Vice President Kamala Harris celebrated 50 years of hip-hop’s influence on American arts and culture Saturday, honoring the genre’s prominent Black roots as the Democratic ticket seeks to retain the community’s support in their 2024 reelection bids.
“Hip-hop is the ultimate American art form,” Harris said at the event at her official residence, according to a pool report. “It tells the stories that don't make the news. But as the great Chuck D once said, rap is Black America's CNN. And by telling the truth, hip-hop calls us to action.”
Harris is one of the prominent standard bearers for rallying Black voters in the Democratic Party. Her role could prove crucial in the coming year with some polls showing the reelection bid is losing some support among Black people and other communities of color.
“Every day, vice president Harris is fighting for the people,” Harvey Mason, Jr., CEO of The Recording Academy, said at the event. “She's fighting for our people. Our vice president was rooted in hip-hop, and it's essential to who she is.”
The event, the first of its kind at the vice president's official residence where several hip-hop artists performed and politicians rubbed shoulders with entertainment industry executives, featured Harris speaking about the Biden administration commitment to the arts, especially hip-hop, in American life.
Harris's policy areas, including voting rights and the border, have proven challenging given the Democratic agenda’s tough odds in Congress over the past two years.
Recently she has pushed back forcefully on Florida’s contentious educational standards that she says whitewash Black history — a chorus that some Republicans have also joined.
Professing a love of hip-hop on its 50th milestone, though, should be an easy political winner.
“This is a hip-hop household!” Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff said.
NEW ORLEANS — A federal appeals court Friday significantly whittled down a lower court's order curbing Biden administration communications with social media companies over controversial content about COVID-19 and other issues.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Friday said the White House, the Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and the FBI cannot “coerce” social media platforms to take down posts the government doesn’t like.
But the court threw out broader language in an order that a Louisiana-based federal judge issued on July 4 that effectively blocked multiple government agencies from contacting platforms such as Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) to urge that content be taken down.
Even the appeals court’s softened order doesn’t take effect immediately. The administration has 10 days to seek a Supreme Court review.
Friday evening's ruling came in a lawsuit filed in northeast Louisiana that accused administration officials of coercing platforms to take down content under the threat of possible antitrust actions or changes to federal law shielding them from lawsuits over their users’ posts.
COVID-19 vaccines, the FBI’s handling of a laptop that belonged to President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and election fraud allegations were among the topics spotlighted in the lawsuit, which accused the administration of using threats of regulatory action to squelch conservative points of view.
The states of Missouri and Louisiana filed the lawsuit, along with a conservative website owner and four people opposed to the administration’s COVID-19 policy.
In an unsigned 75-page opinion, three 5th Circuit judges agreed with the plaintiffs that the administration “ran afoul of the First Amendment” by at times threatening social media platforms with antitrust action or changes to law protecting them from liability.
But the court excised much of U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty's broad July 4 ruling, saying mere encouragement to take down content doesn't always cross a constitutional line.
“As an initial matter, it is axiomatic that an injunction is overbroad if it enjoins a defendant from engaging in legal conduct. Nine of the preliminary injunction’s ten prohibitions risk doing just that. Moreover, many of the provisions are duplicative of each other and thus unnecessary,” Friday's ruling said.
The ruling also removed some agencies from the order: the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency and the State Department.
The case was heard by judges Jennifer Walker Elrod and Edith Brown Clement, nominated to the court by former President George W. Bush; and Don Willett, nominated by former President Donald Trump. Doughty was nominated to the federal bench by Trump.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision to run for reelection was shaped by what she called San Francisco’s “special needs,” but she made clear in an interview Friday that she was as motivated by fervent desire to reclaim the House majority and block former President Donald Trump’s return.
Speaking a few hours after she revealed her plans to supporters at a breakfast in her district, Pelosi told me the city’s difficulties rebounding from the pandemic were the “dispositive” factor in her seeking another term.
As she did when we spoke last month during a day I spent this summer with her in San Francisco, Pelosi veered between acknowledging the city’s challenges with homelessness, crime and business closures and complaining about its dire portrayal in the news media.
“The fact is, it’s contained, and we will deal with it, but it requires a special kind of attention,” she said, referring to the city’s unique set of challenges.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s frail condition and pending retirement, the recent departures of other California lawmakers and the ascent of two New Yorkers atop her party in Congress have been weighing on Pelosi as the 83-year-old weighed whether to run again. People close to her said that she could argue it both ways but that for weeks she seemed more persuaded to seek reelection.
And while Pelosi emphasized her driving motivation was to help San Francisco, without prompting Friday she brought up her recent trip to Italy, during which she gave a handful of speeches and met with high-ranking European officials.
“People there were so concerned about our democracy, as concerned about what happens if what’s-his-name ever would become president again in terms of Ukraine, in terms of NATO, in terms of the transatlantic alliance and the rest,” she said. “It was amazing, I mean, I was on the front page of the four leading newspapers of Italy because of their concern about all of this.”
Pelosi was, though, sensitive to the suggestion that she wanted to see through Trump’s second, and perhaps final, defeat for the presidency.
“My decisions in life are not predicated on his insanity,” she said, but quickly added that “it’s important to make sure that our flag is still there.”
That has been Pelosi’s watchword in recent weeks. It’s her favorite phrase from the National Anthem, the working title of a book she plans to write next year and her shorthand for confronting threats to American democracy.
It's also the title of the first video of her nascent reelection.
“It’s no secret that American democracy itself is on the line in 2024,” she says in the spot, adding: “Our country needs us to show the world that our flag is still there, with liberty and justice for all.”
The 36-year incumbent won’t say Trump’s name. But she’s animated about defeating him and reclaiming the House majority from her successor and fellow Californian, Speaker Kevin McCarthy, for whom her contempt is not even thinly veiled.
“I feel so excited about the prospect of engaging people in this, I don’t want to use the word fight, but this decision for our country,” she said. “I feel I have a leverage, an influence, it’s not power — you know, I had power as speaker — it’s influence and that I shouldn’t underutilize it.”
Less exciting is the parade of would-be congressmen and congresswomen in San Francisco who had already started plotting, and even raising money, in hopes she’d retire. Pelosi evinced little sympathy for them.
“Well, they never asked,” she said. “Nobody told them to go do what they were doing. They never asked. And in any event, upward and onward.”
Those would-be successors may not want to close their campaign accounts — or extend multi-year leases in Sacramento — just yet, however. When I asked Pelosi if she planned to serve a full term if reelected, she left ample room to step down early.
“We’ll see,” she said. “That will be the plan, yeah.”
She was most blunt in explaining that, to be fully effective as a fundraiser, she had to be on the ballot herself once more.
“My focus is the House and presidency; you’re in a stronger position as a candidate,” Pelosi said. “You may not know this, but if you’re not a candidate, you really can’t raise money for yourself. And raising money for myself enables me to spend that on other people.”
She added: “For the House Democrats, though, I needed to be able to still raise significant money for them as a candidate.”
There is something to this. But Pelosi is also justifying her appetite to run once more. Given her deep relationships with the Democratic donor class, it is not as though the party’s bundlers would send her calls to voicemail were she no longer a candidate.
Pelosi said neither President Joe Biden nor California Gov. Gavin Newsom had put pressure on her to run again, but she reminded me that Biden nudged her last year to remain as Democratic leader.
“I’ve been urged to do a lot of things by Joe Biden in my career,” she said with a chuckle
The former speaker made sure to note that White House chief of staff Jeff Zients placed “one of the first calls” she got after her decision Friday.
And while emphasizing her gratitude for all the local encouragement she got to run for reelection, Pelosi said she was struck by the response from Democrats beyond San Francisco. It was, she said, “Thank god, thank god, oh thank god.”
When I saw Pelosi last month in San Francisco, her husband, Paul, was at one of the events and recounted how little interest they had in the former speaker ending her career as ambassador to Italy, a rumor that persisted in Washington most of the last two years. Yet when Paul Pelosi got demonstrative about how much they were “done,” the former speaker gave his hand a knowing squeeze.
So I asked the congresswoman Friday if her husband — who’s made good progress since being assaulted in their San Francisco home last year — was as enthusiastic as she is about another campaign.
“I wouldn’t be doing it if he were objecting,” she said, adding: “He’s apolitical, but he knows what is at stake.”
The future of the most popular method of terminating a pregnancy is back before the Supreme Court after the Biden administration and pharmaceutical company Danco appealed a lower court ruling rolling back years of FDA policies broadening access to the drug.
The Supreme Court is unlikely to consider the case until next year at the earliest, and the justices previously ruled that no changes to federal regulation of the pills will happen until then — leaving the current state-by-state patchwork of access in place for now.
The looming case is expected to be the most sweeping abortion issue the high court examines since overturning Roe v. Wade, with implications that extend far beyond reproductive health and could impact how a vast array of drugs are approved and regulated.
What it says: In its appeal, the Justice Department argues that allowing lower court rulings to stand would “compel FDA to return to a pre-2016 regulatory regime that imposes restrictions on distribution that FDA has found to be unnecessary and unjustified … with damaging consequences for women seeking lawful abortions and a healthcare system that relies on the availability of the drug under the current conditions of use.”
Mifepristone, along with another drug, misoprostol, is approved through 10 weeks of pregnancy, and is used in more than half of abortions nationwide.
The DOJ also argues that the anti-abortion doctors who brought the challenge against the pills don’t have standing to sue because they can’t prove they’ll be harmed in the future.
“They do not prescribe mifepristone, and FDA’s approval of the drug does not require them to do or refrain from doing anything,” Biden administration attorneys wrote.
Danco, the maker of the brand name version of mifepristone, argued to the Supreme Court in its own appeal that there’s no evidence the FDA’s rule changes since 2016 expanding access to the pills were made improperly.
“The case presents a serious question: whether courts can disregard constitutional and statutory limits on judicial review of agency action to overrule agency decisions that they dislike,” the company said in the legal filing, adding that allowing the 5th Circuit ruling to stand would invite a wave of ideological challenges to other medications.
“For the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, permitting judicial second-guessing of FDA’s scientific evaluations of data will have a wildly destabilizing effect,” Danco wrote.
What’s next: The appeals by the government and the drugmaker do not automatically mean the Supreme Court will hear the case. The justices will first receive a preliminary round of briefing before deciding whether to add the case to the court's merits docket and schedule an oral argument.
Though it's possible the justices could opt not to take up the issue — a move that would allow the lower court's decision to take effect — most experts believe that is unlikely and expect the Supreme Court to accept the case.
How we got here: The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine — a coalition of anti-abortion medical groups — sued last year over the FDA’s 2000 approval of mifepristone as well as later actions that loosened restrictions on the pills, arguing the agency didn’t adequately consider the drug’s safety risks.
District Judge Matthew Kascmaryk issued a sweeping ruling in their favor in April, striking down the FDA’s approval of mifepristone nationwide and issuing a de facto ban on the pills. A few weeks later, a three-judge panel at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals partially upheld and partially overruled that decision, maintaining federal approval of the pills but sharply limiting who can get them. The Supreme Court intervened later that month, pausing any implementation of those lower court orders.
The 5th Circuit heard arguments on the case in May, and ruled in August to roll back actions the federal government has taken since 2016 to make the pills more accessible, including rules allowing online ordering, mail delivery and pharmacy dispensing of the drugs. It also would roll back access from the current 10 weeks of pregnancy to seven and would reimpose a requirement that only physicians can prescribe the pills.
Both the Biden administration and Danco — one of two pharmaceutical companies that make the pills — swiftly pledged to appeal — and both parties did so on Friday.
"The FDA has been entrusted to serve as the nation’s gatekeeper of legal drugs. By repeatedly and unlawfully removing critical safeguards in the chemical abortion regimen, the FDA has failed to protect the safety of women and girls," said Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Erik Baptist: "Two courts have now held the FDA accountable for the damage it has done to the rule of law and the harm it has caused to countless girls and women. We hope the Supreme Court does the same."
Lobbyists for the tech industry are hedging their bets as Washington gears up to consider new AI laws this fall — not just pressuring Congress, but also fanning out to state capitals to stave off more serious restrictions nationwide.
In California, lobbyists for the software industry are helping shape the state’s main AI bill. In Connecticut, they’re in frequent contact with the senator now prepping a major push on AI. Lobbyists are also already in talks with interested legislators in New York, Massachusetts and Illinois, working to influence the conversation before AI bills are even introduced.
The new lobbying campaigns are driven by concern that states often act faster than Washington on tech issues, and can sometimes impose far tougher rules on companies.
If they’re successful, tech lobbyists could nip tough AI regulations in the bud and neutralize the threat of new rules from state capitols — regardless of where Washington ends up.
This has raised concerns for consumer advocates, who see states like California and New York as “places to do model policy” on AI.
“Generally, we are nervous that industry will be the dominant voice in this discussion. We don't want that to happen,” said Samantha Gordon, chief programs officer at the California-based Tech Equity Collaborative, a progressive tech group.
For the industry, it’s a way to stave off a nationwide patchwork of inconsistent laws — a particular risk if Washington doesn’t manage to pass a comprehensive AI law in the near term.
Jordan Crenshaw, head of the Technology Engagement Center at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said key sectors of the tech industry have learned to be “proactive” after a recent flood of state data-privacy laws created an inconsistent state-by-state legal landscape.
“We wanted to make sure that industry came to the table with a set of solutions before the laws were written for us,” said Crenshaw, who pointed to the Chamber’s recent report on AI rules as a model for the light-touch approach that industry hopes to usher in.
The tech industry’s state AI playbook has been shaped largely by recent fights over state privacy laws, which numerous states have now enacted in the absence of any regulation from Washington. After California passed a tough privacy law in 2018, the lobby swung into action and successfully watered down many of its successors.
One tech lobbyist says he sees close parallels between the current flurry of AI activity on Capitol Hill and Congress’s prior efforts to pass a national data privacy bill, which began with a bang more than five years ago but soon bogged down.
“We’ve seen this movie before,” said Chandler Morse, vice president of corporate affairs at Workday, the California-based software giant now at the forefront of industry efforts to influence early-stage state AI bills. In the absence of federal action, data privacy laws “spread across the states like wildfire,” he said.
California is now preparing a major push on AI. Lobbyists from Workday and other sectors of the tech industry are drilling down on AB 331, a bill from California Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan that would mandate impact assessments and notification requirements for AI systems used in “consequential” decisions.
“The states don't care what's going on in D.C.,” said Craig Albright, head of U.S. government relations at BSA — The Software Alliance. “They feel that they have a responsibility to take action, and they're moving.”
So is the tech industry. Across the country, state lawmakers in the early stages of crafting AI bills are being met by lobbyists eager to offer suggestions. And often, both sides already know each other: Many of the lawmakers now looking at AI had previously led the charge on state privacy rules.
Matthew Lenz, senior director of state advocacy at BSA, said the state legislators most interested in drafting AI bills are usually “folks that we’ve talked to and we’ve established some good working relationships with.” He said BSA is already talking to James Maroney, the Connecticut state senator who’s now turning to AI after his privacy bill was signed into law last year. The tech industry’s state-level work on privacy has proven a good investment, with Big Tech racking up a slew of privacy wins in statehouses across the country.
Lobbyists are quick to note that their early focus on the states shouldn’t be seen as a preference for state-level AI rules over a single federal law. As with privacy, tech companies fear a possible “patchwork” of contradictory state AI laws, which they claim would slow innovation and cause an avalanche of compliance costs. In their ideal world, Congress would act quickly to set nationwide rules on automated systems.
But Capitol Hill’s historic paralysis on tech issues has inspired the industry to look beyond Washington, and lobbyists believe the states will move on AI with or without Congress. “As we've seen with privacy, I don't think it's a question of whether [states] act,” said Morse. “I think it's a question of what's the timing on their action.”
Industry’s early focus on state AI bills is already paying off — particularly in California, which is once again at the forefront of state efforts to rein in the tech sector.
Bauer-Kahan, a Democrat, is understandably wary of tech industry efforts to influence her AI bill. “Their role, obviously, is to create this [technology] and in most cases, to maximize their bottom line,” she said. “That’s their job.”
But Bauer-Kahan says she does find the lobbyists useful, especially when it comes to comprehending a fast-moving technology that few people outside of the tech industry understand. She said lobbyists from the enterprise software industry — including Workday and BSA — have been particularly helpful as she’s sought to refine AB 331 and “strike these definitions in the right place, where we're really getting at the intended consequences and not gobbling up the things we're not concerned about.”
Not all tech lobbyists are playing ball. While Bauer-Kahan praised the software lobby — which stands to gain much from increased consumer confidence in AI systems — she singled out Meta as one company whose representatives have refused to engage on her bill. “They try to take this position that they're really pro-regulation, [but] it's not been my experience at the state level,” the California legislator said.
A Meta spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
While the software industry is largely supportive of California’s AB 331, there are still thorny disagreements – particularly over the inclusion of a private right of action, which would let Californians directly sue AI companies over violations.
It’s a callback to the long-running fight between legislators and lobbyists over similar private right of actions in state privacy bills — a fight that the tech lobbyists are so far winning. Bauer-Kahan said she’s still negotiating with lobbyists on that specific provision in her AI bill, and is open to alternative methods of enforcement.
Bauer-Kahan’s AI bill is expected to be reintroduced by December of this year, which could put it on a glide path to passage. If that happens, lobbyists believe other states will follow California’s lead — regardless of what happens in Washington.
“I think you're going to see a lot of states next year focus on AI,” said Albright.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The conservative majority on Florida’s Supreme Court on Friday expressed skepticism that long-standing abortion protections, enshrined in the state’s Constitution, were intended to safeguard the procedure.
The justices heard arguments in a legal challenge to Florida’s 15-week abortion ban, which provides no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. The state’s GOP-led Legislature approved it and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law in 2022 — and have since approved an even more restrictive ban at six weeks of pregnancy.
The legal challenge, brought by Planned Parenthood, the ACLU of Florida and others, hinges on a 1989 state high court decision that determined the right to privacy prohibits most abortion restrictions. That 1989 ruling has been used to protect abortion rights in Florida.
But DeSantis appointed five of the seven justices on the current court, and many believe they will interpret that law different.
Chief Justice Carlos G. Muñiz, a DeSantis appointee, said as much during Friday’s hearing, suggesting that linking Florida’s constitutional right to privacy with the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision was an “abomination.”
“Roe v. Wade may have been an abomination, it may have been semantically absurd to talk about that in terms of privacy,” Muñiz said. “But for better or worse, it was part of our cultural lexicon.”
The state Supreme Court’s ruling will have far reaching consequences beyond the 15-week abortion ban. This year, lawmakers passed legislation that bans abortions at six weeks of pregnancy, essentially two weeks after a pregnant person’s first missed period. That law has been on pause while the Supreme Court decides the fate of the 15 week abortion ban but it will go into effect within 30 days if the justices uphold last year’s ban.
Any decision will also affect thousands of people beyond Florida’s borders. Many people travel to Florida to get abortions because neighboring states, including Alabama, have much stricter bans on abortion. If the Florida’s high court approves the abortion restrictions, many in the Southeast will need to travel to Virginia or Washington, D.C., for the procedure.
The plaintiffs in the case argue the state privacy right was created to expand the federal abortion protections under Roe. During the hearing, Muñiz asked Florida Solicitor General Henry C. Whitaker whether voters knew the state’s privacy right, which was successfully added to the Constitution in 1980 as a voter-approved referendum, was meant to protect abortions.
Whitaker asserted that most voters did not consider Roe when they cast ballots on the privacy clause.
The justices also asked ACLU lawyer Whitney Leigh White, who was representing the plaintiffs, about the original intent of the privacy clause and how it was explained to voters. Justice John D. Couriel asked White, for example, why the plaintiffs didn’t give the court any record proving that the framers of the privacy clause had intended it to protect abortion access.
“If that’s the original meaning of that text you’d expect to see groups like Planned Parenthood and Right to Life debating that in 1980,” Couriel said. “How do you explain that?”
White said voters in 1980 were well aware of the 1973 Roe decision, and the framers of the privacy clause did not want voters to think it affected only abortion.
“People understood that the text was broad and it would include a variety of issues, including abortion,” White said.
White also warned the court that thousands of people have already suffered from the impact of the 15-week ban since it took effect in July of last year.
“These injustices have been going on for a year,” White said. “And if the court does not act now, there’s an even more dangerous six-week ban waiting in the wings.”
Inside the courtroom, Attorney General Ashley Moody, whose office defended the 15-week ban, sat at the lawyer’s table for the state. Also in attendance was Sen. Erin Grall (R-Vero Beach), who was the sponsor of both abortion bans. She sat in the front row on the same bench as Democratic state Sen. Lauren Book, the minority leader of the Senate and a staunch abortion rights supporter.
The justices are not expected to issue a ruling for several weeks or even months.
