July 16, 2025

In the News

Portland Press Herald: Maine’s voter-approved campaign finance limits deemed unconstitutional

By Drew Johnson

.....A U.S. District Court judge in Portland has ruled that a referendum on campaign finance limits passed by nearly 75% of Maine voters in November is unconstitutional.

The referendum passed in November limits the amount of money that can be donated to political action committees seeking to influence candidate elections. The limit does not apply to PACs operated by political parties or that seek to influence referendum campaigns.

However, its enactment date of Dec. 25, 2024, was delayed due to a lawsuit filed by the Institute for Free Speech, a national conservative advocacy group, on behalf of two PACs, Dinner Table Action and For Our Future, and their founder, Alex Titcomb.

Both PACs are linked to Rep. Laurel Libby, who is also a co-founder of Dinner Table Action.

The Institute argued that the $5,000 contribution limit is unconstitutional and directly contradicts the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission. That ruling said the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution allows PACs to spend as much money as they want in elections.

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): 9th Circuit Revives Challenge to Community College "Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility" Requirements for Teaching and Other Professional Work

By Eugene Volokh

.....Here's a short excerpt from the Nov. 2023 Report and Recommendations by Magistrate Judge Christopher D. Baker (E.D. Cal.) in Johnson v. Watkin; the plaintiff is a history professor at Bakersfield College, a California public community college. The opinion is long, so I've excerpted it heavily; read the whole thing for more of the legal analysis, and the interesting and contentious factual backstory. The District Court dismissed the case, holding that plaintiff lacked standing, but just today a Ninth Circuit panel (quoted below) reversed that standing decision as to this issue, so the matter will go back down to the lower court.

New from the Institute for Free Speech

Federal Judge Strikes Down Maine’s Question 1

.....In a major victory for free speech, a federal magistrate judge has blocked the campaign finance restrictions created by Maine’s “Question 1,” ruling that those restrictions violate fundamental constitutional rights.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Karen Frink Wolf granted a permanent injunction in the Institute for Free Speech case Dinner Table Action, et al. v. Schneider, et al., preventing enforcement of the “Act to Limit Contributions to Political Action Committees That Make Independent Expenditures,” more commonly known as Question 1. The law imposed a $5,000 annual limit on contributions to groups making independent expenditures and required disclosure of all donors regardless of contribution size. Previously, Maine had already agreed not to enforce the law while the litigation proceeded.

The Institute for Free Speech (IFS) and local counsel Joshua D. Dunlap of Pierce Atwood LLP filed the lawsuit, representing Dinner Table Action, For Our Future, and Alex Titcomb in challenging the measure.

The Courts

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): May Aliens Be Denied Lawful Permanent Resident Status Based on Their Speech?

By Eugene Volokh

.....Third Circuit Judge Paul Matey argues yes, dissenting in Qatanani v. Attorney General. (The two judges in the panel majority seem to disagree, stating that "the [Board of Immigration Appeals] penalized Qatanani for quintessential First Amendment activity," but declines to discuss the matter in detail because it concludes Qatanani should prevail on statutory and procedural grounds.) Here's an excerpt:

Wall Street Journal: The Pragmatic ‘60 Minutes’ Settlement

By Jason Altmire

.....Public companies have a fiduciary duty to act in the enterprise’s best interest, not to wage proxy wars for one party or another. Who could blame Paramount for wanting to put this in the past? Mr. Trump and his supporters have turned their narrative of the “doctored” Harris interview into a recurring talking point. Any reasonable observer should understand why a public company might prefer to redirect its energy elsewhere.

The idea that this settlement is validation of the president’s point of view is absurd. CBS News, the Paramount division at the center of the controversy, has been one of the most consistent institutions in criticizing Mr. Trump’s administration during his second term. Paramount clearly isn’t trying to cozy up to the White House, so why do some pundits and politicians insist it is?

The Conversation: IRS says churches may endorse political candidates despite a decades-old federal statute barring them from doing that

By Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer

.....There’s only one known instance of a church losing its tax-exempt status because it violated the Johnson Amendment. In that case, a church in Binghamton, New York, published full-page newspaper ads criticizing Bill Clinton during his 1992 presidential campaign...

The plaintiffs and the IRS filed a joint motion on July 7 to settle the case. They asked the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas to order the IRS not to enforce the Johnson Amendment against the two church plaintiffs. They also asked the court to incorporate in its order a statement that the Johnson Amendment does not apply to “speech by a house of worship to its congregation, in connection with religious services through its customary channels of communication on matters of faith, concerning electoral politics viewed through the lens of religious faith.”

This represents the first time the IRS has said there’s an exception to the Johnson Amendment for houses of worship. While lawmakers have periodically sought to repeal or modify the statute, neither chamber of Congress has ever passed such legislation.

Free Expression

Wall Street Journal: Harvard Explores New Center for Conservative Scholarship Amid Trump Attacks

By Douglas Belkin, Juliet Chung, Emily Glazer, and Natalie Andrews

.....Harvard leaders have discussed creating a program that people briefed on the talks described as a center for conservative scholarship, possibly modeled on Stanford’s Hoover Institution, as the school fights the Trump administration’s accusations that it is too liberal.

The idea has circulated at the university for several years but gained steam after pro-Palestinian protests began disrupting campus in late 2023. Harvard has discussed the effort with potential donors, people familiar with the matter said. The cost of creating such a center could run somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion, a person familiar with Harvard’s thinking estimated.

Wall Street Journal: Are Liberals Finally Tiring of Cancel Culture?

By James Freeman

.....“Is It Time to Stop Snubbing Your Right-Wing Family?,” asks a New York Times headline that teases a cure to what ails the New York Times. The newspaper has shown some recent indications of a healthy desire to step back from the progressive ledge, and let’s hope that Sunday’s guest essay is another baby step toward a post-ideological journalism.

Candidates and Campaigns

NOTUS: Kyrsten Sinema’s Campaign Committee Spent Big on Flights, Wine Shops and Skiing

By Dave Levinthal

.....In late April, the campaign committee of former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema made an odd expenditure, even by contemporary political standards: It dropped $352 at a self-described “naturally based wellness provider” that provides chiropractic, massage and “shockwave therapy” services from a shopping center in Cave Creek, Arizona.

The expenditure at Healthy Images wasn’t for Sinema herself. Rather, it funded “health services” for a member or members of the former senator’s private security detail, which she’s continued to bankroll through her old campaign committee, according to new documents the former Arizona independent senator filed with the Federal Election Commission.

The States

ICNL: State Foreign Influence Legislation Impacting Nonprofits

.....States have recently enacted new types of legislation to combat perceived foreign influence, particularly from China. Many of these bills either explicitly target nonprofits or affect nonprofits along with others. These include: 

• A newly enacted law in Florida that bans nonprofits from fundraising in the state if they receive anything of value from those from a “country of concern”. 
• Newly enacted foreign influence registration schemes in Nebraska and Arkansas that cover frequently routine interactions with those from China and other countries. 
• Recently enacted disclosure requirements for universities receiving foreign funding in over a dozen states. 
• New registration requirements in Texas and Louisiana for those lobbying on behalf of China and other foreign adversaries.

The Dispatch: Society Needs Philanthropic Privacy

By Emily Chamlee-Wright

.....For decades, progressives have dismissed donor privacy concerns— and philanthropic freedom, generally—as a ruse devised by elites bent on hijacking democracy. But today, progressive voices are sounding the alarm to preserve those very freedoms. As someone who is fiercely nonpartisan, I welcome this reversal. Yet, it should serve as a cautionary tale. The lesson? Once the state acquires a taste for weaponizing donor lists and suppressing disfavored organizations, it’s unlikely to confine its ambitions to a narrow set of ideological targets...

The concerns are real and the stakes are high…

Some conservatives may be tempted to meet the left’s newfound enthusiasm for philanthropic freedom with snark and calls for retribution: “You made this bed. Now lie in it.” But if the goal is to reassert American principles of liberal democracy, that would be both a tactical miscalculation and a moral failure. 

Colorado Sentinel: Jena Griswold’s dangerous double-standard on privacy

By Jon Caldara

.....We’re told redacting TRACER records was a matter of safety for those in politics. But lots of us are in politics. Why only protect the elected?

These records still show the home addresses of everyone of us who donated to a campaign. Aren’t we worth the same level of safety and protection?

If an elected official is targeted for an act of violence, wouldn’t those who paid for him to get into office also be possible targets? Why does Griswold protect the privacy of her elected colleagues but not their supporters?

There’s a reason why people want to give their money anonymously — to save their lives and livelihoods.

During the bloody civil rights battles, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, NAACP, had to go to court to protect their donor’s privacy. Why? If doxed, those who financed their mission would have been lynched.

A few years back, there was a mass shooting at a Planned Parenthood office in Colorado Springs. Fortunately, Planned Parenthood also keeps their donors private. If that shooter could look up their funders’ addresses, they might have been targeted, too.

Reason: Missouri Harasses AI Companies Over Chatbots Dissing Glorious Leader Trump

By Elizabeth Nolan Brown

....."Missourians deserve the truth, not AI-generated propaganda masquerading as fact," said Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey. That's why he's investigating prominent artificial intelligence companies for…failing to spread pro-Trump propaganda?

Under the guise of fighting "big tech censorship" and "fake news," Bailey is harassing Google, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI. Last week, Bailey's office sent each company a formal demand letter seeking "information on whether these AI chatbots were trained to distort historical facts and produce biased results while advertising themselves to be neutral."

And what, you might wonder, led Bailey to suspect such shenanigans?

Chatbots don't rank President Donald Trump on top.