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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

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Freedom of speech is an important issue. There were high hopes that Trump would make real progress in promoting free speech norms as public squares on the internet. With DeSantis signing hate speech laws in Jerusalem, the "free speech" issue would almost certainly be worse under a DeSantis administration than a Biden administration. Let's say he becomes president and signs a federal law like this one in Jerusalem. Do you think that's a silly concern, and can you see why I would give that a lot of weight?

DeSantis is signing law that is going to be used to crack down on right-wing expression. If I'm on the right wing, why wouldn't I give that a higher priority than taxes or abortion?

Biden has been better at foreign relations than Trump. Biden actually pulled US forces out of Afghanistan, Trump never did. Trump's most notable foreign policy accomplishments were moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and breaking the Iranian nuclear deal. All indications are that DeSantis would follow the exact same pattern.

More important than the law itself is that this signals that DeSantis is going to be beholden to the Jewish NGOs that have been the most influential in changing content policies on internet platforms. So I would have 0 expectation that DeSantis would fight that influence in any way, this is a clear signal that he's going to work with them to fight antisemitism.