Politics and views in the United States.

The Supreme Court hears arguments on whether social media can restrict content. Biden advisors point to anti-democracy speeches at CPAC, and the President heads to the US-Mexico border appealing to voters on immigration and border issues.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to 2024 Talks, where we're following our democracy in historic times.

If the government's doing it, then content moderation might be a euphemism for censorship.

If a private party is doing it, content moderation is a euphemism for editorial discretion.

And there is a fundamental difference between the two.

Paul Clement is representing big social media companies as the Supreme Court grapples with internet-free speech questions, specifically laws from Texas and Florida that would bar platforms from restricting content.

The Republican-led states outlawed content moderation when Twitter, Facebook and others banned former President Donald Trump over efforts to overturn the 2020 election and inciting his supporters to storm the Capitol on January 6th.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act generally protects social media companies from being sued over content.

Justice Clarence Thomas questioned whether that means they are like phone companies, who just carry the messages for everyone, or like newspapers that have the right to decide what is said.

I've been fortunate or unfortunate to have been here for most of the development of the internet.

And the argument under Section 230 has been that you're merely a conduit.

Now you're saying that you are engaged in editorial discretion and expressive conduct.

Trump and his followers are again drawing fire for authoritarian rhetoric.

Jack Posobiec told the conservative crowd at CPAC, "We are here to overthrow democracy" and finish the January 6th insurrection.

Former Obama adviser David Axelrod tells CNN that President Joe Biden's campaign needs to make sure every American knows about the Trump's movement's fascist tendencies.

If I were the Biden campaign, I would pay to have every American see the CPAC convention because the thing that has been thwarting Republicans in the midterms and since has been this impression of the Republican Party as an extreme party.

Meanwhile, both Biden and Trump will go to the border to highlight the importance of immigration policies.

Biden will travel to Brownsville, Texas and meet with immigration agents.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre says in his second visit to the border, Biden will again stress his frustration that congressional Republicans killed a hard-fought bipartisan border compromise.

He wants to make sure that he puts his message out there to the American people so that they know.

They know that what we tried to do with the Senate in a bipartisan way, a border security deal and obviously a deal that deals with the immigration system, and we tried to get that done.

Arizona has mailed out ballots for next month's presidential preference election to Democrats and Republicans, in part to reduce mistrust and deal with election denial.

Secretary of State Adrian Fontes says all voting machines have just been tested.

We've had teams deployed across the entire state, making sure that those equipments are ready for your ballots.

I'm Farah Siddiqui for Pacifica Network and Public News Service.

Find our trust indicators at publicnewsservice.org.