President Trump tweets unconfirmed information from the Drudge Report as first public comment on London attack, and British prime minister calls for a global effort to “regulate cyberspace.” The many sides of free speech rally in Portland in wake of killings of men protecting women from a hate-filled tirade. And Wonder Woman sets the mark for the biggest U.S. open ever for a film with a woman director as Hollywood begins to confront its barriers and movie going becomes a form of expression to many. -Dru Menaker, Chief Operating Officer

 

DARE: Daily Alert on Rights and Expression

The most pressing threats and notable goings-on in free expression today

U.S.

AP FACT CHECK: Attack draws visceral Trump tweets, not facts
President Donald Trump can’t be counted on to give accurate information to Americans when violent acts are unfolding abroad. The latest deadly London attacks, like one in the Philippines last week, prompted visceral reactions from Trump instead of statements shaped by the findings of the U.S. intelligence and diplomatic apparatus. He got ahead of the facts emerging in Britain’s chaos Saturday and got it wrong in the Philippines case, calling the episode there a “terrorist attack” when it was not.
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Right-wing free speech rally draws massive counterprotests in Portland
In a city splintered by protest, acrimony and the fresh pain of a pair of killings, demonstrators gathered again — and clashed again — here Sunday afternoon, with a right-wing rally drawing thousands of counterprotesters in the heart of downtown. The planned, permitted free-speech and pro-President Trump rally came just more than a week after 35-year-old Jeremy Christian allegedly stabbed three men, killing two, after what witnesses said was a hate-filled tirade against two teenage girls on a light-rail train.
WASHINGTON POST

‘Wonder Woman’ has biggest opening ever for a female director
“Wonder Woman” is the first major superhero film to be led by a woman, and 52%, of the film’s audience this weekend were female – a significant number for a genre that has been dominated by men. The box office haul for the female superhero icon is smaller than the numbers of some of her caped male counterparts, but the opening weekend for “Wonder Woman” is an achievement for female filmmakers and for the industry, says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at comScore (SCOR). “Any ridiculous notion that a woman may not be suited to direct a big budget superhero movie is hopefully once and for all shattered,” he said.
CNN

How Trump Stoked the Campus Debate on Speech and Violence
Nearly a century ago, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., famously suggested, in defense of free speech, that “every idea is an incitement.” But are words themselves violence? The striking acceptance of the notion that some speech can constitute violence—and therefore has no place on a university campus—has coincided, this year, with the eruption of actual physical violence over speech.
NEW YORKER

 
Global

Theresa May says the internet must now be regulated following London Bridge terror attack
The Prime Minister said introducing new rules for cyberspace would “deprive the extremists of their safe spaces online” and that technology firms were not currently doing enough. “We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed – yet that is precisely what the internet, and the big companies that provide internet-based services provide,” Ms May said.
THE INDEPENDENT

Cambodia’s Buddhist Monks Find a Second Calling: Political Correspondent
Wearing an orange robe and speaking calmly into his smartphone, the Venerable Luon Sovath eased his way through the throngs of people gathered outside Polling Station 867 in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital. He paused his monologue only to adjust his cellphone, talking for hours to his Facebook followers about what he saw and heard as Cambodians went to the polls Sunday in nationwide elections of local officials.
NEW YORK TIMES

China’s Weibo restricts overseas users on Tiananmen anniversary
China’s internet regulators are usually hard at work over the period, wiping out and preventing any potentially damaging comments online. In recent years, the state has put the onus on social network operators themselves to ‘police’ their users. This year microblogging service Weibo — “China’s Twitter” — clamped down on all overseas users with a ban on uploading images and videos from Saturday until the end of Monday.
TECH CRUNCH

Egypt’s Government Can’t Crush Independent Journalism
As we were winding up the day on May 24 at the office of Mada Masr, the news website where I work, we started to notice something strange. Our site had vanished from the internet in Egypt. After some technical tests and conversations with users of different internet service providers, we realized what had happened: Mada Masr was being blocked in Egypt.
NEW YORK TIMES

DARE is a project of PEN America’s #LouderTogether campaign, bringing you a daily-curated roundup of the most important free expression-related news from the U.S. and abroad. Send your feedback and story suggestions to [email protected]