In the News
Daily Caller: Campaign Finance Law Should Do More To Prevent Donor Harassment
By Bradley A. Smith
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has spent years warning that disclosure is a weapon in the wrong hands. In 2014, he warned that the DISCLOSE Act, which proposed expansive new disclosure requirements for groups that discuss legislation, would allow political operatives and activists to “go after the funding that amplifies the message. And they’ll do it the old fashioned way: through donor harassment and intimidation.”
These concerns were front-and-center again just earlier this year, when House Democrats passed a legislative package that would force many nonprofits and advocacy groups to expose their supporters. McConnell noted, “All this appears custom-built to chill the exercise of the First Amendment and give federal bureaucrats – and the waiting left-wing mob – a clearer idea of just who to intimidate.”…
At a time when everyone’s contributions over $200 are just a few clicks away, disclosure laws created in a pre-internet era deserve a second look. Privacy needs more protection.
Some disclosure advocates may be starting to come around. Rick Hasen, an election law professor who runs an influential blog and listserv, told CNN “the internet has changed the calculus.”
“We might well raise the disclosure threshold to $1,000 or $2,000, so people of modest means who are making small contributions don’t get caught up in these strong policy debates in our very polarized society,” he said.
A viable path for reform would be to raise the $200 threshold for public disclosure, tie it to inflation, and end the reporting of donors’ employers. At the same time, we must defeat efforts to expand these laws to nonprofits and advocacy groups.
This summer’s rash of donor-intimidation was not a surprise or an accident. Free speech advocates and even government leaders predicted it would happen. Politicians pushed ahead anyway.
Wall Street Journal: Can Facebook Post Ms. Warren’s Profession? (Letters)
Regarding your editorial “The Warren-Zuckerberg Clash” (Oct. 15): Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other politicians want Facebook to censor political ads they deem “false.” It’s dangerous for government to decide what’s true and what’s not. Twisting corporate chiefs’ arms to decide the “truth” as politicians see it is just as bad.
Recognizing such dangers, federal law says radio and TV stations “shall have no power of censorship” over candidates’ ads. The reasons for this are simple. It stops elected officials from indirectly censoring speech through political pressure on license renewals. And it prevents media corporations from censoring their disfavored candidate. Facebook is doing the right thing by letting the candidates speak and the voters decide.
David Keating
President, Institute for Free Speech
Washington Examiner: Warren tax on ‘excessive lobbying’ gives NRA a pass
By Naomi Lim
Warren released her “gun violence prevention” plan over the summer…
Her proposal singled out the NRA, vowing to “break the NRA’s stranglehold on Congress by passing sweeping anti-corruption legislation and eliminating the filibuster so that our nation can no longer be held hostage by a small group of well-financed extremists who have already made it perfectly clear that they will never put the safety of the American people first.” Under her Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act, lobbyists would, for instance, be banned from donating to political candidates and members of Congress.
But Warren’s platform to tax excessive lobbying on Capitol Hill, published to coincide with the March for Our Lives and former Democratic Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ gun forum in Las Vegas, doesn’t capture one very important target: the NRA.
Under the framework, she’d slug corporations and trade organizations that spend more than $500,000 on lobbying each year starting at a rate of 35% on those costs. The catch? The NRA, which spent $5.076 million lobbying the federal government in 2018, is classified as a 501(c)(4) organization by the Internal Revenue Service…
But former Federal Elections Commission Chair Brad Smith slammed Warren’s idea more broadly. The Institute for Free Speech chairman and professor at Capital University Law School says Warren’s “anti-corruption” suggestions simultaneously muffle voices of “dissent.”
“It’s terrible policy,” Smith told the Washington Examiner. “I don’t know her thinking but it is probably just first, she believes nonprofits are legit in a way for-profits are not. And secondly, she thinks nonprofits lean left and for-profits lean right.”
Congress
The Hill: House panel pushes forward election security legislation
By Maggie Miller
The House Administration Committee voted 6-1 on Tuesday to push forward legislation intended to limit foreign interference in elections, moving the bill to the House floor for a vote against strong Republican objections…
The SHIELD Act is expected to move quickly to the House floor for a vote, with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) noting in a “letter to colleagues” last week that the chamber would likely vote on the bill during the week of Oct. 21.
Rep. Rodney Davis (Ill.), the top Republican on the committee, strongly pushed back against the bill, introducing 10 amendments, almost all of which were voted down by the majority of Democrats on the committee. Davis noted he was “trying to prove a point of how bad your bill is” to the Democrats on the committee…
Davis noted that he could not support the bill in its entirety, even as he was in favor of some aspects, due to concerns that it would violate First Amendment rights.
“I believe the SHIELD Act will have many unintended, but severe consequences on the American people and a chilling effect on free speech, a fundamental right we in Congress have a responsibility to defend,” Davis said.
Davis vowed to bring up his concerns with the SHIELD Act on the House floor when it is brought up for a vote, noting his belief that it is “unfixable in its current form.”
Axios: House Democrats plan messaging push on Trump and Ukraine
Plus, in a challenge to Republicans who often have resisted such measures, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office says the SHIELD Act (“Stop Hacks and Improve Electronic Data Security”), a package to protect elections from foreign interference, is expected to come to the floor for a vote this week.
Washington Post: The Technology 202: House Science Committee chair takes aim at Silicon Valley’s handling of Trump’s falsehoods
By Cat Zakrzewski
Democrats are ratcheting up pressure on tech companies to do more to address President Trump’s spread of false or hateful information on social media.
The calls, which are a focus on the 2020 campaign trail, are moving to Congress as the chair of the House Science Committee calls on the companies to take action.
“I know there gets to be a pretty close edge of freedom of speech,” Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Tex.) said during an interview with me on C-SPAN’s “The Communicators” that aired this weekend. “But at the same time, I think we ought to have a freedom of responsibility.”
Johnson says it’s time for Congress to “get more aggressive” in making sure companies such as Facebook and Twitter don’t incite partisanship on social media. “We’ve got to be a little bit more aggressive and making sure there’s responsibility there.”
This sentiment from leading Democrats signals that Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg might face a frosty or even hostile reception when he testifies on Capitol Hill this week. He will almost certainly be on the defensive about Facebook’s recent announcement it will not fact-check or moderate politicians posts or ads, which is fueling concerns the company is allowing the spread of misinformation ahead of the elections…
Johnson’s comments came during a wide-ranging interview with me and C-SPAN’s Peter Slen, where we discussed the state of tech regulation in Washington and her committee’s efforts to ensure the United States is investing in technology. Here are some excerpts from that conversation, which have been edited for clarity: …
Daily Caller: GOP Congressmen Send Letter To CNN’s Jeff Zucker For Refusing To Air Trump Campaign Ads
By Henry Rodgers
The letter, spearheaded by South Carolina Rep. Jeff Duncan, was also signed by the following Republicans: North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, Texas Rep. Randy Weber, Idaho Rep. Russ Fulcher, Alabama Rep. Bradley Byrne and Florida Republican Rep. Greg Steube.
They all believe CNN could be breaking the law by not airing Trump’s campaign ads
“As a press organization utilizing the freedom of the press guaranteed to you in the First Amendment, it is particularly disheartening to see you suppressing the free speech of federal political candidates, potentially in violation of federal law and Supreme Court precedent,” the letter reads.
“As your news organization seems to have lost all sense of objectivity, spinning itself into oblivion to support left-leaning candidates and participating in distortions against conservative candidates, you have still operated within the boundaries of the First Amendment. CNN has the right to spout your political commentators’ opinions while millions of Americans change the channel to something else,” the letter continues…
The lawmakers said that CNN’s decision goes beyond First Amendment protections and that is in violation of the Constitution. The official message comes just days after Trump’s campaign lawyer threatened a lawsuit against the network in a letter Wednesday, accusing the network of violating multiple laws.
“We urge you to correct this flagrant violation with all due haste and allow the paid Trump Campaign advertisements to return to your airwaves immediately,” the letter concluded. “We await your response.”
[Full letter available at link above]
Online Speech Platforms
Washington Post: Facebook fine-tunes disinformation defenses – but leaves controversial political ad rules intact
By Tony Romm
Facebook on Monday introduced a slew of efforts meant to fine-tune its defenses against disinformation ahead of the 2020 presidential election, but the tech giant left untouched its policy that allows political candidates to lie in their political ads.
The changes include new requirements for owners of Facebook pages, which must disclose more clearly the organizations that run them or whether they’re tied to a country’s state-owned media, along with more prominent labels around debunked news and tougher rules to prevent voter suppression…
Adding to the urgency, Facebook also revealed Monday it had removed four separate networks of accounts – three originating in Iran, and one in Russia – that violated the company’s rules around “inauthentic behavior.”…
“We have a responsibility to stop abuse and election interference on our platform,” the company said in a blog post.
But the suite of policy and product fixes is unlikely to end the growing dispute over Facebook’s handling of political ads, particularly from President Trump, that contain falsehoods. Facebook’s decision against fact-checking or blocking those ads – which Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, defended in an interview with The Washington Post last week – has drawn sharp rebukes from Democratic presidential candidates, who have accused Facebook of profiting from lies.
Facebook’s announcements arrive two days before Zuckerberg is set to appear on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are likely to press him on the company’s work to safeguard U.S. elections from foreign manipulation.
[Facebook blog post: Helping to Protect the 2020 US Elections]
Wall Street Journal: Facebook and Free Speech
By Editorial Board
Mark Zuckerberg offered a stalwart defense of liberal values on free speech last week, and it’s a sign of our illiberal times that progressives were his biggest critics. A Joe Biden spokesman accused the Facebook CEO of using “the Constitution as a shield for his company’s bottom line,” and pundits on Twitter raged at his refusal to censor ads for Donald Trump.
Mr. Zuckerberg’s offense was standing up for John Mill’s liberal marketplace of ideas that liberals used to stand for. At Georgetown University and in our pages Thursday, he committed Facebook to uphold a wide definition of free expression. This is good news with major implications for how information is distributed in the 21st century if Facebook honors this pledge…
Facebook is a private company that isn’t obliged to follow a First Amendment standard. The company understandably doesn’t want its platform to resemble Gab or 8chan or PornHub, where obscene or violent content festers, as that would degrade the user experience. Facebook therefore regulates the outside boundaries of expression on its platform, but Mr. Zuckerberg says he doesn’t want the definition of impermissible speech to expand beyond “what is absolutely necessary.”
The challenge is to devise and enforce policies that are as viewpoint-neutral as possible. Mr. Zuckerberg says in particular that he doesn’t want to police political advertising by candidates, since that would mean trying to referee America’s raucous election debates. Intervention would inevitably lead to claims of political bias. Better to let candidates and the media brawl over competing claims as they do in traditional media.
Washington Post: Facebook shouldn’t run Trump’s lie-laden ads
By Editorial Board
Ms. Harris thinks Twitter should suspend the commander in chief for the simple reason that he is violating its rules. It’s a bad idea for the same reason platforms are smart as a general matter to avoid meddling in the democratic discourse. A private company picking which politicians are permitted to communicate with the public is a dubious proposition, and society generally benefits from citizens seeing the speech of those who represent them. The more information available, the more informed the voters.
But what happens when that information is false?
This is the morass Facebook has been stumbling through as it has attempted to articulate its attitude toward political advertising. The company argues that the content politicians pay to have promoted shouldn’t be subject to fact-checking even though its advertising policies prohibit falsehoods from anyone else…
Equal-opportunity requirements for broadcasters require them to allow latitude to lies, but cable networks can reject ads that contain flat-out falsehoods. Some did exactly that last week, and Facebook should, too. These decisions won’t always be clear-cut. There’s the concern that Facebook could play games – or get played by the conservatives hounding the platform over nonexistent censorship. The electoral arena has also always played host to hyperbole, and locating the line between permissible exaggeration and unacceptable smear will require some thought. But responsible thinking, plus a hefty helping of transparency and a robust appeals process, is exactly what’s necessary.
Independent Groups
Vox (Recode): A new high-powered super PAC is going to spend millions to back Andrew Yang
By Theodore Schleifer
The group, called Math PAC, is being run by a well-regarded Democratic operative, Will Hailer, and this week began sending its first pieces of direct mail to voters, according to federal disclosures. The group expects to have a seven-figure budget and to do both paid media and voter outreach on Yang’s behalf in early primary states.
The point is to “allow the movement behind Andrew Yang to catch up to elected officials – who were able to transfer years of war chests to their presidential campaigns,” Hailer told Recode. “We felt an opportunity to harness that so that a first-time candidate’s voice isn’t drowned out.”
But Yang has been explicit about the harm posed by super PACs, which are unaffiliated committees that can raise money in unlimited amounts as long as they do not directly coordinate strategy with the campaign. A Yang spokesperson had no immediate comment, but Yang’s campaign platform calls to “eliminate super PACs.” Math PAC was formed last month…
Hailer said his group agreed that super PACs were a problem but that Math PAC’s work was essential to “make sure that we are enacting election reform measures that prohibit this type of work from happening.” …
“He is running against governors, senators, and institutional actors that have these apparatuses that they can automatically tap into,” Hailer said. “So the only way to be able to give voice to an incredibly important conversation is to find ways to add value to that voice. And that’s what we’re hoping to do through the super PAC.”…
An advocacy organization, End Citizens United, called on Yang to condemn the group.
“The first day a candidate accepts the help of a single-candidate super PAC in the Democratic primary is the last day their campaign is truly a grassroots movement,” said Tiffany Muller, End Citizens United’s president. “Andrew Yang should disavow this super PAC and let Democratic voters choose our nominee, not Big Money donors.”
Regulatory Agencies
Washington Post: In government by the people, what if the people aren’t who they say they are?
By Editorial Board
Public comment processes are supposed to promote government of the people, by the people and for the people. So what happens when the people aren’t who they say they are? BuzzFeed reports that political operatives are engaging in campaigns of impersonation to co-opt opportunities for everyday Americans to tell officials and lawmakers what they think of pending policies…
The tactics aren’t limited to the federal level. The same firms provoked suspicion in Texas and South Carolina when legislators found themselves inundated with formulaic citizen feedback. In Texas, a lawmaker received a constituent message ostensibly from his predecessor who, when contacted, said he had never sent a thing. In South Carolina, lawmakers could not find a single constituent who had actually sent the correspondence in question. And that’s only the abuse we know about.
The story is a classic case of good intentions and new technology combining to create trouble. The public comment process dates from 1946 – long, long before the Internet era. Agencies realized it wasn’t built for Web-wide engagement, and they tried to catch up. But regulations are lacking from the federal level to prevent the malicious from misusing the system. Fixing that might involve narrow legal updates letting investigators go after comments entered en masse using stolen identities. It will also involve technical ones to make data more transparent and mandate quality control.
The situation today, though, is untenable. Governments pay attention to comments despite their corruption or ignore them because they have become too polluted to trust. Either way, real citizens who cared enough to speak up are disregarded. “It poisoned the well,” a South Carolinian representative told BuzzFeed. “Now when you get an email . . . you think, ‘Is this fake advocacy or someone who really needs something?'”
Candidates and Campaigns
New York Times: Biden Escalates Attack on Facebook Over False Political Ads
By Cecilia Kang and Mike Isaac
A 30-second video ad that ran on Facebook this week falsely accused former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. of blackmailing Ukrainian officials to stop an investigation of his son.
“Send Quid Pro Joe Biden into retirement,” a narrator in the ad intoned.
The video wasn’t released by the Trump campaign, which has produced ads on Facebook with similar accusations in recent weeks. Instead, it was made by an independent political action committee, or super PAC. And it was allowed to run on Facebook with false information, in violation of the social network’s policies on misinformation, the Biden presidential campaign wrote in a letter to Facebook on Thursday.
In the letter, which was viewed by The New York Times, the Biden campaign acknowledged that Facebook had a policy of allowing all political leaders’ speech and ads to remain up because the company considers them to be newsworthy. But the ad by the super PAC was not from a politician, the Biden campaign wrote, so it needed to be rejected.
“This is a most basic test,” Greg Schultz, Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, said in the letter. “The ad contains transparently false allegations, prominently debunked by every major media outlet in the country over recent weeks. It should be rejected.” …
In an emailed response to the Biden campaign on Friday, which was viewed by The Times, Facebook’s head of global campaigns, Katie Harbath, wrote that the ad was now inactive. If the ad ran again, she said, it would be submitted to fact-checking.
New York Times: Trump Campaign Floods Web With Ads, Raking In Cash as Democrats Struggle
By Matthew Rosenberg and Kevin Roose
“We see much less of that kind of experimentation with the Democratic candidates,” said Laura Edelson, a researcher at New York University who tracks political advertising on Facebook. “They’re running fewer ads. We don’t see the wide array of targeting.”
The Trump campaign, she said, “is like a supercar racing a little Volkswagen Bug.”
The Democrats would be the Volkswagen. They are largely running what other experts and political operatives compared to brand-loyalty campaigns, trying to sway moderates and offend as few people as possible, despite mounting research that suggests persuasion ads have little to no impact on voters in a general election…
In the wake of the 2016 election, some on the left sought an explanation for Mr. Trump’s victory in the idea that his campaign had used shadowy digital techniques inspired by military-style psychological warfare – a “Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine,” as one article described it – created by the defunct political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. The theories around Cambridge Analytica have never been fully demonstrated, however, and there is a far less nefarious explanation: The Trump campaign simply made better use of standard commercial marketing tools, particularly Facebook’s own high-powered targeting products…
For the left, the Trump campaign’s mastery of social media in 2016 represented a sharp reversal. From the blogs of the mid-aughts to Netroots Nation, the digital activists who helped propel Barack Obama to victory in 2008 and 2012, the left was seen as the dominant digital force. The Democrats had an array of tech-savvy campaign veterans who were adept at data mining and digital organizing, and had overseen the creation of a handful of well-resourced digital consulting firms.
Starting with the 2016 primaries, the Trump campaign reversed the trend.
The Media
Rolling Stone: Everyone Is a Russian Asset
By Matt Taibbi
Less than a week before Clinton’s outburst, the New York Times – once a symbol of stodgy, hyper-cautious reporting – ran a feature called, “What, Exactly, is Tulsi Gabbard Up To?” The piece speculated about the “suspicious activity” surrounding Gabbard’s campaign…
This was the second such article the Times had written. An August piece, “Tulsi Gabbard thinks we’re doomed,” hit nearly all the same talking points… The Times article echoed earlier pieces by the Daily Beast and NBC.com that said many of the same things.
After Clinton gave the “Russian asset” interview, it seemed for a moment like America’s commentariat might tiptoe away from the topic… But when Gabbard (who’s similarly been through a brutal media ordeal) snapped back and called Hillary “Queen of the warmongers,” and Donald Trump followed by calling Clinton “crazy,” most pundits doubled down on the “asset” idea.
Neoconservative-turned-#Resistance hero David Frum blasted Trump for defending Stein and Gabbard, noting sarcastically, “He was supposed to pretend they were not all on the same team.” Ana Navarro on CNN said, “When both the Russians and Trump support someone, be wary.” An MSNBC panel noted, in apparent seriousness, that Gabbard “never denied being a Russian asset.” CNN media critic Brian Stelter tried to suggest Hillary only seemed wacko thanks to a trick of the red enemy, saying, “It feels like a disinformation situation where the Russians want this kind of disinformation.”…
Everyone is foreign scum these days. Democrats spent three years trying to prove Donald Trump is a Russian pawn. Mitch McConnell is “Moscow Mitch.” Third party candidates are a Russian plot. The Bernie Sanders movement is not just a wasteland of racist and misogynist “Bros,” but – according to intelligence agencies and mainstream pundits alike – the beneficiary of an ambitious Russian plot to “stoke the divide” within the Democratic Party. The Joe Rogan independents attracted to the mild antiwar message of Tulsi Gabbard are likewise traitors and dupes for the Kremlin.
If you’re keeping score, that’s pretty much the whole spectrum of American political thought, excepting MSNBC Democrats. What a coincidence!
The States
Houston Chronicle: Sylvester Turner calls for investigation into Tony Buzbee ad, citing ‘deep fake’ law
By Jasper Scherer
Mayor Sylvester Turner has called for the district attorney to open a criminal investigation into Tony Buzbee’s campaign over a television ad that appears to show edited photos of Turner and an allegedly fake text between the mayor and a 31-year-old intern who works at the airport.
The video, a 30-second spot that began airing earlier this month, highlights a recent report that found Turner signed off on a $95,000-a-year executive internship for a man the mayor initially denied knowing, despite evidence of their prior connections.
In a statement, Turner contended the video violates a section of the Texas Election Code that bars campaigns from creating “deep fake” videos, defined as an ad “created with the intent to deceive, that appears to depict a real person performing an action that did not occur in reality.”
In calling for the investigation, Turner also said Buzbee should “take this false ad down immediately and apologize to Houston voters.”
Buzbee, a millionaire lawyer and businessman who is self-funding his campaign, said he would continue to run the ad despite Turner’s allegations and renewed his push for Turner to release texts he allegedly has exchanged with the intern, Marvin Agumagu…
In response to the ad, Turner’s campaign commissioned a firm, Lone Star Forensic Group, to study the veracity of the video. In a report, the group concluded that the text message likely is “an artistic render rather than an image of actual communication” between Turner and Agumagu.
Eric Devlin, the CEO of Lone Star Forensic Group, could not be reached for comment Friday. He told KPRC 2 that although the text message is an “artistic rendition,” “I am not aware of any law that has been broken.”
