpour on CNN for the past month.

In true professional and Amanpour fashion, she concluded her on-air statement by saying, So, thats my news. Now lets get to the news.

This week is the 50th anniversary of The New York Times publishing the Pentagon Papers the U.S. Department of Defenses history of the countrys involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967 that revealed how the Johnson Administration had lied to Congress and the American people about its involvement in the Vietnam War.

The New York Times is commemorating one of the most important newspaper stories and, maybe, the biggest journalistic scoop of all time with an amazing package: The Pentagon Papers at 50: A Special Report.

It includes an absolutely gripping and stunningly-well designed feature: Were Going to Publish The Oral History of the Pentagon Papers.

The package is elite and fascinating to all audiences, not just journalists and those who follow the journalism business closely.

Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at tjones@poynter.org.

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Opinion: The US government crossed a line by seizing reporters' records. What happens now? - Poynter