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Liberal candidate Janet Protasiewicz advances in Wisconsin Supreme Court race

Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal candidate, is projected to advance to the April 4 general election in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race after she became the top vote-getter on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press.

Protasiewicz was one of two liberal candidates vying for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which was left open after conservative Justice Patience Roggensack announced she would not be seeking another term. Protasiewicz will be going head to head against a conservative candidate — wither Jennifer Dorow or Daniel Kelly — for the open seat in April.

The state Supreme Court race has drawn national attention given that Roggensack’s retirement leaves an even 3-3 partisan split on the court, meaning that whoever wins the open seat will tilt its ideological makeup. Among some of the issues that the new state Supreme Court could weigh in on could include abortion rights, redistricting and even possible future election result disputes.

Source: TEST FEED1

Nikki Haley: Bernie Sanders is 'exactly the reason' mental competency tests are needed

MARION, Iowa — Presidential candidate Nikki Haley defended her proposal for mental competency tests here on Tuesday — in startlingly personal terms.

Haley said that one critic of the proposal, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), was “exactly the reason we need it.”

Sanders, 81, had told Stephen Colbert of CBS’s “Late Show” Monday that Haley’s plan for mandatory tests of the mental acuity of politicians over the age of 75 was “nothing more than old-fashioned ageism” and “not acceptable.”

Haley, answering a final question from an audience member here at a campaign event, said: “Bernie Sanders lost his mind because I asked for that. He is exactly the reason we need it.”

The crowd laughed but Haley then widened her critique, unprompted, to include two other veteran Democratic lawmakers, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif) and Rep. Maxine Waters (Calif.)

“Whoopi Goldberg lost her mind over it — and you know what she was doing? She was glorifying Dianne Feinstein and Maxine Waters. They are exactly the reason we need it,” Haley said.

Feinstein, who is 89 and whose cognitive capacities have been widely questioned, recently announced she would retire at the end of her current term, sparking a Democratic race to succeed her.

Haley’s comments seem sure to inject fresh fire into the contoversy — and keep her in the news, as she has done throughout an impressive rollout to her campaign.

She spent most of her 25-minute stump speech here suggesting she would pursue conservative policies on topics including crime, education and immigration. 

She was for the most part complimentary about Donald Trump, but — in response to that same final question — made plain her differences with the former president.

The question, from an audience member who identified himself as “Bob,” was whether she would consider Trump as her running mate in 2024.

So far Trump and Haley are the only two major candidates in the race.

A clearly amused Haley asked, “How well do you think it would go over if I called President Trump [and ] said ‘Do you wanna be my VP?'”

“President Trump is my friend. I called him before I did this. We had a good conversation,” Haley said.

But, she continued, “He was the right president at the right time. He broke the things that needed to be broken and he worked to fix them. The reason I’m running is, we gotta move forward. We gotta move forward. We cant keep dealing with these issues in the past and I think we need a young generation of leaders.”

Up until that point, Haley had mostly couched her contrast with Trump in implicit rather than direct terms. 

For example, she hearkened back to a more peaceful time in American life when, she told the audience to nods, “Remember, there wasn’t chaos. You didn’t hold your breath turning on the news.”

Yet if Haley would be cast as a “moderate,” that seems to be a label she doesn’t want — perhaps because it is likely a ticket to defeat in today’s GOP.

She took the fight hard to President Biden, calling the recent Chinese spy balloon episode “a national embarrassment.” and the withdrawal from Afghanistan a “debacle.”

She gave a mild nod of acknowledgment to Biden’s current trip to Poland and Ukraine but asked rhetorically “Shouldn’t he be with those people in Ohio?” 

She was alluding to the recent train derailment in East Palestine, after which residents have complained of a host of health symptoms — and the Biden administration has faced criticism for not sending more high-level officials to visit sooner.

Source: TEST FEED1

How the Ukraine war has shaped Biden’s presidency

As the war in Ukraine approaches the one year mark, it is proving to be a defining chapter of President Biden’s time in the White House.

At home, the ripple effects of the war have led to food shortages, higher prices and restricted supply chains while Ukrainian pleas for military aid have put Biden’s belief in bipartisanship to the test.

Russia’s aggression has also challenged running themes of Biden’s presidency: That democracies must band together to push back against autocratic leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin, that the U.S. must be a leader on the world stage, and that the U.S. government must work together to address global challenges.

With the war showing few signs of abating, it is sure to continue to shape Biden’s presidency for the next two years and possibly beyond, something the president himself acknowledged on Tuesday in Warsaw.

“As we gather tonight, the world in my view is at an inflection point. The decisions we make over the next five years or so are going to determine and shape our lives for decades to come,” Biden told a crowd of thousands from the Royal Castle. “That’s true for America, that’s true for the people of the world. And while the decisions are ours to make now, the principles and the stakes are eternal.”

Biden’s presidency has been in many ways consumed by the war in Ukraine since Russia first launched its unprovoked invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.

Domestically, the ripple effects of the war have been widespread. Gas prices rose as the U.S. and its allies banned imports of Russian oil. Sanctions on Russia metals and minerals rattled supply chains globally, fueling concerns about a global recession as the price of goods increased. A Russian blockade of grain exports from Ukraine last year contributed to higher food prices.

The war forced Biden and his team to recalibrate its relationship with Saudi Arabia after declaring the Kingdom to be a “pariah” on the campaign trail as the U.S. looked for ways to stabilize oil costs. It led to releases of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and actions to ramp up domestic grain production.

It also led to a groundswell of bipartisan support for Ukraine aid at a time when Congress is typically polarized, with lawmakers approving $113 billion dollars in military, economic and humanitarian assistance for the war-torn country during 2022.

Some of the most striking images of Biden’s presidency to date have stemmed from the war in Ukraine, whether it was of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arriving at the White House last December, or of Biden donning his aviator sunglasses as he strolled up to shake Zelensky’s hand upon arriving in Kyiv on Monday.

If the war has made an imprint on Biden’s domestic agenda, it has redefined his foreign policy legacy.

A chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2021 led to a drop in Biden’s approval ratings, and it left some voters and foreign leaders questioning whether the president could deliver on his campaign pledge to restore America’s standing in the world after four tumultuous years during the Trump administration.

A year after Russia first invaded Ukraine, Biden’s response has reshaped America’s place as a leader on the global stage. 

The president has convened dozens of calls with Group of Seven (G-7) and NATO allies and spoken of the importance of maintaining those alliances. He has helped juggle the various interests of European allies that are reliant on Russian energy to rollout sanctions, and his administration has coordinated with other nations to provide military equipment like tanks in unison so it is viewed as a coalition-wide effort

“I think it has allowed him to play the role of statesman and demonstrate some American leadership in trying to hold together our allies on a strong position on Ukraine,” said Brett Bruen, a former diplomat and Obama administration official. “At the same time, I think it also serves as an opportunity for Biden, as we heard a little bit during the State of the Union, to point to and to brandish his bipartisan credentials.”

Biden himself has spoken about the larger implications of the war that will shape not just his agenda, but the future of global democracies and autocracies, a struggle that the president has highlighted whether talking about the need to confront Russia and China, or the events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“The defense of freedom is not a work of a day or a year,” Biden said Tuesday.

The president acknowledged the war in Ukraine will have bitter days ahead, and that it will require continued support from the United States and its allies at a time when some outspoken Republicans are questioning Biden’s focus on the war in Europe and domestic support for the war appears to be wavering.

An Associated Press poll released last week found 48 percent of those surveyed support the U.S. providing weapons to Ukraine, down from 60 percent in May 2022. The poll also found 56 percent of Americans have either a great deal or some confidence in Biden’s ability to handle the situation, while 43 percent said they had hardly any confidence.

But there is a sense among current and former government officials that Biden will be hard pressed to find a more consequential global event during his first term than the conflict in Ukraine, which is Europe’s largest land war since World War II.

“I think it is the defining part of his leadership on the world stage,” said Matt Bennett, a co-founder of the centrist think tank Third Way. “I think because he developed such an extraordinary legislative record that’s going to be an enormous part of his legacy as well. But there’s no doubt his handling of Ukraine will define who he was as a global leader.”

Source: TEST FEED1

What Putin’s speech reveals about his plans in Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin began his address before Russia’s parliament on Tuesday by underlining the stakes of his war in Ukraine.

“This is a time of radical, irreversible change in the entire world, of crucial historical events that will determine the future of our country and our people, a time when every one of us bears a colossal responsibility,” he told gathered lawmakers. 

Many of the headlines coming out of his speech focused on his announcement that Russia would unilaterally suspend its involvement in the last remaining nuclear treaty with the United States — a move that further stoked nuclear anxiety in the West. 

But the speech also offered indications of how the Russian leader might handle the second year of the war he started on Feb. 24, 2022, and how he is seeking to shape the narrative to his domestic audience and the world. 

“This is the closest to a true wartime speech that we have heard so far,” said Daniel Goure, a defense expert and senior vice president at the Lexington Institute, a public policy think tank. 

And Putin is no longer framing his fight as a special operation to liberate Ukraine, he is now casting it as an existential war against Western civilization. 

“This came closest to sort of saying it’s them versus us,” added Goure. 

Clash of civilizations

“The Western elite make no secret of their goal, which is, I quote, ‘Russia’s strategic defeat.’” Putin said Tuesday.

“What does this mean to us? This means they plan to finish us once and for all,” he said. “In other words, they plan to grow a local conflict into a global confrontation. This is how we understand it and we will respond accordingly, because this represents an existential threat to our country.”

This sweeping framing of the war — blaming imperial America and its allies for starting the war despite supposed Russian efforts at peace — gives Putin much-needed political cover as he gears up for a long fight, experts said. 

The Russian leader set early expectations that his special operations would take a matter of days. He now needs to justify an all-out war that has cost thousands of lives, isolated Russia internationally and promises months or years of additional pain. 

The case for sending Russian soldiers to die is much stronger if Putin says “look, this is defending not just Russians in Ukraine, or even the Russian border, this is defending the culture. This is defending the [Russians] against the pollution from the west,” said Goure. 

Putin also needs to explain why Russia’s war effort is flailing, after a year in which Moscow’s troops made early gains but have been on a monthslong losing streak, noted Andres Kasekamp, a political science professor at the University of Toronto who studies the war.

“So he’s trying to explain that, ‘No, no, we’re fighting the entire West. That’s why it’s so difficult.’ So that’s a domestic narrative,” he said. 

Internationally, blaming the West, and specifically the U.S., for the war helps muddy the diplomatic waters and might help convince some countries in Africa, Asia and Latin American to maintain a neutral stance, rather than denouncing Russia’s aggression, he added. 

“It helps to reach that non-western global audience who might be anti-Western in their perception,” Kasekamp said. 

Nuclear blackmail

Kasekamp described Putin’s address as “largely rehashing all of the same old grievances,” and noted he made no attempt to apologize for his failures or signal an openness for dialogue or changing course.

The only “new information” in the speech was his announcement that Russia would suspend its participation in the Nuclear START treaty, a post-Cold War agreement that was already effectively paused due to the Ukraine war. 

Kasekamp called the announcement “bluster and trying to push the one button that he thinks that for U.S. policymakers, he can get their kind of attention and irritate them.”

Leon Aron, a Russia expert at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), said nuclear blackmail is the only tool Putin has left. 

“As Russia sinks deeper and deeper into this quagmire of the war in Ukraine — it’s a war of attrition and a bloody slog — what’s left is nuclear weapons. And it appears that’s Russia’s only effective way of influencing both that war, but broader relationship with the West,” he said. 

While Putin has been rattling his nuclear saber since before the war started, Aron say his suspension of the START treaty was a concrete move meant to back up his nuclear blackmail. 

“Essentially he buried arms control,” Aron said. “Why would he do this? Well…he knows that he cannot sustain an indefinitely longer war, and he has to end it one way or another. That is when I think the nuclear blackmail is going to be deployed.”

What that looks like is less clear. Aron wrote an article for the National Review last week raising the possibility that Putin could invade another country in a bid to force a negotiated settlement in Ukraine. 

Would Putin actually use a nuclear weapon, or just ramp up the threat?

“I hope he’s not mad,” Aron said. “But certainly it makes it plausible that he would resort to, one way or another, kind of a very real nuclear blackmail.”

So far, Putin’s nuclear saber rattling has worked — with the U.S. and its Western allies engaging in what Kasekamp called “self-deterrence,” waiting months before providing lethal weapons out of fear of provoking Putin. 

And each additional weapon — air defense systems, long-range missiles, tanks and now jets — spurs a new debate around the same fear of escalation, with Russia’s nukes as the backdrop.

Preparing for a long war

Short of the nuclear option, Putin’s strategy appears to be maintaining the current war of attrition, and encouraging Russians to adapt to their new reality.  

In his address, he boasted that Western sanctions were failing to cripple Russia’s economy, with agricultural production up and unemployment down. And he sent a message to businesspeople who may still yearn for a “comfortable place abroad.”

“There is another option: to stay with your Motherland, to work for your compatriots, not only to open new businesses but also to change life around you in cities, towns and throughout your country.”

With President Biden delivering his own address Tuesday promising to stand with Ukraine until the end, Putin sent his own message of undying commitment to the fight. 

“His game plan has always been that he thinks that he can outlast the West,” said Kasekamp. “He has always thought that OK, I’m taking great losses now, but the unity of the West is fickle.”

And while Biden may have the resolve to support Ukraine for the long haul, that could quickly change if a Republican wins the White House in 2024, or if NATO unity breaks due to changes in other countries.

“Governments come and go in the West, and Putin’s staying forever, in his own mind,” Kasekamp added. 

All three experts who spoke to The Hill were hopeful that this dynamic would push the West to drop its self-imposed limitations on support to Ukraine and help Kyiv win the war — realizing that the status quo ensures a continued slog with neither side gaining an upper hand. 

“Russia has to lose and has to lose big,” said Kasekamp. 

Goure said he believed the Biden administration was coming around to similar thinking. 

“This is rapidly coming to a point where…politically, certainly this administration will not be able to stand a negotiated settlement, to split the baby down the middle,” he said. “So that’s the reason I’m expecting to see the next round of advanced weapons being sent by the summer.”

Source: TEST FEED1

McClellan becomes Virginia's first Black woman elected to Congress

State Sen. Jennifer McClellan (D) was projected to defeat Republican Leon Benjamin in the special election for Virginia’s 4th congressional district on Tuesday, becoming the first Black woman to represent the commonwealth in Congress. 

The Associated Press called the race at 7:22 p.m. ET.

McClellan will replace the late Rep. Don McEachin (D-Va.), who died in November. 

The district spans between Richmond and the North Carolina state line. The state senator was favored to win the special election, which the Cook Political Report rates as heavily Democratic.

McClellan was backed by influential Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), former House Democratic Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), along with every Democrat from Virginia’s congressional delegation. 

She handily won the party’s primary for the seat in December, receiving 84 percent of the votes. Early voting kicked off in the district last month and wrapped on Saturday. 

The state senator turned congresswoman-elect was first elected to Virginia’s House of Delegates in 2006 and was elected to the state Senate in 2017. In 2021, she ran in Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial primary but came in third place behind Delegate Jennifer Carroll Foy and 2021 nominee and former Gov. Terry McAuliffe. If either had won the primary, McClellan and Carroll Foy would have been the first Black woman to serve as governor of the Commonwealth. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Russia’s suspension of nuclear pact brings US into new era of arms control

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s suspension of the last major nuclear arms treaty with the U.S. has shifted both nations into a more volatile era of engagement on weapons of mass destruction.

The threat of a nuclear conflict still remains low, according to international security analysts, even with the war in Ukraine and the now-suspended New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).

But the latest nuclear saber-rattling from the Kremlin once again raised the alarm and spiked fears that tensions are spiraling out of control.

Alicia Sanders-Zakre, a policy and research coordinator with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, said this was a “dangerous and reckless move by Putin when tensions are already at the highest level.”

“This is the latest in a series of reckless, irresponsible, dangerous nuclear rhetoric coming from Russia, including explicit nuclear threats that have really led to elevated levels of nuclear risks,” Sanders-Zakre said, calling for a “global condemnation of any threats to use nuclear weapons.”

In his address to the Russian Federal Assembly, Putin slammed Western allies and NATO, accusing them of seeking to defeat Russia and of “hypocrisy and cynicism” for supplying Ukraine with weapons to attack Russian forces.

“And now they want to inspect our defense facilities?” Putin asked. “In the conditions of today’s confrontation, it sounds like sheer nonsense.”

The U.S. has condemned the decision to suspend New START. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the move “deeply unfortunate and irresponsible” during a Tuesday briefing but added that the Biden administration remains open to dialogue.

“We remain ready to talk about strategic arms limitations at any time with Russia irrespective of anything else going on in the world or in our relationship,” Blinken said. “It matters that we continue to act responsibly in this area. It’s also something the rest of the world expects of us.”

The New START treaty, first signed in 2010 during the Obama administration, caps both nations at 1,550 nuclear warheads and 700 missiles and bombers while also allowing members of both nations to inspect nuclear sites and facilities to ensure compliance.

The treaty was extended in 2021 for another five years, meaning it will now expire in 2026 unless extended. Putin has suspended the treaty but has not fully withdrawn from it — an important distinction.

Treaty inspections were paused during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but a bilateral commission was scheduled for November to resume the regulatory activity.

Moscow unilaterally postponed the November meeting and never gave any indication the talks would be rescheduled.

Last month, the Biden administration accused Russia of violating the treaty’s accords for the first time.

During his Tuesday address, Putin argued that Russia has been locked out of inspecting some U.S. nuclear facilities.

Just hours after his speech, the Russian Foreign Ministry said it would respect the caps on the number of nuclear weapons included in the treaty, Russian state media outlet TASS reported, and would continue to exchange information regarding test launches of ballistic missiles.

Monica Montgomery, a policy analyst with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, said she viewed Putin’s announcement as a formalization of recent developments to halt the nuclear pact.

Amid numerous setbacks in the war in Ukraine, Putin is using the fear of nuclear warfare in a bid to get the U.S. and NATO to back down from continued support, Montgomery assessed.

“It’s all about Putin trying to save face … and find a way to continue to advance in Ukraine,” Montgomery said. “Putin is taking one of the last things that is still out there that is in the mutual interest of both countries.”

With the pact now suspended, the U.S. will have to shift into a strategy of surveillance in order to keep up with the nuclear developments in Russia.

But those surveillance methods, often tracked via orbiting satellites, are not nearly as effective as in-person inspections, bilateral talks and cooperative engagement.

Matthew Schmidt, an associate professor of national security, international affairs and political science at the University of New Haven, said the U.S. may have to increase its vigilance.

“The response the U.S. is going to make is to use our technical capabilities to increase monitoring,” Schmidt predicted.

The war in Ukraine has already pushed the Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds from midnight, the closest it’s ever been to the point of Armageddon.

By suspending New START, Russia is also violating the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, according to the Arms Control Association.

The nonproliferation treaty is signed by 191 nation members, including five nuclear powers that commit to a good faith effort toward disarmament. It was enacted after the Cuban Missile Crisis and went into effect in 1970.

Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, blasted Russia for suspending New START and urged Moscow to return to a nuclear pact with the U.S.

“Putin’s ‘suspension’ of New START harms Russia’s own security interests,” Kimball said in a statement. “Absent full implementation of treaty provisions, Moscow gains less insight and information regarding the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal.”

Montgomery, from the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, said the suspension also raises the risk of nuclear weapons being used for political and military ploys across the world, particularly from ascending nuclear powers like North Korea and Iran.

“Russia as a nuclear power and a member of the Non-Proliferation treaty is showing other countries that nuclear weapons can be used as a tool to carry out reckless military and political aims,” Montgomery said. 

“Russia right now is setting an example that nuclear arms control is not a priority,” she continued, and “they would risk tearing down one of the last remaining pillars of the arms control [treaty] at the expense of carrying out the war of aggression in Ukraine.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Jeffries slams providing Fox with Jan. 6 footage as 'egregious security breach'

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) slammed Republicans providing Fox News with footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection as an “egregious security beach.” 

Jeffries said in a letter to his Democratic colleagues in the House that officials are trying to confirm the “precise nature” of the transfer of videos from the attack. 

“The apparent transfer of video footage represents an egregious security breach that endangers the hardworking women and men of the United States Capitol Police, who valiantly defended our democracy with their lives at risk on that fateful day,” he said. 

The New York Democrat’s letter came after reports surfaced that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) provided Tucker Carlson and his team access to 41,000 hours of surveillance footage from the U.S. Capitol around the time that the riot happened. 

Carlson has repeatedly questioned the events that led up to the attack and that happened during the day. 

Jeffries said the Democratic Caucus will hear from Reps. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), the ranking member on the House Administration Committee, and Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) — who served as the chairman of the House select committee that investigated Jan. 6 attack — during a virtual meeting scheduled for Wednesday at 2 p.m. 

Thompson denounced the release of the footage in a statement on Monday, saying that “It’s hard to overstate the potential security risks if this material were to be used irresponsibly.” 

“Over the past two years, the bipartisan Members of the January 6th Committee were able to diligently review the security footage in question, with numerous protocols in place to protect the safety of the Members, police officers and staff who were targeted during the violent insurrection,” he said. “There is no indication that these same precautionary measures have been taken in connection with the transmission of the video footage at issue.” 

McCarthy said during a press conference last month that he wanted to provide additional footage of the insurrection to the public and accused Democrats of politicizing the committee’s investigation. 

Jeffries said the disclosure of the material seems to be “yet another example of the grave threat to security” that the “extreme MAGA Republican majority” poses.

Source: TEST FEED1

Justices puzzled as Supreme Court hears arguments over internet liability shield

The Supreme Court grappled with the scope of a liability shield for internet companies on Tuesday, at times expressing confusion about arguments to narrow the industry’s protections as they probed how it could impact the internet.

Their skepticism came during oral arguments in Gonzalez v. Google, a case brought by the family of U.S. citizen Nohemi Gonzalez, who was killed during an 2015 ISIS attack in Paris, for YouTube’s purported recommendations of pro-ISIS videos.

A number of the justices appeared frustrated at the arguments of Eric Schnapper, the attorney representing the Gonzalez family who argued Google should not be protected by Section 230.

“I guess I’m thoroughly confused,” liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told Schnapper.

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, the only justice to have previously expressed doubts about the breadth of Section 230’s protections publicly, similarly expressed confusion and in the early moments of the argument said Schnapper needed to give the justices a “clearer point.”

“These are not, like, the nine greatest experts on the internet,” liberal Justice Elena Kagan later quipped.

Section 230 is a provision of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that prevents internet companies, including giants like Google and Facebook as well as smaller services, from being held liable for content posted by third parties. But the case before the court focused particularly on if those protections should apply to how companies create and deploy algorithmic recommendation systems. 

Lisa Blatt, who represented Google, said the protections provided under Section 230 “created today’s internet” and have allowed tech companies to innovate.

Blatt argued that algorithmic recommendations are essential for companies to organize massive amounts of third-party content, and she asserted that not protecting recommendations would expose internet companies to constant litigation and run smaller firms into the ground.

Undoing Section 230 could make the internet a “’Truman Show’ vs. a horror show,” with “anodyne, cartoon-like” content or violent hate speech, Blatt said.

“And Congress would not have achieved its purpose,” she added.

When Kagan asked Blatt if Section 230 protections only apply because YouTube’s recommendation algorithm was neutral, Blatt said Section 230 would also protect algorithms developed with more nefarious purposes.

But Jackson repeatedly stressed Congress’ intent in passing Section 230, saying they did so to protect internet companies that take down third-party content in good faith.

“You’re saying the protection extends to internet platforms that are promoting offensive material. So it suggests to me that it is exactly the opposite of what Congress was trying to do in the statute,” Jackson told Blatt.

Justices also questioned whether they are the proper body to make changes to Section 230, appearing wary of the implications of narrowing the protections. 

“I take the point that there are a lot of algorithms that are not going to produce pro-ISIS content and that won’t create a problem under this statute. But maybe they’ll produce defamatory content or maybe they’ll produce content that violates some other law. And your argument can’t be limited to this one statute,” Kagan said. 

Justice Amy Coney Barrett questioned whether the court could instead send the case back to the lower courts depending on the outcome in a case set to be argued on Wednesday. 

That case, Twitter v. Taamneh, will interpret the anti-terrorism law that the Gonzalez family believes makes Google liable in the first place. The justices could instead ask the lower court to first consider Google’s underlying liability to see if the Section 230 protections are even needed.

But despite attacks from both sides of the aisle, any changes to Section 230 are likely to happen in the court rather than Congress, because Democrats and Republicans are approaching the issue from nearly opposite sides, making it more difficult for legislative change. 

Democrats have said Section 230 provides protections that allow companies to host too much misinformation or hate speech, whereas Republicans have said it protects companies from being able to censor content with an anti-conservative bias as the GOP has broadly alleged. 

Updated 2:55 p.m.

Source: TEST FEED1

EPA to require Norfolk Southern to clean up chemicals after Ohio train derailment

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is ordering Norfolk Southern to clean up and pay for the cleanup costs after one of its trains derailed and spilled chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio. 

The legally binding order will require the company to identify and clean up contaminated soil and water, reimburse the EPA for the cleaning that it is doing and attend public meetings at the agency’s request, according to a press release from the agency.

The train derailment spilled a number of chemicals into the area, including a carcinogen called vinyl chloride that is used to make plastic. 

Officials temporarily evacuated the area, but have since said it is safe to return. Many community members, however, continue to express concerns about the air and water quality since the incident.

“Norfolk Southern will pay for cleaning up the mess that they created and the trauma that they inflicted on this community,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said during a press conference on Tuesday.

Under the newly announced order, the EPA will approve a work plan outlining the steps needed to clean up the environmental damage that the derailment caused. If Norfolk Southern doesn’t abide by the plan, the EPA will do the work and charge the company triple the cost. 

The statement from the EPA said that this order marks a transition in response efforts from an emergency phase to a long-term cleanup phase. 

The Hill has reached out to Norfolk Southern for comment.

Updated at 12:51 p.m.

Source: TEST FEED1