This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected].  

Washington Examiner: The IRS still plays political speech police

.....This month marked the 10th anniversary of the Tea Party scandal: The first public admission by then-Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner that the IRS had targeted conservative groups due to their political views.

.....The undersigned organizations, which represent a broad coalition across the political spectrum, thank you for vetoing House Bill 1236.

.....This report examines the relationship between the states with the most corruption and the states that offer the widest range of free political expression. The states that perform the best on free political expression metrics, in this context, are those that have the fewest campaign finance restrictions. If more campaign finance regulations indeed prevent corruption, then we would expect that states with the least campaign finance restrictions to have higher rates of corruption.

Slate: The Urgent Warning That Got Cut From a Supreme Court Opinion 20 Years Ago

.....More than 20 years ago, then–Supreme Court Justice David Souter tried to warn that big money in politics risked turning United States officials into tools of an emerging “plutocracy.” We now know from recently released case files that Souter had to strike the language in his draft Supreme Court opinion in a 2000 campaign finance case, Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC, as the price to secure Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s vote. It’s too bad, because Souter’s warning is one that American political leaders, including justices on the Supreme Court itself, needed to hear. That warning was never made and thus never heeded. Today, American plutocracy—from Congress to inside the walls of the court itself—is alive and well.

Justice Souter was one of the most important, if underrated, voices among Supreme Court justices on questions of money in politics. His opinion in Shrink Missouri and similar cases in the early 2000s offered a jurisprudence of the First Amendment that is so different from the current Citizens United–fueled era in which limits on money in politics are mostly meaningless.

New York Times: Missteps and Miscalculations: Inside Fox’s Legal and Business Debacle

By Jim Rutenberg, Michael S. Schmidt and Jeremy W. Peters

.....In August 2021, the Fox Corporation board of directors gathered on the company’s movie studio lot in Los Angeles. Among the topics on the agenda: Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against its cable news network, Fox News.

Washington Examiner: Biden State Department 'stands by' disinformation grant to conservative blacklister

.....The State Department "stands by" its widely scrutinized grant to a group the Washington Examiner revealed is blacklisting conservative media outlets, according to a letter to Congress.

Daily Beast: Social Media Age Requirements Are Anti-Free Speech

.....Since the dawn of the commercial internet, Americans have spoken and accessed information online without providing their names.

The Atlantic: Political Campaigns May Never Be the Same

By Russell Berman

.....Depending on whom you ask in politics, the sudden advances in artificial intelligence will either transform American democracy for the better or bring about its ruin. At the moment, the doomsayers are louder...

CBS News: DeSantis campaign will receive $500K raised by super PAC, a source says. Campaign finance experts call it "unprecedented"

.....Campaign finance experts called the move “unprecedented” and had mixed reactions on if it violated FEC regulations.The transfer of “hard” campaign dollars — money raised under federal fundraising limits — from a super PAC to a campaign has not ever been tried, largely because different laws govern the two types of fundraising entities.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Even after election, Georgia law gives Kemp, Jones big-money edge

.....After he was outspent by Democrat Stacey Abrams in 2018, Republican lawmakers backing Gov. Brian Kemp didn’t want to see a repeat in 2022.

State Sen. Jason Esteves, D-Atlanta, filed legislation late in the 2023 session to eliminate the committees, which would force all candidates to follow the same fundraising rules — such as donation limits — again. It didn’t go anywhere in the Republican-dominated Senate, and Esteves said that’s not surprising.

NBC News: Ron DeSantis administration officials solicit campaign cash from lobbyists

By Matt Dixon and Jonathan Allen

.....Officials who work for Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration — not his campaign — have been sending text messages to Florida lobbyists soliciting political contributions for DeSantis' presidential bid, a breach of traditional norms that has raised ethical and legal questions and left many here in the state capital shocked.

Philadelphia Inquirer: Philly’s ethics board usually flies under the radar. That changed with its lawsuit against a super PAC backing Jeff Brown.

By Sean Collins Walsh

.....The regulation of super PACs is almost nonexistent in federal elections. But in Philadelphia, the ethics board actively enforces its campaign finance rules, and in December, Creamer and board chair Michael H. Reed published an opinion piece in The Inquirer to remind everyone.

Read an article you think we would be interested in? Send it to Tiffany Donnelly at [email protected]. For email filters, the subject of this email will always begin with "Institute for Free Speech Media Update."  

The Institute for Free Speech is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that promotes and defends the First Amendment rights to freely speak, assemble, publish, and petition the government. Please support the Institute's mission by clicking here. For further information, visit www.ifs.org.