July 2016

Donald Trump used his favorite hailing frequency, Twitter, to confirm his selection of Gov Mike Pence (R-IN) as his vice presidential running mate. The choice is bound to make conservatives within the Republican party happy — though the he’s unlikely to win the hearts and minds of anyone in the tech industry. Indeed, his selection is likely to provoke the ire of many leaders in Silicon Valley, 70 of whom aligned against an anti-LGBT measure that Gov Pence signed into law in 2015. Some of the technology industry’s most prominent executives — among them Apple’s Tim Cook and Salesforce’s Marc Benioff — vocally protested the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a “religious liberty bill” that they warned would open the door to legalizing discrimination against minority groups.

Of course, Trump isn’t courting Silicon Valley with his choice of Gov Pence. The first-term governor and former congressman is there to make the GOP’s evangelical wing happy. He’s a guy who described himself as “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order.” For Silicon Valley, which has aggressively used corporate muscle on issues of LGBT rights, it seems Trump’s likely pick might be the worst possible selection he could have made.

Dozens of literary and media luminaries -- from Margaret Atwood, Jay McInerney, Martin Amis and Judy Blume, to Robert Caro, Kurt Andersen, Jill Lepore and Janet Malcolm -- are calling on the presidential candidates to "uphold freedom of the press and end intimidation toward journalists" at their nominating conventions these next two weeks.

The writers are among more than 20,000 people, as of the morning of July 15, who have signed a petition that PEN America, the century-old literary and free expression organization, will deliver on Monday to the Trump and Clinton campaigns, as well as to the Republican and Democratic national committees. Other organizations and media outlets, including The Nation, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and The Intercept, partnered with PEN to collect signatures. “I think our members and partners are growing increasingly concerned with a climate of hostility toward the press in the context of the campaigns, and tactics that risk curbing press freedoms,” said PEN America executive director Suzanne Nossel. She cited recent episodes of “threats directed at journalists” and “remarks about the tightening of libel and defamation laws.”