In the News
San Antonio Express-News: Texas preserving political rights
By Joe Albanese
The Institute’s Free Speech Index scores and ranks all 50 states on their laws governing political giving, grading them from A+ to F. Fortunately, Texas ranked among the top states, earning an A, one of 11 states earning an A or higher. One crucial trait these states share is that they don’t limit the freedom of individuals to give to candidates, parties and political committees, or the ability of parties and political committees to give to candidates.
Why is it so important that states allow freedom in political giving to and between these groups? Because the main effect of government-imposed restrictions on political giving is to limit the amount of speech individuals, organizations and political actors can express. Giving money is not just a show of support. It also enables candidates and groups to spread their message further…
Texas lawmakers deserve praise for preserving First Amendment freedoms. Many politicians find it easier to pass laws making it harder for voters or rival candidates to criticize them. They do so while claiming they are protecting voters from the rich when, really, they are protecting themselves. Texas is one of 11 states that has done an exemplary job of avoiding this trap. Hopefully, the Institute for Free Speech’s Index will shed light on how such states can continue producing pro-First Amendment policy – and will push others to do the same.
First Amendment
Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Evidence from Around the Framing: The Freedom of the Press Covering Authors of Books and Pamphlets
By Eugene Volokh
In this post, I’m continuing my series on “Freedom for the Press as an Industry, or for the Press as a Technology? From the Framing to Today,” based on my Penn Law Review article…
Any Framing-era understanding limiting the “freedom of the press” to the press-as-industry is especially unlikely, given the then-existing understanding that the freedom protected books and pamphlets alongside newspapers…
Books and pamphlets of that era were written largely by scientists, philosophers, planters, ministers, politicians, and ordinary citizens, rather than by members of the institutional press…
Some books of the era were funded by printers who were members of the press-as-industry. Others were funded by authors themselves, by ideological groups, or by “subscribers” who supported the cost of production by paying the printer up front for printing the book. Some books were likely published with hope of profit, and others chiefly out of a desire to spread ideas. But in each of these categories, people outside the press-as-industry wrote many of these books.
The Courts
National Review: Free-Speech Lawsuit against UC Berkeley Moves Forward
By Mairead McArdle
Conservative students at the University of California, Berkeley will be allowed to move forward with their lawsuit alleging the school discriminated against conservative speakers.
U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney ruled Wednesday that the lawsuit levied by two student groups can continue, shooting down the school’s request to dismiss it.
The Berkeley College Republicans and the Young America’s Foundation accused the school of efforts to “restrict and stifle the speech of conservative students whose voices fall beyond the campus political orthodoxy,” after two speakers they invited to campus had their events cancelled…
Despite allowing the case to continue, the judge maintained she is not convinced the university discriminated against the groups because they are conservative.
“There are no allegations suggesting those concerns were unfounded,” Chesney said of the restrictions.
Internet Speech Regulation
Fast Company: Facebook Can Still Save American Democracy From Itself
By Parag Khanna
Senators pointed to a range of band-aids to enhance transparency over online ads and curtail Facebook’s usage of personal data. The Honest Ads Act, for example, would require visible disclosure of the sponsor of ads…
As many commentators have pointed out, viral content re-posted and boosted by Facebook users themselves is significantly more far-reaching, visible and influential-ever more so once ads are demoted through filtering, blocking and labeling. This organic content can be divided into the vast majority that is normal user-generated posts and a toxic subset of deliberate “fake news” that can emanate from home or abroad…
Draconian measures like blocking foreign ISPs from promoting content to voters (whether in America, Germany or India) would only reinforce the domestic echo chamber that enables populist ignorance in the first place. Blocking “fake news” should not come at the price of stifling the global conversation Americans need to be exposed to more than most other societies.
Scapegoating Facebook for the ills of American governance ultimately won’t get America anywhere. Filter bubbles and fake news long predate social media, whether in the form of right-wing magazines, shrill talk radio or newsstand tabloids. The solution has always been-and will always be-an educated society and responsive government focused on inclusive social democracy.
FEC
Center for Public Integrity: A dubious anniversary for the Federal Election Commission
By Dave Levinthal
As of April 30, the FEC’s current four commissioners have been on the commission for a total of 32 years longer than they should have been…
Republicans Hunter and Petersen on Thursday also issued a scathing rebuttal to Weintraub’s decision this month to “break glass in case of emergency” and not vote to further defend the FEC in federal court – a highly unusual occurrence – in the lawsuit CREW v. FEC.
They lambasted Weintraub, a Democrat, for seeking “to remove the commission from its enforcement role” and “attempting to obstruct routine commission operations.” Weintraub’s actions “raise questions of bias and/or prejudgment, which, in turn, implicate serious questions of due process.”
Weintraub argued she had no choice but to take such action and effectively invite government reform advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington … to sue the American Action Network directly. Weintraub said she didn’t trust her Republican colleagues to enforce campaign disclosure laws.
“Over a difficult and frustrating decade at the commission, I have seen colleagues with a deep ideological commitment to impeding this country’s campaign-finance laws erode the public’s right to free, fair, and transparent elections,” Weintraub wrote.
Congress
Washington Post: Mick Mulvaney shows why we need to radically change our elections
By Lawrence Lessig
Reformers call to get money out of politics. But we might as well wish for zero-cost electric cars or medical care. Money is essential to politics, because politics is about speech and speech is not free. No one would say that America is overeducated about political issues, so everyone should be anxious about reforms that would cut back on the resources available to help Americans understand them.
Instead, the solution to this corruption is to focus on the problem – not the money, but the dependency. The problem with a system in which members of Congress auction access and influence is that the funders are not the people…
Yet we could easily build a system that would make the funders more representative. Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) has rallied almost 160 co-sponsors to a bill to fund congressional campaigns publicly through matching grants for small contributions. That would broaden the field of contributors substantially. But even more dramatically, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) is about to introduce a bill that would give every voter a $50 voucher to use to fund campaigns. As an experience with vouchers in Seattle demonstrates, that could radically change the character of the funders of campaigns. If done right, it could make those funders representative.
Political Parties
HuffPost: Some Democrats Want Hillary Clinton To Return The DNC’s Money
By Daniel Marans
In February 2017, the DNC agreed to pay Clinton’s group Onward Together $1.65 million for her campaign email list, analytics, donor data and related items, The Intercept reported on Wednesday. The cache of material was worth more than $5 million; Clinton’s campaign made an in-kind donation of resources worth $3.5 million, and the DNC paid for the rest.
Now a number of Democratic Party officials, including some state party chairs and DNC members, want Clinton to retroactively donate the campaign materials to the DNC and return the money that the party organ gave Onward Together…
Officials from state parties who joined the Clinton campaign’s joint fundraising agreement during the 2016 election also complained that the campaign left state parties little funding to maintain their operations.
Onward Together, which as a 501(c)(4) political nonprofit is not required to disclose its financial data, says it has distributed grants to 11 progressive groups, including Indivisible, Swing Left, Run for Something and Color of Change.
However, there are many forms of political organizing that state parties, unlike those groups, are uniquely equipped to do. For example, state parties have historically played important roles in recruiting candidates for state and local office; advising and funding those candidates; and registering and turning out voters in down-ballot races.
Candidates and Campaigns
ABC News: Trump campaign has paid portions of Michael Cohen’s legal fees: Sources
By Katherine Faulders, John Santucci, and Soo Rin Kim
Cohen has said that he did not have a formal role in the Trump campaign, and it is illegal to spend campaign funds for personal use – defined by the FEC as payments for expenses “that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s campaign or responsibilities as a federal officeholder.”
“They’re on shaky legal ground,” said Stephen Spaulding, chief of strategy at the nonprofit watchdog group Common Cause. “It sounds like they are really pushing the envelope … If the campaign were to say they are campaign-related payments, then maybe it’s okay to use campaign funds. But he can’t have it both ways.”
Legal experts told ABC News that if the payments referenced in the FEC filings are related to the Russia investigation, they likely wouldn’t violate campaign finance law, as the investigation is related to the 2016 presidential campaign. If the payments are related to the Stormy Daniels matter, however, the campaign could have a problem.
It is not clear what type of legal work the payments were for, but sources familiar with the matter said that the legal work in question was not related to Daniels.
New York Times: Mueller Has Dozens of Inquiries for Trump in Broad Quest on Russia Ties and Obstruction
By Michael S. Schmidt
Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russia’s election interference, has at least four dozen questions on an exhaustive array of subjects he wants to ask President Trump to learn more about his ties to Russia and determine whether he obstructed the inquiry itself, according to a list of the questions obtained by The New York Times…
They deal chiefly with the president’s high-profile firings of the F.B.I. director and his first national security adviser, his treatment of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and a 2016 Trump Tower meeting between campaign officials and Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton…
A few questions reveal that Mr. Mueller is still investigating possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia. In one of the more tantalizing inquiries, Mr. Mueller asks what Mr. Trump knew about campaign aides, including the former chairman Paul Manafort, seeking assistance from Moscow: “What knowledge did you have of any outreach by your campaign, including by Paul Manafort, to Russia about potential assistance to the campaign?” No such outreach has been revealed publicly.
The States
Providence Journal: Controversy lingers over Mattiello’s campaign finance reporting
By Dominic Fracassa
While House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello escaped any serious consequences for campaign spending and reporting lapses during his 2016 reelection campaign, the controversy is not over.
As of Monday, the state Board of Elections had not yet scheduled the next steps in threatened contempt proceedings against Mattiello campaign operatives Jeff Britt, Matt Jerzyk and others who did not respond to subpoenas for information about their potentially illegal roles in arranging and disseminating a mailer in which failed Republican primary candidate Shawna Lawton endorsed Mattiello, a Democrat…
The issue: state law prohibits candidates from collaborating with people who “contribute” more than the $1,000 state law allows under the guise of making a totally “independent expenditure.”
But Common Cause of Rhode Island is contemplating its own next steps – including possibly filing a complaint – after discovering that a Mattiello-controlled political action committee missed filing two required pre-election spending reports that would have disclosed just how much the House speaker’s campaign was spending on polling and other outside help at a critical time.
San Francisco Chronicle: Despite ad help from outside group, Leno sticks to campaign finance pledge
By Dominic Fracassa
The ad, which began circulating over the weekend, was paid for by an independent expenditure committee called San Francisco for All of Us, Supporting Mark Leno for Mayor. Its chief donors are Equality California, a statewide LGBTQ-rights group that endorsed Leno’s campaign in March, and United Here Local 2, a union representing hotel employees.
Leno has repeatedly worked to make campaign finance – and his vocal rejection of independent expenditure committees – a centerpiece of his campaign. He’s also been acutely critical of one of his rivals in the race, Supervisor London Breed, for refusing to sign his “fair campaign pledge,” which calls on all candidates in the mayor’s race to “publicly denounce, renounce and reject all independent expenditures made on my behalf or against any other candidates.”
Zoë Kleinfeld, a spokeswoman for Leno’s campaign, said Leno continues to abide by the pledge, and has asked Equality California and Local 2’s members to “support his candidacy by contributing directly to his campaign and refraining from participating in outside expenditures.” …
Leno’s campaign also sought to draw a distinction between the groups spending on his behalf, compared with those spending on behalf of Breed.
“One of the primary functions of unions, LGBTQ and tenants organizations is to elevate their endorsed candidates into office. This is a stark contrast to the special-interest objectives of a select few billionaires who single-handedly bankroll city elections,” Kleinfeld said.
