New from the Institute for Free Speech
Announcing Summer Fellow Joshua Monhollon
The Institute for Free Speech is excited to welcome Joshua Monhollon as a Summer Fellow for the summer of 2021. He will spend his time researching political speech topics and assisting the investigatory needs of the President and the organization’s legal and research staff.
Joshua is a rising third-year law student at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School. He is the Symposium Editor for the Journal of Law, Economics and Policy and a member of the Moot Court Board. Prior to law school, Joshua received a BFA in Theatre Performance with a minor in Business Administration from Baylor University.
Joshua became interested in First Amendment issues while studying constitutional law this past year at George Mason. “The First Amendment and political speech rights are under attack from a growing barrage of legislation and intimidation by public officials. We need informed debate on the importance of the First Amendment for a government by the people. To borrow from Justice Thomas, ‘[p]olitical speech is … the lifeblood of a self-governing people.’ I am excited to participate in this debate by joining the Institute for Free Speech,” Joshua said.
Supreme Court
Newsweek: Free Speech Makes for Strange Bedfellows
By Ilya Shapiro
It can be difficult to find bipartisan agreement on any subject these days. Everything from wearing masks to rebuilding roads has become ideologically divided. So it’s refreshing to find that some things can still unite us—like a pending Supreme Court case involving, of all things, a high schooler’s right to say “F**k cheer” on Snapchat.
In Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L., argued recently and with a decision expected by the end of June, more than 100 groups from across the political spectrum and nine states filed briefs supporting a teenager who sent the offending message while hanging out at a convenience store one weekend. “Snaps” are designed to disappear within 24 hours, but someone took a screenshot of this one, showed it to a cheerleading coach, and now it’s the most important case on student speech rights in decades.
Congress
By Brooke Singman
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican Sen. Mike Braun are rolling out a measure Thursday that would prevent Democrats from “weaponizing” the Internal Revenue Service to target conservatives, by codifying a Trump-era rule that would protect groups regardless of their political ideology, and prevent the IRS from doxing donors, Fox News has learned.
Fox News exclusively obtained the legislation on Wednesday, titled the “Don’t Weaponize the IRS Act,” which would ensure that certain tax-exempt groups are no longer required to provide the names and addresses of major donors on annual returns filed with the IRS.
The bill would, though, require the tax-exempt groups to report to the IRS the amounts of donations from their substantial donors, while maintaining the names and addresses of those donors for their own records.
Sources familiar with the legislation said the removal of the requirement to report the names and addresses of donors would help protect taxpayers’ First Amendment rights, while noting that such information is not needed for tax administration purposes…
The legislation was drafted due to provisions under H.R. 1, which would permit the IRS to investigate and consider the political and policy positions of nonprofit organizations before granting tax-exempt status, which Republicans argue would enable IRS officials to target organizations engaging in First Amendment activity with “disfavored views.”
Inside Sources: A Constitutional Remedy for the Campaign Money Aristocracy
By Jim Rubens
Conservatives are waking up to a troubling new reality: We are now being vastly outspent by a torrent of campaign money from liberal donors living in deep blue states…
As a New Hampshire former Republican state senator and liberty-minded conservative, I’ve long been concerned, as a matter of principle, about the corrosive effects on our democracy of unlimited amounts of out-of-state spending in our political system. The notion that such contributions would not breed corruption nor cause Americans to lose faith in our republic – which the Supreme Court asserted in its Citizens United decision – is wholly disconnected from reality. I also know, from conversations I’ve had with fellow conservatives, that many have deep reservations about the out-of-state money arms race, but are reluctant to give up Republicans’ past advantage here. Now that the tide has turned against us, it’s time for conservatives to return to first principles…
The solution lies in the constitution itself – a 28th amendment to help curb concentrated money’s corrupting influence over politics. The corruption crisis is so blindingly obvious to Republican voters that more than two-thirds of us back a 28th amendment to the constitution to restore power to Congress and the states to set limits on non-candidate campaign money.
FEC
Courthouse News: Big Tent
The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center filed a Federal Election Commission complaint against Big Tent Project Fund, an anti-Bernie Sanders group that sought to stifle his chances in the 2020 presidential election but — according to the complaint — failed to register as a PAC or publicly disclose its donors as required by law.
Free Speech
Wall Street Journal: The Price of Woke Corporate Politics
By The Editorial Board
Some of America’s most prominent CEOs have been getting political, as in woke political, and perhaps they figured it was cost-free. They are now learning the hard way that it isn’t, as a national advertising campaign targets their brands and credibility.
The campaign launched Tuesday by Consumers’ Research, a conservative nonprofit, takes aim at Nike, Coca-Cola and American Airlines. But others could be the targets, says Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research. The 30-second spots will air on national cable news, as well as “in local markets where the companies are headquartered,” the nonprofit said. One source says the overall ad buy could be up to $13 million.
Each ad treats the companies like a political candidate would an opponent, hitting the company’s reputation and contrasting its high-minded social-justice rhetoric with its other behavior.
Online Speech Platforms
Politico: Facebook set up ‘special operation center’ for content related to Israeli–Palestinian conflict
By Laura Kayali
Facebook set up a “special operation center” that is active 24 hours a day to moderate hate speech and violent content related to the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict, a senior Facebook executive said Wednesday…
The center gathers native speakers of Arabic and Hebrew to “stay ahead of the trends,” remove content that violates the company’s policies or reinstate material that was wrongfully deleted, Bickert said. “We’ll keep it going as long as necessary,” she added.
New York Times: Mob Violence Against Palestinians in Israel Is Fueled by Groups on WhatsApp
By Sheera Frenkel
Since violence between Israelis and Palestinians escalated last week, at least 100 new WhatsApp groups have been formed for the express purpose of committing violence against Palestinians, according to an analysis by The New York Times and FakeReporter, an Israeli watchdog group that studies misinformation…
While social media and messaging apps have been used in the past to spread hate speech and inspire violence, these WhatsApp groups go further, researchers said. That’s because the groups are explicitly planning and executing violent acts against Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up roughly 20 percent of the population and live largely integrated lives with Jewish neighbors.
Candidates and Campaigns
New York Times: An ‘Army of 16-Year-Olds’ Takes On the Democrats
By Ellen Barry
[A group of young activists known as the Markeyverse] carried out ambitious digital organizing, using social media to conjure up an in-person work force — “an army of 16-year-olds,” as one political veteran put it, who can “do anything on the internet.”
They are viewed apprehensively by many in Massachusetts’ Democratic establishment, who say that they smear their opponents and are never held accountable; that they turn on their allies at the first whiff of a scandal; and that they are attacking Democrats in a coordinated effort to push the whole party to the left, much as the Tea Party did, on the right, to the Republicans.
[Calla] Walsh, for one, is cheerfully aware of all those critiques.
In a podcast this spring, she recalled the day last summer when the Kennedy campaign singled her out in a statement, charging that negative campaigning online had created a vicious, dangerous atmosphere.
“I won’t lie, I was terrified,” she said. But then, she said, the fear evaporated.
“That’s when I realized I had a stake in this game: They are scared of me, a random teenager on the internet who just happened to be doing some organizing with her friends,” she said. “I think that made us all think, ‘Hey, they’re scared of us. We have power over them.’” …
Numerous political strategists in Massachusetts refused to comment for this article. This is in part because, as one of them put it, “I don’t want to be bashing high schoolers on the record,” but equally, perhaps, because they are wary of becoming targets online.
The States
Cincinnati Enquirer: FirstEnergy attorneys: Political donations in federal bribery probe are protected by the First Amendment
By Jessie Balmert
Akron-based FirstEnergy and its leaders want to dismiss a lawsuit brought by shareholders alleging securities fraud, saying the company’s political donations were protected by the First Amendment.
New York Daily News: NYC Comptroller candidate Dave Weprin’s use of campaign cash to pay fine is ‘not permissible’: election lawyer
By Michael Gartland
City comptroller candidate and state Assemblyman David Weprin took seven years to fully pay off a six-figure debt to the city’s Campaign Finance Board — and when he finally did, he used money raised through his state political fund.
That could be a problem, according to some legal and ethics experts.
AP News: Student’s arrest for racist post sparks free speech debate
By Dave Collins
The arrest of a Connecticut high school student accused of posting racist comments about a Black classmate on social media is being supported by civil rights advocates, but free speech groups are calling it an unusual move by police that raises First Amendment issues.
A 16-year-old student in a classroom at Fairfield Warde High School allegedly took a photo of a Black classmate and posted it on Snapchat on May 7 with a caption that included a racial slur and racist comments. The teen who made the post is white, according to the Black student’s mother.
Police in Fairfield, Connecticut, arrested the student on a state hate crime charge of ridicule on account of creed, religion, color, denomination, nationality or race. The misdemeanor dating back to 1917 has been called an unconstitutional infringement on free speech rights by the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut and some law school professors.
Pennsylvania Capital-Star: Pa.s’ top two Republicans announce plans for lobbying reform, but is it enough?
By Marley Parish
A new package of bills could tighten the guidelines for Pennsylvania lobbyists. Though it’s a step toward reform, advocates say they need more details.
In a statement released Monday, Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, R-Centre, and House Speaker Bryan Cutler, R-Lancaster, unveiled plans to draft legislation and build on the state’s existing Lobbyist Disclosure Act by regulating lobbyists’ influence and establishing a code of conduct for lobbyists.
“There is a tangled web of money and influence between the people who lobby the General Assembly and the people who run the political campaigns,” Corman said in a statement. “This package of bills would help untangle the web and sever the ties between those two entities while ensuring the public has more access to information about the individuals and organizations who are seeking to influence public policy.”
