February 19, 2025

In the News

The Oklahoman:Attorneys who earned KFOR successful settlement vs. Walters asking for more than $376K

By Murray Evans

.....Attorneys who successfully represented Oklahoma City television station KFOR in a recent First Amendment lawsuit against state schools Superintendent Ryan Walters and his former spokesman Dan Isett are asking for more than $376,000 in fees and costs, according to federal court documents.

In September, KFOR and three of its journalists — reporter Dylan Brown and photojournalists Kevin Josefy and Gage Shaw — contended Walters and Isett engaged in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination by arbitrarily deciding which media outlets can attend public events.

New from the Institute for Free Speech

Small-Dollar Donor Sues FEC over Disclosure Requirements

.....Should a donation to a candidate of just five dollars—or even less—result in your personal information being posted online for anyone to find? Confusingly, current law says “sometimes.”

If you personally hand a check for $200 to the federal candidate of your choice, no problem. The law says that your personal information is safe. But if your donation, no matter how small, passes through an online conduit like WinRed and ActBlue? Bad news. Your name and address information is now exposed online.

The Institute for Free Speech strongly believes that small-dollar donors’ privacy should be uniformly protected. That’s why attorneys from the Institute, along with local counsel Warren V. Norred, filed a federal lawsuit late yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on behalf of Tony McDonald, a small-dollar donor from Fort Worth. The suit challenges the constitutionality of federal campaign finance disclosure requirements for small-dollar donors who use online platforms to donate.

Trump Administration

Wall Street Journal: Trump Signs Order Giving White House Control Over Independent Agencies

By Brian Schwartz and Nick Timiraos

.....President Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday that seeks to give his political appointees far-reaching control over federal agencies that for decades have operated independently of White House influence.

The order requires that independent agencies submit major regulations to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review. The budget office is run by budget hawk Russell Vought, a Trump ally.

Under the order, Vought would write “performance standards and management objectives” for the heads of independent agencies and provide updates to Trump about whether the agency heads are meeting those requirements. Vought also would review and adjust independent agencies’ budgets. Those adjustments “may prohibit independent regulatory agencies from expending appropriations on particular activities, functions, projects, or objects,” the order says. 

In addition, the order requires that independent agencies hire a White House liaison, who would act as a conduit with Trump’s team. It asserts that the president and attorney general’s legal interpretations are binding on all executive-branch employees, who can’t advance contrary legal interpretations without authorization…

The order is expected to affect a range of independent agencies, including the Federal Election Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. 

Supreme Court

Dallas Express: Battle For Expression: Texas AG Opposes State Agency In Key Case

By Brandon Waltens, Texas Scorecard

.....Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is taking the unusual step of siding against the Texas Ethics Commission in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Rather than defending the state agency, he has filed an amicus brief supporting Michael Quinn Sullivan, a conservative activist who was president of Empower Texans at the time of the events in question.

The case centers on whether Sullivan should have been required to register as a lobbyist before communicating with lawmakers and the public about tax and spending policies.

The dispute dates back to 2014 when the Texas Ethics Commission fined Sullivan $10,000 for allegedly acting as an unregistered lobbyist. The TEC ruled that his efforts to inform legislators and the public—particularly through emails detailing his Fiscal Responsibility Index—qualified as lobbying under Chapter 305 of the Texas Government Code.

Sullivan has spent the past decade fighting the ruling, arguing that the communications were protected free speech, not lobbying. He is now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.

Paxton, rather than backing the agency tasked with enforcing Texas lobbying laws, is arguing that the TEC’s enforcement is unconstitutional and represents a violation of First Amendment rights.

“No free citizen should have to register with the government and pay a special fee just to send letters or emails to the government about matters of public importance,” Paxton’s brief states, contending that the First Amendment does not allow government officials to regulate political speech in this way.

Congress

Fox News: DOGE Caucus senator pushes to end 'slush fund' for presidential candidates: 'Welfare for politicians'

By Charles Creitz 

.....In commemoration of Presidents Day, a top DOGE senator is seeking to claw back $400 million sitting in a "slush fund" set up to help presidential candidates that hasn’t borne fruit since Y2K.

Through the Eliminating Leftover Expenses for Campaigns from Taxpayers (ELECT) Act, Sen. Joni Ernst said she hopes to defund an account she calls "welfare for politicians."

"This Presidents Day I am fighting for the integrity of the office because the last thing we need to spend tax dollars on is more political attack ads," said Ernst, R-Iowa.

"There is no better way to pay down the $36 trillion debt than by defunding welfare for politicians. Washington should be working to benefit all Americans instead of itself."

The Media

Wall Street Journal:CBS’s Impossible Opposition to Free Speech

By James Taranto

.....It’s hard to be a consistent defender of free speech, since it inevitably entails forming temporary alliances with repugnant people…

Because even totalitarians want free speech for themselves and frequently seek to vindicate that right in court, I thought until this weekend that it was impossible to oppose free speech consistently. But CBS News may pull it off.

Free Expression

The Atlantic: Government Workers Cannot Be Fired for Their Political Views

By John Langford and Erica Newland

.....Last week, two sets of FBI employees filed the first lawsuits challenging these moves on First Amendment grounds. Both allege that the employees were targeted as a form of retaliation. The essence of a First Amendment retaliation claim is that although the government may deny someone a valuable benefit for any number of reasons, “there are some reasons upon which the government may not rely,” including, pointedly, someone’s “constitutionally protected speech or associations.” The plaintiffs in the FBI cases allege that the Trump administration is demanding a list of 6,000 agents involved in investigating the January 6 and Mar-a-Lago cases in order to possibly punish or purge thousands of agents Trump perceives (surely wrongly in many instances) to be politically opposed to him. The FBI employees should win their First Amendment claims, especially if any mass purge takes place.

Zooming out, thousands of other federal employees could well make similar constitutional claims, because what the Trump administration is doing with the FBI appears to be but a small part of a much larger effort to resurrect a government-wide political-patronage system, something the First Amendment forbids.

Lawfare: How Far Will Campaign Finance Deregulation Go?

By Robert G. Boatright

.....In a 2023 Pew survey, 85 percent of Americans agreed that the cost of political campaigns prevents good people from running for office. Lopsided majorities agree with a range of other propositions suggesting that there is too much money in politics and that limits should be placed on campaign spending. At the same time, as David Primo and Jeff Milyo show, most Americans know little about campaign finance law, and most put campaign finance near the bottom of the list when asked to rank their political priorities.

This paradox is both cause and consequence of the decades-long campaign that Ann Southworth describes in “Big Money Unleashed: The Campaign to Deregulate Election Spending.”

Candidates and Campaigns

New York Times: Venting at Democrats and Fearing Trump, Liberal Donors Pull Back Cash

By Lisa LererReid J. Epstein and Theodore Schleifer

.....The demoralization and fear gripping blue America in the early weeks of President Trump’s administration have left liberal groups and their allies struggling for cash, hurting their ability to effectively combat the right-wing transformation of the federal government.

The small-dollar online spigot that powered opposition to the first Trump administration has slowed to a trickle as shaken liberal voters withhold their donations.

Charitable foundations that have long supported causes like voting rights, L.G.B.T.Q. equality and immigrants’ rights are pulling back, devoting time to prepare for expected investigations from the Republican-led Congress.

And some of the country’s biggest liberal donors have paused giving, frustrated with what they see as Democrats’ lack of vision and worried about retaliation from a vengeful president. Some Democrats say a few of their reliable donors are now openly supporting Mr. Trump, or at least looking to curry favor with him.

Fund-raising slowdowns are common after a presidential defeat and before marquee midterm races fully begin. But interviews with more than 50 donors, strategists and leaders of activist organizations show that many Democrats believe this year is different.

The States

South Dakota Searchlight: SD governor signs bill closing loan loophole in campaign finance law

.....South Dakota Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden signed a bill into law that would close a campaign finance loophole, he announced Tuesday.

The bill, from Sen. Mike Rohl, R-Aberdeen, was introduced as a response to something that occurred during the most recent election cycle. Toby Doeden, an Aberdeen businessman, reported a $100,000 contribution to his own Dakota First Action committee. The contribution exceeded the state’s $10,000 limit on individual contributions to political action committees.

Doeden later amended the report, reclassifying the contribution as a loan. Existing state law allows loans to be forgiven, effectively providing a way to nullify contribution limits.

The new law says any loan, when combined with contributions from the same source, cannot exceed contribution limits in state law. In other words, in the case of Doeden, he would have been limited to a combined $10,000 of annual contributions and loans to his political action committee.

Another Rohl bill awaiting the governor’s consideration would require candidates to file pre-primary reports of their fundraising and spending even if they’re not involved in a primary race. A third campaign finance bill from Rohl that proposed new restrictions on contributions from inactive candidate committees has been defeated.

Tennessee Lookout: Campaign contribution limits could be lifted for political parties, caucus PACs

By Sam Stockard

.....Smarting from a barrage of dark money that took out two Senate incumbents in 2024, lawmakers are set to consider eliminating campaign contribution limits for political parties and party caucuses.

Sen. Richard Briggs, a Knoxville Republican, told the Tennessee Lookout he is sponsoring Senate Bill 229 to create more equity after out-of-state political action committees spent heavily to defeat incumbent Sens. Frank Niceley and Jon Lundberg last August. Rep. Tim Hicks of Gray in East Tennessee is carrying the House version of the bill.

Niceley lost to first-term Sen. Jessie Seal, who received the backing of the School Freedom Fund but still voted against the governor’s private-school voucher bill, and Lundberg was defeated by first-term Sen. Bobby Harshbarger, whose candidacy was bolstered by two groups, including the American Policy Coalition, that poured $600,000 worth of dark money into the race.

“The Senate Republican Caucus got outspent 50 times what we could spend,” Briggs said. “It could have been more.” …

The Harshbarger-Lundberg election remains under investigation by the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance, which subpoenaed the agents of the American Policy Coalition to determine whether it coordinated illegally with Congresswoman Diana Harshbarger’s campaign through independent expenditures. Thomas Datwyler of Wisconsin is treasurer of both groups, and the congresswoman is Harshbarger’s mother.

Minnesota House of Representatives (Session Daily): State-funded organizations could be barred from making political contributions

By Brian Basham

.....Rep. Elliott Engen (R-White Bear Township) believes there is a conflict of interest when a nonprofit or other organization receives state funding, then is allowed to donate that money as a political contribution to a friendly candidate.

“The bill before you today would simply ensure that the tax dollars received by nonprofit organizations are not being spent on influencing the outcome of elections, but rather, being used to benefit the public good,” he told the House Elections Finance and Government Operations Committee Monday.

Engen sponsors HF72, which would prohibit any organization receiving state funding, including nonprofits, from making political contributions or expending money for a political purpose.

The bill was approved 6-5 on a party-line vote and sent to the House Floor.

Clarion Ledger: MS campaign finance enforcement lacks 'teeth,' hindering accountability

By Charlie Drape and Grant McLaughlin

.....Even if the state wanted to bring charges against federally indicted-Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba for failing to submit several campaign finance reports, it likely wouldn’t due to Mississippi’s confusing campaign finance laws.

The Attorney General's Office, headed by Lynn Fitch, recently told the Clarion Ledger the state’s campaign finance enforcement laws are confusing, difficult to understand and ultimately difficult to enforce because there are several state agencies involved before the AG can see a case. If that even happens, the punitive measures are minor at best, AG Chief of Staff Michelle Williams said.

"The current system for assessing penalties for failing to timely file reports is broken,” Williams said. “It requires work by three agencies — possibly four for a municipal election — and the Attorney General’s Office is in every instance the last step, requiring notification by another agency to trigger our part. In addition, the misdemeanor prosecution and $500 in civil penalties are too light to deter bad behavior. And the many grace periods allowed for curing a delinquent report can push action against a tardy candidate until after the election. General Fitch is hopeful that this year the Legislature will take up the campaign finance reform package she has put forward for the past two years to close the gaping holes in the system, streamline enforcement of its provisions, and improve transparency."