In the News
San José Spotlight: South Bay legislator pushes to investigate government spying on protesters
By Katie King
Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, is calling on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to investigate the federal government’s surveillance of Black Lives Matter protests.
Eshoo, along with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Illinois), sent a joint letter to the board last week.
“The act of protesting has played a central role in advancing civil rights in our country, and our Constitution protects the right of Americans to engage in peaceful protest unencumbered by government interference,” they wrote…
David Keating, the president of the Institute for Free Speech, told San José Spotlight law enforcement has an obligation to respect First Amendment rights, and to be transparent about its actions to lawmakers.
“History teaches us the danger of allowing government to monitor people who are exercising First Amendment rights, especially the right to criticize the government,” he said. “Many of the Supreme Court’s most important rulings for free speech arose from government efforts to identify and track its critics.”
Keating said Congress should consider passing laws to ensure the government does not take advantage of technological advances to gather “First Amendment-related intelligence” without a legitimate law enforcement purpose.
The Courts
Courthouse News: Sixth Circuit Strikes Down Ban on Political Speech in Bus Ads
By Kevin Koeninger
An appeals court panel sided with a conservative free speech group Friday and ruled a Detroit-area public transit authority’s ban on political speech in ads violates the First Amendment because such speech is not clearly defined.
The American Freedom Defense Initiative filed suit against the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation, or SMART, in 2010, after two of its proposed ads regarding Islam were rejected for placement on buses. The ads were part of an outreach by AFDI to Muslims who wanted to leave the Islamic faith and promoted the website RefugefromIslam.com.
AFDI was initially successful and obtained an injunction from a federal judge, but the Sixth Circuit overturned the ruling in 2012 and held SMART had enacted a permissible total ban on political advertising.
Discovery was conducted following a remand to federal court, and U.S. District Judge Denise Hood sided with SMART in a 2019 decision after she determined the buses are a nonpublic forum.
The case was argued before a different panel of Sixth Circuit judges in December 2019, and Friday’s ruling focused heavily on recent Supreme Court decisions, including the 2018 case Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky.
Congress
Politico: Barrett clears pivotal Senate hurdle ahead of Monday confirmation vote
By Marianne Levine and Andrew Desiderio
The Senate cleared a key procedural hurdle Sunday for Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination for the Supreme Court, bringing the 48-year-old judge one step closer to confirmation to the high court.
In a 51-48 vote, the Senate kicked off 30 hours of debate on Barrett’s nomination, setting up a final confirmation vote for Monday evening, just eight days before the Nov. 3 election. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), the Democratic vice presidential nominee, wasn’t present for the vote. The Senate is expected to remain in session overnight into Monday.
Politico: Twitter, Facebook CEOs to testify before Senate Judiciary after election
By Cristiano Lima
The CEOs of Twitter and Facebook have agreed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on allegations of anti-conservative bias at a hearing after the November elections, the panel announced Friday, staving off a legal confrontation between the companies and Congress.
Office of Senator Tom Cotton: Cotton & Gallagher Introduce Bill to Close Lobbying Loopholes for Chinese Companies
Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) and Representative Mike Gallagher (R-Wisconsin) today announced they will introduce the Chinese Communist Party Influence Transparency Act, which would close loopholes that allow lobbyists for Chinese companies to avoid registering under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
The bill comes after Rep. Gallagher and Sen. Cotton wrote to Attorney General Bill Barr last month expressing concerns about these loopholes and whether individuals lobbying on behalf of certain Chinese companies should be required to register under FARA. Click here for bill text.
FEC
MLive: Hank Meijer created LLC accused of campaign finance violation in West Michigan congressional race
By Brian McVicar
Hank Meijer’s name was mistakenly left off a campaign finance report detailing a $150,000 donation – now the subject of a federal complaint – he made to a Republican super PAC supporting his son’s congressional campaign, a family spokesperson said Saturday…
Meijer is the executive chairmen of the Meijer supercenter chain and the father of Peter Meijer, the Republican candidate challenging Democrat Hillary Scholten in Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District race.
Hank Meijer’s donation to Congressional Leadership Fund, which works to elect Republican U.S. House candidates, came under scrutiny Friday.
The Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog group, filed a complaint Friday with the Federal Election Commission against Montcalm LLC, alleging that the LLC was created on Sept. 28 solely for the purpose of masking the identity of the individual behind its Oct. 8 donation.
Until last night, Montcalm LLC was the only name attached to the donation.
Free Speech
The Atlantic: Should the Professional Be Political?
By Conor Friedersdorf
Last month, Brian Armstrong, the CEO of the cryptocurrency platform Coinbase, observed that although many Silicon Valley companies engage in wide-ranging social activism unrelated to their core businesses, his firm would move away from that approach. “While I think these efforts are well intentioned, they have the potential to destroy a lot of value at most companies, both by being a distraction, and by creating internal division,” he wrote, citing internal strife at Google, Facebook, and beyond. “I believe most employees don’t want to work in these divisive environments.”
Going forward, he announced, Coinbase would still engage in political activism related to cryptocurrency and the new global financial system it hopes to create. But employees at Coinbase should not engage in activism or debates about other causes or politicians while at work or expect the company to represent their personal beliefs externally. Armstrong granted that for some, “working at an activism-focused company may be core to what they want,” and gave such employees at Coinbase a chance to accept severance of four to six months’ pay–or to stay and commit to making the new approach work. About 60 employees, or 5 percent, took the payout.
The Media
New York Times: Conservative News Sites Fuel Voter Fraud Misinformation
By Tiffany Hsu
In the final stretch of the 2020 campaign, right-leaning news sites with millions of readers have published dozens of false or misleading headlines and articles that effectively back unsubstantiated claims by President Trump and his allies that mail-in ballots threaten the integrity of the election…
Harvard researchers described a “propaganda feedback loop” in right-wing media. The authors of the study, published this month through the school’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, reported that popular news outlets, rather than social media platforms, were the main drivers of a disinformation campaign meant to sow doubts about the integrity of the election.
Independent Groups
New York Times: New York City billboards featuring Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner draw a threatening letter.
By Stephanie Saul
A lawyer for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner threatened Friday to take legal action against the Lincoln Project, a super PAC made up of anti-Trump conservatives, unless the group removes a pair of large billboards from Times Square in Manhattan.
One of the billboards shows a smiling Ms. Trump, the president’s eldest daughter, gesturing toward national and statewide tallies of coronavirus deaths.
Another features a smiling picture of her husband, Mr. Kushner, alongside a quote saying that New Yorkers “are going to suffer and that’s their problem.” Below the quote is a series of body bags.
The quote is taken from a Vanity Fair article published in September about Mr. Kushner’s role in the federal coronavirus response. The article claims that Mr. Kushner accused Gov. Andrew Cuomo of failing to “pound the phones hard enough” for coronavirus protective equipment for New York, then added, “His people are going to suffer and that’s their problem.”
The threatening letter from Marc E. Kasowitz, a New York lawyer who represents the couple and has worked for President Trump in the past, called the ads malicious and defamatory.
Online Speech Platforms
Wall Street Journal: Facebook Prepares Measures for Possible Election Unrest
By Jeff Horwitz and Deepa Seetharaman
Facebook Inc. teams have planned for the possibility of trying to calm election-related conflict in the U.S. by deploying internal tools designed for what it calls “at-risk” countries, according to people familiar with the matter.
The emergency measures include slowing the spread of viral content and lowering the bar for suppressing potentially inflammatory posts, the people said. Previously used in countries including Sri Lanka and Myanmar, they are part of a larger tool kit developed by Facebook to prepare for the U.S. election.
Facebook executives have said they would only deploy the tools in dire circumstances, such as election-related violence, but that the company needs to be prepared for all possibilities, said the people familiar with the planning.
The potential moves include an across-the-board slowing of the spread of posts as they start to go viral and tweaking the news feed to change what types of content users see, the people said. The company could also lower the threshold for detecting the types of content its software views as dangerous.
Deployed together, the tools could alter what tens of millions of Americans see when they log onto the platform, diminishing their exposure to sensationalism, incitements to violence and misinformation, said the people familiar with the measures. But slowing down the spread of popular content could suppress some good-faith political discussion, a prospect that makes some Facebook employees uneasy, some of the people said.
Wall Street Journal: Facebook Seeks Shutdown of NYU Research Project Into Political Ad Targeting
By Jeff Horwitz
Facebook Inc. is demanding that a New York University research project cease collecting data about its political-ad-targeting practices, setting up a fight with academics seeking to study the platform without the company’s permission.
The dispute involves the NYU Ad Observatory, a project launched last month by the university’s engineering school that has recruited more than 6,500 volunteers to use a specially designed browser extension to collect data about the political ads Facebook shows them.
In a letter sent Oct. 16 to the researchers behind the NYU Ad Observatory, Facebook said the project violates provisions in its terms of service that prohibit bulk data collection from its site…
The researchers behind the NYU Ad Observatory said they wanted to provide journalists, researchers, policy makers, and others with the ability to search political ads by state and contest to see what messages are targeted to specific audiences and how those ads are funded.
Facebook’s demand that the project stop its collection drew opposition from proponents of greater ad transparency, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.), a sponsor of a bill called the Honest Ads Act that would mandate greater transparency in online political advertising.
Bloomberg: YouTube Can’t Place All the Political Ads It Gets
By Mark Bergen
Less than two weeks before the U.S. election, some political campaigns are dealing with an unexpected obstacle on YouTube, the internet’s largest video site: There isn’t enough space to run their ads.
Campaigns have flooded YouTube with commercials in search of voters they may not be reaching on television. Yet despite its nearly endless supply of video clips, YouTube has been struggling to place these ads in front of the desired audience.
The site has a particular shortage of ad slots in critical swing states, causing prices to double in some instances…
The situation has sent smaller campaigns scrambling to find advertising opportunities elsewhere. “There’s a crunch,” said Cat Stern, media director for Lockwood Strategy Lab, a digital campaign agency focused on Democratic candidates and progressive advocacy organizations. “All political advertisers are buying in the same states, to similar audiences.” She equated the commercial spree to the online spending binge during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Viewership has shot up on YouTube during the pandemic. While commercial advertising remains anemic, there has been a glut of political ads…
“The reserves tend to be gobbled up by well-funded campaigns,” said Reid Vineis, vice president of digital at Majority Strategies, a Republican political ad firm.
Newsweek: Backlash Against Big Tech was a Long Time Coming
By William A. Jacobson
When [Twitter and Facebook] aren’t stopping the spread of information disadvantageous to the left, they’re employing dubious “fact checks” to undermine legitimate news coverage by slapping disclaimers on stories that don’t fit their left-wing narrative.
Even making factual statements contrary to the whims of progressive activists can result in censorship on social media. The website I run, Legal Insurrection, discovered this first hand when we posted about arsonists causing the recent Australia wildfires-wildfires that were exacerbated by long-term failures in land management. Our statement was demonstrably true-24 people were arrested for starting the fires-but that didn’t stop Facebook from marking our story, which was largely a reprint of news covered in mainstream outlets, as “false information.” Their rationale? A Facebook fact checker said we should have included climate change as a factor contributing to the intensity of the blazes.
Candidates and Campaigns
Wall Street Street: The Most Expensive Election
By The Editorial Board
The 2020 elections are “obliterating previous spending records,” says OpenSecrets.org, which projects a total cost of around $11 billion. Yet the campaign has so far been remarkably free of complaints about money in politics.
Funny, that. Perhaps it’s because this year Democrats are crushing Republicans in fundraising, from the presidential race, to Senate challengers, to House incumbents, to even state legislative elections…
Donation patterns tend to ebb and flow across political cycles depending on the national mood and party prospects. But so does outrage over campaign finance, as Democrats seem to object only in years when Republicans get a fundraising edge.
It’s another reminder that complaints about money in politics are always marbled with hypocrisy and phony posturing. Campaign-finance reform of the scope that progressives imagine is impossible to square with the First Amendment. But Democrats love it as a talking point, at least when they’re losing. And when they’re winning? Yeah, they’ll get around to addressing money in politics, right after they take power with the help of those oversize checks.
The States
By Rebecca Ellis
A Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge has ruled that the city auditor must examine a complaint into Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler’s $150,000 loan to his own re-election campaign.
Voters approved strict campaign finance limits in 2018, including a $5,000 cap on how much candidates can loan themselves. However, City Auditor Mary Hull Caballero had decided not to enforce the self-funding portion of the charter, saying it conflicts with the U.S. Supreme Court precedent and would inevitably be struck down by the court.
This decision by the auditor drew scrutiny after the mayor made a $150,000 loan to his campaign. His opponent, Sarah Iannarone, filed a lawsuit on Oct 6. asking the court to make the city auditor enforce the cap.
On Friday, Multnomah County Circuit Judge Thomas Ryan ruled that the city auditor had to follow the rules in the charter and city code and look into the complaint that alleged Wheeler violated campaign finance rules with his loan.
Bellefontaine Examiner: Ohio files complaint on ex-House speaker’s campaign spending
By Mark Gillespie, Associated Press
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed a complaint Friday with the state Elections Commission over the former Ohio House speaker’s use of more than $900,000 in campaign contributions to pay attorneys defending him in a federal racketeering case.
Yost said in the complaint that Rep. Larry Householder, a Perry County Republican, violated campaign finance laws and that a 1996 advisory opinion from the Elections Commission makes clear campaign funds can’t be used for an elected official’s criminal defense.
“Accordingly, Householder, Friends of Larry Householder, and Mr. Householder’s criminal defense attorneys were on notice that expenditures were not appropriate,” the complaint said.
In an interview Friday, Yost said the conversion of campaign funds to pay for an elected official’s criminal defense is a first-degree misdemeanor.
Chicago Tribune: Billionaire Ken Griffin, in battle with Gov. J.B. Pritzker over graduated-rate income tax amendment, ups his stake to $53.75 million to oppose it
By Rich Pearson
Ken Griffin, in a billionaire battle with Gov. J.B. Pritzker over the governor’s effort to switch Illinois to a graduated-rate income tax system, pumped another $7 million of his wealth to oppose it, state campaign finance reports showed Friday.
Griffin, the founder and CEO of Citadel, a Chicago-based hedge fund and investment firm, has now given $53.75 million to the Coalition to Stop the Proposed Tax Hike group, which is opposed to Pritzker’s signature agenda item – a proposed state constitutional amendment on the Nov. 3 ballot to move Illinois from a flat-rate income tax to a graduated-rate income tax that increases the levy along with income.
Griffin and Pritzker are the main funders for the anti- and pro-amendment forces, respectively, using their wealth to help drive a flurry of expensive TV advertising.
