The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech March 20, 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]. The Courts Arizona Capitol Times: We’re suing to restore our right to free speech By Stephen Shadegg .....Proposition 211’s proponents claim it is needed to stop “dark money,” that they define as people trying to hide giving to political campaigns through intermediaries. But such practices are already illegal under both Arizona law and federal law, and Proposition 211 doesn’t just target political campaigns. Instead, the scope is so sweeping that it impacts essentially any organization that speaks up on any issue – from civil rights to immigration. These groups will be forced to list their supporters’ names, addresses and employers. That’s great news if you’re a politician seeking to silence your opponents, not so much if you’re an Arizonan – of any political belief. What’s more, Proposition 211 doesn’t just require disclosures of those who give to a cause, but of people who give to an organization that gives to an organization that supports a cause. It will create complicated and misleading “disclosures” of people who simply supported a charity, only to find themselves listed as a supporter of something they had nothing to do with... Arizona deserves better. That’s why my organization is bringing a federal lawsuit against Proposition 211. We’re asking the courts to uphold Arizonans’ constitutional rights to privacy and free speech – just like the Supreme Court has done from 1950s Alabama to 2020s California. AZ Mirror: Claiming a First Amendment right to anonymity, lawsuit aims to strike down ‘dark money’ prop By Jerod MacDonald-Evoy .....“Compliance-wise, it is just a nightmare,” Luke Wachob, senior director of communications and policy for People United for Privacy Foundation told the Mirror about Prop. 211. According to the lawsuit and Wachob, the voter-approved law will make it so those who advocate at the Capitol will also be running afoul of disclosure laws due to the “overly broad” language of the proposition. The argument rests on the claim that the proposition does not adequately define “campaign media spending,” leaving an open door to interpretation, and adds on the window of time prior to an election in which disclosures must be made and other forms of political speech may be impacted. “It is going to trip up a lot of legislative groups looking to talk about legislation around the legislative session,” Wachob said. Plaintiffs and advocates for anonymous political spending say that the disclosure required by Prop. 211 opens up donors to harassment. “People vote in private booths,” Wachob said. “It is a very similar idea, that when you support a nonprofit group or advocacy group…you should not have to have your name, address, employer published.” In today’s divisive political environment, Wachob contends that exposing donors could create retaliation or chill speech, as donors would think twice about donating out of fear. FEC Federal Election Commission: FEC to hold hearing on proposed changes to regulations regarding use of campaign funds to compensate candidates .....The Commission will hold a hybrid public hearing at 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday, March 22, on proposed changes to regulations regarding the use of campaign funds by a candidate’s principal campaign committee to pay compensation to the candidate. The proposed changes could expand the ability of candidates to use campaign funds for candidate compensation, including salaries, health insurance premiums, and dependent care costs. Testimony provided at the hearing may inform the Commission’s consideration of whether or not to amend the regulations governing candidate compensation. The Commission has received 12 comments in response to its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which was published in the Federal Register on December 12, 2022. At the hearing, it will hear testimony from the following witnesses: Panel One: U.S. Representative Maxwell Frost (10th District of Florida) Laurence Gold (AFL-CIO) Jacquelyn Lopez (DSCC) Dr. Neil Makhija (University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School) Brad Smith (Institute for Free Speech) Daniel Weiner (Brennan Center for Justice) Epoch Times: Millions of Tiny, Suspicious Political Donations Questioned by Watchdog Group By Steven Kovac .....Election Watch, a national election integrity watchdog group, is raising questions about more than 10,000 individual donors who are listed on the Federal Election Commission database as having each contributed thousands of times in four years. The data is raising eyebrows among investigators because surveys have shown that American political contributors donate far fewer times per year. In the following examples taken directly from the FEC database, the donors’ identities will not be disclosed. One of many examples cited by Election Watch is a 77-year-old Colorado woman referred to as “Donor A.” She contributed more than 59,000 times in separate donations totaling over $279,000 in the 2020 and 2022 election cycles. Another contributor, Donor B, 74, a woman from Kansas, donated 65,489 times, giving over $223,000, over the same time period. When asked by The Epoch Times about Donor C’s situation and the above comments, FEC spokesman Christian Hilland answered in an email, “I wouldn’t be able to speculate or comment on specific financial activity. “However, duplicate contributions may appear in our database if they were earmarked through a conduit committee. “The same contribution is reported by both the conduit committee and the recipient committee. “It is the responsibility of a committee’s treasurer to monitor contributions to ensure that they comply with the legal limits and source prohibitions of federal campaign finance law and agency regulations.” Christopher Gleason, an Election Watch computer analyst, responded to the FEC explanation, telling The Epoch Times, “We are not just seeing duplications. We are looking at thousands of transactions recorded in FEC reports showing individual donors making multiple small contributions dozens of times a day, week in and week out, to the same recipient.” Free Expression Washington Free Beacon: At Stanford, Public Accountability for Thee But Not for Me By Free Beacon Editors .....[Stanford’s] chapter of the National Lawyers Guild—the organizing force behind the Maoist horde of would-be lawyers—papered the hallways prior to Judge Duncan's arrival with the names and photographs of the Federalist Society's board members. Yet when Free Beacon reporter Aaron Sibarium quoted the group's board members describing the protests as "Stanford Law School at its best," and named those board members, we got a note from one of them, Lily Bou, demanding that we remove her name and those of her classmates. "You do not have our permission to reference or quote any portion of this email in a future piece." That's not exactly how the First Amendment works. We've gotten similar complaints about publishing images—pulled from social media—of Stanford Law School dean Jenny Martinez's classroom, which protesters covered end to end in flyers after she issued an apology to Judge Duncan. We received the following note from Mary Cate Hickman, who identified herself as a second-year law student and describes herself on LinkedIn as "passionate about social justice" and a graduate of the Sorbonne. Hickman demanded that we "anonymize the face of the student in the red hoodie" because "California is a two-party consent state, and you have no right to publish this student's identity/likeness/face without consent." Online Speech Platforms New York Times: YouTube Restores Donald Trump’s Account Privileges By Nico Grant .....YouTube suspended former President Donald J. Trump’s account on the platform six days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The video platform said it was concerned that Mr. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election could lead to more real-world violence. YouTube, which is owned by Google, reversed that decision on Friday, permitting Mr. Trump to once again upload videos to the popular site. The move came after similar decisions by Twitter and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. “We carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence, while balancing the chance for voters to hear equally from major national candidates in the run up to an election,” YouTube said on Twitter on Friday. Mr. Trump's account will have to comply with the site’s content rules like any other account, YouTube added. Candidates and Campaigns New York Times: A Four-Decade Secret: One Man’s Story of Sabotaging Carter’s Re-election By Peter Baker .....What happened next Mr. Barnes has largely kept secret for nearly 43 years. Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal. Then shortly after returning home, Mr. Barnes said, Mr. Connally reported to William J. Casey, the chairman of Mr. Reagan’s campaign and later director of the Central Intelligence Agency, briefing him about the trip in an airport lounge. Mr. Carter’s camp has long suspected that Mr. Casey or someone else in Mr. Reagan’s orbit sought to secretly torpedo efforts to liberate the hostages before the election, and books have been written on what came to be called the October surprise. But congressional investigations debunked previous theories of what happened. Mr. Connally did not figure in those investigations. His involvement, as described by Mr. Barnes, adds a new understanding to what may have happened in that hard-fought, pivotal election year. With Mr. Carter now 98 and in hospice care, Mr. Barnes said he felt compelled to come forward to correct the record. The States Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): School District Superintendent Sought Gag Order Against Critic By Eugene Volokh .....From yesterday's opinion in Cozad v. Ohio Elections Commission, decided by the Ohio Court of Appeals: Los Angeles Times: Unions and environmentalists push for California referendum reform By Taryn Luna .....Assemblymember Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles) is introducing a proposal this week to reform state elections law by making it more difficult for campaigns to mislead voters when circulating petitions to qualify a statewide referendum… Assembly Bill 421 would establish new government oversight of signature collection, require more transparency about the groups funding referendum campaigns and mandate that at least 10% of petition signatures must be obtained by unpaid volunteers. The sweeping legislation would apply the new rules to referendums and extend to initiative campaigns that seek to repeal or amend a state statute within two years of the law taking effect… [One] common complaint is that signature gatherers misrepresent the groups funding campaigns. To offset those concerns, the legislation would require the petition to disclose the top three contributors to the campaign on the first page along with the attorney general’s title and summary of the measure. Signers would be required to initial a statement that says they reviewed the top funders. 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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