This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected].
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New from the Institute for Free Speech
By Bradley A. Smith and David Keating
.....While the latest Federal Election Commission “Draft Final Rule and Explanation and Justification for Internet Communications Disclaimers” is a big improvement over earlier FEC drafts, we believe it is not ready to become final.
First, key portions of the draft are unclear. If it’s not clear, then how will speakers who can’t afford lawyers be able to follow something they can’t understand? As former Justice Kennedy wrote in the Citizens United v FEC opinion, the “[t]he First Amendment does not permit laws that force speakers to retain a campaign finance attorney … or seek declaratory rulings before discussing the most salient political issues of our day.”
Second, the draft rule would effectively ban certain ad formats that are available to commercial speakers. That strikes us as both poor policy and unconstitutional.
For these reasons, the draft rule would benefit from another round of public comment. Indeed, further comment may be required by the Administrative Procedure Act.
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Candidates and Campaigns
By J.D. Vance
.....But any effort to blame Trump—or McConnell for that matter—ignores a major structural advantage for Democrats: money. Money is how candidates fund the all-important advertising that reaches swing voters, and it’s how candidates fund turnout operations. And in every marquee national race, Republicans got crushed financially.
The reason is ActBlue. ActBlue is the Democrats’ national fundraising platform, where 21 million individual donors shovel small donations into every marquee national race. ActBlue is why my opponent ran nonstop ads about how much he “agreed with Trump” during the summer. It is why John Fetterman was able to raise $75 million for his election.
Republican small dollar fundraising efforts are paltry by comparison, and Republican fundraising efforts suffer from high consultant and “list building” fees—where Republicans pay a lot to acquire small-dollar donors. This is why incumbents have such massive advantages: much of the small-dollar fundraising my own campaign did went to fundraising and list-building expenses. If and when I run for reelection, almost all of it will go directly to my campaign. Democrats don’t have this problem. They raise more money from more donors, with lower overhead.
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Independent Groups
By Melissa Santos
.....Outside groups spent record amounts trying to influence congressional races in Washington state this year — and no other election cycle comes anywhere close to 2022's tab.
Independent groups spent nearly twice as much money supporting and opposing Washington congressional candidates in 2022 than in any prior year, according to Federal Election Commission data analyzed by Axios.
The analysis illustrates the extent to which outside money has shaped politics since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision.
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By Taylor Giorno
.....Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX, was a darling in some Washington D.C. policy circles. He proselytized for digital assets in testimony on Capitol Hill and gave more than $990,000 to candidates plus an additional $38.8 million to outside groups this election cycle, making him the sixth biggest individual donor of the 2022 midterms.
But his pledge to spend up to $1 billion during the 2024 election cycle likely won’t come to pass. Bankman-Fried’s $16 billion fortune was wiped out almost overnight last week, one of the largest ever single-day collapses among billionaires, according to Bloomberg.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced a nonbinding agreement to buy FTX last Tuesday, but the world’s largest cryptocurrency platform backed out of the deal the next day, citing “mishandled funds and alleged U.S. agency investigations.” At least $1 billion in FTX client funds were reported missing by Reuters.
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Online Speech Platforms
By Donie O'Sullivan
.....Facebook’s fact-checkers will need to stop fact-checking former President Donald Trump following the announcement that he is running for president, according to a company memo obtained by CNN.
While Trump is currently banned from Facebook, the fact-check ban applies to anything Trump says and false statements made by Trump can be posted to the platform by others. Despite Trump’s ban, “Team Trump,” a page run by Trump’s political group, is still active and has 2.3 million followers.
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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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