A federal court temporarily halted Florida’s controversial restrictions on drag performances, warning the law was overbroad and could risk infringing on free speech rights. The SB1438 law, signed in May by Republican governor Ron DeSantis, is “dangerously susceptible to standardless, overbroad enforcement which could sweep up substantial protected speech,” US judge Gregory Presnell wrote in his ruling. Far from a neutral attempt to protect children, as its backers have sometimes claimed, the law is an admitted attempt to “specifically suppress the speech of drag queen performers,” Judge Presnell wrote. The governor’s office told Reuters the ruling was “dead wrong.” “Of course it’s constitutional to prevent the sexualization of children by limiting access to adult live performances,” spokesperson Jeremy Redfern said. The suit against the state comes from Hamburger Mary’s, a restaurant chain that features family-friendly drag performances. An Orlando franchise of the restaurant filed suit in May. It claimed the law, which levies criminal penalties at food establishment for admitting children to an “adult live performance,” would “explicitly restrict or chill speech and expression protected by the First Amendment.” “This bill has nothing to do with children, and everything to do with the continued oppression of the LGBTQ+ community,” Hamburger Mary’s Orlando wrote in a Facebook post. Florida governor Ron DeSantis has made limiting the rights of LGBTQ+ people a key part of his agenda, signing bills that restrict gender-affirming care, protections for trans people in schools, and access to youth education on gender and sexuality. This month, courts struck down a Florida rule and statute banning Medicaid payments for transgender healthcare, and partially blocked a state law banning people under 18 from getting gender-affirming medicine. Earlier this month, a federal judge in Tennessee declared the state’s drag ban to be “unconstitutionally vague and substantially overbroad.” “There is no question that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment,” Judge Thomas Parker wrote. “But there is a difference between material that is ‘obscene’ in the vernacular, and material that is ‘obscene’ under the law.” “Simply put, no majority of the Supreme Court has held that sexually explicit — but not obscene — speech receives less protection than political, artistic, or scientific speech.” Read More Trump faces questions about whether he'll drag down the Republican Party after his indictments Group with Nazi flags protest outside Florida children’s museum days after similar stunt at Disney World Here are the restrictions on transgender people that are moving forward in US states Florida's law targeting drag shows is on hold under federal judge's order Evangelical leader hopes conference is 'testosterone booster shot' for anti-abortion 2024 candidates Trump, DeSantis interviews show Fox influence on GOP field still strong despite troubled year

By Benoit Van Overstraeten and Leigh Thomas PARIS (Reuters) -The biggest food industry companies in France have pledged to cut

China is hosting senior officials from mostly Middle Eastern nations for “in-depth” talks on deescalating the Israel-Hamas conflict,

A man convicted of the 1996 killing of a University of Oklahoma dance student has been executed

Hans Kim shared a video of his latest stand-up routine where he pokes fun at how 'Friends' star Matthew Perry died, seemingly alone

Baby Elijah had enough fentanyl in his system to 'kill approximately 10 people,' said Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper

It is possible for human beings to hear silence, according to a team of philosophers and psychologists, in a huge win for 1960s crooners Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. In a study published on Monday by Johns Hopkins University researchers, the team decided that it’s not just sound that human hears pick up: silence is, indeed, something we can hear too. Rui Zhe Goh, a Johns Hopkins graduate student in philosophy and psychology who was the study’s lead author, wrote: "We typically think of our sense of hearing as being concerned with sounds. But silence, whatever it is, is not a sound — it's the absence of sound. Surprisingly, what our work suggests is that nothing is also something you can hear.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Per the study, published in the journal PNAS, researchers had participants listen to an array of audio illusions. They also periodically substituted the noise for pure nothingness, the measure whether people’s brains would react in the same way. “Philosophers have long debated whether silence is something we can literally perceive, but there hasn’t been a scientific study aimed directly at this question,” said study co-author Chaz Firestone, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences and the director of the Johns Hopkins Perception & Mind Laboratory. “Our approach was to ask whether our brains treat silences the way they treat sounds.” "If you can get the same illusions with silences as you get with sounds, then that may be evidence that we literally hear silence after all." The 1,000 participants’ responses were measured across seven different tests. Across all of them, their brains reacted the same way to silence as they did to noise. “We show that silences can 'substitute' for sounds in event-based auditory illusions,” said the study. “Seven experiments introduce three 'silence illusions,' adapted from perceptual illusions previously thought to arise only with sounds.” “In all cases, silences elicited temporal distortions perfectly analogous to their sound-based counterparts, suggesting that auditory processing treats moments of silence the way it treats sounds. Silence is truly perceived, not merely inferred,” it said. “The kinds of illusions and effects that look like they are unique to the auditory processing of a sound, we also get them with silences, suggesting we really do hear absences of sound too,” added study co-author Ian Phillips, a John Hopkins philosopher and psychologist. Hello darkness my old friend… Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Spain is sweltering under an unrelenting heat wave as temperatures start to build toward what is forecast to be a torrid weekend across southern Europe

'Alan Wake 2' is arriving on October 27.

VATICAN CITY A man visiting St. Peter's Basilica on Thursday stripped off his clothes and stood naked on

During a walkabout at the Iowa State Fair on Saturday, Donald Trump was asked by a reporter if he had intended to overturn the 2020 election. The former president is currently under criminal indictment at the federal level for his alleged efforts to interfere with the result of the November 2020 presidential election, and will potentially face a further indictment at the state level via a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia as soon as next week. As he made his way through a throng of people at the fair, a voice called out: “President Trump, did you intend to overturn the 2020 election?” Half-turning toward the person who asked, Mr Trump replied: “You know the answer to that.” He then continued on his way through the crowd toward a scheduled event with allied Republican lawmakers including Rep Matt Gaetz of Florida. Online, social media users were quick to respond to the former president’s sarcastic remark, clipped by Acyn Torabi, with a chorus of: “So, that’s a yes, then?” One more erudite response expanded on Mr Trump’s legal woes, remarking: “The Court in DC and in GA will soon confirm what we all know. YES you conspired to overthrow our election system.” “Yes, we do. Yes, he did,” posted one person on X, formerly known as Twitter. “He didn’t say no,” said another. Journalist Aaron Rupar noted the similarity between Mr Trump’s remark and OJ Simpson’s book about the murder of his wife “If I did it”, calling the publication “coy by comparison” to the former president’s remark. Given his record of talking himself into deeper trouble (or raising further questions) with off-the-cuff remarks, some noted that perhaps he had been coached. “Well at least his lawyers got him to shut up and not admit out loud what we know the correct answer is,” said one poster on X. “Someone’s been practising the answer his lawyers gave him…” added another. The former president was also asked by someone else if he’ll comply with Judge Tanya Chutkan’s order regarding his access to sensitive government documents and limiting what he can say in public in regard to the federal 2020 election case. He replied: “We’ll have to take a look at the order.” Mr Trump then baselessly blamed the case being brought about on President Joe Biden as a way to interfere with the election. Mrs Betty Bowers posted: “Donald is in for a rather unpleasant surprise if he thinks a judge’s order is something that needs an RSVP.” “If a person really believed in the rule of law the only acceptable answer would be: ‘Yes, of course’,” noted another person. Not to be left out of the “saying the quiet bit out loud” party, Rep Gaetz when introducing Mr Trump on stage appeared to propose some kind of rebellion, perhaps an insurrection of some sort? “I cannot stand these people that are destroying our country ... we know that only through force can we make any change in a corrupt town like Washington DC,” he told the crowd. People were quick to note that that approach has been tried before by a Trump-supporting mob of rioters at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. “Sure sounds like he’s inciting violence,” wrote one person in response to the video clip. “These are terrific statements to play alongside the prosecution’s evidence at Trump’s upcoming election interference trials,” said another. “Is this the kinda force he’s talking about?” said one X user alongside a picture of lawmakers taking shelter in the gallery of the House of Representatives. More than 1,100 people have been charged with offences relating to the events in Washington on January 6. A great many named Mr Trump in their statements in court. He was indicted by federal prosecutors in relation to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the events that led up to the Capitol riot on 1 August. The government has proposed 2 January 2024 as his trial date. Shortly before the Iowa Caucus. Read More Georgia grand jury to hear Trump election subversion case next week Trump lashes out at Fulton County DA over Atlanta crime as potential ‘CON JOB’ indictment nears Judge warns Trump that ‘inflammatory statements’ will have consequences as she grants looser protective order Judge shuts down Trump lawyer as he claims protective order would give Biden an ‘advantage’ Pro-Trump Michigan false elector said conspiracy charges could trigger ‘civil war’ The Pentagon plans to shake up DC’s National Guard, criticized for its response to protests, Jan. 6

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is denying a woman's claims that he forced her to have sex and owes her $2 million in unpaid wages