The post, we understand that successfully navigating this tension is vital to protecting a vibrant prepress. Just last week i worked on the stories about a hate crime, actually about the aftermath of some appalling graffiti spray painted at a high school, so we can decide just how much of the offensive language we should repeat in telling the story in the text, photographs and video. Courts and commentators alike are grappling with critical questions, how do we determine the difference between artistic expression and a true threat. There is a line between First Amendment protective journalism and the governments interest in defending its desire to keep some things, perhaps too many things, secret. And how can we maintain a free and open exchange of ideas online, while also ensuring safety and security. Today we are fortunate to be joined by some of the most popular and powerful voices in this debate. Please welcome senator ted cruz to the Washington Post live stage this afternoon, he will talk about his charge and major social media platforms that exhibit political bias by censoring users and content. We will sit down with michael render, the grammy Award Winning rapper better known as killer mike to talk about how we determine what is and is not protected artistic expression. We are very glad youve joined us. Before we begin, i want to thank the presenting sponsor of todays program, our partners in night foundation, please join me in welcoming sam gill, Vice President of the foundation, to give opening remarks. Thank you very much cameron, and thank you very much for the Washington Post for convening this conversation. I am delighted to be a part of this, you are in for a wonderful lineup today. Freedom of speech and the First Amendment is a fundamental value of the modern janice and james foundation. It was founded by the night brothers seeks to support more informed communities. It was a core issue for the night brothers themselves who thought acutely about press freedom. Jack night one said that the truly distinguished newspapers in this country are those who have bared their face and the public wrath and displeasure. They can be reserved only to the degree that the public is fully informed on the forces to which to seek to destroy them. For the night brothers, the seat those seeking to destroy them with the overreaching government. Those forces remain present today because open discourse and brutal facts are always a threat to incumbent power. But whats most exciting about todays proceedings is that they will also address a new set of threats to the freedom of speech and freedom of expression. They probably didnt think much about and could not have occurred to our founders. They have surveyed High School Students for over a decade and College Students for the past few years for the views on free speech. The idea is to understand the rising generations understand these rights. You can find all of the surveys on their site. Todays young people believe in principle in the freedom of speech, they also have an acute understanding that the Public Square now exist primarily online. Its not just a place where issues of public importance are discussed, its a location where young people make friends, find and lose love, discuss intimate details of their lives and formed their identities. Its also where they shop, entertain themselves and just joke around. And then of course there is, too, public, civic and social debris. This new Digital Reality has an impact. Surveys have found that young people worry that an amenity on the internet risks the quality of discourse. They have strong views that hate speech and not be deserving of the same kind of protection as other speech. One of the Big Questions posed is whether a challenge is a key warrant for the freedom of expression. Namely that the marketplace should be as wide and deep as possible. The second issue of course is the digitization that is happening on privately owned platforms for the First Amendment stipulates that its congress that shall make no law. Civil liberties are about the protection of the individual from the region of the government. How should we regard the roles and responsibilities of social media platforms. The answer will not be simple. You people have shown consistently in our surveys that they want a public forum that balances the ability to express oneself openly, you want the form to be open to everyone, and its quite possible that they will accept limits to what can be said in the service of that value. Young people are going to make the rules in a world in which the government and citizens are not the only players in the matter. By rules, norms or laws, the newfound power around freedom of expression, on the commercial entities that have created and now operate the Public Square for the 21st century. What that will look like, and whether it will be a bold new step for the republic or a retreat from the precious freedoms that make the republic great may well be up to the people in this room. It certainly is a moment in which ideas matter. We are very much counting on all of you to continue this discussion, thank you very much. Thank you sam. Now we will bring to the stage the first panel, thank you. Good afternoon, my name is wesley lowery, National Correspondent here at the Washington Post. Im really excited to dive right in to a fascinating conversation we will have this afternoon about issues of free speech and artistic freedom and about this moment that we live in, where we often, so many of our clinical and societal conversations revolve around the idea of whats acceptable speech in public verse whats acceptable in private. Out of those lines bend, so i will shut up and introduce our panelists. To my immediate left, is mike render, which you may know as grammy Award Winning rapper killer mike, to his left is an author and musician, and then attorney john elwood, so why do we give a quick round of applause. Thank you all so much for being here. I want to remind everyone, before we get darted, you can tweet questions, eventually i will run out of good ones, and we would love to hear yours, so you can use that hashtag post live, and tweet out all the smart things they say, but if you send your questions, i will get them on this ipad and i will be happy to give the floor to you all. But i wanted to get started, mike, talk a little bit about this case of jamaal and some other prominent artists. And luther campbell. So for folks who may not know this case, jamaal, pennsylvania rapper, and they convicted him of making terroristic threats and witness intimidation after he wrote a song, and in it, the song was a homage to nwas 88 song, but also spoke to some of his own personal experience. Can you talk a little bit about how you got involved in the case, and some of the other phonetic issues per eric nelson is a friend of mine, and hes an advocate on behalf of the First Amendment rights, in particular, hiphop. If a kid in hiphop this is a politician or policeman, its taken a lot more seriously. Its less scary when its an artist who looks like the majority. So eric fights this all the time, and he fights on behalf of people in my culture in hip hop, and he asked me to call right with him, he asked other guys to get on board. And i sought out one person that when all the weight to the Supreme Court and win, and that was luther campbell. And he had a song that raised all types of things. He was charged with obscenity, and he filed and he won. We are finding wrappers that have name in prominence are less likely to face prosecution. So if we have someone who has a a song, he named it to policeman in particular, and the policeman he named had in some way assaulted him and his friend to the point of injury. And essentially what i saw when i first read the case, was this was just a kid who was angry who knew he couldnt shoot a cop, knew he couldnt go stab a cup, couldnt even find a company and because he had the courage to say this is what i felt like doing, i can feel like hitting my mom, but if i hit my mom she will beat the heck out of me. So he voiced his feelings. And because he voiced his feelings, he is now serving time in the penitentiary. The scary part about that is at what point in my feelings, or the not equal to the feelings of others or the feelings of the majority, and at what point to get prosecuted for feeling away and having the courage to say i feel this way. I can say, and a bunch of us have said, even to the people we love, i just want to kill you. If we let freedom of speech go out the door with it hurts my feelings, i believe we put ourselves in an environment where feeling something in saying it vocally can potentially get anyone of us put in prison. Whats really scary to me is that laws like this usually affect people who look like me first and worst per i want to drill into that a little bit. You brought up the example of johnny cash. How do you think the stigmatization, especially when we talk about hiphop artists who work predominantly black, may not look like the majority of law enforcement, how do you think that that portrayal, and also the misunderstanding sometimes, how do you think that feeds into this. First of all, im a son of a Police Officer and a cousin of two great Police Officers. I have a cousin who is a sergeant on the s. W. A. T. Team, so im supportive of and also a member of pal. So i am not against Police Officers, im not against people who vote for the people who governed them, having Police Officers in my community. What im against is Police Officers not being an Occupying Force. I made a song about the real life of fred hanson, was assassinated in his apartment, it was a scene where police entered his apartment to kill him, so i took that story and kind of meshed my own story of how i got away from cops assassinating me for being a person to speak freely. It was fantasy and fun, but had i been jamaal, i might have been in jail, but it was already because i was already a professional grammy winner. Its tricky for me because i understand the need for law enforcement, i have a personal preference by being policed by people who look like me or are from communities like mine. I think when police are an Occupying Force in minority committees, they are hiring people who do not have experience with these people, and they are being underserved, many of them are only one patrol into a car, many of them are being trained too quickly. It takes a year and a half to be a barber, but six months to be a cop. It should take a little longer. You have to go through more protocol for the United States soldier than you do as a Police Officer. Recently people in my community are tired of seeing Police Officers getting away with what they believe is state sanctioned murder. So beyond talking or rapping, what im afraid of is that we are setting up an environment in which not only the public still feels they are in danger, and they really are, and im not talking about just the black public, but the general public. The people will start pushing back, and that makes me afraid. Again, i have Police Officers in my family, im a supporter of good policing, but i see that the most dangerous time in the communities now is when it young black girl or black boy on the ground and you have three or four cops that dont look like them are manhandling them. And we are going to start seeing bullets flying. So i think that in matters of freedom of speech, i think artists freedom of speech should be protected. If you are not yelling fire in this room and causing people to be injured, i believe you should be able to say it. If you dont leave and freedom of speech, i think that we are allowing agents of the government to murder innocent americans. Without due process. And if that does not stop, you will see more pushing the lines artistically, and then if it doesnt stop there, you see violence. In this case, the Supreme Court declined to bring up the case. I wanted to bring john in here because he worked in a very similar case. Can you talk a little bit about the contours of that case, and how it relates to the conversation we are having. Here, and these issues of free speech and how it relates to artistry. Anthony alanis, somebody who wrote, after his wife woke up with him, he took to facebook and wrote in the style of rap, lyrics saying not very kind things about his wife, including describing killing her and things like that. It had disclaimer saying this is just me working things out, but he was prosecuted successfully for making crimes, and that casey was prosecuted under a theory where the prosecutor actually said in the closing statement, it doesnt matter what he thinks, what matters is what a reasonable person would think. We argued in the case that you have to show and intent of threat, more or less, at least knowledge of the person who is reading it would feel that they are safety was in jeopardy, and you did it anyway. My understanding of the jamaal knox case, and i looked over my notes, i had jamaal jamaals case in my binder, and my understanding was that he argued kind of the opposite. They convicted him of intent to threaten and he was arguing for the opposite, that a reasonable person wouldnt have taken it as a threat. Thats probably one of the reasons why perhaps they didnt take his case, it was a little unusual in that regard. But i also think that there may be more to it, one of the things that came up a lot my argument for aloneness was a different standard. Negligence isnt a standard, but they havent said what the standard is. And there seem to be some interest in recklessness, which is the idea that you know there is a risk that people would be threatened but you do it anyway so you know they will be threatened and you do it anyway. And i think one of the reasons why the court might not have taken it was because the court is a mess on this, they were all over the map about where they were going to go. And then they would have five votes in the majority. So what is the current standard in terms of when something with this is prosecuted . Pugh its all over the map. The only thing that has been established is a campy negligence. Basically the standard isnt is if a reasonable person would feel threatened by it you can be prosecuted. But theres a split, all over the place. Among the federal courts of appeals and among the state Supreme Court. You know, i cant say anything other than its a mess. One thing though, and this is my pitch for the highest standard to show intent, is that the state standard in california, new york and texas, big states with lots of people, all require a proof of intent, and no one is saying they cant protect their citizens. How might this theoretically play forward, how is it different if the person you are allegedly threatening is a public figure, someone who works for the government, its not an individual citizen per se, but someone like a Police Officer or an elected official. I think its probably more likely to be taken as not a serious threat, it depends on the context, but if you do it publicly comments about a public figure, its less likely to be viewed as a threat. The case that inspired a true threat exception to the First Amendment, involved a draft protester saying that if anyone ever gave him a gun, the first person he would take a met was lbj, the court said that was not a through true threat because of the context. But there are a lot of people who do not take a joke well, and in my experience police do not take jokes will. Alonis was generally doing okay, he would postings online and people would like them. It wasnt until he was visited by the fbi and wrote his rap lyrics about that. The sense of humor expired and he was arrested the same day. Its amazing, eminem built an entire career on killing his mother and exwife. I dont think anyone ever showed up at his door. Spank if i threaten my wife, she would kill me. It will be a whole different panel. To make you were the only one on the stage acting, that actually had the case taken up by the Supreme Court. Can you talk a little bit about the contours of your case and then we will get into some deeper questions i played the registered trademark for my band, but the government ended up not liking that, they quoted an old seven yearold law that you cant register marks that the government considers scandalous, immoral or disparaging. In this case, they said the term slant was disparaging but only when it was used by an Asian American band. In other words they said i was too asian to use this term. 7 1 2 years later, i was before the u. S. Supreme court arguing for our rights. Actually the federal courts rejected all of our other arguments, even arguments saying look at the trademark offices using our race against us. They didnt care about any of that they just wanted to talk about the First Amendment. When we brought up the fact that it was a speech that the law violated because of a viewpoint discrimination, a got taken up by the court and thats where we won unanimously in 2017. See your efforts were to essentially reclaim a slayer, right . You were ironically using this term free in some ways, and i would also argue that the term slant is not inherently racialized. You can talk about a perspective or angle, that sort of thing. But according to the government, because i was asian, all of a sudden it became racially charged. Going back to this kind of true threat, how do you think the government should try to adjudicate these questions. How often as an artist, for someone who is creating art to put into the world, what should the governing be in moderating it . Mech i think extremely limited, if not at all. Art is meant to be on the edges, to push boundaries, to cause us to question. Its oftentimes stirred as a mirror. And what we find is artist particularl