Trump Megadonor Escalates Campaign Against Freedom of The Press
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In 1964, the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision known as New York Times Company v. Sullivan that further protected freedom of the press and speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Billionaire Steve Wynn, a casino tycoon and former finance chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC), has now asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn this precedent. During the 2024 election cycle, he donated over $1 million to groups that supported President Donald Trump.
If Wynn prevails, it would potentially open the floodgates to libel lawsuits against reporters, editors, producers, and news media organizations and have a chilling impact beyond what President Donald Trump has accomplished through his latest torrent of lawsuits.
"Sullivan is an admittedly ahistorical precedent, divorced from any understanding of the law when the First Amendment was enacted,” Wynn states in his petition [PDF]. “Not only does it fail to adhere to history and tradition, it is unfit for the modern era where any person or corporation may, with the push of a button, publish defamatory material for the billions of people around the world to see—defamatory material that, like everything else on the internet, will exist forever.”
Wynn further insists that the U.S. Supreme Court should respond to the “age of clickbait journalism” and end this “golden era of lies.”
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Constitutional Amendment is necessary. Corporations are not People and only have the privileges granted to them by their respective states. At the Federal level they have no right to lobby any member of Congress.
Thank You Kevin