August 23, 2024

In the News

The Federalist Society: Reviving the Lost Liberty: Why the Assembly Clause Matters Today

By Nathan Ristuccia 

.....I recently delved into the history of the First Amendment’s Assembly Clause, which safeguards “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” A good-faith debate over this right has existed since the 1700s. Even then, the Founders disagreed about its scope. Did it, for instance, extend to secret or anonymous gatherings?

In the fall of 1875, for example, a convention in Raleigh proposed gutting North Carolina's 1868 Reconstruction Constitution—a constitution written by black freedmen and Northerners and passed as a condition of the state’s readmission to Congress. Democrats held a slim legislative majority and, considering the 1868 Constitution’s origins, likely would have preferred to repeal the document altogether. However, state law only allowed delegates to propose amendments to the Reconstruction Constitution, not to abolish it.

The Courts

Associated Press: She took a ‘ballot selfie.’ Now she’s suing North Carolina elections board for laws that ban it

By Makiya Seminera

.....A woman is suing the North Carolina elections board over state laws that ban most photography in polling places after she took a selfie with her ballot in March.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. Eastern District Court of North Carolina by Susan Hogarth.

The lawsuit centers around a letter Hogarth said she received from the North Carolina State Board of Elections asking her to remove a post on X that included a selfie she took with her completed ballot during the March primary election.

ACLU: ACLU Urges Eighth Circuit to Protect Students' Right to Learn about Race in School

.....The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU affiliates within the Eighth Circuit, and PEN America filed a friend-of-the-court brief today in Walls v. Sanders, a First Amendment challenge to Arkansas’s ban on “prohibited indoctrination” in K-12 public schools. The law chills full and frank classroom discussion about race. The brief, submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, argues that students have an independent First Amendment right to receive information, including in public school curricula.

Courthouse News: Feds charge crypto lobbyist linked to former FTX executive with campaign finance crimes

By Josh Russell

.....Federal prosecutors on Thursday unsealed an indictment accusing convicted former FTX executive Ryan Salame's girlfriend of receiving illegal campaign contributions during her unsuccessful bid for a New York congressional seat in 2022.

In the four-count indictment, authorities say cryptocurrency lobbyist Michelle Bond, 45, illegally financed her campaign with hundreds of thousands of dollars wired to her from Salame. She then lied to the House Ethics Committee about the origin of those campaign funds, they say.

Congress

Washington Post: Democrats signal voting rights bills will top the agenda if Harris wins

By Patrick Marley

.....Earlier Wednesday, Schumer said that if the party keeps the Senate majority, it will have the votes necessary to “change the rules” and make voting rights legislation a top priority, a reference to carving out an exception to the filibuster.

“One of the first things I want to do, should we have the presidency and keep the majority, is change the rules and enact both the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Act,” Schumer said at a panel discussion in Chicago on voting rights…

In an effort to curb “dark money” in politics, the bill would require groups to disclose their major donors and put in place new rules meant to ensure they do not coordinate with candidates. It would also provide more public funding for congressional candidates who focus their fundraising on small donors.

FEC

Washington Examiner: Trump whistleblower-turned-Democratic House candidate accused in FEC complaint of violating federal law

By Gabe Kaminsky

.....Eugene Vindman, a Trump whistleblower-turned-Democratic congressional candidate in Virginia, is facing a Federal Election Commission complaint over his campaign’s allegedly illegal coordination with an outside group.

The complaint, filed with the FEC on Wednesday by the Functional Government Initiative, calls for the agency to investigate Vindman, the Democrat’s campaign, and a political action committee called VoteVets. That’s because, in the telling of the watchdog group, a recent interaction with the press appears to show that VoteVets, which supports progressive veterans for office such as Vindman, made an “excessive and impermissible” in-kind contribution to Vindman’s campaign.

FCC

RadioWorld: FCC Extends Time to Comment on Political AI Disclosure

By Paul McClane

.....The FCC has extended the deadline for the public to comment about its proposals regarding artificial intelligence in political advertising.

While such an extension is not normally big news, the change seems to make it less likely that the commission will or even could implement any new rules before the national elections in November.

Candidates and Campaigns

RealClearPolicy: How Kamala Harris Earned Rebukes from ACLU and SCOTUS on Privacy

By Jerry Rogers

.....In a time of rising political violence, privacy is essential to free speech. Privacy protects us from extremists bent on silencing opposing views by any means necessary. For generations, Americans on the right and the left have enjoyed the freedom to privately organize and speak about issues such as taxes, education, border control, and public safety. 

Yet these rights face an increasingly powerful opponent: Vice President Kamala Harris. In her prior roles as a U.S. Senator and Attorney General for California, Harris repeatedly took aim at Americans’ privacy and First Amendment rights. If she becomes our next president, grassroots organizations representing traditional American values may soon find their donors under attack.

New York Times: The Year of the A.I. Election That Wasn’t

By Sheera Frenkel

.....This was supposed to be the year of the A.I. election. Fueled by a proliferation of A.I. tools like chatbots and image generators, more than 30 tech companies have offered A.I. products to national, state and local U.S. political campaigns in recent months. The companies — mostly smaller firms such as BHuman, VoterVoice and Poll the People — make products that reorganize voter rolls and campaign emails, expand robocalls and create A.I.-generated likenesses of candidates that can meet and greet constituents virtually.

But campaigns are largely not biting — and when they have, the technology has fallen flat. Only a handful of candidates are using A.I., and even fewer are willing to admit it, according to interviews with 23 tech companies and seven political campaigns. Three of the companies said campaigns agreed to buy their tech only if they could ensure that the public would never find out they had used A.I.

Much of the hesitation stems from internal campaign polls that found voters were nervous about A.I. and distrusted the technology, said four officials involved in Democratic and Republican campaigns. When campaigns turned to A.I. to generate photos or videos of candidates, the numbers were even worse, one of them said.

Wired: ‘Hundreds of Ads in Minutes’: This Startup Thinks AI Can Drown Out the MAGA Movement

By Kate Knibbs

.....Despite concerns, some US political campaigns are embracing generative AI tools. There’s a growing category of AI-generated political content flying under the radar this election cycle, developed by startups including Denver-based BattlegroundAI, which uses generative AI to come up with digital advertising copy at a rapid clip. “Hundreds of ads in minutes,” its website proclaims.

BattlegroundAI positions itself as a tool specifically for progressive campaigns—no MAGA types allowed. And it is moving fast: It launched a private beta only six weeks ago and a public beta just last week. Cofounder and CEO Maya Hutchinson is currently at the Democratic National Convention trying to attract more clients. So far, the company has around 60, she says. (The service has a freemium model, with an upgraded option for $19 a month.)

“It’s kind of like having an extra intern on your team,” Hutchinson, a marketer who got her start on the digital team for President Obama’s reelection campaign, tells WIRED.

Politico (Digital Future Daily): Trump’s crafty new use of AI

By Mohar Chatterjee

.....It’s true that enforcing bans on certain uses of AI in political speech could get complicated quickly, both practically and constitutionally, but Farid says enforcing disclosure should be relatively easy if regulators target the right chokepoint.

Asking AI companies to build guardrails into their models isn’t the way, Farid said. “I can’t stop people from making fake shit. Open AI, Midjourney, Firefly, they did a pretty good job of putting guardrails, but then along comes Flux and Grok, and you’re like, ‘Alright, somebody’s gonna create an unhinged generative AI. There’s nothing I can do about that.’” And the wide availability of open source foundation models makes it even harder to regulate who has access to which AI tools, he added.

Asking social media platforms to enforce disclosure rules might make a difference: “The problem is not the AI, it’s social media,” he said. “It’s the democratization of the distribution channels that makes this so dangerous.”