We’re Hiring!
Legal Director – Institute for Free Speech – Washington, DC or Virtual Office
The Institute for Free Speech anticipates the need for a highly experienced attorney to direct our litigation and legal advocacy. President Trump announced plans to nominate our longtime Legal Director to the Federal Election Commission, in which case he likely would be confirmed in late summer or fall.
This is a rare opportunity to develop and implement a long-term legal strategy directed toward the protection of Constitutional rights. You would work to create legal precedents clearing away a thicket of laws and regulations that suppress speech about government and candidates for political office, that threaten citizens’ privacy if they speak or join groups, and that impose heavy burdens on organized political activity. The Legal Director will direct our litigation and legal advocacy, lead our in-house legal team, and manage and expand our network of volunteer attorneys.
A strong preference will be given to candidates who can work in our Washington, D.C. headquarters. However, we will consider exceptionally strong candidates living and working virtually from anywhere in the country.
[You can learn more about this role and apply for the position here.]
The Courts
Wall Street Journal: Liberating Pennsylvania From Lockdown
By The Editorial Board
‘The liberties protected by the Constitution are not fair-weather freedoms-in place when times are good but able to be cast aside in times of trouble.” So federal judge William Stickman IV wrote Monday in an instructive ruling that overturned Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s use of emergency power.
The decision comes nearly six months after Mr. Wolf invoked police powers to impose a strict lockdown as his strategy against Covid-19…
Republican legislators and several businesses argued the Governor’s emergency orders violate the First Amendment’s right to assemble and Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection and due process guarantees…
Most legal challenges to emergency orders this year have involved religious freedom, but Judge Stickman wrote that other individual liberties are equally important. By closing “non-life-sustaining businesses,” his ruling says, the state was “determining who could work and who could not, who could earn a paycheck and who would be unemployed-and for some-which businesses would live, and which would die.”
Mr. Wolf’s administration never bothered to define “life-sustaining,” and it turned out to mean whatever his government says it means…
Ditto for Mr. Wolf’s restrictions on public gatherings this summer to 25 people indoors and 250 outdoors. Yet as many as 20,000 attendees were allowed to attend an auto show and flea market outdoors. Mr. Wolf even participated in a Black Lives Matter protest that violated the letter of his own emergency order. By contrast, the plaintiffs weren’t allowed to hold campaign events exceeding the order’s limits, which Judge Stickman says violates their right to assemble.
Reason: The Julian Assange Case Threatens All Journalists Who Scrutinize Government Conduct
By J.D. Tuccille
This week sees the resumption in London of the extradition hearing for Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks. Assange faces charges in the U.S. of conspiring with Chelsea Manning and hackers to gain access to and publish classified information that embarrassed the government. It’s an extraordinary proceeding which has American officials claiming that U.S. law applies to a foreign publisher, but that U.S. constitutional protections do not.
It’s also a caution to journalists that governments will go to any length to punish those who inconvenience or embarrass them…
The U.S. throws the book at Assange, including for conduct that clearly constitutes journalism…
Assange’s alleged crime under [the language of the indictment] is nothing more than publishing classified material.
Other charges, based on soliciting information from Manning and from hackers, have their own problems. Journalists have frequently done exactly that in high-profile cases, such as when the The Washington Post and The Guardian worked with Edward Snowden to publish his surveillance revelations, and when The New York Times and the Post did the same with Daniel Ellsberg with regard to the Pentagon Papers…
“Justice officials said they looked hard at Assange but realized that they have what they described as a ‘New York Times problem,'” the Washington Post noted in 2013. “If the Justice Department indicted Assange, it would also have to prosecute the New York Times and other news organizations and writers who published classified material, including The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, according to the officials.”
Congress
KRCG: Hawley asks Facebook reconsider its ban on political ads in week leading up to election
By Megan Smaltz
U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) sent a letter to Facebook’s CEO asking the company to reconsider its recent decision to ban political advertising in the week leading up the November 2020 elections.
With the election closing in, Facebook announced it will restrict new political ads in the week before the election and remove posts that convey misinformation about COVID-19 and voting…
Hawley argues that Facebook’s decision could suppress voter turnout.
He also wrote in the letter that the ban includes an overly broad blackout of advertising related to “social issues” which, he says, could refer to almost anything in this day and age…
He asked the company to specifically define a “political” or “issue” advertisement and said: “Would an advertisement explaining how citizens can protect themselves against mob violence, or an ad for concealed-carry firearms training, run afoul of Facebook’s blackout?”
He also asks whether news or opinion outlets will be allowed to promote stories related to the election and whether advocacy groups like Planned Parenthood or NARAL will be permitted to advertise on Facebook during the blackout.
FEC
Church Militant: Exclusive Interview: Trey Trainor (Video)
Trey Trainor, chairman of the Federal Election Commission and a practicing Catholic, clarifies the rights of Catholics to engage in political advocacy and how bishops are misusing their authority to censor the faithful.
Fundraising
RealClearPolitics: ActBlue Raises Millions in Suspicious Gift Card Donations
By Phill Kline
For all the complaining they do about so-called “dark money” in politics, it certainly appears that those on the left are eager to get a slice of the pie – even if they possibly have to engage in some “creative accounting” to make it seem as though everything is above-board.
ActBlue is undeniably the cash cow of the progressive movement, boasting over $6 billion raised for favored candidates since 2004…
The organization has leveraged its powerhouse presence to negotiate a special relationship with banks so that it does not have to reveal donor names when processing its gift cards, as is normally required for virtually all online transactions.
Some people have long suspected this allows ActBlue or a mega-donor to easily break large donations down into smaller gifts to avoid campaign finance laws and Federal Election Commission scrutiny – once an individual donor or third-party organization has given $200 or more to a candidate, for instance, their information is supposed to be added to a public FEC database for the sake of transparency. ActBlue’s structure could easily allow illegal donations made online to be broken down into smaller gifts from claimed U.S. sources with little chance of exposure. ActBlue’s design would allow large donors to exceed contribution limits without even triggering the threshold for public reporting.
But now, computer analysis calls into question the legitimacy of these gifts.
Independent Groups
Daily Signal: This BLM Co-Founder and Pro-Communist China Group Are Partnering Up. Here’s Why.
By Mike Gonzalez
Imagine that far-right demonstrators were laying siege to American cities for months, led by activists explicitly calling for an “ethno-state,” and that one of their groups was funded by an outfit involved with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. It would lead the news every day and there would be congressional hearings, right?
And rightly so. The threat of foreign interference in our domestic affairs is a serious matter, whether the suspects are rivals such as Russia or friendlies such as Mexico. This is especially the case if a foreign power were abetting unrest that aims to topple our constitutional order.
Well, the scenario described above is happening, though not with Russia or the far right, but with China and the leftist disturbances upending America and seeking to transform it.
Yet, there has not been a peep from the media or Congress about China’s support of the riots.
Go to the website for the Black Futures Lab, a venture of Black Lives Matter founder Alicia Garza, and click on the “Donate” button. It will ask you to send your money to an obscure organization, the Chinese Progressive Association, explaining that “Black Futures Lab is a fiscally sponsored project of the Chinese Progressive Association.”
Online Speech Platforms
Washington Blade: Facebook slaps fact check on ads stoking fears about transgender kids in girls sports
By Chris Johnson
The tech giant Facebook has slapped on fact-check on an anti-transgender ad ran by the American Principles Project that seeks to stoke fears during the presidential election transgender athletes would “destroy girls’ sports.”
David Kearns, a Facebook spokesperson, confirmed to the Washington Blade via email the tech company had placed a fact check on the ads, citing determinations from Politifact and its third-party checking program.
“Our third party fact checkers have rated this content which means it is not allowed to run as an ad and any organic posts will receive a label,” Kearns added.
According to Facebook’s ad library, the American Principles Project spent between $2,000 and $2,500 to run the ad, which was shown entirely in Michigan to criticize Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) for co-sponsoring the Equality Act and Joe Biden for supporting the legislation. The ad has received 60,000 to 70,000 impressions…
Last week, the Human Rights Campaign called on Facebook to take down the anti-trans deceitful ads or label them as the misinformation. Meanwhile, requests in with other tech companies running similar ads are still pending…
Terry Schilling, executive director of the American Principles Project, pointed out nothing in the Politifact assessment determined the ad was false…
Washington Post: Pro-Trump youth group enlists teens in secretive campaign likened to a ‘troll farm,’ prompting rebuke by Facebook and Twitter
By Isaac Stanley-Becker
The messages have been emanating in recent months from the accounts of young people in Arizona seemingly expressing their own views – standing up for President Trump in a battleground state and echoing talking points from his reelection campaign.
Far from representing a genuine social media groundswell, however, the posts are the product of a sprawling yet secretive campaign that experts say evades the guardrails put in place by social media companies to limit online disinformation of the sort used by Russia during the 2016 campaign.
Teenagers, some of them minors, are being paid to pump out the messages at the direction of Turning Point Action, an affiliate of Turning Point USA, the prominent conservative youth organization based in Phoenix…
The campaign draws on the spam-like behavior of bots and trolls, with the same or similar language posted repeatedly across social media. But it is carried out, at least in part, by humans paid to use their own accounts, though nowhere disclosing their relationship with Turning Point Action or the digital firm brought in to oversee the day-to-day activity…
In response to questions from The Post, Twitter on Tuesday suspended at least 20 accounts involved in the activity for “platform manipulation and spam.” Facebook also removed a number of accounts as part of what the company said is an ongoing investigation…
“This is sincere political activism conducted by real people who passionately hold the beliefs they describe online, not an anonymous troll farm in Russia,” Turning Point Action’s field director, Austin Smith, said in the statement.
He said the operation reflected an attempt by Turning Point Action to maintain its advocacy despite the challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic, which has curtailed many traditional political events.
New York Times: Celebrities Plan an ‘Instagram Freeze,’ but Reaction Is Icy
By Kellen Browning
One by one, celebrities came forward this week to say they were sick of the misinformation and hate speech on Instagram and Facebook, its parent company. Many of them – Kim Kardashian West, Katy Perry, Leonardo DiCaprio – have tens of millions of followers on social media…
On Wednesday, they said, they would freeze their Instagram accounts for 24 hours and not post anything on the photo-sharing site as a kind of moratorium against Facebook.
But the move, which the celebrities made in concert with the Stop Hate for Profit Campaign, a coalition of civil rights organizations that had organized an ad boycott of Facebook in July, quickly became fodder for online criticism…
“These stunts are worthless if temporary and short-lived (which they always are),” tweeted Jenna Golden, the head of a consulting firm in Washington, mirroring a common sentiment shared across Twitter. “If anything, they shine a light on the fact that we cannot live without these platforms since everyone always comes back (brands included.)” …
In an interview on Tuesday, Jim Steyer, the chief executive of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit group that is part of the campaign, said the Instagram freeze was just the first step in a new round of messaging.
NPR: Facebook VP Nick Clegg On New Climate Change Information Hub
By James Doubek
Facebook is launching a climate change information page in an effort to promote facts about climate change from trusted sources.
Users in the U.S., U.K., France and Germany are seeing links and information from Facebook’s Climate Change Information Center starting Tuesday. It’s similar to the COVID-19 information page launched in March…
The climate information page features articles from reputable news sources and social media posts from government and international agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the World Meteorological Organization.
Facebook says it partners with more than 70 organizations to fact-check misinformation, including that related to climate change. There has been some controversy over what is exempted from fact-checking as “opinion” when it comes to climate change…
Clegg talked with NPR’s Audie Cornish on All Things Considered about misinformation on Facebook. Here are selected excerpts of that interview.
Candidates and Campaigns
Business Insider: The Trump campaign and Republican political committees are accepting donations from people claiming QAnon ties. And they may be violating federal law
By Dave Levinthal
QAnon is a cockeyed conspiracy theory about a liberal, devil-worshiping pedophile syndicate that secretly controls national affairs and will only be stopped by President Donald Trump. The FBI considers it a domestic terrorism threat.
But the Trump campaign and several Republican political committees, including the Republican National Committee, and National Republican Senatorial Committee, have together accepted at least 80 contributions from people claiming to work for or otherwise be associated with QAnon, an Insider analysis of federal campaign finance records indicates…
The Trump campaign and the Republican political committees could face federal scrutiny for accepting the donations…
The Federal Election Commission warns political actors that they are violating federal election law by “knowingly and willfully making any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation to a federal government agency,” including the FEC…
At minimum, political committees should scrub their public campaign finance filings of false information when made aware of it and use their “best efforts” to gather and submit accurate information, said Kenneth Gross, a partner at the Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP law firm who previously led the FEC’s enforcement division.
The States
Independent Voter News: Alaska’s ‘Yes on 2’ Campaign: Voters Have A Right to Know Who Is Trying to Influence Their Elections
By Shawn Griffiths
The comprehensive reform campaign, Yes on 2 for Better Elections, released its first general election TV ad Tuesday, targeting the corrupting influence of undisclosed money in politics, also known as “dark money.” …
The campaign says the influence this money has on candidates is a growing concern as voters feel their voices matter less and less.
“Alaska is the crown jewel of America,” said Yes on 2 campaign manager Shea Siegert, “so we can understand why people from Outside might have opinions about our state’s future. But they shouldn’t be able to hide in the dark while they try to influence our elections.”
Shea says Ballot Measure 2 ends the secrecy and deception of these tactics and adds transparency to the electoral process.
“Out of all the improvements Ballot Measure 2 will bring to Alaska’s elections, ending Dark Money is the one almost everyone from every party agrees on,” said Siegert. “You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who thinks more money from mysterious sources is a good thing.”
Bloomberg Tax: Billionaires’ Bankrolls Escalate Illinois Flat Income Tax Debate
By Michael J. Bologna
Some of the ultra-wealthy in Illinois are using their personal millions to try to influence voters as the state considers swapping its flat income tax with a graduated system.
Just two billionaires-Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) and hedge fund founder Kenneth Griffin-are responsible for 95% of the campaign contributions to the political committees set up to fight over the flat tax, according to campaign finance records.
They’re on opposite sides of the Nov. 3 ballot proposal.
Pritzker…is ranked by Forbes Magazine as the state’s sixth wealthiest resident. He has donated $56.5 million to the “Vote Yes for Fairness” committee.
Griffin…is one of the richest people in the world, ranking No. 110 on the global Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He has donated $20 million to the “Coalition to Stop the Proposed Tax Hike Amendment”.
“Every time I think I’ve gotten used to big money in Illinois politics something like this happens,” said Alisa Kaplan, executive director of the government ethics watchdog Reform for Illinois. “Pritzker is pouring millions into his agenda and Griffin is coming in to counter him. So it’s this vicious cycle that locks ordinary people out of the political process.”
Kent Redfield, a professor of political science at the University of Illinois who has studied campaigns for 30 years, called the political war chests “unprecedented” for an Illinois ballot question, where spending never previously topped $5 million
