In the News
Arizona Republic: DCS ‘looking into’ secrecy order in child-welfare case, following Republic report
By Dianna M. Náñez
The state Department of Child Safety is “looking into” a report that a parent was ordered to keep their court hearings and DCS meetings secret from media and anyone who might make “derogatory statements” about the government.
The review follows The Arizona Republic providing DCS on Thursday with the names of three caseworkers involved in the case.
In an Aug. 8 statement, the agency condemned bans on parents’ free-speech rights. But DCS has yet to warn its 1,400 caseworkers handling the cases of more than 15,000 Arizona children and their parents against including similar orders in other cases…
In an interview last Tuesday with The Republic, David Keating, president of the Institute for Free Speech, said the state’s response was lacking, puts families at risk and appears to state that only people with good things to say about DCS and the justice system may attend a parent’s hearing.
After The Republic’s initial article, the Virginia-based Institute for Free Speech on July 23 sent a letter to then-DCS Director Greg McKay, copying the Governor’s Office and several lawmakers, saying the order raised “serious First Amendment concerns” that could result in a lawsuit paid for by Arizona taxpayers.
“There is very little prospect of your office prevailing in court,” Keating wrote.
“Not only does the instruction bar public viewing of presumptively-public proceedings … the government’s clear motivation is suppressing criticism, its behavior is not just technically unconstitutional,” he wrote. “It is patently outrageous.”
READ THE LETTER: Institute for Free Speech writes to former DCS director
The Courts
Rapid City Journal: Judge temporarily blocks pipeline protest, riot laws
By Arielle Zionts
A federal judge temporarily blocked South Dakota from enforcing two anti-riot laws and parts of a new law aimed at protests against the Keystone XL Pipeline, saying the laws threaten the First Amendment.
“The state has a substantial government interest in criminalizing participation in a riot with acts of force or violence,” Judge Lawrence Piersol wrote in a Wednesday order. But the three laws “go far beyond that appropriate interest and … do impinge upon protected speech and other expressive activity as well as the right of association.”
The three laws violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments by discouraging free speech and being unclear about what exact actions are considered boosting or encouraging a riot, the ACLU argued in its lawsuit…
“The so-called ‘Riot Boosting’ Act was clearly intended to suppress constitutionally-protected, peaceful protests of the Keystone XL pipeline,” ACLU attorney Stephen Pevar said in a news release. “We’re glad the court recognized that these vague and overbroad laws threaten the First Amendment rights of South Dakotans on every side of the issue.”…
Piersol wrote that the parts of laws that say people can’t “direct” another person to be violent in a protest or riot can stand. But he said the parts that ban people from “advising, encouraging or soliciting” are too vague to be enforced because they don’t “give the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited.”…
He also questioned the law’s goal of cracking down on out-of-state protest supporters.
“Is one goal to keep outsiders out?” Piersol asked. “If so, that is not a laudable goal as we are a nation of 50 states with each citizen in any state having the same rights of free speech and assembly in every state.”
What’s most important in the public interest is to preserve First Amendment rights which “will be thwarted if the unconstitutional portions of the riot-boosting legislation remain in effect,” Piersol wrote.
Los Angeles Times: Federal judge blocks California law to force disclosure of Trump’s tax returns
By John Myers
A federal judge ordered a temporary injunction Thursday against California’s first-in-the-nation law requiring candidates to disclose their tax returns for a spot on the presidential primary ballot, an early victory for President Trump but a decision that will undoubtedly be appealed by state officials.
U.S. District Judge Morrison England Jr. said he would issue a final ruling in the coming days but took the unusual step of issuing the tentative order from the bench. He said there would be “irreparable harm without temporary relief” for Trump and other candidates from the law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in July…
The hearing in a Sacramento courtroom consolidated arguments made in five separate lawsuits filed since enactment of the law…
Beyond the five lawsuits considered Thursday, there are three other legal challenges to the California election law. Two additional lawsuits have been filed in Los Angeles and San Diego, respectively. A third challenge was filed by the California Republican Party in the state Supreme Court, asserting the new statute conflicts with existing election law.
Congress
Washington Post: Facebook, Google and Twitter face fresh heat from Congress on harmful online content
By Bryan Menegus
Congressional lawmakers are drafting a bill to create a “national commission” at the Department of Homeland Security to study the ways that social media can be weaponized – and the effectiveness of tech giants’ efforts to protect users from harmful content online.
The draft House bill obtained by The Washington Post is slated to be introduced and considered next week. If passed, the commission would be empowered – with the authority to hold hearings and issue subpoenas – to study the way social media companies police the Web and to recommend potential legislation. It also would create a federal social media task force to coordinate the government’s response to security issues.
The effort reflects a growing push by members of Congress to combat online hate speech, disinformation and other harmful content online, including a hearing held Wednesday where Senate lawmakers questioned Facebook, Google and Twitter executives to probe whether their platforms have become conduits for real-world violence…
“I would suggest even more needs to be done, and it needs to be better, and you have the resources and technological capability to do more and better,” Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) said at the hearing…
“In today’s Internet-connected society, misinformation, fake news, deep fakes and viral online conspiracy theories have become the norm,” said Republican Sen. Roger Wicker (Miss.), the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, to open the Wednesday hearing.
Wall Street Journal: Zuckerberg Spars With Senators at Private D.C. Dinner
By John D. McKinnon and Lindsay Wise
Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off a lobbying trip to the capital by sparring with senators at a private dinner over a range of online woes including election security, privacy and competition.
One attendee, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.), described the meeting as a mix of criticism and constructive dialogue over the tech industry’s “repeated failures” to protect election security and consumer privacy…
Wednesday night’s dinner was held at a high-end restaurant called Ris in downtown Washington. It was organized by Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.), who has become a leader in developing policy solutions to some of the internet problems that have become a growing worry in Washington.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for Mr. Warner said the discussion included “the role and responsibility of social media platforms in protecting our democracy, and what steps Congress should take to defend our elections, protect consumer data and encourage competition in the social media space.”
On Thursday, Mr. Zuckerberg was expected to have more private meetings with Democratic and Republican lawmakers on a range of issues, including privacy and election security as well as potential antitrust concerns, content regulation and data portability…
[O]ne idea that has gained attention is placing new limits on the sweeping legal immunity that platforms enjoy for harms caused by their users. Mr. Zuckerberg was expected to meet with at least one lawmaker, Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.), who has advocated such an approach.
Online Speech Platforms
Center for Responsive Politics: Multi-million dollar political ad spending on Snapchat revealed amid transparency push
By Cat Zakrzewski
Snapchat has accounted for more than $1.2 million in political ad spending targeting the U.S. since June 2018, according to OpenSecrets’ analysis of newly-released data from the company…
A number of candidates have yet to make their Snapchat debut. Some candidates, however, have seen Snapchat support from outside groups.
A super PAC supporting Jay Inslee’s now-folded 2020 bid spent six figures on Snapchat. Billionaire megadonor-turned-candidate Tom Steyer’s NextGen America spent nearly $100,000 in 2018, before he announced a presidential run. Both super PACs are among the top political ad spenders in Snap’s data, along with Everytown for Gun Safety and Planned Parenthood.
The biggest political ad spender on Snapchat is ACRONYM, a “dark money” 501(c)(4) nonprofit that also owns a major digital firm. While many of ACRONYM’s ads are innocuous, simply encouraging voter participation, others reveal more of an agenda…
The political ads take a variety of forms ranging from videos displayed to users between snaps or stories, functioning more like traditional political advertising, to geofilters that allow users in targeted locations to add an illustration or filter to their snaps.
In addition to spending totals for each ad buy, Snap’s new data reveals previously unreleased details about everything from what gender and age is targeted by each ad to addresses and links to the ads themselves…
Experts agree that while creating uniform disclosure standards for online political ads won’t stop foreign actors from influencing Americans on social media, it is a change that is relatively easy to implement right away.
Wall Street Journal: Government Orders Google: Let Employees Speak Out
By Rob Copeland
Federal regulators have ordered Google to assure employees they are allowed to speak out on political and workplace issues, people familiar with the matter say, as part of a settlement of formal complaints that the search giant punishes those who do just that.
The National Labor Relations Board’s move offers Google an escape hatch from a thorny issue that has roiled the business in recent years. Though Google executives have long bragged about having a workplace culture designed to encourage open debate, current and former employees across the political spectrum have complained that they were retaliated against for raising concerns about equality and freedom of speech.
The NLRB’s settlement comes in response to a pair of complaints about Google’s reaction to workplace dissent. The settlement orders Google to inform current employees that they are free to speak to the media-without having to ask Google higher-ups for permission-on topics such as workplace diversity and compensation…
Private employers have the ability to limit certain speech inside their workplaces, and Google has done so independent of the NLRB investigation. Late last month Google moved to prune office debates among its more than 100,000 full-time employees, adding new guardrails for discussions of nonwork topics and encouragement to avoid potentially disruptive conversations…
Still, current and former employees have said Google has overreached, or at times not done enough to protect their speech inside the workplace. The NLRB settlement says Google must actively notify employees that the search giant killed rules that clamped down on employees sharing certain confidential information with one another, or with the media…
[A] Google spokeswoman said: “Under the settlement, we have agreed to post a notice to our employees reminding them of their rights.” She said the earlier changes to Google’s policies were “unrelated and unaffected.”
Fundraising
Washington Post: ‘Alexa, I want to make a political contribution.’ Amazon to start voice-controlled donations to 2020 presidential campaigns
By Michelle Ye Hee Lee
Alexa users can make donations of at least $5 and up to $200 to campaigns, and the feature is currently limited to presidential campaigns. Campaigns can sign up starting Thursday.
The latest evolution in campaign technology raises new questions about how such contributions will be screened to make sure they are legal. And it points to challenges federal regulators face in keeping up with such innovations without a functioning Federal Election Commission, which lost its voting quorum last month.
Alexa Political Contributions is among the new features Amazon announced Wednesday to help users find more information about the 2020 presidential election, including how candidates are polling, candidate endorsements and the dates of primary contests…
Donations will be made through Amazon Pay, which uses the credit card or bank account saved with a user’s Amazon account. The Alexa user also needs to allow voice purchasing.
Amazon will charge campaigns a processing fee of 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per donation, Amazon spokeswoman Kerry Hall said…
Amazon’s Q&A page clarifies that there are restrictions on who can make political contributions. Hall said Alexa will verbally list requirements to donate to political campaigns and will ask the customer to confirm they are eligible to donate.
To prevent unintended donations, users can set up a verification code that they recite to Alexa before the donation is processed, Amazon says. But setting it up is optional…
The company will not report directly to the FEC or make donor information public, Hall said. Instead, it will provide to campaigns the donors’ name, email address and physical address, Hall said.
Candidates and Campaigns
The Hill: Again, DNC debate moderators fail to ask about democracy issues
By Adam Eichen
Unfortunately, some in the media fail to take seriously the legitimacy crisis facing our political institutions. This month’s Democratic presidential primary debate-and the analysis that accompanied it-illustrated as much.
Following in the footsteps of NBC and CNN, the ABC News debate moderators did not ask a single question about democracy-nothing about campaign finance, voting rights, or gerrymandering.
A few candidates brought up reform unprompted, most notably Andrew Yang, who reframed a question about climate change to explain how progress couldn’t be made until special interest influence was reduced. To do that, he proposed a “democracy dollars” program in which every American citizen would receive $100 in vouchers to donate to eligible candidates.
This public financing system-modeled after that in Seattle-has tremendous potential to democratize political influence, yet political pundits reacted with confusion, derision, and condescension. Some mocked the vouchers by comparing them to Shrute bucks, a gag from the sitcom “The Office.” …
A major media outlet even compiled random tweets about democracy dollars in order to somehow suggest the policy was more comic than serious-a claim that couldn’t be further from the truth…
Pundits unfairly delegitimizing Yang’s valuable proposal made democracy’s omission from the debates somehow even worse. The biggest hindrance to reform is the public’s unawareness about solutions that are currently working in cities and states across the country. The public was entitled to a substantive conversation about public financing; instead, it got farce.
Our democracy is in crisis. That the news moderators are ignoring that reality and that pundits make a mockery of solutions is malpractice.
Independent Groups
Vice: EXCLUSIVE: GOP Activists Just Formed a Dark Money Group to Go to War With Big Tech
By Liz Landers
The organization, called the Internet Accountability Project, is the brainchild of Mike Davis, who helped lead last year’s fight to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
As a 501(c)(4), the IAP is a “dark-money” group, meaning it isn’t required to disclose who’s funding it. Davis wouldn’t tell VICE News, beyond describing its funders as a “coalition of populist organizations and individuals who are working on this project.” Its strategic partners include several right-leaning organizations, including Publius Lex, a conservative legal nonprofit, and the Media Research Center, which describes its aim as “neutralizing leftist bias in the news media and popular culture.”
IAP’s mission is “to lend a conservative voice to the calls for federal and state governments to rein in Big Tech.”
In an interview with VICE News, Rachel Bovard, a senior adviser to the group and experienced GOP Senate staffer, lamented the way the tech industry “controls” conversation and how large these companies have grown. She said it will fight Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter in three areas: privacy, antitrust, and Section 230…
Bovard said the group will offer political “cover” and support to conservative lawmakers – people like Hawley and Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), two members of the Judiciary Committee who have expressed concern about Big Tech. She said IAP will also leverage the media to rally opposition to the industry…
IAP’s website echoes the most common conservative anti-tech talking points, calling the companies “aristocrats and elitists and they don’t even know it.” Bovard concedes that “bias” is a leading motivator for right-leaning users of social media. She says she’s concerned about “companies who, you know, can enforce rules against conservatives that they don’t necessarily enforce against other folks.”
The States
Empower Wisconsin: The FBI and Wisconsin’s infamous John Doe
By M.D. Kittle
Sen. Ron Johnson, (R-Oshkosh) inquired in a July 2018 letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray. Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee sought answers about the nature and extent of the bureau’s work with the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office in the investigation into “misconduct by employees of the Milwaukee County’s Executive Office.”…
Director Wray did not personally respond to the Senate committee chairman. Instead, an underling, Jill C. Tyson, acting assistant director in the Office of Congressional Affairs, provided a two-paragraph response.
The FBI, according to the letter, got involved in November 2010 at the request of the Milwaukee County DA “due to the voluminous amount of records in their investigation and possible violations of federal law.” Tyson insisted the FBI’s involvement was “limited to John Doe I; the FBI did not provide assistance with John Doe II.”…
Tyson confirmed that the FBI’s Milwaukee Field Office assisted in the execution of search warrants and technical analysis. She did not elaborate. Agents also reviewed financial and communication records, “among others,” and assisted in the “exploitation and analysis of electronic communication devices.”…
Johnson was not happy with the response. In a follow-up letter, the senator wrote that the FBI response contained “only one substantive paragraph” that did not satisfactorily answer his questions.
“The FBI’s response abjectly failed to satisfy the Committee’s oversight interests. The FBI did not provide any details or specific information about the FBI’s investigative actions relating to political speech of conservative individuals and groups. The FBI likewise did not produce any of the requested documents or materials,” Johnson wrote…
Nearly a year later, the FBI has not responded to Johnson’s request.
Anchorage Daily News: Eagle River man sues to block ranked-choice ballot initiative from advancing
By James Brooks
An Eagle River man has sued Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer and the Alaska Division of Elections to block backers of a ballot initiative from beginning to gather signatures, and Alaska’s attorney general has already stopped the process.
In a complaint and request for a temporary restraining order filed Tuesday, Harry N. Young Jr. alleges that the state violated Article XI, Section 3 of the Alaska Constitution by allowing backers of the ranked-choice voting initiative to begin gathering signatures before their measure has been certified by the Division of Elections.
The ballot measure seeks to change Alaska’s electoral system by toughening campaign contribution laws, making the state’s primary elections open to all candidates and installing ranked-choice voting during general elections. In August, Meyer ruled that the initiative violated the “single-subject” clause of the Alaska Constitution…
Without Meyer’s approval, signature-gathering could not begin, so backers appealed to state Superior Court. Oral arguments are not scheduled until November, but the state and petitioners agreed to allow signature-gathering in the meantime…
Young’s lawsuit says that if the state allows signature-gathering before a verdict, it violates a portion of the constitution that allows signature-gathering only “after certification of the application.”
Rather than wait for a judge to rule on Young’s request for an injunction to stop the signature-gathering, Attorney General Kevin Clarkson took to Twitter on Wednesday morning to say that he had already stopped the process.
By email, Senior Assistant Attorney General Cori Mills confirmed the stoppage.
“Considering the legal questions that have now been raised, we feel it is better to wait for resolution of those issues because once the petition booklets are provided, they are no longer in the State’s control. We need to have finality from the courts before proceeding,” she wrote.
Seattle Times: Democracy vouchers are supposed to be an answer, but big money is swamping Seattle’s elections
By Danny Westneat
What Yang’s talking about was Initiative 122, which Seattle voters approved in 2015 as an experiment in public financing of elections. Through a property tax it gives every Seattle voter $100 worth of “democracy vouchers” to give to candidates. It also lowered contribution limits and capped campaign spending.
The total effect was supposed to be as described in the 2015 voters’ guide: “Powerful special interests are spending record amounts to influence elections … I-122 keeps Seattle of, by and for the people.”
Yet there has never been a Seattle City Council election so dominated by special interests, big businesses and the superwealthy as this year. As of this week, outside influence PACs – mostly business and labor – have raised more money to pour into the 2019 council elections than was spent by outside committees in all previous council races combined, going back to 1995 (that’s as far back as the city’s online records go).
Put another way: Of the top seven money-raising committees seeking to influence the 2019 city vote, only one is connected to a candidate (Kshama Sawant’s campaign). The other six are special interest PACs, representing business, labor or the wealthy (such as the developer-dominated People for Seattle).
The result is a crazy quilt of campaign ads and themes, some of which aren’t true (like flyers with homeless tents Photoshopped into parks). And none of which is controlled or sanctioned by the candidates themselves…
“Seattle’s limits on contributions do not restrict how much people can give to electoral efforts; they simply require people to send their contributions to less responsible and more destructive speakers,” Albert Alschuler, a University of Chicago law professor, wrote in a recent letter to Seattle election commissioners. “It’s unfortunate that Seattle now has a system of campaign financing that actively channels funds toward less responsible speech.”
Washington Post: Hogan raising ‘dark’ money to boost his agenda, stop costly education plan
By Erin Cox
A fundraising memo obtained by The Washington Post emphasized that Hogan’s new super PAC and a related nonprofit “can accept unlimited donations.” The campaign will target, among other things, a costly plan embraced by the Democratic-majority legislature to address inequity in public schools and deep disparities in student achievement.
Campaign finance watchdogs said the governor’s solicitation illustrates a troubling trend that has escalated over the past decade, as public officeholders find methods to raise unlimited money – some from undisclosed donors – in ways often prohibited for traditional candidate committees…
Entities similar to Hogan’s caused political trouble for D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) in 2015 and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) this year, after government-transparency advocates said the fundraising activity can blur ethical boundaries. Controversy over a political nonprofit aligned with former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens (R) contributed to his 2018 downfall.
Roughly a third of sitting governors have ties to such outside influence groups, according to a Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington report last year.
In Maryland, contribution limits and disclosure rules constrain how much money can flow to accounts controlled by candidates. But those rules no longer apply to Hogan, because he is not running for office, said Jared DeMarinis, Campaign Finance Director for the Maryland Board of Elections.
