We’re Hiring!
Senior Attorneys – Institute for Free Speech – Washington, DC or Virtual Office
The Institute for Free Speech is hiring three attorneys, including at least one Senior Attorney with at least 10 years of experience and two other experienced attorneys with at least four to six years of experience in an expansion of its litigation and legal advocacy capabilities.
This is a rare opportunity to work with a growing team to litigate a long-term legal strategy directed toward the protection of Constitutional rights. You would work to secure legal precedents clearing away a thicket of laws and regulations that suppress speech about government and candidates for political office, threaten citizens’ privacy if they speak or join groups, and impose heavy burdens on organized political activity.
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. In addition to litigation or advocacy-related travel, a virtual candidate would be required to travel for quarterly week-long visits to IFS’s headquarters after the pandemic’s impact has receded.
[You can learn more about this role and apply for the position here.]
The Courts
Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Legislator Free to Block Users from Her Campaign-Focused Twitter Account
By Eugene Volokh
Yesterday’s Eighth Circuit decision in Campbell v. Reich, written by Judge Morris Arnold and joined by Judge Steven Colloton, considered “whether [Missouri state representative Cheri Toalson] Reisch acted under color of state law when she blocked [Mike] Campbell on Twitter.” If she was acting under color of state law, viewpoint-based blocking would likely have violated the First Amendment; but if she was acting wearing her private citizen hat, she’d be free to engage in such blocking:
DOJ
National Review: The Justice Department’s Ridiculous Voter ‘Disinformation’ Prosecution
By Andrew C. McCarthy
On Wednesday, the FBI arrested a man in Florida on a conspiracy charge, punishable by up to ten years’ imprisonment, for the “crime” of peddling disinformation about voting on social-media platforms. It’s a three-fer: the prosecutorial creation of a crime Congress has not prescribed, the trivialization of civil-rights law, and the intrusion of government as a monitor of political speech…
In a nutshell, in the final two months of the 2016 campaign, Douglass Mackey, the defendant, disseminated nonsense on social media – what the government’s breathless press release describes as a “disinformation campaign.” Mackey, as described by the New York Post, is a pro-Trump, alt-right Twitter troller who goes by the name of “Ricky Vaughn.” He is said to have collaborated with likeminded jackasses, styling themselves the “Madman Group” and the “War Room.” An illustrative example of their diabolical . . . er . . . tradecraft: A week before the election, Mackey is alleged to have urged in a tweet that voters should “avoid the Line. Vote from Home. Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925. Vote for Hillary and be a part of history.”
Congress
Boston Globe: Following US Capitol attack, we senators must investigate fellow members of Congress – and follow the money
By Sheldon Whitehouse
Now, we need a full accounting of the disinformation and dark money that produced this humiliating insurrection.
We see glimpses of the forces behind the mob: heavily trained and armed right-wing militias, often with white supremacist and anti-government leanings; cultist adherents of the dark conspiracy of QAnon; political extremists whipped up and egged on by the Trumps and their supporters. But another organizing force was a flotilla of anonymously funded “dark money” groups tied to some of the largest donors and most powerful special interests in Trump’s Washington…
All these investigations – from the Senate Ethics Committee to law enforcement – must follow the money. We do not know whether politicians pushing the lie of a stolen election have dark-money ties. But we know that, as the mob besieged the Capitol, senators sent out automated solicitations for campaign donations. We know private donors urged dark-money groups to call for a “march to the Capitol.” We know a swamp of hidden donors undergirds the apparatus of dark money and lies seeking to control not just mobs at the Capitol but also our system of government as a whole..
Secretive interests profited from a sprawling dark-money scheme that has existed for a long time. Jan. 6 proved its sinister power. As long as the scheme lurks behind a curtain of secrecy, our democracy will face many more of its big lies. America deserves to know.
FEC
Business Insider: Watchdog group accuses the Trump campaign and family members of engaging in ‘schemes’ that hid massive election spending and likely broke federal law
By Dave Levinthal and Tom LoBianco
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign committee and several family members participated in “schemes” to disguise the true nature of their election spending, in violation of federal law, the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center asserts in a new update to an existing federal complaint.
The supplement, filed Thursday morning with the Federal Election Commission, is in part based on Insider’s reporting in December about American Made Media Consultants, a secretive shell company that operated inside Trump’s 2020 campaign committee.
American Made Media Consultants, the shell company, along with a political firm owned by former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, “served as conduits that hid the ultimate recipients of nearly half of the campaign’s overall spending,” the updated complaint states.
“These schemes disguised which firms or individuals were working for Trump’s committees, how much and when they were being paid, and the purposes of those payments,” it continued.
Lobbying
Center for Responsive Politics: Lobbying spending nears record high in 2020 amid pandemic
By Karl Evers-Hillstrom
Much of 2020’s lobbying activity revolved around proposed stimulus legislation to combat the virus and its damaging effect on the economy. The bipartisan CARES Act – the $2.2 trillion package Congress passed in March – and Democrats’ HEROES Act, which passed the House but not the Senate, became the second and third most lobbied non-appropriations bills of all time, respectively…
Tech giants Amazon and Facebook topped all other companies on lobbying spending in 2020, bested only by massive trade associations. Among Amazon’s recent hires is a lobbyist whose brother is a top Biden adviser. Those powerful companies and others in the tech industry have increased their presence in Washington each year, hoping to defeat calls from lawmakers on both sides to regulate or break up tech giants. Those proposals could gain traction under the Biden administration, which is expected to more strongly regulate Silicon Valley.
Online Speech Platforms
CNBC: Apple CEO links Facebook’s business model to real-world violence
By Kif Leswing
Apple CEO Tim Cook on Thursday linked Facebook’s business model, which used data to serve targeted ads, with real-world consequences like violence or reducing public trust in vaccines.
Cook’s speech at a data privacy conference in Brussels did not mention Facebook by name, but the social media company was clearly a target of the Apple CEO’s warning.“If a business is built on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, it does not deserve our praise. It deserves scorn,” Cook said.
Cook also criticized recommendation algorithms that suggest extremist groups to users, as Facebook has been under fire for doing. On Wednesday, Facebook said it will no longer automatically recommend political groups.
Cook also said he believes that some companies reward content that could undermine public trust in vaccinations to boost engagement.
“At a moment of rampant disinformation and conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms, we can no longer turn a blind eye to a theory of technology that says all engagement is good and the longer the better,” Cook said…
Cook’s comments also come amid questions about whether Facebook’s algorithms and tools were used to supercharge the pro-Trump riot on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6…
“It is long past time to stop pretending that this approach doesn’t cover the costs of polarization, of lost trust, of violence,” Cook said. “A social dilemma cannot be allowed to cause a social catastrophe.”
Candidates and Campaigns
The Hill: Corporations dodge questions on permanent donation bans
By Alex Gangitano
When contacted by The Hill, more than a half-dozen companies that took a public stand this month declined to comment on whether they would commit to a permanent ban on donations to the GOP lawmakers, despite earlier condemnations of the “direct assault” on the peaceful transition of power and the “appalling” violence at the Capitol.
Most companies that announced a freeze on PAC contributions have not specified how long the pause will last and did not respond to requests from The Hill seeking clarification…
In making their pronouncements after the attack on the Capitol, many companies said their suspensions applied to direct contributions toward the 147 Republicans, but with no mention of restrictions on donations to groups like the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and Republican National Committee (RNC) – all of which can provide financial support to GOP lawmakers and candidates of their choosing.
Amazon, Cisco and Comcast all contributed to those three GOP groups. None responded to questions about whether their freezes extend to the Republican committees…
Few companies specified a timeline for their pause on donations.
The States
Augusta Free Press: Virginia legislators back constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United
By Chris Graham
Virginia is one of five states with no limits on campaign contributions. We’re the Wild West when it comes to campaign spending.
Several pieces of specific legislation aimed at slowing our roll have failed to get out of committee in the 2021 General Assembly session.
Legislators took a small step – a baby step – in the right direction this week.
Both the House of Delegates and Senate passed, by voice vote, a resolution supporting an amendment to overturn Citizens United…“Today, despite living in a state where there is almost no regulation on big money in elections, we as Virginians have joined countless other Americans in sending the resounding message that we will not tolerate big money in our politics,” said Ilana Beller, a Public Citizen organizer and a resident of Virginia.
“We must use this momentum to ensure that the United States Congress votes to enshrine this protection of our democracy in our Constitution,” Beller said.
We also got this today from People For the American Way President Ben Jealous.
“It is truly exciting to see Virginia become the latest state to vote in favor of a constitutional amendment to address the influence of big money in politics,” Jealous said.
Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Can California Employee Be Fired for Attending the Jan. 6 Protest at the Capitol?
By Eugene Volokh
In Snyder v. Alight Solutions, LLC (filed yesterday), Leah Snyder claims that her employer fired her on these grounds. Here is what she alleges in the Complaint:
She listened to speeches being made and walked to the Capitol, and then she left. She did not participate in any rioting, she did not observe any rioting, and she did not hear of any injuries to persons or damages to property during her peaceful visit. On return home, she posted two “selfies” with her friends and at least one smiling police officer in front of the Capitol to a comment thread on the social media of Sean Armstrong. She believed she was engaging in a debate over the nature and scope of a protest at the Capitol….
Orlando Sentinel: ‘Cancel culture’ comes to the Florida Legislature in crackdown on tech companies
By Editorial Board
Two new bills introduced in the Florida House and Senate are attempting to cancel Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, by prohibiting state and local governments from doing business with those companies.
At a Tallahassee news conference Tuesday, state Rep. Randy Fine, who introduced the House bill, said that companies like Facebook and Twitter are “shut(ting) down the thoughts of half of our state,” presumably meaning the conservative half.
It’s a lie, all the more repellent because Fine tells it so casually, so offhandedly.
If what he said were true, Fine wouldn’t have been able to post the video of his attention-seeking news conference on Facebook, which he did, or retweet a news story about it on Twitter, which he also did…
This is what we meant in a recent editorial about the radicalization of the Republican Party in Florida, a party whose leaders can’t seem to wrap their minds around a fundamental constitutional concept – that the First Amendment protects Americans from government interference in free speech.
Government interference.
