The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech August 1, 2022 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 Luke Wachob at [email protected]. In the News Appen Media: ‘Mama Bears’ sue Forsyth County Schools for censorship By Chamian Cruz .....A group of moms is suing the Forsyth County Board of Education on grounds that their First Amendment rights have been violated. The lawsuit was filed in federal court on July 25 by two members of the group Mama Bears of Forsyth County, an unincorporated association whose mission is to organize, educate and empower parents to defend their parental rights... The lawsuit stems from a meeting in March in which Forsyth County Board of Education Chairman Wes McCall called for a recess after repeatedly asking a parent, Alison Hair, to stop reading sexually explicit excerpts from school library books. The board’s policy prohibits profane remarks... Court documents show McCall sent Hair a letter, dated March 17, prohibiting her from attending future meetings until she submitted a statement in writing agreeing to follow the board’s public participation rules and his directives as chairman... Hair and Martin are represented in the lawsuit by attorneys from the Institute for Free Speech, a nonpartisan First Amendment advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., that defends political speech rights. A week before filing the lawsuit in Forsyth County, the Institute for Free Speech successfully defended four residents over their right to comment at Pennsbury School Board meetings in Pennsylvania. The Courts Mercury News: League of Women Voters sues Cupertino over lobbyist ordinance By Grace Hase .....Over concerns that nonprofit employees and everyday citizens may be subject to Cupertino’s lobbyist ordinance, the League of Women Voters this week filed a lawsuit against the city arguing the law is unconstitutional, “hopelessly overbroad” and anti-nonprofit. The lawsuit, which was filed Monday in a U.S. District Court by the League of Women Voters Cupertino-Sunnyvale chapter and the League of Women Voters’ national organization, attest the city “enacted an ordinance to silence free speech and chill the ability of citizens to petition the government by making civic participation conditional on paying a fee.” Glenn Greenwald: Court Rejects Google's Attempt to Dismiss Rumble's Antitrust Lawsuit, Ensuring Vast Discovery .....A federal district court in California on Friday denied Google's motion to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that the Silicon Valley giant is violating federal antitrust laws by preventing fair competition against its YouTube video platform... It is rare for antitrust suits against the four Big Tech corporate giants (Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon) to avoid early motions to dismiss. Friday's decision against Google ensures that the suit now proceeds to the discovery stage, where Rumble will have the right to obtain from Google a broad and sweeping range of information about its practices, including internal documents on Google's algorithmic manipulation of its search engine and the onerous requirements it imposes on companies dependent upon its infrastructure to all but force customers to use YouTube. FEC OpenSecrets: Campaign finance watchdog alleges WinRed processed billions in political contributions without disclosing operating expenses By Taylor Giorno .....Online Republican fundraising platform WinRed may have failed to fully disclose operating expenses, the nonpartisan watchdog Campaign Legal Center alleges in a new complaint filed Thursday with the Federal Election Commission. Online Speech Platforms Washington Post: The GOP went to war against Google over spam — and may win By Isaac Stanley-Becker and Josh Dawsey .....The occasion was lunch. The setting was an ornate room off the Senate chamber. The hosts were some of the top Republican lawmakers in the country and the strategists responsible for filling their campaign coffers. Their guest, on a Wednesday in May, was Google’s top lawyer, invited to explain the company’s approach to email spam and answer charges that the tech giant was suppressing Republican solicitations. Amid a chorus of complaints, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) offered an analogy. The 88-year-old suggested that Google’s sending emails to spam was equivalent to the post office refusing to deliver the mail, according to three people in the room who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details from a closed-door meeting. “If you mail a letter, you expect it to be delivered,” said a “red-faced” Grassley, as one person recalled. “That’s what should happen!” Just the News: CDC told Big Tech to censor COVID claims now debated by mainstream scientists, documents show By Greg Piper .....The newly revealed scope of collaboration between the feds and Big Tech in stamping out purported COVID-19 misinformation and promoting government narratives has opened a new chapter in constitutional challenges to state-influenced censorship by private actors. On Wednesday night, America First Legal (AFL) published the first 286-page batch of emails among CDC, Google, Twitter and Meta staffers, some of whom were former Hill and White House aides. The production was compelled through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, and typical of government document dumps, it's not text-searchable. The emails show intimate cooperation was well underway by the time the White House a year ago acknowledged the effort, which included thinly veiled threats for not more aggressively removing content. New Civil Liberties Alliance attorney Jenin Younes told Just the News it incorporated "the revelations about the CDC emails" into a filing Thursday seeking to reopen its case against the feds on behalf of deplatformed users. The Hill: Twitter reports record high government demands for account info By Chloe Folmar .....Twitter reported on Thursday that it received record numbers of government legal demands targeting journalists from July to December of last year. The tech giant reported an increase of 103 percent increase in overall legal demands related to verified journalists and news outlets, such as requests to remove content or court orders. It received a total of 47,572 demands regarding 198,931 accounts. About a quarter of those demands, 11,460, were made by governments, 20 percent of which were from the U.S. government. “We continue to see a concerning trend toward attempts to limit global press freedom, with an increase in government legal demands targeting journalists, as well as an overall increasing number of legal demands on accounts – both represent record highs since reporting began,” Twitter wrote in its transparency report. Independent Groups Forbes: Sen. Cortez Masto Opposes Dark Money In Politics, Even Though One Of Her Biggest Supporters Is A Dark Money Group By Kyle Mullins .....Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto believes dark money is “a threat to our political system.” To combat it, she has backed several campaign finance reform proposals, including a constitutional amendment that would allow Congress to regulate campaign money more strictly... But like it or not, big donors are putting big money behind Cortez Masto, with North Fund watching Somos PAC deploy the cash on television ads and online marketing. “They’re using nonprofit status as a shield for their donors,” said Robert Maguire, research director at another watchdog group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. RealClear Opinion Research: Billionaires: Have Americans' Views Changed? By Carl M. Cannon .....Although most Americans have no problem with the likes of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk financing such pursuits as engaging their own personal space race, by more than a 3-1 margin U.S. voters think billionaires should have their wings clipped when it comes to exerting outsized influence over U.S. political campaigns. Asked in the most recent in-depth survey by RealClear Public Opinion Research whether billionaires should be allowed to contribute “unlimited amounts” of political money, 66% of respondents said no, while only 21% said yes (with the rest undecided). Congress enacted just such a prohibition 20 years ago in the bipartisan McCain-Feingold campaign law. But in the ensuing two decades those reforms were eroded by a series of unpopular U.S. Supreme Court decisions – and by the willingness of leaders in both major political parties to accept vast sums of political “dark money” even while decrying its impact. The States Miami Herald: Florida congresswoman asks feds to investigate FPL over ‘dark money’ reports By Ana Ceballos .....A longtime Tampa Democratic congresswoman has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Florida Power & Light, the state’s largest electric utility, over its use of dark money and reports that it sought to manipulate elections and coverage in its favor. “Generally, electric utilities should operate in the public interest and it appears that FPL and its officers use dark money, pressure campaigns and illicit, and possibly illegal, activity to disadvantage the citizens of Florida,” U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor wrote in a letter Thursday to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. In recent months, FPL has been the subject of news headlines after leaked documents, reported by the Orlando Sentinel, Florida Times Union and Miami Herald, showed how political consultants tied to the company have used a network of nonprofit groups to secretly back candidate in numerous Florida races and hire private investigators to tail reporters. Records also showed how FPL secretly took over a Florida news web site — which aims its content directly at Tallahassee decision-makers — to bend news coverage in its favor… Castor also raised concerns that customers may be footing the bill for FPL’s activity, and said “huge sums of secret political spending by FPL” should be scrutinized by federal investigators. Washington Post: Ron DeSantis is taking on woke corporations. Good. By Henry Olsen .....Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is seeking to bar financial intermediaries, such as banks, from discriminating against customers on the basis of their political, religious or social views. That’s a great idea — and an excellent reason for why he’s surging among Republicans nationwide. 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 First Amendment rights to freely speak, assemble, publish, and petition the government. Please support the Institute's mission by clicking here. For further information, visit www.ifs.org. Follow the Institute for Free Speech ‌ ‌ ‌ The Institute for Free Speech | 1150 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 801, Washington, DC 20036 Unsubscribe [email protected] Update Profile | Constant Contact Data Notice Sent by [email protected]