The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech March 7, 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 Washington Watch with Tony Perkins (Video): Cindy Martin highlights her win against a school district that promoted highly-sexualized books .....Ed. note: Cindy Martin, Mama Bears Chairwoman, discusses her First Amendment victory in Mama Bears v. Forsyth County Schools. Learn more about the case here. The Courts Cleveland.com: How prosecutors used a law meant to fight the mob to shine a light on dark money in the Householder corruption trial By Adam Ferrise .....[T]he case also represents the first time in Ohio the racketeering charge has been used to charge a 501(c)(4), and those who spoke with cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer said they believed it may be the first in the country. “If we wanted, as a people, to create a perfect mechanism to launder money, we did it with a 501 (c)(4),” said David DeVillers, the former U.S. Attorney in southern Ohio who headed the office when it brought charges against Generation Now, Householder and others. “The way it’s written and the way, quite frankly, that it’s not enforced, is the perfect mechanism for laundering money. It basically invites this sort of thing.” … The uniqueness of charging a 501(c)(4) had high stakes for U.S. Justice Department, said Ned Hill, a political science professor at Ohio State. “I think the belief is that this is seen by the Justice Department as being a very important case because it’s going to establish whether there are going to be limits on 501(c)(4)s or if it becomes American publicly policy to buy your way through elections,” Hill said. “It’s going to establish whether we have corporate thuggery or not.” Hill said even if Householder and Borges are convicted, the trial still highlighted how easy it is for politicians to get away with similar offenses in the future. All that needs to be done is delete text messages after they’re sent, don’t make an explicit quid-pro-quo agreement and make certain you’re not recorded directing the 501(c)(4), he said. “This really is kind of a Harry Potter type device: it’s an invisibility shield,” Hill said. DeVillers said nearly all statewide politicians have affiliated 501(c)(4)s. “Every statewide politician controls a 501 (c)(4), they just do,” DeVillers said. “And if they say they don’t, that’s b-----t.” He said the federal government could make it harder for politicians to exploit 501(c)(4)s through changes in the tax code. But, he said, that’s not likely to happen. “But there’s no political will to do that,” DeVillers said. “The politicians control these 501(c)(4)s, and they’re not going to want to change that.” Congress The Hill: Jordan issues subpoenas over school boards memo, DHS disinformation board By Ian Swanson .....The House Judiciary Committee on Monday issued three subpoenas in an effort to forge ahead on two of its most controversial probes. The panel sent subpoenas to two figures previously connected with the National School Boards Association (NSBA), part of its ongoing investigation into a short-lived Justice Department memo encouraging the FBI to coordinate with school boards amid rising violent threats to its members. A third subpoena was sent to Nina Jankowicz, who briefly served as the head of the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board, which was swiftly disbanded amid Republican criticism. DHS Politico: DHS has a program gathering domestic intelligence — and virtually no one knows about it By Betsy Woodruff Swan .....For years, the Department of Homeland Security has run a virtually unknown program gathering domestic intelligence, one of many revelations in a wide-ranging tranche of internal documents reviewed by POLITICO. Those documents also reveal that a significant number of employees in DHS’s intelligence office have raised concerns that the work they are doing could be illegal… The inner workings of the program — called the “Overt Human Intelligence Collection Program” — are described in the large tranche of internal documents POLITICO reviewed from the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. Those documents and additional interviews revealed widespread internal concerns about legally questionable tactics and political pressure. The documents also show that people working there fear punishment if they speak out about mismanagement and abuses… Spencer Reynolds, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School and a former DHS intelligence and counterterrorism attorney, told POLITICO that I&A’s mission makes it uniquely susceptible to political pressure. “In recent years, the office’s political leadership—Democrat and Republican—has pushed I&A to take a more and more expansive view of its mandate, putting officers in the position of surveilling Americans’ views and associations protected by the U.S. Constitution,” he emailed. “There’s a tendency to use the office’s power to paint political opponents—be they left-wing demonstrators or QAnon truthers—as extremists and dangerous. This has had a disastrous impact on morale—most people don’t join the Intelligence Community to monitor their fellow Americans’ political, religious, and social beliefs. At the same time, leadership has sidelined I&A’s oversight offices, leaving employees with little recourse.” Online Speech Platforms BBC: Twitter insiders: We can't protect users from trolling under Musk By Marianna Spring .....Twitter insiders have told the BBC that the company is no longer able to protect users from trolling, state-co-ordinated disinformation and child sexual exploitation, following lay-offs and changes under owner Elon Musk. Exclusive academic data plus testimony from Twitter users backs up their allegations, suggesting hate is thriving under Mr Musk's leadership, with trolls emboldened, harassment intensifying and a spike in accounts following misogynistic and abusive profiles. The Intercept: U.S. Special Forces want to use deepfakes for psy-ops By Sam Biddle .....U.S. Special Operations Command, responsible for some of the country’s most secretive military endeavors, is gearing up to conduct internet propaganda and deception campaigns online using deepfake videos, according to federal contracting documents reviewed by The Intercept. The plans, which also describe hacking internet-connected devices to eavesdrop in order to assess foreign populations’ susceptibility to propaganda, come at a time of intense global debate over technologically sophisticated “disinformation” campaigns, their effectiveness, and the ethics of their use. The States New York Times: Florida Is Trying to Take Away the American Right to Speak Freely By The Editorial Board .....A homeowner gets angry at a county commission over a zoning dispute and writes a Facebook post accusing a local buildings official of being in the pocket of developers. A right-wing broadcaster criticizing border policies accuses the secretary of homeland security of being a traitor. A parent upset about the removal of a gay-themed book from library shelves goes to a school board meeting and calls the board chair a bigot and a homophobe. All three are examples of Americans engaging in clamorous but perfectly legal speech about public figures that is broadly protected by the Constitution. The Supreme Court, in a case that dates back nearly 60 years, ruled that even if that speech might be damaging or include errors, it should generally be protected against claims of libel and slander. All three would lose that protection — and be subject to ruinous defamation lawsuits — under a bill that is moving through the Florida House and is based on longstanding goals of Gov. Ron DeSantis. The bill represents a dangerous threat to free expression in the United States, not only for the news media, but for all Americans, whatever their political beliefs. There’s still time for Florida lawmakers to reject this crude pandering and ensure that their constituents retain the right to free speech. Fortune: Florida bill that would require bloggers to register with state raises big free speech questions: ‘It’s an attempt to bring critics to heel’ By Anthony Izaguirre, Associated Press .....A Republican lawmaker in Florida wants bloggers who write about elected officials to register with the state, raising concern among First Amendment groups who are calling the proposal unconstitutional. The bill, filed by Sen. Jason Brodeur of Lake Mary, would require bloggers to file periodic reports with the state if they are paid for posts about the state’s governor, lieutenant governor, cabinet members or legislative officials... “The only thing that I can see is that it’s an attempt to limit and control free speech,” said Bobby Block, executive director of the First Amendment Foundation. “It’s an attempt to bring critics to heel and it’s an attempt to make sure that people who want to talk about you think real hard before they do so.” ... In a Twitter post, Brodeur said the bill is aimed at bringing transparency to blogs that advocate or lobby for specific causes. The text of his bill states that it would apply to any blogger who is paid to write about elected officials in Florida. “Do you want to know the truth about the so-called “blogger” bill?” Brodeur’s post reads. “It brings the current pay-to-play scheme to light and gives voters clarity as to who is influencing their elected officials, JUST LIKE how we treat lobbyists. It’s an electioneering issue, not a free speech issue.” Spectrum News 1: National coalition urges New York to implement public campaign financing By Nick Reisman .....A coalition of 20 national organizations and civil rights leaders in a letter to top Democrats in the state Legislature and Gov. Kathy Hochul to move forward with a system of publicly financed campaigns as lawmakers discuss a potential two-year delay. The letter released Monday is the latest pressure point for Democrats in Albany over whether the program should be put on hold as new district boundaries for the state Assembly are being considered, giving an added dash of uncertainty for incumbent lawmakers… The letter was signed by figures like former NAACP President Ben Jealous as well as Maya Wiley, a former candidate for New York City mayor. Progressive organizations like the Center for Popular Democracy and End Citizens United are backing the push as well as good-government groups like the League of Women Voters of the United States and the Brennan Center. 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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