Congress
People United for Privacy: Coalition to Oppose H.R. 1 and S. 1
[On Monday, February 1, 2021, a coalition letter signed by over 130 organizations was sent to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in opposition to H.R. 1 and S. 1. Following is the text of the letter, and you can download a PDF of the letter and list of signers here.]
Dear Speaker Pelosi, Republican Leader McCarthy, Majority Leader Schumer, and Republican Leader McConnell,
On behalf of the millions of Americans who cherish and rely on the right to support causes we believe in without fear of harassment and intimidation, we, the undersigned individuals and organizations, ask you to reject H.R. 1 and S. 1, the deceptively named “For the People Act.”
Nonprofit organizations serve a vital role in encouraging free speech and the free exchange of ideas. Privately supporting causes – and the organizations advancing those causes – is a fundamental freedom protected by the First Amendment…
H.R. 1 and S. 1 would dramatically alter the First Amendment protections that Americans have enjoyed since the founding of our country. It would institute sweeping new burdens on their constitutionally protected rights to freely speak, publish, and organize into groups to advocate for the causes they support.
Biden Administration
Reclaim the Net: White House: We support social media platforms reducing “hate speech”
By Tom Parker
It’s been less than two weeks since Joe Biden was inaugurated as President and now his administration has thrown its support behind social media platforms’ censorship of “hate speech.”
During today’s White House press briefing, when Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked whether Biden supports Big Tech banning former President Trump from their platforms, Psaki replied: “I think that’s a decision made by Twitter. We’ve certainly spoke to and he’s spoken to the need for social media platforms to continue to take steps to reduce hate speech.”…
While the Biden administration can’t censor so-called hate speech directly because it has to abide by the First Amendment and the US Supreme Court has unanimously reaffirmed that there’s no hate speech exception to the First Amendment, the government can pressure or encourage Big Tech companies that control most of the online speech infrastructure to censor based on buzzwords such as hate speech or “misinformation.”
FEC
Bloomberg Government: Campaign Cash for Lawmaker Bodyguards at Center of GOP’s Request
By Kenneth P. Doyle
Escalating concerns about security threats to members of Congress prompted two Republican campaign committees to ask that lawmakers be allowed to use campaign money to hire bodyguards.
The request to the Federal Election Commission cited a series of recent events, including written and verbal threats to kill lawmakers, demonstrations and vandalism at their homes, and problems they’ve encountered moving through airports. It also cited reported threats related to next week’s impeachment trial.
If granted, the request would significantly expand previous rulings in which the commission allowed lawmakers to use campaign money to purchase or upgrade home alarm systems and other security equipment. The commission is legally required to vote by the end of March, and the votes of at least four of the six FEC commissioners would be needed to approve the request…
Brett Kappel, a veteran Democratic election lawyer with the firm Harmon Curran, said he suspected the FEC would approve the latest request “given the tenor of the times.”
But, he added, there may be a debate among the commissioners “about whether this is going too far and these types of expenditures should come from appropriated funds” rather than campaign money.
The Media
Wall Street Journal: Speech and Sedition in 2021
By The Editorial Board
Most Americans learn in school about flagship political excesses in U.S. history like Joe McCarthy’s 1950s inquisitions, the post-World War I Red Scare and the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Yet a recent Washington Post opinion piece purports to explain “what the 1798 Sedition Act got right.”
The law banned a wide range of political speech and publication. It was passed by the ruling Federalists to suppress the rival Democratic-Republicans, whom they saw as seditious. The Post piece argues that though their solution was “flawed,” the Federalists had reason to worry about “unregulated freedom of the press.”
We highlight this as one example among many of the emerging appetite for viewpoint suppression among journalists, intellectuals and Democrats in the wake of the Trump Presidency. They increasingly see domestic enemies wherever they look, and are devising ways to use levers of power to restrict, regulate and boycott opposition. It’s an extraordinary and ominous turn in a democracy.
Online Speech Platforms
Wall Street Journal: Facebook Knew Calls for Violence Plagued ‘Groups,’ Now Plans Overhaul
By Jeff Horwitz
[Facebook] is clamping down on Groups. The effort began after Facebook’s own research found that American Facebook Groups became a vector for the rabid partisanship and even calls for violence that inflamed the country after the election…
Facebook executives were aware for years that tools fueling Groups’ rapid growth presented an obstacle to their effort to build healthy online communities, and the company struggled internally over how to contain them.
The company’s data scientists had warned Facebook executives in August that what they called blatant misinformation and calls to violence were filling the majority of the platform’s top “civic” Groups, according to documents The Wall Street Journal reviewed. Those Groups are generally dedicated to politics and related issues and collectively reach hundreds of millions of users.
The researchers told executives that “enthusiastic calls for violence every day” filled one 58,000-member Group, according to an internal presentation. Another top Group claimed it was set up by fans of Donald Trump but it was actually run by “financially motivated Albanians” directing a million views daily to fake news stories and other provocative content.
Roughly “70% of the top 100 most active US Civic Groups are considered non-recommendable for issues such as hate, misinfo, bullying and harassment,” the presentation concluded.
By Mike Masnick
Professor Philip Hamburger wrote an op-ed for the WSJ that is so bad, so wrong, so clueless, that if I handed it in in one of his classes, I’d deserve a failing grade… It’s titled: The Constitution Can Crack Section 230…
Section numbers of federal statutes rarely stir the soul, but one of them, 230, stirs up much fear, for it has seemed to justify censorship. Relying on it, tech companies including Google and Twitter increasingly pull the plug on disfavored posts, websites and even people. Online moderation can be valuable, but this censorship is different. It harms Americans’ livelihoods, muzzles them in the increasingly electronic public square, distorts political and cultural conversations, influences elections, and limits our freedom to sort out the truth for ourselves.
So, first of all, how is this moderation (the bad kind) different from that moderation (the good kind that you say is valuable)? Hamburger makes no effort, and seems to think that, like obscenity, he knows it when he sees it. But, even if we go by what little information he provides here, you might already notice the problem. He claims that this moderation “distorts political and cultural conversations” and “influences elections” but… that’s also the exact same argument that people who are mad about too little moderation make.
PACs
Wall Street Journal: Pause in Corporate PAC Spending Triggers Political Pushback
By Brody Mullins, Emily Glazer, and Chad Day
Lawmakers from both parties are pushing back against companies that have suspended campaign donations, saying the freeze is unfairly punishing everyone and could undermine corporate interests in Washington.
Democrats friendly with business have complained to companies, including Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Citigroup Inc. and Lockheed Martin Corp., that they are being penalized for actions taken by Republicans challenging the results of the Nov. 3 election, people familiar with the discussions said.
Democrats have also told companies that pausing donations from their political-action committees could weaken them politically, ultimately jeopardizing business priorities in Congress, some of the people said.
Separately, Republicans who voted with Democrats to uphold President Biden’s win have told companies that cutting off their funding could hurt their election prospects and hinder them if they are challenged in a GOP primary by those who supported former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claim that he won re-election, some of the people said.
Republicans who voted to challenge the election are responding as well, warning that companies are denigrating politicians whom they have come to rely on for advancing favorable legislation, according to congressional aides and fundraising consultants.
Roll Call: Elaine Luria pays off campaign debt using corporate PAC money she said she’d reject
By Kate Ackley
Corporate political action committees gave Rep. Elaine Luria more than $30,000 in the final weeks of 2020, after the Virginia Democrat reversed her policy of refusing such donations.
Luria, who ended her 2020 reelection race owing more than she had in her campaign account, used contributions from the PACs of Google, Altria, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Rolls Royce North America and others to pay off debt, according to recent filings with the Federal Election Commission…
Tiffany Muller, president and executive director of End Citizens United, said in a statement last year that Luria breaking her pledge “would demonstrate that her values have changed since she’s been in Washington or that she wasn’t sincere to voters in the first place. It will be a heavy burden on her to explain to voters why she is going back on her word.”
The group tweeted a campaign appearance from 2018 when Luria said that a “key tenet in my campaign is that I am not accepting any corporate PAC contributions.”
The National Republican Congressional Committee also piled on. “Virginians know Elaine Luria is a phony who will never keep her word to them and this is the latest proof,” said Camille Gallo, a spokeswoman for the House GOP campaign arm.
Business Insider: 7 yuuge reasons Donald Trump isn’t going away
By Dave Levinthal, Eliza Relman, and Kimberly Leonard
Early in the maelstrom of Trump’s election-results denial, the politically doomed president quietly formed a new committee that, by its very creation on November 9, tacitly acknowledged his second White House term might not materialize.
Trump called the “leadership” political action committee Save America…
“Trump’s Save America PAC may very well be a textbook example of a political slush fund,” Meredith McGehee, the executive director of the bipartisan ethics-reform watchdog Issue One, said. “While Trump could use the money he raises for this PAC to support like-minded candidates, Trump may also use these funds to cover travel, lodging, dining, legal expenses, or entertainment expenses like golfing – including at Trump properties – for years to come.”
The States
Dickinson Press: Bill seeks more transparency in political advertisements
By Dylan Sherman, N.D. Newspaper Association Education Foundation
Ellen Chaffee, a board member of North Dakotans for Public Integrity, is part of the movement to pass HB 1451, which would require independent expenditures to disclose donations of over $200…
HB 1451 would bring independent expenditures into the same disclosure requirements that are already required for candidates, political action committees and ballot measure sponsors.
“Part of the philosophy of this bill is that if you are not willing to be accountable for what you are doing then we don’t want you influencing our voters,” she said.
Cleveland.com: A blueprint to end the corrupting influence of dark money in Ohio
By Catherine Turcer
It should not take FBI wiretaps and subpoenas to be able to follow the money.
At the press conference to announce Householder’s arrest, U.S. Attorney David DeVillers was asked if the bribery scheme could have occurred if Generation Now had been required by law to disclose its donations. “I don’t see how it possibly could have,” he responded.
Common Cause Ohio responded to the indictments and Statehouse inaction by hosting forums with experts to craft proposed reforms. Every expert called for Ohio to require disclosure of dark money.
The bribery scandal inspired some legislative reforms, but none made it out of committee.
While they would have been good first steps, meaningful reforms must do the following:· Require that the original sources of funding be disclosed. Absent this requirement, wealthy special interests will try and avoid disclosure by funneling the money through pop-up shell groups.
· Give Ohioans access to the donor information as they are watching TV or reading political advertisements by requiring that the names of the biggest donors be listed on the ads.
· Prohibit fundraising for independent expenditures from candidates their staff and family.
