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For Immediate Release
August, 27 2020, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Timothy Karr: 201-533-8838,,tkarr@freepress.net
Free Press and Allies File Lawsuit Challenging Trump's Executive Order Against Social-Media Companies
On Thursday, Free Press joined Common Cause, Maplight, Rock the Vote and Voto Latino as plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's May 28 executive order that seeks to punish social-media companies for fact checking the president's online posts.
The administration's order was in direct response to Twitter adding a factual correction to one of the president's tweets about mail-in voting. The order threatens online platforms with a loss of liability protections, among other ramifications, should they fact check Trump's statements.
WASHINGTON
On Thursday, Free Press joined Common Cause, Maplight, Rock the Vote and Voto Latino as plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's May 28 executive order that seeks to punish social-media companies for fact checking the president's online posts.
The administration's order was in direct response to Twitter adding a factual correction to one of the president's tweets about mail-in voting. The order threatens online platforms with a loss of liability protections, among other ramifications, should they fact check Trump's statements.
Those protections stem from Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a federal law that generally shields social-media platforms and other websites from liability for the material their users post online. In doing so, the law also protects platforms' ability to moderate content on their websites as those sites themselves see fit. Free Press has repeatedly warned against many recent congressional and FCC efforts to eradicate or undermine Section 230's vital online-speech protections.
In the court complaint filed today, the five organizations state that Trump's executive order--which effectively encourages the spread of harmful disinformation about voting rights, racial-justice protests, COVID-19 treatment and other vital issues--flies in the face of these groups' missions. The order would require Free Press and the other groups to divert scarce resources to combat the dangerous spread of disinformation.
"Online platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram (all targeted by name in the executive order) have First Amendment rights to ensure that accurate information--including about how to register to vote and successfully cast a ballot by Election Day--is not undermined by misinformation on their platforms," the plaintiffs state in the complaint (available here).
Plaintiffs are represented in their suit by legal counsel at Protect Democracy, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Cooley LLP.
Free Press Vice President of Policy and General Counsel Matt Wood made the following statement:
Censorship is when the government tries to silence people--especially those the government disagrees with. President Trump's preposterous executive order on social media gets it entirely backwards, claiming that private parties are censoring him. He's simply trying to bully into silence Twitter and any other social-media site that attempts to correct his lies and disinformation. This is exactly the kind of abuse of power that the Constitution and the First Amendment were written to prevent.
Preserving Section 230 is key to preserving free expression on the internet, and to making it free for all-- not just for the privileged few or for the president's pronouncements. Section 230 lowers barriers for people to post their ideas online, but it also makes possible the content-moderation choices that platforms have the right to make. It is plainly illegal for this administration to threaten that law's protections in retaliation for fact checks and other contextualizing remarks made by the private platforms that Trump abuses.
Trump's authoritarian actions are shameful and, as our lawsuit makes clear, they violate the First Amendment rights of online platforms to curate content as they see fit. The order also infringes on the rights of organizations like Free Press to receive information that corrects or contextualizes inaccurate and harmful statements.
Constantly correcting the record, calling out harmful hate speech and combating official propaganda comes at a cost to social-justice organizations like ours. Trump's executive order is yet another dictatorial action from a president who abuses the power of his office to intimidate and silence media companies, journalists, activists and anyone else who criticizes or corrects him.
Free Press was created to give people a voice in the crucial decisions that shape our media. We believe that positive social change, racial justice and meaningful engagement in public life require equitable access to technology, diverse and independent ownership of media platforms, and journalism that holds leaders accountable and tells people what's actually happening in their communities.
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ICC Collecting War Crimes Evidence Against Sudanese Militia After Darfur Massacre
The court said the actions of Sudan's Rapid Support Forces, who are backed by a US ally in the UAE, "may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity."
Nov 04, 2025
The International Criminal Court said it is collecting and preserving evidence of war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region following a massacre committed by a militia group and amid reports of widespread starvation.
In a statement published Monday, the ICC—the international body charged with prosecuting crimes against humanity—expressed "profound alarm and deepest concern over recent reports emerging from El-Fasher about mass killings, rapes, and other crimes" allegedly committed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which breached the city last week.
According to the Sudan Doctors Network (SDN), a medical organization monitoring the country's brutal civil war, the militants slaughtered more than 1,500 people in just three days after capturing El-Fasher, among them more than 460 people who were systematically shot at the city's Saudi Maternity Hospital.
The ICC said that "such acts, if substantiated, may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute," the court's founding treaty, which lays out the definitions for acts including genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
The court said it was "taking immediate steps regarding the alleged crimes in El-Fasher to preserve and collect relevant evidence for its use in future prosecutions."
The announcement comes shortly following a new report from the UN-affiliated Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the world's leading authority on hunger crises, which found that famine has been detected in El-Fasher and the town of Kadugli in Sudan's South Kordofan province. Twenty other localities in the two provinces—which have seen some of the civil war's worst fighting—are also in danger of famine, according to the report.
The two areas have suffered under siege from the RSF paramilitary, which has cut off access to food, water, and medical care. The IPC says it has led to the "total collapse of livelihoods, starvation, extremely high levels of malnutrition and death."
According to the UN's migration authority, nearly 37,000 people have been forced to flee cities across North Kordofan between October 26 and 31. They joined more than 650,000 displaced people who were already taking refuge in North Darfur's city of Tawila.
Sudan's civil war, which began in 2023, has created the world's largest humanitarian crisis, with potentially as many as 150,000 people killed since it began. Over 12 million people have been displaced, and 30.4 million people, over half of Sudan’s total population, are in need of humanitarian support.
The recent escalation of the crisis has led to heightened global scrutiny of RSF's chief financier, the United Arab Emirates. In recent days, US politicians and activists have called for the Trump administration to halt military assistance to the Gulf state, which it sold $1.4 billion in military aircraft in May.
On Tuesday, Emirati diplomats admitted for the first time that they "made a mistake" supporting the RSF as it attempted to undermine Sudan's transitional democratic government, which took power in 2019 after over three decades of rule by the Islamist-aligned dictator Omar al-Bashir. Those efforts culminated in a military coup in 2021 and an eventual power struggle for control over the country.
However, as Sudanese journalist Nesrine Malik wrote in The Guardian on Monday, the UAE "continues to deny its role, despite overwhelming evidence."
"The UAE secures a foothold in a large, strategic, resource-rich country, and already receives the majority of gold mined in RSF-controlled areas," Malik wrote. "Other actors have been drawn in, overlaying proxy agendas on a domestic conflict. The result is deadlock, quagmire, and blood loss that seems impossible to stem, even as the crisis unravels in full view."
"Sudan’s war is described as forgotten, but in reality it is tolerated and relegated," she continued. "Because to reckon with the horror in Sudan... is to see the growing imperialist role of some Gulf powers in Africa and beyond—and to acknowledge the fact that no meaningful pressure is applied to these powers, including the UAE, to cease and desist from supporting a genocidal militia because the UK, US, and others are close allies with these states."
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SNAP Beneficiaries ‘Dumbfounded by the Cruelty’ of Trump Holding Crucial Food Program Hostage
"If I have money left over, then I will eat."
Nov 04, 2025
Beneficiaries of federal food aid are expressing anger and bewilderment at the Trump administration's efforts to use the program as a hostage to end the current shutdown of the federal government.
On Monday, the Trump administration said that it would partially restart funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in the wake of two district court rulings mandating that the administration use emergency funds set up by Congress to continue the program.
The administration said that it would only fund around 50% of the $8 billion in total monthly benefits, while also warning that there could be delays before SNAP beneficiaries are able to access the funds.
In interviews with The Guardian, several SNAP beneficiaries fumed that their ability to access food for themselves and their families is being used as a political football by the administration.
Wisconsin resident Betty Standridge, who had been relying on SNAP to afford food after being hospitalized, told The Guardian that, without the funds, "I will not be able to replenish my food for the month, therefore I will do without things like fresh produce, milk, eggs."
Donna Lynn, a disabled veteran who lives in Missouri, also said that she would have to make significant cuts to her budget if SNAP benefits were not replenished.
"It comes down to paying for my medications and my bills or buying food for myself and for my animals," she said. "So I pay for my medications and bills and get what food I can for my animals, and if I have money left over, then I will eat."
A Wisconsin retiree named Sandra, meanwhile, told The Guardian she feared that the administration was angling to permanently end SNAP even after the end of the government shutdown.
"I'm dumbfounded by the cruelty," she said.
Before the administration allowed more than 40 million people—nearly 40% of whom are children—to go without food assistance on November 1 and refused to use a contingency fund to keep SNAP running, the Republican Party passed roughly $186 billion in cuts to the program in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act this summer.
The bill expanded work requirements, shifted some of the cost of SNAP to the states, and restricted benefit increases, leaving millions of people vulnerable to losing their benefits.
Betty Szretter, a New York retiree whose daughter depends on SNAP benefits, told NBC News that she regrets voting for President Donald Trump in 2024, and said she's worried that his focus appears to be elsewhere—like the corporate-funded construction of a ballroom at the White House—rather than on helping people like her family.
“I think deep down he wants to help the country with things like food insecurity,” she said. “But now he is busy out of the country and demolishing the White House. I know that is being paid for with private funds, but those could be used to help people... It all seems very selfish."
CBS News on Tuesday interviewed a Baltimore resident named Kelly Lennox, who has been relying on SNAP for the last year-and-a-half after a car accident that required multiple surgeries left her unable to work. She said the halt of SNAP payments was a particularly harsh blow given that she's deep in medical debt in the wake of the accident.
Now, she says she'll have to rely on local food pantries to keep from going hungry.
"I'm going to have to make use of the pantries and work with their schedule, because if I use actual money for food, it takes away money I need to pay for my residential parking permit, gas, and union dues," she said.
Roughly 42 million people living in the US currently receive SNAP benefits, and The Washington Post estimates that SNAP payments account for 9% of all grocery sales in the US.
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'How Is That an Assault?' DC Residents Scoff as Trial Starts for Man Who Chucked Sandwich at Trump Agent
"I don't know how a DC jury would convict," said one resident who was not selected to serve on the jury.
Nov 04, 2025
The trial of Sean Dunn, a former Justice Department employee who threw a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection agent in protest in early August, began Monday, weeks after US Attorney Jeanine Pirro's office failed to secure a felony indictment.
Dunn, who is now facing a misdemeanor assault charge, has become a symbol of public resistance to and disdain for President Donald Trump's deployment of masked federal immigration agents to the streets of US cities.
DC residents who were not chosen to serve on the jury for the trial expressed deep skepticism that the latest attempt to indict Dunn would end any differently than the first.
"How is that an assault?” one DC woman asked of Dunn's sandwich throw, which was caught on video. Before hurling the sandwich, Dunn screamed at the agents and called them "fascists."
Another person who was not selected to serve on the jury told CNN that they "don't know how a DC jury would convict."
The trial is expected to be quick. The judge, Trump appointee Carl Nichols, called it "the simplest case in the world" and predicted a two-day trial.
Dunn's lawyers have argued in court that the Trump administration's prosecution attempts amount to "a blatant abuse of power."
"The federal government has chosen to bring a criminal case over conduct so minor it would be comical—were it not for the
unmistakable retaliatory motive behind it and the resulting risk to Mr. Dunn," Dunn's lawyers said. "Mr. Dunn tossed a sandwich at a fully armed, heavily protected Customs and Border Protection officer. That act alone would never have drawn a federal charge. What did was the political speech that accompanied it."
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