In the News
News Talk 1370: Former Candidate Sues
A candidate for the Escambia County School Board is suing the state of Florida. Kells Hetherington was fined $200 after the 2018 election for telling voters in his campaign literature he was a Republican while running for the Escambia County School Board District 2 seat, a nonpartisan office. Florida law prohibits candidates running for a nonpartisan office from campaigning based on party affiliation or stating any party affiliation. Hetherington lost the election, but has partnered with the Institute for Free Speech to file a federal lawsuit Thursday against the state over the fine as well as the prohibition on candidates for nonpartisan offices telling voters their party affiliation.
Supreme Court
By Mark Brnovich
The Supreme Court later this month will hear a California case that could vindicate or eviscerate the rights of Americans to freely organize, associate and engage in our political system without fear of targeting or intimidation. It’s important the court defend against California’s overreach.
The California attorney general’s office requires all charities that fundraise in the state to hand over confidential records detailing the identities and addresses of their major donors. California authorities insist this information is required to protect consumers from fraud.
In reality, California rarely if ever uses this information and routinely fails to keep it confidential, inviting harassment, personal attacks and chilling the speech of those who rightfully fear reprisal…
The truth is, when it comes to enforcing nonprofit statutes and holding bad actors accountable, states do not need a list of donor names and addresses. As attorneys general, we already have the necessary tools to enforce the law…
Compelled disclosure undermines free expression and fuels the cancel culture. American politics is a conversation. That means everyone has an equal right to be heard. Consequently, the court should favor free speech and squash California’s overreaching donor-disclosure requirement.
[Ed. note: The Institute for Free Speech filed an amicus brief in AFPF v. Becerra (now AFPF v. Rodriquez)in support of the petitioners. We also filed a related lawsuit challenging then-Attorney General Kamala Harris’s demand for nonprofit Schedule B information in IFS v. Becerra. Read more about that case here.]
Congress
New York Times: Democrats Aim to Revive a Campaign Finance Watchdog
By Carl Hulse
As the Senate prepares to begin work on a sweeping voting rights and elections overhaul bill, the two parties are bitterly divided over a proposal to restructure [the Federal Election Commission], a central plank of [S. 1.] It is a significant reason Republicans oppose the measure so strongly.
The bill would reconfigure the panel from being evenly divided to having a 3-to-2 split, making stalemates far less likely, giving more power to its presidentially appointed chairman and building in stronger enforcement mechanisms.
Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader who has long fought against campaign finance restrictions — including by steering like-minded allies onto the commission — placed revamping the panel at the top of his list of examples of Democratic overreach in a measure he said was stuffed with outlandish ideas.
“First, I would list turning the F.E.C. from the judge into a prosecutor and giving the party of the president the opportunity to harass opponents,” said Mr. McConnell when asked to itemize his objections to the bill. “Completely outrageous.”
He and fellow Republicans argue that the commission’s overhaul would set off a series of back-and-forth partisan campaign investigations each time power shifted in Washington and the makeup of the panel changed.
“I think that is a mistake,” said Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama and a senior member of the Rules Committee that is scheduled to take up the elections and campaign bill in May. “One group will go after the other. With Republicans in control, they will go after the Democrats, and vice versa.”
The Media
Michael Tracey: Biden Blames Russia For The Exact Same “Interference” That US Corporate Media Is Guilty Of
Deliberately vague weasel-word terms like “election interference” and/or “influence” gained such purchase in the past four-to-five years for a simple reason: the deliberate vagueness allowed people in power — elected officials, pundits, Intelligence Community functionaries — to claim unspecified expertise on a supposedly emerging range of threats.
The threats were portrayed as particularly scary because of their alleged potential to Undermine Our Democracy. Consequently, these power-wielding people acquired a potent tool in their arsenal to accuse political enemies, whether foreign or domestic, of contributing to the proliferation of new and scary threats. The accusations were so deliberately vague that it was almost impossible to ever rebut them; sometimes even retweeting a meme was sufficient to be implicated in a foreign plot to destroy the very foundations of America. If an act so trivial as clicking one’s mouse on a social media post could be spun as abetting a foreign-backed “interference” or “influence” scheme, then that created an endless number of booby-traps for you to walk into.
So there was nothing new about the suite of anti-Russia charges promulgated Thursday by the US federal government, and parroted as usual with maximum credulity across the US media ecosystem.
Fundraising
New York Times: Fund-Raising Surged for Republicans Who Sought to Overturn the Election
By Luke Broadwater, Catie Edmondson, and Rachel Shorey
Republicans who were the most vocal in urging their followers to come to Washington on Jan. 6 to try to reverse President Donald J. Trump’s loss, pushing to overturn the election and stoking the grievances that prompted the deadly Capitol riot, have profited handsomely in its aftermath, according to new campaign data…
A New York Times analysis of the latest Federal Election Commission disclosures illustrates how the leaders of the effort to overturn Mr. Biden’s electoral victory have capitalized on the outrage of their supporters to collect huge sums of campaign cash. Far from being punished for encouraging the protest that turned lethal, they have thrived in a system that often rewards the loudest and most extreme voices, using the fury around the riot to build their political brands. The analysis examined the individual campaign accounts of lawmakers, not joint fund-raising committees or leadership political action committees…
“We’re really seeing the emergence of small donors in the Republican Party,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist. “In the past, Democrats have been the ones who have benefited most from small-dollar donations. We’re seeing the Republicans rapidly catching up.”
Online Speech Platforms
The Hill: Facebook prevents sharing of New York Post Black Lives Matter story
By Thomas Moore
Facebook is preventing users from sharing a New York Post story about how a co-founder of Black Lives Matter spent millions of dollars to buy several homes.
Attempts to share the story Friday morning produced a Facebook error message reading, “Your content couldn’t be shared, because this link goes against our Community Standards.”
A Facebook spokesperson told The Hill that the Post story “was removed for violating our privacy and personal information policy.”
However, on Thursday night, New York Times media columnist Ben Smith posted a tweet with a further explanation for the ban…
The explanation included in Smith’s tweet said Facebook did not allow people to post confidential information and that it would remove private information including information on a person’s residence if it could lead to harm…
[Thursday] evening, Tucker Carlson mentioned it on his show.
“Facebook is now blocking the New York Post reporting,” Carlson said. “We just tried to share that on Facebook, and we got a message, ‘You can’t share this link because it goes against our community standards.’ Those standards include flacking for every left-wing activist group in America.”
New York Post: James O’Keefe of Project Veritas vows revenge on CNN and Twitter after ban
By Dana Kennedy
James O’Keefe of Project Veritas, a day after being permanently banned from Twitter, says he is preparing to launch a legal broadside against Big Tech and the mainstream media.
“We’re going to sue CNN and we’re going to sue Twitter,” the combative 36-year-old conservative activist and guerrilla journalist told The Post during a Friday interview…
“We’re going to sue a bunch of other people and we’ll represent other people suing these organizations and represent a people’s defamation defense fund under the country’s libel laws — something that no one’s ever done before,” he said.
Twitter said it banned O’Keefe because he allegedly used multiple fake accounts to boost his following and tried to “artificially amplify or disrupt conversations through the use of multiple accounts.”
O’Keefe denies ever using fake accounts. He said he got the boot because of an embarrassing exposé of CNN he released Wednesday showing secretly-recorded video of a CNN director, Charles Chester, boasting that his network produced “propaganda” aimed at defeating President Trump in the 2020 election. Chester was also caught on tape saying CNN played up the COVID-19 death toll for ratings.
The States
New York Times: Dark Money in the New York Mayor’s Race
By Giovanni Russonello
This [New York City] mayoral election is shaping up to be the city’s first in which super PACs — the dark-money groups that sprang up after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission — play a major role.
But it’s also the first race in which a number of candidates are taking advantage of a city policy that allows campaigns to gain access to more generous public matching funds, based upon their level of grass-roots support.
With the potentially decisive Democratic primary just over two months away, our Metro reporters Dana Rubinstein and Jeffery C. Mays have written an article looking at how the hunt for super PAC cash is complicating the race — and raising ethical questions about some campaigns, including a few that are also receiving public matching funds. Dana took a moment out of her Friday afternoon to catch me up on where things stand.
Must Read Alaska: Ballot Measure 2 strikes Dunbar campaign, forced to admit its dark money is from Outside Alaska
By Suzanne Downing
New campaign finance laws known as Ballot Measure 2, passed by voters in November, are beginning to sting the Forrest Dunbar campaign.
In the current attack ad against opponent Dave Bronson launched by supporters of Forrest Dunbar, the disclaimer at the end of the ad admits that “A majority of contributions to Building a Stronger Anchorage came from outside the state of Alaska.” That’s now required by law.
Majority of money is an understatement: All of money used to attack Dave Bronson is coming from a national attack dog group.
What group? The Sixteen Thirty Fund.
Ballot Measure 2 created a wide-open jungle primary for state and national seats, as well as ranked-choice voting during the General Election. None of that will go into effect until the 2022 cycle.
But the campaign finance part of the ballot measure requires greater disclosure of where the money comes from. Dark money must be disclosed in campaigns being run this year.
Only a handful of Alaskans truly understand the ballot measure, which stretches 25 pages long. Among other things, it requires persons and entities that contribute more than $2,000 that were themselves derived from donations, contributions, dues, or gifts to disclose the true sources (as defined in law) of the political contributions.
That means that groups like Building a Stronger Anchorage have to follow the law, and tell Alaskans the real source of their funding.
KTTH AM 770: New bill from state Republican ‘should help everybody interested in free speech’
By Jason Rantz
Sen. Mike Padden’s (R-Spokane Valley) measure to help protect citizens and whistleblowers and members of the press from frivolous lawsuits will become law, a measure which many believe bolsters free speech rights. The bill essentially reinstates these Anti-SLAPP protections, SLAPP standing for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.
“Well, the state Supreme Court in a case called Davis v. Cox ruled our previous Anti-SLAPP law unconstitutional, and that was about four years ago. And we’ve been trying ever since to get something through this year,” Padden told the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH.
“This year we had the benefit of the uniform law commission suggesting a uniform bill — that was the starter, and then it’s made its way through the legislative process and just yesterday was sent off to the governor. So it’s been approved by the House and then it’s up to the governor. Hopefully he will sign it.”
Nevada Appeal: Nevada lawmakers advance bill against organized harassment
By Associated Press
Nevada lawmakers are now considering whether to make people who undertake organized harassment — commonly known as doxxing — legally accountable for their acts. If passed, a bill sponsored by Assemblywoman Rochelle Nguyen, a Las Vegas Democrat, would ban the practice and allow victims to pursue civil penalties against perpetrators…
“People were personally attacking those individuals on social media, sending people to their house, coming outside their house,” Nguyen said. “They were not public officials, they were not doing anything. They were just trying to live their lives and do their jobs.” …
In a committee hearing, Assemblyman Jim Wheeler, a Mindem Republican, noted that harassment campaigns target members of both parties and said he previously had his address published online by extremist groups, though ultimately there was no incident…
The bill passed the Assembly Judiciary Committee unanimously on April 9. It has not received any significant opposition, but attorneys from the Nevada branch of the American Civil Liberties Union raised concerns about infringing on people’s First Amendment rights.
Holly Wellborn, the group’s policy director, said many defining moments in recent struggles against racism included people sharing videos and identifying information about people on the internet.
“Posting information online and in other forums is one of the few ways that ordinary people have to hold people in a position of power accountable,” Wellborn said. “Statute cannot under any circumstances be used by a government official — whether that is a police officer or a legislator — as a tool to punish innocent behavior and constitutionally protected speech.”
KOMO News: Judge orders Tim Eyman to pay $2.9M to reimburse taxpayers for campaign finance case
A Thurston County Superior Court judge on Friday ordered Tim Eyman to pay nearly $2.9 million in legal fees and costs related to Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s campaign finance lawsuit.
The sum is in addition to a $2.6 million fine issued by Judge James Dixon in February after he ruled that Eyman has been an egregious violator of state campaign finance laws. The judge also barred him for life from participating in financial aspects of political campaigns. He is now being ordered to pay back the fees incurred during the case.
Eyman has been ordered to pay $10,000 every month at the beginning of the month. He has already paid close to half a million dollars to the state in sanctions and fees related to his “willful delay” of the state’s case.
