CCP
Citizen Sleuth or Citizen Snoop? The Dangers of Disclosure in the Internet Age
By Scott Blackburn
CCP regularly argues that disclosure is too broad, capturing donors to groups that are not political at all, and therefore, exposing donors to unnecessary harms without doing anything to stop corruption.
But disclosure is also too deep. The threshold for disclosed federal spending starts at just a penny over $200, and because of the onerous, labyrinthine reporting requirements mandated by law and FEC regulations, campaigns sometimes disclose even more information than is required. It is difficult to argue that publicly posting the name, home address, occupation, and employer of a $200 donor serves much of an anti-corruption purpose. When this law was passed in the 70s, it was equally difficult to imagine that publishing such information on microfiche that was “publicly accessible” solely from a room at FEC headquarters in Washington D.C. harmed the donor significantly.
In the internet age, the situation has changed.
Recent efforts by HuffPost to crowdsource “fact-checking” of the Trump inaugural committee’s disclosure filing (part of the outlet’s so-called Citizen Sleuth Project) epitomize this change.
Free Speech
Reason: No, Trump Won’t Change the First Amendment, But It Matters That People Want To
By Scott Shackford
President Donald Trump’s willingness to alter the terms of the First Amendment as part of his desire to censor critical press of him is firmly established: See his constant complaints of “fake news” (to be fair, his complaints are sometimes correct) and his desire to “open up libel laws.” The president has no direct influence over the content of libel laws because they’re state-level laws. There are many pivotal Supreme Court rulings on the relationship between libel laws and the First Amendment protections of free speech and a free press. Trump would have to rewrite the First Amendment in order to get what he wants…
Americans have a remarkable facility for looking for exceptions to the First Amendment and deciding that some controversial or unpleasant statements simply are not valid forms of speech. On the other side of the aisle, there’s a concerted push to invalidate the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision by attempting to amend the Constitution to deprive corporations of legal personhood and of their right to free speech.
Mother Jones: The Most Important Free Speech Question Is: Who Decides?
By Kevin Drum
The right is naturally outraged that these speakers were harassed or banned, and the left is-well, what is the left’s reaction to all this? At first, it was mostly a matter of not really sticking up for free speech rights on campus. That was bad enough, but then the conversation changed. Instead of a collective mumble, I began reading affirmative arguments that there was absolutely nothing wrong with “no-platforming” these folks…
If political speech was all a harmless game of patty-cake, nobody would even care.
Speech is often harmful. And vicious. And hurtful. And racist. And just plain disgusting. But whenever you start thinking these are good reasons to overturn-by violence or otherwise-someone’s invitation to speak, ask yourself this: Who decides? Because once you concede the right to keep people from speaking, you concede the right of somebody to make that decision. And that somebody may eventually decide to shut down communists. Or anti-war protesters. Or gays. Or sociobiologists. Or Jews who defend Israel. Or Muslims.
I don’t want anyone to have that power. No one else on the left should want it either.
Center for Individual Freedom: Liberals Seek Free Speech for Media, Censorship for Everyday Americans
By Timothy H. Lee
While riots on college campuses attract headlines, freedom of speech isn’t necessarily faring any better across American society more broadly. In particular, the movement to silence everyday citizens from expressing their beliefs persists.
Look no further than the continuing onslaught against the 2010 Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court decision. Today in popular discourse, that ruling has been so demonized that its very name constitutes an ad hominem slur among the political left. For far too many people, it has become shorthand for some sinister threat of powerful special interests corrupting our otherwise pristine political system…
The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favor of Citizens United, holding that the First Amendment prohibits government from banning political speech by private citizens independently organizing as nonprofit organizations or unions. In the words of the majority opinion, “If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.”…
So the next time someone maligns Citizens United, it’s worth asking whether they believe in the First Amendment freedom of speech at all. Because freedom of speech either belongs to everybody, or it belongs to nobody.
Supreme Court
New York Times: Gorsuch, in Sign of Independence, Is Out of Supreme Court’s Clerical Pool
By Adam Liptak
In an early sign of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch’s independence and work ethic, he has decided not to join a labor pool at the Supreme Court in which justices share their law clerks in an effort to streamline decisions about which cases to hear.
Justice Gorsuch joined the court last month. His decision not to participate in the pool was confirmed by Kathleen L. Arberg, the court’s public information officer. The only other member of the court who is not part of the arrangement is Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr….
The pool has been criticized for giving too much power to law clerks and for contributing to the court’s shrinking docket.
For almost two decades until 2008, only Justice John Paul Stevens, who retired in 2010, stayed out of the pool. He said it had caused “the lessening of the docket.”
“You stick your neck out as a clerk when you recommend to grant a case,” he told USA Today. “The risk-averse thing to do is to recommend not to take a case.”
Some scholars have traced the decline of the Supreme Court docket to the pool. In the early 1980s, the Supreme Court decided more than 150 cases a year. These days, it decides about half that many.
Independent Groups
Digital Journal: Review: Hot Docs’ ‘PACmen’ expands on craziness of the 2016 US election
By Sarah Gopaul
Unlike traditional PACs, a super PAC can raise funds from individuals, corporations, unions, and other groups without any legal limit on donation size. In 2015, PACmen became the first film to go behind the curtain of one of these groups…
In spite of his inexperience, super PAC leaders thought he would be able to save the party and convinced him to run. Armed with copies of the TV-movie of his life, and the powers of phone and internet prayer teams, these groups set forth with one goal in mind: make Carson the next president. However, in spite of a strong start, his greenness and repeated public gaffes would gradually make fundraising incredibly difficult and lead to his concession less than a year later…
As his campaign tanks, they continue to solicit six- and seven-figure donations to try and raise him out of the mire in spite of his clear incompetence. In addition to depicting the inner-workings of a super PAC, director Luke Walker captures how the Christian conservative right were fleeced and divided by ill-suited Republican candidates.
Congress
International Business Times: Does Money Buy Votes? Most Americans Say Yes; A New Study Says They’re Right
By Josh Keefe
Because there are so many factors and variables influencing political decisions, researchers have found it difficult to prove causation between campaign money and congressional votes. But in a new study, researchers led by Thomas Ferguson believe they found a group of public officials that illustrates money’s impact: Democrats who changed their mind about Dodd-Frank…
He says the new study refutes the notion — advanced for years by academic political science research — that money doesn’t have much influence on the outcome of political campaigns or the decisions of politicians when in office, a conclusion that Ferguson thinks has been driven by a combination of bad analytical methods and an allegiance to the status quo which funds research grants and keeps academics employed…
The researchers found that for every $100,000 the financial industry spent on campaign contributions for a House Democrat who voted for Dodd-Frank, they were able to increase the likelihood that same Democrat would vote to dismantle parts of the bill by 13.9 percent, according to the study.
Candidates and Campaigns
CBS News: Trump Campaign launches latest attack on media in $1.5 million ad buy
By Emily Tillett
The Trump campaign is getting an early start on his re-election campaign with his first 2020 campaign ad. In a $1.5 million ad buy, The Donald J. Trump for President campaign released a new ad, just two days after his official 100th day in office, commemorating what they perceived as the highlights of his career in governing thus far…
In keeping with many of his comments during his presidency and his campaign, Mr. Trump slammed the mainstream media in the ad, claiming the public “wouldn’t know it from watching the news” but that “America is winning again” and Mr. Trump is indeed, “making America great again.”
The ad is currently featured on the campaign’s website under a banner that reads: “The Truth Mainstream Media Refuses to Tell,” which urges supporters to “not let fake news dominate the truth.”
The ad will air on television in major markets across the country, as well as target-specific voting groups on online media.
Politico: Trump’s new campaign ad mirrors one produced by pro-Trump nonprofit
By Shane Goldmacher
President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign rolled out the first ad of his reelection Monday and it looked an awful lot like the one of ads produced by the independent pro-Trump nonprofit group six weeks earlier…
The ads look so similar because the same agency – Jamestown Associates – produced them both, according to a person familiar with the ads. The overlap underscores the close ties between Trump’s official campaign apparatus, which is constrained by strict $2,700 donation limits, and the pro-Trump nonprofit, which can accept undisclosed and unlimited-sized contributions.
The arrangement is legal, so long as the nonprofit, known as America First Policies, does not directly advocate Trump’s election. But watchdogs fear the blurring represents another tear in the fabric of the country’s fraying campaign finance law.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Jon Ossoff’s campaign readies a $5.2M ad blitz
By Greg Bluestein
The Democrat’s campaign has reserved more than $5.2 million in airtime for cable, TV and radio spots through the June 20 runoff. And that’s likely just a taste of what’s to come.
The former congressional aide reported raising more than $8.3 million through the end of March, but this ad buy suggests he’s added millions more to that fundraising haul in the weeks since the last filing deadline.
Handel’s campaign, meanwhile, has taken in at least $1.75 million since she landed the No. 2 spot in the matchup – a total that includes about $750,000 from Donald Trump’s visit on Friday. The Republican hasn’t aired a TV ad since the election, but she’s had ample backup.
The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC with ties to Paul Ryan, said it was pouring in another $3.5 million into the contest and has already reserved nearly $3 million in ad time.
The National Republican Congressional Committee has paid for $3.65 million in airtime, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a nearly $1 million ad blitz on Monday.
The States
MinnPost: Silently destroying Minnesota’s campaign financing reforms
By Sen. John Marty
Both the Minnesota House and Senate recently passed legislation to repeal the heart of Minnesota’s campaign finance reform laws. These were major reforms adopted on a bipartisan basis 40 years ago in the wake of the Watergate scandal and were strengthened after an ethics scandal in the early 1990s.
Despite widespread disgust at the corruption of our democracy from powerful special interests and deep frustration at the Citizens’ United ruling, which allowed more big money into politics, there has been no public outcry about this effort to repeal Minnesota’s reforms…
The law being repealed established campaign spending limits for candidates. Those spending limits are tied to public financing…
Senate File 605, the State Government Appropriations Bill that contains the repeal of the campaign finance reforms, is in conference committee to work out differences between the House and Senate language. The one conferee fighting to block it is Sen. Carolyn Laine, the only DFL member of the committee. Unless the Republican conference committee members have a change of heart, or unless the governor vetoes the bill, Minnesota’s campaign finance reforms will be gone.
