Institute For Free Speech
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Political Spending: Civic Engagement is Not a Threat to Democracy
January 1, 2018  •  By IFS Staff  •    •  

The First Amendment guarantees every American freedom of speech. That freedom includes the right to spend money on speech. Without money, a political group cannot buy ads, print fliers, organize protests, or hire staff. Short of shouting one’s opinions on a street corner, it takes money to spread a message. Recognizing this relationship, the Supreme Court has long prohibited the…

No, Taxpayer Financing of Campaigns Won’t Stop Out-of-State Political Spending
June 13, 2017   •  By Joe Albanese   •  , ,

The special election for the U.S. House seat for Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District is attracting a great deal of attention from the media. The ...

Saying American businesses spend ‘dark money’ harms our democracy
June 12, 2017   •  By Scott Blackburn   •  , ,

Imagine you own a business. You make widgets. You have 50 employees, and you are looking to expand. But a local politician, Mayor Grouch, ...

Bernie Sanders and Rick Hasen Are Two Sides of the Same Defective Coin on Free Speech
June 8, 2017   •  By Joe Albanese   •  , ,

Recently, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders sat down with professor Rick Hasen of the University of California, Irvine School of Law. In their conversation, they ...

Recent Political Documentaries Have a Knee-Jerk Skepticism of Free Speech
June 2, 2017   •  By Joe Albanese   •  , , ,

I recently watched the new Netflix documentary Get Me Roger Stone, about the eponymous Republican political insider. The film traces Stone’s career from its ...

New study fails to prove that money sways politicians, despite activists’ excitement
May 24, 2017   •  By Brad Smith   •  ,

Politics is full of people with strong beliefs. Sometimes those beliefs are about principles, like free speech. Other times they are beliefs about facts, ...

Roosevelt Institute Study on “Political Money” is Not the Revelation It Claims to Be
May 16, 2017   •  By Joe Albanese   •  ,

A new study on the impact of “money in politics” has been released by the Roosevelt Institute, and sympathetic outlets are already hailing it ...

Putting “Dark Money” In Context: Total Campaign Spending by Political Committees and Nonprofits per Election Cycle

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May 16, 2017   •  By Luke Wachob   •  ,

PDF available here Not every group that spends money on campaigns or candidate-related speech is a political committee. If that were so, only politicians, ...

CLC Says CCP’s Wrong about “Dark Money.” Here are the Facts. Readers can Decide.
May 9, 2017   •  By Scott Blackburn   •  , ,

In a blog post from earlier today, the Campaign Legal Center’s Brendan Fischer critiques a mid-April CCP blog post I authored highlighting “Five Lessons ...

Stop Using ‘Special Interests’ As An Insult
April 27, 2017   •  By Joe Albanese   •  , ,

Commentators have debated for months what President Donald Trump’s pledge to “drain the swamp” really means. Many believe that the “swamp” represents so-called “special ...

Out-of-State Spending Was High in Georgia Special Election, and That’s OK
April 20, 2017   •  By Joe Albanese   •  , ,

The outsized attention being paid to a few special elections means an early opportunity for the politically active to create favorable momentum going into ...

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