The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech February 14, 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]. In the News New York Daily News: Matching funds tempt corrupt pols & cost plenty By Tiffany Donnelly .....Former New York Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin likely sighed with relief when a judge dismissed criminal corruption charges against him in December. But taxpayers aren’t so lucky. They’re still on the hook for funding the money pit encouraging these corrupt politicians, New York City’s matching funds program. The program shovels $8 in tax dollars for every $1 of eligible campaign contributions to politicians. Proponents claim that such “matching funds” schemes reduce corruption by making small-dollar donors more important and making candidates less reliant on “special interests.” But those funds instead incentivize corruption by making illegal straw donor schemes enticing. A crooked politician with some shady friends can split one $400 contribution into sixteen “different” $25 dollar contributions and pocket $3,200 in “matching funds.” Federal prosecutors claimed that Benjamin went to criminal lengths to rake in the tax dollars... No one can deny the sleaziness of what happened. And New York City’s matching funds program enabled and encouraged this sleaze. City records show Benjamin raised a little more than $900,000, but earned an extra $2.1 million from the city’s “match.” This isn’t unique to New York. Everywhere politicians enact tax-funded campaign schemes, slimy candidates across the country exploit them. Daily Caller: Red State Business School Threatened Professor Over Conservative Views, Lawsuit Alleges By Alexa Schwerha .....A tenured University of Texas at Austin (UT) McCombs School of Business professor sued school leaders on Feb. 8 for allegedly threatening his career because of his public conservative views, the lawsuit reads. Richard Lowery, McCombs School of Business associate professor of finance, publicly spoke out in various publications and on social media criticizing the school’s use of Critical Race Theory (CRT), Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and affirmative action, according to the lawsuit. He began self-censoring after several school leaders began an alleged campaign to silence his speech by threatening his job, his pay and opportunities at the school. Congress Mediaite: ‘Sir, Sir, Probable Cause for What?’ Ingraham Baffled by House Republican’s Claim ex-Twitter Employees Will Be Jailed By Michael Luciano .....Laura Ingraham questioned Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) over statements he made during an Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday. She seemed unconvinced and even confused by his response... At one point, Higgins told the witnesses they are going to jail... On Thursday’s edition of The Ingraham Angle, the host who has been a relentless critic of Twitter and its moderation policies, asked Higgins about his remarks after citing liberal pushback against his claim. “Your response to that argument?” she said. “How does moderating content rise to criminal activity? I mean we complain about Democrats, criminalizing politics, criminalizing things that shouldn’t be criminalized. They’re trying to turn that argument on you.” Here was Higgins’ response: DOJ Reason: Can the Feds Prosecute Douglass Mackey for His Twitter Trolling? By Emma Camp .....In a first-of-its-kind case, the Justice Department is prosecuting an internet troll, using a Reconstruction-era law to claim that a series of misleading social media memes were an attempt to "deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote." FEC Brennan Center: Comment to FEC: Adopt more equitable rules for candidate salaries and benefits. By Daniel I. Weiner and Harry Isaiah Black .....On February 10th, the Brennan Center submitted a comment to the Federal Election Commission concerning candidate salaries and benefits. The current regulations only allow candidates to pay themselves the lower of two options with campaign funds: the salary of the office sought by the candidate or the candidate’s prior salary before running for office. This disadvantages candidates who previously worked lower paying jobs or part time, or needed to forego paid work altogether, often to care for others. These individuals are disproportionately women, people of color, LGBTQ+, and/or working class. The Brennan Center’s comment urges the Commission to adopt new rules for candidate salaries and benefits that make running for office more accessible. Nonprofits Election Law Blog: My New Paper: “Nonprofit Law as the Tool to Kill What Remains of Campaign Finance Law: Reluctant Lessons from Ellen Aprill” By Rick Hasen .....I have written this draft for a festschrift symposium issue of the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review honoring my dear friend, Loyola Law School professor Ellen Aprill. Here is the abstract: "This brief Essay was prepared for a festschrift honoring the work of Professor Ellen Aprill. I explain in the Essay how Professor Aprill’s deep knowledge of nonprofit and tax law and her relentless intellectual honesty leads her (and us) to an unhappy place: a world in which many of the remaining regulations of money in politics could well be struck down as unconstitutional or rendered wholly ineffective by a Supreme Court increasingly hostile to the goals of campaign finance law and extremely solicitous of religious freedom. Just as the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission used the First Amendment rights of nonprofit corporations to open up direct political spending by large, for-profit corporations, additional arguments about the rights of charitable institutions and other nonprofits will be used to push further judicial deregulation of the political process for all..." Free Expression Epoch Times: Military Investigates Mother for Facebook Post Objecting to LGBT Banners By Jackson Elliott .....New Jersey mom Angela Reading didn’t expect a single Facebook post would deem her a “security threat” in the opinion of U.S. military officials. But it has, military documents confirm. “They’ve created this image of me—that I’m some sort of domestic terrorist—because I don’t want sexual posters hanging on the wall in an elementary school,” she told The Epoch Times. “People legit [legitimately] believed that me posting online that I didn’t like posters meant that I was a terrorist.” Reading said she eventually resigned her job at the school board because of overwhelming pressure against her because of her Facebook post. Emails show military officials encouraged school superintendents to demand Reading’s resignation. New York Times: DeSantis, Aiming at a Favorite Foil, Wants to Roll Back Press Freedom By Ken Bensinger .....Mr. DeSantis is the latest figure, and among the most influential, to join a growing list of Republicans calling on the court to revisit the 1964 ruling, known as The New York Times Company v. Sullivan. National Review: Progressive Activist Scrubs Website Targeting Harry Potter Video Game Fans By Caroline Downey .....In response to backlash, a progressive activist has scrubbed the custom website he created just days earlier to expose fans of a new widely anticipated Harry Potter-themed video game to an online pressure campaign. Online Speech Platforms Washington Examiner: The Left’s disinformation racket is defunding conservative voices .....Democrats have successfully pressured online platforms to censor conservative opinions, and it is time Republicans started fighting back. New investigative reporting from the Washington Examiner shows that well-funded international nonprofit organizations are systematically labeling conservative outlets such as the Washington Examiner as “disinformation,” all for having the temerity to suggest that there are established scientific differences between men and women. Here is how the scam works. First, Democratic politicians such as former President Barack Obama , Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) , and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) threaten online platforms with regulation unless they crack down on “misinformation.” What is misinformation? Well, that is where deep-pocketed groups such as the Global Disinformation Index come in. GDI maintains a secret "dynamic exclusion list" of news outlets that it encourages advertisers and platforms to avoid so the “financial incentive” to create “disinformation” is removed. The list is made by GDI’s “advisory panel,” which is made up of leftist journalists and academics. Washington Examiner: Disinformation Inc: Microsoft removes conservative sites from blacklist 'defunding' outlets By Gabe Kaminsky .....Microsoft has removed negative flags for conservative media outlets that have blocked them from reaping key advertising dollars amid the corporation launching an internal review and suspending its subscription to a "disinformation" tracking group's blacklist used to "defund" disfavored speech, according to internal data obtained by the Washington Examiner. PACs Daily Beast: Thieves Have a New Target for Big Paydays: Political Groups By Roger Sollenberger .....James E. Lee, CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center, told The Daily Beast that political groups are in some ways “tailor-made” targets for fraudsters. “This is part of a bigger trend indicative of how well-organized and sophisticated these cyber thieves are becoming. But when you’re talking about some of these national-level campaigns, there’s a whole lot of money and data flowing through, but not a lot of processes in place,” Lee said. “Campaigns are also temporary organizations by design, without a lot of structure, and on top of that, elections can be very chaotic,” he said. “Those circumstances are tailor-made for someone to come in for identity fraud.” A review of Federal Election Commission online data shows reports of fraud dating back to 2004. However, that rate has dramatically increased, especially in the back half of 2022. While it’s not clear whether there are truly more incidents or just more reports of incidents, the data indicates about 180 instances of reported fraud during the 2021-2022 midterm cycle, around 15 more than 2019-2020—a presidential cycle. The 2017-2018 midterm saw about 83 reported incidents. Candidates and Campaigns New York Times: George Santos and the Case of the Missing $365,000 By Grace Ashford, Alexandra Berzon, Ken Bensinger and Alyce McFadden .....Representative George Santos has spent his campaign money in plenty of conspicuous ways, from lavish hotel stays in Las Vegas and Palm Beach, Fla., to an unusual slew of payments for exactly $199.99 — two cents below the threshold where receipts would be required. But deep within Mr. Santos’s campaign filings, The New York Times found another eye-catching number: $365,399.08 in unexplained spending, with no record of where it went or for what purpose. The mysterious expenditures, which list no recipient and offer no receipts, account for nearly 12 percent of the Santos campaign’s total reported expenses — many times exceeding what is typical for congressional candidates. The States New Mexico In Depth: Lawmakers seek to close big transparency gap By Marjorie Childress .....There were bound to be gaps in a 2019 revision to New Mexico’s dense elections transparency law that sought to force independent groups who aren’t required to register as political committees to disclose the money they spend in elections. The changes were quickly put to the test the next year, during the 2020 election cycle, when a new independent expenditure group found a loophole so big it evaded reporting who donated hundreds of thousands of dollars it spent on political advertising... This year, Sen. Peter Wirth, a Democrat from Santa Fe who shepherded the decade-long effort to pass those 2019 revisions, hopes to close that loophole and other gaps in the law with Senate Bill 42, co-sponsored by Sen. Katy Duhigg, D-Albuquerque, and Rep. Matthew McQueen, D-Galisteo... Jeremy Farris, executive director of the New Mexico State Ethics Commission, told the [Senate Rules] committee the bill in part was “reactive” to cases the commission has handled over the last three years, noting that his office tended to face lawyers from Washington, D.C. and New York. “It’s out-of-state money, and they have sophisticated attorneys,” Farris said. “And so in order to react to gaps that the smart lawyers from out of state kind of see in our law, we have to respond.” The bill spells out in more detail about when donations or spending would have to be publicly disclosed. It speeds up reporting by independent groups; they would have to file reports in the final week of an election as candidates and political committees do. And it adds a second requirement for these independent groups wishing to keep certain donors undisclosed. In addition to the donor putting in writing that their donations can’t be used for politics, the donations would have to be placed in a separate bank account that isn’t used for political spending. The legislation is also “proactive,” said Farris, in making several other changes. One has to do with personal loans that candidates make to their own campaigns... The bill would also further tighten fundraising during a legislative session. Sludge: Minnesota Democrats Pass Voting Rights Bill in Committee By David Moore .....[I]n the 2022 midterm elections, Minnesota Democrats won a trifecta in state government, flipping control of the House. This week, three committees of the Minnesota legislature advanced a bill that supporters say would increase voting access, combat secret spending by groups in elections, and more. Titled the Democracy for the People Act, the bill was among the first legislative items introduced by Minnesota Democrats this year, a sign of its priority. The Senate Committee on Elections passed the bill on Feb. 7, with the House Committee on Elections and Senate Transportation Committee passing it the next day. The bill will be heard next week in the House Transportation, Finance, and Policy Committee before it can receive a vote by the full body... The bill would...increase campaign finance transparency by adopting federal standards to define when a group’s communication advocates for the election or defeat of a candidate—even when the message lacks so-called “magic words” like “vote for,” “support,” or “defeat.” This change seeks to require more groups that spend money to influence politics to have to disclose their spending to the state. The bill would prohibit foreign-influenced corporations—defined as those where a foreign owner holds more than one percent of total equity, among other conditions—from spending on behalf of state candidates or ballot measures… The Democracy for the People Act has been buoyed by We Choose Us, a coalition of grassroots organizations, unions, and advocacy groups in Minnesota, and its provisions align with the coalition’s Expanding Democracy Agenda. 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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