In the News
State Policy Network: H.R. 1 bill would chill speech by nonprofits and spurn privacy in association
By Matt Nese
IFS has published a series of analyses examining the damage H.R. 1 would do to free political speech. In the first analysis, IFS Senior Fellow Eric Wang highlighted portions of the bill that would force nonprofits to report their supporters to the government, regulate speech by groups about policy issues on the internet, and coerce organizations into including complicated disclaimers that name their supporters in their communications.
In a second analysis, IFS Chairman and former Federal Election Commission Chairman Bradley A. Smith studied how H.R. 1 would transform the FEC from a bipartisan, 6-member agency to a partisan, 5-member agency under the control of the president with an all-powerful “Speech Czar” as Chair. The likely impact would be to shrink public confidence in the impartial enforcement of campaign finance laws and silence much political speech through new rules on groups that discuss public affairs. In a third analysis, Smith analyzed the broad “coordination” provisions in H.R. 1. He concluded that the restrictions would reach far beyond campaign speech to regulate discussion of legislative issues and public affairs by countless nonprofits.
In addition to these serious flaws, IFS President David Keating has authored a series of blog posts explaining how H.R. 1’s taxpayer-financed campaign program for political candidates would waste taxpayer dollars, increase extremism in our politics, and create new incentives for corruption.
The Institute is working hard to spread this message. In February, Smith testified before the House Oversight and Reform Committee. IFS also sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee outlining the factual problems with H.R. 1’s findings on the Citizens United decision. FreedomWorks hosted IFS Communications Director Luke Wachob in a Facebook Live discussion on the myriad harms to free speech perpetrated by H.R. 1.
State Policy Network: Freedom Center of Missouri gets 2019 off to appealing start
By Dave Roland
Last November, the Eighth Circuit handed down a sharply divided opinion in which the majority held that the government has an interest in knowing who is trying to influence public policy. It also held that the First Amendment did not protect citizens from being forced to register and report to the government as lobbyists, even if those citizens were neither being paid nor giving legislators any money to buy their attention. The Freedom Center and its co-counsel at the Institute for Free Speech asked for a rehearing of this case before the entire Eighth Circuit. On January 28, the court granted that request. The Eighth Circuit grants less than one percent of requests for re-hearing, and a grant like this usually results in a victory for the party that requested the re-hearing. The full Eighth Circuit will hear arguments in this case in April, and the Freedom Center should get an opinion in that case by August.
Congress
Office of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: Democrat Politician Protection Act Includes a Taxpayer Bailout for Political Campaigns
“Keep in mind, this puts each taxpayer on the hook for financing the candidates and campaigns they personally disagree with. They’d take our money, and give it to people we are not for. If Democrats have their way, citizens won’t just have to sit through television commercials railing against the candidates they plan to vote for. Now they’d also have the pleasure of bankrolling those ads. Sit there in front of the T.V. screen and watch your tax dollars at work, supporting the person you’re going to vote against. People are going to love that.
“When you ask Democrats why exactly they would propose something as ludicrous as a massive, new taxpayer-funded bailout of the permanent political class, sometimes they make vague claims that problems in American politics would go away if only we took more power out of the people’s hands and shipped it here to the nation’s capital. Now, the evidence suggests they’re dead wrong about this.
“Research suggests that jurisdictions – and there are a few of them – that have ‘matching fund’ systems in many cases also have rampant corruption, misappropriation, and waste. There are numerous examples that there’s still plenty of corruption and wrongdoing in these systems — not exactly a surprise outcome when you centralize more money and power through government channels. And public financing doesn’t appear to change the playing field between challengers and incumbents in any way either.
“Here’s how one University of Wisconsin political scientist summed it up: ‘The people who propose these systems often oversell them.’ End quote. No apparent benefits. Significant new costs. And they want to stick taxpayers with the bill. Just another one of the Democrat Politician Protection Act’s greatest hits. I’ll have more in the future.”
New York Times: House Judiciary Committee Hires Trump Legal Critics for Investigations
By Nicholas Fandos
The committee’s chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, has not committed to opening a formal impeachment inquiry, but the addition of the two lawyers, Norman L. Eisen and Barry H. Berke, indicates that the Democrats do not intend to wait for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, to finish his work to begin weighing issues that could ultimately be wrapped up in such a proceeding…
Mr. Eisen, 58, served as the top White House ethics lawyer under President Barack Obama and later as his ambassador to the Czech Republic. A former white collar litigator and investigator, he has emerged since Mr. Trump’s election as one of the president’s most recognizable legal critics, using his perch as chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington to write voluminously about what he has argued are ethical lapses and instances of outright corruption in his administration…
Mr. Berke, a partner at the New York firm Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, is less well known in Washington, but has written voluminously with Mr. Eisen about obstruction of justice and the president’s other legal vulnerabilities…
[Mr. Nadler] has said in the past that he also plans to investigate Mr. Trump’s role in making hush money payments shortly before Election Day in 2016 to two women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump. The president’s former personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, implicated Mr. Trump in those payments in court last year as he pleaded guilty to a campaign finance violation and others.
Mr. Eisen and Mr. Berke, together with Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of C.R.E.W., have written a series of reports on obstruction of justice, collusion and Mr. Trump for the Brookings Institution.
Politico: Michael Cohen’s Senate testimony delayed
By Darren Samuelsohn
Congress is now 0 for 3 in trying to bring in Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, for testimony before he is scheduled to report to federal prison in early March.
The latest panel to come up short in landing Trump’s longtime fixer is the Senate Intelligence Committee, which had issued a subpoena to get closed-door testimony from Cohen on Tuesday.
In a statement on Monday, Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis said the Senate panel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election had accepted his client’s request for a delay “due to post-surgery medical needs.”
“A future date will be announced by the committee,” Davis added…
Two Democratic-led House panels’ attempts to speak with Cohen have failed. Last week, the House Intelligence Committee announced it was delaying its plans to talk with Cohen under subpoena until Feb. 28.
The House Oversight Committee had planned to open its work for 2019 with a public Cohen hearing, but that plan changed after Davis cited “ongoing threats” against his client’s family and Cohen’s continuing cooperation with federal investigators. Cohen’s team is still negotiating with the Oversight panel for a new date.
The Media
Wall Street Journal: National Enquirer Publisher Asked Justice Department for Advice on Saudi Connection
By Julie Bykowicz and Lukas I. Alpert
[T]he company sought advice from the Justice Department last year about whether it should register as a foreign agent…
The Justice Department posted its response in redacted form. Although American Media isn’t named in the letter, the details clearly reference the media company.
A person familiar with the matter confirmed American Media wrote to the Justice Department after publishing the magazine celebrating Prince Mohammed. “Frankly, it was done to kiss his ass when he came to visit in the hopes he’d invest in the company and it didn’t work,” the person said of the magazine…
The publisher gave an adviser to Saudi Arabia a draft of the magazine and followed the adviser’s editorial suggestions, according to the letter…
The company told Justice Department officials in the letter that although it followed the editorial and photography suggestions of the adviser, it wasn’t under any contractual obligation to do so. The publisher also told the Justice Department that it didn’t receive any foreign money to produce the magazine.
Based on those assertions, the Justice Department said the media company didn’t need to register as a foreign agent, noting that conclusion could change if the facts in the matter “are different in any way from those depicted in your submission.”…
Mr. Pecker has admitted buying embarrassing stories about Mr. Trump and burying them, a practice known as “catch and kill.” In exchange for immunity, the publisher and Mr. Pecker last year agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors investigating former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who arranged payments during the 2016 campaign to silence two women who alleged sexual encounters with Mr. Trump. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are examining whether the Enquirer’s dealings with Mr. Bezos violated the nonprosecution agreement, according to people familiar with the matter.
New York Times: BBC Cameraman Is Attacked at Trump Rally
By Iliana Magra
“BBC cameraman Ron Skeans was violently pushed and shoved by a member of the crowd while covering a President Trump rally in Texas last night,” a BBC spokesman said in an email on Tuesday…
The BBC condemned the attack. “It is clearly unacceptable for any of our staff to be attacked for doing their job,” the statement on Tuesday said…
The White House Correspondents’ Association also condemned the crowd member’s actions, saying in a statement that “the president of the United States should make absolutely clear to his supporters that violence against reporters is unacceptable.”
Since the beginning of his presidency, Mr. Trump has had a strained relationship with the news media. He has repeatedly called journalists “the enemy of the people,” and he used the term “Fake News” on Twitter at least 174 times last year alone.
In August, experts from the United Nations and a human rights body condemned the president’s attacks on the news media and warned that they could incite violence against journalists.
“His attacks are strategic, designed to undermine confidence in reporting and raise doubts about verifiable facts,” David Kaye, the United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of expression, and Edison Lanza, who holds the same position at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, said in a statement.
“We are especially concerned that these attacks increase the risk of journalists being targeted with violence,” they said.
During an interview last month, the publisher of The New York Times, A. G. Sulzberger, asked Mr. Trump about “potentially dangerous” rhetoric against journalists. In his response, Mr. Trump took credit for popularizing the term “fake news” but said he was not responsible for how it was used by other governments.
Candidates and Campaigns
Washington Post: ‘It’s the metric, 100 percent.’ Democratic presidential hopefuls increasingly see small-dollar donations as a sign of viability.
By Michelle Ye Hee Lee
Although the Democratic field for the 2020 election is still taking shape, the race for small-dollar donations has already begun, with about two dozen prospective and declared candidates scrambling to build online operations focused squarely on individual supporters who may give in amounts as low as $5.
Historically, these early low-dollar contributions were viewed largely as a sign of grass-roots support and an indication of potential voter enthusiasm. But that has changed in recent elections as small contributions have increasingly filled the coffers of many candidates – providing the fuel that allows them to be viable contenders…
Being able to raise a lot of money from a lot of small donors is now a test – not only of a candidate’s ability to tap this source of funds, but to go head-to-head against President Trump and his army of grass-roots donors.
“It is the metric, 100 percent. The very simple definition of front-runner status is: Can you or can you not raise substantial money online?” said Tom Nides, former deputy secretary of state under President Barack Obama and longtime Democratic fundraiser…
The shift also comes amid intensifying efforts among Democratic candidates to distance themselves from the political donor class and moneyed interests.
“This campaign is going to be a community-led effort, and your voice will ring true in everything we do. No corporate PAC money, no federal lobbyist money, no individual Super PAC,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), a declared candidate, tweeted Sunday…
In a sign that 2020 contenders are also moving to court wealthier donors, several are holding private meetings and phone calls with stalwart party donors in Los Angeles, New York and Washington, according to multiple major donors and fundraisers.
Fox News: Meet the 2020 candidate giving away money, in ‘universal basic income’ pitch
By Paul Steinhauser
Andrew Yang is going a step further — pushing a plan for “universal basic income.” And to demonstrate what he’s talking about, the entrepreneur from New York City and uber-longshot for the Democratic presidential nomination is personally giving away money to families in Iowa and New Hampshire, the states that vote first and second in the presidential caucus and primary calendar…
Yang is giving $1,000 per month this year out of his own pocket to a family in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Giving money to potential voters in two crucial early voting states could raise some eyebrows, legally speaking. But Yang said he checked with the Federal Election Commission before going ahead with his plan.
“I talked to the FEC and they said as long as it’s my personal funds, and it’s a personal gift with no strings attached, they have no issues,” he said.
He added that he’s “optimistic” the families receiving his personal cash payments this year “will come out for me, but I have no expectations and certainly no obligations.”
The New Hampshire recipients, the Fassi family from Goffstown, were selected out of a pool of dozens of Granite State applicants. They started receiving the monthly $1,000 payments in January. The campaign says a family in Iowa will be chosen soon through a similar contest.
Experts at the Campaign Legal Center – a nonpartisan organization that works to reduce the influence of money in politics – told Fox News that the distribution of personal funds is not something that campaign finance laws cover.
They added that they didn’t believe what Yang was doing would be unlawful, since the money being given away came with no strings attached, and should not be considered a form of bribery.
Fundraising
New York Times: 6 Days When 2020 Democratic Hopefuls Scored With Small Donors
By Shane Goldmacher
In the 2020 race for the White House, small donors are expected to play a more significant role than ever before. With so many Democratic candidates running, and only so much money to go around, whom small donors choose to support will determine in part which contenders will have the cash to compete – and who will not.
So, what clicks with donors online?
The Times analyzed six years of online donations to potential 2020 candidates through ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s main donation-processing platform, to tally the number of donations each candidate has received by day.
The findings show that the art of inspiring online donors is very much about timing: It’s about having a moment in the national spotlight – and then capitalizing on it. Also, small donors are just like the rest of us: procrastinators inspired by a looming deadline.
With that, here are six days when some current and potential Democratic candidates for president scored big online, and why: …
The States
Daily Caller: Democrat Who Sought To Regulate Drudge Running To Represent Silicon Valley In California Senate
By Rudy Takala
The former Federal Election Commission member who sought to regulate the Drudge Report and other online political speech is running to represent a district that encompasses Silicon Valley in the California Senate, according to a Monday report.
“I care a lot about California, and I want to do things that are in the public interest,” former FEC Commissioner Ann Ravel said in an interview with the San Jose Spotlight. “I’m interested only in doing what’s good for the people. I’ve been doing so much in the area of campaign finance and it’s influenced me a lot.”
Ravel served on the FEC from 2013-17, and gained a reputation for pushing new rules to regulate online political speech. Republicans said the rules were aimed at requiring anyone who posted political content online – including on social media and on websites such as the Drudge Report – to disclose their activity to the feds. She slammed the agency as “dysfunctional” toward the end of her tenure and proposed reducing the number of commissioners who were allowed to serve…
Ravel has continued to push online regulation since she left the commission. “We know that there’s a lot of campaigning that’s moved to the internet, whether it’s through fake news or just outright advertising,” she said in a 2017 speech at UC Berkeley. “There is almost no regulation of this … the disclosure that we expect as to who is behind campaigns is not going to exist soon.”
In her interview Monday, Ravel said she was more optimistic about enacting her agenda in California than in Washington. “To be in D.C. and to see how public policy is generally reflective of corporate interests, wealthy interests and doesn’t reflect the people … I know that California isn’t like that for the most part.”
Seattle Times: Seattle mailing out ‘democracy vouchers’ ahead of 2019 City Council elections
By Daniel Beekman
Seattle is mailing out “democracy vouchers” for residents to donate to candidates in this year’s hotly contested City Council elections.
Officials intend to send the vouchers to 463,000 residents Tuesday, weather permitting.
All seven of the council’s district seats are up for grabs in 2019, and 39 candidates already have registered campaigns.
It’s only the second election cycle for the first-in-the-nation voucher program, which voters approved in 2015 and which debuted in 2017.
Eligible residents each receive four $25 vouchers that they can sign over to candidates who abide by special rules, such as limits on cash contributions and campaign spending.
Funded by a 10-year, $30 million property-tax levy, the program is meant to engage more people in the electoral process and help grass-roots candidates compete…
Two local property owners who brought a lawsuit against the program were defeated in King County Superior Court, but the state Supreme Court recently agreed to review the case…
At this point, 25 candidates have made themselves eligible to collect vouchers by pledging to abide by the program’s rules.
Only two – Alex Pedersen and Logan Bowers – already have qualified to spend voucher money by collecting 150 signatures and $10 contributions from residents.
