In the News
Center for Public Integrity: Elizabeth Warren Decries Big Money In Politics. Her Campaign Treasurer Embodies It.
By Lateshia Beachum
Dubbed a “personal PAC man” to politicians by The Boston Globe more than a decade ago, retired software engineer Paul Egerman, 70, has quietly established himself as a key benefactor and rainmaker for Democratic political committees and liberal causes.
Since 1995, Egerman and his wife, Joanne, have given more than $8.4 million to various Democratic candidates and PACs…
Of that, Egerman has contributed $1.7 million to the pro-Democratic super PAC American Bridge 21st Century, which is also affiliated with a “dark money” group… In 2012, he gave $56,000 to Rethink PAC, a super PAC that helped Warren in her successful campaign to unseat U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass.
During the 2017-2018 election cycle, he contributed substantial sums to major super PACs…
[H]e’s the board treasurer for Democracy Alliance, a network of wealthy Democratic donors…
Egerman in 2014 also hosted an ultra-exclusive Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee fundraiser at his Massachusetts home. President Barack Obama attended. The entry price per person: $32,400, according to The Boston Globe…
So, is Warren’s work with Egerman hypocritical?
Bradley Smith, a former FEC chairman and now chairman of the Institute for Free Speech, a nonprofit that advocates against campaign finance limits, isn’t convinced.
“I doubt that many of her followers think ‘I can’t back her now,'” he said. “It shows that they haven’t thought this [her stances on money in politics] through.”
Supreme Court
National Review: The Supreme Court Should Take Up NR v. Mann, and Vindicate Free Speech
By The Editors
At stake in this fight is nothing less than the integrity of the First Amendment – and, by extension, the right of all Americans to engage in robust political debate without being dragged into court by the frivolous and the hypersensitive to be bled dry of their time, effort, and money. That, after seven years, National Review has not yet been freed from this frivolous claim is bad enough. But that inconvenience, real as it is, pales in comparison to the damage that would be done to America’s broader debate were the indifference of the D.C. Court of Appeals to become a chilling national precedent.
A quick refresher is in order: Michael Mann sued National Review for libel over a 270-word blog post that was critical of his now-infamous “hockey stick” graph and its role within the global-warming debate. Naturally, National Review resolved to fight the suit, which represents one of the worst attempts to bully a press organization in recent memory. As our petition for certiorari notes, Mann’s lawsuit presumes that a “subjective, value-laden critique on a matter of public concern can be construed as a provably false fact.” Worse still, it presumes that such critiques can – and should – be litigated in the courts, rather than in the public square. Should Mann prevail, our petition concludes, “the result would be to insert courts and juries into every hot-button political and scientific dispute, to allow politicians to sue their critics at will, and ultimately to chill and deter the robust debate that is the lifeblood of our republic.”
We do not intend to let this happen. And neither, it should be noted, do any of the many organizations from across the political spectrum that have, at various stages in the process, filed briefs in our behalf. There is not much that brings together National Review, the Washington Post, Time Inc., the ACLU, the Cato Institute, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but a strong belief in the importance of the freedom of speech does.
Congress
Washington Post: The Technology 202: Republicans make alleged conservative bias top priority at election security hearing
By Cat Zakrzewski
A string of Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee skipped questions about how the companies were tackling disinformation campaigns or preventing Russians from purchasing political ads on their platforms in the run-up to the 2020 election. They were more interested in whether Facebook and Twitter were “shadow-banning” — quietly blocking or restricting — conservatives’ accounts on their platform.
“The minute you start putting your hand on the scale of freedom and justice to tilt it one way or another, quite frankly we’ve got to act as members of Congress,” warned Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.)…
During the same hearing, Democrats also expressed concerns about Silicon Valley’s content moderation decisions — with a focus on curbing the spread of disinformation over their platforms. They pressed the companies on what steps they had taken to prevent foreign actors from buying political ads on their platform and how effectively they were coordinating with one another to address security threats.
Republicans are using the groundswell of criticism on both sides to bolster the case for change. Meadows told the companies their “freelance” approach to making content decisions is “over with.”
“Even if it takes extreme measures, you have now collided with a bipartisan issue for different reasons, and we’ll make sure that we do that,” he said…
Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), the chairman of the subcommittee hosting the hearing, warned the companies that he found the Republicans’ accusations concerning.
“That worries me,” Lynch said. “Certainly I probably didn’t agree with anything those members were … but still it is free speech. Right now we have 257 million Americans with smart phones and everyone is mobile right now, so the scale of what can happen if you make a mistake as you’ve conceded is enormous so that cannot happen, that cannot happen. Especially in the campaign context, that hurts our credebility as well.”
CBS19 News (Charlottesville, VA): Warner introduces bill on reporting foreign election contacts
By News Staff
A new bill has been introduced in the U.S. Senate that would require political campaigns to report attempts to influence elections by foreign powers.
Senator Mark Warner introduced the Foreign Influence Reporting in Elections Act, or FIRE, on Tuesday.
Under the bill, campaigns would be required to report such attempts to the appropriate federal authorities at the Federal Election Commission and the FBI…
“Most Americans already know that is a foreign adversary reaches out about interfering in our elections, you should report that contact. But after Special Counsel Robert Mueller identified at least 140 contacts between Trump associates and Russian nationals or WikiLeaks, it’s clear that some Americans haven’t taken that responsibility seriously,” said Warner. “In fact, the Trump campaign welcomed the help, and sought to hide that from the American people. This bill would protect the integrity of our democracy by requiring future campaigns to report attempts by foreign nationals to coordinate or collaborate during a political campaign, and by putting campaigns on notice about their obligations.”
The legislation would require all campaign officials to report, within one week of the contact, any contacts with foreign nationals who are attempting to make campaign donations or otherwise coordinate with the campaign by proffering information or services.
Campaigns would also have to implement a compliance system to monitor reportable foreign contacts with campaign representatives and to train all new employees and other associates on their legal obligations. The compliance system would have to be certified by the candidate him or herself as well.
Livermore Independent: Swalwell Introduces Second Bill Designed to Curb Foreign Interference in U.S. Elections
On May 20th, Rep. Eric Swalwell (CA-15), a member of the Committee on the Judiciary and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, introduced the Corporate Duty to Report Act of 2019, which would require companies to disclose to the government when a foreign person, country, or organization attempts to subvert our election with political ads. The act is intended to deter foreign agents from buying U.S. political ads…
The Corporate Duty to Report Act of 2019 would address this problem by imposing two new duties on corporations. First, a corporation would face criminal fines of up to $1 million per incident if it failed to report to the FBI instances in which it received funds for a political message that it knew was either an independent expenditure or electioneering communication (i.e., ads that mention a particular candidate) where the provider of the funds was a foreign national (includes persons, countries, and organizations). Second, a corporation would face civil fines of up to $500,000 per incident if it failed to ask, in cases in which it received funds intended for a political message, whether the funds amounted to an independent expenditure or electioneering communication and, if so, if the provider of the funds was a foreign national…
[The bill] follows on another bill Swalwell introduced in April, H.R. 2424, the Duty to Report Act, which would require the reporting to the government of offers by foreign persons and entities to help campaigns in U.S. elections.
Medium: Whitehouse’s Blacklist: Why Does Senator Whitehouse Keep Lying About Neomi Rao?
By Adam J. White
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse keeps launching false attacks on Judge Neomi Rao and the academic research center that she founded. It’s tiresome, and it’s beneath the dignity of the Senate, but it’s also a dangerous threat to democratic discourse and academic inquiry…
Whitehouse’s approach-conjuring up conspiracy theories about omnipotent and perceived political enemies-has still deeper roots. It exemplifies what mid-20th century scholar Richard Hofstadter famously identified as “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” …
In our own time, paranoid minds like Whitehouse’s do precisely what Hofstadter highlighted: they try to delegitimize those with whom they disagree by trying to paint them not as ordinary scholars and citizens but as “a vast and sinister conspiracy, a gigantic and yet subtle machinery of influence set in motion to destroy a way of life.”
As [Senator Joseph] McCarthy did then, Whitehouse does now: instead of recognizing Judge Rao as simply a legal scholar with whom he disagrees, Whitehouse attempts to paint her as the puppet of shadowy corporate interests secretly supporting the evil deeds of . . . a small forum at a law school, where scholars discuss law review article drafts? …
In the end, Whitehouse’s obsessive conspiracy theories about people like Judge Rao (and about the Federalist Society and its members in the academy), denigrating their scholarly work as simply the puppetry of deep-pocketed powers-that-be, also exemplifies a particularly partisan variant of what Hofstadter described in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963): the reflexive hatred of intellectuals with whom one disagrees-an instinct that, as Hofstadter recognized, threatens to “gravely inhibit or impoverish intellectual and cultural life.”
Online Speech Platforms
Wall Street Journal: Facebook Curbs Incentives to Sell Political Ads Ahead of 2020 Election
By Emily Glazer and Jeff Horwitz
Once seen as a growth area, political ads are now viewed within Facebook as more of a headache, according to former employees and campaign staffers who work on digital strategies. In the wake of revelations about Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election, senior leaders at the company debated whether it should cease running political ads entirely, former employees familiar with the discussions said. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg made the final call to stay in the business…
Facebook’s new approach to political ad sales is designed to eliminate incentives for employees to push a more-is-better strategy with campaigns. The ad-buying portal for campaigns is now largely self-serve, with Facebook staffers available to help campaigns register to buy ads, assist if certain ads are stuck in review and provide other basic customer service. Sales employees are no longer paid based on reaching or exceeding goals related to ads purchased promoting either a candidate or politically tinged messages in the U.S. and abroad, said Katie Harbath, Facebook’s global elections public policy director…
Ms. Harbath said the company views its political-ad business as a civic responsibility rather than a revenue driver. The company declined to comment on whether that business is profitable on its own…
Last year, Mr. Zuckerberg said the company would invest in staff to manually review political ads, work that he predicted would make the business a money-loser. The company said this week its review process includes a mix of humans and automation.
Facebook’s broader shift has had a beneficial impact on smaller local campaigns, which as recently as earlier this year struggled to get the company’s staffers to help with glitches in the political advertising registration process, said Patrick O’Keefe, executive director of the Maryland Republican Party.
The Media
Freedom of the Press Foundation: San Francisco’s criminal investigation of a journalist for ‘conspiracy’ is a shocking attack on press freedom
The San Francisco Police Chief announced yesterday, May 21, that freelance journalist Bryan Carmody – who had his home raided as part of a police investigation into a confidential source – is the subject of a criminal investigation.
In a shocking press freedom violation two weeks ago, San Francisco police invaded Carmody’s home with their guns drawn, seized his reporting materials and equipment worth thousands of dollars, and handcuffed him for over six hours. The warrant police received from a judge to conduct the raid most likely violated California’s journalist shield law, and the city has so far provided no justification for why they ignored the binding statute’s clear language.
While providing zero evidence that his actions went beyond constitutionally protected newsgathering activities, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said yesterday that Carmody is being investigated as a potential ‘co-conspirator’ in the leak of a police report about the late public defender Jeff Adachi’s death earlier this year.
Freedom of the Press Foundation Executive Director Trevor Timm issued the following statement:
It was already appalling that the San Francisco police raided a journalist’s home and confiscated his belongings in violation of the law. Investigating Carmody directly for criminal charges for merely obtaining a leaked document is beyond the pale, and it strikes at the heart of the First Amendment. These actions constitute a huge abuse of power, and it’s especially ironic that civil liberties advocates’ worst fears about press freedom during the Trump administration are coming to fruition in San Francisco. Reporters like Bryan Carmody have a responsibility to gather news and protect confidential sources – that isn’t a ‘conspiracy.’ That’s journalism.
The States
Willamette Week: Campaign Finance Reform Is Inching Through the Oregon Legislature. How Much of the Status Quo Would It Change?
By Rachel Monahan
Last year, Nike founder Phil Knight donated four times more toward a single political candidate than anyone else in Oregon history-yet failed to buy victory for Republican gubernatorial nominee Knute Buehler…
The night of Gov. Kate Brown’s election, she pledged to set a cap on contributions. Now lawmakers are following through.
Legislation being considered in Salem would set contribution limits, require disclosure of independent expenditures and sources of advertising, and refer a ballot measure to voters that would amend the constitution to lock that ceiling in place.
Rep. Dan Rayfield (D-Corvallis) says he believes he has the votes to pass the bills this session, which seems increasingly likely given that key political forces in Salem, including public employee unions and state Sen. Ginny Burdick (D-Portland), a leader in the Senate, are on board.
“Phil Knight changed our minds,” says Ben Morris, a spokesman for the Service Employees International Union, which was part of the coalition of unions to publicly oppose limits 13 years ago, when voters approved them with Ballot Measure 47, which in turn was overturned by the Oregon Supreme Court…
The campaign limits in House Bill 2714 would remove Oregon’s status as an outlier-it’s currently one of only five states without any limits.
