In the News

ProPublica: I Approved This Facebook Message – But You Don’t Know That

By Jennifer Valentino-DeVries

Hundreds of federal political ads – including those from major players such as the Democratic National Committee and the Donald Trump 2020 campaign – are running on Facebook without adequate disclaimer language, likely violating Federal Election Commission rules, a review by ProPublica has found.

An FEC opinion in December clarified that the requirement for political ads to say who paid for and approved them, which has long applied to print and broadcast outlets, extends to ads on Facebook. So we checked more than 300 ads that had run on the world’s largest social network since the opinion, and that election-law experts told us met the criteria for a disclaimer. Fewer than 40 had disclosures that appeared to satisfy FEC rules.

“I’m totally shocked,” said David Keating, president of the nonprofit Institute for Free Speech in Alexandria, Virginia, which usually opposes restrictions on political advertising. “There’s no excuse,” he said, looking through our database of ads…

It’s not clear why advertisers aren’t following the FEC regulations. Keating, of the Institute for Free Speech, suggested that advertisers might think the word “Sponsored” and a link to their Facebook page are enough and that reasonable people would know they had paid for the ad.

FEC

Richmond Times-Dispatch: Washington loses a free-speech champion

By Editorial Board

America got some bad news the other day when Lee Goodman submitted his resignation from the Federal Election Commission…

The FEC’s job is to keep elections clean. But in recent years some of its Democratic members – Ann Ravel and Ellen Weintraub in particular – have tried to push the agency into realms where it has no business being.

Goodman has pushed back – e.g., by suggesting that the First Amendment protects not only newspapers and magazines but books, magazines, and streaming services such as Netflix. (Ravel and Weintraub weren’t so sure about that.)

More recently, he thwarted an attempt by the FEC to regulate third-party tweets…

What started out as a noble goal – preventing the bribery of political candidates – has transmogrified into a Kafkaesque regulatory regime under which, if some FEC commissioners had their way, nearly all political communication in the U.S. would be subject to federal review. Goodman stood four-square against such a threat to free speech. It is imperative that his replacement do so as well.

The Courts

Helena Independent Record: Montana’s ban on robocalls upheld as constitutional by federal judge

By Holly Michels

A federal district court judge has ruled that Montana’s ban on political robocalls is constitutional, although the lack of enforcement since the ban was approved in 1991 has meant Montanans still receive many of the calls each election cycle.

The ruling, issued Friday by U.S. District Court Senior Judge Charles Lovell in Helena, puts an end to a challenge filed against Montana’s law a year ago by Victory Processing LLC, a Michigan company that does political consulting and works on campaigns and ballot initiatives primarily through the use of automated telephone calls, or robocalls.

Victory Processing claimed the ban was depriving it of the right to free speech. However, Lovell found that the state law prohibiting robocalls is a “constitutionally permissible content-based regulation of speech.”

Congress

Los Angeles Times: U.S. intelligence leaders expect Russia to interfere in the November elections, like they did in 2016

By Chris Megerian

President Trump’s top intelligence advisor told senators on Tuesday that he expects Russia to mount an operation to influence U.S. voters in the November midterm elections, much as it did during the 2016 presidential campaign.

“We expect Russia to continue using propaganda, social media, false flag personas, sympathetic spokesmen and other means to influence, to try to build on its wide range of operations, and exacerbate social and political fissures in the United States,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on global threats.

He added, “There should be no doubt that Russia perceives its past efforts as successful and views the 2018 U.S. midterm elections as a potential target.”

CIA Director Mike Pompeo echoed Coats’ concerns. Other Trump administration officials have raised similar warnings in recent weeks.

“If it’s their intention to interfere, they are going to find ways to do that,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Fox News during a recent trip to Latin America. “We can take steps but… it’s very difficult to preempt it.”

Politico: Intelligence officials say Russia intent on disrupting U.S. elections

By Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney

Here are other key moments from the hearing with Coats, FBI Director Christopher Wray, CIA Director Mike Pompeo and others:

Intelligence indicates Russia is specifically targeting the 2018 elections, Pompeo said…

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) skewered Trump for not addressing the threat Russian hackers pose to future U.S. elections.

“We’ve had more than a year to get our act together and address the threat posed by Russia and implement a strategy to deter future attacks. But we still do not have a plan,” the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said…

Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) disputed Warner’s assessment that the U.S. was no better prepared now than in 2016 for Russian election meddling.

“I would respectfully disagree,” Risch said. “I think the American people are ready for this. I think they’re going to look askance a lot more at the information that’s attempted to be passed in social media…The American people are smart people. They realize there are people trying to manipulate them.” …

“There’s no single agency, quote, in charge” of addressing the problem, Coats said…

Coats said the government’s ability to force changes at social media companies, which have come under scrutiny over the spread of false information, is limited.

First Amendment

Durham Herald Sun: Duke wants to train more First Amendment lawyers. Here’s how it plans to do it

By Ray Gronberg

Duke Law is poised to launch another clinic, its 12th, this fall semester. It will focus on First Amendment law and has five years’ worth of operational funding on the way from a New York City-based foundation. Professor Jefferson Powell, a U.S. Department of Justice official in the Clinton and Obama administrations, is set to become its director.

Powell said he’ll continue to teach a first-year constitutional law class, but otherwise devote his working hours at the school to running the clinic. “I’ll be hands-on on a daily basis,” he said.

Its practice will focus on helping media groups and people in the Southeast who need pro-bono legal help in fending off attempts to suppress or inhibit free speech. The team will include a teaching fellow and, starting out, four students…

Legal practice regulations and the students’ learning curve will mean that “sometimes it’s better for me to argue a case or for the fellow to handle a matter,” Powell said. “But part of the goal is to help new lawyers be good First Amendment lawyers.”

Fundraising

Washington Post: ‘It’s not just marches’: Democratic candidates reap financial benefits of anti-Trump fervor

By Michelle Ye Hee Lee, Anu Narayanswamy and Ed O’Keefe

The Republican National Committee has raised far more money than its Democratic counterpart, thanks in part to a surge in small-dollar donations sparked by Trump’s popularity with the GOP base. Some major Democratic donors, meanwhile, seem hesitant to invest in upstart, unproven “resistance” groups that might also support Democratic hopefuls…

Donors on the left also are bypassing the main party groups and injecting money directly into the fight to win back Congress…

The candidates, as well as the DCCC, have been particularly effective at attracting contributions of $200 or less from individual donors, according to campaign finance experts…

One way Trump critics in liberal areas have tried to influence the midterms is by pouring money into competitive races elsewhere in the country…

In some cases, major donors are eschewing both the national committees as well the resistance groups, which are new and untested.

The States

New York Times: Mayor Wants City Charter Revision to Tackle Campaign Finance

By William Neuman

The mayor will direct the commission – whose members he will appoint – to lower the limits for allowable campaign contributions to political candidates significantly, Mr. Phillips said…

“We need a charter revision commission, we need to go at the specific idea that one of the things that most discourages people is money in politics,” Mr. de Blasio said on Monday night on NY1. “People want to get money out of the political process as much as possible.”

The mayor is also expected to propose a more generous model for public financing of elections, Mr. Phillips said. He said the commission will also be directed to consider possible reforms to the city’s Board of Elections and to find ways to promote greater voter participation.

One area that he will not instruct it to examine will be the issue of outside nonprofit groups created to take donations to support an elected official’s policies, like the Campaign for One New York, which was created for Mr. de Blasio, and whose efforts were later examined by state and federal investigators. Mr. Phillips said it was not necessary because the city had already passed a law limiting donations to such groups.