In the News
Bloomberg Government: Push to Revive FEC Could Curb Court Action on Campaign Finance
By Kenneth P. Doyle
Advocates of stricter campaign finance law enforcement fear a Senate Republican push to restore a quorum on the Federal Election Commission could thwart their ability to pursue alleged violations in court.
The Senate Rules and Administration Committee is expected to vote Thursday to advance Texas election lawyer James “Trey” Trainor to fill a GOP vacancy on the panel…
“For the FEC to do its job to protect the voices of all voters, not just special interests, the agency and the nomination process must be reformed,” Trevor Potter, an election lawyer and former Republican FEC commissioner who’s president of the Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement in March opposing Trainor’s confirmation.
Attacks similar to those now being leveled at Trainor, “have been lobbed at every Republican nominee for the past 20 years,” Bradley Smith, a former Republican FEC commissioner who heads the nonprofit Institute for Free Speech, wrote in a Washington Examiner op-ed in March.
Trainor’s critics claim they want the commission’s quorum restored, but they don’t want any Republican commissioners “holding typical Republican views when it comes to interpreting the complex labyrinth of campaign finance law,” Smith wrote.
Supreme Court
Wall Street Journal: Court Hears Free-Speech Challenge to Robocall Ban
By Jess Bravin
A federal prohibition on robocalls to mobile phones looked safe after Supreme Court arguments Wednesday, as justices pushed back on claims that the First Amendment entitled political organizations to use automated dialers and recorded voices to reach unwilling audiences…
Congress banned the robocalls in a 1991 law, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. In a 2015 amendment, however, it authorized robocalls to collect federal debt. A group representing political consultants, who see robocalls as cost-effective means to deliver their clients’ messages, seized on that exception to challenge the ban under the First Amendment, which generally doesn’t permit the government to play favorites with permitted speech based on its content.
In an April 2019 decision, the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Richmond, Va., agreed that Congress unconstitutionally had favored one form of speech over others. But to the political consultants’ consternation, it simply eliminated the exception allowing government debt collectors to use robocalls, rather than striking down the entire prohibition on automated telemarketing.
On Wednesday, Roman Martinez, a lawyer for the American Association of Political Consultants, told the court that an unconstitutional limit on free speech shouldn’t be cured by constricting more speech.
The 1991 law bars his clients “from using some of the most effective tools for communication now available: automated text messages and calls to cellphones,” Mr. Martinez said. By carving out an exception in 2015, Congress undermined its rationale for the robocall ban altogether, Mr. Martinez said, since consumers hate debt-collection calls even more than political pitches.
The Courts
Austin American-Statesman: Sen. Cornyn unblocks Twitter critic after lawsuit
By Nicole Cobler
One day after an Austin man sued U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in federal court for banning him from Cornyn’s Twitter feed, the Texas Republican unblocked him…
Tod Beardsley, the director of research at Massachusetts-based cybersecurity firm Rapid7, argued that Cornyn engaged in “viewpoint-based discrimination and censorship” on a public forum…
By Friday afternoon, Beardsley was able to access Cornyn’s Twitter feed again…
Multiple users tweeted in the past month that they too had been blocked by the senator.
Kay Bell, a writer for the blog Don’t Mess With Taxes, tweeted Friday that she was blocked by Cornyn. She also shared a screenshot with the American-Statesman, showing that she was still blocked from his official feed.
Bell said she was blocked March 28, after criticizing Cornyn in a tweet.
NLRB
Washington Examiner: In dumb union case, a Twitter joke becomes a federal case
By Quin Hillyer
Somebody needs to send administrative law judge Kenneth Chu back to the salt mines.
On April 27, Chu issued one of the silliest rulings imaginable in finding Ben Domenech, publisher of the Federalist online journal, guilty of violating the National Labor Relations Act for a satirical Tweet he posted on June 6, 2019. Responding to news that union employees of the more liberal online publication Vox had conducted a walkout, Domenech tweeted the following:
“FYI @fdrlst first one of you tries to unionize I swear I’ll send you back to the salt mine.”
The Federalist has only six full-time employees. None of them have ever tried to unionize, nor would it make sense for them to do so. As the Federalist is a conservative publication, and conservatives are usually seen as less open to special privileges for unions, it is not likely any of those employees would even desire to unionize.
None of his employees complained. Instead, the complaint was filed by a progressive activist with no prior affiliation or dealings with the Federalist.
Nonetheless, Judge Chu determined that Domenech’s tweet amounted to a threat of retaliation for potential labor organizing, in contradiction of Section 8(a)(1) of the NLRA, which makes it unlawful to “restrain, or coerce employees,” with regard to unionizing rights…
Indeed, the move to silence Domenech is itself an attempt at intimidation and a threat to First Amendment guarantees of free speech.
Media
Wall Street Journal: CBS Blames Source for Fake News
By James Freeman
Project Veritas is a controversial media watchdog which has employed questionable tactics. But it may be on to something with its claim that a recent CBS News report included medical staff posing as patients waiting for coronavirus tests.
A recent CBS report showed footage of the alleged waiting line at a Cherry Health facility in Michigan and separately featured Gov. Gretchen Whitmer blaming the federal government for not doing enough to prepare for testing needs.
When contacted by this column, CBS News provided the following statement:
CBS News did not stage anything at the Cherry Health facility. Any suggestion to the contrary is 100% false. These allegations are deeply disturbing. We reached out to Cherry Health to address them immediately. They informed us for the first time that one of their chief officers told at least one staffer to get in the testing line along with real patients. No one from CBS News had any knowledge of this prior to [Tuesday night]…We take the accuracy of our reporting very seriously and we are removing the Cherry Health portion from the piece.
When asked to respond to the CBS statement, Cherry Health provided a statement from its CEO Tasha Blackman, which reads in part:
To my knowledge, CBS This Morning did not stage any part of their visit to our site.
Cherry Health initially didn’t respond to the allegation that its own staff participated in staging a longer waiting line. When pressed on this issue, the organization responded with another statement attributed to Ms. Blackman: “I did not instruct any of our staff to get in their cars as part of the line of vehicles.”
Online Speech Platforms
New York Times: Who Ultimately Decides What Content Is Removed From Facebook? Now We Do
By Catalina Botero-Marino, Jamal Greene, Michael W. McConnell and Helle Thorning-Schmidt
[I]n November 2018…Facebook committed to creating an independent oversight body that will review Facebook’s decisions about what content to take down or leave up. Over the past 18 months, more than 2,000 experts and other relevant parties from 88 countries have contributed feedback that has shaped the development of this oversight board, which will have 20 members and is scheduled to become operational this year.
The oversight board will focus on the most challenging content issues for Facebook, including in areas such as hate speech, harassment, and protecting people’s safety and privacy. It will make final and binding decisions on whether specific content should be allowed or removed from Facebook and Instagram (which Facebook owns).
Today, the first set of members of the oversight board is being announced. We are the four co-chairs…
The board members come from different professional, cultural and religious backgrounds and have various political viewpoints. Some of us have been publicly critical of Facebook; some of us haven’t. But all of us have training and experience that can help the board in considering the most significant content decisions facing online communities. We are all independent of Facebook. And we are all committed to freedom of expression within the framework of international norms of human rights. We will make decisions based on those principles and on the effects on Facebook users and society, without regard to the economic, political or reputational interests of the company.
NPR: Why Fake Video, Audio May Not Be As Powerful In Spreading Disinformation As Feared
By Philip Ewing
Sophisticated fake media hasn’t emerged as a factor in the disinformation wars in the ways once feared – and two specialists say it may have missed its moment.
Deceptive video and audio recordings, often nicknamed “deepfakes,” have been the subject of sustained attention by legislators and technologists, but so far have not been employed to decisive effect, said two panelists at a video conference convened on Wednesday by NATO…
The perils of deepfakes in political interference have been discussed too often and many people have become too familiar with them…
Following all the reports and revelations about election interference in the West since 2016, citizens know too much to be hoodwinked in the way a fake video might once have fooled large numbers of people, one expert argued…
Tim Hwang, director of the Harvard-MIT Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative, agreed that deepfakes haven’t proven as dangerous as once feared, although for different reasons.
Hwang argued that users of “active measures” (efforts to sow misinformation and influence public opinion) can be much more effective with cheaper, simpler and just as devious types of fakes – mis-captioning a photo or turning it into a meme, for example.
Candidates and Campaigns
New York Times: Both Parties Wonder: How Much Do Conventions Even Matter Anymore?
By Adam Nagourney and Matt Flegenheimer
Has the American political convention become a ritual holdover from another age?
For all the organizing, money, time and energy poured into a four-day extravaganza of parties, speeches, forums, lobbying and networking, there is a strong argument that they have become among the less consequential events…
Yes, candidates get their prime-time perch to speak to the nation…The events can provide a lift in the polls, but there is no shortage of convention nominees, John McCain and Michael S. Dukakis among them, who can attest to just how ephemeral that boost is…
The parties themselves have become far less influential, particularly since Mr. Trump overcame the Republican power structure to win the nomination in 2016. They have been weakened by rising anti-establishment beliefs on the left and the right, notably among younger voters, and by the sentiment that parties are not as essential to ideas or governing anymore…
Kevin Madden, who was a senior adviser to Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president in 2012, recalled that the party’s convention that year produced just one enduring scene: a curious, semi-scripted bit from the actor Clint Eastwood, who conversed onstage with an empty chair.
“They spend a year developing, it’ll take an hour to execute, and right afterward the effect will already be going through its life cycle,” Mr. Madden said of the modern convention, “and disappearing into another chaotic media environment.”
New York Times: What Joe Biden Needs to Do to Beat Trump
By David Axelrod and David Plouffe
Joe Biden is mired in his basement, speaking to us remotely, like an astronaut beaming back to earth from the International Space Station.
The former vice president is a man of vast experience in government…
Yet in the midst of a catastrophic virus and devastating economic coma that command our full attention, Mr. Biden finds himself on the outside looking in. Governors and mayors have taken center stage in the only story that matters.
And while President’s Trump’s well-watched White House briefings have been, for him, a decidedly mixed bag, video of the president in action has been a striking contrast to the image of his solitary challenger, consigned to his basement…
As with every other facet of our lives, the Covid-19 pandemic has transformed how the presidential race will be run. Every aspect of campaigning must be rethought, from how you present yourself and reach and organize voters to how you stage a national convention in a time when large public gatherings are proscribed…
Online speeches from his basement won’t cut it…
While television remains a potent force, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are all essential in a Covid-19 world in which candidate travel and voter contact will be severely limited. In many respects, they are the campaign, not an important part of it.
Bangor Daily News: Using campaign cash to help coronavirus relief
By The Editorial Board
In Maine’s Senate race, the well-resourced campaigns of incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins and expected Democratic challenger Sara Gideon can both point to steps their organizations – and the candidates themselves – have taken to reach out and directly help Mainers during the coronavirus crisis…
The Collins campaign says staff have helped some people get groceries, volunteered with local organizations like agencies on aging, and helped connect small business owners with resources related to the Paycheck Protection Program that Collins co-authored as part of the federal response to the virus. Collins herself has used personal funds to supply more than 500 New Balance masks to first responders.
Meanwhile, the Gideon campaign says it has raised more than $20,000 for three Maine charities, and that staff have been helping pick up groceries and volunteer in their communities. Gideon has bought and delivered groceries to local seniors and helped deliver school nutrition meals to families in the RSU school district…
It’s not particularly realistic, but it would be great to see some sort of campaign truce that helps Maine charitable organizations on a larger scale, while also sparing Mainers from the mutually assured distraction that comes with misleading negative ads and less informed debate about actual issues.
Any such armistice would need buy-in from the outside groups buying millions in air time.
The States
Baltimore Sun: Maryland settles challenge over law regulating online campaign ads
By Pamela Wood
The Maryland state government agreed to pay $400,000 to several newspapers to settle a lawsuit challenging a law that would have required the papers to collect and share information about political advertisers.
The state Board of Public Works voted Wednesday to approve the settlement without discussion.
The Baltimore Sun, several other newspapers and the region’s press association sued in 2018 to block a law passed earlier that year that required companies that are paid to run online campaign ads to collect information about the advertisers and turn it over to state elections officials.
The goal was to prevent foreign interference in elections…
The newspapers argued that while the goal may be compelling, the law was overly broad, put a burden on Maryland companies and infringed on free speech and other Constitutional rights.
Further, the newspapers’ lawyers argued that “there is no evidence that any newspaper website in Maryland unwittingly published advertising surreptitiously placed by foreign nationals to disrupt the 2016 election.”
The newspapers noted that even internet giant Google decided to stop accepting political ads in Maryland due to the new law.
The money will come from the budget of the Maryland State Board of Elections, which is the agency that the newspapers sued.
ABC 6: Bexley City Council members hold special meeting to address neighborhood protesters
By Jessi Starkey
City council members in Bexley held an emergency meeting Wednesday night to address recent protesters outside of Ohio Department of Health director Dr. Amy Acton’s home.
There are signs along the street to prohibit parking in the area. There are also signs citing protesters may not violate Bexley City law 648.11 which prohibits yelling, shouting and using a bullhorn. Although they have a right to protest, city leaders said they do not have a right to disturb the peace…
“We know, if we try to heavy hand them into leaving”, Chief Rinehart said, “that just increases your crowd. It becomes their Alamo. It becomes their battle cry.”
During the meeting council members brought in constitutional law expert and Capital University professor Dan Kobil. He explained the first amendment is broadly protected, and there has to be a serious and harmful threat for action to be taken.
“It’s a high bar,” Kobil said. “They have to have an intent to harm. They also have a second amendment right and an Ohio right to carry a weapon.”
Council members discussed possibilities for an ordinance such as requiring the protesters to keep moving or making them social distance.
However, Kobil explained how difficult it is to put legislation in place regarding constitutional rights. Chief Rinehart also said a new city law may escalate things more.
“They would see this for what it is,” He said. “They would know this is a new law restricting what they consider to be their constitutional rights.”
