July 1, 2025

Ed. note: The Daily Media Update will return Monday, July 7. Happy Independence Day!

In the News

Washington Post: Supreme Court will hear challenge to limits on political party spending

By Justin Jouvenal and Beth Reinhard

.....The Supreme Court will hear a significant campaign finance case next term that will examine whether it violates the Constitution to restrict the amount of money that political parties can spend in coordination with individual candidates on advertising and other communications.

The case has the potential to reshape election spending in a major way. The restrictions being challenged were established in the early ’70s during the Nixon era to try to prevent donors from contributing to parties as a way to skirt limits on direct giving to candidates…

Most states don’t restrict the amounts that parties can spend in coordination with candidates, said David Keating, president of the Institute for Free Speech, which filed a brief supporting the Republican committees’ request for the high court’s involvement.

“This case is a complete outlier, and this is long overdue,” Keating said. “There is no evidence that it will lead to corruption, so I think it’s extremely unlikely the court will uphold this restriction.”

Balkinization: Campaign Finance and Free Speech: The Extreme and the Mainstream

By Bradley A. Smith

.....It is often suggested that the true test of one’s commitment to free speech and the First Amendment comes when one is faced with “offensive” content or “extreme” views. I am not so sure. 

It seems to me that the ordinary American can be forgiven for not thinking that the future of free speech hinges on the ability to show videos of animals being tortured, to depict simulated child pornography, or to engage in hate-filled protests at the funeral of a deceased serviceman. The traditional argument for policing efforts to ban such speech is not that not that this type of speech has much intrinsic value, but rather that these outer fringes of the free speech must be protected in order to prevent inroads into the core of First Amendment-protected speech. Put another way, we cannot ultimately trust the government to censor such “low-value” speech, over time, without invading the core. The average American, who responds to a pollster’s question or a barstool quip without, perhaps, giving the issue much thought, might, under the circumstances, be forgiven for lapses in First Amendment purity. And in the great scheme of things—at least if by the “great scheme of things” we’re talking democratic self-government—whether or not such speech is limited is probably of little importance, unless and until the government uses such limits as a lever to invade the core. 

The Hill: FEC lack of quorum is a problem Trump should solve

By David Keating

.....The Federal Election Commission’s current inability to execute key duties benefits no one. But President Trump has the power to begin restoring the FEC to a functional body.

What led the FEC to its current predicament? With only three of its six commissioners remaining after Allen Dickerson’s departure in April, the commission lacks the four-member minimum needed to conduct essential business. But the situation may soon become even more dire — and politically ironic.

Commissioner Trey Trainor has signaled that he may run for Texas attorney general, which would mean he, too, would leave the FEC. If he does, just two commissioners will remain, Shana Broussard and Dara Lindenbaum, both of whom are Democrats.

That scenario would leave us with the odd spectacle of Trump allowing a key federal agency to fall under total Democratic control — a remarkable and entirely avoidable situation.

Not that two Democratic commissioners could accomplish much. The FEC’s statutory framework requires at least four commissioners for many actions, meaning even a Democratic-controlled, two-commissioner agency would remain largely powerless. Broussard and Lindenbaum have solid reputations as thoughtful commissioners. Yet the FEC would continue to be hamstrung, unable to perform its most essential functions during a critical period leading up to the 2026 midterm elections.

Union Leader: Summary judgment sought in lawsuit against Kearsarge board over free speech rights

By Paul Feely

.....Attorneys for a Nashua woman have filed a motion for summary judgment in her federal lawsuit against the Kearsarge Regional School District.

Beth Scaer claims her First Amendment rights were violated when she was “silenced and threatened with police intervention” after referring to a transgender athlete on a girls soccer team as a “tall boy” during a Kearsarge Regional school board meeting last summer.

Attorneys from the Institute for Free Speech, along with local counsel Roy S. McCandless, say Beth Scaer attended the Aug. 29, 2024, meeting to speak out against transgender athletes in girls high school sports, after members of the school board announced that it would revisit its decision to enforce HB 1205, a state law that limited participation in interscholastic girls sports to biological females.

Supreme Court

SCOTUSblog: Court allows Texas’ law on age-verification for pornography sites

By Amy Howe

.....In a major First Amendment decision, the Supreme Court on Friday upheld a ruling by a federal appeals court that allowed Texas to enforce a state law requiring pornography sites to verify the age of their users before providing access. By a vote of 6-3, the justices ruled that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit should have used a more stringent standard of review, known as intermediate scrutiny, to determine whether the Texas law passes constitutional muster. But, as Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority, the Texas law passes that test.

Courthouse News: Justice Thomas sounds alarm on courts misapplying First Amendment in political speech cases

By Megan Butler

.....The Supreme Court turned down a petition Monday from a teacher who claims she was wrongfully fired, but Justice Clarence Thomas raised serious concerns with how courts are handling such cases regarding controversial political speech.

In a lawsuit from Kari MacRae, the former teacher at Hanover High School in Massachusetts argued her employment was wrongfully terminated in retaliation of her exercising her First Amendment rights.

Prior to her employment, MacRae had “liked, shared, posted, or reposted” six memes or images on her personal TikTok account that are “‘spread widely online’” — expressing her views that immigration laws should be enforced, that an individual’s sex is immutable and that society should be racially color blind.

School officials claimed the posts violated the core values of Bourne Public Schools, of ensuring a "safe learning environment based on respectful relationships" and respecting "human differences," given the potential to perceive some of her posts as transphobic, homophobic, or racist.”

Election Law Blog: How A Recent Supreme Court Decision Affects the President’s Executive Orders Concerning the FEC and the ECA

By Richard Pildes

.....Congress designed the Federal Election Commission and the Election Assistance Commission to be “independent agencies” in various respects. See, e.g., S. Rep. No. 93689, at 16 (1974) (emphasizing that the 1974 FECA amendments aimed to “establish[] an independent [FEC] within the executive branch to enforce . . . reporting and disclosure requirements”). But the recent Supreme Court decision in Kennedy v. Braidwood Management is going to make more difficult defending against the President’s claim that he has the right to remove at will the FEC and EAC Commissioners.

The Courts

Federal Election Commission: District Court issues memorandum opinion, order in Campaign Legal Center v. FEC (Case No. 24-2585)

.....The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia yesterday issued a Memorandum Opinion and Order in Campaign Legal Center v. FEC (Case No. 24-2585), granting Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgment and denying the Commission’s Cross-Motion for Summary Judgment.

In February 2024, the Plaintiff filed an administrative complaint with the Commission alleging that Last Best Place PAC, a political action committee, had violated the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended (the Act), by failing to report certain independent expenditures in connection with the 2024 U.S. Senate race in Montana. The Commission considered the complaint in MUR 8216 and voted to dismiss the matter in July 2024. Commissioners subsequently issued Statements of Reasons explaining their votes in the matter. Plaintiff then filed suit in the district court in September 2024, challenging the Commission’s dismissal of the complaint as arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law.

The district court found that while the Commission’s dismissal was based on a permissible interpretation of the Act, the Commission did not adequately explain its dismissal of the matter. Accordingly, the court granted Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgment and remanded the case to the Commission, ordering it to conform to the court’s judgment within 30 days.

Washington Post: Trump drops federal lawsuit against Iowa pollster, refiles in state court

By Brianna Tucker and Frances Vinall

.....Lawyers for President Donald Trump on Monday filed a motion to drop his federal lawsuit against longtime Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register newspaper, and refiled the suit in an Iowa state court.

Attorneys for Trump sued Selzer and the Des Moines Register in December over a poll that showed him trailing Vice President Kamala Harris (D) in the state just days before the 2024 presidential election.

Congress

Washington Post (Tech Brief): In dramatic reversal, Senate votes to kill AI-law moratorium

By Will Oremus

.....In the predawn hours Tuesday, the U.S. Senate voted 99-1 to strip from the sprawling tax and immigration bill a provision that would have blocked states from regulating artificial intelligence for the next decade.

The provision’s resounding defeat came after Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) backed out of a compromise she had previously struck with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that would have reduced the pause to five years from the original 10 and exempted some categories of AI regulations. Cruz, who had championed the moratorium, ended up joining Blackburn in voting against it, along with all of their colleagues except for Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina).

Trump Administration

Courthouse News: US revokes visa for British punk-rap duo who led anti-IDF chants at Glastonbury

By James Francis Whitehead

.....The U.S. government has revoked the visas of Bob Vylan, the punk-rap duo who led chants of “death to the IDF” during their Glastonbury set.

The U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau announced the move “in light of their hateful tirade at Glastonbury,” adding: “Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country.”

The band, whose music focuses on racism, economic injustice and social inequalities, have also been dropped by United Talent Agency.

The U.K. government condemned the band, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer calling the chants “appalling hate speech.”