In the News
The Hill: Facebook and the new Red Scare
By David Keating and Paul Jossey
Various interests have seized on Russian chicanery to push “reforms” lacking priority in less neurotic times. Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) sent a “Dear Colleague” letter seeking new rules for online ads. The resulting bill would burden internet speech with suffocating rules, even possibly banning some forms of online speech. Instead of hitting the Russians, the bill instead targets American speech, press and assembly rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. In short, despite the dearth of candidate references in the Russian ads, there is already a rush to chill the world’s most dynamic speech forum…
In the rush to respond, we have to remember the most important values, which are our rights to freely speak, publish, listen, read and watch. That’s the real risk of an irrational response, whether the threats come from new laws or more speech cops at Facebook…
The government should focus on ensuring that our voting machinery is safe from foreign hackers. Protection is also needed to prevent foreign agents from stealing internal candidate campaign communications. But when the issue is speech, we must exercise great caution lest zeal to curb foreign influence instead damages our own free speech rights.
New from the Institute for Free Speech
Is Patagonia Destroying Democracy?
By Alex Baiocco
That a company, whose customers are outdoor recreation enthusiasts, is concerned about the preservation of protected wilderness lands makes perfect sense…
To insist that all political advocacy should be completely removed from the interests of the speaker is not only unrealistic but, in practice, would be deeply harmful to meaningful and productive political debate. The people and businesses who are most directly affected by specific policies or government actions should be those speaking about those policies or actions…
The First Amendment protects Patagonia’s right to keep this ad, or a similar ad in opposition to Trump, on its website everyday up until Election Day 2020. The company can thank the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision for safeguarding that right.
The next time you hear someone lament Citizens United as “democracy destroying,” consider the consequences of a ruling in the opposite direction: The federal government would have the power to ban this exact activity from occurring too close to an election with Trump’s name on the ballot.
Congress
CNN: Senators weigh in on ‘dark money’ tax deduction
By Jon Sarlin
The debate weighs around a proposed rule change to the Johnson Amendment, a law that currently prevents nonprofit 501(c)(3) groups from directly participating in politics…
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and one of the lawmakers working on the final bill, said the “voice of the nation’s faithful” should not be “censored.”
“Our religious organizations play a central role in American civic life and, in my view, it’s vital the voice of the nation’s faithful are not censored. At the same time, we need to make sure American taxpayers are not forced to subsidize political speech,” Hatch said in a statement to CNN. “While the Senate-passed tax bill did not address the Johnson amendment, the House bill does. As we work to resolve our differences in conference, this is an issue that we will be examining closely.”…
A spokesman for Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, told CNN “this is about free speech and IRS control, not political campaign activity. Senator Lankford doesn’t believe houses of worship should make endorsements, however, he doesn’t want the federal government, through the IRS, to tell them not to.”
Independent Groups
Politico: Secret super PAC backing Jones in Alabama exposed
By Gabriel Debenedetti
A mystery super PAC backing Democrat Doug Jones in Alabama is controlled by a pair of groups closely aligned with the national Democratic Party, even as the candidate strives to dissociate himself from Washington interests.
Highway 31, which dropped more than $4.1 million in support of Jones and against Roy Moore ahead of Tuesday’s Senate special election, is a joint project of two of the largest national Democratic super PACs – Senate Majority PAC and Priorities USA Action – along with a group of Alabama Democrats, multiple senior officials familiar with the arrangement told POLITICO.
Corporate Speech
Washington Post: Ryan Zinke rebuffed for retweet
By Dino Grandoni
On Twitter, Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee, which oversees the Interior Department, said Patagonia was disingenuous in its ad campaign.
“Patagonia Is Lying To You,” the committee’s account wrote, using the same font the retailer had on its website. It continues: “A corporate giant hacking our public lands debate to sell more products to wealthy elitist urban dwellers from New York to San Francisco.” …
And then, Zinke retweeted that message.
In an interview with Fox News last Tuesday, the interior secretary criticized Patagonia as one of many companies “that make their products in other places on foreign shores.” Separately that same day, Zinke called the claim made on Patagonia’s website “nefarious, false and a lie,” …
It’s the retweet, however, that opens Zinke to legal liability, according to Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics under President Barack Obama. On Twitter, he called the message “wildly inappropriate:”
“Secretary of Interior Zinke has misused his official position by retweeting this wildly inappropriate tweet calling an American company a liar without any due process in an effort to coerce the company and its employees into ceasing the lawful exercise of a First Amendment right.”
Lobbying
Daily Beast: After Manafort’s Indictment, Firms Are Suddenly Registering Their Foreign Lobbying
By Lachlan Markay
In the wake of the indictment of President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman in late October, the Department of Justice has begun stepping up enforcement of laws governing lobbyists and public relations executives promoting foreign governments’ interests on U.S. soil. And those lobbying and PR shops, mindful of renewed efforts to enforce a law that had all but lost its teeth, have started scrambling to ensure they’re complying with it…
With Congress considering legislation to revamp FARA, and DOJ more strictly enforcing the statute on the books, the country could see the most dramatic shift in the Washington influence industry since notorious lobbyist Jack Abramoff was busted for fraud and tax evasion in 2005…
Russian attempts to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election heightened attention on laws governing foreign agents in the U.S. A September 2016 report from DOJ’s inspector general criticized a lackluster enforcement culture that generally failed to aggressively enforce FARA registration and disclosure requirements.
The Media
New York Times: Trump Escalates His Criticism of the News Media, Fueling National Debate
By Peter Baker and Sydney Ember
President Trump has escalated his fiery attacks on the news media, seizing on a recent string of mistaken reports to bolster his case that he is being persecuted by a left-leaning establishment out to bring him down and fueling a national debate over truth, accountability and a free press.
In a series of broadsides reflecting his own profound grievances while also resonating with his populist conservative base, Mr. Trump castigated ABC News for a “horrendously inaccurate and dishonest report,” declared that CNN’s slogan should be “THE LEAST TRUSTED NAME IN NEWS” and insisted that a Washington Post reporter “should be fired.”
While every president has groused about his coverage, Mr. Trump has proved to be the most vocal and visceral news media critic in the Oval Office in at least a generation. In recent days, news outlets have provided him ammunition with reporting errors. But the barrage has deepened concern among media executives about what they see as a concerted campaign to discredit independent journalism.
The States
Helena Independent Record: Montana political watchdog says Democratic Party violated campaign finance laws
By Associated Press
Party spokesman Roy Loewenstein said it filed the appropriate information with the commissioner in October, but limitations of the online system “meant that material was not accepted. We have updated the filings in question and in the future we will be filing additional information to correct this deficiency in the reporting system.”
The campaign reporting system has fields for the vendor’s name, the purpose of the spending, the candidate or issue involved and the amount of money spent. The Democratic Party included both the purpose and the candidate/issue in the same field, which was limited to 100 characters. It left the candidate/issue field blank.
The party responded that the reporting failures were “not the fault of the reporter, but of the system,” the finding said.
However, the party “has, in other committee finance reports, utilized all the available fields, including the candidate/issue field,” Mangan wrote, noting they had also filed an addendum in cases where character limitations affected responses.
