Email from The Institute for Free Speech The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech October 16, 2024 Click here to subscribe to the Daily Media Update. This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected]. In the News Original Jurisdiction: Judicial Notice (10.13.24): October Surprises By David Lat .....Moms for Liberty was represented by the Institute for Free Speech’s Alan Gura (whose name might be familiar to some as the lawyer who won District of Columbia v. Heller, the landmark Second Amendment case). In an interview with Law.com, Gura said that the Eleventh Circuit’s ruling provides “a strong measure of protection for all Americans to express their views to their elected officials,” since “we cannot have government officials deciding which views are acceptable and which are not.” Congratulations to Gura and the Institute—and kudos to Judge Grant on another important First Amendment decision, following in the footsteps of her opinions in Honeyfund.com, Inc. v. Governor, State of Florida (affirming a preliminary injunction blocking certain provisions of the Stop W.O.K.E. Act from going into effect) and McDonough v. Garcia (writing for the en banc court and “aligning our public forum doctrine with the [Supreme] Court’s latest cases”). It’s worth noting that in Moms for Liberty, Judge Grant ruled in favor of the conservative side, while in Honeyfund.com, she ruled against the conservative side—which is just as it should be in the First Amendment context. The Courts Election Law Blog: D.C. Circuit Will Rehear En Banc the End Citizens United PAC Case Holding that Dismissals of FEC Complaints are Unreviewable Exercises of Prosecutorial Discretion By Rick Hasen .....The controversial 2-1 decision is here. The en banc order wiping this out and setting it for briefing and oral argument is here. More background and documents from the FEC. Florida Politics: A TV station stopped playing pro-abortion rights ads after state’s threats, lawsuit says By Gabrielle Russon .....One Fort Myers TV station acquiesced and stopped playing pro-abortion rights ads after a Department of Health (DOH) lawyer threatened Florida TV stations with criminal prosecution. It’s a revelation in a new First Amendment lawsuit as the political committee supporting the Amendment 4 abortion rights initiative sued a pair of state officials Wednesday in federal court. Floridians Protecting Freedom (FPF) is currently negotiating with CBS affiliate WINK-TV to get the ads back on air, but representatives for the PC say it has lost valuable time to reach voters in that market with the election just three weeks away. Just the News: GOP consultant files lawsuit alleging identity fraudulently used to make ActBlue donations to Dems By John Solomon .....Mark Block has been consulting for Republicans for years. So when he discovered an old email account he used for the 2012 Herman Cain presidential campaign was receiving receipts for donations to Democrat candidates like Kamala Harris, he became alarmed. The discovery led Block -- a stalwart Republican -- and his lawyers on a journey that escalated Monday evening when he filed a groundbreaking lawsuit in the Wisconsin state courts under civil racketeering laws, alleging he is a victim of identity theft in a conspiracy to abuse the massive ActBlue fundraising platform. That platform is designed to benefit Democrats with small donations under $200 that evade Federal Election Commission reporting requirements, the suit stated. Block’s litigation — which called the misuse of his Personally Identifiable Information (PII) “smurfing” — mirrors allegations that the House Administration Committee uncovered during a recent computer analysis that identified tens of thousands of suspicious donations placed through the ActBlue platform that appear to come from people who do not have the means to give large amounts of money. Carolina Journal: Ballot selfie legal battle likely to extend at least to December .....A Libertarian voter’s legal fight against North Carolina’s ban on ballot selfies is likely to extend at least through mid-December. In the meantime, Susan Hogarth is unlikely to face a legal penalty if she posts a photo of herself with her ballot during this fall’s election. US District Judge Louise Wood Flanagan issued a pair of orders Tuesday in Hogarth’s lawsuit against the State Board of Elections, Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman, and the Wake elections board. One order extends until Friday the deadline for Hogarth and Freeman to file a proposed consent decree. Freeman had declared in earlier court filings that she would not prosecute Hogarth for violating state laws against photographing and sharing details of a completed election ballot this fall. The second order sets deadlines for resolving Hogarth’s legal complaint. FCC Bloomberg Law: Political Consultants Fight FCC Move to Restrict AI Robocalls By Courtney Rozen .....One of the nation’s largest organizations of political consultants is fighting a federal push to curb the use of AI in robocalls and robotexts, saying it would complicate automated fundraising appeals to voters. The American Association of Political Consultants, a bipartisan organization, called the Federal Communications Commission’s proposal to require that callers disclose when they use artificial intelligence to generate phone messages “overly broad.” The group said that while it “staunchly opposes the use of fraudulent and misleading robocalls and texts in political campaigns,” the proposed requirement that any AI-generated call be disclosed as such would inhibit efforts to increase voter turnout. “In the time the disclosure is being read out, the voter may have already hung up the call,” the group said in a letter to the commission opposing the proposed rule. InsideRadio: AI Proposal For Political Ads Threat To Minority Broadcasters And Journalism FCC Told. .....The Multicultural Media, Telecom, and Internet Council is adding its voice to those opposing a Federal Communications Commission proposal to require disclosures on radio and television political ads if artificial intelligence is used. Like some broadcasters, MMTC says it agrees that the public should have the most accurate information. However, the firm says radio and TV ads are least likely to be deceptive and the use of AI in broadcast ads is more likely for “innocuous purposes” such as enhancing the quality of audio or video. “Because the Commission’s proposed regulations will not apply to online platforms, more advertising will flow to those platforms,” says MMTC. “Creating incentives that drive more political content to these unregulated platforms is harmful to the public and creates competitive imbalances affecting all broadcasters, especially stations owned by people of color and other underrepresented groups.” Online Speech Platforms Racket News: The Hurricane Speech Panic is Here By Matt Taibbi .....In Covid-19, health officials issuing confusing or incorrect or shifting dictates caused significant loss of trust, which was then used as an excuse to call for clampdowns on the information landscape. Now a sequel misinformation panic is upon us, with incompetent disaster management stepping in the role of the health bureaucracy. Once again, we’re told it’s Donald Trump and other online miscreants the world cannot survive: “I’m running out of ways to explain how bad this is,” wrote Charlie Warzel in the Atlantic. “Rumors on X are Becoming the Right’s New Reality,” added Renee DiResta. Stories in Politico, the New York Times, CNN, the Daily Beast, Vox, CBS, Bloomberg, the Guardian, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times similarly howled about the hurricane misinformation crisis. MSNBC: Two big questions raised by Elon Musk’s Trumpian transformation of X By Richard L. Hasen .....[I]f the removal of the Hunter Biden content was problematic because of its potential impact on the 2020 election, how should we feel about Elon Musk, owner of X (formerly Twitter) using his platform to give unremitting support to Donald Trump’s 2024 candidacy via at times misleading and incendiary election content pushed to millions of users’ feeds daily? A new deep dive by The New York Times last week described Musk as “the richest man in the world [who] has involved himself in the U.S. election in a manner unparalleled in modern history.” Indeed, even as Musk railed about social media’s Hunter Biden censorship, the Times alleges X worked with Trump’s campaign to stifle a potentially embarrassing Trump story: “After a reporter’s publication of hacked Trump campaign information last month, the campaign connected with X to prevent the circulation of links to the material on the platform, according to two people with knowledge of the events. X eventually blocked links to the material and suspended the reporter’s account.” (Musk did not return a request for comment on the Times’ reporting.) Washington Post: This threat hunter chases U.S. foes exploiting AI to sway the election By Cat Zakrzewski .....On Wednesday, Nimmo released a report that said OpenAI had disrupted four operations that targeted elections around the world this year, including an Iranian effort that sought to exacerbate America’s partisan divide with social media comments and long-form articles about U.S. politics, the conflict in Gaza and Western policies toward Israel. Nimmo’s report said OpenAI had uncovered 20 operations and deceptive networks worldwide this year. In one, an Iranian was using ChatGPT to refine malicious software intended to compromise Android devices. In another, a Russian firm used ChatGPT to generate fake news articles and the company’s image generator, Dall-E, to craft lurid, cartoonish pictures of warfare in Ukraine to better attract eyeballs in crowded social media feeds Candidate and Campaigns MIT News: Model reveals why debunking election misinformation often doesn’t work By Anne Trafton .....When an election result is disputed, people who are skeptical about the outcome may be swayed by figures of authority who come down on one side or the other. Those figures can be independent monitors, political figures, or news organizations. However, these “debunking” efforts don’t always have the desired effect, and in some cases, they can lead people to cling more tightly to their original position. Neuroscientists and political scientists at MIT and the University of California at Berkeley have now created a computational model that analyzes the factors that help to determine whether debunking efforts will persuade people to change their beliefs about the legitimacy of an election. Their findings suggest that while debunking fails much of the time, it can be successful under the right conditions. For instance, the model showed that successful debunking is more likely if people are less certain of their original beliefs and if they believe the authority is unbiased or strongly motivated by a desire for accuracy. It also helps when an authority comes out in support of a result that goes against a bias they are perceived to hold: for example, Fox News declaring that Joseph R. Biden had won in Arizona in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Read an article you think we would be interested in? Send it to Tiffany Donnelly at [email protected]. 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