January 6, 2023

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Independent Groups

Politico: Politico Influence

By Caitlyn Oprysko

.....The Super PAC Speaker’s Election: As House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) worked through Wednesday to corral enough votes to become House speaker, a McCarthy-allied super PAC and a top conservatives grassroots group announced what they hailed last night as a “key agreement in support of Kevin McCarthy for speaker.”

As part of the deal, head of the House Republican group the Congressional Leadership Fund, agreed not to spend money in open primaries in safe red districts — a top complaint lobbed by conservatives, including at the conservative grassroots advocacy group Club for Growth that has agitated against McCarthy’s speakership bid.

In exchange, the Club, which even issued a key vote alert for the Speaker’s race, extended its support to the Californian conditional upon McCarthy’s approval of a rules agreement with his critics.

Because super PACs are prohibited from coordinating with candidates as a condition of being able to raise and spend unlimited sums, The Washington Post’s Isaac Stanley-Becker writes that “the circumstances of the agreement may present thorny campaign finance questions,” according to Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at the Campaign Legal Center.

Spokespeople for McCarthy and CLF told the Post the GOP leader “had no role in brokering the super PAC deal unveiled last night,” per Stanley-Becker.

Election Law Blog: “End Citizens United” Group Wants Investigation into Kevin McCarthy for Super PAC Deal to Help Get Speakership

By Rick Hasen

.....Letter.

Candidates and Campaigns

Politico: Corporations gave $10M to election objectors after pledging to cut them off

By Jessica Piper and Zach Montellaro

.....Political action committees affiliated with more than 70 major corporations said they would pause or reconsider donations to those who objected to certifying the results of the 2020 election after the attack on the U.S. Capitol two years ago.

Then they gave more than $10 million to members of Congress who did just that, according to a POLITICO analysis of federal campaign finance filings.

Free Expression

The Popehat Report: Hamline University And Cancel Culture

By Ken White

.....Last March I wrote a self-indulgently long post airing my grievances about the term “cancel culture” and how it’s used in an unprincipled, unproductive way that discourages good discussions rather than encouraging them.

My thesis was this: (1) any productive discussion of cancel culture needs a workable definition of it, (2) any principled discussion of cancel culture must consider the free speech interests of everyone involved, not just the “first speaker,” and (3) any useful discussion of cancel culture needs specific action items — articulable things to do or not to do in order to advance “free speech culture.”

A few people have said, in so many words, “all right, wise-ass. But what would that look like? Can you actually apply it to a real-life situation?”

Fair enough. Let’s take Hamline University.

Online Speech Platforms

TK News by Matt Taibbi: Capsule Summaries of all Twitter Files Threads to Date, With Links and a Glossary

.....In order, the Twitter Files threads:

Wall Street Journal: Facebook Wanted Out of Politics. It Was Messier Than Anyone Expected.

By Jeff Horwitz, Keach Hagey, and Emily Glazer

.....After the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, parent Meta Platforms Inc. said it wanted to scale back how much political content it showed users. The company went further than almost anyone knew.

The results of the effort are gradually reshaping political discourse on the world’s biggest social-media platform, even though the company backed off the most aggressive approach: hitting the mute button on all recommendations of political content.

The company’s sometimes tortured efforts over the past 18 months to play down politics and other divisive topics on the platform are outlined in internal documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The States

Bleeding Heartland: State board asks Iowa lawmakers to regulate recurring campaign donations

By Laura Belin

.....The agency charged with enforcing Iowa's campaign regulations pre-filed the bill last month, after the six-member board unanimously voted to recommend the policy at its November meeting…

In a memo to lawmakers, the ethics board's executive director Zach Goodrich explained that the regulations "will protect contributors from unscrupulous fundraising tactics." The use of pre-checked boxes for online donations can lead "unsuspecting contributors" to make a recurring contribution when they intended to make a one-time gift. "These recurring contributions, some of which happen as frequently as every week, can be difficult to cancel once discovered."

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