Happy Tuesday! Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, some of the past week’s top stories from the intersection of politics and technology.
Texas’ censorship law still partially blocked
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld an injunction partially blocking a Texas law aimed at preventing minors from being exposed to harmful content. The portion of the SCOPE Act that requires some digital service providers to adopt monitor-and-filter strategies had already been hit with an injunction, which the 5th Circuit upheld after Texas appealed.
Read more at Bloomberg Law.
Johnson says he missed Truth Social news
House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed ignorance when questioned about plans by President Donald Trump’s social media company to sell premium access to market-moving posts. On Monday, the Louisiana Republican told CNN’s Manu Raju that it was the first time he had heard the news, which was reported last week.
Watch Johnson’s response below.
Administration sued over alleged database
Privacy and civil liberties advocates have sued the Trump administration, accusing it of adopting “a secret policy of collecting, maintaining, and using personally identifying information of protestors and observers.” The lawsuit centers on claims — some of which have been made by federal immigration agents — that the government is maintaining a database to spy on critics of the president’s racist anti-immigrant crackdown.
Read more at Common Dreams.
SpaceX’s stock collapse
SpaceX’s stock price fell again Monday amid ongoing concerns in the market about spending on artificial intelligence. The stock’s overall collapse since its peak after its initial public offering in June has reportedly played a role in erasing owner Elon Musk’s trillionaire status.
Watch Bloomberg Tech’s report below.
Trump administration exempts SpaceX
Speaking of SpaceX, the Trump administration — perhaps, in keeping with the president’s campaign vow to “make life good” for people like Musk — agreed to exempt the company’s Starlink routers from the Federal Communications Commission’s ban on foreign-made routers. Starlink makes some of its routers in Vietnam.
Read more at Ars Technica.
High-tech voter suppression
AlterNet published a report on the high-tech tools enabling conservatives to challenge voters’ eligibility en masse, posing potential threats to voter participation in the upcoming midterms.
Read more at AlterNet.
Senate crypto bill in danger
A Senate bill regulating cryptocurrencies — and banning federal officials, including presidents, from issuing digital assets like Trump’s crypto coins — is at risk of languishing as Democrats raise concerns that the bill’s ethics provisions aren’t strong enough.
Read more at CNBC.
Prosecution over ‘duress’ password
The Justice Department is prosecuting a critic of Atlanta’s massive “Cop City” compound over an allegation that the activist gave authorities planning to looking through his phone a so-called duress password that triggered the deletion of his data.
Read more at Tech Crunch.
Kalshi’s midterm moves
Kalshi, the glorified betting platform that has financial ties to Donald Trump Jr. and which has been used to promote baseless election conspiracy theories, unveiled its “midterms hub” ahead of this fall’s elections. What could go wrong? Plenty, it seems. A Kalshi board member joined MS NOW’s “The Weekend” to discuss the scrutiny the company is facing.
Watch the interview here.
MAHA misinformation
“Make America Healthy Again” influencers are spreading misinformation about women’s menstrual cycles, and The Guardian spotlighted how the influencers are spreading falsehoods about women’s luteal phases — claims that seem designed to malign birth control and fuel pronatalist talking points that have gained steam in the MAGA movement.
Read more at The Guardian.
The post Partial block of Texas’ censorship law is upheld in court appeared first on MS NOW.
Author: Source Author
From MS Now.