LIES AND LEGALITIES: A federal judge in Louisiana on Tuesday imposed temporary limits on how members of President Biden’s administration can engage with social media companies in their efforts to curb and correct lies and disinformation posted on the web. 

  The case stems from an effort by conservatives to block what they contend is a liberal conspiracy by Democrats and tech company executives to silence their views.

  The Administration has been staying in touch with social media companies, particularly Facebook, in an effort to stem misinformation and conspiratorial posts about vaccines, the origins of Covid, and the 2020 election. 

  The order by Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee who himself has expressed skepticism about vaccines, posed the question of whether the government violated the First Amendment by unlawfully threatening social media companies to censor speech about the Biden administration and its policies. 

 Doughty, for instance, ruled against a Biden administration vaccine mandate for Head Start preschool programs,  saying that the “liberty interests of individuals mandated to take the Covid-19 vaccine outweigh any interest generated by the mandatory administration of vaccines.”

  His current order regarding the government and social media has enormous implications for free speech.

THE WAR ROOM: Ukraine’s military launched a ferocious aerial attack on the Russian-occupied city of Makiivka, revealing an ability to hit hard behind the trench lines. Video shows a huge fireball in the dead of night and the Ukraine military claimed that a “Russian base” had “ceased to exist” in that city. 

  Tass, the Russian state news agency, countered that one man was killed and 68 civilians were wounded. Neither claim could be independently verified.

  On the political front, Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko now says that the rebellious mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin is in Russia, not Belarus as he previously stated. This adds to the mystery of  where Prigozhin is and what might be his fate after his thwarted march on Moscow. 

ORANGE ALERT: Former President Donald Trump on Saturday entertained a crowd of admirers in South Carolina with continuing lies about 2020 election interference and complaints about his indictment for his possession and handling of classified documents after he left office. Despite his scheme to overturn a legal election, Trump promised that, “We will rescue freedom, liberty and justice and propel that spirit of July 4, 1776.” 

  Trump is polling far and away as the lead Republican candidate for 2024, and he has a decent shot at winning back the presidency. Stephen Collinson writes for CNN that the South Carolina rally “showed the enduring power of his personality and feral political appeal to GOP base voters.”

THE SHOOTING GALLERY: What police say appears to be a random shooting spree in a  Philadelphia neighborhood on Monday killed five people and injured two children. The shooter dressed in a ski mask and body armor, opened fire with an assault rifle in the Kingsessing neighborhood of southwest Philadelphia sometime after 8 pm Monday.

  Kimbrady Carriker, 40, of Philadelphia faces five counts of murder for that massacre. CNN reports according to law enforcement sources that the accused told the cops he did it to clean up the neighborhood.

  Since Monday night there have been at least 12 more mass shootings, bringing the number in the US this year to 360, according to the Gun Violence Archive. 

  Also Monday night, three people were killed and eight wounded in Fort Worth, Texas when several gunman opened fire on the crowd at ComoFest, an annual community even in a predominantly Black neighborhood.

  Adding to the statistics, four people were killed and seven others wounded in a shooting at a July 4th celebration in Shreveport, Louisiana on Tuesday night. About 100 people were attending a party when the shooting broke out. Police have made no arrests.

THROWN OUT ON STRIKES: New York Yankees pitcher Jimmy Cordero, who’s thrown in 31 games this season, has been suspended for the rest of the year for violating Major League Baseball’s domestic violence policy. The league didn’t say what Cordero did, or to whom, but evidently he still gets paid. 

  Cordero, 31, is a righty who was in his fourth major league season playing for his fourth major league team.

THE OBIT PAGE: Léon Gautier, the last surviving member of French commando unit that assaulted Sword beach at Normandy just a few steps ahead of British troops to liberate France, has died at 100.  He said, “The British let us go a few meters in front. For us it was the liberation of France, the return into the family.”

  Gautier became one of the faces of remembrance for the war, always reminding younger French generations of what their country had endured. He met only last month with President Emmanuel Macron as part of commemorations for the 79th anniversary of D-Day. In 2019  he told The Associated Press, “The younger generations have to be told — they need to know.” 

THE SPIN RACK: The White House has confirmed that a white substance found Sunday night in a common area of the West Wing accessible to tour groups was cocaine. — Three minority advocacy groups are suing Harvard University, accusing the school of discrimination by giving preferential treatment to children of wealthy donors and alumni. The suit claims that “legacy” admissions are “overwhelmingly White,” and make up as much as 15 percent of admitted students.

BELOW THE FOLD: A recent study in Australia found that drivers find bicycle riders who wear helmets or safety vests to be “less human” than riders who don’t wear safety gear. 

  Overall, a third of respondents viewed cyclists as something less than fully human. Many rated bicyclists on a dehumanization scale, placing them somewhere between a bug and a human. Conclusion: Don’t ride your bicycle in Australia.

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