The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech September 6, 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]. The Courts Reason ("Volokh Conspiracy"): Cyberstalking Conviction for E-Mails to Nebraska Legislature Candidate Reversed By Eugene Volokh .....From U.S. v. Sryniawski, decided yesterday by the Eighth Circuit (Judge Steven Colloton, joined by Judge Bobby Shepherd and Chief Judge Lavenski Smith): Christian Post: Louisville can’t force Christian photographer to shoot same-sex weddings, federal court rules By Michael Gryboski .....U.S. District Judge Benjamin Beaton of the Western District of Kentucky ruled Tuesday that Louisville could not enforce its LGBT nondiscrimination ordinance against photographer Chelsey Nelson, who is "motivated by her faith to celebrate marriage as the union of only opposite-sex couples." Beaton, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, granted a summary injunction and argued the city's ordinance preventing discrimination based on sexual orientation violated Nelson's freedom of speech rights. He stated that while the city "may require restaurants and hotels and stores to provide services regardless of the proprietors' views or their customers' legal status, the government may not force singers or writers or photographers to articulate messages they don't support." "The freedom of speech — especially for minority views — is a core premise of our democratic republic," ruled Beaton. "As prevailing sentiments and politics have changed over the years, robust constitutional protection for differing views has remained fixed." The judge concluded that the First Amendment is "necessary to protect the discourse of same-sex couples and their supporters." Donor Exposure Wall Street Journal: All About Nikki Haley’s Donors By The Editorial Board .....The Supreme Court last year blocked the California Attorney General from requiring charities to disclose their donors, and now New York AG Letitia James is providing a reminder of why AGs can’t be trusted to guard this confidential information. IRS Wall Street Journal: IRS Says It Exposed Some Confidential Taxpayer Data on Website By Richard Rubin .....The Internal Revenue Service inadvertently posted what is normally confidential information involving about 120,000 individuals before discovering the error and removing the data from its website, officials said Friday. The data are from Form 990-T, which is often required for people with individual retirement accounts who earn certain types of business income within those retirement plans… The IRS has long struggled with aging information-technology systems and occasional instances of private taxpayer information being released. Last year, the news organization ProPublica published tax data about many of the wealthiest and highest-income Americans, triggering investigations. So far, it is unknown where that data came from. Congress Washington Post: Jan. 6 committee withdraws subpoena against RNC and Salesforce By Jacqueline Alemany and Josh Dawsey .....The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection is dropping its subpoena against the Republican National Committee and Salesforce, a software vendor, according to people familiar with the development. Counsel for Salesforce and the RNC were notified this week that the committee is formally withdrawing a subpoena issued earlier this year, seeking records from Salesforce on performance metrics and analytics related to email campaigns for former president Donald Trump, his election campaign and the RNC... “We said all along that this subpoena was unconstitutional. This is a victory for freedom of speech, privacy, and Americans’ right of political association without fear of partisan reprisal,” said RNC spokeswoman Emma Vaughn. Candidates and Campaigns New York Times: How a Record Cash Haul Vanished for Senate Republicans By Shane Goldmacher .....One fund-raising scheme used by the Senate committee, which has not previously been disclosed, involved sending an estimated millions of text messages that asked provocative questions — “Should Biden resign?” — followed by a request for cash: “Reply YES to donate.” Those who replied “YES” had their donation processed immediately, though the text did not reveal in advance where the money was going. Privately, some Republicans complained the tactic was exploitative. WinRed, the party’s main donation-processing platform, recently stepped in and took the unusual step of blocking the committee from engaging in the practice, according to four people familiar with the matter. The Nation: Now Is the Time for Democrats to Ban Dark Money From Primaries By Robert L. Borosage .....In this election season alone, the Wesleyan Media Project reports, nearly 60 percent of the ads aired in Democratic House primaries were purchased by groups that offered only partial disclosure of their donors—or none at all. Progressive challengers in contested primaries were often the leading targets of these dark money groups. Democrats have long condemned the Big Money corruption of our politics—but reforms passed by the House of Representatives have repeatedly been torpedoed by Republican filibusters in the Senate. This month, however, Democrats could—if they choose—crack down on dark money poisoning their own primaries. And small-d democrats across the country should join in calling for them to act. Online Speech Platforms Washington Post: Washington state judge rules Facebook violated campaign finance rules By Naomi Nix .....A Washington state judge ruled Friday that Facebook repeatedly violated campaign finance rules requiring platforms to release information about political advertisers on their sites. The court said that Facebook, which last year renamed itself Meta, repeatedly broke the state’s law requiring technology platforms make information about political ads available for public inspection in a “timely manner,” according to a statement from the Washington state attorney general’s office. King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North also turned down Facebook’s request to gut part of the law, delivering a blow to the social media giant’s challenge of some of the strictest disclosure rules governing digital political advertising in the country, according to the attorney general’s office. Washington Post: Twitter can’t afford to be one of the world’s most influential websites By Elizabeth Dwoskin, Joseph Menn and Cat Zakrzewski .....While Zatko’s allegations of Twitter’s security failures, first reported last month by The Post and CNN, have received widespread attention, the audit on misinformation has gone largely unreported. Yet it underscores a fundamental conundrum for the 16-year-old social media service: despite its role hosting the opinions of some the world’s most important political leaders, business executives and journalists, Twitter has been unable to build safeguards commensurate with the platform’s outsize societal influence. It has never generated the level of profit needed to do so, and its leadership never demonstrated the will. The Verge: Twitter Had a New Plan to Fight Extremism — Then Elon Arrived By Zoe Schiffer and Casey Newton .....By late 2021, Twitter’s health researchers had spent years playing whack-a-mole with bad actors on the platform and decided to deploy a more sophisticated approach to dealing with harmful content. Externally, the company was regularly criticized for allowing dangerous groups to run amok. But internally, it sometimes felt like certain groups, like conspiracy theorists, were kicked off the platform too soon — before researchers could study their dynamics. “The old approach was almost comically ineffective, and very reactive — a manual process of playing catch,” says a former employee, who asked to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the company. “Simply defining and catching ‘bad guys’ is a losing game.” Instead, researchers hoped to identify people who were about to engage with harmful tweets, and nudge them toward healthier content using pop-up messages and interstitials. New York Post: Instagram took down Fauci parody account after pressure from Biden administration: lawsuit By Ariel Zilber .....Instagram immediately complied with a Biden White House request to remove a fake account that parodied Dr. Anthony Fauci, according to emails obtained by Republican-run states that have sued the federal government for allegedly colluding with top social media sites. The States Florida Politics: After UN rips Florida anti-riot law, Marco Rubio questions taxpayer funding By A.G. Gancarski .....The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed concerns in a report against 2021’s House Bill 1, described by Gov. Ron DeSantis as the “strongest anti-riot/pro-law enforcement legislation in the country.” The committee contends the legislation may be too strong, citing it as an example of a move to “unduly restrict the right to peaceful assembly.” Read an article you think we would be interested in? 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