New from the Institute for Free Speech
Nina Turner’s Self-Serving Campaign Finance Myth
By Tiffany Donnelly
In Tuesday’s Democratic primary in Ohio’s 11th Congressional District, former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner was defeated by Cuyahoga County Councilwoman Shontel Brown. Turner doesn’t seem to be taking the loss so well.
“We didn’t lose this race – the evil money manipulated and maligned this election,” she proclaimed during her “concession” speech.
As it turns out, as of late July, Turner had outraised her opponent by $2.5 million. She also benefited from celebrity and high-profile endorsements, which surely didn’t hurt her ability to stay in the news cycle and raise small dollar donations. If she wasn’t talking about her campaign funding, what exactly is the source of this supposedly evil money?
I surmise it has something to do with comments she made earlier Tuesday. She tweeted about the “billionaire-funded Super PACs” trying to “buy” the election.
Of course. Why not blame everyone’s favorite scapegoat: groups of like-minded citizens pooling their resources to support or oppose political candidates independently of those candidates’ campaigns. How wicked!
The Courts
Lawfare: The Real Takeaway From the Enjoining of the Florida Social Media Law
By Alan Z. Rozenshtein
On June 30, Judge Robert Hinkle of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida preliminarily enjoined a controversial Florida law targeting social media platforms. Senate Bill 7072 was enacted in May and would levy fines and impose additional penalties against social media platforms that blocked or otherwise inhibited content from political candidates and media organizations. The technology news website Ars Technica reported excitedly that the injunction “tears Florida’s social media law to shreds”; other media reports have been similarly complimentary of the decision. While Hinkle was correct to enjoin this particular law, and his novel analysis of the First Amendment position of social media platforms is a welcome addition, the real lesson of the Florida law is that government restrictions on the content moderation decisions of private platforms are more constitutionally viable than has generally been assumed.
FEC
Slate (“What Now” Podcast): Washington’s Most Broken Institution?
Hosted by Mary Harris
The Federal Election Commission can barely get anything done. With its commissioners stuck in partisan gridlock, one is finding new ways to make sure election law is upheld.
Guest: Ellen Weintraub, commissioner at the FEC.
Candidates and Campaigns
Sun Sentinel: Millions of reasons to watch this candidate for Congress
By Sun Sentinel Editorial Board
Should someone wealthy be able to buy an advantage in a campaign and perhaps purchase the office itself?
Florida’s new big spender is Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who has put more than $2.3 million into her candidacy in District 20 in Broward and Palm Beach counties — the most of any congressional candidate in the country. With about $2 million on hand as of June 30, she’s far better stoked than any of seven other Democrats in the primary on Nov. 2…
[Money] coarsens campaigns with attack ads and defines which candidates are viable regardless of what they stand for. Paid speech drowns out free speech and distorts democracy beyond anything the Founders could have foreseen.
Online Speech Platforms
Bloomberg: Facebook Disables Accounts Tied to NYU Research Project
By Kurt Wagner and Naomi Nix
Facebook Inc. has disabled the personal accounts of a group of New York University researchers studying political ads on the social network, claiming they are scraping data in violation of the company’s terms of service…
The researchers are part of a project called the NYU Ad Observatory, which asks people to download a browser extension that collects data on what political ads the users see on Facebook, and how those ads were targeted…
Facebook moved to penalize the researchers in part to remain in compliance with a 2019 data privacy agreement with the Federal Trade Commission, in which the company was punished for failing to police how data was collected by outside developers, [Facebook’s Mike] Clark said…
“Facebook is silencing us because our work often calls attention to problems on its platform,” [lead researcher Laura] Edelson wrote in an emailed statement. “Worst of all, Facebook is using user privacy, a core belief that we have always put first in our work, as a pretext for doing this. If this episode demonstrates anything it is that Facebook should not have veto power over who is allowed to study them.”
The States
Wisconsin Examiner: The uphill battle to reform campaign finance laws
By Erik Gunn
Democratic lawmakers who are circulating draft bills to tighten campaign finance laws acknowledge that their efforts face steep hurdles, including opposition from the Legislature’s Republican majority and a series of Supreme Court decisions that favored looser campaign finance laws instead.
KSNT: Kansas resident’s ‘F*** Biden’ flag can’t stay in yard, town says
By Noah Ochsner and Mark Feuerborn
“F*** Biden and F*** you for voting for him!” These are the words on a flag the City of Blue Rapids deemed too inappropriate to be in David Sain’s front yard…
The city ultimately cited Sain with promoting obscenity, as defined in the “Kansas Uniform Public Offense Code.” Although some people have shown they find the flag offensive, political speech is protected under the First Amendment, according to an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas.
“Regulating what people say is exactly what the First Amendment is designed to prevent, and so as a general matter this is exactly the kind of thing that the First Amendment would be aimed at protecting,” said ACLU Attorney Josh Pierson.
