“It’s decidedly significant” that Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) used her first TV ad this year to “attempt to get some distance from Biden (and her party more broadly),” CNN’s Chris Cillizza argues. The ad highlights Hassan’s call to suspend the federal gas tax and for the prez to release more oil from the strategic reserve, thundering that “gas prices are a major problem in the country” and “Biden and Democratic leaders aren’t doing enough to solve it.” New Hampshire “has two Democratic US senators and both of its US House members are Democrats,” but the state “has turned away from Biden and Democrats — mimicking the broader disapproval with which Biden is regarded nationally.” That “42% of Americans said they strongly disapprove of the job” Biden’s doing shows “the incredibly difficult line that endangered incumbents like Hassan must try to walk over the next six months.”

On free speech on Twitter, Elon Musk’s “position is, in fact, convincing,” writes Jeffrey Rosen at The Atlantic. “There are strong reasons to believe that” on social media “the First Amendment should presumptively govern.” Once “a public or private regulator” decides “which information is good for people to access, that regulator infringes on the right of all individuals to form opinions.” Further, “free citizens . . . shouldn’t trust any centralized authority” on “what books, music and other content they can safely be exposed to.” For Big Tech to decide “in advance” which “political candidates or information are safe” infringes people’s “right to make that decision on their own” while weakening “the public’s ability to make the political choices” needed in “a functioning democracy.”

Science’s “stewardship has been shifting into the hands of an arriviste managerial class with no idea what science is or any real respect for it,” warns J. Scott Turner at Spectator World. As these administrators control faculty hiring, “no longer will admission to the science guild be based on assessed merit and mastery, but on de facto hiring quotas based upon race, gender and sexual proclivity.” Demands for “diversity statements” are “ubiquitous.” A typical one asks applicants to describe their “efforts and aspirations to promote equity, inclusion and diversity through teaching, research and service.” That masks “the actual message: your application will be judged by conformity to our de facto hiring quota.” Such quotas “are illegal,” but they exist, “hidden within the details of the faculty search process.”

“Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas tried to put the public at ease” Sunday on the Disinformation Governance Board yet failed to explain how it will avoid the “errors that have characterized most previous attempts” to regulate misinformation, frets Reason’s Robby Soave. Worse, Mayorkas admitted his agency could’ve done a better job “communicating” what the board will do. Says Soave: “That a government entity charged with improving the government’s capacity for generating good information failed this first and most basic task is not particularly encouraging.” Nor does tapping Nina Jankowicz, “a figure with a dubious record” on misinformation, to run the board “inspire tremendous confidence.”

“Despite President Joe Biden’s assault on election integrity efforts in several states, voters in record numbers are demanding that identification be presented to get a ballot and want reforms across the board in all 50 states,” reports the Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard. New polling shows 84% of Americans support voter-ID requirements, including “huge percentages of black and Hispanic voters.” Voters also want “a ban on outside funding of elections,” such as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s “Zuckerbucks” that boosted Democratic turnout in 2020. “Americans want elections they can trust, and for the vast majority of voters protecting voting rights means not just ensuring access but also protecting the security of the voting system as a whole.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board