March 24, 2023

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This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected].

In the News

CNN: Ramen noodles and drained savings: FEC weighs allowing candidates to use political cash to pay themselves bigger salaries

By Fredreka Schouten

.....At a [FEC] hearing Wednesday, the regulators weighed boosting the amount of campaign money candidates can use to pay themselves while running for office. They also are considering whether to allow federal candidates to use donors’ money to underwrite health insurance premiums and other benefits…

Bradley Smith, a former Republican FEC commissioner, testified that the agency should be wary of going too far with “feel-good rule-making.”

“Why not allow candidates to pay for haircuts, better clothes, better food to keep a candidate’s energy up and fundraising or recharging time at the country club, all of which could be helpful to a campaign?” he asked.

Congress

Epoch Times: Angry Parents Tell House Panel to End DOJ’s Labeling of Parents as ‘Domestic Terrorists’

By Mark Tapscott

.....There were only two issues on which Republicans and Democrats could agree during the House Judiciary Committee’s Constitution and Limited Government’s March 23 hearing on the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) “chilling of parents fundamental rights” by branding them “domestic terrorists” in 2021.

All four of the witnesses providing testimony for the hearing agreed when asked by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) that parents “have the right to see what their children” are being taught in public schools. The other point of agreement was that to date nobody has been arrested as a result of DOJ’s actions…

Tyson Langhofer, Senior Counsel and Director of the Center for Academic Freedom at the Alliance Defending Freedom, focused on recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts affirming freedom of speech for all citizens, including parents of public school children...

The day’s most emotional testimony was delivered by Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of the parents group Moms for Liberty. Noting that her organization has more than 115,000 members, Justice said “we attended school board meetings, often facing unjust treatment. Parents were expelled, their mics were cut off, and many were prevented from speaking. Americans peacefully exercising their constitutional rights were labeled as enemies of the state.”

But Justice vowed that “we are moms, dads, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and concerned citizens. We are not ‘domestic terrorists.’ We will not be silenced to protect a failing system. They betrayed the trust of the American people. There must be accountability.”

Free Expression

Wall Street Journal: Diversity and Free Speech Can Coexist at Stanford

By Tirien Steinbach

.....Students involved in the protest had previously requested that the event be canceled or moved to Zoom. In my role as Stanford Law School’s associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion, I supported the administration’s decision not to cancel the event or move it to video, as it would censor or limit the free speech of Judge Duncan and the students who invited him. Instead, the administration and I welcomed Judge Duncan to speak while supporting the right of students to protest within the bounds of university policy.

As a member of the Stanford Law School administration—and as a lawyer—I believe that we should strive for authentic free speech. We must strive for an environment in which we meet speech—even that with which we strongly disagree—with more speech, not censorship.

My participation at the event with Judge Duncan has been widely discussed...

I stepped up to the podium to deploy the de-escalation techniques in which I have been trained, which include getting the parties to look past conflict and see each other as people. My intention wasn’t to confront Judge Duncan or the protesters but to give voice to the students so that they could stop shouting and engage in respectful dialogue.

New York Times: Free Speech Doesn’t Mean Free Rein to Shout Down Others

By David French

.....Robust protest should be welcome in the academy, and it is entirely appropriate to ask any judge difficult questions during the question and answer session after a speech. But protests that go so far as to shout down or disrupt speeches or events aren’t free speech but rather mob censorship.

This is an ancient principle of American liberty. My right to protest does not encompass a right to silence or drown out another person. As the abolitionist Frederick Douglass wrote in 1860 after an antislavery event was disrupted in Boston by a violent mob, “There can be no right of speech where any man, however lifted up, or however humble, however young, or however old, is overawed by force, and compelled to suppress his honest sentiments.”

Online Speech Platforms

New York Times: Conservatives Aim to Build a Chatbot of Their Own

By Stuart A. Thompson, Tiffany Hsu and Steven Lee Myers

.....When ChatGPT exploded in popularity as a tool using artificial intelligence to draft complex texts, David Rozado decided to test its potential for bias. A data scientist in New Zealand, he subjected the chatbot to a series of quizzes, searching for signs of political orientation.

The results, published in a recent paper, were remarkably consistent across more than a dozen tests: “liberal,” “progressive,” “Democratic.”

So he tinkered with his own version, training it to answer questions with a decidedly conservative bent. He called his experiment RightWingGPT.

As his demonstration showed, artificial intelligence had already become another front in the political and cultural wars convulsing the United States and other countries.

Washington Post: Fake images of Trump arrest show ‘giant step’ for AI’s disruptive power

By Isaac Stanley-Becker and Naomi Nix

.....Eliot Higgins, the founder of the open-source investigative outlet Bellingcat, was reading this week about the expected indictment of Donald Trump when he decided he wanted to visualize it.

He turned to an AI art generator, giving the technology simple prompts, such as, “Donald Trump falling down while being arrested.” He shared the results — images of the former president surrounded by officers, their badges blurry and indistinct — on Twitter...

Two days later, his posts depicting an event that never happened have been viewed nearly 5 million times, creating a case study in the increasing sophistication of AI-generated images, the ease with which they can be deployed and their potential to create confusion in volatile news environments. The episode also makes evident the absence of corporate standards or government regulation addressing the use of AI to create and spread falsehoods.

“Policymakers have been warning for years about the potential misuse of synthetic media to spread disinformation and more generally to sow confusion and discord,” said Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “While it took a few years for the capabilities to catch up, we’re now at a point where these tools are widely available and incredibly capable.”

Warner said developers “should already be on notice: if your product directly enables harms that are reasonably foreseeable, you can be held potentially liable.” But he said policymakers also have work to do, calling for new obligations to ensure firms are addressing the dangers of artificial intelligence.

Washington Post: This dissident uses Chinese-owned TikTok to criticize China’s government

By Drew Harwell and Meaghan Tobin

.....Kim Wong, a longtime journalist in Hong Kong who now lives in the Boston area, has attracted a giant online audience with his Mandarin-language videos criticizing the Chinese government — including, he says, a substantial number of people inside China who use software tools to access information the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t want them to see.

And many of those videos can be found in a surprising place: TikTok, the wildly popular short-video app owned by Chinese company ByteDance that the U.S. government has claimed could serve as a megaphone for pro-Communist propaganda.

Wong says he understands and supports the calls to ban TikTok in the United States because of its potential for misuse by the Chinese state. But he also calls TikTok a uniquely powerful tool for reaching young Mandarin-speaking people around the world. Blocking it would close off an influential route for questioning the Chinese government’s authoritarianism — and mean one fewer voice breaking through.

Candidates and Campaigns

Politico: Republicans are looking for Senate candidates who are filthy rich

By Ally Mutnick

.....Senate Republicans have landed on a plan to avoid getting swamped by Democratic cash again next year: Find candidates whose bank accounts are already loaded.

So far, at least 10 candidates with sizable net worth are seriously considering self-funded Senate campaigns in more than a half-dozen swing states — many of them at the behest of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Both parties have relied on self-funders before. But this approach has taken on increasing importance for Republicans because they failed to counter Democrats’ massive grassroots fundraising in Senate races during the past two cycles. In 2022 alone, Democratic nominees outraised Republicans by $288 million in the six closest Senate races.

The strategy is also an acknowledgment that the party’s reliance on super PACs funded by its richest supporters has been insufficient.

The States

Politico (Massachusetts Playbook): Back that PAC up

By Kelly Garrity and Sophie Gardner

.....Stalled in the state’s top court, campaign finance-reform advocates looking to reign in super PAC spending are taking their fight to the Legislature.

A bill from state Rep. Michael Day would set a $5,000 annual cap on individual donations to independent expenditure PACs...

The legislation mirrors the language of a ballot initiative now sitting before the Supreme Judicial Court. Two groups are challenging then-Attorney General Maura Healey’s decision to shoot down their petition last year for being “inconsistent” with free speech protections.

Advocates want to close what they view as a loophole in state law that’s come into play in the decade since Citizens United opened the floodgates for outside spending: Massachusetts limits individuals’ contributions to candidates and political parties, but not to super PACs. The SJC heard their case in February but has yet to rule on whether the groups can proceed in their ballot quest.

What the court says will likely weigh heavily on whether lawmakers decide to take up Day’s legislation...

Healey’s opposition to the ballot question doesn’t bode well for the bill’s chances even if it advances to the governor’s office.

But Free Speech for People, a nonpartisan nonprofit that’s one of the groups behind the ballot initiative and the legislative effort, believes public opinion is on their side...

“If you survey ordinary Americans and you ask: ‘Should wealthy donors be able to give unlimited amounts of money to super PACs?’ Overwhelmingly, people are opposed to that,” Fein said.

Nebraska Examiner: Senator hopes seventh time a charm for bill requiring disclosure of spending, donors, ‘dark money’ groups

By Paul Hammel

.....[State Sen. Carol] Blood’s proposal, LB 9, like bills in the past, would require independent groups that spend more than $1,000 on political ads, mailers or other “electioneering communication” to report their spending and disclose the donors who gave them money.

But LB 9 ran into opposition as a restriction on public debate by the ACLU of Nebraska, as well as the Nebraska chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit group that, as a 501(C)(4), doesn’t have to report its donors.

Jessica Shelburn of AFP, in a letter, said there is a long tradition of “anonymous writing on matters of public interest.” She said that disclosing donors, especially those who voice unpopular opinions, would subject them to “threats, intimidation and violence.”

“We should be making it easier, not harder, for people to participate in civic life,” Shelburn wrote.

The ACLU, also in written testimony, said LB 9 could “chill” protected speech and “discourage people from donating to causes they care about.”

Donors to “controversial causes” — such as abortion or religious rights — would be particularly vulnerable to harassment and retaliation, said Grant Friedman of ACLU of Nebraska.

NBC 4: Ohio Democrats reintroduce bill targeting dark money spending

By Maeve Walsh

.....Ohio Democrats want to eliminate a loophole in the state’s campaign finance law that helped former House speaker Larry Householder secretly cash in $60 million in illegal bribes.

Earlier this month, Reps. Bride Rose Sweeney (D-Cleveland) and Jessica Miranda (D-Forest Park) reintroduced House Bill 112, dubbed the Ohio Anti-Corruption Act, that would require nonprofits and other corporations who spend money on state elections to publicly disclose their donors…

Twenty-six Democrats have signed on to the legislation, but with no Republican support, the bill faces an uphill battle in the General Assembly.

House Majority Floor Leader Bill Seitz (R-Cincinnati) said although he has yet to take a firm position on HB 112, he said in an email that 501(c)(4)s should not be required to disclose their donors. Ohio law sufficiently regulates nonprofits’ political advocacy and publicizing donor information could jeopardize Ohioans’ privacy, he said.

“Donors to C-4’s often wish to remain anonymous for fear of being doxed, boycotted, protested against, or otherwise bullied into sacrificing their free speech rights,” Seitz said. “Those are legitimate concerns.”

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