This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected].
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Ed. note: The Media Update will return Tuesday, September 20.
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FEC
By Zach Montellaro
.....A high-spending effort to draft Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis into the 2024 presidential race has promised to forge ahead with an unusual attempt to boost his would-be campaign, after the Federal Election Commission deadlocked on a request for guidance about whether the strategy was legal.
The group, Ready for Ron, is a federal PAC with the goal of building a list of up to 1 million people urging DeSantis to run for president. But along with those names, the group wants to deliver would-be supporters’ email addresses and phone numbers to DeSantis — a potential treasure trove of information for a presidential campaign.
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By Andrew Solender
.....The chair of the Jan. 6 select committee on Thursday said the panel may make referrals to agencies other than the Justice Department, citing the Federal Election Commission as a potential recipient.
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Congress
By Ramsey Touchberry
.....Sen. Lindsey Graham called on Congress to more vigorously crack down on social media giants like Facebook and Twitter by considering a requirement they be licensed to operate.
The South Carolina Republican said he‘s working with Sens. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican, and Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, to create a commission or regulatory agency that would “protect consumers in a variety of ways.”
One way could be to require licenses that could be revoked if it’s deemed that Big Tech companies censor too much content or are failing to stop criminal activity or foreign interference.
“We regulate the sale of stocks. We regulate the sale of real estate, you have to get a license to be a real estate agent. You got to get a license to drive a car,” Mr. Graham said.
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.....The undersigned nonprofit organizations and policy leaders write in strong support of the free speech and citizen privacy provisions in the “American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act” (H.R. 8528), introduced by Congressman Rodney Davis. This thoughtful legislation protects and strengthens important First Amendment rights that Americans have enjoyed since the founding of our country. This is a critical counterbalance to the growing push for unconstitutional and harmful disclosures in Congress and at the state level that attack the rights to freely speak, publish, and support groups that advocate for causes supported by Americans across the country and ideological spectrum.
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Donor Exposure
By Elizabeth McGuigan
.....Donor privacy is back in the headlines in a big way. Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, is filing a lawsuit against New York State Attorney General Letitia James for allegedly leaking to the press a list of donors to Haley’s conservative nonprofit, Stand for America...
The case highlights yet again the threats donor privacy faces in our tumultuous political environment. In June, California Attorney General Rob Bonta released the personal information of state residents who applied for concealed carry weapon permits. The leak included sensitive information like home addresses, driver’s license numbers, dates of birth and criminal histories. Bonta claims the information leak was accidental, but even so, the breach is another demonstration of highly sensitive information falling through the cracks in California on a politically charged topic...
Examples like these continue to mount, as some state attorneys general and government agencies continue to disregard donor privacy.
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Free Expression
By Stephanie Slade
.....Something is broken in our politics. Just about everyone knows it, but it can be hard to put your finger on what it is.
As the media attempt to grapple with this felt reality, they reach over and over for the same word: polarization. That, we're told, is the shorthand for what has gone wrong. Where once the country had its share of conservative Democrats, liberal Republicans, and mushy moderates, today the two parties are more internally consolidated—and further apart from each other—than ever.
But what if that explanation is missing something? What if there's a sense in which left and right are actually converging, and the nature of that convergence is the real source of the perception that something isn't right?
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Online Speech Platforms
By Jacob Sullum
.....Federal officials expect obsequious compliance, and that is what they get. This largely surreptitious exercise in censorship by proxy, practiced by an administration that preaches transparency while practicing opacity, is especially troubling because it targets not only demonstrably false claims but also speech that the government considers "misleading" or contrary to the prevailing "consensus."
Whether the subject is the origins of COVID-19, the effectiveness of face masks, or the newsworthiness of Hunter Biden's laptop, that consensus often proves to be wrong. Both publicly and behind the scenes, federal officials are subverting the free inquiry and open debate required to reveal those errors.
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PACs
By Jill Colvin, Brian Slodysko, and Eric Tucker
.....[Trump's] chief fundraising vehicle, Save America PAC, is under new legal scrutiny after the Justice Department issued a round of grand jury subpoenas that sought information about the political action committee’s fundraising practices.
The scope of the probe is unclear. Grand jury subpoenas and search warrants issued by the Justice Department in recent days were related to numerous topics, including Trump’s PAC, according to people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
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The States
By Olafimihan Oshin
.....California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has signed into law a social media transparency measure that he says protects residents from hate and disinformation posts spread through social media platforms.
A.B. 587 will require social media companies to publicly post their policies regarding hate speech, disinformation, harassment and extremism on their platforms and report data on their enforcement of the policies.
The newly signed legislation will also require platforms to file semiannual reports to the state’s attorney general’s office that will disclose their policies on hate speech, extremism and disinformation.
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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."
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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.
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