DOJ

Lawfare: Justice Department Will Monitor State and Local Pandemic Policies for Civil Rights Violations

By Elliot Setzer

Attorney General Bill Barr today issued a memo directing all U.S. attorneys to examine state and local policies for directives that could violate the constitutional rights and civil liberties of individual citizens. Barr also directed the assistant attorney general for civil rights and the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan to oversee and coordinate efforts to monitor state and local policies and potentially take actions to correct them.

You can read the memo here.

Supreme Court

Brennan Center: Supreme Court Delivers a Blow to Secret Campaign Spending

By Ciara Torres-Spelliscy

[W]ith the pandemic dominating news stories, the media has overlooked recent developments in campaign finance cases, such as the Court’s refusal last month to hear a case called Doe v. Federal Election Commission, thus leaving in place a pro-disclosure ruling from a lower court. This move by the Court marks a positive step toward more transparency in elections and against the use of straw donors.

Media

National Review: A Rant against the Media

By David Harsanyi

The media is a well-funded institution that sets the agenda, narrative, tone and focus of coverage while conspiring with a major political party. Reporters don’t openly collude with Democrats (well, most of the time they don’t), they merely share the same objectives and set of values. This wasn’t a problem created by Trump’s emergence. It’s problem that’s been festering for decades.

Now, I wish conservatives would build their own journalistic outfits to proactively chase down big stories and, in part, dictate the conversation. I’ve never understood why more big donors, and there are plenty of them, haven’t diverted dollars from political candidates, think tanks, and PACs to help build a reliable and serious conservative news infrastructure.

Online Speech Platforms

Washington Post: As Chinese propaganda on covid-19 grows, U.S. social media must act

By Vanessa Molter, Renee DiResta and Alex Stamos

Mark Zuckerberg has said that he believes Facebook should write policy that “helps the values of voice and expression triumph around the world.” Limiting the reach of Chinese disinformation and propaganda would be an important step toward that goal…

First, these platforms should not allow paid political advertisements from media outlets registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Twitter has banned all state media ads after Chinese state media ads against the Hong Kong protesters on Twitter caused a backlash. Facebook and YouTube still allow, and financially benefit from, Chinese state media ads on their platforms, even though these outlets are registered under FARA. This means the U.S. government must continue to be aggressive about rooting out state media and mandating foreign agents register.

New York Times: How a Digital Ad Strategy That Helped Trump Is Being Used Against Him

By Nick Corasaniti

Facebook users in five key swing states have been seeing a peculiar sequence of political ads pixelating their news feeds for the past six months.

It begins with a carousel ad from a page called United Research Group asking them to fill out a lengthy survey. Soon afterward, multiple ads from Pacronym, a progressive super PAC, begin to litter the Facebook experience of about half of those who had been surveyed. Then, an ad for a different but related survey appears.

This rather specific experience is an intentional and coordinated effort to reach persuadable voters in critical presidential battlegrounds, a result of months of work by a group of former Facebook employees and data scientists at the progressive nonprofit group Acronym.

Essentially, the group, which includes some who worked on the Trump campaign in 2016, has co-opted the political ad function on Facebook to perform real-time persuasion message testing, to get a sense of how voters are reacting to ads as they see them.

Candidates and Campaigns

Los Angeles Times: In shift, Bloomberg offers ex-campaign staff health coverage

By Associated Press

Michael R. Bloomberg will cover the cost of healthcare for his former presidential campaign staffers through November, reversing course on a decision that had prompted outrage and sparked lawsuits against the billionaire businessman.

The former New York mayor had initially enticed staffers to join his long-shot presidential campaign by offering generous benefits and pay and promising them employment through November, even if he didn’t win the Democratic nomination. Bloomberg initially indicated that, even if he didn’t win the nomination, he would transition his campaign apparatus into an independent entity working to help the Democratic Party defeat President Trump.

Those commitments helped the candidate build out a staff of thousands across 43 states within months of his late entry into the race. But after winning just one U.S. territory during the March 3 Super Tuesday primary contests, Bloomberg bowed out of the race the next day and laid off most of his staff soon afterward.

Washington Post: Biden campaign replaces Democratic National Committee CEO, signs deal to expand fundraising

By Michael Scherer

Former vice president Joe Biden’s presidential campaign installed new administrative leadership at the Democratic National Committee on Friday, as the two organizations forged a new deal that will allow for a dramatic expansion of fundraising capacity in the coming months…

The announcement came as the party and the Biden campaign signed a joint fundraising agreement Friday, creating the “Biden Victory Fund,” that will allow the unofficial nominee to raise $360,600 each from individual donors to help the coordinated campaign. Donors to Biden’s effort had been limited to donations of $2,800 for his primary and general election campaigns.

The initial joint fundraising agreement, an interim measure meant to speed money into the Biden operation, will be expanded in the coming weeks to include state parties, raising the maximum donation amounts further for wealthy individuals, a party official said.

Right to Protest

Bloomberg: California Activists Fight Stay-at-Home Order to Hold Protests

By Robert Burnson

Two California activists claim a ban on non-essential activities is infringing on their right to protest at the State Capitol Building.

Ron Givens, a gun store employee in Sacramento, and Christine Bish, a Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, sued Governor Gavin Newsom and other state officials Monday seeking a judgment that the state’s stay-at-home order is unconstitutional.

Detroit Free Press: Law firm says it will sue Royal Oak if it sanctions commissioner who attended protest

By Christina Hall

A nationally known, conservative law firm says it will file a federal lawsuit against the Royal Oak City Commission if it votes to censure Commissioner Kim Gibbs for attending a recent protest in Lansing against the governor’s pandemic restrictions.

Ann Arbor-based Thomas More Law Center said it is representing Gibbs, who it says is the target of a “majority-liberal block of the City Commission, in an unconstitutional attempt to punish her” because she attended the April 15 protest against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s tightened stay-at-home executive order.

The States

OPB: Portland Mayor’s Reelection Campaign To Limit Future Donations After Court Ruling

By Rebecca Ellis

While the city’s auditor said Portland is not yet ready to enforce the Oregon Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of strict campaign finance limits, Mayor Ted Wheeler announced late Friday his campaign will begin abiding by a $500 cap on future donations. 

The announcement came on the heels of a statement from the city auditor’s office noting it can’t immediately enforce the Supreme Court’s Thursday ruling to support Multnomah County campaign limits. That statement from the auditor leaves candidates in local races free to collect large contributions for the time being. 

EFF: Not a Hoax: The Very Real Threat of Political ‘Deepfakes’ Laws

By Mark Rumold

Let’s look at Texas’s law, which makes it a Class A misdemeanor for a person to create and publish a “deep fake video” within 30 days of an election. The creator of the video must have the intent to “injure a candidate” or to “influence the result of an election.” Convictions are punishable by a fine or up to a year in prison…

Like many legislative attempts to prohibit political ‘deepfakes,’ Texas’s law is hopelessly overbroad. For example, the law could conceivably criminalize the use of fiction or dramatizations in political videos. One of the most influential American political ads of all time-“Daisy”-appears to depict a real person performing an action that did not occur in reality: in the ad, a young girl picks a flower right before a nuclear bomb detonates. The ad was created by Lyndon Johnson’s political campaign to “injure” a political candidate, Barry Goldwater, and to “influence the result of the election.” And, Republicans, at the time, charged that the ad was a “panic-inspired falsehood[]” aimed at “scaring the wits out of children in order to pressure their parents”-a charge that sounds suspiciously like an “intent to deceive.” If this law were on the books in the 1960s, the creators and publishers of the video on LBJ’s campaign might have been charged with a crime.