Email from The Institute for Free Speech The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech January 8, 2025 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 Union Leader: Plaintiffs in Nashua lawsuit over refusal to fly right-wing flags object to recent ruling By Paul Feely .....Attorneys for a Nashua couple involved in a free speech fight with Gate City officials have filed a motion objecting to a ruling by a federal judge saying the city didn’t violate the residents’ First Amendment rights when they rejected her application to display right-wing flags outside City Hall this fall. Supreme Court SCOTUSblog: Trump asks Supreme Court to intervene in hush money sentencing By Amy Howe .....President-elect Donald Trump came to the Supreme Court on Wednesday morning, asking the justices to halt the criminal sentencing scheduled for Friday morning in his New York hush money case. In a 40-page filing signed by John Sauer, Trump’s intended nominee for solicitor general, Trump urged the court to put the proceedings on hold to allow him to appeal. “Forcing President Trump to prepare for a criminal sentencing in a felony case while he is preparing to lead the free world as President of the United States in less than two weeks imposes an intolerable, unconstitutional burden on him that undermines these vital national interests,” Trump wrote. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who handles emergency appeals from New York, directed the prosecutors to respond to Trump’s request by Thursday at 10 a.m. The Courts Reason: Decrying First Amendment Threat, FIRE Will Defend Pollster Whom Trump Sued for 'Consumer Fraud' By Jacob Sullum .....After Donald Trump sued pollster J. Ann Selzer and The Des Moines Register under Iowa's Consumer Fraud Act last month, Robert Corn-Revere, chief counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), called the president-elect's claims "absurd" and "a direct assault on the First Amendment." Acting on that assessment, FIRE this week announced that it will represent Selzer as she fights Trump's allegation that she defrauded consumers by conducting a preelection poll that erroneously gave Democratic nominee Kamala Harris a narrow lead in Iowa. Trump's lawsuit, which was originally filed in the Iowa District Court for Polk County but has been transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, "violates long-standing constitutional principles" and is "entirely meritless under the Iowa law," FIRE says. JURISTnews: Second Circuit revives free speech challenge to New York anti-discrimination labor law By Phoebe Appel .....The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Thursday remitted to reconsideration a lawsuit challenging a provision of New York’s Labor Law as violations of the rights to free speech and religion of a crisis pregnancy center. The court held that CompassCare may proceed with their claims if the judge finds that the Act threatens their “very mission.” Given a 2023 precedent, CompassCare may succeed in its claim that the act is unconstitutional. The central controversy at the court is the scope of the right to freedom of expressive association. Reviewing previous jurisprudence of the US Supreme Court, the court reiterated that the First Amendment includes an implicit “freedom not to associate,” permitting a voluntary association to exclude or expel a member it does not desire even if it amounts to discrimination. Nonetheless, the right only applies when the member in question “significantly burdens” the group’s expression and the impugned law runs afoul the group’s right. Just the News: ActBlue mystery solved? Incorrectly entered email could be to blame as lawyers move to drop lawsuit By Steven Richards .....The lawyer for a Republican campaign operative alleging his email was fraudulently used to make donations through ActBlue on Friday asked a Wisconsin judge to dismiss the lawsuit against the donor without prejudice after evidence was put forward that the use of his email address was accidental. FEC Daily Beast via Yahoo News: Laura Loomer Apologizes After She ‘Doxxes’ Trump’s AI Guy By Leigh Kimmins .....Far-right figurehead Laura Loomer has given a grovelling public apology to President-elect Donald Trump‘s AI advisor Sriram Krishnan after she “accidentally doxxed” him. Loomer took a break from her scheduled programming on X, namely saying Elon Musk is censoring her and then begging for her blue check back, to blurt out the apology after she revealed some of his personal information when she posted his Federal Election Commission records. The advisory body maintains a database of individuals who have made contributions to federally registered political committees. Loomer said her post showed a donation by the Indian national to Kamala Harris. She later deleted the post and said Krishnan, who moved to the U.S. on an L-1 visa (intra-company transfer) in 2007 to work at Microsoft, may have “felt as though I was trying to ‘doxx’ him.” Doxxing is the act of maliciously revealing someone’s private information. “I deeply apologize for accidentally doxxing Sriram @sriramk by sharing public FEC records with his personal info." “It was an honest mistake, and I take full responsibility. I’ve removed the post and I promise that I will be more careful in the future when I post FEC records,” she continued. She had earlier said she did not intend to “inflict harm.” Independent Groups Politico Magazine: ‘Dark Money’ Is Tainting Washington Think Tanks. A New Report Shows It’s Worse Than You Think. By Michael Shaffer .....Washington’s think-tank industry, which sets the terms of debate for so much of American policymaking, is floating on a sea of foreign-government and Pentagon-contractor dollars. That’s the conclusion of a brand-new report out this morning and shared with me by a pair of scholars at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank that officially eschews foreign-government money — and delights in tweaking the Beltway foreign-affairs establishment. Among other things, the paper says that the top 50 think tanks took in some $110 million over the past five years from foreign governments and related entities, including nearly $17 million from the United Arab Emirates, the largest single foreign donor. Leading Pentagon contractors, meanwhile, kicked in nearly $35 million over the same period. MSN: Commentary: 'Dark money' is not the boogeyman it’s made out to be By Heather Lauer .....Among the big losers of the 2024 election were politicians and activist groups who claim so-called “dark money” is the secret force driving American politics. Groups that do not disclose their donors once again made up a small share of overall campaign spending and notched few notable victories. The results underscore an uncomfortable but increasingly clear reality: calls to force disclosure of “dark money” are not about securing a negligible increase in transparency in elections. They are about subjecting donors to harassment and retaliation for their beliefs. Online Speech Platforms New York Post: Don’t fall for the censorship industrial complex’s superficial makeover By Post Editorial Board .....Clegg, a former left-liberal hack British politician, absolutely needed axing: It was under his leadership that Facebook banned Donald Trump, suppressed The Post’s reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and removed posts suggesting that COVID was man-made. But changing the public face of Meta is no guarantee that Facebook will become a permanent rock of free speech. The company remains riddled with lefty bas, from top execs who donated thousands to President Biden’s campaign to underlings who clamored for Trump’s posts to be scrubbed from the site. And nothing prevents Zuck from tilting back to the Clegg era if Democrats regain DC power the “anti-disinformation” lies of the pro-censorship elite. The States Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): A Test Suite for Proposals to Restrict "Doxing" By Eugene Volokh .....In any case, in thinking about the subject (and especially the questions that aren't limited to information such as social security numbers, bank account numbers, and the like), I came up with a set of hypotheticals that I hoped might be helpful. If any of you are interested in this, I'd love to hear your thoughts about which, if any, of these situations should lead to, say, criminal or civil liability (and, briefly, why). One can of course think that none should lead to liability—at least unless the allegations are false and therefore libelous, or are part of a criminal conspiracy involving the speaker, or involve some other factual feature not included in the hypothetical—or one can think that all should, or one can come to some conclusion in between. Read an article you think we would be interested in? Send it to Tiffany Donnelly at [email protected]. For email filters, the subject of this email will always begin with "Institute for Free Speech Media Update." The Institute for Free Speech is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that promotes and defends the political rights to free speech, press, assembly, and petition guaranteed by the First Amendment. Please support the Institute's mission by clicking here. For further information, visit www.ifs.org. 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