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As New Jersey prepares to temporarily release some state prison inmates to stem a spike in coronavirus deaths behind bars, corrections officials threatened to throw anyone who talked to the media back in their cells, NJ Advance Media has learned.

The gag order was among more than two dozen conditions prisoners had to agree to in order to get temporary medical leave under an executive order signed by Gov. Phil Murphy this month, which sought to reduce prison populations by moving sick, elderly and other prisoners to home confinement.

Violating any term can land you back in prison, where at least 16 inmates have already died, as well as trigger further disciplinary action," according to the original contract.

The ban on speaking to reporters was removed only after civil liberties advocates complained to the state attorney general, according to Alexander Shalom, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey.

A draft obtained by NJ Advance Media directed prisoners not to "engage in any public activities, meetings, discussions or demonstrations, or give interviews/opinions to the press, radio, or television media.

The condition raised concerns among free speech advocates, especially at a time when the states prison system faces intense scrutiny over limited testing, a rise in deaths in custody and complaints from inmates and officers that New Jersey isnt doing enough to quell the spread of COVID-19.

It appears to be a form of prior restraint, which is clearly something precluded by the First Amendment," said Tom Cafferty, a media lawyer at Gibbons P.C. in New Jersey.

Cafferty serves as general counsel for the New Jersey Press Association, and he said corrections officials do have the authority to control media access to inmates in their care. For example, they could turn down an interview request out of concern for the safety of the inmate, staff or members of the press.

But this doesnt appear to be a valid condition to any furlough or medical leave, he said. This is somebody whos not even in the prison and theres a restriction on their speech rights."

Matthew Schuman, a corrections spokesman, responded that officials were creating a process to release prisoners from the ground up." That involved pulling information from various resources," including some from previous administrations, he wrote in an email.

He did not respond to questions about the prohibitions intended purpose, who suggested blocking reporters from speaking with inmates, why the department wanted to prevent news gathering or if there was any statute or law they believed would allow that restriction.

A state attorney general spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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More than 1,100 inmates have been flagged for possible release, many of whom are older than 60 and have health conditions that put them at extra risk, but none had been set free as of Wednesday. Almost two weeks have passed since the governor told officials to ease pressure inside the states near-capacity prisons.

An updated contract prisoners will have to sign was revised Wednesday and provided by the ACLU-NJ. That document is the latest version and has been vetted, Schuman wrote.

The 3-page contract bars those under emergency medical home confinement from driving, drinking alcohol or getting married without prior approval.

Released prisoners must call twice a day. Not calling, or not returning to prison the moment theyre expected back, is considered an escape.

People may only leave their homes for medical emergencies, and they must call the department to report any unusual circumstances or problems. Inmates are also barred from contact with victims or their relatives, exchanging anything with other inmates or their families, or possessing weapons.

They must carry their prison ID with them at all times, and inmates may not open bank accounts.

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Blake Nelson can be reached at bnelson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BCunninghamN.

S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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N.J. tried to ban inmates from talking to media if they are released amid coronavirus crisis - NJ.com

"VOA should be leading the charge in exposing the exact timeline of the lies of the CCP concerning human-to-human transmission and community spread. Instead, we get Amanda Bennett, Bannon told POLITICO. She is a classic 'useful idiot' who kowtows to Beijing's Party Line.

The vitriol from the right doesnt sit well with mainstream journalists, who fear that Trump, through Pack, could transform VOA into a vehicle for his own brand of politics. The National Press Club issued a statement strongly backing Bennett, and citing VOAs history of providing accurate and unbiased news to counter the lies of totalitarian regimes.

Michael Freedman, president of the National Press Club, said that VOA has produced exemplary reporting under Bennett. "Amanda is a respected journalist, he said. When you're providing accurate and fair information, somebody is going to be unhappy with it."

The independence of the federal governments broadcast media for foreign audiences has been an issue for decades, dating back to the Cold War. Conservative activists have long sought to remake the U.S. Agency for Global Media, formerly known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors with its annual budget of $750 million and a weekly audience of nearly 350 million people in a more confrontational mold. Trumps election renewed the issue, sparking speculation that he and Bannon would move quickly to turn Voice of America into full-throated, pro-Trump state TV.

But such changes have not come to pass, and as the White House looks again to advance its nominee, Democrats are pushing back against Pack, who served as president of the conservative Claremont Institute until 2017 and is the producer, most recently, of "Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words.

On Monday, Senate Foreign Relations Ranking Member Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) sent the White House a letter about Pack, saying his nomination remains tainted by unanswered questions about possible self-dealing during his time at Claremont and unresolved issues with the Internal Revenue Service over money from government grants to his non-profit that ended up being paid to his production company.

Mr. Pack has acknowledged that he made false statements to the IRS, yet he has indicated that he has no intention of correcting the record, Mendendez wrote to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Does the White House agree that there is no need for Mr. Pack to provide accurate information or required disclosures to the IRS? If so, how did the White House arrive at this conclusion and does the IRS agree? Does this position apply only to Mr. Pack, or does it apply more broadly to Trump Administration nominees and other U.S. taxpayers?

Pack did not respond to requests for comment. A person familiar with his nomination said he was following standard procedure for nominees by avoiding contact with the press.

In 2017, the White House settled on Pack as its pick to head the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which was renamed the U.S. Agency for Global Media the following year. In addition to VOA, the agency oversees the funding of Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia, which are privately incorporated but publicly funded and often take a more antagonistic stance than VOA does towards covering authoritarian regimes.

Pack, whom Bannon has described as his mentor in documentary filmmaking, has previously served on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Council on the Humanities, two other flashpoints for political fights over publicly funded cultural programming.

That culture war lens has had an enduring influence on his approach to media. "There's a lot of complaining sometimes on the right that there aren't documentaries like this, he said of his Clarence Thomas film during a recent radio appearance. But the left supports its documentary filmmakers and in that sense it deserves to own the culture because it shows up for it."

Trump formally put Pack forward in 2018, but his nomination languished in the Senate, in large part due to a lack of enthusiasm from Republicans on Capitol Hill. Former Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, who chaired the Foreign Relations Committee at the time and was one of few Senate Republicans to openly defy Trump, showed little interest in moving Packs nomination.

Corkers replacement as chairman, James Risch of Idaho, is a more reliable ally of Trumps, and support from conservative activists has rekindled Packs nomination in recent months. In September, Pack got a hearing, but since then, his nomination has again stalled as he has jousted with Menendez over questions related to his taxes and his tenure at Claremont.

In November, a group that included former Attorney General Ed Meese, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, and Justice Thomass wife, Ginni Thomas, signed an open letter in support of Pack.

Per Senate rules, Packs nomination was sent back to the White House in January, which re-submitted it on February 25. By the time Pack had sent in his paperwork in March, coronavirus had brought Senate proceedings to a halt.

It is expected Pack would fire Bennett if confirmed. For some Hill Republicans who remain lukewarm on Pack, the drawn-out nomination fight has already diminished his chances of successfully remaking VOA in a more hawkish image.

Trumpworld has known about [Bennett] since the transition but they didnt care because they didnt think VOA mattered, said a congressional Republican aide. Now they have a problem because she had four years to install her people at every level and shes going to absolutely steamroll Pack. From day one everything he sees and hears is going to be prebaked. He doesnt have a chance.

VOAs coverage of China under Bennett had been drawing fire from the right at least as early as 2018, when Stanford Universitys conservative Hoover Institution relayed complaints of a pattern of avoiding stories that could be perceived to be too tough on China in a lengthy report on Chinese influence in the U.S.

Amid the coronavirus crisis, the White House has seized again on VOAs China coverage and Packs nomination to oversee it.

Behind the scenes, White House Chief Digital Officer Ory Rinat who worked at the Heritage Foundation and is aligned with many of Packs movement conservative supporters has been active in pushing for change at the governments broadcasters.

On April 10, Rinats office blasted Voice of America in the White Houses 1600 Daily newsletter, writing, VOA too often speaks for Americas adversariesnot its citizens.

The day before, White House Social Media Director Dan Scavino had taken issue with VOAs coverage of a light show marking the end of the lockdown in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the coronavirus outbreak began. American taxpayerspaying for Chinas very own propaganda, via the U.S. Government funded Voice of America! DISGRACE!! Scavino tweeted.

Bennett issued a lengthy response, pointing to VOAs critical coverage of Chinas coronavirus response and saying, One of the big differences between publicly-funded independent media, like the Voice of America, and state-controlled media is that we are free to show all sides of an issue and are actually mandated to do so by law as stated in the VOA Charter signed by President Gerald Ford in 1976.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley did not respond to a request for comment.

Bennett did not respond to requests for comment and VOAs press office declined to make her available for an interview.

Bennetts husband Don Graham, whose Graham Holdings sold the Washington Post to Jeff Bezos in 2013, has taken to defending her on his personal Facebook page, appealing to taxpayers.

You, through your tax payments, have built up a worldwide broadcasting organization with considerable worldwide credibility. And now we have a chance to throw it away, he wrote, in addition to authoring a lengthy post about Bennetts work as an editor at Bloomberg News in exposing the riches of Chinese President Xi Jinpings family.

She has been a truthful reporter and editor, he wrote, willing to stand up to the Chinese government (as the family of Xi Jinping will attest), at Bloomberg and at VOA.

Daniel Lippman contributed to this report.

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Whats behind Trumps fresh push to wrest control of Voice of America - POLITICO

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) warned SiriusXM radio host Dean Obeidallah that President Donald Trump is looking to gain more control over the Post Office in order to meddle with mail-in ballots and interfere with the 2020 election.

The Washington Postreported on Thursday that The Treasury Department is considering imposing tough terms on Congress emergency coronavirus loan in order to take control of the U.S. Postal Service and change they do business.

Raskin told Obeidallah on Friday that the Republican party doesnt want to have a real election and is trying to interfere with the vote because they recognize that American citizens have begun to reject Trump, which further explains a desire to control the Post Office.

We are going to be depending on the Post Office to deliver people their ballots and then have them return their ballots through the mail, Raskins said. Its another reason not for just Donald Trump but the whole Republican party to hate the Post Office.

Raskin also claimed that Republicans take issue with the Post Office because it is public and because of its historical decision to employ women and minorities before others, deeming the service as one that prefers non-white people.

Raskin added that there is also a micro-story behind Trumps issues with the Post Office, and explained that part of his hatred for the management of their service is based on his relationship with arch-enemy Jeff Bezos,owner of Amazon and The Washington Post.According to Raskin, Trump believes that the Post Office does not charge Amazon enough money for delivering their packages.

Listen above, viaThe Dean Obdeidallah Show.

Have a tip we should know? [emailprotected]

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Rep. Jamie Raskin Accuses Trump of Trying to Hijack Control of Post Office to Meddle With Voting: He Doesnt Want A Real Election - Mediaite

U.S. officials are preparing to battle two bad viruses circulating at the same time as the coronavirus outbreak runs into flu season next fall and winter.

The Covid-19 outbreak in the U.S. hit just as the flu season was ending this year, Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a White House press briefing Wednesday. But they won't have that benefit of using the country's flu surveillance system to track the Covid-19 pandemic when the next flu season hits, he said.

"Next fall and winter, we're going to have two viruses circulating and we're going to have to distinguish between which is flu and which is the coronavirus," Redfield said.

But Redfield noted that he didn't say the coronavirus itself would be "worse" in the winter.

Earlier in the press conference, President Donald Trump said Redfield was "totally misquoted" when he previously said challenges from the coronavirus could be "more difficult" in the winter.

"He was talking about the flu and corona coming together at the same time," Trump said, "and corona could be just some little flare-ups that we'll take care of."

Redfield told The Washington Post on Tuesday that the already daunting task of responding to the coronavirus outbreak could only become more challenging in the winter, when flu season begins.

"There's a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through," Redfield told the Post. "And when I've said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don't understand what I mean."

"We're going to have the flu epidemic and thecoronavirusepidemic at the same time," the newspaper reported him saying.

The headline of the newspaper's story read: "CDC director warns second wave of coronavirus is likely to be even more devastating." Trump called that headline "ridiculous" and "fake news" at the briefing Wednesday evening.

"It's possible if the corona even comes back" in the winter, Trump said, "and [Redfield] doesn't know that it's going to and neither do I ... we may have some embers [of the virus] and we're going to put them out."

The CDC director, however, had been definitive that Covid-19 would still be present in the winter. "We're going to have two viruses circulating at the same," Redfield said at the briefing. Redfield also said that the Post's story quoted him accurately.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, said later in the briefing that the disease would last beyond the summer.

"We will have coronavirus in the fall," Fauci said. "I am convinced of that."

Trump on Wednesday morning lashed out at CNN, which reported on the Post's interview with Redfield.

"CDC Director was totally misquoted by Fake News @CNN on Covid 19," Trump tweeted.

On Wednesday afternoon, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on Fox News that she had just spoken with Redfield on the phone and "the mainstream media has been taking him out of context, as they so often do with Trump administration officials."

McEnany added that what Redfield "was trying to" urge Americans to get a flu shot.

"The flu comes back in the fall. Be smart, American people," Redfield meant to say, according to McEnany.

"That's what he was saying. But leave it to CNN and some of the other networks to really take those comments out of context," McEnany said.

-- CNBC's Jacob Pramuk contributed to this report.

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US officials prepare for 'two viruses' next fall: coronavirus and the flu - CNBC

All these developments have taken place under pressure from Washington and Brussels. In hearings over the past few years, Congress has criticized the companiesnot always in consistent waysfor allowing harmful speech. In 2018, Congress amended the previously untouchable Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to subject the platforms to the same liability that nondigital outlets face for enabling illegal sex trafficking. Additional amendments to Section 230 are now in the offing, as are various other threats to regulate digital speech. In March 2019, Zuckerberg invited the government to regulate harmful content on his platform. In a speech seven months later defending Americas First Amendment values, he boasted about his team of thousands of people and [artificial-intelligence] systems that monitors for fake accounts. Even Zuckerbergs defiant ideal of free expression is an extensively policed space.

Against this background, the tech firms downgrading and outright censorship of speech related to COVID-19 are not large steps. Facebook is using computer algorithms more aggressively, mainly because concerns about the privacy of users prevent human censors from working on these issues from home during forced isolation. As it has done with Russian misinformation, Facebook will notify users when articles that they have liked are later deemed to have included health-related misinformation.

But the basic approach to identifying and redressing speech judged to be misinformation or to present an imminent risk of physical harm hasnt changed, according to Monika Bickert, Facebooks head of global policy management. As in other contexts, Facebook relies on fact-checking organizations and authorities (from the World Health Organization to the governments of U.S. states) to ascertain which content to downgrade or remove.

Read: How to misinform yourself about the coronavirus

What is different about speech regulation related to COVID-19 is the context: The problem is huge and the stakes are very high. But when the crisis is gone, there is no unregulated normal to return to. We liveand for several years, we have been livingin a world of serious and growing harms resulting from digital speech. Governments will not stop worrying about these harms. And private platforms will continue to expand their definition of offensive content, and will use algorithms to regulate it ever more closely. The general trend toward more speech control will not abate.

Over the past decade, network surveillance has grown in roughly the same proportion as speech control. Indeed, on many platforms, ubiquitous surveillance is a prerequisite to speech control.

The public has been told over and over that the hundreds of computers we interact with dailysmartphones, laptops, desktops, automobiles, cameras, audio recorders, payment mechanisms, and morecollect, emit, and analyze data about us that are, in turn, packaged and exploited in various ways to influence and control our lives. We have also learned a lotbut surely not the whole pictureabout the extent to which governments exploit this gargantuan pool of data.

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What COVID-19 Revealed About the Internet - The Atlantic