This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected].
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In the News
By Tiffany Donnelly
.....Online financial giant PayPal jumped on — then quickly jumped off — the bandwagon of companies using “misinformation” concerns to justify punishing speech. But they added a twist. Instead of the typical account suspensions and bans, PayPal decided to make a profit by fining users for promoting ideas they don’t agree with. What a scheme! ...
PayPal has since backtracked on the misguided policy...
Yet few have noticed that PayPal has a similar policy still in effect, uncovered by UCLA law Professor Eugene Volokh. He discovered that PayPal’s current Acceptable Use Policy, last updated September 20, 2021, threatens to fine users $2,500 for other vague speech violations.
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The Courts
By Dave Byrnes
.....Two recent changes to the Illinois Election Code will not be in play for the state's 2022 judicial elections, per a federal judge's ruling issued Friday night.
The first reform, enacted by the Illinois General Assembly in November 2021, bars non-Illinois residents from donating to state judicial candidates. The second, enacted in May 2022, prevents individual donors from giving more than $500,000 to independent expenditure committees — like Super PACs — involved in state judicial elections.
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Congress
By Jordan Whittington
.....Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn and other GOP leaders are calling on the Attorney General to investigate why the Dept. of Justice "continues to stifle" debates regarding gender-affirming care for minors.
In a letter to AG Merrick Garland, the senators asked the First Amendment rights for Americans be protected when it comes to expressing concern over gender reassignment surgeries being performed on minors.
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Free Expression
By Philip Hamburger
.....It is time for a new civil-rights act that addresses the dangers of our time, not merely those of the 1960s.
The threat again comes from discrimination, but now by the federal government as well as states and private organizations. Most worrisome is federal and state encouragement for private entities to discriminate against Americans with dissenting views. Also significant is discrimination that bars Americans from participating in services ordinarily open to the public.
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By Sam Brownback
.....The [National Committee for Religious Freedom] is a diverse organization representing people from every faith and walk of life. Our bipartisan National Advisory Board includes members who are Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Latter-Day Saints, and Muslim.
After organizing the NCRF as a nonprofit group, our executive director and I opened a bank account at JPMorgan Chase & Co...
However, three weeks after opening our nonprofit business checking account, we received a letter notifying us that Chase had decided to “end their relationship” with the National Committee for Religious Freedom and that our account would be closed. The bank actually closed our account before we received the letter.
We were surprised at being canceled by Chase. When our executive director called to see if this was an error, he was informed that “a note in the file read that Chase employees were not permitted to provide any further clarifying information to the customer.”
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Citizen Privacy
By Luke Wachob
.....A recent editorial acknowledges that Americans have legitimate fears of retaliation when they are identified as supporting groups that criticize or oppose powerful government officials (“Dark money drives elections in unhealthy secrecy,” Oct. 11.) It also acknowledges that groups that do not disclose their donors often have true and important things to say about candidates for election. Nevertheless, the editorial declares that this “doesn’t matter” and insists that more laws requiring disclosure are necessary for the public to have confidence in elected officials.
The former issue may be a question of values, but the latter is a question of social science, and the data does not support the editorial’s view. University of Rochester political scientist David Primo and University of Missouri economist Jeffrey Milyo recently conducted the most extensive study ever of survey data on Americans’ views about money in politics. They found “no meaningful relationship between state campaign finance laws and trust in state government.” In other words, passing more disclosure laws will not improve New Yorkers’ trust in government.
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The Media
By Michael Scherer
.....Pennsylvania’s most widely circulated newspaper showed up, without fanfare or explanation, in the mailboxes of about 1 in every 5 households in the state this April.
A 12-page tabloid with a circulation of 953,000, it has arrived every month since, with articles from the Associated Press, crosswords, recipes and useful updates on which nearby towns had the lowest gas prices. But nowhere in its pages does it disclose its true mission.
The Pennsylvania Independent is, in fact, a new sort of political-journalism hybrid becoming more popular on the left — just one part of a quiet four-state, $28 million election year effort by the liberal-leaning American Independent Foundation and partner groups aimed at swaying voters in the midterm elections.
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Candidates and Campaigns
By Caitlin Oprysko
.....On Twitter and over email, Fetterman’s campaign manager, Brendan McPhillips, laid into what he called a “scam PAC” that was “using John’s name and likeness for their own fundraising.”
“These people are only pretending that the money they raise goes to John and our campaign. In reality, they are tricking thousands of donors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars,” McPhillips continued. “Not only is this wrong, it also puts us at a major disadvantage.”
The object of McPhillips’ ire was an ad backing his candidate launched earlier that week by the Democratic Coalition, a progressive super PAC.
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The States
By Ray Stern
.....Republican candidates for top statewide offices in Arizona have said they believe what they saw in the election-conspiracy movie "2000 Mules."
Now, the state Attorney General's Office is asking the FBI and IRS for investigations of the group behind the movie, True the Vote, noting that it has repeatedly rebuffed all requests to share the documentary's alleged evidence and has raised "considerable sums of money" based on claims of having that evidence.
"Given TTV's status as a nonprofit organization, it would appear that further review of its financials may be warranted," wrote Reginald "Reggie" Grigsby, chief special agent of the office's Special Investigations Section.
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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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