Federal Judge Temporarily Halts Trump’s WeChat and TikTok Ban
On Sunday, September 20th, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against President Donald Trump’s executive order that banned WeChat and TikTok from operating in the U.S. Trump signed the executive order on August 6th, citing national security concerns that the Chinese-owned messaging app and the video app were collecting data on Americans.
Pentagon Backtracks, Says Stars and Stripes Won’t Be Forced to Close
In an email obtained by The Associated Press, a Pentagon official told the newspaper's publisher that he no longer had to provide plans for shutting down the paper.
University of California, San Diego Reaches Settlement with Satirical Student Publication
The newspaper sued the university after the student government passed a bill excluding media student groups from accessing activity funds. The legislation was passed just days after the paper published a controversial article satirizing safe spaces.
Military Newspaper “Stars and Stripes” Threatened With Closure is Safe for Now
Hours after the story broke that the Pentagon was planning to close Stars and Stripes, Donald Trump tweeted that he would not allow the newspaper to get shut down. The tweet took some by surprise, not only because the President is not known for defending the press, but because it was his administration's 2021 budget that had cut the newspaper’s funding in half.
Texas Governor Says Teacher Who Showed Cartoon Comparing Police to KKK Should Be Fired
The cartoon is made up of five panels and starts with an image of a slave ship owner kneeling on a Black man's neck, and ends with a police officer kneeling on a Black man while he says "I can't breathe."
TikTok and WeChat Users Challenge the Constitutionality of Trump’s Executive Orders
The lawsuits, filed by WeChat users and the company Tiktok, claim the executive orders violate the First and Fifth Amendment, and that the law is unconstitutionally overbroad. Both lawsuits are asking for declaratory relief, as well as a preliminary and permanent injunction barring the president from enforcing the orders.
Trump Sued Again for Refusing to Unblock Certain Twitter Users
The lawsuit says that the President continues to exclude users who were blocked before his inaguration or cannot specify the tweet that provoked the block. According to the complaint, the President’s staff told the Knight Institute as recently as July 20nd that the President “does not intend to unblock persons who were blocked prior to his inauguration or who cannot identify a tweet that proceeded and allegedly precipitated the blocking.”
2020 World Press Freedom Index Warns of the Impact of Coronavirus on Free Expression
“The public health crisis provides authoritarian governments with an opportunity to implement the notorious ‘shock doctrine’ – to take advantage of the fact that politics are on hold, the public is stunned and protests are out of the question, in order to impose measures that would be impossible in normal times,” Reporters Without Borders Secretary-General Christophe Deloire said in a statement.