“The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in a 2012 Supreme Court decision striking down the Stolen Valor Act. That ruling cited a 1927 court opinion similarly stating that “the remedy to be applied [for falsehoods] is more speech, not enforced silence.”
The idea that the answer to false speech is more speech correcting it, rather than legal sanction — often described as “counterspeech” or the “counterspeech doctrine” — is one that undergirds much of our country’s approach to regulating (or, more specifically, not regulating) political speech.
It’s also one that has run into some serious challenges, as tens of millions of Americans and a majority of the Republican Party have bought into Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, with no amount of counterspeech or fact-checking proving a remedy.
Inslee has in recent days said he will support a bill criminalizing some such political speech. The bill he’s supporting would make it illegal for an elected official or political candidate to lie specifically about election results. Citing Trump’s “big lie” and “continuing coup,” he has called for the Democratic-controlled state legislature to take up the bill, which is still being drafted, in the session that began Monday.
“It should not be legal in the state of Washington for elected...
By JAMELLE BOUIE Donald Trump knew as well as anyone that he had lost the 2020 presidential election fair and square. He knew there was no conspiracy to commit voter fraud — no mysterious mail bal...