In the News
NTD: The Nation Speaks: Outcry Over H.R. 1 (Video)
By Cindy Drukier
On this week’s The Nation Speaks, critics are ringing alarm bells over the sweeping new federal powers contained in House Bill H.R. 1, or the “For the People Act.” The act has been passed by House Democrats; Senate Republicans say they will do everything they can to stop it…
David Keating, president of the Institute for Free Speech, says half of the provisions in the nearly 800-page bill severely limit free speech for everyone but politicians.
[Ed. note: David Keating’s interview begins at 14:57.]
Events
John Locke Foundation: The High Stakes of H.R. 1: Election Integrity, Speech, and Privacy
Virtual event: March 15, 2021,12:00 PM-1:00 PM
It is called the “For the People Act of 2021.” It’s anything but. Passed in the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 220 to 210, with no Republican support, H.R. 1 is raising alarm bells on a variety of fronts. In this conversation, our experts will discuss the bill’s impact on the integrity of elections, the negative effect on public discourse and donor privacy, and the potential for its provisions to lead to one-party rule…
Featuring:
-Bradley A. Smith
Chairman, Institute for Free Speech; Former Chairman, Federal Election Commission
-Rep. David Rouzer
NC-7th District, U.S. House of Representatives
-Dr. Andy Jackson
Director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity, John Locke Foundation
-Jon Guze
Senior Fellow, Legal Studies, John Locke Foundation
Supreme Court
Bloomberg Law: Supreme Court to Hear California Donor-Disclosure Case in April
By Aysha Bagchi
…..The U.S. Supreme Court scheduled arguments over the constitutionality of California’s donor-disclosure law for April 26, in one of two tax-related cases set for arguments that month.
The court released its April calendar on Friday scheduling the donor-disclosure arguments in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Becerra. A Charles Koch-backed nonprofit, Americans for Prosperity Foundation, as well as the Thomas More Law Center, brought the lawsuit, arguing that the requirement for charities to disclose their biggest donors to California officials violates the First Amendment.
Congress
SCOTUSblog: Senate Judiciary holds hearing on “dark money” and Supreme Court
By Kalvis Golde
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has been talking about anonymous political donations and the Supreme Court for a long time. Now, Whitehouse is using his new position as the chair of a key Senate subcommittee to bring more attention to the issue. The senator on Wednesday held the first in a series of hearings to investigate whether large political donations are exerting undue influence on Supreme Court nominations and decisions, provocatively titled “What’s Wrong with the Supreme Court: The Big-Money Assault on Our Judiciary.”
In his opening remarks, Whitehouse, D-R.I., contended that a “multi-hundred million dollar covert operation” influences conservative Supreme Court justices at three stages. First, a “gatekeeping organization” Whitehouse didn’t name (which witnesses later identified as the Federalist Society) grooms potential nominees for vacancies on the bench. Second, advocacy groups lobby for votes to confirm a chosen nominee in the Senate. And third, law firms and interest groups — allegedly with the same anonymous backers as the gatekeeper and advocacy groups — file amicus briefs urging the court to decide cases for the benefit of corporate interests.
The problem is not one of partisanship, Whitehouse said, noting that “in recent years Democratic dark money has caught up” to similar backing of Republican efforts. Rather, the issue is transparency. “Dozens of anonymously funded legal organizations have sprung up,” Whitehouse claimed, and the lack of any requirements for donor disclosure means the public – and the justices – cannot know when the same sources that supported a justice’s confirmation might be backing the legal team behind a party, or amicus, in a given case.
Scam PACs
Politico: A Pro-Trump scam PAC returns with a vengeance
By Theodoric Meyer
President Donald Trump is out of office, but the scammers that used his name to raise money aren’t stopping.
Over the past few weeks, POLITICO has received a number of robocalls from generically named political groups asking for cash in order to help in very Trump-specific missions.
A donation of $100, for example, would help return Trump to Twitter. Or, for a similar amount, a potential donor can “stop Kamala Harris and socialism,” the calls claim. Other calls ask for money to ensure that congressional Democrats don’t dismantle the wall Trump started building along the U.S.-Mexico border.
One of the telemarketers behind the calls, who spoke to a POLITICO reporter on Wednesday, promised that “100 percent of the contributions go directly to President Trump.”
But the calls aren’t being made by Trump’s Save America political action committee. In fact, it’s not entirely clear who’s behind them. The telemarketers on the line said they were volunteers working for the Campaign to Support Republican Leaders, which is not registered with the Federal Election Commission and doesn’t have any online presence.
One telemarketer said he was calling from the 33rd floor of a Dallas office building — a building which is home to a WeWork office that’s been linked to a man named Matthew Tunstall.
The States
Colorado Springs Gazette: Griswold leads effort to block foreign money from influencing elections
By Pat Poblete
Secretary of State Jena Griswold is leading the charge on a new effort to keep foreign influence out of Colorado’s elections, and she’s enlisted a pair of Democratic lawmakers to help. The effort comes in the form of a bill from Sen. Jeff Bridges, D-Greenwood Village, and Rep. Steven Woodrow, D-Denver, that would ban foreign-influenced corporation from spending in the state’s elections.
“This bill continues our work to fortify democracy by limiting foreign corporate influence in dark money in Colorado’s elections,” Griswold said in a recent news conference unveiling the proposal. “Just as non-U.S. citizens cannot contribute directly to candidates’ campaigns, corporations with significant foreign ownership should not be allowed to influence candidate elections here in Colorado.”
Griswold said under the bill, any corporation boasting a 1% ownership from a foreign government, a 5% ownership from a single non-American citizen or a 20% ownership from a group of foreign nationals wouldn’t be able to use its corporate coffers to influence candidate campaigns through super PAC spending…
Federal Elections Commissioner Ellen Weintraub was able to highlight a more specific instance. Speaking at the news conference, she said the biggest penalty her agency collected this decade came from a case involving a domestic subsidiary of a foreign corporation that was spending illegally in an American election.
Washington Post: Kentucky Senate votes to criminalize insulting police in way that could cause ‘violent response’
By Marisa Iati
Kentucky’s Republican-majority Senate on Thursday moved forward a bill that would make it easier to arrest protesters for insulting a police officer, a measure that critics say would stifle free speech.
The bill, passed two days before the anniversary of the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor, would make it a misdemeanor to taunt or challenge an officer with words or gestures “that would have a direct tendency to provoke a violent response from the perspective of a reasonable and prudent person.” Conviction would be punishable by up to 90 days in jail and fines of up to $250.
State Sen. Danny Carroll (R), who sponsored the bill, said it would enable officers to arrest someone inflaming them before the encounter turns violent. The provision is meant to apply to comments that are “obviously designed to elicit a response from the officer — something to push them to making a mistake, pushing them to violence,” he said, although courts would have the final say in interpreting the rule…
The American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky called the measure “an extreme bill to stifle dissent” with broad and ambiguous language.
“It’s criminalizing speech in a way that’s directed at protesters and people who are speaking out against police action,” said Corey Shapiro, ACLU of Kentucky’s legal director. “It is a bedrock principle of the First Amendment that people should be able to criticize police action, even if it’s using offensive speech.”
OPB: Lawmakers consider ways to limit money in political campaigns (Audio)
By Allison Frost
Oregon voters amended the state constitution to allow campaign finance limits. Now, lawmakers are trying to figure out: What should those financial limits be? We talk with Rep. Dan Rayfield, D-Corvallis, and Sen. Tim Knopp, R-Bend, who have been working hard on that question.
Lawfare: No, Florida Can’t Regulate Online Speech
By Corbin Barthold and Berin Szóka
Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has promised that Florida will soon enact “the most ambitious reforms yet proposed” for “holding ‘Big Tech’ accountable.” The bill would force large “social media platforms”—entities that enable users to access “a computer server, including an Internet platform and/or a social media site”—to apply their content moderation standards in a “consistent manner,” to change those standards no more than once a month, and to let users turn off algorithmic promotion or post sorting. It would also block websites from moderating content posted by politicians during an election…
Although DeSantis poses as a champion of free speech, his bill would trample on private companies’ First Amendment right to exercise editorial discretion. Private actors cannot be compelled either to host certain speakers, or to privilege some forms of speech over others. This is even more true of political speech, which, contrary to DeSantis’s claims, the bill is likely to suppress. Although DeSantis frames some parts of it as a campaign finance measure, the bill does not even regulate campaign contributions. And although he frames other parts as a consumer protection measure, the bill in fact targets entities precisely because of what they choose to say (or not say)…
Ultimately, it’s the First Amendment that constrains campaign finance law; the media exemption is merely an incomplete codification of First Amendment principles. Neither the FEC nor the states may use campaign finance law to force websites to grant special privileges to political candidates.
