December 14, 2023

The Courts

Courthouse News: Georgia Libertarians fight two-party campaign finance law at 11th Circuit

By Kayla Goggin

.....An Eleventh Circuit panel will decide whether or not to give the Libertarian Party of Georgia another chance at pursuing its challenge to a campaign finance law that allows some political candidates to accept unlimited campaign contributions, a fundraising advantage the party says benefits Republican and Democratic hopefuls over third-party contenders.

An attorney for the Libertarian Party of Georgia and its 2022 lieutenant governor candidate Ryan Graham asked the three-judge panel to revive a lawsuit that claims an amendment to the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Act violates the First Amendment and the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In the lawsuit, filed against Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr and the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission, the party claims the act unfairly allows Republican and Democratic candidates to create special “leadership committees” to accept campaign contributions over the typical limits.

Fox News: Pennsylvania man takes local officials to court for First Amendment right infringement over front yard sign

By Greg Wehner

.....A Pennsylvania man is taking Olyphant Borough officials to court after a sign he erected on his property that read "F--- the Government" was deemed illegal, allegedly infringing on the homeowner’s First Amendment right.

Congress

U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means: Oversight Subcommittee Schweikert Opening Statement – Hearing on Tax-Exempt Charities Influencing the Political Process

.....“Today we’d like to hear from our panel of expert witnesses about the growth and changes the tax-exempt sector has undergone as well as discuss some recent political activities of these organizations. I have been alarmed to read of several public accounts of large sums of money, to the tune of millions of dollars, flowing from foreign nationals into U.S.-based 501(c)(3)s and 501(c)(4)s, which then have directed these funds into influencing American politics. While U.S. law makes it illegal for foreign nationals to donate directly to U.S. candidates for office, it seems that these actors have found a loophole. This should raise eyebrows for all Americans. At the same time, I would like to emphasize that Americans have a First Amendment right to privacy when they donate to nonprofits. 

“Unfortunately, under current law, if Vladimir Putin were to donate money to a U.S.-based 501(c)(4), this organization is not required to disclose the source of this donation. Hypothetically, this organization could subsequently direct this money to a Super PAC that could help elect candidates for federal office."

Full witness list, witness statements, and video

FEC 

Wiley: FEC Looks to End Year With Significant Changes to Regulations on Nonprofit Internet Communications and Candidate Salaries

By Lee E. Goodman

.....The agenda for the Federal Election Commission’s (FEC or Commission) final meeting of 2023 this Thursday, December 14, signals several significant rulemakings and policy recommendations to Congress. The first rulemaking, titled “Technological Modernization,” proposes a number of updates and clarifications to existing regulations to adapt the agency’s rules to technological advancements like third-party commercial fundraising platforms and internet communications by organizations. The second, titled “Candidate Salaries,” proposes significant amendments to existing regulations that permit campaign committees to pay salaries to candidates. The Commission also will take up a set of legislative recommendations to Congress.

Free Expression

Tablet: College Presidents Are Lying About Free Speech

By Julia Schaletzky

.....[C]ollege administrators have been weaponizing the First Amendment when it suits them, and blatantly disregarding it when it doesn’t. When the Proud Boys were threatening to have a presence during a protest recently, Berkeley brought the FBI to campus, just in case. For the pro-Palestine protesters too busy to do their coursework, we are being asked to use our “discretion to administer grace and flexibility” for grading so that they don’t fail their classes.

The rule of law requires that laws are enforced equally against all, so that we are not governed by the whims of the powerful but by a shared set of norms and rules that apply equally. Unfortunately, in the self-governing world of academic institutions, the rule of law is easily abandoned by like-minded ideologues working together to bring about what they call “social change,” which apparently requires that one group’s idea of the good must monopolize the entire space and mission of the university.

New York Times: Campus Speech Codes Should Be Abolished

By James Kirchick

.....[T]wo wrongs don’t make a right. If the problem with campus speech codes is the selectivity with which universities penalize various forms of bigotry, the solution is not to expand the university’s power to punish expression. It’s to abolish speech codes entirely.

New York Times: Black Students Are Being Trained to Think They Can’t Handle Discomfort

By John McWhorter

.....But the tacit idea is that when it comes to issues related to race — and, specifically, Black students — then free speech considerations become an abstraction. Where Black students are concerned, we are to forget whether the offense is directed, as even the indirect is treated as evil; we are to forget the difference between speech and conduct, as mere utterance is grounds for aggrieved condemnation.

It seems to me that, in debates over free speech, Jews are seen in some quarters as white and therefore need no protection from outright hostility. But racism is America’s original sin, and thus we are to treat all and any intimation of it on university campuses as a kind of kryptonite, even if that means treating Black students as pathological cases rather than human beings with basic resilience who understand proportion and degree.

This is certainly a double standard imposed on Jewish students, as my colleagues Bret Stephens and David French, among others, have argued. However, we must also consider the imposition of this double standard upon young Black people. To assume they can’t handle anything unpleasant infantilizes bright, serious students preparing for life in the real world.

Candidates and Campaigns

New York Times: Inside the Troll Army Waging Trump’s Online Campaign

By Ken Bensinger

.....Mr. Heestand doesn’t work for Mr. Trump, but he belongs to a small circle of video meme-makers who have effectively served as a shadow online ad agency for his presidential campaign. Led by a little-known podcaster and life coach, this meme team has spent much of the year flooding social media with content that lionizes the former president, promotes his White House bid and brutally denigrates his opponents.

Much of the group, which refers to itself as Trump’s Online War Machine, operates anonymously, adopting the cartoonish aesthetic and unrelenting cruelty of internet trolls…

“It’s ominous,” said Saurav Ghosh, a former Federal Election Commission lawyer who now works at the Campaign Legal Center, a government watchdog nonprofit.

Mr. Ghosh said the meme team’s activities appeared to fit the definition of a super PAC — an entity that can raise and spend unlimited sums to support a candidate or issue but must report its donors and spending. Yet because the group operates outside the campaign finance system, its finances and funders remain unknown.

The lack of transparency “creates an avenue for lots of money to be spent in coordination with a campaign and having a serious impact on races without the public having any sense of what’s really going on,” Mr. Ghosh said.

The States

White Mountain Independent: Attys. ask judge to block voter-approved campaign finance law

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services

.....The attorney for the top two Republican lawmakers asked a judge Wednesday to block implementation of a 2022 voter-approved law designed to guarantee that people know who is trying to influence elections.

Brett Johnson argued that Proposition 211 is an infringement on the constitutional powers of the Legislature. He said that's because it allows the Citizens Clean Elections Commission, charged with enforcing the new "dark money" law, to make any rules its wants, rules that are not subject to any legislative approval.

"It is so broad that it is injurious to the legislative body, which is in this case is the Legislature," he told Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Ryan. And Johnson, hired by House Speaker Ben Toma and Senate President Warren Petersen, said that the whole voter-approved statute collapses if the judge determines that the rule-making authority is unconstitutional.