In the News
Daily Caller: The Coming IRS Reign Of Terror
By James Bovard
In the Obama era, the IRS again became a political hit squad. The IRS demanded donor lists from 24 conservative nonprofits and proceeded to audit 10% of their donors — an audit rate ten times higher than average for the country. A 2013 Inspector General report confirmed that IRS employees had devoted far more scrutiny to nonprofit applications that used the terms “tea party” or “patriot” or that criticized government spending or federal deficits. In 2017, the IRS formally apologized to scores of conservative groups that it had wrongfully targeted in tax audits.
The hubbub over Obama IRS machinations overshadowed similar appalling abuses on Capitol Hill. In 2014, the Center for Competitive Politics (since renamed as the Institute for Free Speech) filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee charging that senators had personally intervened to demand IRS audits against conservative organizations. The senators “pressured the IRS to undertake income-tax investigations of specific organizations, to find that specific organizations were in violation of the law, to reach predetermined results pertaining to pending applications by individual organizations for nonprofit status.”
FEC
New York Times: F.E.C. Drops Case Reviewing Trump Hush-Money Payments to Women
By Shane Goldmacher
The Federal Election Commission said on Thursday that it had formally dropped a case looking into whether former President Donald J. Trump violated election law with a payment of $130,000 shortly before the 2016 election to a pornographic-film actress by his personal lawyer at the time, Michael D. Cohen.
The payment was never reported on Mr. Trump’s campaign filings. Mr. Cohen would go on to say that Mr. Trump had directed him to arrange payments to two women during the 2016 race, and would apologize for his involvement in a hush-money scandal…
While Mr. Cohen has served time in prison, Mr. Trump has not faced legal consequences for the payment.
“The hush money payment was done at the direction of and for the benefit of Donald J. Trump,” Mr. Cohen said in a statement to The New York Times. “Like me, Trump should have been found guilty. How the F.E.C. committee could rule any other way is confounding.”
In December 2020, the F.E.C. issued an internal report from its Office of General Counsel on how to proceed in its review. The office said it had found “reason to believe” violations of campaign finance law were made “knowingly and willfully” by the Trump campaign.
But the election commission — split evenly between three Republicans and three Democratic-aligned commissioners — declined to proceed in a closed-door meeting in February. Two Republican commissioners voted to dismiss the case while two Democratic commissioners voted to move forward. There was one absence and one Republican recusal.
That decision was announced on Thursday.
New York Times: F.E.C. Asks Congress to Ban Prechecked Recurring Donation Boxes
By Shane Goldmacher
The Federal Election Commission voted unanimously on Thursday to recommend that Congress ban political campaigns from guiding donors by default into recurring contributions through prechecked boxes, a month after a New York Times investigation showed that former President Donald J. Trump’s political operation had steered huge numbers of unwitting supporters into repeated donations through that tactic…
The F.E.C., in its legislative recommendation, disclosed that its staff was “regularly contacted” by donors who “do not recall authorizing recurring contributions.”
“The Commission’s experience strongly suggests that many contributors are unaware of the ‘pre-checked’ boxes and are surprised by the already completed transactions appearing on account statements,” its recommendation said.
The commission asked Congress to amend the law to require the “affirmative consent” of all contributors before enrolling them in programs to make recurring withdrawals.
The vote also amounts to a tacit acknowledgment that, under current law, the nation’s top elections watchdog agency is virtually powerless to stop campaigns from opting donors unknowingly into repeated contributions. Adav Noti, who previously worked in the F.E.C. general counsel’s office and is now a litigator with the Campaign Legal Center, said it was notable that any recommendation had been adopted by a commission that is so often stymied by partisanship.
“It’s pretty rare that they agree on a recommendation related to substantive campaign finance law,” Mr. Noti said. The package of recommendations also includes asking Congress to make clear that no political funds can be used for personal purposes and to crack down on so-called scam PACs that spend little on politics but enrich their operators.
FCC
Protocol: NY AG finds nearly 82% of net neutrality comments to the FCC were fake
By Issie Lapowsky
In a new report, New York Attorney General Letitia James found that of the more than 22 million public comments the Federal Communications Commission received in 2017 regarding the repeal of net neutrality protections, a whopping 18 million were fake. Millions of those comments, the report says, were funded by the broadband industry…
The investigators behind the report found that nearly 80% of the comments funded by the broadband industry were collected by lead generation companies that offered consumers various rewards in exchange for their information…
Under former FCC chairman Ajit Pai, the FCC repealed Obama-era net neutrality protections. In the report, the investigators argue that the deluge of fake comments may have had “significant consequences” for the FCC’s decision. “Federal and state agencies rely on public comments to set standards that govern many aspects of our lives, from public health to consumer protection to the environment, and, in this case, the rules that govern how we share and consume content over the internet,” the report reads. “Public comments can also influence legislators and the laws they enact.”
The Courts
Courthouse News: Lawsuit Claims Feds Directed Facebook to Censor Vaccine Misinformation
By Nicholas Iovino
In a lawsuit claiming Facebook conspired with the federal government to squelch an anti-vaccine group’s speech, a federal judge on Wednesday questioned whether the state can work with private companies to combat misinformation without violating the First Amendment.
Online Speech Platforms
ACLU: The Oversight Board’s Trump Decision Highlights Problems with Facebook’s Practices
By Kate Ruane, Vera Eidelman, and Jennifer Stisa Granick
The ACLU condemns the bald-faced lies that President Trump repeatedly propounded after decisively losing the Nov. 4 election, and we called for his impeachment for his concerted effort to subvert our democratic process, leading to the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol. We also recognize that Facebook is a private entity with its own First Amendment rights to control the content it publishes. But Facebook’s decision to ban Trump nonetheless illustrates serious shortcomings in its content-related decision making — as its own Oversight Board (OB) properly declared yesterday in reviewing the decision. Facebook exercises quasi-monopoly power over a critical forum in our marketplace of ideas, and for many of the same reasons that we would be suspicious of a central government authority controlling what can and cannot be said, we have concerns with Facebook exercising such unchecked power…
The ACLU believes that political speech deserves the greatest protection to ensure the functioning of our democratic system. We have parted company with other advocacy organizations that have been more willing to limit the speech of political leaders on social media platforms. The ACLU believes that the speech of former President Trump should be presumed important to the functioning of our democratic system given his prior role in government. Most of what politicians and political leaders say is, by definition, newsworthy, and can at times have legal or political consequences. While their words may have greater capacity for harm, there is also a greater public interest in having access to their speech. For example, courts considered President Trump’s tweets as evidence in several challenges to his official acts, including the transgender military ban and the Muslim ban. Given the importance of protecting political speech by political figures, Facebook’s primary recourse should be striking discrete statements by President Trump that run afoul of its standards, rather than imposing a lifetime, outright ban.
Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): What Rules Should Govern How Americans Speak with Other Americans?
By Eugene Volokh
Today’s Facebook Oversight Board decision on the Trump ban raises many interesting questions: When should politicians’ speech be blocked on the grounds that it “supports” or “legitimizes” riots (whether right-wing or left-wing)? When can Facebook ban claims of electoral fraud on the grounds that they are “unfounded,” and when should it conclude that the debate about the often uncertain events in a recent election is ongoing and legitimate? (Say what you will about bans on Holocaust denial, but those came after a consensus built on decades of comprehensive scholarly study of the subject.) What sort of further transparency should Facebook provide for its decisions? How long should Trump be banned from Facebook?
But for this post, I want to set those questions aside, because the question at the heart of the matter is much more far-reaching: It is: What rules should govern how Americans communicate with other Americans, including on Facebook, which “has become a virtually indispensable medium for political discourse, and especially so in election periods”?
There are at least three possible answers:
Politico: Trump still booted off Facebook — but ruling opens door to his return
By Cristiano Lima
Reaction to the [Facebook Oversight Board] decision was swift from across the political spectrum — and not in Facebook’s favor, as lawmakers revived calls for taking action to curb the company’s power over American political discourse.
“It’s a sad day for Facebook because I can tell you, a number of members of Congress are now looking at, do they break up Facebook?” former Rep. Mark Meadows, who served as Trump’s chief of staff during the final year of his presidency, said on Fox News. “Do they make sure that they don’t have a monopoly?”
Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the House Judiciary Committee’s top Republican, tweeted: “Break them up.”
Meanwhile, House Energy and Commerce Chair Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) tweeted after the ruling that while Trump “played a big role in helping Facebook spread disinformation,” the platform’s struggles to combat disinformation and harmful content runs much deeper.
“Every day, Facebook is amplifying and promoting disinformation and misinformation, and the structure and rules governing its oversight board generally seem to ignore this disturbing reality,” Pallone wrote. “It’s clear that real accountability will only come with legislative action.”
PBS: Board member explains decision to keep Trump off Facebook for now, and why he may be back
By Stephanie Sy, Courtney Norris, and Maea Lenei Buhre
Four months after Facebook indefinitely suspended former President Donald Trump’s account, the company’s oversight board backed the initial decision to throw him off the platform at the time. But the board may have opened the door to allowing Trump back on this fall. John Samples, vice president of the Libertarian Cato Institute, is a member of the board and explains the decision to Stephanie Sy.
Wall Street Journal: Twitter: Prompts Reduced Offensive Replies But Algorithms Sometimes Missed Sarcasm and Banter
By Josh Beckerman
Twitter Inc. is rolling out improvements of its prompts that encourage users to pause before sending potentially offensive replies.
The company said the prompts that encouraged people to “pause and reconsider” before hitting the button on insults, strong language or hateful remarks “ultimately resulted in people sending less potentially offensive replies across the service, and improved behavior on Twitter.”
“If prompted, 34% of people revised their initial reply or decided to not send their reply at all,” Twitter said.
The company noted that unnecessary prompts emerged as algorithms “struggled to capture the nuance in many conversations and often didn’t differentiate between potentially offensive language, sarcasm, and friendly banter.”
The States
Arizona Republic: Campaign to end dark money is back. And this time (maybe), there’s no virus to derail it
By Laurie Roberts
Great news, Arizona. The drive to lift the shroud on “dark money” campaigns – the people and groups that secretly spend big bucks to buy our elections – is back.
A new and improved citizen initiative that would require disclosure of major contributors to independent campaigns is scheduled to be filed at 2 p.m. May 4 with the secretary of state.
The group is aiming for the 2022 ballot, with former Attorney General Terry Goddard once again leading the campaign…
Longtime political consultant Chuck Coughlin, who recently took a poll on the proposed initiative, said the support for dark money disclosure is overwhelming.
“If this makes it to the ballot and doesn’t get molested by the kings of dark money, which are entrenched interests on both the Republican and Democratic side, the only way to defeat this is in the courtroom,” he told me…
This will be Goddard’s third try to require disclosure of big dark money campaigns…
So now comes 2022 and the Voters’ Right to Know Act.
It’s a new and improved proposal that ensures the deep pockets funding political campaigns are identified and thus accountable for the claims they make in the attack ads that have become standard operating procedure for every dark money campaign.
Under the proposal, any non-profit or political party spending $50,000 or more on any combination of statewide races would have to disclose all donors who contributed more than $5,000 to a campaign, regardless of whether the money was passed through intermediary groups. For local races, the threshold would be $25,000.
The disclosures would have to come within five days of the money being spent…
Goddard will have 14 months to get 237,645 valid voter signatures in order to qualify for the November 2022 ballot.
New York Times: The Wealthy Lobbyist Behind Andrew Yang’s Campaign for Mayor
By Dana Rubinstein and Emma G. Fitzsimmons
When Andrew Yang parachuted into the New York City mayor’s race from a losing presidential campaign, he was a known national quantity but unknown in the insular world of local politics.
He did not rise from a political club, had never run for local office and had no established base of financial or political support in the city. He had never even voted in a mayoral election.
But he had one major asset working in his favor: He had joined forces with Bradley Tusk, a powerful New York political strategist, lobbyist and venture capitalist whose investments could hinge on government action.
Mr. Yang leads most early polling in a race for mayor that is less than seven weeks away. But Mr. Tusk’s personal business concerns could present significant potential conflicts of interest should Mr. Yang be elected mayor…
And now [Tusk] is advising a candidate with a total absence of government experience — so much so that Mr. Tusk recently called Mr. Yang an “empty vessel.”
“Tusk could essentially be the shadow mayor for New York, while he is representing the interests of big corporate clients,” said John Kaehny, executive director of the good-government group Reinvent Albany.
By Kevin Shea
Hopewell Township has fired a police officer who described Black Lives Matter protesters as “terrorists” and will suspend and demote another for replying to a comment on the Facebook post.
The fired officer, Sara Erwin, and Sgt. Mandy Grey, who will be suspended for six months, are exemplary and decorated officers with “absolutely no disciplinary history,” their lawyer Frank Crivelli said Monday evening…
Gray was the first female officer hired in Hopewell Township, and was the first sergeant when promoted in 2019 — a rank she will lose in the demotion.
Crivelli said the discipline result is dumbfounding as neither officer has any prior internal affairs complaints; this was the first such investigation for either.
Both are public servants with 20 or more years of service.
Appeals are already underway in Superior Court for both, he said. That action will ague a number of things, including First Amendment issues.
