ICYMI

Washington Examiner: Senators embarrass themselves defending S.1 bill’s assault on free speech

By Luke Wachob

How do you defend a bill that would subsidize politicians’ campaigns, expose people to harassment for their beliefs, and impose a partisan takeover of the agency that oversees campaign funding and political speech?

Not very well.

At least, that is, if this week’s meeting of the Senate Rules Committee is any indication. Democratic sponsors of the bill continued to dismiss First Amendment concerns in their proposal to overhaul campaign finance and speech laws. But Republicans finally got an opportunity to confront them.

The hearing left one wondering whether the sponsors even understand their bill or the history of government efforts to control political speech. Either way, S. 1 needs to be sent back to the drawing board. Again.

Congress

ABC News: Manchin to support measured voting reform in lieu of sweeping Democratic proposal

By Allison Pecorin and Rachel Scott

Sen. Joe Manchin is breaking with Democrats and throwing his weight behind a more measured voting rights bill in lieu of the sweeping Democratic voting reform bill that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has labeled a top priority of the caucus.

The Democrat from West Virginia told ABC News exclusively that he intends to support the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, a more narrowly tailored piece of voting rights legislation that he said he believes could muster bipartisan support even as voting legislation is becoming a flash point between the two parties…

Manchin said Tuesday’s mark-up made clear to him that the robust Democratic bill, which he has already said he does not support, has no hope of mustering the necessary 60 votes to pass.

“No matter what was brought up it was partisan vote, 9-9,” Manchin said. “This is one of the most — I think — important things that we can do to try to bring our country back together and if we do it in a partisan way, it’s not going to be successful I believe.”

For weeks Manchin has said he believes the Democratic proposal is too sweeping. The John Lewis Voting Rights Act takes a narrower approach to voting reform.

CNN: Concerns about sweeping voting rights bill grow among Senate Democrats

By  Lauren Fox, Fredreka Schouten, and Rachel Janfaza

Senate Democrats privately signaled concerns Thursday about pushing ahead with a vote on the sweeping voting rights and ethics bill that had become a top priority for Democratic leaders and progressive outside groups — at least without first making changes.

The concerns, aired in a private Democratic meeting on Capitol Hill, followed confirmation Wednesday that West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin — a crucial vote in Democrats’ narrow majority — would not back S1, known as the For the People Act, which Democrats see as a way to blunt Republican state-level efforts to restrict voting access. Manchin, who was not at Thursday’s meeting because he’s traveling with first lady Jill Biden in his home state, suggested instead that the path forward lies in pushing legislation that would have a narrower scope.

One source familiar with the discussion at Thursday’s meeting said that lawmakers signaled that while they had signed onto S1, they still had changes they wanted to make — some of them significant. Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, told the caucus that some things in the bill still needed to be adapted and that it was one thing to have a bill that was seen as a messaging bill and another thing to vote on the legislation as it is.

A spokesman for Warner declined to comment.

HuffPost: How West Virginia Progressives Are Pushing Joe Manchin On Voting Reform

By Paul Blumenthal

Any legislation that Democrats hope to pass and put on President Joe Biden’s desk needs Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) support first. The chances for his vote seem to be slipping away for the For the People Act, a sweeping election reform package.

But the legislation’s supporters, particularly progressives in Manchin’s home state of West Virginia, aren’t giving up.

Despite large coalitions of national groups organizing the grassroots campaign to pass the bill, the campaign to win Manchin’s support has largely been a local affair. A coalition of West Virginia groups is working to educate West Virginians and Manchin’s office about the bill and why he should support it.

So far, it’s been for naught…

The groups running this encouragement campaign hope to remind Manchin about his past support for similar policies when he served in the West Virginia state government that are now a part of the For the People Act…

When he was governor, he backed a law introducing a public election financing program for judicial elections. The For the People Act includes a voluntary public financing program for congressional elections.

National Review: ‘Partly Constitutional’ Isn’t Enough: Senate Should Reject the ‘For the People Act’

By Walter Olson

[S. 1] would oblige larger online platforms to keep public logs of ads on political topics. When my own state of Maryland actually tried to enact such a law, the federal courts proceeded without hesitation to strike it down. Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson’s opinion for the Fourth Circuit called it “a content‐based law that targets political speech and compels newspapers, among other platforms, to carry certain messages on their websites. In other words, Maryland’s law is a compendium of traditional First Amendment infirmities.”

To put it differently — I’ve made this point before, but am never going to tire of making it — the bill’s sponsors aren’t willing to drop parts of their bill that courts have already declared unconstitutional.

Chamber Business News: “For the People Act” to push some voices out of the political process

By Victoria Harker

[S. 1] contains worthy measures to increase voter participation, but other provisions within it threaten industry’s right to have a voice in Washington, D.C., said Jack Howard, senior vice president for government affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce…  

“The Chamber believes it is crucial to democracy to bring more people into the political process. Significant portions of S.1 are clearly intended to have precisely the opposite effect – pushing certain voices, representing large segments of the electorate and U.S. economy, out of the political process altogether,” Howard said in a letter to the Senate last month…

[O]pponents argue the broad legislation also contains provisions that would erode the ability of industry and organizations to advocate on their own behalf.

For example, S.1 would regulate a vague, brand-new category of communications — communications that “promote,” “attack,” “support,” or “oppose” a candidate or elected official (PASO communications). 

Existing campaign finance law regulates speech that either expressly advocates a candidate’s election or defeat or that mentions a candidate in relatively close temporal proximity to an election. Under the proposed legislation, the definition of PASO communications applies year-round and threatens to consume any legislative advocacy that even mentions an elected official, experts say.            

In the letter to the Senate, the U.S. Chamber cited some provisions that are “extremely problematic,” stating that they would:

FCC

Wall Street Journal: End Comment Fraud at the Cost of a Stamp

By Kirk R. Arner and Harold Furchtgott-Roth

The New York Attorney General’s office announced an astonishing finding on May 6. Of the more than 22 million comments filed in response to the Federal Communication Commission’s hotly contested 2017 “net neutrality” repeal, nearly 18 million were fraudulent. A 19-year-old computer science student filed nearly eight million of them using automated software.

According to the Administrative Procedure Act, federal agencies like the FCC must give notice to the public when they propose to write new rules. Then the public can comment on those proposals. The agency must review all public comments before publishing an order detailing final rules, along with the legal and policy rationales for enacting them.

Parties that stand to gain one way or another pay to generate comments, as was shown in the New York report. To comment, you don’t need to use your own name, you don’t need to be American, and you can comment multiple times. Stuffing the regulatory ballot box is all too easy, and politicians love to say, “Millions of Americans have filed comments supporting my view.”

But there is a solution. Before the advent of electronic commenting, comments on proposed rules were submitted through the mail. The cost of mailing a letter served as a barrier to fraud. By introducing a small fee for electronic comments—say, the price of a postage stamp, currently 55 cents—agencies could reduce comment fraud.

Fundraising

Insider: How Marjorie Taylor Greene went from Nowhereville to fundraising juggernaut and AOC of the far right

By Dave Levinthal

The more than $3.2 million that [Rep. Marjorie Taylor] Greene raised during the year’s first three months ranks her second in the House to just one person: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…

Until now, no member of the US House, save for those running in a special election, has raised so much money during the first quarter of a nonelection year…

When Greene formed her congressional campaign committee in June 2019, she was all but a political nonentity…

But Greene was also a successful businesswoman…

And Greene had money. Lots of it. A personal financial disclosure that she filed while a candidate indicated that she was, at minimum, a multimillionaire. At maximum, the disclosure, which only required her to report assets in broad ranges, indicated that she was worth well into eight figures.

Either way, Greene easily enjoyed enough of a cash cushion to personally loan her nascent campaign $700,000 during 2019, and another $250,000 during 2020, records from the Federal Election Commission showed.

Online Speech Platforms

The Intercept: Twitter’s Lackluster Verification Policy Hurts Primary Challengers

By Rose Adams

Twitter is refusing to verify the accounts of many primary candidates running for Congress in 2022, putting upstart contenders at a disadvantage and suggesting the social media giant is, at least for the moment, ambivalent about its influence over elections.

Erica Smith, a state senator in North Carolina now running in the 2022 primary for Richard Burr’s soon-to-be-vacant U.S. Senate seat, has raised over $111,000 so far — the second most out of nine Democratic candidates, according to campaign filings. But Smith’s Twitter account continues to lack a blue checkmark. Though Twitter verification isn’t enough to sway an election on its own, the badges establish a candidate’s legitimacy, lending them a sheen of credibility, and helping to expand their reach on social media — crucial steps for candidates running with less institutional and financial support.

“Social media in itself has already been a great tool for non-establishment candidates to break through and meet people where they are on these platforms,” Smith said. “When you’re a non-establishment candidate, you’re already going up against systems and barriers and roadblocks. This is just another one.”

Politico EU: Facebook top lobbyist pushes back on ‘contradictory’ Trump ban guidance

By Nicholas Vinocur

Facebook has been ordered to clarify rules on political speech in the wake of its ban on Donald Trump — and the company’s top lobbyist isn’t happy.

In an interview with POLITICO’s EU Confidential podcast, Facebook’s Vice President for Global Affairs Nick Clegg criticized the guidance issued by a panel of experts to extend the ban as sending confusing signals on how political speech should be handled on the platform.

“The oversight board said two things which are in tension with each other, to be honest,” Clegg said. “They on the one hand recognized that political speech, particularly in democracies, is a particular form of speech, and as a matter of first principle it’s important that people have as unhindered an access as possible to what politicians are saying.

“On the other hand, they suggested that politicians with significant reach shouldn’t be regarded as different in any way to any other user of Facebook with significant reach. So we have to grapple with that,” he added.

The comments from Clegg — who has reportedly played a key role in shaping Facebook’s approach to Trump — point to a drawn-out process to review the decision as well as an increasingly strained relationship between the firm and its oversight board.

The States

Washington Post: It’s not just voting: Legislators have introduced 100 state bills targeting protesting

By Philip Bump

New analysis from the nonprofit organization PEN America has identified 100 pieces of legislation that in some way aim to amplify or introduce penalties associated with what the group calls “protest-related activity.” A number of those bills have been abandoned… But six have been signed into law…

Many of the bills targeting protest, for example, both increase penalties for rioting and adjust the threshold for declaring a riot downward, as is the case with legislation signed into law in Florida. Many increase penalties for acts of vandalism or for obstructing traffic. Others introduce new trespassing rules, including, as a bill proposed in South Carolina would do, making it a felony to camp on state property without authorization. Another common component of these bills reduces penalties for drivers who strike protesters if the driver feels as though his or her life is at risk. (You can see them all on the organization’s website.)

In several states, the proposed legislation seeks to leverage not only to impose new criminal penalties but new social penalties as well. In Minnesota, a proposed bill would make those convicted of an offense committed at a protest ineligible for student loans or unemployment benefits. In Michigan, a similar effort would rescind such benefits from those charged with such violations.

Cincinnati Enquirer: Ohio Democrats and Republicans seek more transparency for dark money politics

By Laura A. Bischoff, Columbus Dispatch

In the wake of the largest public corruption case in Ohio history, lawmakers on the right and left are pushing bills that call for more transparency for dark money politics.

Republicans Diane Grendell of Chesterland and Mark Fraizer of Newark introduced House Bill 13, which they call the Light of Day Bill. The bill, which has had two hearings in the House Government Oversight Committee, would require 501(c)4 nonprofit organizations to disclose political spending and donors.

Such organizations currently do not have to disclose their financial backers and only reveal limited information on their expenditures on IRS forms that are filed annually. For that reason, 501(c)4s are often called dark money groups.

Democrats Allison Russo of Upper Arlington and Bride Rose Sweeney of Cleveland on Tuesday announced the Ohio Anti-Corruption Act, which would mandate disclosure of donations to 501(c)4s, require more disclosure of true owners of certain nonprofits and block foreign companies from political spending via American subsidiaries.

House Bill 306 was introduced Tuesday and is awaiting hearings…

It’s unclear if either bill has the momentum needed to pass. Another campaign finance reform bill introduced last July failed to gain traction.

WABI 5: Maine lawmakers hear testimony on proposed act that could stop social media censorship

By Courtney Cortright

Lawmakers in Augusta heard testimony about a proposed act that could stop social media censorship.

It would create a “private right of action” for those who use social media websites.

This is if their religious or political speech has been subject to being deleted, censored or a reason the social media website doesn’t like it.

The bill could also have the attorney general handle the civil cases.

Testimony was given both for and against the proposal.