February 20, 2024

In the News

The Hill: FEC shows how (and why) bipartisanship can still work

By Bradley A. Smith

.....Everyone loves to hate the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Politicians hate it because it regulates their campaigns. Civil libertarians hate it because it regulates speech. But mostly, “good government” types hate it, because, they claim, its bipartisan structure—it has three Democratic and three Republican appointees—makes it an ineffective enforcer.

It is true that the FEC’s bipartisan structure will lead it to tie votes at times. But this is a feature, not a bug. The FEC’s current structure intentionally ensures that bipartisan consensus is a prerequisite for determining whether a violation occurred, or for adopting regulations that can affect our vital free speech rights. In this era of “lawfare,” it is hard to imagine an agency required to regulate political campaigns would have any legitimacy without this bipartisan structure.

Think about it for a minute. Would a Democratic candidate want an FEC with Donald Trump’s majority deciding whether a violation occurred? Would a pro-life PAC want a President Biden majority on the FEC deciding whether a complaint against them deserved a full-blown investigation? To ask the question is to answer it.

In fact, the FEC is working about as well as we could expect. How easy is it to be the nation’s campaign speech cop? Yet, in the last three years, with four relatively new commissioners, the FEC has accomplished a great deal.

Charleston Gazette-Mail: David Keating: Protecting free speech in West Virginia

By David Keating

.....The First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech is perhaps the most important right we have as Americans to improve our nation. Yet, without legal protections in place, unscrupulous plaintiffs can weaponize lawsuits to prevent speakers from exercising that right.

Unfortunately, West Virginia is one of a dwindling number of states that still have no such protections. Lawmakers now have an opportunity to change that.

Supreme Court

The Atlantic: Texas’s Social-Media Law Is Dangerous. Striking It Down Could Be Worse.

By Zephyr Teachout

.....As a progressive legal scholar and activist, I never would have expected to end up on the same side as Greg Abbott, the conservative governor of Texas, in a Supreme Court dispute. But a pair of cases being argued next week have scrambled traditional ideological alliances.

The arguments concern laws in Texas and Florida, passed in 2021, that if allowed to go into effect would largely prevent the biggest social-media platforms...from moderating their content. 

I joined a group of liberal law professors who filed a brief on behalf of Texas. Many of our traditional allies think that siding with Abbott and his attorney general, Ken Paxton, is ill-advised to say the least, and I understand that. The laws in question are bad, and if upheld, will have bad consequences. But a broad constitutional ruling against them—a ruling that holds that the government cannot prohibit dominant platforms from unfairly discriminating against certain users—would be even worse.

At an abstract level, the Texas law is based on a kernel of a good idea, one with appeal across the political spectrum. Social-media platforms and search engines have tremendous power over communications and access to information. A platform’s decision to ban a certain user or prohibit a particular point of view can have a dramatic influence on public discourse and the political process. Leaving that much power in the hands of a tiny number of unregulated private entities poses serious problems in a democracy. One way America has traditionally dealt with this dynamic is through nondiscrimination laws that require powerful private entities to treat everyone fairly.

Congress

Washington Examiner: State Department threatening to obstruct ‘censorship’ investigation: House GOP

By Gabe Kaminsky

.....Republican lawmakers are accusing the State Department of threatening to obstruct their investigation into “censorship” of companies in the United States.

House Small Business Committee Republicans have continued to request grant records from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center for an inquiry into “government censorship and revenue interference of American small businesses by proxy,” which the committee launched after a series of Washington Examiner reports on the interagency group funding the Global Disinformation Index, a British think tank blacklisting conservative media from advertising dollars. Now, the Biden administration is asserting it may resort to letting the GOP-led panel review documents solely under in camera supervision, which lawmakers say is a “veiled threat to further impede” their investigation, letters show.

Free Expression

New York Times: ‘Beginning of the End’ as Assange Case Returns to Court

By Megan Specia

.....On Tuesday, Mr. Assange’s case returned to a British court for a two-day hearing that will determine whether he has exhausted his right to appeal within the U.K. and whether he could be one step closer to being sent to the United States.

Mr. Assange did not appear before the court, declining to attend virtually because of ill health, according to his lawyers, but dozens of protesters gathered outside, demanding his release.

In the United States, Assange, 52, faces charges under the Espionage Act of 1917 that could amount to a sentence of up to 175 years in prison, his lawyers say, although lawyers for the United States government had previously said that he was more likely to be sentenced to between four and six years. Here’s what to know about the long-running legal battle over his extradition and what could happen next.

Nonprofits

Daily Caller: Swiss Billionaire’s Nonprofit Sent $35 Million To Dark Money Group Propping Up Dems

By Robert Schmad

.....“It’s outrageous that the same people who decry dark money and foreign election interference don’t seem to have a problem benefitting from continued cash infusions from a foreign national,” Americans for Public Trust (APT) Executive Director Caitlin Sutherland told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Candidates and Campaigns

Wall Street Journal: What Have Negative Political Ads Done to Us?

By Gerald F. Seib

.....Ed Goeas, a longtime Republican campaign consultant, estimates that a campaign is now “lucky” if it can control 25% of the messages in its own race. He recalls campaigns in which the candidate wanted to run on a positive message, only to find that a so-called super PAC—a political-action committee that can raise money from corporations and individuals—simply decided to go negative on its own.

Goeas attributes declines in primary-election turnout in recent years in part to the growth of attack ads. “The higher the cynicism goes, the more voters are susceptible to demagoguery,” he worries. “And the more that happens, the more campaigns take that tone.”

Is there an antidote to all the negativity? Lake, the Democratic pollster, argues for a change in campaign finance laws to reduce the role of super PACs and their ability to take money from anonymous donors. It’s possible that the implosion of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign, which relied to an unusual degree on super PACs, may discourage other campaigns from going down that path.

New York Times: No, Your Honor, You Can’t Call Yourself ‘High Justice’ on the Ballot in Chinese

By Heather Knight and Amy Qin

.....In San Francisco, where more than a fifth of residents are of Chinese descent, politicians have long taken a second name in Chinese characters. And any serious candidate knows to order campaign materials in English and in Chinese.

But the city’s leniency for adopted names has frustrated some Chinese American candidates, who say that non-Chinese rivals have gone overboard by using flattering, flowery phrases that at first glance have little to do with their actual names. Some candidates have gained an advantage or engaged in cultural appropriation, the critics say.

No more. For the first time, San Francisco has rejected Chinese names submitted by 22 candidates, in most cases because they could not prove they had used the names for at least two years. The city has asked translators to furnish names that are transliterated, a process that more closely approximates English pronunciations.

The States

KQED: San Francisco Appoints First Noncitizen to Serve on Elections Commission

By Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman

.....The newest member of the San Francisco Elections Commission, a seven-member civilian body that oversees and creates policy for the city’s Department of Elections, isn’t legally allowed to vote.

Kelly Wong, an immigrant rights advocate, is believed to be the first noncitizen appointed to the commission. At a swearing-in ceremony administered by Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin on Wednesday at San Francisco City Hall, dozens of people gathered to commemorate the occasion.

Florida Politics: Why Florida’s proposed libel laws undermine conservative principles

By Drew Steele

.....The legislative impulse behind Florida’s proposed libel laws — HB 757 and SB 1780 — is understandable. Conservatives are justifiably outraged by the lies and vitriol directed at them by an overwhelmingly liberal media complex that dominates public discourse. The bills aim to hold purveyors of misinformation accountable by making it easier to sue for defamation.

Alas, these proposed laws are misguided and threaten to undermine long-cherished conservative principles. However well-intentioned, they contravene fundamental tenets that conservatives have long championed — limited government, free markets and individual liberty. By inviting more regulation and litigation, they expand state power at the expense of personal freedom. Their actual effect would be to chill speech, imperil small media outlets and open the door to the very “lawfare” tactics liberals have used so effectively against conservatives.

Miami Herald (via Orlando Sentinel): Editorial: First Amendment issues should silence Right to Rock Act

By Miami Herald Editorial Board

.....The Right to Rock Act advancing in the Florida Legislature aims to address another issue related to our still-simmering culture wars — a First Amendment question of whether entertainment venues can cancel shows due to an artist’s expressed political views.

Senate Bill 1206 and House Bill 15 would stop venues that are publicly funded or built with public money from breaking performance contracts on the performer’s lawful exercise of freedom of speech. The act states that an “owner or operator of a public venue may not cancel a live performance of an artist, a performer, or a musical group because of their … personal beliefs.” If there is a cancellation, “venue owners or operators who violate the prohibition bear the costs enumerated in the related contract with the artist, performer, or musical group whose performance was canceled.”

OpenSecrets: Virginia state lawmakers quietly killed a bill to limit campaign donations

By Jimmy Cloutier

.....The Democrat-controlled Virginia General Assembly quietly killed a bill that would limit how much money politicians can accept from campaign donors, letting the measure expire in a state House committee last week without so much as a hearing. 

The bill, introduced by Del. David Bulova (D-Fairfax), is the latest proposal establishing contribution limits to be blocked by state lawmakers in Virginia, one of five states with virtually no restrictions on political donations. Last year, a near-identical bill was voted down in a state Senate committee 10-5.