The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech January 13, 2023 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 [email protected]. Ed. note: The Daily Media Update will return Tuesday, January 17. The Courts Courthouse News: Ninth Circuit hears appeal over press access to Maricopa County voting centers By Joe Duhownik .....The Ninth Circuit seems likely to reverse a federal judge’s denial of a restraining order that would eradicate part of Maricopa County’s journalist-vetting criteria, which the judges called a First Amendment violation. Jordan Conradson, a reporter with The Gateway Pundit, was denied a press pass by Maricopa County that would have granted him access to voting centers during the November 2022 election. Maricopa County attorney Joseph Branco told the court Thursday that Conradson lost credibility in the eyes of the county, not because of the outcome of his reporting, but because his “process of newsgathering” differs from other journalists. “What you just said seems like a blatant violation of the First Amendment,” said U.S. Circuit Judge Ryan Nelson, a Donald Trump appointee. Congress Wall Street Journal: GOP Bill Would Bar Government From Pushing Internet Platforms to Block Lawful Speech By Ryan Tracy .....Senior House Republicans introduced legislation Thursday to ban federal employees from pressuring internet platforms to suppress lawful speech, in one of their first steps to advance a central initiative of the newly empowered GOP leadership. The bill addresses what its supporters claim to be efforts by the Biden administration to influence content on social-media platforms, including attempts to block speech on Covid-19 vaccines that runs counter to White House policy. It would bar federal employees from ordering or advocating for “the removal or suppression of lawful speech” from internet platforms... The bill follows the House vote Tuesday, over Democrats’ opposition, to launch a new Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government that is expected to target alleged government meddling in social media, among other issues. Biden Administration Washington Post: Biden calls for changing Big Tech moderation rules. But not how. By Olivier Knox .....Biden’s fresh attack on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — whose supporters call it foundational to a free and open Internet — came in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece he used to invite Democrats and Republicans to take on Big Tech in a bipartisan way. “We need Big Tech companies to take responsibility for the content they spread,” he said. “That’s why I’ve long said we must fundamentally reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects tech companies from legal responsibility for content posted on their sites.” … Yes, Biden has “long said” Section 230 in its current form must go. He just hasn’t said what it should turn into. And if he has publicly uttered the words “Section 230” since taking office, I wasn’t able to find an example… In September 2022, the White House released a kind of blueprint for taking on Big Tech. It was also pretty vague on this score. (Of note, Biden and his administration have used “reform” and “remove” interchangeably when it comes to Section 230, which doesn’t help clear up matters.) The document says he wants to “[r]emove special legal protections for large tech platforms” and notes “[t]he President has long called for fundamental reforms to Section 230.” What those reforms might be, it does not say. Independent Groups RealClearPolitics: Democrats’ Dark-Money Devotion By Susan Crabtree .....Secretive liberal dark-money groups spent hundreds of millions of dollars to boost Democrats’ 2022 midterm ground game, pushing the limits of election law while helping to reduce an expected red Republican wave to little more than a ripple. Still smarting from the underwhelming midterm results, some Republicans are calling on party leaders to replicate those turnout efforts on the right or risk continued disappointments at the ballot box. But doing so is no easy task, veteran GOP operatives argue, especially considering Democrats’ reliance on union foot soldiers for tactical operations, and the sheer magnitude of the money and complex infrastructure their side is devoting to the effort… [Charlie Spies, a veteran GOP election lawyer, told RCP] that Democrats are pushing the boundaries of their dark-money groups’ tax-exempt statuses but benefit from anti-GOP bias within the IRS and the Justice Department. “I think they act in an aggressive way that if conservative-leaning groups did, they would have IRS and DOJ investigations” coming after them, he asserted. Online Speech Platforms FIRE: FIRE releases statement on free speech and social media .....Over the last two decades, people have increasingly flocked to social media to have conversations about politics, current events, and other topics of human interest. For better or worse, the vibrancy of free speech culture partly depends on what speech large and influential private platforms like Twitter and Facebook think is acceptable. For that reason, we should all be concerned when these platforms regulate users’ speech based on vague, arbitrary, or viewpoint-discriminatory standards. But while we can — and must — vigorously advocate for social media policies and practices that promote free expression, we should also oppose laws that infringe upon platforms’ First Amendment right to make editorial decisions about the content they host. That’s the position FIRE takes in our new statement on free speech and social media. Washington Post: How the new GOP House panel could target a real threat to democracy By Jason Willick .....The First Amendment, of course, is widely understood as a xxxxxx against government control of speech. But in a December article for Harvard Law School’s National Security Journal, “Symbiotic Security and Free Speech,” scholar Michael J. Glennon proposes that in our current period of technological transition, free-speech doctrines might paradoxically be having the opposite effect. The government has a First Amendment right to speak, including to browbeat social media corporations, which themselves have a First Amendment right to decide what content goes on their platforms. “Within that constitutional shelter,” Glennon argues, “the government’s security apparatus and private actors can, and often do, join symbiotically to shut down the marketplace of ideas.” He describes a First Amendment no man’s land “in which government recommendations shade into directives, in which voluntary private conduct melts into coerced compliance, and in which benefits are continually exchanged between a public and private sector that have become indistinguishable.” Candidates and Campaigns Insider: George Santos repeatedly ducks Matt Gaetz's questions about the $700,000 he lent his campaign By Madison Hall .....Rep. George Santos repeatedly sidestepped questioning from GOP colleague Rep. Matt Gaetz about the origin of the $705,000 that Santos lent his campaign. On Thursday, Santos appeared on Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast, where Gaetz acted as a stand-in host for Bannon. Link via Yahoo The States CBS Bay Area: Bay Area lawmaker proposes ban on foreign money in state elections .....Assemblymember Alex Lee, D-San Jose, penned Assembly Bill 83, or the Get Foreign Money Out of California Act. The bill would amend the state's Political Reform Act of 1974, which prohibits foreign governments or foreign nationals from making contributions, donations or expenditures to politicians or political committees in California. The amendment would prohibit foreign influenced corporations from engaging in direct election spending within the state. Under AB 83, a U.S. corporation would be "foreign influenced" if 1 percent of the company's shares were owned by a single foreign investor, if 5 percent of shares are owned by multiple foreign investors, or if a foreign entity participates in making decisions on state or local political spending. CT Mirror: CT public campaign financing faces a reckoning in self-funders era By Mark Pazniokas .....The dominance of wealthy self-funders in Connecticut gubernatorial races is prompting an examination of how to restore the relevance of the state’s groundbreaking public financing system to top-of-the ticket elections... The Democratic co-chairs of the legislative committee overseeing election law and the leader of the House Republican minority all say the time is ripe for an examination of whether the program needs to be updated. At issue is both the sufficiency of the public grant for a gubernatorial race, which currently is $7.7 million for a general-election campaign and $1.6 million for a primary, and the more complicated question of whether the money is too hard to obtain and comes too late in the election cycle. Fox 8: Beachwood, police chief file suit to amid anonymous criticisms By Peggy Gallek .....The Beachwood police chief and the city now want a judge to help solve a mystery. Police Chief Katherine Mclaughlin and the city filed the lawsuit asking a judge to find out who has been sending anonymous emails criticizing her and other city officials. The lawsuit was filed in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court. The defendant in the lawsuit is “John Doe.” Mclaughlin says she doesn’t mind criticism, but the social media posts and emails are “malicious” and causing harm to her reputation, the city’s operations and others. In November, Beachwood council voted to spend money to hire a law firm to determine the identity of the sender of an anonymous email that criticized police leadership. Some council members objected, saying an anonymous emailer is a whistleblower and has first amendment rights that should be protected. The Oklahoman: Campaign watchdog sees evidence of abuses but lacks the funding to prosecute By Ben Felder .....Oklahoma’s campaign watchdog agency has the evidence needed to prosecute multiple violations of the state’s campaign finance laws, including from out-of-state actors engaged in “dark money” spending. But the Legislature has not given it the money needed to pursue those cases, said Ashley Kemp, executive director of the Oklahoma Ethics Commission. 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." 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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