REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
The American Civil Liberties Union is coming to the defense of a blogger who criticized pop star Taylor Swift for her popularity in alt-right and white supremacist circles. Writer Meghan Herning received a letter from Swift's attorneys demanding she retract the article and threatened to sue if she did not comply. “This is a completely unsupported attempt to suppress constitutionally protected speech,” Michael Risher, an attorney with the ACLU of Northern California said in a statement. Herning added that she would not be intimidated by the legal threat. “The press should not be bullied by high-paid lawyers or frightened into submission by legal jargon,” Herning said in a statement. “These scare tactics may have worked for Taylor in the past, but I am not backing down.”