Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to announce her running mate next week. She is reportedly considering several governors who theoretically appeal to moderate voters in the swing states: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg are also in the mix.

Which of these individuals would be best from a libertarian perspective is not as clear cut as it was on the Republican side, where North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum was obviously better than the alternatives. (Unfortunately, former President Donald Trump selected Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, whose distinguishing feature is his contempt for libertarian economic policies.) Nevertheless, it's possible to parse them.

First, the national figures. Unlike the other names on the list, Buttigieg is actually a member of the current administration and has been responsible for implementing federal policies. Unfortunately, his tenure as Transportation secretary will not be remembered as particularly libertarian. While he has signaled openness to tearing down bureaucratic "barriers" in the wake of transportation-related disasters, he has not made any serious attempts to grapple with said bureaucracy. On the contrary, when things have gone wrong, he has reserved most of his ire for private companies like Southwest Airlines and Norfolk Southern, rather than the outdated and meddlesome regulators who make their jobs more difficult.

Buttigieg comes across as a technocrat rather than a progressive: He appears to believe that smart, capable people like himself should run the government and make things more efficient. When he pursued the presidency in 2020, liberal news site Vox described him as a "product of the meritocracy" and did not intend it as a compliment. He enrages the left, but this does not make him a friend to liberty, amusing though it is. His foreign policy views also seem somewhat more hawkish than other standard-issue Democrats, which is not an improvement.

Then there's Kelly. As an astronaut and the husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D–Ariz.)—who was grievously wounded after being shot in the head by a deranged gunman—he is certainly an inspiring figure. However, his political positions are mostly in line with his party. He has voted in support of President Joe Biden's approved policies 95.5 percent of the time. On energy and environmental issues, he has deviated from the progressive wing of the party: He opposes the Green New Deal and has voted in favor of increased oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. On the other hand, he is one of the more outspoken Democrats on gun control.

Arizona's U.S. senators have tended to be more individual-minded, bipartisan, and independent: see Kyrsten Sinema. For those reasons, Kelly might be slightly preferable to some of the other options.

Now for the governors. Walz and Beshear were both elected in 2018 and thus have longer records than Shapiro, who became governor of his state just last year. Alas, their tenures are not particularly inspiring, as both of them overlapped with the COVID-19 pandemic—providing an opportunity to implement policies that were anathema to liberty.

Walz implemented many of the same heavy-handed, liberty-infringing mitigation policies as other blue state governors; he also maintained a government hotline for people to call and report their neighbors for violating social distancing rules. When Republicans complained about it, he replied: "We're not going to take down a phone number that people can call to keep their families safe." This alone should be disqualifying.

For his part, Beshear attempted to keep lockdowns, mask mandates, and school closures in place—well into the pandemic. In fact, he reimposed masks on public school students in August 2021, saying, "We are to the point where we cannot allow our kids to go into these buildings unprotected, unvaccinated and face this delta variant." This is also disqualifying.

It's nice that Walz and Beshear are supportive of legalizing, or at least decriminalizing, marijuana. But it's hard to look past the whole wrestling-masks-onto-5-year-olds thing. The best thing to be said for them is that they are not Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

That leaves Shapiro, who has had mercifully less time in office to do things that would offend libertarians. To his credit, he has supported several encouraging initiatives. One of his first actions after taking office was to eliminate the college degree requirement for government jobs. He also made some small progress on reforming the state's occupational licensing system. He is a supporter, to a degree, of school choice; he ultimately vetoed a voucher bill after facing significant pressure from teachers unions, however.

Given how popular he is in Pennsylvania—a must-win state for Harris—Shapiro has emerged as the likeliest veep pick in recent days. Like Buttigieg, Shapiro seems to make the far-left very upset: The New Republic called him "The One Vice Presidential Pick Who Could Ruin Democratic Unity." While that sounds entertaining enough, the main knock on him from the left is that he harshly condemned the recent pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses and is vocally supportive of Israel. For libertarians who would like to see the U.S. become less involved in Middle Eastern affairs and stop spending American tax dollars on costly foreign wars, these are reasonable concerns.

At the same time, it's hard to imagine Vice President Shapiro steering a markedly different course on foreign policy than any of the other options; on most other issues, he is slightly better. All this contributes to a weak—very weak—libertarian preference for Shapiro.

The post Josh Shapiro Is Kamala Harris' Best Bet for Veep appeared first on Reason.com.

Nicolás Maduro is the authoritarian leader of Venezuela. Last weekend, he declared himself the winner of that country's presidential election—an outcome that is highly disputed; the Carter Center lambasted the Maduro regime's lack of transparency and said the process "cannot be considered democratic."

Thousands of Venezuelans have taken to the streets in protest. In response, the government has implemented a crackdown, killing at least 16 people and detaining a thousand more. Such behavior is entirely characteristic of Maduro, an outlaw who has faced credible accusations of drug trafficking, public corruption, and crimes against humanity. His unscrupulous leadership has plunged the country into depression and poverty. As Reason's Katarina Hall wrote, "Almost 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country amid hyperinflation, shortages of essential goods, and rampant corruption. Many more have expressed their desire to leave if Maduro remains in power."

Maduro's governing ideology is not a secret: He is a socialist. He is the successor to the leftist tyrant Hugo Chávez. He heads Venezuela's ruling Socialist Party. His policy prescriptions are in line with socialism: His government has instituted price controls, seized assets from private companies, and contributed to the country's hyperinflation problem. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and wrecks the economy with a mixture of centralized planning, repression, and pure theft—well, it's a socialist duck.

So it came as something of a shock when a recent New York Times article that correctly described Venezuela's overall problems—and Maduro's perfidy in particular—nevertheless identified the government's economic policy as "brutal capitalism" rather than socialism. Here was The Times:

If the election decision holds and Mr. Maduro remains in power, he will carry Chavismo, the country's socialist-inspired movement, into its third decade in Venezuela. Founded by former President Hugo Chávez, Mr. Maduro's mentor, the movement initially promised to lift millions out of poverty.

For a time it did. But in recent years, the socialist model has given way to brutal capitalism, economists say, with a small state-connected minority controlling much of the nation's wealth.

Economists say what now? These economists are not identified by The Times; the given hyperlink redirects to a Times article about improvements in the Venezuelan economy. These improvements were due to the introduction of some market reforms, according to economists with actual names.

"Lifting some controls does not make Venezuela a capitalist country," writes George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen. "Moreover, the lifting of controls led to improvements."

When a small state-connected minority controls much of the nation's wealth—and maintains its grip on power by outlawing dissent and cheating in elections—then the ruling ideology is socialism, almost by definition. Maduro, it bears repeating, makes no secret of this: He is the leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

Socialists will complain, as they often do, that various socialist governments are not practicing actual socialism. Under their idealized system, socialists claim, the government's centralized redistribution of resources will be fair, equal, and democratic. Yet it certainly says something about such a system that it collapses into outright tyranny every time it is attempted. Socialist governance seems to require concentrating an extraordinary amount of power in elite government decision makers; this tends to produce a new ruling class, the widespread deprivation of political rights for everyone else, and crippling poverty.

Socialism is brutal, as the people of Venezuela know perfectly well. They understand that better than The New York Times.

 

This Week on Free Media

Amber Duke and I discuss MSNBC's confusion over what Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) really wants, President Joe Biden's plan to pack the Supreme Court, and weird affinity groups supporting Vice President Kamala Harris. (Apologies for my hoarse voice; I had too much fun at a Green Day/The Smashing Pumpkins concert the night before we filmed.)

 

Worth Watching

Like most fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), I am of the opinion that things have mostly gone awry since Avengers: Endgame concluded "The Infinity Saga." (Though I enjoyed several of the post-Endgame television shows on Disney+: WandaVision, Loki, Hawkeye, and What If…?) I was thus incredibly pleased to learn that the Russo brothers—who were responsible for many of the MCU's best films, including Endgame and Infinity War—are returning to rescue the franchise. Most notably, they have enlisted a familiar face: Robert Downey Jr., who famously portrayed Tony Stark/Iron Man, the original MCU superhero who gave his life to save the universe.

Downey Jr. will not be playing Stark again, thank goodness. While there are all sorts of ways to revive the character—alternate universes, time travel, etc.—doing so would cheapen his sacrifice at the conclusion of Endgame. Instead, Downey Jr. will play Victor von Doom, a beloved villain from the Marvel comics. It seems likely that this version of Doctor Doom will have some connection to Stark; as previously mentioned, the MCU has made use (some would say overuse) of alternate realities.

In any case, the recent reveal of Downey Jr. at Comic-Con in San Diego, California, was something to behold.

The post <em>The New York Times</em> Thinks 'Brutal Capitalism,' Not Socialism, Ruined Venezuela appeared first on Reason.com.

Samuel Alito has refused to recuse himself from upcoming cases relating to the January 6 Capitol riot. The Supreme Court associate justice told Congress earlier this week that Democrats' insistence that he does so was unreasonable, saying, "I am therefore duty bound to reject your recusal request."

Why have so many Democratic politicians and media figures decided that Alito should sit out from January 6 cases? They believe that he has proven himself to be sympathetic to former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election—and they cite as evidence two flags that were flown on Alito's properties.

One was an upside-down American flag, and the other was a Pine Tree flag bearing the message "an appeal to heaven." Many in the media have abruptly decided that both flags telegraph agreement with the right's pro-insurrection camp. CNN called the "Appeal to Heaven" flag a "symbol for supporters of former President Donald Trump." The New York Times noted that both flags were carried by rioters during the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. MSNBC insisted that the Pine Tree flag was not just a pro-insurrection flag but also a Christian nationalist flag and implied that Alito should recuse himself from abortion-related cases as well.

Yet the idea that either the Pine Tree flag or flying the American flag upside-down always and everywhere endorsements of Trump's election-related malfeasance is ludicrous. The American flag is commonly turned upside-down by activists representing all sorts of issues and usually represents dissatisfaction with the current state of the country. The "Appeal to Heaven" flag has equally broad usage; it originated during the Revolutionary War and quotes the philosopher John Locke in defense of rebellion against unjust authority. Protesters have borrowed it for their own purposes throughout American history. The Black Lives Matter movement was using it just a few weeks before January 6.

It is certainly true that some of the people who smashed the windows of the U.S. Capitol and feuded with police were carrying this flag, the Gadsden flag, and other icons of liberty—including the American flag itself. That does not mean these flags should be considered exclusive hallmarks of the far right. In fact, people ought to resist ceding pro-liberty iconography to the farr ight.

Alito says that he had nothing to do with the flags, which were put up by his wife during a dispute with one of their neighbors. It is certainly possible that Martha-Ann Alito is a supporter of the Stop the Steal movement. (Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's wife, Ginni Thomas, was certainly sympathetic.) The flags are not compelling evidence of this, however; nor would it necessarily mean that Alito should recuse himself from such cases. Would a liberal justice be expected to recuse from a case related to gay marriage if they flew the pride flag? Or a criminal justice–related case if they had a Black Lives Matter sign on their front yard? No.

For decades, San Francisco's city hall has flown the "Appeal to Heaven" flag alongside other cherished, patriotic banners. In response to the Alito controversy, the city announced this week that it had removed the flag. This is madness. It's retconning. That picture of a pine tree is not a right-wing symbol of hate; cowards are turning it into one.

This Week on Free Media

Once again, I am joined by Amber Duke to discuss Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg's electric vehicle push, MSNBC's price confusion, Trump's interview with Tim Pool, Robert DeNiro's stunt, and more.

 

Worth Watching

I'm playing a new video game! Nintendo released a remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door for the Switch. I originally played this game in college, and it's just as much fun as I remembered. The Paper Mario series combines typical Mario platforming action with RPG-esque battle strategy and a surprising amount of hilarious dialogue and sophisticated storytelling. The game is well worth acquiring if you own a Nintendo Switch.

The post Samuel Alito's 'Appeal to Heaven' Flag Got Retconned appeared first on Reason.com.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have agreed to participate in two presidential debates—one in June and one in September—after both candidates bucked the Commission on Presidential Debates, the nonprofit organization that has managed such affairs since 1988.

Biden had a list of demands regarding the terms of this debate, such as the elimination of the traditional live audience and inclusion of mics that immediately cut off when the candidate's time has elapsed and the other person is speaking. Apparently these terms were amenable to Trump, who nevertheless complained that Biden is afraid of crowds.

This means the candidates have officially killed the proposal put forth by the commission, which wanted three debates somewhat closer to Election Day, in September and October. There is nothing sacred about the commission, and these new debates may well be an improvement over last cycle's. Preventing the candidates from interrupting each other would be a significant win for the viewing public and everyone involved.

That said, Biden and Trump have utterly failed—unsurprisingly—to agree to the most desirable change, which would have been to include more candidates. The commission infamously restricted its debates to just candidates polling above a 15 percent threshold. In 2016, this meant that Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson was excluded despite polling as high as 13 percent in some surveys. By mutual decree, Biden and Trump are sticking with this arbitrary limitation.

In a statement, the Biden campaign said the purpose of the debate was "to compare the only two candidates with any statistical chance of prevailing in the Electoral College" and not to waste time "on candidates with no prospect of becoming president." That's a rather direct rebuke of independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is currently polling at about 10 percent in battleground states.

RFK Jr. is not currently in a position to win the presidential election. But he could have a major impact. Polls show that he is currently pulling votes from Biden and Trump in somewhat equal measure. He has also attracted a following among anti-establishment, populist, and even some libertarian voters. If either Biden or Trump were to make an appeal to previous supporters who have decamped for RFK Jr., and win them back, it could be the difference on Election Day.

Of course, both major party candidates are probably more worried about the opposite thing happening: RFK Jr. winning an even greater number of their voters. Their present actions betray them; the Biden campaign is doing everything in its power to undermine RFK Jr.'s ballot access drive, while Trump is desperate to remind his base of RFK Jr.'s decidedly nonconservative views on guns, environmental regulation, and abortion.

RFK Jr. holds an eclectic mix of views, some of which appeal to supporters of limited government: He opposed COVID-19 mandates, is worried about federal efforts to suppress dissent on social media, and does not want to continue sending billions in foreign aid to Ukraine. Yet he remains a progressive liberal on a range of social and economic issues. He recently expressed support for both student loan debt forgiveness and affirmative action.

He is keen to join the debate stage. He recently issued a challenge to Trump to debate him later this month at the Libertarian National Convention, where both candidates will be speaking. (Hopefully the party will make time for its own prospective candidates as well.) Trump does not seem likely to take him up on this offer; like Biden, Trump wants a presidential debate safe space, where the two presidents* only have to face each other.

 

Leave Maggie Alone

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, well-known for her coverage of Trump, was excoriated by liberals on social media this week because of a wrinkle in the Trump hush money case. One exhibit in the trial was text messages between Haberman and former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, the purpose of which was to establish that Cohen was well-accustomed to doing Trump's dirty work.

"Please start writing and I will call you soon," read one message from Cohen to Haberman.

On X, liberals treated this as proof that Haberman was somehow in cahoots with the Trump campaign. But the exchange is perfectly benign; sometimes a reporter is only interested in writing a story if they can get comment from the source. It looks to me like Cohen was merely acknowledging to Haberman that she wouldn't be wasting her time—he would, in fact, provide whatever statement she needed. This is perfectly common journalistic practice.

Of course, many Democrats have decided that The New York Times should be working full-time to help reelect Biden to the presidency, a notion that Times Executive Editor Joe Kahn unequivocally rejects.

 

This Week on Free Media

I'm joined by The Spectator's Amber Duke to discuss MSNBC's horror over independent voters seeing Biden as a bigger threat to democracy than Trump, quarterback Aaron Rodgers stumping for RFK Jr., CNN reacting to Cohen's testimony, Vice President Kamala Harris dropping an f-bomb, and The Simpsons killing comedy with European Union propaganda.

 

Worth Watching

Amazon released a trailer for the second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. I thought the first season was OK, but not great. It felt like very generic fantasy and was missing some of the light-hearted whimsy and magic of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. (As well as the Hobbit films, which I found delightful; whenever I hear someone say "they should have been one movie," I stop listening.) Like everyone else (except for Galadriel, sadly), I guessed that the mysterious castaway from the second episode was actually Sauron; the fake-out with the Stranger did not fool me for one second.

This trailer makes it look like the second season will depict Sauron's corruption of Numenor, which is definitely an interesting aspect of the backstory. We shall see if they manage to make it compelling.

 

*CORRECTION: This article has been edited to clarify the descriptions of Trump and Biden.

The post Biden and Trump Want a Presidential Debate Safe Space appeared first on Reason.com.

Following revelations about the extent of the federal government's pressure on social media companies to suppress dissenting opinions, the feds broke up with Meta, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube. Cybersecurity experts now frequently complain about the lack of coordination between the government and the platforms, warning that social media users are vulnerable to misinformation about elections, foreign interference, and other woes.

But the platforms might be receiving late-night "you up?" texts from federal agents once again. Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner (D–Va.) told reporters on Monday that communication between the federal government and social media sites is back on, according to Nextgov and The Federalist.

In fact, Warner said these communications had resumed in the midst of oral arguments for Murthy v. Missouri, the Supreme Court case that will decide whether the FBI, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Biden White House had violated the First Amendment when they pushed social media sites to remove disfavored content. The justices seemed at least somewhat skeptical, viewing the government's actions as mere attempts at persuasion rather than coercion. That skepticism has apparently given the feds the green light, with Warner acknowledging that "there seemed to be a lot of sympathy that the government ought to have at least voluntary communications" with the platforms.

Whether social media companies ever viewed these communications as "voluntary" is an open question. For instance, when then–White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield suggested tinkering with Section 230—the federal law that protects online platforms from some liability—in order to punish Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg might have wondered whether he had much of a choice but to comply.

In any case, it seems clear that federal agencies will continue to interact with social media companies in ways that trouble many libertarians—until and unless they are explicitly forbidden from doing so.

 

This Week on Free Media

The Spectator's Amber Athey is back to discuss waning liberal anxiety about Donald Trump's potential return to power, Jen Psaki's advice for President Joe Biden's comms team, and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem's doggone media tour.

 

Worth Watching

Now this is podracing: It's the 25th anniversary of Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace, and the much-maligned first prequel film has returned to theaters. This is as good a time as any for me to reiterate my once-controversial, now increasingly accepted opinion that the Star Wars prequels are OK. (It's truly heretical to say that they are better than the original films; that is my view, though I won't try to defend it here.) They are certainly way, way better than the new films, which are dull, joyless, and derivative.

The best thing about the prequels is Palpatine's manipulations, and those only come into full focus later on. Phantom Menace is thus the least appealing of the three, as it's the one most obviously aimed at children. But there's nothing wrong with that; I was 9 years old when I first saw the film, and like virtually every other kid at that time, I thought Darth Maul's appearance and climactic duel with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn was pretty much the coolest thing I'd ever watched. And it still holds up!

The post The Feds Are Talking to Social Media Companies Again appeared first on Reason.com.

Raucous pro-Palestine protests have taken over college campuses across the country for the past several days. At UCLA, protesters declared areas of campus off-limits to pro-Israel students and blocked them from entering certain spaces, even just to get to class. At night, masked counter-protesters attacked the pro-Palestine encampment, tearing down barricades and shooting fireworks at the protesters.

At the University of Texas at Austin, police brutally dispersed student protesters. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was among those arrested at Washington University in St. Louis. Administrators at Brown University persuaded protesters to disband their encampment peacefully after agreeing to discuss their demands for financial divestiture from companies that do business with the Israeli military.

Events at Columbia University came to a head after the authorities finally tired of the occupation of Hamilton Hall. Protesters had smashed the windows of the administrative building, entered it, taken over, held a janitor hostage, and demanded humanitarian aid—not for Gaza, but for themselves. (I.e., they wanted snacks.)

Reporter grills Columbia student after she demands the university help feed protestors occupying Hamilton Hall:

"It seems like you're saying, 'we want to be revolutionaries, we want to take over this building, now would you please bring us some food'." pic.twitter.com/vNczSAM4T1

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) April 30, 2024

It is easy to make fun of these protesters, many of whom seem to know very little about why they are even protesting. And some of their antics deserve not just mockery, but condemnation: Statements in support of terrorist violence and exhortations for "Zionists" to be killed "or worse" are contemptible, as are tactics that involve preventing other students from moving about campus and pursuing their education.

But critics of the campus left should not lose sight of the much greater threat, which is that campus authority figures, members of law enforcement, and even national legislators will act in a manner that gravely threatens the free speech rights of everyone. Indeed, in response to the protests, identity-obsessed busybodies are already working overtime to criminalize protests on the grounds that offensive speech is a threat to the safety of Jewish students.

 

Safe Space Reprise

These are not new arguments; for years, university bureaucrats have subtly chipped away at their institutions' stated protections for free speech by invoking dubious safety concerns. You might remember the concept of the safe space: A very real notion, frequently invoked by progressive student activists, that being forced to confront speech with which they disagree is a form of physical violence.

In my first book, Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump, I traveled to college campuses and interviewed activists. What I learned was that for a variety of reasons—their upbringing, their ideology, their social circles—they did not want free and unfettered debate. They thought that outside speakers, professors, and even other students should be silenced for expressing nonprogressive views. In fact, they viewed the university administration's role as that of a parent, shielding them from painful speech. Administrators were all too happy to comply, and school after school took steps to shield their most unreasonable students from emotional vulnerability. Not all of these efforts are explicitly contrary to free speech principles, even though they were universally silly: In 2016, for instance, the University of Pennsylvania created a safe space so that students spooked by former President Donald Trump's rise to the presidency could take time to breathe, play with coloring books, and pet some puppies. Duke University's 2016-era safe space—a production of the campus's diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracy—included the presence of a social worker.

More perniciously, hundreds of campuses created bias incident reporting systems, whereby students were instructed to call the campus authorities—in some cases, the literal cops—if they overheard anyone say something that could offend another person on the basis of a protected class, such as race, gender, sexuality, or ability status. At Colby College, someone filed a bias incident report when they overheard the phrase "on the other hand," with no explanation given, though I gather the ever-vigilant person worried that a one-handed person might take offense.

These developments on campuses produced widespread mockery from many Democrats as well as Republicans. Aside from a minority of extremely difficult young people, and the administrators who coddle them, most people do not think the university's job is to protect students from having their feelings hurt.

 

Enter Congress

Unfortunately, many elected officials are hypocrites, and during a perceived crisis—like the one unfolding on college campuses right now—they are all too eager to pass bad laws. Case in point: On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act by a margin of 320–91. This bill empowers the Education Department to take action against educational institutions that do not sufficiently combat antisemitic speech on campus. It also defines antisemitism incredibly broadly; Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), who voted against the bill, pointed out on X that political statements about Israel would be effectively criminalized if the bill became law.

Do you agree with all of these examples of antisemitism? Should people in America be prosecuted for saying these things in all contexts? I think not. This is a poorly conceived unconstitutional bill and I will vote no. pic.twitter.com/L3AI5MCFGw

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) May 1, 2024

Some of the statements deemed impermissible antisemitism include "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination" with respect to a Jewish state and "applying a double standard" to the state of Israel. It should go without saying, but the First Amendment robustly protects the right to disagree with the political project of Israel. This bill is obviously unconstitutional, and moreover, a clear violation of the idea that college students don't need protection from uncomfortable speech. Universities must protect their campuses from violence and harassment, whether motivated by antisemitism, some other political animus, or any other cause. It's the action that should count, not the content of the belief.

The collective national media are obsessed with campus protests, and understandably so—the spectacle of disproportionately elite, privileged young people resorting to histrionics is frequently amusing to general audiences. People should feel free to mock them, but let's not forget that Congress is using them as a pretext to grant vast new powers to federal bureaucrats, with the explicit goal of enshrining into law a new right not to be offended: one giant safe space.

 

This Week on Free Media

Reason's Emma Camp and I mocked Drew Barrymore's cringeworthy interview with Vice President Kamala "Momala" Harris, surveyed media coverage of the campus protests, criticized the Biden campaign's youth outreach strategy, and argued about RFK Jr.'s appeal.

 

Worth Watching

Famed satire website The Onion was recently acquired by Ben Collins, a former disinformation beat reporter for NBC News. (Regular readers will know Collins and I have clashed before.)

That said, I have to give him props for his plan to revive The Onion's TV department. I am particularly eager to the see return of Today Now, the site's mock morning show. The entire archive is available here; the humor has only become more relevant for me over time, now that I, too, host a morning show. It's hard to pick a favorite, but here's one.

The post The Antisemitism Awareness Act Will Make It Illegal To Criticize Israel on Campus appeared first on Reason.com.

Who is Katherine Maher, and what does she really believe? The embattled NPR CEO had the opportunity on Wednesday to set the record straight regarding her views on intellectual diversity, "white silence," and whether Hillary Clinton (of all people) committed nonbinary erasure when she used the phrase boys and girls.

Unfortunately, during a recent appearance at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to discuss the journalism industry's war on disinformation, she repeatedly declined to give straight answers—instead offering up little more than platitudes about workplace best practices. I attended the event and submitted questions that the organizers effectively ignored.

That's a shame, because Maher's views certainly require clarity—especially now that longtime editor Uri Berliner has resigned from NPR and called out the publicly funded radio channel's CEO. In his parting statement, Berliner slammed Maher, saying that her "divisive views confirm the very problems" that he wrote about in his much-discussed article for Bari Weiss' Free Press.

Berliner's tell-all mostly took aim at specific examples of NPR being led astray by its deference to progressive shibboleths: the Hunter Biden laptop, COVID-19, etc. He implored his new boss—Maher's tenure as CEO had only begun about four weeks ago—to correct NPR's lack of viewpoint diversity. That's probably a tall order, since Maher had once tweeted that ideological diversity is "often a dog whistle for anti-feminist, anti-POC stories."

That Silicon Valley v Russia thread was pretty funny — until it got onto ideological diversity. In case it's not evident, in these parts that's often a dog whistle for anti-feminist, anti-POC stories about meritocracy. Maybe's not what the author meant. But idk, maybe it is?

— Katherine Maher (@krmaher) July 6, 2018

Indeed, Maher's past tweets would be hard to distinguish from satire if one randomly stumbled across them. Her earnest, uncompromising wokeness—land acknowledgments, condemnations of Western holidays, and so on—sounds like they were written by parody accounts such as The Babylon Bee or Titania McGrath. In her 2022 TED Talk, she faulted Wikipedia, where she worked at the time, for being a Eurocentric written reference that fails to take into account the oral histories of other peoples. More seriously, she seems to view the First Amendment as an inconvenient barrier for tackling "bad information" and "influence peddlers" online.

But interestingly, she did not reiterate any of these views during her appearance at the Carnegie Endowment on Wednesday. On the contrary, she gave entirely nonspecific answers about diversity in the newsroom. In fact, she barely said anything concrete about the subject of the discussion: disinformation.

When asked by event organizer Jon Bateman, a Carnegie senior fellow, to address the Berliner controversy, she said that she had never met him and was not responsible for the editorial policies of the newsroom.

"The newsroom is entirely independent," she said. "My responsibility is to ensure that we have the resources to do this work. We have a mandate to serve all Americans."

She repeated these lines over and over again. When asked more specifically about whether she thinks NPR is succeeding or failing at making different viewpoints welcome, she pointed to the audience and said that her mission was to expand the outlet's reach.

"Are we growing our audiences?" she asked. "That is so much more representative of how we are doing our job, because I am not in the newsroom."

Many of the people who are in the newsroom clearly had it out for Berliner. In a letter to Maher, signed by 50 NPR staffers, they called on her to make use of NPR's "DEI accountability committee" to silence internal criticism. Does Maher believe that a diversity, equity, and inclusion task force should vigorously root out heresy?

At the event, Maher did not directly take audience questions. Instead, audience members were asked to write out their questions and submit them via QR code. I asked her whether she stood by her previous tweet that maligned the concept of ideological diversity, as well as the other tweets that had recently made the news. Frustratingly, she offered no further clarity on these subjects.

 

This Week on Free Media

In the latest episode of our new media criticism show for Reason, Amber Duke and I discussed the Berliner situation in detail. We also reacted to a Bill Maher monologue on problems with liberal governance, tackled MSNBC's contempt for laundry-related liberty, and chided Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) for encouraging drivers to throw in-the-way protesters off bridges.

 

 

This Week on Rising

Briahna Joy Gray and I argued about the Berliner situation—and much else—on Rising this week. Watch below.

 

Worth Watching (Follow-Up)

I have finally finished Netflix's 3 Body Problem, which went off the rails a bit in its last few episodes. I still highly recommend the fifth episode, "Judgment Day," for including one of the most haunting television sequences of the year thus far.

But I have questions about the aliens. (Spoilers to follow.)

In 3 Body Problem, a group of scientists must prepare Earth for war against the San Ti, an advanced alien race that will arrive in 400 years. The San Ti have sent advanced technology to Earth that allows them to closely monitor humans and co-opt technology—screens, phones, presumably weapons systems—for their own use. We are led to believe that the San Ti want to kill humans because unlike them, we are liars. Eccentric oil CEO Mike Evans (Jonathan Pryce), a human fifth columnist who communicates with the San Ti, appears to doom our species when he tells the aliens the story of Little Red Riding Hood. The San Ti are so offended by the Big Bad Wolf's deceptions that they decide earthlings can't ever be trusted, and should instead be destroyed. "We cannot coexist with liars," says the San Ti's emissary. "We are afraid of you."

The scene in which Evans realizes what he has done makes for gripping television but… I'm sorry, it's nonsensical. Clearly the San Ti already understand deception, misdirection, and the difference between a made-up story and what's really happening. After all, they were the ones who equipped Evans and his collaborators with the virtual reality video game technology they use to recruit more members. The game does not literally depict the fate of the San Ti's home world; it uses metaphor, exaggeration, and human imagery to convey San Ti history. It doesn't make any sense that they would be utterly flummoxed by the Big Bad Wolf.

Then, in the season finale, the San Ti use trickery to taunt the human leader of the resistance. They are the liars, but no one ever calls them out on this.

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After a not-quite accidental encounter, an unassuming Oxford student named Ollie (Barry Keoghan) befriends a popular classmate, the handsome and wealthy Felix (Jacob Elordi). Felix invites Ollie to spend the summer with him at Saltburn, his eccentric family's opulent mansion in the English countryside. Murder and madness ensue.

Critics correctly noted that Amazon Prime Video's Saltburn bears a striking resemblance to another film that depicts an ingratiating young man's quest for social acceptance (and it's a mild spoiler to mention this, so be warned): The Talented Mr. Ripley. But as far as the film's message is concerned, the critics wildly missed the mark, describing Saltburn as an eat-the-rich comedy that "skewers" the ultra-wealthy and rejoices in "class war."

This interpretation could not be more wrong. Felix and his family are not villains—they are victims of scheming outsiders who covet all they have and seek to destroy it. If anything, the rich people in the film are toonice and generous; they should have thrown Ollie out on day one. Forget Ripley; Saltburn has much more in common with the critically acclaimed but widely misinterpreted Parasite, in which a wealthy Korean household is preyed upon by a lower-class family (the eponymous parasites). Both films are, if anything, reactionary, something almost no one seems to have noticed.

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Adam Rubenstein is a journalist and former opinion editor at The New York Times. As a person of right-leaning political sensibilities—Rubenstein previously worked for The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard—he was brought to the Times opinion pages with a mandate to help diversify its ideological offerings. His bosses said they expected him to use his contacts in conservative media to solicit, research, and improve op-eds that would advance contrarian arguments and challenge the paper's editorial point of view, as well as its readers.

This mandate resulted in the now-infamous publication of an editorial by Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) on June 3, 2020—amid the nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd—headlined "Send In the Troops." In the op-ed, Cotton called for the federal government to deploy the military to end the rioting and looting in U.S. cities.

While one can raise a number of practical, philosophical, and even legal objections to such a proposal, it was not exactly a controversial suggestion, at least as far as public opinion was concerned: Polls showed that more than half of American voters wanted the feds to mount a more aggressive response to all the lawbreaking. But among The New York Times' staff, the op-ed proved to be radioactive. Times journalists went ballistic, publicly attacking their organization for daring to run such a piece. A characteristic response came from the Times' Nikole Hannah-Jones, the 1619 Project originator, who wrote on Twitter, "As a black woman, as a journalist, as an American, I am deeply ashamed that we ran this."

There's nothing inherently wrong with opinion journalists criticizing the thoughts of a U.S. senator, of course, but many on staff did not stop there. On the contrary, they argued the Times never should have published the op-ed—that platforming such an opinion was an act of violence against black people and would cause them harm. These staff members became organized, and soon enough, many of them started tweeting nearly identical statements that the op-ed had put black writers in danger. Eventually, more than a thousand Times employees signed a letter to top NYT bosses accusing them of jeopardizing "our reporters' ability to work safely and effectively."

With hindsight, it's very clear what they were doing: appropriating the language of human resources—hostile environment, workplace safety, etc.—for the ideological project of shutting down an opinion that clashed with theirs. And the gambit worked. In an attempt to mollify the staffers, the Times published a groveling apology in the form of a self-flagellating editor's note that is still appended to the op-ed to this day. A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of the Times, forced James Bennet, the editor of the opinion pages, to resign, and he did so. Other personnel involved with the Cotton op-ed were reassigned, and Rubenstein left the paper some months later.

This sorry episode is currently being re-litigated, four years later, in light of a revelatory article published in The Atlantic earlier this week. Rubenstein is finally telling his side of the story, and he has persuasively argued that the Times threw him, Bennet, and Cotton under the bus to appease a woke mob. He debunked several criticisms of the op-ed—namely, that it had included obvious factual errors—and pointed out that Times op-eds penned by literal authoritarian dictators such as Moammar Gadhafi, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Vladimir Putin had not produced any internal fury whatsoever. It's very telling whose words are described as literal violence, and whose are not.

"Last year, the page published an essay by the Hamas-appointed mayor of Gaza City, and few seemed to mind," wrote Rubenstein in The Atlantic. "But whether the paper is willing to publish conservative views on divisive political issues, such as abortion rights and the Second Amendment, remains an open question."

His article certainly appears to confirm suspicions that the paper of record is, at least at times, in thrall to its liberal staffers.

Since the publication of Rubenstein's record-straightening account, an interesting criticism of it has appeared on social media. This criticism takes aim at a fascinating anecdote related by Rubenstein in the article's opening paragraphs.

According to Rubenstein, he participated in an orientation activity upon first joining the Times: An HR representative asked new employees to each answer a question about themselves. Rubenstein was told to describe his favorite sandwich, and volunteered the spicy chicken from Chick-fil-A. The HR person chided him for citing Chick-fil-A, a fast food chain with a socially conservative founder. "We don't do that here, they hate gay people," was the response—a self-parody of woke shibboleths, if ever there was one.

In fact, this response by a Times HR figure is so embarrassing that some liberals have decided it simply cannot be true. Enter Hannah-Jones, who opined on X (formerly Twitter) that the anecdote in question "never happened." She was hardly alone in accusing Rubenstein of making it up; writer Michael Hobbes said the anecdote was "egregiously fake."

Never mind that over the years, Rubenstein has told a number of other journalists—including yours truly—about the incident. The Atlantic actually verified it. The writer Jesse Singal reached out to the publication, and Atlantic editors said that Times employees with "contemporaneous knowledge" of the orientation session confirmed it happened.

Atlantic spokeswoman on the Chick-fil-A incident that Nikole Hannah-Jones and many others claimed must have been fabcricated: "the details were confirmed by New York Times employees who had contemporaneous knowledge of the incident in question." pic.twitter.com/KL0cptFB6B

— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) February 27, 2024

So the next time conservative, libertarian, or independent thinkers are accused of spreading misinformation or reflexively distrusting the media, it might be helpful to remind the accusers in the mainstream press that we're all in good company.

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Claudine Gay resigned as president of Harvard University in January, following numerous allegations that she plagiarized passages in her published works. But in some corners of the media, the fact that she committed plagiarism mattered much less than the fact that it was conservative writers who caught her.

Aaron Sibarium, a reporter at the right-leaning news website The Washington Free Beacon, performed the lion's share of the digging. Christopher Brunet, a conservative writer; Christopher Rufo, a conservative writer and activist; and Phillip Magness, a libertarian economic historian, also made important contributions. Their allegations were very serious, and what they found led many commentators—including Harvard students—to conclude that she should be held accountable. Even The Harvard Crimson's editorial board, writing in support of Gay, nevertheless acknowledged that she had committed plagiarism and that the university's investigation had been inadequate.

Gay's defenders said the charges against her lacked importance and that she was guilty of mere sloppiness—failing to sufficiently paraphrase the passages she had copied. This position became less tenable after subsequent reporting from Sibarium revealed that she had in fact committed traditional plagiarism as well: copying passages from other scholars without citing them.

The next course of action was to shoot the messengers. Since many of the people accusing Gay of committing plagiarism were conservative, their motivations were deemed political and thus dismissible. New York Times columnist Charles Blow described the campaign against Gay as "a project of displacement and defilement meant to reverse progress and shame the proponents of that progress."

Gay's defenders had a point, at least, in noting that conservatives had first set their sights on the president of Harvard after her disastrous testimony before the House of Representatives concerning antisemitism on campus. When Gay ultimately stepped aside, her resignation letter leaned into this explanation while merely nodding at the plagiarism accusations.

"It has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor—two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am—and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus," she wrote.

Gay is a more sympathetic figure when the hearing is considered in isolation. While her explanations of Harvard's speech policies in the face of relentless grilling by Republican political figures seemed tin-eared, it is in fact true that such policies are context-dependent; calls for political violence are not necessarily violations of Harvard's policies unless they are directed at specific individuals. She should not have lost her job for articulating that.

Yet Gay is no free speech hero. She may have defended provocative political speech at the House hearing, but her brief tenure at Harvard has not been marked by a dramatic return to free speech principles. In 2023, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression ranked Harvard dead last on its college free speech list. Indeed, one might conclude that in order to restore free speech at Harvard, different leadership is sorely needed.

In any case, the plagiarism allegations had teeth. Reporters discovered numerous instances of Gay lazily copying other scholars' exact passages without naming them. The political ideology of some of her accusers should make no difference; Gay must be held to the same standards as other professors and students. As one member of Harvard College's Honor Council wrote in an editorial for The Harvard Crimson days before her resignation, "There is one standard for me and my peers and another, much lower standard for our University's president."

When Harvard's governing board picks the next president, it should look for someone who both abides by principles of academic integrity and vows to improve the college's free speech standing.

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