FEC

Center for Public Integrity: New hope, new problem: Will Federal Election Commission shut down?

By Dave Levinthal

The six-member commission, which regulates and enforces the nation’s campaign finance laws, could face a de facto shutdown just as 2018 congressional midterm elections heat up.

Absent speedy intervention by President Donald Trump and the U.S. Senate, the FEC could soon lose at least two commissioners, and with them, the requirement that four commissioners be present to conduct high-level business such as making rules, levying fines, approving audits and offering political committees official guidance…

At the FEC’s final meeting of 2017 on Thursday, the five commissioners unanimously agreed to ask Congress for a dozen different changes to federal law.

Among the recommendations: Forcing senators to file their campaign finance disclosures electronically – they still do so on paper – and prohibiting political committees from engaging in “potentially fraudulent fundraising and spending” that involves raising money with the promise of supporting candidates, then using almost none of it for that purpose.

Fox News: Hillary Clinton campaign, DNC accused of ‘corrupt’ money scheme in new FEC complaint

By Perry Chiaramonte

“Based on publicly available FEC records, repeatedly throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, HVF would purportedly transfer funds to its constituent political committees, which included between 34 and 40 state parties,” reads a passage from a copy of the complaint reviewed by Fox News. “On the very same day each of these transfers supposedly occurred, or occasionally the very next day, every single one of those state parties purportedly contributed all of those funds to the DNC.”

CDP counsel Dan Backer said the scheme was a flagrant violation of a Supreme Court ruling that determined such moves were illegal — and broke FEC campaign contribution rules which state that an individual can contribute only $2,700 directly to a presidential campaign…

“It’s not entirely clear if they transferred the money to the state parties to begin with, and if they never had control of the money, it’s not a contribution. It’s an earmark. If the money is in control of the candidate, then it is a contribution to them.”

Donor Privacy

Daily Caller: Oklahoma Secretary Of State ‘Doxxes’ O’Keefe Donors

By Mark J. Fitzgibbons

In their charitable solicitation filings with Oklahoma, organizations are required to provide their nonprofit tax return, Form 990, but James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas did not redact the names of donors listed on Schedule B of its return. Instead of notifying Project Veritas to give it the opportunity to redact those names, the Oklahoma Secretary of State carelessly (and I assume not willfully) posted those names online…

In this consequence-free environment for government lawbreakers, the office of former California Attorney General, now U.S. Senator Kamala Harris was exposed as posting over 1,400 unredacted Schedule B forms filed with her office. This lawbreaking by doxxing confidential tax return information was uncovered in a lawsuit filed by Americans for Prosperity Foundation against Harris…

The court decision recognized the underlying reason for the confidentiality of donor information, stating that “AFP, its employees, supporters and donors face public threats, harassment, intimidation, and retaliation once their support for and affiliation with the organization becomes publicly known.” …

Given the known prohibition on unauthorized disclosure of confidential tax return information, such online publication seems not only negligent, but reckless.

Supreme Court

SCOTUSblog: Symposium: Hijacked riders, not free riders

By Andrée Sophia Blumstein

The First Amendment creates a marketplace in which ideas about political, economic and social issues may compete freely for public acceptance without government interference, as the Supreme Court reaffirmed in 2012, in Knox v. Service Employees International Union, Local 1000. Two years later, in Harris v. Quinn, the court declared it a “bedrock principle” of the First Amendment that, “except perhaps in the rarest of circumstances, no person in this country may be compelled to subsidize speech by a third party that he or she does not wish to support.” So, for example, in Rutan v. Republican Party of Illinois, the court held that a state may not compel a public school teacher to contribute to or be member of a political party as a condition of her employment…

We can expect some interplay with the other compelled-speech cases granted this term, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission and National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra. The court has yet to settle on a comprehensive and comprehensible compelled-speech doctrine, as it has done in cases involving suppression of speech. Janus offers a salutary opportunity for contouring such a compelled-speech doctrine, and, especially, for determining the standard(s) of scrutiny applicable in compelled-speech cases.

Free Speech

Washington Free Beacon: Over 90% of America’s Top Colleges Regulate Campus Free Speech

By Rachel Frommer

Over 90 percent of the America’s top colleges maintain policies regulating campus free speech, with one third employing severely restrictive policies, according to a study released Tuesday.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) reported in its annual end-of-year analysis on campus speech and harassment policies-what FIRE terms “speech codes”-found that over half of the 461 schools included in FIRE’s study continue to use methods that have some “chilling effect” on expression.

One in nine campuses continue to preserve “free speech zones,” or limited strips of campus to which administrators at public institutions restrict demonstrations, pamphleting, and other public expressions of views, according to the report. These zones can make up less than 1 percent of a campus, according to FIRE.

Samantha Harris, vice president of policy research at FIRE, said such policy is “blatantly unconstitutional.”

The U.S. Justice Department has publicly supported students who have filed suits against their colleges zoning guidelines, and the state legislatures of Colorado, Missouri, Arizona, Virginia, Kentucky, and Utah have all approved bills this year banning zones at public universities.

Reason: Conservative Snowflakes Get Protesting Nebraska Instructor Booted From Her Teaching Job

By Dan King

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has told a graduate English instructor who picketed a conservative student group, calling them neo-fascists, she will not be employed at the end of this coming spring semester.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) sent a letter to the school Dec. 8, asking for the reinstatement of Lawton, who was removed from her teaching position in September after she confronted members of Turning Point USA, who were recruiting prospective members in a public space on campus…

UNL said Lawton was relieved of her duties because she did not meet the “expectations for civility” the school has for its lecturers. FIRE, however, is arguing that Nebraska’s speech policies are not specific enough for its professors, making the firing of Lawton unjustified.

“The First Amendment does not tolerate broad, unfettered discretion to penalize students or faculty for political speech that officials view as offensive, unprofessional or uncivil,” FIRE’s letter reads. “The need to narrowly tailor a university’s policies as they apply to faculty members’ speech is particularly critical when it concerns the speech of lecturers, who lack the formal protection offered under a tenure system.”

Congress

Center for American Progress: An Appropriations Bill Is Threatening to Make Politicians More Dependent on Big Donors

By Alex Tausanovitch

Prior to 2014, an individual donor could give no more than $74,600 to all political party committees in each election cycle. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission found this “aggregate limit” to be unconstitutional, raising the combined total a donor could give to political parties to $1.2 million. Less than eight months later, Congress inserted a provision into an end-of-year budget deal that more than doubled this amount, allowing one donor to give a combined $2.5 million to the state and national arms of one political party through a variety of special-purpose accounts.

Currently, most of the money that goes into these party accounts must be spent at arm’s length from the candidate. After all, the candidate can only accept $5,400-the rest is not the candidate’s money to spend. The party cannot turn around and give this money to the candidate or spend it “in cooperation, consultation or concert, with, or at the request or suggestion of [the] candidate.”

The new bill would wipe out this language and replace it with language that prohibits the party from making only communications “controlled by, or made at the direction of, the candidate.”