Supreme Court sounds reluctant to curb US social media outreach

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court appeared ready Monday to allow Biden administration officials to communicate with social media companies, as multiple justices sounded skeptical that the government violated free speech rights when it encouraged the removal of posts with misinformation.

The justices heard oral arguments over a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that, if allowed to go into effect, would sharply limit the government’s ability to communicate with internet giants like Meta, Google and X, the company formerly known as Twitter.

That lower court injunction, in a lawsuit brought by the states of Missouri and Louisiana along with a handful of social media users, would block government agencies from engaging in “coercion” or “significant encouragement” of social media platforms to censor views the government disfavored.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett was among several justices who questioned the unintended fallout of such an injunction would be on public safety and other issues.

—CQ-Roll Call

2,000 pages of 'confidential' Dominion emails dumped on social media

DETROIT — A new social media account using the name and photo of Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf released Sunday more than 2,100 pages of emails from employees of Dominion Voting Systems as the company maintained Leaf got improper access to internal messages through the breach of a court order.

An account on the website X with the handle @SheriffLeaf sent out links to the Dominion emails, which were marked "confidential." Leaf didn't immediately respond Monday to a request from The Detroit News asking whether he was personally operating the account.

However, for years, Leaf has investigated the 2020 presidential election and worked with Stefanie Lambert, a Michigan lawyer who's now representing Patrick Byrne, former chief executive officer of Overstock.

Dominion, whose election equipment is used in most Michigan counties, is suing Byrne for defamation after he spread conspiracy theories about Dominion's technology.

—The Detroit News

An attempt to ban all “forever chemicals” in Colorado failed. What will it take to finally get rid of PFAS?

First, Lisa Cutter removed the carpet from her downstairs level. As she learned more about PFAS — also known as forever chemicals — she replaced her nonstick pans. Then she started buying dental floss that was free of the harmful chemicals that have become pervasive in modern life.

“The problem is that we can’t keep track of all these things as people,” said Cutter, a state senator from Jefferson County. “It’s too hard. They’re in too many things.”

Cutter and two fellow Democratic lawmakers are running a bill in the state legislature to ban the sale of some consumer products containing PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — including cookware, outdoor apparel, ski wax and artificial turf. Senate Bill 81’s first draft had also included a full ban on the chemicals beginning in 2032, but the full ban faced enough opposition that it was written out of the bill at its first committee hearing on Tuesday.

The challenges against the bill illustrate the difficulty of regulating PFAS, which have been used for decades to make commercial products waterproof, nonstick or stain resistant. The harmful chemicals are difficult to regulate because they are everywhere, lawmakers and experts said.

—The Denver Post

‘We are hungry’: Cubans take to the streets in the second-largest city to protest

Hundreds of people in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba’s second-largest city, protested on the streets on Sunday, chanting “electricity and food” and “Patria y Vida,” homeland and life, in what appeared the largest demonstration on the island since the July 2021 uprising.

A video live stream on Facebook by an anonymous user at 3:38 p.m. on Sunday showed a large crowd protesting along Santiago’s Carretera del Morro Avenue.

Activist Yasmany Labrada, a former Santiago dissident who currently lives in Washington, D.C., published other videos of the protest, where Santiago residents can be heard chanting “we are hungry” and the presence of military forces at the scene.

As Cubans reported a cut in internet service, videos started to appear on Sunday evening, also showing protests in Bayamo, one of Cuba’s oldest cities in the eastern province of Granma, in Cacocún, in the eastern province of Holguín, and in Santa Marta, a town in Matanzas close to the sea resort of Varadero.

—Miami Herald