January 26, 2024

We're Hiring!

2024 Summer Associate Legal Fellowship

.....The 2024 Institute for Free Speech Summer Associate Legal Fellowship is a unique opportunity for current law school students to explore a career in public interest and First Amendment law. The program is open to students who will finish their first or second year of law school by the summer of 2024.

Fellows are eligible to earn $10,000 in salary for their 10 weeks of employment.

During the fellowship, students may work with Institute for Free Speech attorneys for a portion of their time. Each fellow will also be expected to complete a project. Applicants are encouraged to be creative in suggesting a project as part of their application.

In the News

Des Moines Register: Iowa's top leaders need to quit treating reporters as obstacles

By Editorial Board

.....An insightful journalist covering Iowa state government won a capitulation from the Legislature on Wednesday. After rather transparently giving Laura Belin of the Bleeding Heartland website the runaround for much of the past five years, the Iowa House gave Belin a press credential.

The rules for credentialing had for years been moving goalposts that always managed to exclude Belin, who writes and edits her site from a progressive viewpoint and is often critical of Republicans who control state government. Belin sued House Chief Clerk Meghan Nelson in federal court on Jan. 19 — and a few days later she had her credential.

The sequence of events reinforces the conclusion that there was never any neutral principle about journalism or workspace at issue here…

“I hope this victory for press freedom will make any public official reluctant to deny access to reporters, either as retaliation for tough coverage or because of political bias,” Belin said in a prepared statement. 

Washington Post: Liberal blogger granted press credentials in Iowa House days after filing lawsuit

By Associated Press

.....A liberal journalist who blogs about Iowa politics was granted press credentials for the Iowa House of Representatives Wednesday, days after she filed a lawsuit alleging the Republican-controlled House was denying her her First Amendment rights.

Candidates and Campaigns

New York Times: The Secretive Court Fight Roiling New York’s Democratic Socialists

By Nicholas Fandos

.....Though it often acts like one, the D.S.A. counts fewer than 10,000 members in New York, making it too small to qualify as a political party. It created D.S.A. for the Many in 2020 to serve as something of a stand-in to support the group’s candidates for state office and to build on efforts to push Democrats leftward in primaries and policy fights…

It had registered as a multicandidate committee, a special legal status that allowed it to coordinate with candidates and spend near unlimited funds toward their election, but only if those candidates explicitly authorized the committee to do so in writing.

That’s where the problems began. The group filed paperwork stating that it was authorized to support more than a dozen candidates…

But an investigation by Mr. Johnson found that the group — a forceful champion for more transparency in the campaign finance system — never actually produced the documentation required under the law to prove the authorizations: either a sworn affidavit from the candidate or a signed state form. Without them, Mr. Johnson concluded that the group had no special status and therefore had raised and spent more than the legal limit supporting the candidacies.

Washington Examiner:  Failed Democratic candidates pocket ‘fellowship’ cash from opaque progressive group to run in 2024

By Gabe Kaminsky

.....A little-known organization fighting for “the interests of progressive voters through public advocacy” is quietly overseeing an unusual “fellowship” to ensure repeat Democratic congressional hopefuls get paychecks between runs.

New Politics Leadership Academy, a charity that trains prospective candidates and has an affiliated New Politics 527 advocacy group also focused on “recruiting, developing, and electing servant leaders who put community and country over self,” previously sponsored the fellowship, and it ran a similar one in 2019 that drew legal scrutiny from campaign experts for cutting large checks to failed candidates. Years later, New Politics Leadership Academy has moved on from the initiative, which Our American Future Foundation, a newly-formed charity incorporated in Washington, D.C., by an associate of Democratic superlawyer Marc Elias, recently absorbed, according to documents obtained by the Washington Examiner.

OpenSecrets: Press Release: OpenSecrets Releases Report on Foreign-Influenced Corporations’ Money in State Elections

.....In a groundbreaking new report on political giving by foreign-influenced companies across multiple key states, OpenSecrets sheds light on the escalating influence of foreign-influenced companies in U.S. state-level elections. 

OpenSecrets’ new report examines disclosed corporate contributions in six key states, analyzing campaign finance disclosures where the contributors are companies that have met the criteria for being foreign-influenced corporations under the proposed foreign influence legislation.

The report sheds light on the flow of money from foreign-influenced companies into political contributions in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New York and Washington. Despite federal campaign finance laws prohibiting direct contributions by foreign nationals, subsidiaries of foreign corporations and U.S.-registered corporations with foreign ownership have been found to contribute millions to political campaigns.

The States

Washington Post: Florida lawmakers move to bar kids from social media in latest statehouse push

By Lori Rozsa and Molly Hennessy-Fiske

.....Florida’s House of Representatives has greenlit what could be one of the nation’s strictest laws aimed at protecting children online, passing a bill that would bar anyone 16 and younger from using social media.

While lawmakers voiced some concerns about enforcement, parental rights and First Amendment issues, the bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, and on Thursday moved to the state Senate, which is expected to take up the bill soon.