Free Speech
Wall Street Journal: Colleges Are Caught in the Free-Speech Crossfire
By Moving Upstream and Jason Bellini
Why do many college students want to see limits placed on campus free speech?
In this episode of Moving Upstream, we explore three factors that are influencing the national debate: polarization, postmodernism and provocation.
We spoke with dozens of students and teachers from around the country; among them, New York University professor and administrator Urlich Baer, who defends the students who are blocking controversial, conservative speakers from speaking on their campuses. He says these students do so out of a “fundamental commitment to racial equality.”
Then there’s Bret Weinstein, who resigned from Evergreen State College in June, and identifies himself as a progressive. He thinks social justice activists, who are blocking conservative speakers, are influenced by the postmodernist world view.
We also visit with University of California at Berkeley student organizer Gaelan Ash, who explains why he thinks people like Steve Bannon should be banned from speaking on college campuses.
Supreme Court
SCOTUSblog: Justices to hear challenge to Minnesota voting dress code: In Plain English
By Amy Howe
Minnesota’s ban on “political” apparel at the polling places violates the First Amendment, the MVA argues, because it sweeps far too broadly: It prohibits any references not only to political candidates and political parties, but also to political ideologies, political symbols and current issues. Thus, the MVA contends, the law would bar clothing and apparel bearing the Peace and Freedom Party’s peace-dove symbol, even though that party did not have any candidates on the ballot in Minnesota in 2010.
Even worse, the MVA continues, election officials have virtually complete discretion to decide whether a particular message is “political,” creating the very real possibility that messages that should be protected by the Constitution will be quashed. The MVA points to two incidents: In 2008, a poll worker in Texas tried to bar someone who was wearing a souvenir T-shirt bearing the word “Alaska” from voting because the worker thought it signaled support for then-vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, while voters in Colorado and Florida wearing “MIT” shirts – as in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – were stopped by poll workers who were concerned that the shirts showed support for 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
The Courts
Washington Times: Federal prosecutors drop charges against 129 Trump inauguration protesters
By Valerie Richardson
Federal prosecutors said Thursday they will dismiss the charges against 129 of 188 activists facing trial for rioting and vandalism during the Trump inauguration, a month after a jury found the first batch of six protesters not guilty.
Instead, federal prosecutors will concentrate on the remaining 59 defendants, a “smaller, core group that we believe is most responsible for the destruction and violence that took place on Inauguration Day,” said Bill Miller, spokesman for Jessie K. Liu, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.
The 59 activists still facing charges were described in the court document as those who engaged in “identifiable acts of destruction, violence, or other assaultive conduct,” planned the protests, or used Antifa-style “black-bloc” tactics to “perpetrate, aid or abet violence and destruction.” …
After the jury acquitted the six activists on Dec. 21, the ACLU urged the prosecution to dismiss “all remaining charges against peaceful demonstrators.
“Today’s verdict reaffirms two central constitutional principles of our democracy: First, that dissent is not a crime, and second, that our justice system does not permit guilt by association,” said ACLU senior staff attorney Scott Michelman…
The next round of defendants is scheduled for trial on March 5, according to court documents.
Al Jazeera: Journalist among J20 defendants still being charged
Journalist Aaron Cantu is among 59 defendants still facing the grim prospect of decades behind bars after being arrested at a protest during US President Donald Trump’s inauguration last year.
On Friday afternoon, Cantu’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the charges against the reporter, arguing that moving forward with his prosecution would “set a dangerous precedent for journalists”, according to the filing.
“The indictment does not contain any specific allegations that Mr Cantu himself engaged in any violent or destructive acts,” the filing reads.
The prosecution’s case against Cantu is largely focused on his knowledge of the protest tactics and the fact that he remained in the area of the protesters while property damage took place…
“The government’s prosecution of Mr Cantu is the most severe type of government restriction possible,” it adds.
“The government is not simply trying to limit what Mr.Cantu publishes as a journalist, but to actually prosecute and imprison him for exercising his First Amendment newsgathering right.”
Internet Speech
Facebook Newsroom: Hard Questions: Social Media and Democracy
By Katie Harbath, Global Politics and Government Outreach Director
For the next topic of our Hard Questions series, we decided to confront an issue that has been top of mind for many of us here, including myself: What effect does social media have on democracy? …
Our role is to ensure that the good outweighs the forces that can compromise healthy discourse.
That’s the subject that these essays address. We begin with a perspective from Samidh Chakrabarti, who leads Facebook’s civic engagement team. And for the first time since we launched Hard Questions, we’re publishing the views of three prominent outside contributors – not all of whom agree with Facebook’s perspective and offer some direct criticisms. We did this because serious discussion of these issues cannot occur without robust debate. And we asked them to take on a broader, and perhaps more blunt, question: Is social media good or bad for democracy? Among our writers is Harvard professor and author Cass Sunstein; Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former president of Estonia and social media scholar; and Ariadne Vromen, a professor of political participation at the University of Sydney. We begin with Sunstein and will publish the others in subsequent days.
New America: Digital Deceit: The Technologies Behind Precision Propaganda on the Internet
By Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott
To truly address the specter of future nefarious interventions in the American political process, we need to broaden the lens and assess all of the tools available to online commercial advertisers. Disinformation operators in the future will replicate all of these techniques, using the full suite of platforms and technologies…
The central problem of disinformation corrupting American political culture is not Russian spies or a particular social media platform. The central problem is that the entire industry is built to leverage sophisticated technology to aggregate user attention and sell advertising…
Our paper concludes with a series of recommendations to guide corporate reform, consumer empowerment and new public policy development. Current efforts to promote transparency in the advertising ecosystem are important steps. But these are only the first moves in a long and difficult challenge. We offer a set of principles to guide the path forward as well as starting points for potential regulatory intervention. These include changes to election law, data privacy protections, and competition policy. The nature of this crisis in media and democracy requires an ambitious approach to reform from Silicon Valley C-Suites to Capitol Hill to the handsets of everyday internet users.
FEC
Politico: Alleged payment to porn star was illegal donation to Trump campaign, watchdog says
By Josh Gerstein
In submissions to the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission, Common Cause said the alleged payment to Stephanie Clifford – who uses the stage name Stormy Daniels – amounted to an in-kind donation to Trump’s presidential campaign that should have been publicly disclosed in its official reports.
An attorney for Common Cause, Paul Ryan, said the payment appeared to be hush money. He compared the situation to the series of events that resulted in the prosecution of former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.)…
McGahn, at a 2011 FEC meeting, concluded that the gifts were “not reportable,” also saying that it would be “odd” to deem such payments as gifts to Edwards’ campaign…
Jan Baran, a GOP campaign finance lawyer, called the reasoning of the Common Cause complaint “fallacious.”
“The money spent for Edwards in 2004 or for Trump in 2016 is not covered by the election law,” Baran said. “As the jury concluded in the Edwards case, money spent for a candidate is not necessarily money spent for a campaign and, therefore, is not a regulated contribution or expenditure. Both times the purpose of the expense was highly personal, to say the least, and not campaign related in the legal sense.”
Detroit News: Kid Rock sends $122K from fake campaign to voter group
By Melissa Nann Burke
The watchdog group Common Cause filed a complaint with the FEC and the U.S. Department of Justice in September, alleging that the Romeo-born musician was violating federal law by acting like a Senate candidate without registering his candidacy or complying with campaign finance rules…
The complaint also named Warner Bros. Records Inc., alleging the record label violated election law by facilitating contributions and acting as a conduit for contributions for Kid Rock’s campaign…
Paul S. Ryan, vice president for policy and litigation for Common Cause, said the FEC usually takes more than a year, sometimes several years, to resolve complaints. He said Kid Rock’s donation to CRNC Action “doesn’t really impact our complaint.”
“Candidates – which is what we allege he was – have broad latitude with how they dispose of leftover or surplus campaign funds, which is how I would characterize these funds,” Ryan said.
“The only thing a candidate can’t do with leftover campaign funds is pocket them – i.e., ‘convert them to personal use’ in campaign finance law-speak. It’s permissible for a candidate to give leftover campaign funds to a 501(c)(4) organization, so the fact that Kid Rock did so here doesn’t raise any new legal red flags.”
Fundraising
Real Clear Politics: ActBlue Fundraising Platform Strikes Gold — for Liberals
By Michael E. Hartmann
By ActBlue’s own most-recent figures, it has been hugely successful. For 2017, the amount of money it raised from more than 16 million clicks on “Contribute” to 7,892 Democratic candidates and liberal advocacy and 501 (c)(3) nonprofit groups, totaled over $522 million. That staggering total is up from nearly $207 million in 2015…
In 2016, moreover, ActBlue announced creation of ActBlue Charities as an IRS 501(c)(3) nonprofit that shares the same technological prowess to maximize giving to liberal (c)(3) groups…
In contrast, there are conservative donor-advised funds that support conservative (c)(3)s, including with good online platforms, but they usually require a certain, non-small-dollar amount to open an account with them, and they don’t come with as full a set of convenient tools that ActBlue provides to givers and recipients…
As the $522 million raised in 2017 makes clear, ActBlue’s tools are working extremely well. And ActBlue Charities seems like another smart idea, from its liberal standpoint.
From a conservative standpoint, all of this might look to be worth another aggressive attempt at replication.
Citizens United
Talking Points Memo: Did Citizens United Help Russians Funnel Money To NRA?
By Allegra Kirkland
To fully understand the news about the FBI’s probe, we need to first understand how the effort to gut campaign finance laws has left the U.S. deeply vulnerable to foreign money infiltrating our elections.
“Citizens United opened up the floodgates to any kind of corporate money,” Craig Holman, a campaign finance expert at good government group Public Citizen, told TPM. “It’s easy to launder foreign money through corporate entities or LLCs, and it goes entirely unreported as coming from foreign sources.” …
Larry Noble of the Campaign Legal Center told TPM that the law is now easy to get around. 501(c)(4)s are required to file reports including the donor’s name if money comes in that is expressly earmarked for an ad boosting a particular candidate. But as long as the non-profit doesn’t divulge the specific content of an ad to the donor, no disclosure is necessary…
Noble said any case against Torshin or the NRA would be complex. The FBI will have to look through “bank records, the money coming in, where it went,” Noble said. “And try to trace it through to what it was spent on. Beyond that, you want to know who was involved with it, what they discussed with foreign nationals, who approached who, what were their understandings.”
The States
Washington Policy Center: Washington Coalition for Open Government drops its support for bill that would limit free speech
By Paul Guppy
The Washington Coalition for Open Government (WCOG) once supported the bill, but the respected civic openness organization is now worried about the danger the bill poses to open expression and the free flow of ideas. Here is WCOG’s latest statement on the bill:
“We have updated WCOG’s position on the DISCLOSE Act, HB 2455 and SB 5991, from SUPPORT to CONCERNS…”
“…the way the bill is written, it could be interpreted to require intrusive financial disclosures by non-profits who do nothing more than publish policy analysis articles about ballot measures or campaign issues, by considering such writing to be an in-kind contribution or independent expenditure for or against a candidate or measure.
“The free flow of ideas, without express advocacy, shouldn’t be stifled by onerous disclosure requirements; the bill should be focused on actual attempts to conceal the flow of cash to political advertising. The definitions in the bill need to be clarified.”
The ACLU also opposes the bill, testifying against it at a Senate hearing and submitting a statement against it in the House. The ACLU is rightly concerned about the chilling effect the bill would have on voluntary giving to charities and other non-profits.
U.S. News & World Report: Bill to Fill Initiative Campaign Finance Gap Heads to Senate
By Associated Press
A bill aimed at requiring South Dakota ballot measure campaigns to disclose their donors while supporters gather signatures to get on the ballot is headed to the full state Senate.
The State Affairs Committee voted 8-1 Monday for the proposal.
It would require initiative campaigns to submit finance reports by July 1 in odd-numbered years when supporters collect signatures needed to get on the ballot.
Democratic Sen. Reynold Nesiba, the main sponsor, says residents deserve to know who is paying for the campaigns.
Current rules don’t require ballot question campaigns to disclose their donors until long after they’ve submitted signatures to the state.
Nesiba drafted the legislation after being contacted by The Associated Press about the issue.
Republican Sen. Stace Nelson, an opponent, says he thinks campaign finance disclosure is an infringement on people’s rights.
Arizona Daily Star: Political contributions should remain anonymous
By Jonathan Hoffman
Former Attorney General Terry Goddard, a Democrat, is on a crusade. His group, Outlaw Dirty Money, will try to get an initiative on the 2018 state ballot that would ban “dark money.” …
Money spent on political communication is a form of speech (see Buckley v. Valeo). Our country was inspired by, and founded upon, anonymously published documents…
Some might argue that the revolution is over and we no longer need to live in fear of reprisals. Perhaps, but we are still the same species and passions still run high. In fact, we need look no further than California for reasons to be concerned…
California has a law that requires the reporting of donor information, including name, occupation and employer, to the state. California then publishes that information on its website.
Activists used this information to harass Prop. 108 supporters at their places of employment either in person or via the telephone…
While it may be interesting, and occasionally useful, to know the names of donors, the chilling effect of reprisals is sufficient to justify anonymity. Why spend all that time and effort discussing the issues on their merits when you can just punish people who get in your way?
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin Republicans hope to oust leaders of ethics, elections commissions on Tuesday
By Patrick Marley
Hoping to oust the leaders of the state’s ethics and elections commissions, Republicans in the state Senate will vote Tuesday on denying their confirmations.
It’s the latest skirmish in the years-long war over how a sweeping John Doe investigation of Wisconsin Republicans was conducted. The probe was shut down in 2015 after the state Supreme Court ruled nothing illegal occurred in how Republicans ran their campaigns in recall elections.
GOP senators contend denying confirmation votes Tuesday will remove from office ethics director Brian Bell and elections director Michael Haas. Both men are fighting for their jobs, and the Ethics Commission released an investigation report on the eve of the vote that concluded Bell had acted in a professional and non-partisan manner.
Bell has said a “no” vote by the Senate would force him out of office, but the chairman of the state Elections Commission has said such a vote would have no effect and a lawsuit would have to be brought to oust Haas…
Bell has said he left the accountability board in part because of concerns about a liberal bias. In a Monday memo to Sen. Tom Tiffany (R-Hazelhurst), Bell contended the accountability board had not securely maintained records and said Haas had dismissed his concerns about how they were maintained.
