Nonprofits
Wall Street Journal: Gunning for the NRA
By The Editorial Board
New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit Thursday calling for the dissolution of the National Rifle Association, and you have to smile at her audacity. The suit claims to speak for millions of donors it alleges were cheated by the NRA’s self-dealing executives. But how does dissolving the nonprofit deliver relief or justice to gun-rights donors or their cause?
The death-penalty remedy is one hint that there might be some politics going on here. Another is that the lawsuit arrives, after an 18-month investigation, a mere three months before an election when Second Amendment rights will be an important issue. How better to neuter a major opposition political force than to tell its donors they’ve been fleeced? …
[I]f the charges are true, the victims are the donors. They presumably gave to the NRA to protect their right to bear arms. If they have been harmed, the solution should be some form of restitution and repayment, plus a ban on the officials from serving as a fiduciary at the NRA or any other nonprofit. As Cato Institute senior fellow Walter Olson puts it, dissolving the NRA would hurt the group’s donors by denying them the institutional voice they chose to represent their views on gun rights.
National Review: New York’s Lawless NRA Lawsuit
By The Editors
To say that the corruption case is pretextual is not to say that it is made up out of whole cloth…
At the same time, the effort to dissolve the NRA is nonetheless a plainly partisan political attack. The point here is not to fight nonprofit fraud but a Democratic effort to embarrass and hobble a political opponent, to burden it with expensive and cumbrous litigation, and to weaponize the power of the attorney general’s office for partisan ends…
New York State Attorney General Letitia James is only working to deliver on her campaign promise to ruin the NRA legally after decades of Democrats failing to beat the organization politically. This is part of a nationwide Democratic campaign: In San Francisco, they declared the NRA a “terrorist organization”; New York Governor Andrew Cuomo attempted to use financial regulators to deprive the NRA of access to banking services and insurance, thereby ending its ability to engage in organized public advocacy; in Los Angeles, the city demanded that any NRA member doing business with the city identify himself, an attack on the First Amendment that was almost immediately shut down by a federal judge acknowledging the “overwhelming” evidence that the purpose of this was “to suppress the message of the NRA.”
If Wayne LaPierre or other NRA executives have committed a crime, then indict them and present the evidence in a criminal court. The attempt to legally dissolve the NRA instead is pure political score-settling, and an assault on the First Amendment, the rule of law, and democracy itself.
Congress
Politico: Democrats turn up the heat on Wray over foreign campaign interference
By Natasha Bertrand
Three top Democratic senators say they have grown increasingly concerned about a foreign interference campaign targeting Congress and the 2020 presidential election following recent classified briefings from the intelligence community, and are now urging FBI Director Chris Wray to regularly brief the Senate on the threat and make more information public.
In a letter sent to Wray on Friday and obtained by POLITICO, Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.); and Jack Reed (D-R.I.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, expressed “growing concerns that foreign actors continue to target the November 2020 election,” citing recent briefings from the FBI and intelligence community.
“Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi noted in their July 13th letter to you that ‘Congress appears to be the target of a concerted foreign interference campaign, which seeks to launder and amplify disinformation in order to influence congressional activity, public debate, and the presidential election in November,'” the senators wrote. “We attended classified briefings from the intelligence community and FBI over the past week and our concerns with respect to this targeting have only grown.”
National Review: Tom Cotton Introduces Campus Free-Speech Bill
By Stanley Kurtz
I am pleased to announce that today Senator Tom Cotton has introduced the “Campus Free Speech Restoration Act” (CAFSRA). Under CAFSRA, public colleges and universities that promulgate restrictive speech codes, so-called free-speech zones, and other unconstitutional speech policies will lose their eligibility to receive federal student loans and grants through the Higher Education Act. Private universities will also lose eligibility unless they both fully disclose their policies on free expression and accept contractual responsibility for enforcing those policies.
Decades of successful court challenges to unconstitutional campus speech codes and zones have failed to end these practices. With many public colleges still evading their constitutional responsibilities, it is time for the hammer to come down. Only the prospect of losing federal aid can prevent public colleges from thumbing their noses at the First Amendment…
Once public colleges are compelled to uphold their responsibilities under the First Amendment, and once private institutions are forced to accept legal responsibility for their chosen speech policies, the message will go out that our most sacred and fundamental liberties are not negotiable.
Here is how the bill works…
The Courts
National Law Journal: Pa. Lawyer Sues State Disciplinary Board to Halt Enforcement of New Anti-Bias Rules
By Max Mitchell
A disciplinary rule aimed at curbing bias and discriminatory behavior by Pennsylvania attorneys had stirred up controversy before it was adopted earlier this year, and now it is drawing legal fire.
On Thursday, a Pennsylvania lawyer at a nonprofit focusing on Title IX due process issues sued members of the Pennsylvania Disciplinary Board, alleging that Rule 8.4, which the state Supreme Court adopted earlier this summer, will “chill his speech.” The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania by a lawyer from a Washington, D.C.-based legal nonprofit, alleges the rule violates the First Amendment and is unconstitutionally vague.
“[Plaintiff Zachary] Greenberg will be forced to censor himself to steer clear of an ultimately unknown line so that his speech is not at risk of being incorrectly perceived as manifesting bias or prejudice,” the complaint, filed by Adam Schulman of Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, said. “Even if the defendants were to attempt to assure Greenberg that his speeches and writings were permitted under Rule 8.4(g), given the open-ended language of Rule 8.4(g) and its accompanying comments, Greenberg would not feel comfortable speaking freely and would still reasonably fear professional liability.”
The suit seeks a permanent injunction barring members of the Disciplinary Board from enforcing the rule, which is set to go into effect in December.
Trump Administration
The Hill: TikTok slams Trump’s executive order, promises to pursue ‘all remedies’
By Chris Mills Rodrigo
TikTok on Friday responded to President Trump’s executive order banning the company from operating in the U.S. in 45 days, saying it shows “no adherence to the law.”
The social media company went on to promise to “pursue all remedies available to us.”
“We are shocked by the recent Executive Order, which was issued without any due process,” the short-form video sharing platform said.
Trump’s executive order issued late Thursday night justified the ban by citing national security concerns based on TikTok’s ties to China…
TikTok said Friday that the order sets a “dangerous precedent for the concept of free expression and open markets.” …
The president issued another executive order on Thursday night applying the same ban on transactions with the Chinese owners of messaging app WeChat.
EFF: TikTok Ban: A Seed of Genuine Security Concern Wrapped in a Thick Layer of Censorship
By Eva Galperin, David Greene, and Kurt Opsahl
Banning Americans from using the TikTok app would infringe the First Amendment rights of those users to express themselves online. Millions of users post protected speech to TikTok every day, choosing the app over other options for its features or for its audience. Courts will generally not uphold a categorical ban on speech. As the Supreme Court has recognized, to “foreclose access to social media altogether is to prevent the user from engaging in the legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights.” Noting that the Court had previously struck down a law prohibiting protected speech in just one venue (the Los Angeles International Airport), the Court explained: “the State may not enact this complete bar to the exercise of First Amendment rights on websites integral to the fabric of our modern society and culture.” …
Moreover, if the Trump Administration’s true motives are based on perceived anti-Trump content on TikTok, as some have contended, the ban would be an impermissible restriction based on content and viewpoint, subjecting the ban to more constitutional scrutiny, which it could not survive.
Even if the courts reviewed the ban as just a content-neutral restriction on the manner of speech, a complete TikTok ban is overly broad and not narrowly tailored to achieve the government’s national security purpose. The vast majority of TikTok videos are not in any way related to national security, nor are their posters in substantially more danger of Chinese government spying than the users of other Chinese-owned technologies.
Online Speech Platforms
Wall Street Journal: Antitrust Can’t Bust a Monopoly of Ideas
By Vivek Ramaswamy
On the premise of “social responsibility,” Alphabet subsidiary YouTube recently decided to begin removing political videos it deemed untruthful. The site has taken down videos that were critical of Covid-19 lockdown policies in certain states, stifling discourse about the most important scientific and public-policy debate of the year. YouTube’s stated litmus test is the World Health Organization’s assessment of what is and is not truthful. By that standard, YouTube would have removed any video in January claiming the coronavirus could be transmitted person to person, since that ran contrary to WHO’s position at the time.
Facebook’s decision this year to create a corporate politburo of “experts” to determine what types of speech are acceptable on its site is similarly troubling. It’s worth recalling that as recently as March most public-health experts, including the surgeon general and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were advising against wearing face masks…Unfettered dialogue isn’t a liberal-arts luxury; it is a necessity for science and democracy…
Google, Facebook and Twitter enjoy a de facto oligopoly over the public debate many Americans witness on the internet, a primary source of political information in the digital age…
Twitter suspended accounts of Chinese activists ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Apple has removed songs from iTunes that refer to Tiananmen Square and has suppressed its Taiwanese flag emoji in Hong Kong and Macau. Will these restraints eventually apply to American users too?
Politico: Twitter to begin labeling ‘state-affiliated media outlets’
By Betsy Woodruff Swan
Twitter will start labeling the accounts of media outlets affiliated with the governments of countries on the U.N. Security Council, it announced Thursday.
The new labels won’t apply to all media outlets that receive government funding – only “outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution,” according to Twitter’s blog post announcing the change.
The labels will go on the accounts for China Daily, Russia Today, Sputnik and other media outlets, a Twitter spokesperson said. But not Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, two media outlets funded by the U.S. government, or NPR and the BBC. The blog post described NPR and the BBC as “state-financed media organizations with editorial independence.”
The post implied the policy might expand to include more countries…
Twitter will also label the accounts of some government leaders from the five countries that are permanent members of the Security Council, including ambassadors and foreign ministers.
CNN: Facebook bans ads from pro-Trump PAC
By Donie O’Sullivan
Facebook announced Thursday it was banning ads from The Committee to Defend the President, a pro-Trump super PAC. Facebook did not say how long the ban would last.
“As a result of the Committee to Defend the President’s repeated sharing of content determined by third-party fact-checkers to be false, they will not be permitted to advertise for a period of time on our platform,” Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said. Stone declined to say what specifically led to Thursday’s action…
Representatives for former President Barack Obama sent a cease-and-desist letter to the PAC earlier this year demanding that it stop airing an ad that uses the former President’s words to imply former Vice President Joe Biden supports “plantation politics.”
In October, the Biden campaign wrote a letter to Facebook complaining about an ad run by the PAC.
NBC News: Facebook removes troll farm posing as African-American support for Donald Trump
By Ben Collins and Kevin Collier
Facebook removed hundreds of accounts on Thursday from a foreign troll farm posing as African-Americans in support of Donald Trump and QAnon supporters. It also removed thousands of fake accounts linked to conservative media outlet The Epoch Times that pushed pro-Trump conspiracy theories about coronavirus and protests in the U.S.
Facebook took down the accounts as part of its enforcement against coordinated inauthentic behavior, which is the use of fake accounts to inflate the reach of content or products on social media.
The foreign pro-Trump troll farm was based in Romania and pushed content on Instagram under names like “BlackPeopleVoteForTrump” and on Facebook under “We Love Our President.” …
Facebook stressed that the takedowns were based on “behavior, not content,” like breaking rules against creating fake accounts to boost engagement on some pieces of content.
Buzzfeed News: Instagram Displayed Negative Related Hashtags For Biden, But Hid Them For Trump
By Ryan Mac
For at least the last two months, a key Instagram feature, which algorithmically pushes users toward supposedly related content, has been treating hashtags associated with President Donald Trump and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in very different ways. Searches for Biden also return a variety of pro-Trump messages, while searches for Trump-related topics only returned the specific hashtags, like #MAGA or #Trump – which means searches for Biden-related hashtags also return counter-messaging, while those for Trump do not…
Reached for comment, a Trump campaign spokesperson used the bug as an opportunity to lambaste social media platforms for alleged anti-conservative bias.
“Social media companies’ biases consistently make the strongest arguments for the President’s Executive Order on Section 230 reform,” said Ken Farnaso, a Trump 2020 deputy national press secretary, referring to the president’s push to end a law that gives internet companies legal immunity for what users post to their platforms. “It’s preposterous that Silicon Valley, the bastion of diversity and liberalism, is terrified of intellectual diversity and conservative voices.”
Candidates and Campaigns
Politico: Commission rejects Trump campaign’s request for debate in early September
By Max Cohen
The Commission on Presidential Debates on Thursday rebuffed the Trump campaign’s request for an early-September debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.
In a letter addressed to Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, the commission’s co-chairs wrote that the campaign’s fears of mass early voting before a debate had occurred were unfounded.
“There is a difference between ballots having been issued by a state and those ballots having been cast by voters, who are under no compulsion to return their ballots before the Debates,” the letter read. “In 2016, when the debate schedule was similar, only .0069% of the electorate had voted at the time of the first debate.”
In a swift response on Thursday,Giuliani, the former New York mayor, said the Trump campaign was “disappointed” in the commission’s decision.
“We continue to believe that the American people deserve to see their candidates for president compare their records and visions for the United States before actual voting begins,” Giuliani wrote.
He also asked the commission to clarify that both candidates would physically appear together on stage or in a television studio – and that the debates would not be held with Trump and Biden in separate locations.
CBS News: Biden campaign announces largest ad buy ever by a presidential candidate
By Bo Erickson, Nicole Killion, Nicole Sganga, and Ed O’Keefe
The Biden campaign on Wednesday is announcing what it says is the largest TV ad buy ever by a presidential candidate, with $220 million set aside for commercials to air through the fall and another $60 million budgeted to reach audiences digitally on social media or gaming platforms.
Daily Caller: Trump Self-Funded Much Of His 2016 Campaign, But He Hasn’t Contributed A Penny Towards His Reelection
By Andrew Kerr
President Donald Trump frequently boasted during the 2016 primaries that he was self-funding his campaign, but Federal Election Commission records reveal he hasn’t put a penny of his own wealth into his reelection campaign…
Trump…sold himself to primary voters during the 2016 elections as an outsider immune to the corrupting influence of lobbyists and special interest groups due to his ability to self-fund his campaign.
He frequently suggested that his Republican opponents at the time, such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, were beholden to the special interest groups signing checks to their campaigns.
“They will be bombarded by their lobbyists that donated a lot of money to them,” Trump said in July 2015. “Again, Jeb raised $107 million dollars, OK? They’re not putting that money up because it’s a wonderful charity.”
Trump went as far as to publicly disavow at least nine super PACs in 2015 that were supporting his campaign, telling the groups in letters issued by his campaign counsel that they were “not authorized to use Mr. Trump’s name and likeness in connection with its fundraising activities” and that the Trump campaign didn’t “want any money, services or goods from your committee.” …
But Trump hasn’t contributed anything to his campaign since he entered the White House, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of FEC records.
The States
Washington Post: Georgia teens shared photos of maskless students in crowded hallways. Now they’re suspended.
By Lateshia Beachum
At least two North Paulding High School students have been suspended after sharing images of a school hallway jammed with their mostly maskless peers, and the principal has warned other students against doing the same…
Hannah Watters, 15, wore a mask as she captured the inside of her school. On Wednesday, she ended up with a five-day suspension for violating the district’s student code of conduct, BuzzFeed News reported. The rules bar students from using social media during the day or using recording devices without the permission of an administrator…
The teen, who said she’d never before run afoul of the code of conduct, told the news outlet that she understood she broke the rules. But she also said she viewed her punishment as overly harsh.
“I’d like to say this is some good and necessary trouble,” Watters told CNN. “My biggest concern is not only about me being safe, it’s about everyone being safe because behind every teacher, student and staff member, there is a family, there are friends, and I would just want to keep everyone safe.” …
On the basis of the district’s policy, Watters’s speech probably would have been better protected had she been off school grounds when she posted a social media message about what happened, said Fred Smith Jr., an associate professor of law at Emory University.
“From a rights perspective, the question I would have is whether or not the school has exercised similar discipline for other students who have posted anything during the school day, especially instances of people posting favorable things,” he told The Washington Post on Thursday.
A lack of equal enforcement of the rules could pose a potential First Amendment problem for the school because it could show that the institution applies the rules selectively to speech, he said.
