California Governor Newsom wants to outlaw all political speech annoying to himself. If legislation he’s just signed is allowed to stand, he’ll be well on the way to doing so.
One target of California’s two new laws, the Babylon Bee, is filing suit against them.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents the Bee, says that the subjects of the lawsuit, California’s AB2839 and AB265, “censor speech through subjective standards like prohibiting pictures and videos ‘likely to harm’ a candidate’s ‘electoral prospects.’… AB 2655 applies to large online platforms and requires them to sometimes label, and other times remove, posts with ‘materially deceptive content.’”
Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon observes that, contrary to the wishes of “self-serving politicians [who] abuse their power to try and control public discourse and clamp down on comedy,” the right to tell jokes they dislike is secured by the First Amendment.
The vague nature of the laws would enable California officials to “police speech they disagree with,” according to ADF and Captain Obvious.
One of the laws requires a disclaimer to be attached to satirical content, a mandate that also violates the First Amendment.
The immediate incentive for fast-tracking the censorship bills into law was a parody video of Kamala Harris that includes a simulation of her voice. The video does bill itself as parody but that is obvious regardless. This video “should be illegal,” Newsom asseverated.
No, it shouldn’t.
Anyway, watch the hilarity on YouTube … while you can.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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