I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Thursday, June 10th.

Now we're going to talk about an apparent growing identity crisis at the ACLU. This has been going on for a while now, but maybe you saw it

written up in the recent New York Times article by journalist Michael Powell, who frames it as a

divide between free speech absolutists, people who think defending even white supremacists, right,

to public expression is an important part of the ACLU's mission in history, think Charlottesville,

when the ACLU defended the proud boys right to protest in the town square, or Skokie, Illinois

in an earlier generation when they supported the rights of Nazis to march near Jewish people's homes.

And the other side, those who think defending

hate speech is antithetical to the other priorities of the organization beyond a certain point,

namely protecting minority groups, especially because all offensive speech is not equal. Some

really victimizes people, especially more marginalized people,

more than other offensive speech. The article is stirring up controversy among former and current

ACLU staffers and people across the political spectrum, some of whom hotly contest the framing

of the piece. A new republic critic said it was

culture war propaganda in 1A clothing.

ACLU legal director David Cole rejected the article as well, saying they are committed at the

ACLU to defending free speech as always and that the organization has faced similar

bad faith critics as he sees them in the organization has faced similar bad faith critics, as he sees them,

in the 1970s and the 1990s, nothing new, according to the ACLU's David Cole.

So is the ACLU really newly turning its back on the First Amendment, or, like any mission-driven

nonprofit, are they engaged in healthy debate about how to best live up to their own standards and values,

especially as the American landscape changes and groups like the proud boys have the backing of powerful people,

...