We’re Hiring!
Legal Director – Institute for Free Speech – Washington, DC or Virtual Office
The Institute for Free Speech anticipates the need for a highly experienced attorney to direct our litigation and legal advocacy. In September, President Trump announced the nomination of our longtime Legal Director to the Federal Election Commission. In late October, the President nominated two others to fill the remaining vacancies on the Commission, and a confirmation hearing was held in mid-November. After the Committee acts to approve the nominations, which may occur in early December, the Institute for Free Speech will move forward with interviewing applicants.
This is a rare opportunity to develop and implement a long-term legal strategy directed toward the protection of Constitutional rights. You would work to create legal precedents clearing away a thicket of laws and regulations that suppress speech about government and candidates for political office, that threaten citizens’ privacy if they speak or join groups, and that impose heavy burdens on organized political activity.
The Legal Director will direct our litigation and legal advocacy, lead our in-house legal team, and manage and expand our network of volunteer attorneys.
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.
[You can learn more about this role and apply for the position here.]
Trump Administration
Jonathan Turley: Trump Administration Moves To Bar Any Group Supporting A Boycott of Israel
For years, we have discussed the effort of states to bar individuals, groups, and businesses from state contracts if they support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Other Western nations have also moved to declare BDS “hate speech.” I have previously opposed such laws as unconstitutional and an attack on free speech. I do not support the BDS movement but I believe that it is a form of political speech that should be protected. For that reason, the move this week by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is alarming. He has declared that any non-profit groups supporting BDS will be cut off from government funding. The United States State Department has previously targeted BDS supporters but this is the first ban on contracts or grants…
It is one thing for the United States to oppose the BDS movement as a policy, including barring the funding of any program or campaign that includes a BDS component. It is quite something else to bar any group or organization from contracts or benefits based on their support for BDS.
Wall Street Journal: Trump Threatens to Veto Defense Bill if Tech Liability Shield Stands
By Andrew Restuccia and Lindsay Wise
President Trump threatened to veto an annual defense-policy bill if it doesn’t include language revoking a provision that gives social-media companies broad immunity for the content they publish from users on their sites.
Mr. Trump demanded on Tuesday night that Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act be repealed.
“[I]f the very dangerous & unfair Section 230 is not completely terminated as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), I will be forced to unequivocally VETO the Bill when sent to the very beautiful Resolute desk,” he wrote on Twitter…
“The President is right,” tweeted Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.), an outspoken critic of big tech companies…
If Section 230 were to be revoked, internet companies could be forced to invest heavily in monitoring content. Alternatively, they might decide to stop moderating user posts or cease hosting them altogether…
Senate Republicans are pushing legislation to rewrite the law, and the GOP-led Federal Communications Commission has begun a rule-making review that could lead to a scaling back of liability protections for internet platforms.
While Democrats have opposed the FCC’s involvement, House leaders have said they want to develop legislation to modify Section 230 in the next Congress.
Congress
Axios: Scoop: Senators offer to slip Section 230 changes into defense bill
By Ashley Gold and Margaret Harding McGill
A source familiar with the negotiations told Axios that Sen. Roger Wicker, Republican chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, has proposed that his bill limiting Section 230 protections be included in the National Defense Authorization Act.
It’s a long shot, for political and logistical reasons.
The White House has pushed lawmakers to insert a repeal of Section 230 into the NDAA, as part of a compromise that would have President Trump sign the bill even though he’s opposed to a provision that renames military bases that are named for Confederate leaders.
But Senate Republicans are instead trying to negotiate an alternative that would combine multiple bills aimed at reforming the law, including the bipartisan Platform Accountability and Consumer Transparency Act and Wicker’s Online Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity Act, a Hill source familiar with the matter told Axios.
Glenn Greenwald: Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Misguided Defense of John Brennan and The Logan Act: a Dangerous and Unconstitutional Law
[The Logan Act] is one of the most unconstitutional and dangerous laws in the U.S. Code. Because it has never been used to prosecute anyone, and was only used to obtain an indictment one time in its entire history – back in 1803, against someone who wrote an op-ed criticizing U.S. foreign policy toward France – nobody knows what it actually prescribes or allows because there is no binding judicial precedent interpreting what it means. It is precisely because it has never been used to prosecute anyone that there is no judicial clarity about what it means, and that’s how the U.S. Government wants it (for the same exact reason, the DOJ has never made good on its threats to prosecute any journalist who publishes classified information under the Espionage Act of 1917: they prefer to weaponize the fear of uncertainty regarding the law’s scope and application rather than prosecute journalists under it and thus risk a judicial ruling declaring it unconstitutional or inapplicable to journalists).
The wildly broad vagueness and lack of clarity is what makes it so dangerous to leave the Logan Act on the books. These are exactly the kinds of laws that can serve as an abusive pretext in the hands of the FBI, empowering it to investigate anyone it wants under the rubric of this archaic, ambiguous law. All members of Congress, but particularly foreign policy dissidents, should be working to repeal this ancient and repressive law, not wielding it as a weapon against adversaries and pretending that it is some highly specific, clear and valid criminal constraint on the conduct and speech of U.S. citizens.
Right to Protest
Intercept: Austin Fusion Center Spied on Nonpolitical Cultural Events
By Mara Hvistendahl
The documents originate with the Austin Regional Intelligence Center, or ARIC, part of a network of fusion centers established after 9/11 to share intelligence among federal agencies, local police departments, and the private sector. They show that law enforcement personnel there monitored Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and Twitter for announcements of protests, social gatherings, and other events organized by supporters of Black Lives Matter, and sometimes merely by Black people. Fusion center employees then prepared dispatches listing organizers’ names or social media handles, information about notable guests, and RSVP totals. The fusion center, which is managed by the Austin Police Department, sent the updates to local, state, and national law enforcement, including recipients at the CIA, FBI, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement…
The monitored events include a Juneteenth celebration, a meditation event, and two candlelight vigils.
“In our heightened political moment, the fact that now every single public gathering is being surveilled by local, state, and federal government is incredibly concerning for civil liberties,” said Matthew Guariglia, a policy analyst focused on surveillance and policing at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Independent Groups
Fox News: Democratic PAC billboards push Trump supporters to sit out Georgia Senate runoff vote
By Thomas Barrabi
With Georgia’s crucial Senate runoff vote just weeks away, a progressive political action committee has launched a billboard campaign in a tongue-in-cheek bid to convince President Trump’s backers not to lend their support to incumbent Republican candidates Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
Really American PAC, a group that has run ads referring to Loeffler and Perdue as “enemies of Georgia,” said it has already placed nine billboards in Georgia. The billboards say: “Perdue/Loeffler Didn’t Deliver For Trump, Don’t Deliver For Them.”
“Trump supporters in Georgia are saying that because David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler couldn’t deliver a victory in Georgia for Trump, MAGA supporters should not deliver a victory for them in the run-off election. We agree,” Really American PAC said in message on Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue.
The PAC plans to put up 20 or more billboards in rural Georgia counties if it reaches its $100,000 fundraising goal, the message added.
Online Speech Platforms
Protocol: Facebook’s Oversight Board announced its first posts for review
By Anna Kramer
The Facebook Oversight Board will review six cases in its first round of deliberations over Facebook’s content moderation decisions.
The Oversight Board chose its first six cases from the more than 20,000 appeals made since October, and the cases were chosen based on their ability to affect the widest range of posts and people, the questions they raise about Facebook’s policies or their importance to public conversation, according to today’s Oversight Board announcement…In one case, a user appealed the decision to remove two posted screenshots of Tweets by the former Malaysian Prime Minister, in which the Prime Minister called for Muslim violence against French people. That post was removed for violating the company’s hate speech policy, while the user claimed in the appeal that the screenshots were posted to raise awareness of the terrible words of the former Prime Minister. The reviewers also accepted one case referred by Facebook instead of through user appeal, about video and text removed for spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic.
The States
Politico: Christie’s 2013 campaign hasn’t paid off $1M in debt to 2 firms
By Matt Friedman
Seven years after his 2013 reelection, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s gubernatorial campaign still owes $1 million in debt…
The state Election Law Enforcement Commission allows publicly financed gubernatorial campaigns to apply to stop filing reports with the state – essentially canceling the public record of its debt – seven years after the election. That means the Christie campaign is eligible to do so this month…
In 2009, as it considered the regulation about stopping the filing of reports, ELEC said that “a campaign must be required to demonstrate some degree of good faith in an effort to retire liabilities, rather than simply wait for the proposed seven-year period to lapse.”
But records filed with the commission indicate that Christie, who has proven to be a prolific fundraiser for other campaigns and causes, barely raised any money to retire the debt…
“The [Christie] campaign had a $3,800 contribution limit for any individual or corporation, so anyone who had made a maximum contribution could not contribute one penny more,” said Christie confidant Bill Palatucci, a prominent attorney and a fixture in New Jersey Republican circles. “In addition, New Jersey pay-to-play rules governing any gubernatorial campaign made it near impossible to fundraise for Christie-Guadagno more than a year after the race was over.” …
[ELEC Executive Director Jeff Brindle] said that candidates who take public financing, as Christie did, can’t pay off the campaign debt themselves – even if the contributions they’re taking after the campaign are no longer matched by public funds.
“It would still be subject to the $25,000 that a publicly funded candidate can spend on his own money,” Brindle said.
Richmond Times-Dispatch: Next step in campaign reform – limiting ‘supersize” donations
By J. Chapman Petersen
In the next General Assembly session, [a] long-sought reform could occur, as the assembly – which banned gifts to lawmakers in 2015 – now tackles the unfinished half of ethics reform: a limitation on “supersize” campaign donations.
Currently, Virginia is one of only five states in the nation that does not place any limit on campaign donations. As a result, “big money” dominates Virginia politics. In 2019, according to the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project, three-quarters of the money spent in Virginia campaigns came from donations of $10,000 or more…
Limiting donations to $20,000 per campaign cycle is not a violation of the First Amendment. The federal courts repeatedly have upheld the constitutionality of such limits.
Must Read Alaska: Lawsuit filed over Ballot Measure 2, ranked choice voting, jungle primary
By Suzanne Downing
A lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Ballot Measure 2, which changes the manner in which people vote in Alaska, has been filed in Superior Court in Anchorage, the day after the 2020 General Election was certified by the Division of Elections.
Plaintiffs include Scott Kohlhass, the Alaska Libertarian Party, Robert M. Bird, the Alaska Independence Party, and Kenneth P. Jacobus, a Republican who is also the lawyer for the group. The court filing says that the ballot measure violates Alaskans’ right to free political association, free speech, right to petition, right to due process, and other rights guaranteed to Americans by the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution, and by Article One, Sections 2, 5, 6, 7 and 22 of the Alaska Constitution.
Cincinnati Enquirer: Fighting corruption will be a priority of my next term
By Jessica E. Miranda
To make sure that legislators are working for people and not special interests, we first have to reform campaign finance law. That’s why I teamed up with Rep. Gayle Manning, a Republican, to sponsor a bill that would require corporations and labor unions to be transparent about their campaign spending. You can read about it here.
