Three New Yorkers Sue to Halt Trump’s ‘Presidential Alert’ Text Messages

Three New Yorkers are asking a federal judge to stop Donald Trump from sending out text messages to all Americans as part of a test of his new “presidential alert” system scheduled for Wednesday. In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan that was made public Monday, the plaintiffs argue that it would be a violation of their constitutional rights to have their personal cellphones turned into tools for the same kind of “weaponized disinformation” that Trump has been known to disseminate on Twitter. The three activists—J.B. Nicholas, Kristine Rakowsky, and Liane Nikitovich—argue that the “presidential alerts” would subject them to government propaganda and represent a misuse of a 2016 law on the nationwide emergency-alert system. The lawsuit says they “don’t wish to receive text messages, or messages of any kind, on any topic or subject, from Defendant Trump.”