Free Speech
Reason: Democrats Join Trump in Seeking Balance by Policing Speech
By Jacob Sullum
Donald Trump wants to regulate social media, while Democrats want to regulate political spending. Both are prepared to sacrifice freedom of speech on the altar of fairness, balance, and equality.
The president’s plan for fighting anti-conservative bias on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook is still in flux. But it reportedly includes siccing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on companies that are deemed to be removing content for political or ideological reasons…
Removing Section 230 protection from platforms that bureaucrats consider biased, a policy similar to one proposed by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), would be counterproductive, since it would encourage them to suppress a lot more content, as well as shortsighted. As Wayne Crews, vice president for policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, observes, “tomorrow’s Speech Police are not going to think political neutrality or criteria for a certification of objectivity mean what Trump (or Hawley) thinks they mean.”
While Trump is using the language of free speech to support a policy that would undermine it, Senate Democrats are taking a more direct approach, unanimously backing a constitutional amendment that would authorize “reasonable” limits on election-related spending. The Supreme Court has categorically rejected such limits, noting that they “place substantial and direct restrictions on the ability of candidates, citizens, and associations to engage in protected political expression, restrictions that the First Amendment cannot tolerate.”
The answer, Democrats think, is to amend the First Amendment…
While Trump’s assault on the First Amendment is less blatant, it will lead either to a kind of compelled speech, forcing private companies to host content they would otherwise remove, or to a much less freewheeling internet where liability concerns stifle self-expression.
Congress
Time: The Super-Wealthy Have Outsize Influence in Politics. Here’s How We Can Change That
By Senator Tom Udall
The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC and other court decisions left Congress and the states constitutionally prohibited from putting limits on raising and spending money in elections, unleashing a flood of corporate dollars in U.S. elections and opening the door for the super-rich to fuel their own interests in our government at the expense of ordinary Americans. While this trend has been decades in the making, these decisions further dismantled our campaign finance laws.
This summer, I joined with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and other Senate Democrats to introduce the Democracy for All Amendment, a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United v. FEC and other disastrous court decisions…
The first step in fixing our broken campaign finance system is to sustainably address the root of the problem created by the Supreme Court. While it’s true that constitutional amendments are warranted in only the rarest of circumstances, this is undoubtedly one of those moments in our country’s history…
And because the Supreme Court has now reinforced the misguided idea that spending money to elect politicians is the same thing as free speech, our broken campaign finance system lets billionaires and corporations have outsize influence in our elections. If we want to make progress on the very real problems Americans face, we have to create a democracy that is fair and open to all.
I urge Americans everywhere to contact your state and federal representatives and demand they support the Democracy for All Amendment.
The Courts
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: Judge urged to rethink campaign blackout-period ruling
By Linda Satter
A Pulaski County woman challenging the state’s two-year blackout period on campaign contributions for candidates for statewide office on Wednesday again urged a federal judge to try the case in October.
On June 17, in response to Peggy Jones’ April 8 lawsuit, U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. blocked the state from enforcing the challenged law, Arkansas Code 7-6-203(e), until he can consider its constitutionality. But the next day, the attorney general’s office asked Moody to “stay” the injunction, allowing the blackout period to remain in effect while the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals considers the state’s appeal. Moody agreed…
Since Moody placed a hold on the injunction, attorney Chad Pekron of Little Rock, who represents Jones, has asked him to reconsider the stay, which Moody denied. Pekron has also filed a motion asking the 8th Circuit to expedite the appeal, which it denied…
Pekron’s latest effort to move the case along came Wednesday when he asked Moody to set a scheduling conference to get a trial date reserved on his October calendar. Pekron has already asked that Moody expedite the pretrial information-gathering process, while the state has argued that expedited discovery isn’t necessary and that a trial shouldn’t be scheduled until 2020.
But that date, Pekron said in his latest filing, would be “on the verge of the issue in this case becoming irrelevant for the 2022 election cycle.”…
In a June 24 motion asking the 8th Circuit to expedite the appeal, Pekron wrote, “While this appeal is pending, [Jones] cannot engage in First Amendment activity,” and said that “absent expedited briefing, [her] First Amendment rights will continue to be infringed until close to the time that this case becomes moot (at least for purposes of the 2022 election cycle) by its own terms.”
Disclosure
New York Times: May the SoulCycle Boycott Make Democracy Better
By Editorial Board
There is rich irony in Republican self-righteousness about public attacks on people’s political donations. Prominent Republicans routinely assert that the billionaire George Soros, a major donor to progressive candidates and causes, secretly controls the Democratic Party. Mr. Trump and his supporters spent over a year publicly smearing members of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s team as “13 angry Democrats,” based on their voter registrations or political giving, or both.
Thus far, Mr. Castro and his defenders have refused to back down, noting that the information he tweeted was public and readily available to anyone who cared to do a quick internet search.
This is true. But it does not mean his move shouldn’t give people pause…
What Mr. Castro did was to “unlink” disclosure from policy, said Fred Wertheimer, a longtime crusader for campaign finance regulation. Such public shaming, devoid of context and redolent of politics, threatens to start “a very dangerous game,” Mr. Wertheimer said…
As with all political tactics, there is also a high risk of escalation, to the point where each side routinely sics the dark furies of social media on their opponents’ donors.
“It is not the purpose of campaign finance disclosure to create political warfare in which the donors become the targets per se,” said Mr. Wertheimer, noting that such a turn could nudge more contributors into dark-money channels – or be used as a weapon in future legal challenges to campaign finance laws. “The other side always argues that disclosure laws encourage harassment and chill speech,” he said of court cases, cautioning that, if angry Twitter users wage online campaigns against random donors, that argument could carry considerably more weight.
Fox News: Trump donors react to being outed on Twitter (Video)
Rep. Joaquin Castro tweets list of Trump donors; Wall Street journal editorial board member Kim Strassel weighs in.
Detroit Free Press: Michigan restaurant chain Anna’s House under fire from customers for donations to Trump
By Andrea Perez Balderrama
Richard Hall, professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, believes both parties are within their rights.
Beckett made contributions to Trump’s reelection campaign under Anna’s House Corporate LLC, and according to Hall and the FEC, using the LLC legally allowed him to exercise his free speech and give directly to a candidate.
Chu and any other Anna’s House patron is similarly exercising their right to free speech when they decide to boycott or express views against the restaurant online.
But Hall thinks the Anna’s House case is an isolated example of a larger problem involving free speech and campaign finance laws.
He believes political corruption and free speech are at odds when talking about the disclosure of campaign donations.
Public donations might deter some from expressing political support through monetary contributions, but undisclosed donations might fuel corruption in the political sphere.
“One of the reasons the court has worried about this is that if you disclose donors, then those donors can be intimidated into not donating, which is basically what (Beckett’s) concern is,” Hall said.
FEC
Kansas City Star: Kobach faces second complaint in using border wall nonprofit email list for donations
By Jason Hancock
A campaign-finance watchdog has filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission alleging a nonprofit broke the law by allowing Kansas Republican Kris Kobach to use its email list to raise money for his Senate campaign.
The complaint was filed Tuesday by Washington, D.C.,-based Campaign Legal Center. It is the second FEC complaint stemming from a fundraising email sent earlier this month soliciting donations for Kobach’s campaign from supporters of We Build the Wall, a 501(c)4 nonprofit that uses private donations to construct a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Kobach serves on We Build the Wall’s advisory board and as its general counsel…
Shortly after the email was made public by The Daily Beast, Washington-based watchdog group Common Cause filed a complaint with the FEC and formally asked for an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The new complaint notes that federal law prohibits corporations, including nonprofits, from making a contribution in connection with a federal election. That includes “facilitating the making of contributions to candidates or political committees,” the complaint says.
Kobach’s campaign released a statement saying that if a mistake was made it was a third-party vendor’s “failure to include a ‘paid for by’ notice on any campaign email.”
The statement went on to call Campaign Legal Center’s complaint “a common political tactic designed to distract voters.”
Politico: Watchdog group files complaint accusing de Blasio of flouting FEC rules
By Joe Anuta and Sally Goldenberg
The Campaign Legal Center filed a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing the mayor’s camp of circumventing contribution limits by routing additional cash through a pair of political action committees. The committees, the federal Fairness PAC and the state NY Fairness PAC, were ostensibly created by the mayor to help elect other Democrats in New York and around the country…
In addition, the complaint makes several other allegations, some of which have been highlighted in recent POLITICO reports. First, the center argues that the de Blasio campaign did not disclose the donors who funded exploratory expenses, a step required by FEC rules.
In addition, the complaint alleges that the mayor’s camp failed to report significant expenditures as de Blasio was considering his run for office…
Lastly, federal rules make no distinction between contributions between an organization such as the NY Fairness PAC and an individual – neither can donate more than $2,800. The complaint argues that the campaign violated this rule by allowing the state PAC to pay for $52,852 in exploratory expenses and then pass it off as a loan.
Fundraising
Fox News: Trump campaign’s small-dollar donations surge, marking major shift for GOP
By Maxim Lott
Sixty-one percent of money raised directly by the Trump campaign this election cycle came from small donors (donations under $200), according to Federal Election Commission figures.
That is similar to the proportion Trump raised during the 2016 election cycle, when 65 percent of donations were under $200. And this is dramatically higher than previous Republican nominees. Mitt Romney raised 26 percent of his direct contributions from small donations in 2012, and John McCain raised 25 percent from small donations in 2008…
“Democrats have traditionally been the party that has benefited the most from cultivating a small donor base,” Alex Baumgart, individual contributions researcher at the Center for Responsive Politics, which runs the donation database OpenSecrets.com, told Fox News.
“It’s pretty clear from the numbers that Trump has done a lot to change that dynamic — the populist edge he’s brought to campaigning is clearly something that is resonating with small donors on the right.”…
“Historically, there has been a very strong, positive correlation with income and Republican voting over the past several decades, but that went away in 2016,” Anthony Fowler, a professor of public policy at the University of Chicago who studies campaign finance, told Fox News.
Democratic presidential candidates also improved their grassroots fundraising compared with previous cycles. Among the 20 Democrats who made the debate stage this year, 51 percent of individual contributions were from small donors. That’s up from 26 percent for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and 43 percent for then-President Barack Obama in 2012…
Fowler said studies show getting money from big donors is not necessarily bad.
“If there are any concerns that politicians behave differently because they’re getting donations from rich people, corporate interests, etc., we haven’t found much evidence in support of those concerns,” he said.
Trump Administration
Reason: Trump’s Social Media Executive Order Would Let Unelected Bureaucrats Police Online Speech
By Billy Binion
President Donald Trump is reportedly drafting an executive order to address allegations of bias at tech companies, which he says have unduly targeted conservatives. Although ostensibly offered in service of free speech, the order would almost certainly increase censorship instead.
The measure is far from concrete and “has already taken many different forms,” Politico reports. But the most recent version, obtained by CNN, would instruct the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission to verify that social media platforms operate with political neutrality when they moderate content. If they fail to do so, the platforms could be stripped of the protections afforded under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act…
It is especially ironic that conservatives would take up this cause after spending years warning about the evils of the Fairness Doctrine. That rule, enforced from the 1940s through the ’80s, allowed the Federal Communications Commission to penalize broadcasters for being unbalanced. In theory, the doctrine was supposed to expand the range of views heard on TV and radio. Yet in practice, politicians and pressure groups used it to harass stations that aired opinions they disliked, and many stations got more skittish about airing controversial opinions at all.
The death of the Fairness Doctrine is directly related to the rise of right-wing talk radio, and conservatives have spent decades warning that the Democrats would like to bring the law back. But now the tables have turned, and it’s conservatives who are pushing for what would essentially be a Fairness Doctrine for the internet.
The States
Idaho Press: Attorney: Freedom Foundation didn’t violate campaign finance laws
By Margaret Carmel
On March 28, A.K. Lienhart-Minnick, former chairwoman of the Idaho Democratic Party and wife of former U.S. Rep. Walt Minnick, D-Idaho, filed a complaint alleging Idaho Freedom Foundation violated Idaho’s Sunshine Law by supporting citizens group Boise Working Together. The group formed at the end of 2018 to create ballot initiatives asking voters if they would like to vote on any city projects to build a main library or sports park, and was ultimately successful…
To complete the investigation, the Boise City Clerk’s Office hired former Idaho U.S. District Attorney Wendy Olson for $4,034. She found that, despite the fact that Idaho Freedom Foundation has some overlap with Boise Working Together in its posts, there were enough significant differences in their views that they were not in coordination. Olson concluded that Idaho Freedom Foundation has long been posting in opposition of the library project, which is different from Boise Working Together’s stated goal of having a vote on the project…
In her investigation, Olson reviewed all social media posts by Idaho Freedom Foundation to see if it was supporting Boise Working Together’s campaign…
In order for Idaho Freedom Foundation to be required to register as a political committee, Olson said it would have to spend over $1,000 in support of Boise Working Together. She said the one Facebook post, which would have been posted by Hurst, could not have cost anywhere near $1,000 of Idaho Freedom Foundation staff time. She also pointed out that even if the sponsored poll related to the library was directly related to Boise Working Together’s efforts, it did not cost more than $500 to create, according to Facebook’s records.
Colorado Sun: The effort to recall Colorado’s governor is facing a campaign finance complaint over its “Polis Penny” strategy
By Sandra Fish
Groups gathering signatures are setting out jars to collect donations. But the name, address, occupation and employer of any donor giving $20 or more must be reported on campaign finance disclosures.
To avoid such disclosure, those giving $20 receive a commemorative 2019 penny wrapped in plastic and attached to a card explaining the recall operation.
The complaint, filed Wednesday and first reported by 9News, says that practice violates Colorado’s campaign finance laws. It claims that two committees, Resist Polis PAC and Dismiss Polis, “have both accepted anonymous donations and kept them.”
The Colorado Sun article is among the evidence cited in the complaint, which was filed by prominent Democratic campaign finance and elections attorney Mark Grueskin, who is representing Denver resident Jamie Sarche. Grueskin is working for Democracy First, a committee formed to combat attempts to recall Polis and state lawmakers…
Karen Kataline, a spokeswoman for Dismiss Polis, which is coordinating signature gathering for the recall, said the “Polis Penny” was reviewed with the Secretary of State’s office. She said many donors fear retaliation if their information is shared.
“We have a lot of scared people who don’t want to” have names and address disclosed, Kataline said. “In keeping completely within the (review by the) Secretary of State’s office, we give them a penny back.”
Kataline noted that some petition gatherers in Wheat Ridge were allegedly recently harassed, citing a video posted to conservative news site Complete Colorado. “We had two older ladies attacked while they were gathering signatures in Wheat Ridge,” she said.
