FEC
Texas Scorecard: Trump Appointee Highlights Unfairness of Speech Regulations in First Act on FEC
By Brandon Waltens
In his first official act as chairman of the Federal Election Commission, Trey Trainor is speaking out against hyper-technical rules that limit Americans’ right to free speech.
Trainor joined his colleagues on the commission in dismissing a complaint brought by the Campaign Legal Center, a left-wing organization aligned with the Democratic Party, against America Progress Now. In its complaint to the FEC, CLC accused APN of running $7,665 in Facebook ads supporting third-party candidates without including legally required disclaimers. Even though APN complied with Facebook’s requirements for political ads, such that it was clear who was funding the ads, CLC asked the federal speech regulatory body to punish them for failing to comply with technical requirements of federal election laws.
CLC attempted to paint APN as a “fake political group” and theorized that it might be backed by major political party operatives or a foreign government. However, as Trainor explained, APN was in fact “established by an unsophisticated individual trying to show his support for several third-party candidates” who “got tripped by the myriad regulations governing online political speech.”
In an apology letter to the FEC, the head of APN explained that he wanted to comply with all requirements but was confused by Federal election laws as they applied to online speech…
In a “statement of reasons” for his vote to dismiss a complaint against American Progress Now, Trainor [wrote], “I am troubled that as a result of the Respondent’s interaction with the FEC, he has expressed his disinclination to continue exercising his First Amendment right to engage in political speech,” wrote Trainor. “A person shouldn’t need to have to hire a lawyer to speak.”
FCC
Washington Post: Trump’s flagrant assault on the First Amendment is disguised as a defense of it
By Editorial Board
President Trump sent a message to Twitter – and by extension all communication platforms and outlets: If you cross me, you’ll be punished. Now, he has sent a message to the Federal Communications Commission: Cross me for misusing my powers in this way, and you’ll be punished, too.
Michael O’Rielly has served two terms on the FCC under two presidents, and was expected to serve another – until this week, when the White House announced it would withdraw his renomination. This unexpected notice came only days after Mr. O’Rielly gave a speech in which he exhorted listeners to “reject demands, in the name of the First Amendment, for private actors to curate or publish speech a certain way.” Such demands, not so incidentally, are precisely what’s contained in this spring’s executive order on social media sites, issued by the president after Twitter had the audacity to fact-check some of his more egregious tweets…
The Constitution was designed to enable free expression, not enable the government to stifle it…
This is a flagrant assault on the First Amendment under the guise of defending it, and an assault on those who seek to defend the right of free expression.
FTC
Digital News Daily: FTC Lacks Authority To Police Platforms’ Content Moderation Policies, Simons Says
By Wendy Davis
The Federal Trade Commission lacks the authority to oversee how social media companies curate political speech, Chairman Joe Simons told the Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday.
“Our authority focuses on commercial speech, not political content curation,” Simons told Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) at an oversight hearing.
Simons’ statement came in response to questions from Wicker about President Trump’s recent attempt to crack down on social media platforms. In May, Trump issued an executive order that directed the FTC to consider taking action if websites “restrict speech in ways that do not align with those entities’ public representations about those practices.”
Trump said at the time that social media platforms were engaging in “selective censorship” based on viewpoint, despite a lack of empirical proof…
The FTC has long said it isn’t empowered to regulate political speech.
In 2004, for example, the FTC rejected a complaint against Fox News by advocacy group MoveOn.org, which had asked the agency to investigate whether the company dupes the public with the slogan “fair and balanced.”
“I am not aware of any instance in which the Federal Trade Commission has investigated the slogan of a news organization,” former FTC Chair Timothy Muris stated on July 19, 2004. “There is no way to evaluate this petition without evaluating the content of the news at issue. That is a task the First Amendment leaves to the American people, not a government agency.”
State Department
New York Times: State Dept. Traces Russian Disinformation Links
By Julian E. Barnes
Russia continues to use a network of proxy websites to spread pro-Kremlin disinformation and propaganda in the United States and other parts of the West, according to a State Department report released on Wednesday.
The report is one of the most detailed explanations yet from the Trump administration on how Russia disseminates disinformation, but it largely avoids discussing how Moscow is trying to influence the current campaign…
Most of the report focuses on an ecosystem of websites, many of them fringe or conspiracy minded, that Russia has used or directed to spread propaganda on a variety of topics…The document builds on information disclosed last week by American officials about Russian intelligence’s control of various propaganda sites.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who announced the release of the report on Wednesday, said the State Department would offer rewards of up to $10 million for information to help identify any person who, acting at the direction of a foreign government, tries to hack into election or campaign infrastructure.
The report was prepared by the department’s Global Engagement Center, whose mandate is only to examine propaganda efforts outside the United States.
The Courts
Digital News Daily: Trump Admin Asks Judge To Throw Out Lawsuit Challenging Attempted Social Media Crackdown
By Wendy Davis
The digital rights group Center for Democracy & Technology has no grounds to challenge President Trump’s recent executive order regarding social media, because the order’s impact is still “speculative,” the White House argues in court papers filed this week.
The Justice Department is asking U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden in Washington, D.C. to dismiss the organization’s request for a declaration that the order is unconstitutional and an injunction blocking its implementation.
The Center for Democracy & Technology challenged Trump’s executive order in court several days after he issued it. The organization argues the order violates the First Amendment because it “seeks to curtail and chill the constitutionally protected speech of all online platforms and individuals.”
The order, issued in late May, directed the Commerce Department to petition the Federal Communications Commission to craft regulations that could deprive online platforms of the protections of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
WTHR: ACLU lawsuit accuses State Police of interfering with death penalty protests
The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana has filed a lawsuit against the Indiana State Police for allegedly interfering with those who protested in opposition to the July executions at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute.
According to the ACLU, State Police closed the roads leading to the prison and put significant barriers in place ahead of the executions, forcing demonstrators to protest nearly two miles away from the prison. The lawsuit claims these restrictions violate the protesters’ First Amendment rights.
“These restrictions obstruct one of the most fundamental rights protected by the Constitution, political speech. There is absolutely no justification for this overly broad ‘no-protest zone,'” said Ken Falk, legal director at the ACLU of Indiana, in a press release. “The Indiana State Police are severely compromising protesters’ ability to express themselves and to express their opposition to the death penalty while in sight of the prison.” …
Click here to read the full complaint.
Congress
The Hill: House Democrat calls on Facebook to take down doctored Pelosi video
By Chris Mills Rodrigo
Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) is demanding Facebook remove a video of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) edited to make her appear intoxicated.
“I am extremely troubled that Facebook is once again refusing to remove a doctored video of Speaker Pelosi that makes her seem inebriated,” Eshoo, a Pelosi ally, said in a letter to the social media giant on Tuesday.“The video is disinformation, and by leaving it up, Facebook is actively playing a role in disseminating political disinformation,” Eshoo added.
The clip was first shared on the platform Saturday with the caption, “this is unbelievable, she is blowed out of her mind, I bet this gets took down!” The 55-second video comes from a May press conference in which Pelosi condemned comments President Trump made about MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough.
Facebook has elected not to remove the clip, which surpassed 3 million views on Tuesday, instead electing to place a “partly false” label on it. Twitter, YouTube and TikTok have removed the video
Media
Washington Examiner: Study of DC journalists’ Twitter use shows they’re ‘even more insular than previously thought’
By Becket Adams
A recent study of Washington, D.C., journalists’ Twitter usage found that those who cover the federal government have locked themselves away in “microbubbles” where they primarily talk only to each other. The study suggests that reporters in the nation’s capital “may be even more insular than previously thought,” says its authors, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign professors Nikki Usher and Yee Man Margaret Ng.
This obviously raises “additional concerns about vulnerability to groupthink and blind spots,” they add.
“Political journalists in D.C. are people who use Twitter all day,” said Usher. “And so the question is what does that do to how they think about the world. And generally … it seems to me that it can make things worse.”
Online Speech Platforms
Washington Post: Facebook, Twitter penalize Trump for posts containing coronavirus misinformation
By Heather Kelly
Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday took extraordinary action against President Trump for spreading coronavirus misinformation after his official and campaign accounts broke their rules, respectively.
Facebook removed from Trump’s official account the post of a video clip from a Fox News interview in which he said children are “almost immune” from covid-19. Twitter required his Team Trump campaign account to delete a tweet with the same video, blocking it from tweeting in the interim.
In the removed video, President Trump can be heard in a phone interview saying schools should open. He goes on to say, “If you look at children, children are almost – and I would almost say definitely – but almost immune from this disease,” and that they have stronger immune systems.
Wall Street Journal: States Call on Facebook to Launch Hate-Speech Hotline
By Ryan Tracy
A group of Democratic attorneys general jumped into the debate over monitoring content on social media Wednesday, urging Facebook Inc. to take additional steps to combat harassment and hate speech.
In a letter to Facebook executives, the attorneys general for California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois and other states called on the social-media platform to offer live, real-time assistance so users can report intimidation and harassment.
They also asked Facebook to improve its filtering and blocking tools for hate speech and to be more cooperative with law-enforcement authorities investigating hate crimes.
“They are really the biggest vehicles out there for spreading hate and disinformation,” New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, whose office helped organize the letter, said in an interview, referring to Facebook platforms…
Precisely what defines hate speech has sometimes been a point of contention between members of the two parties, with Republicans arguing that concerns over hateful speech have been used to arbitrarily squelch conservative viewpoints…
In their letter, the attorneys general for 19 states and the District of Columbia defined harassing content as that “focused on characteristics protected by the civil rights laws that many of us are charged with enforcing, including race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender and gender identity, and disability.”
Washington Post: Facebook’s fact-checkers have ruled claims in Trump ads are false – but no one is telling Facebook’s users
By Craig Timberg and Andrew Ba Tran
Fact-checkers were unanimous in their assessments when President Trump began claiming in June that Democrat Joe Biden wanted to “defund” police forces. PolitiFact called the allegations “false,” as did CheckYourFact. The Associated Press detailed “distortions” in Trump’s claims. FactCheck.org called an ad airing them “deceptive.” Another site, the Dispatch, said there is “nothing currently to support” Trump’s claims.
But these judgments, made by five fact-checking organizations that are part of Facebook’s independent network for policing falsehoods on the platform, were not shared with Facebook’s users. That is because the company specifically exempts politicians from its rules against deception. Ads containing the falsehoods continue to run freely on the platform, without any kind of warning or label.
Enabled by Facebook’s rules, Trump’s reelection campaign has shown versions of the false claim on Facebook at least 22.5 million times, in more than 1,400 ads costing between $350,000 and $553,000, a Washington Post analysis found based on data from Facebook’s Ad Library…
Biden’s campaign has not taken similar advantage of Facebook’s leniency about political claims. Fact-checkers working with Facebook have found far fewer misleading statements from him or his campaign, a review of their work since May found.
New York Times: TikTok Takes Steps to Curb Misinformation Ahead of U.S. Election
By Reuters
Video-sharing app TikTok has updated its content policies to curb misinformation on its platform ahead of the presidential election in the United States, the company said on Wednesday.
The app, which has come under fire by U.S. lawmakers and the Trump administration over national security concerns due to its Chinese ownership, said it was working with experts from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to “protect against foreign influence”.
TikTok said it would expand partnerships with PolitiFact and Lead Stories to fact-check potential misinformation about the election. It will also allow users to report vote-related misinformation on the app, the company said in a blog post.
The company, which does not allow political advertising and said in the blog post it was not the “go-to app to follow news or politics,” has increasingly emerged as a platform for political discourse and activism.
Candidates and Campaigns
CNN: Trump campaign calls for a fourth presidential debate, citing early voting
By Dan Merica, Donald Judd, and Ryan Nobles
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign called for an additional presidential debate in a letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates on Wednesday.
Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York who represents the Trump campaign on debate issues, wrote in the letter that the current debate schedule is an “outdated dinosaur and not reflective of voting realities in 2020,” citing the fact that millions of Americans will have the ability to vote early before the first general election debate in late September.
“For a nation already deprived of a traditional campaign schedule because of the COVID-19 global pandemic, it makes no sense to also deprive so many Americans of the opportunity to see and hear the two competing visions for our country’s future before millions of votes have been cast,” Giuliani wrote.
Giuliani wrote in the letter that if the commission will not add a fourth debate, “we strongly urge the Commission to move up the final debate (currently scheduled for October 22, 2020) to instead happen during the first week in September.”
CBS News: Trump wants to deliver his GOP convention speech at White House. Is that legal?
By Nicole Sganga
President Trump is now mulling the White House as a locale for his Republican National Convention acceptance speech…
“Is that even legal?” GOP Senator John Thune said to reporters when asked about the president’s plans. “I assume that’s not something that you could do,” the Republican senator from South Dakota said, citing a potential “Hatch Act issue.” The senator added, “I think anything you do on federal property would seem to be to be problematic.”
But the president defended the idea Wednesday, calling it a “very convenient idea” during a White House news conference. “Well it is legal,” Mr. Trump said. “There is no Hatch Act because it doesn’t pertain to the president. But if I use the White House, we save tremendous amounts of money for the government in terms of security, traveling. If we go to another state, some other location, the amount of money is very enormous, so that’s something to consider also.” …
“The campaign still needs to pay for the event,” Kedric Payne, general counsel and senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center tells CBS News. “How does the campaign reimburse for expenses like the cost of the White House lawn?”
The Hill: Trump campaign uses altered photos of Biden in new ad
By Zack Budryk
An ad released by President Trump’s re-election campaign falsely depicts former Vice President Joe Biden as “hiding” alone in his basement using an image edited to remove several other people.
The Trump campaign tweeted the ad Wednesday. The edited picture of Biden sitting on the floor of a house appears about five seconds in, as a narrator claims Biden is “hiding … in his basement.”
In fact, the original image depicts Biden and several other people in the home of Coralsville, Iowa, Mayor John Lundell in December 2019…
Photo editor Liz Martin, who took the picture, said about three dozen people were present at the event, and told the newspaper that Biden had sat on the floor so someone else could have his seat.
Iowa state Sen. Zach Wahls (D) noticed the altered image on Twitter, saying he was also present at Lundell’s home that evening…
Another manipulated photo shows a microphone edited out of Biden’s hands and a different background.
The States
Standard-Examiner: Court rejects defamation case by Utah GOP caucus system hard-liners
By Mark Shenefelt
A state court has rejected a group of Utah Republican caucus system hard-liners’ defamation lawsuit against a party activist who widely criticized their actions.
Seven current or former GOP State Central Committee members sued Daryl Acumen in 2018, accusing him of defamation and electronic communications harassment.
Acumen, a former Central Committee member and chair of the Utah Black Republican Assembly, sent an email and made social media commentary vehemently opposing a party bylaw favored by the seven…
District Judge David Connors ruled in favor of Acumen, saying the email did not constitute electronic harassment and that Acumen’s comments were protected political speech.
And in its ruling released last week, the Utah Court of Appeals in Salt Lake City agreed.
“Acumen’s emails and social media post were unquestionably political speech, which enjoys the broadest protection under the First Amendment,” the July 30 court opinion said…
Several of the same party members also sued Acumen in federal court as well, accusing him of illegally intercepting electronic messages during a State Central Committee meeting.
In April, Acumen was dropped from that suit in a settlement with the plaintiffs.
