Free Speech
BBC: Canada election: Charities warned against climate change ads
The issue arose because one party running in October’s election denies climate change is a threat.
That has led Elections Canada to warn groups that running paid advertisements about climate change could be considered partisan activity.
Advocates called the guidance “ludicrous” and say it will dampen urgent climate discussions…
“The guidance is extremely troubling,” Stephen Cornish, the CEO of the David Suzuki Foundation, an environmental charity, told the BBC…
Canada has strict regulations on partisan advertising during the election period, whether they be from candidates, parties or third-party organisations.
Individuals or organisations that take out “issue” advertisements that cost C$500 ($375, £309) or more during the election period have to register with Elections Canada as a third party.
“Issue” advertisements are paid media campaigns that take positions on issues related to parties’ platforms but do not explicitly address a particular candidate or party…
Mr Cornish says it is “absolutely ludicrous” that charities are barred from advocacy work on climate change during the election just because one of the party’s platforms denies it is an issue…
A spokesperson for Elections Canada told the BBC there is no way of knowing if climate change will be an issue until the election officially begins…
If an environmental group decides to register, it could threaten their charitable status, since tax-exempt non-profits are not supposed to engage in partisan activity.
As a result, both Environmental Defence and the David Suzuki Foundation say they will have to avoid taking out any climate change ads during the election, but that the rules will not stop them advocating for action on their own platforms.
The Courts
Michigan Advance: ‘There’s a gray area’: Campaign finance experts weigh in on Inman bribery case
By Nick Manes
At a motion hearing earlier this month, U.S. District Court Western District of Michigan Chief Judge Robert Jonker declined to outright dismiss any of the three charges against [state Rep. Larry] Inman. He did, however, move a charge of lying to federal law enforcement forward toward a likely jury trial.
Meanwhile, charges of extortion and attempting to solicit a bribe remain under advisement. Jonker raised questions about what the line between campaign contributions and bribery is in light of Citizens United, the landmark 2010 U.S. Supreme Court case.
Richard Hall, a professor of public policy and political science at the University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, has studied and written about campaign finance law for years. Speaking with the Advance this week, Hall was blunt in his assessment of the text messages allegedly sent by Inman, a northern Michigan lawmaker, to union officials seeking campaign contributions in exchange for a vote against prevailing wage repeal.
“As a student of campaign finance law, I don’t know how this case doesn’t meet the standard of causing the appearance of corruption,” Hall said.
Experts like Hall and Aaron McKean, legal counsel for state and local reform at the Washington, D.C.-based campaign finance group Campaign Legal Center, say that Supreme Court decisions in the last decade have limited the legal definition of corruption.
McKean said Monday, however, that the evidence that’s already publicly available in the Inman case is “at least [at] the starting point of meeting the standard for quid pro quo corruption.” …
The University of Michigan’s Hall says it’s been particularly difficult to prosecute bribery in recent years, and pointed to the 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned corruption charges against Bob McDonnell, the Republican former governor of Virginia.
Washington Times: Indicted firm: Mueller meddling accusations ‘at best misleading and at worst demonstrably false’
By Rowan Scarborough
“The allegation in the Indictment claiming that IRA spent thousands of dollars each month to purchase advertisements is at best misleading and at worst demonstrably false because the discovery indicates that many of the advertisements took place after the 2016 presidential election or did not involve any clearly identifiable candidate,” Concord attorney Eric A. Dubelier argued in a Monday filing in U.S. District Court…
The filing’s main argument has to do with the identities of defendants. It claims the government refuses to say which company employees violated FEC laws. Only one Concord employee is listed: its head, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a food service mogul close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“This means that the responsible conspirator would have had to know that of the millions of rubles equating to hundreds of thousands of dollars of Concord’s money allegedly spent by IRA, at worst approximately $2,900 were spent for advertisements and $1,800 were spent for rallies that the FEC could possibly conclude were independent expenditures for express advocacy,” Mr. Dubelier said in a 24-page motion…
The indictment charges Concord with defrauding the U.S. by not filing with the FEC. It also failed to file with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Mr. Dubelier said Concord has no presence in the U.S. to act as a foreign agent.
He asked the judge to order the prosecution to identify who specifically failed to register.
“If the Court does not require the government to identify which defendant(s) were required to register under FARA (and on behalf of whom) or file under FECA it will be impossible for Concord to prepare for trial; and moreover, the Court will not know until sometime during trial whether or not the indictment should be dismissed as a matter of law,” Mr. Dubelier argued.
A trial may be scheduled for spring.
First Amendment
Reason: Beto O’Rourke Proposes Plan to Punish Tech Companies for Failing to Censor Hate Speech
By Billy Binion
Democratic presidential hopeful and former congressman Beto O’Rourke announced on Friday that he would like to remove legal protections from tech companies if they fail to police hate speech online. As with previous attempts to interfere with internet speech, the move would be an assault on the First Amendment.
O’Rourke joins a growing chorus of lawmakers and political activists who would like to amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act…
In essence, O’Rourke wants the government to suppress speech that he finds distasteful. But as the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear, “hate speech” is protected by the First Amendment.
Most recently, the Court affirmed that principle in Matal v. Tam, which ruled 8-0 that the Asian-American band The Slants could trademark its name, even though some people found the name to be racially objectionable…
The federal government told the Supreme Court that the band’s name was too offensive to be trademarked, while Simon Tam, the band’s Asian-American founder, said just the opposite, arguing that he wanted to “take ownership” of Asian stereotypes. Who can say decisively what is too offensive for public consumption?
That debate continues to plague a myriad of political matters. Consider the rhetoric around abortion, for instance. After the 2015 shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood, politicians and activists placed some of the blame on pro-life protesters, accusing them of inciting violence with their words…
As Justice Alito pointed out in Matal v. Tam, certain speech can certainly be unsavory, depending on the listener. That much is clear. But the First Amendment also makes clear that it is not the government’s job to decide what is beyond the pale.
Online Speech Platforms
Axios: Social media reconsiders its relationship with the truth
By Kaveh Waddell
For years, Facebook and other social media companies have erred on the side of lenience in policing their sites – allowing most posts with false information to stay up, as long as they came from a genuine human and not a bot or a nefarious actor…
Now, the companies are considering a fundamental shift with profound social and political implications: deciding what is true and what is false…
The new approach, if implemented, would not affect every lie or misleading post. It would be meant only to rein in manipulated media – everything from sophisticated, AI-enabled video or audio deepfakes to super-basic video edits like a much-circulated, slowed-down clip of Nancy Pelosi that surfaced in May.
Still, it would be a significant concession to critics who say the companies have a responsibility to do much more to keep harmful false information from spreading unfiltered.
It would also be an inflection point in the companies’ approach to free speech, which has thus far been that more is better and that the truth will bubble up…
To defend against the spread of manipulated media, which experts believe threaten elections, businesses and human rights, the companies are now discussing potential new policies to call them out or even take them down…
There’s a new realization among some of the companies that their approach to date may no longer be defensible, says Charlotte Stanton of the Carnegie Endowment, who convened the previously unreported June meeting.
“It’s great to believe in the conflict of ideas, but the reality is that when we’re inundated with so much information, that doesn’t really work,” Stanton says. “There was an ‘aha’ moment for some of the platforms when we had that discussion.”
The Hill: Facebook pulls Trump campaign ad violating platform’s policy
By Owen Daugherty
Facebook has reportedly pulled an ad for President Trump’s reelection campaign after it violated the platform’s advertising policies.
Popular Info reported Monday that Facebook pulled the Trump ad because it violated a policy that prohibits ads targeting “personal attributes.”
The ad in question featured a crowd of women with the caption, “The Women for Trump Coalition needs the support of strong women like you!”
Facebook’s ad policy prohibits “content that asserts or implies personal attributes,” including, among other things, “direct or indirect assertions or implications about a person’s … gender identity.”
Facebook reportedly pulled the ad following an inquiry from Popular Info.
“We’ve notified the campaign that the ads violate policy. They cannot continue to run unless fixed,” a Facebook spokesperson told The Hill in a statement.
Independent Groups
New York Times: Outside Money Flows Into Race for Susan Collins’ Senate Seat
By Associated Press
Maine Momentum, the group running the new anti-Collins ad, plans to spend at least $716,000 on ads geared toward the Senate race from now until the end of December, records show. Maine Momentum is a nonprofit “dark money” group that can raise unlimited sums and does not have to reveal its donors. And because it was recently founded, it won’t have to report how much it raised until next year.
Maine Momentum spokesman Chris Glynn, [Democratic challenger Sara] Gideon’s former communications director, said the group is focused on Collins’ record on “health care, taxes and the money she has been taking from special interests in Washington.”
But Collins’ campaign said it’s ironic that Democrats are embracing such tactics, noting how they have often lamented the loosened campaign finance rules that have led to a proliferation of dark money spending.
IRS
Washington Post: IRS analyst pleads guilty to leaking Michael Cohen’s financial records
By Devlin Barrett
An Internal Revenue Service analyst pleaded guilty Wednesday to illegally disclosing sensitive financial records about President Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen…
John Fry, who had worked as an investigative analyst with the IRS in San Francisco, entered his plea in federal court there. Fry was charged in February with the unauthorized disclosure of suspicious activity reports, or SARs. Such reports are meant to flag potentially unlawful financial conduct to government investigators but do not necessarily indicate wrongdoing…
Prosecutors say Fry shared the reports about Cohen with Michael Avenatti, a lawyer who rose to national prominence representing adult-film actress Stormy Daniels in litigation arising from her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump more than a decade ago. Cohen is serving a three-year prison sentence for financial crimes, including arranging hush-money payments to Daniels and another woman who also alleged an affair with Trump…
Officials say Avenatti took Fry’s information and made it public by posting it on social media.
Fry’s is not the only case in which a government employee has been charged with the crime of disclosing sensitive government documents related to figures of interest in the now-shuttered investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the former special counsel.
Last year, a senior Treasury Department official was charged with giving a journalist the details from suspicious activity reports involving former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and other associates of the president.
Fundraising
Politico: PAC money flowed to DNC ahead of August meeting
By Maggie Severns
Democratic candidates for president have sworn off corporate PAC money, but the Democratic National Committee took in more than $155,000 in funds from corporate PACs in July, ahead of a major DNC meeting this weekend that 2020 candidates will attend…
The DNC raised additional money from PACs earlier this year, but the funds raised in July represent a sharp uptick in corporate PAC money raised by the Democratic committee in 2019. The DNC and other Democratic committees have not pledged to back away from corporate PAC contributions, despite some activist pressure to follow the lead of many Democratic candidates. The DNC’s Republican counterpart, the Republican National Committee, also raises money from PACs.
Labor union groups, including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; American Federation of Teachers; and the United Auto Workers, also collectively contributed more than $500,000 to the DNC last month.
Some of the PAC contributions came to the DNC as part of the committee’s solicitations for a major fundraiser it is throwing on Thursday in San Francisco, a DNC spokesperson said, but the spokesperson did not elaborate on which donations were connected to the event. Thirteen presidential candidates are slated to be in San Francisco this week for the DNC meeting.
The States
WAMC News Albany: NY Public Finance Commission To Hold First Meeting
By Karen Dewitt
The first meeting of the commission created to devise a public campaign finance system for New York’s political races is scheduled for Wednesday. Advocates hope the commission, which has been slow to start, will start taking steps towards a final report due in December.
The commission, announced in March, does not yet have a staff or a schedule of promised public hearings, but advocates for public campaign financing in New York say they hope that will be announced at the meeting.
John Kaehny, with the government reform group Reinvent Albany, says his group has 18 recommendations for the commission.
“Making sure that there’s a small donor matching program for New York that is something akin to what New York City has,” Kaehny said. “Small campaign donations would be matched 6 to 1.”
Kaehny says New York’s donation limits are among the highest in the nation, and he’d like to see those greatly reduced…
Republicans are against public financing of campaigns, saying taxpayers should not have to pay for political ads and other campaign-related activities.
