This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact Luke Wachob at [email protected].  

Politico: Document reveals identity of donors who secretly funded Nikki Haley’s political nonprofit

.....[T]he organization Documented, which describes itself as a nonpartisan government watchdog that investigates money in politics, obtained an unredacted copy of Stand For America’s 2019 filings, which it then shared with POLITICO. The group did not share the original source of the filing, but it bears a stamp from the charity office of the New York state attorney general...

Washington Post: A $1.6 billion donation lays bare a broken campaign finance system

.....The Marble Freedom Trust donation, possibly the largest ever to such an advocacy group in U.S. history, manages to encapsulate in a single case the problems with the status quo. The issue isn’t merely the distortion of democracy enabled by 2010′s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. That decision allowed for unlimited political spending by corporations and outside groups — to which, in turn, the ultra-wealthy can funnel unlimited funds of their own. The issue is also that the distortion remains, in most cases, invisible. Nonprofits groups registered as 501(c)(4)s, such as Marble Freedom Trust, don’t have to disclose their donors...

Congress should close the tax loophole these donors exploit. And the Disclose Act, some version of which has been languishing in Congress for more than a decade, blocked by GOP filibusters, would at least tell voters who’s trying to buy their votes. The Internal Revenue Service can improve things on its own by collecting donors’ information again, after it stopped in 2018. Unfortunately, without a change in Supreme Court precedent or a constitutional amendment, only marginal improvements are possible.

Philanthropy Roundtable: National Taxpayers Union Foundation Issues Strong Defense of Philanthropic Freedom

.....Our friends at the National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTU) recently published a blog debunking many of the claims in the Institute for Policy Studies’ (IPS) July report entitled “Gilded Giving 2022: How Wealth Inequality Distorts Philanthropy and Imperils Democracy.” ...

Washington Times: Lois Lerner claimed ignorance of tea party in secret deposition

.....Lois Lerner claimed to have little knowledge of the tea party movement and what it stood for, even as she oversaw the IRS’s intrusive scrutiny of tea party groups’ applications for nonprofit status, according to newly released transcripts of a long-secret deposition she gave.

Wall Street Journal: Facebook Parent Meta Agrees to Settle Cambridge Analytica Lawsuit

.....Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. agreed to settle a lawsuit that accused the social-media platform of allowing third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, to access private user data, according to a court filing on Friday.

Tribune Chronicle: Federal judge rules against Newton Falls

.....A federal judge has issued a permanent injunction wiping out a Newton Falls village council rule that restrains free speech during council meetings.

Jonathan Turley: Zuckerberg Reveals the FBI Told His Company to be Wary of “Russian Disinformation”

.....Recently, I wrote about the disclosure of an alleged backchannel between the CDC and Twitter on censoring critics of the agency and its recommendations. Now, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed how the FBI warned Facebook about “Russian propaganda” before the Hunter Biden laptop story dropped in 2020...

NBC News:  FBI responds to Mark Zuckerberg claims in Joe Rogan show

By Dennis Romero and Ben Goggin

.....In an episode of the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast made available Thursday, Zuckerberg said that although the FBI didn't specifically name a New York Post article about Hunter Biden's laptop, it "fit the pattern" of what the FBI warned about.

Washington Examiner: Social media, common carriage, and the First Amendment

.....AEI recently published a thought-provoking report by Professor Richard A. Epstein addressing censorship of conservative viewpoints online. Building on initial comments offered last year in the Wall Street Journal, Epstein identifies the problem as a systemic progressive bias among dominant social media companies, coupled with steep barriers to entry that reduce competition as a potential disciplining force in the short term. The solution, he posits, is a common carriage regime that would prevent digital platforms from abusing their positions in ways that distort public debate.

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