
Florida's social media ban for kids halted by federal judge
Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee says in court documents obtained by FOX Business that the law is a violation of the First Amendment's protections on free speech.
Walker's ruling on Tuesday sides with trade groups NetChoice and Computer and Communications Industry Association, putting HB 3 on hold until the litigation is resolved.
'Today's ruling is yet another affirmation that the government cannot control or censor online speech. Like all Americans, Floridians have the right to access lawful speech without the government controlling what they say, share or see online,' Chris Marchese, NetChoice Director of Litigation, said in a statement.
'Lawmakers should focus on real, constitutional alternatives that respect both family autonomy and free speech,' he continued.
HB 3 requires social media platforms to bar users under the age of 14 and requires users 16 and under to have parental consent before opening an account.
Getty Images
Jeremy Redfern, a spokesman for Republican Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, whose office is defending the law, said in a statement obtained by Reuters that the 'platforms do not have a constitutional right to addict kids to their products.'
Uthmeier's office plans to appeal it to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, he said.
HB 3 requires social media platforms to bar users under the age of 14 and requires users under 16 to get parental consent before opening an account.
It was supposed to go into effect Jan. 1, but was put on hold due to litigation.
'Today's ruling is yet another affirmation that the government cannot control or censor online speech,' NetChoice's director said.
Getty Images
NetChoice, which represents social media platforms, has won injunctions in recent months against similar laws in Utah and California that restricted the use of social media platforms by youths.
In Tuesday's ruling, Walker said he appreciated that parents are concerned about their children's social media use, but that other, unchallenged provisions of the law offered them recourse.
The industry groups did not address some parts of the law that directed social media companies to delete youth accounts at parental request.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


New York Post
24 minutes ago
- New York Post
Comey's ex-media whisperer can't remember if he leaked classified info to shape Russiagate narrative
A 'close friend' of former FBI Director James Comey, who served as his de facto media whisperer to help shape media narratives during Russiagate, said he couldn't be completely sure he didn't leak classified intelligence to the press, new documents show. Daniel Richman, who is now a Columbia University law professor, fessed up to repeatedly talking to journalists, seeking 'to correct stories critical of Comey, the FBI and to shape future press coverage,' he told the FBI in 2019. Richman, who became friends with Comey during their time working together in the Southern District of New York, admitted to speaking with New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt, in particular. Advertisement At one point in early 2017, Richman had a discussion with Schmidt, who mentioned unspecified classified information and 'knew more about it than he did,' an FBI memo obtained by The Post said. 'Richman was pretty sure he did not confirm the Classified Information. However, Richman told the interviewing agents he was sure 'with a discount' that he did not tell Schmidt about the Classified Information. Richman did not know who gave Schmidt the Classified Information.' 4 Daniel Richman cautiously downplayed concerns that he may have confirmed classified intelligence to a NYT reporter. Bloomberg via Getty Images Advertisement 4 The tranche of FBI documents reveals how James Comey's allies quietly worked to shape media narratives during Russiagate. Getty Images While the memo, first reported by Just the News, didn't specify the classified information discussed, it previously said Comey mentioned to Richman that the bureau had 'weird classified material related' to then-US Attorney General Lorretta Lynch. Lynch infamously met with Bill Clinton on the tarmac in 2016, just over a week before Comey announced he wasn't recommending charges against Hillary Clinton. 'Richman understood the information could be used to suggest Lynch might not be impartial with regards of the conclusion of the Midyear Exam investigation,' the FBI memo said before describing Richman's talk with Schmidt. Advertisement 'Richman understood the information about Lynch was highly classified and it should be protected.' The FBI memo in question comes from the bureau's 'Arctic Haze' investigation, a probe into the leaking of classified information that began in August 2017 in response to the 'unauthorized disclosure of classified information in eight articles published between April and June 2017.' Arctic Haze dealt with four of those stories specifically. The FBI memos on Arctic Haze were among the tranche of documents Director Kash Patel's team delivered to Congress earlier this week. One of Schmidt's articles cited by the FBI in its Arctic Haze probe was a piece that pointed to the existence of a document that seemed to 'raise questions about her [Lynch's] independence.' Advertisement That document, which was reportedly obtained in the aftermath of Russian hacking, revealed that a Democratic operative was remarkably confident Lynch wouldn't let the probe into Hillary Clinton go too far. The FBI files did not make it clear whether the document regarding Lynch was the classified information discussed between Richman and Schmidt referenced during his questioning. Schmidt had used Richman as a source for stories since at least 2008 and even visited his house on multiple occasions, the memo said. Richman was quoted in some stories during the height of Russiagate, but the FBI memo made clear he fed even more information to reporters anonymously. 4 President Trump's team has begun unearthing key Russiagate documents to share with the public. Notably, Schmidt, who is married to MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace, broke the story that Comey claimed President Trump directed him to quash a probe into Michael Flynn over his lobbying deal with Turkey. That story, coupled with Trump's May 9, 2017, firing of Comey, led to the Justice Department appointing former special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate allegations of Russian collusion and whether the president obstructed justice. Richman is known to have leaked Comey's memos on his behalf about Trump's alleged instructions on the Flynn investigation. Comey later admitted he hoped that leak 'might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.' Former DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz previously blasted the leak of the 'Comey Memos' in his scathing report of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane inquiry into whether there were ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia. Advertisement 4 James Comey admitted to trying to spark the Mueller probe during the first Trump administration. Getty Images In 2015, Comey pushed the FBI to hire Richman as a special government employee and give him 'a Top Secret clearance.' 'Richman opined Comey took comfort in the fact Richman had talked to the press about his feelings regarding Comey's handling and decision-making on the Midyear Exam investigation,' the FBI memo said. 'Richman claimed Comey never asked him to talk to the media.' Advertisement Ultimately, the FBI ended its leak investigation in September 2021, and the DOJ declined to prosecute anyone over the sharing of classified information with reporters. The batch of files that Patel turned over to Congress this week also revealed the existence of other whimsically-named leak probes such as Riding Hood, Sirens Lure, Tropic Vortex, Foggy Falls, Echos Fate, and Genetic Christmas.


USA Today
24 minutes ago
- USA Today
Trump-Putin summit spotlights Alaska's strategic importance, vulnerability
Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson is a prime midway rest stop for dignitaries on the route from Washington to eastern Asia. WASHINGTON − The summit meeting between President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin will focus on ending Putin's war in Ukraine, with Alaska's awesome beauty and vulnerabilities as its backdrop. The two world leaders will meet at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, the post that crowns Anchorage to its south. It's an installation that teems with airmen and soldiers − plenty of moose and bears, too, befitting its location on the edge of Alaska's vast stretches of black spruce-fringed wilderness. Cold, dark and snowy in the winter, the base gets near round-the-clock sun at summer's peak. It's a prime midway rest stop for dignitaries, like presidents and cabinet secretaries, on the route from Washington to eastern Asia. The flight from the East Coast to the southern coast of Alaska takes roughly eight hours, about the limit for air crews before mandated rest, and a convenient, secure location to refuel. Long before air travel and a superpower summit, U.S. and Russian leaders haggled over Alaska. In 1867, Secretary of State William Seward secretly negotiated with Russian officials to buy the territory of Alaska for $7.2 million. Derided at the time as Seward's Folly, the deal worked out for the Americans. Alaska – its people, awesome landscape and enormous natural resources – joined the union in 1959. Before statehood, the Army established the base that would become Elmendorf-Richardson in 1940 during the runup to World War II. Since then, soldiers and airmen along with smaller contingents from the Navy and Marine Corps have called the base home. In all, the joint base hosts about 30,000 service members, their family members and civilian employees. Its key location – near Russia and close to Arctic resources eyed by China – has made Elmendorf-Richardson and other Alaskan military installations increasingly valuable to the Pentagon. More personnel and money have been streaming into Alaska in recent years to bolster northern defenses. The base takes part in some of the military's most intricate annual war games, featuring sophisticated weapons like the F-22 fighter. Alaska is the land of superlatives. The state is more than twice the size of Texas; its 46,000 miles of shoreline are more than the lower 48 states combined; Denali's snow-capped peak towers over the interior at more than 20,000 feet. Brown and black bears, moose and wolves, roam tundra and black spruce forests. Temperatures routinely drop to 50 degrees below zero in the interior, where Fort Wainwright sits on the edge of Fairbanks. Dim sunlight smudges skies for only a few hours in the depth of winter. Cabin fever can be very real. In the summer, it truly is the Land of the Midnight Sun. Perpetual daylight has its downside, disrupting sleep, leading to irritability – and worse. Alaska routinely ranks among the nation's leaders in alcohol abuse and suicide. In recent years, Alaska's strategic, remote location has exposed its vulnerabilities. Suicide among soldiers spiked to alarming levels. Reporting by USA TODAY revealed a shortage of mental personnel to help them. The Army and Congress intervened, dispatching dozens of counselors and spending millions to improve living conditions for troops there. Suicide rates declined. Efforts by Chinese spies to gain access to Alaskan bases hasn't, however, USA TODAY has reported. The bases contain some of the military's top-end weaponry, sophisticated radars to track potential attacks on the homeland and missiles to intercept them. Russia, too, regularly probes America's northern flank. As recently as July, 22 the North American Aerospace Defense Command detected Russian warplanes operating in the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone. When aircraft enter the zone, they must be identified for national security purposes. The Russian planes remained in international airspace, a tactic they employ regularly. Mildly provocative, the flights are noted by NORAD but not considered a threat. Meanwhile, global warming has thawed permafrost beneath runways and rising water levels have damaged coastal facilities requiring remediation costing tens of millions of dollars. A skeptic of climate change, Trump could view for himself its effects, including cemeteries eroded by rising sea levels disgorging coffins of flu and smallpox victims from more than a century ago. The potential release of ancient pathogens from melting permafrost has captured the Pentagon's attention, too. Alas, Alaska may have been Putin's last, best choice for a summit. His brutal, unprovoked invasion of neighboring Ukraine has made him an international pariah. Denied entry into Europe, he and Trump could not repeat their summit in Helsinki, the capital of Finland that is now a member of NATO − due mainly to the invasion. Luckily for Putin and Trump, Anchorage is a delightful city, cool in midsummer and far from the death and destruction Putin he has wrought in Ukraine.

USA Today
24 minutes ago
- USA Today
What is Trump's approval rating? See states where he is most, least popular
President Donald Trump's approval ratings nationally are in the red, but for about half of the states, more people approve of his job peformance. State legislatures could determine Trump's political future. Texas' push to redraw its Congressional map to add more Republican seats has dragged the states into a bit of a standoff, as heavy hitter Democratic states threaten to do the same if Texas moves forward. That's because Democrats are looking to take back control of the U.S. House in the midterm elections, and doing so would subvert Trump's efforts for his last two years in office. While Trump's approval rating nationally remains historcially low, a look at state-by-state survey results show a more complicated picture. Here is what we know: More: Did Trump remove the Rose Garden? He has pushed these White House renovations Trump has positive approval rating in 27 states Trump's approval rating is above water in 27 states. That is according to an Aug. 12 update from Morning Consult, which gathers polls over the course of three months to get a look at state-level data among registered voters. The number of states is unchanged from July's update. Trump is most popular by Morning Consult in Wyoming, where 66% of voters approve of his job performance, and least popular in Vermont, where 64% disapprove of his job performance. But his approval is net negative in two states with gubernatorial races this fall: New Jersey and Virginia, according to Morning Consult. In Texas, 53% of voters approve of Trump's performance while 44% disapprove. In California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom has threatened to counter changes in Texas' redistricting, 41% approve of Trump's job peformance while 56% disapprove. California is Trump's seventh worst rating among the states, according to Morning Consult. What is Trump's approval overall? RealClearPolitics Poll Average shows Trump's approval rating was becoming more negative throughout the first few weeks of July before buoying toward the end of the month. Aggregated polls by the New York Times show a similar trend. As of Jan. 27, Trump received a +6.2 percentage point approval rating, but as of March 13, it flipped to slightly negative, the RealClearPolitics graphics show. The approval rating reached its most negative on April 29 at -7.2 percentage points, which fell around Trump's 100-day mark. It came close to that low again on July 22 and 23 at -7.1 percentage points, as the controversy over Epstein carried into its third week. His average approval rating margin as of Aug. 12, according to RealClearPolitics, is -5.4 percentage points. The approval margin according to the New York Times aggregator on Aug. 12 is -8 percentage points. How does Trump's approval rating compare to previous presidents? A historical analysis by Gallup shows Trump's approval ratings in July of his first years in office − both as the 45th and 47th presidents − are lower than any other modern president at the same time in their administrations. In a Gallup poll conducted from July 7-21, 37% approved of Trump's job performance. Here is how that compares to other presidents in July of their first year of their term, according to Gallup: Kinsey Crowley is the Trump Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at kcrowley@ Follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley or Bluesky at @