We’re Hiring!
Senior Attorney – Institute for Free Speech – Washington, DC or Virtual Office
The Institute for Free Speech is hiring a Senior Attorney with a minimum of seven years of experience.
This is a rare opportunity to work with a growing team to litigate a long-term legal strategy directed toward the protection of Constitutional rights. We challenge laws, practices, and policies that infringe upon First Amendment freedoms, such as speech codes that censor parents at school board meetings, laws restricting people’s ability to give and receive campaign contributions, and any intrusion into people’s private political associations. You would work to hold censors accountable; and to secure legal precedents clearing away a thicket of laws, regulations, and practices that suppress speech about government and candidates for political office, threaten citizens’ privacy if they speak or join groups, and impose heavy burdens on political activity.
[You can learn more about this role and apply for the position here.]
The Courts
Courthouse News: Watchdog: FEC ignored claim that Trump campaign laundered millions
By Emily Zantow
A legal watchdog is suing the Federal Election Commission for allegedly failing to address its complaint filed two years ago claiming former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign laundered hundreds of millions of dollars.
Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Washington, D.C., federal court alleging the commission has yet to respond to the group’s claims that two of the former president’s campaign committees hid their spending in the 2020 presidential election by funneling millions through two firms tied to Trump’s top campaign officials: American Made Media Consultants and Parscale Strategy.
FEC
Campaign Legal Center: Democracy Decoded: My Time on the Federal Election Commission
By Trevor Potter
During my tenure on the FEC, there was consistent, bipartisan compromise between the Democratic and Republican Commissioners — something I pushed by reaching across the aisle. We would talk through the cases, ensure that each party was treated fairly, that no party took advantage of the other and that the laws were applied evenly across the board. We also generally believed in the importance of disclosure laws that would protect voters’ right to know who is spending money to influence their vote.
Since the mid-2000s, however, this has changed. Congressional opponents of campaign finance reform have confirmed Commissioners ideologically opposed to the agency’s core mission. Due in large part to this, between 2012 and 2019, the FEC could not take meaningful action on over half of all enforcement matters.
Because of the agency’s structure, preventing the FEC from doing its job has been relatively easy…
The deadlock and dysfunction that has come to plague the FEC poses a grave threat to our democracy.
Internet Speech Regulation
Politico: U.S. Law Holds a Tool to Counter Putin’s Propaganda. But Officials Aren’t Using It.
By L. Gordon Crovitz
The first invasion by Russia was not dispatching his military into Ukraine. It was the malignant propaganda the Kremlin skillfully deployed to poison public opinion in the U.S. and Europe. The Biden administration — specifically Attorney General Merrick Garland — should now enforce a longstanding law requiring that propaganda from hostile foreign governments be labeled as such so that Americans know who’s feeding them the news. Silicon Valley should atone for its role as Putin’s long-time enabler by pledging to give users the information they need to know when they see propaganda in their social media feeds and search results.
The Media
Washington Post: Mainstream media have failed to notice their own disinformation issue
By Megan McArdle
As social psychologist Jonathan Haidt puts it, the difference in mainstream reporting is the difference between can and must. When it comes to stories that flatter Democrats, we often ask “Can I believe it?” If it’s not obviously false, we do. But if the story flatters the right, we are more likely to ask “Must I believe it?” If we can find any reason to disbelieve, we take it — and keep the story off our pages.
The obvious retort is that the same thing is happening on the right, only more so. And indeed, some right-wing media have gone much further with crazy election conspiracies than any mainstream outlet ever did with Russophobia. But pointing that out doesn’t do a thing to solve the problem.
An actual solution will require the recognition that we in the mainstream media are part of the problem: We are not trusted because we are not entirely trustworthy. That is not the only thing that will have to be fixed to heal our epistemic divide. But it would make a very good start.
Online Speech Platforms
Honestly with Bari Weiss: How Big Tech Is Strangling Your Freedom
David Sacks is a paradox. The entrepreneur and venture capitalist helped lay the foundations of the digital world we now live in: He was one of the members of what’s known as the PayPal Mafia, alongside people like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Max Levchin. He’s also been an early investor in some companies you may have heard of: Airbnb, Facebook, Slack, SpaceX, Twitter, Uber. At the same time, he is something of a whistleblower from inside the world of tech. He believes that Big Tech has far too much power. He argues that the fact that a handful of billionaires get to decide what we are (and aren’t) allowed to say in the new, digital public square is something that the Framers would have been repelled by—and that all Americans should oppose. Today I spoke to David, now a general partner at Craft Ventures, about the rise of America’s social credit system and how we can defend our civil liberties in the age of the Internet.
TK News by Matt Taibbi: Meet the Censored: Chris Hedges
This past weekend, celebrated journalist and author Chris Hedges woke up to find six years of episodes of his Russia Today show On Contact vanished from the show’s account on YouTube. Though almost none of the shows referenced Russia or Vladimir Putin directly, and the few that did tended to be unflattering, his association with Russian state media was enough to erase hundreds of interviews about topics ranging from Julian Assange’s imprisonment to censorship to police brutality to American war crimes in the Middle East.
Free Expression
NPR: German states outlaw displays of the letter ‘Z,’ a symbol of Russia’s war in Ukraine
By Rachel Treisman
Two German states have outlawed public displays of the letter “Z,” which has become synonymous with support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The States
AP News: South Dakota AG investigating billboards pushing impeachment
The South Dakota attorney general’s office on Tuesday said it will launch an investigation into whether state campaign finance disclosure laws were broken by a political organization that sponsored billboards to push state lawmakers to impeach Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg…
An organization launched to further Gov. Kristi Noem’s agenda sponsored the billboards in Sioux Falls this month. The signs demanded Ravnsborg be impeached and named four members of the House committee which has been investigating whether Ravnsborg’s conduct related to a 2020 crash that killed pedestrian Joe Boever…
The nonprofit organization that sponsored the billboards, the Dakota Institute for Legislative Solutions, said in a statement that it “has fully complied with all applicable state laws and regulations in regards to our grassroots-issue advocacy operations. Any allegation or suggestion otherwise is outrageous and defamatory.”
