TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
The President and Chilling Free Speech
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Heather Nauert withdraws from consideration
for UN ambassador nomination,
State Department says
by Elizabeth Zwirz
{foxnews.com} ~ State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert withdrew her name from consideration for the U.N. ambassador nomination, the department said Saturday... “I am grateful to President Trump and Secretary Mike Pompeo for the trust they placed in me for considering me for the position of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations," Nauer said in the statement. "However, the past two months have been grueling for my family and therefore it is in the best interest of my family that I withdraw my name from consideration. She went on to describe her time working in the administration as being "one of the highest honors of my life." A State Department source told Fox News that the process, on top of traveling around the world and between Washington D.C., and New York to see family, grew to be too much. Trump -- who picked Nauert to succeed Ambassador Nikki Haley in December -- will make an announcement "soon" about a nominee for the position, the State Department said...TCC Fighting Back against Pulosi and House
Liberals Who Have Launched Their
Campaign to Harass and Impeach Trump
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President Trump is Slowly Stopping
The Exfiltration of American Wealth
by sundance.
There are Trillions at Stake
by sundance.
Arkansas State Director credits "unbelievable
grace of God" and "unquenchable
patriotic spirit" for victory
by Bud Cornwell
{conventionofstates.com} ~ After six years of dedicated work by our Convention of States supporters and leaders, we have passed both legislative bodies in Arkansas. Arkansas is now the 13th State to pass the Article V resolution... to rein in the federal government and give the power back to the people. The road was very hard and politically challenging for our legislators and supporters. Our leadership over a 6-year period changed many times. We had four State Directors and many district captains leave the organization causing the movement to slow drastically many times. However, a corps of dedicated patriots kept the momentum going which was a deciding factor in growing the grassroots army necessary to convince the legislators that “We the People” in Arkansas have the power. We grew from 1200 supporters in 2015 to over 17,000 in 2019, which was the determining factor to get the resolution passed. To make it over the finish line this year, Regional and District Captains performed hand written letter parties all over the state and we delivered them directly to the legislators. We also provided the legislators more hand-written letters and a printout list of their supporters in the chamber while they were voting on the resolution. We used a state slogan during presentations and meetings: "They knew it then, so we could do something now.” The Founders created and built a country based on biblical principles and the inalienable rights give to us by God. They gave us the Convention of States option in Article V of the Constitution to use in times like these, and we called attention to this fact to reach patriotic Arkansas residents and combat misinformation by those opposed to the Founders' solution....
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The President and Chilling Free Speech
by Judge Andrew Napolitano
{townhall.com} ~ While the public discourse has been consumed over the realization that abortion physicians actually let viable babies who survive late-term abortions die -- as well as whether President Donald Trump or House Speaker Nancy Pulosi will blink first over the issue of congressional authorization for building a wall at the country's southern border, to say nothing of the race- and sex-infused mess at the top of the government in Virginia -- a profound free speech issue has been bubbling below the radar.
A former White House communications aide and former Trump campaign adviser who has written a blistering tell-all book about the Trump White House now finds himself in litigation about whether he can freely publish his book -- which he has already done -- and freely profit from it.
The former Trump friend and colleague is Cliff Sims, and his book is called "Team of Vipers." It makes Chris Christie's book about his bitter experiences with those around the president look as if it were written by Mother Teresa by comparison. The president and his folks, who knew of the book before it was published, apparently bristled at the stories related and allegations contained and opinions expressed in it.
This is an unhappy tale, not with regard to accuracy or fairness in reporting but with regard to the doctrine of fair comment and the natural and constitutional right to the freedom of speech. Here is the back story.
When Sims began his time as an official of the Trump campaign, he signed a nondisclosure agreement, or NDA. NDAs typically bar the revelation of information gathered during one's employment. They were nearly universal in the Trump campaign.
Sims' NDA also provided that if there was any dispute between him and the campaign over the meaning of the NDA or whether he or the campaign violated it, that dispute would be resolved in secret arbitration, not in a public courtroom in front of a judge and jury. The NDA further provided for liquidated damages -- a pre-agreed-upon amount of money that Sims would owe to the campaign if arbitrators found that he violated the NDA.
What about the freedom of speech and the right to a fair trial? The theory of an NDA is that the signer has knowingly waived those rights in return for the employment contemplated by the NDA. This is a quid pro quo. You get hired at a job you want; you get the pay and perks you sought; you agree to keep silent the secrets you learn. And if there is a dispute about what you can say and to whom you can say it, the dispute itself will be resolved in secret because you agreed to that in the NDA. If the arbitrators find that you violated the NDA, you owe a certain amount of money to the other party -- in this case, $10 million to the Trump campaign -- whether you caused damages in that amount or not.
That is at least the theory of how these NDAs are supposed to work. The courts do not favor these agreements, because they often stifle free speech -- and often it is speech in which there is a material and serious public interest. Yet as they are between private parties, NDAs are enforceable.
In this case, the speech is about Trump -- not as a candidate but as the president. So after Sims' book was published and after the folks in the West Wing, where he worked for a year, read what he wrote, the Trump campaign -- it still has a skeleton staff and lawyers on the payroll -- filed a complaint with the designated arbitration entity, demanding the liquidated damages of $10 million.
Then Sims' lawyers filed a complaint in federal district court, asking a judge to enjoin the arbitration proceeding because what Sims' wrote he learned about while working for the government, not on the campaign. The campaign will no doubt point to an NDA it claims Sims signed when he began his tenure in the West Wing and argue that it applies as effectively as the NDA he signed for the campaign. Sims recalls no NDA at the White House.
Here is the problem for Trump. The campaign is not subject to the First Amendment, but the White House clearly is. Even if Sims did sign an NDA at the White House, the First Amendment bars the government from enforcing it, and several federal statutes protect whistleblowers, no matter what they agreed not to say at the outset of their work, unless it is classified material being protected. In the West Wing, Sims worked for the federal government, not Donald Trump personally and not the campaign.
Can the government punish speech of someone who agreed to remain silent? In a word: No. It cannot deter speech, and it cannot chill speech. Chilling takes place when government behavior is so oppressive that the potential speaker is afraid to speak about what he knows.
And if the speech is comment about public people or public policy, it is protected by the doctrine of fair comment. That is a Supreme Court rubric underscoring the truism that the whole purpose of the First Amendment is to protect and encourage open, wide, robust speech about the government -- speech that sheds light on dark government corners, speech that is unafraid of and immune from the slightest whiff of government redress, speech that can be harsh in tone and discomfiting in delivery.
It is that brand of public free speech that the Framers intended to protect by the First Amendment. As one of President Trump's no-holds-barred predecessors famously said, "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."
If presidents can use legal artifices to punish the speech they hate and fear, they are no longer presidents in a free society. They are princes in an empire.
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