NYT: The prosecution, citing Black’s Law Dictionary, argued in a brief filed on Tuesday that “the straightforward answer is that Senator Menendez’s constituents are the New Jerseyans that he was elected to represent in the United States Senate.” But the … Continue reading
Category Archives: campaigns
Daily Beast: Suspected Russia propagandists on Facebook tried to organize more than a dozen pro-Trump rallies in Florida during last year’s election, The Daily Beast has learned. The demonstrations—at least one of which was promoted online by local pro-Trump activists— brought dozens … Continue reading
New syndicated George Will column: Volokh anticipated today’s a la carte world of instant, inexpensive electronic distributions of only such content as pleases particular individuals. In 1995, he said that “letting a user configure his own mix of materials” can … Continue reading
BuzzFeed: The personal Facebook page of Vice President Mike Pence is also running a version of the ad. One difference between the Pence and Trump ads is the VP’s refers to “Fake News media,” while Trump’s calls out the “mainstream … Continue reading
AP: The Republican Governors Association has quietly launched an online publication that looks like a media outlet and is branded as such on social media. The Free Telegraph blares headlines about the virtues of GOP governors, while framing Democrats negatively. … Continue reading
Ann Ravel for Politico: I suggested to the commission that the FEC consult with internet and tech experts to discuss how the agency’s current approach may or may not fit with future innovations. Starting this conversation should have been noncontroversial, … Continue reading
Chris Elmendorf and Abby Wood have posted this draft on SSRN. Here is the abstract: It is common to think of political elites—candidates, legislators, party officials, and campaign advisers—as specialists in learning the preferences of voters. But recent studies find … Continue reading
Jim Rutenberg NYT column. … Continue reading
WSJ reports. … Continue reading
Reuters reports. … Continue reading
CNN: How extensive was Russia’s use of Facebook to meddle with the presidential election? Even Facebook doesn’t know. One week after it told the country that it had sold $100,000 worth of ads to a Russian troll farm during the … Continue reading
The Daily Beast reports. … Continue reading
Kevin Bingle: One common response to the news that a Kremlin-linked online operation in Russia bought $100,000 worth of Facebook ads during the 2016 election campaign has been that the money is a drop in the bucket relative to the … Continue reading
Brendan Fischer blogs. … Continue reading
Bloomberg BNA: The revelation that Russian sources financed political ads on Facebook in the 2016 presidential campaign could prompt enforcement action by the Federal Election Commission, agency Vice Chairwoman Caroline Hunter said. “It’s something we can and should deal with … Continue reading
Chicago Daily Law Bulletin: In his e-mail, Posner wrote leaving the bench opens the way for him to assist Pixie, a Maine Coon cat who succeeded the late Dinah. Pixie intends to run for president in 2020, Posner wrote in … Continue reading
WaPo: Representatives of Facebook told congressional investigators Wednesday that it has discovered it sold ads during the U.S. presidential election to a shadowy Russian company seeking to target voters, according to several people familiar with the company’s findings. Facebook officials … Continue reading
Law360: Allowing voters to take selfies with their marked ballots could allow groups to put pressure on members to reveal their votes, a political science professor testified Tuesday in the New York federal bench trial of a suit by voters … Continue reading
Buffalo News reports. … Continue reading
Reuters: The federal government has not notified U.S. state election officials if their voting systems were targeted by suspected Russian hackers during the 2016 presidential campaign, and the information will likely never be made public, a top state election chief … Continue reading
Release: Today, Issue One and Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed six complaints with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) against two Atlanta-based television stations in the aftermath of the special election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, which was the most expensive U.S. … Continue reading
NYT deep dive: Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian immigrant who met last summer with senior Trump campaign officials, has often struck colleagues as a classic Washington mercenary — loyal to his wife, his daughter and his bank account. He avoided work … Continue reading
Politico: Trump is mapping out a fall fundraising tour that is expected to fill his campaign bank account with tens of millions of dollars. His team has tracked dozens of potential Democratic rivals, a list of names that ranges from … Continue reading
Bloomberg: Small-dollar donors — those who give a total of less than $200 per year — have provided 59 percent of the $26 million that Trump’s re-election campaign has raised so far in 2017. A good share of that total … Continue reading
Darren Grant for Public Choice: Primary and runoff elections in Texas provide an ideal test of the ballot order hypothesis, because ballot order is randomized within each county and the state offers many counties and contests to analyze. Doing so … Continue reading
I have written this oped for Sunday’s Los Angeles Times Opinion section. It begins: The Internet and social media did not create white supremacist movements in the United States, such as the hate groups that rallied in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend … Continue reading
Shane Goldmacher for the NYT: If Mr. Menendez, a Democrat, is convicted and then expelled from the United States Senate by early January, his replacement would be picked by Gov. Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey and an … Continue reading
I have written this draft for SSRN (forthcoming, in the First Amendment Law Review’s symposium on “Distorting the News: ‘Fake News’ and Free Speech“). Here is the abstract: In a remarkably prescient article in a 1995 Yale Law Journal symposium … Continue reading
Paul von Hippel: President Trump has chartered a Commission on Election Integrity to investigate his claim that millions of voters, including undocumented immigrants, voted illegally in 2016. Although no evidence has been offered to support this allegation, it does evoke … Continue reading
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy blogs. … Continue reading
NYT: Imagine you’re a millionaire or billionaire with strong political views and a desire to spread those views to the masses. Do you start a think tank in Washington? Funnel millions to a shadowy “super PAC”? Bankroll the campaign of … Continue reading
Interesting read. You can find my contrary views in this Slate piece. … Continue reading
AP: Trump’s fundraising prowess is the engine of the Republican National Committee and a lifeline for every Republican planning to rely on the party for financial help during next year’s congressional races. Leaning heavily on Trump’s appeal among small donors, … Continue reading
The great Fredreka Schouten of USA Today with this piece: Groups spending millions in anonymous donations are leading the outside efforts to either defend President Trump or sell his agenda with voters and Congress, despite the president’s repeated calls to … Continue reading
Uri Friedman for The Atlantic. … Continue reading
Klain in WaPo: What about Trump? He not only put Neil M. Gorsuch in the Supreme Court vacancy created by Merrick Garland’s blocked confirmation, but he also selected 27 lower-court judges as of mid-July. Twenty-seven! That’s three times Obama’s total and … Continue reading
CNN: There are two questions. One is: Was there coordination or collusion between the campaigns and these technology tools, which overwhelmed the search engine tools so that certain stories popped up at the top of your newsfeed. The second is, … Continue reading
Quite a wow from Time: President Obama’s White House quietly produced a plan in October to counter a possible Election Day cyber attack that included extraordinary measures like sending armed federal law enforcement agents to polling places, mobilizing components of the military … Continue reading
KCRW- To the Point: “Hillary Clinton is running a child sex ring out of a pizza shop.” “Democrats want to impose Sharia law in Florida” These are just some of the headlines you may have seen online last fall. Among … Continue reading
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy for Bill Moyers. … Continue reading
Ken Doyle reports for Bloomberg BNA. … Continue reading
Reuters: Trump Jr. eagerly agreed to meet the woman he was told was a Russian government lawyer who might have damaging information about Democratic rival Hillary Clinton as part of Moscow’s official support for his father’s presidential election campaign, according … Continue reading
Here. … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins: Get ready for the latest defense for Donald Trump Jr.’s actions: He had a First Amendment right to collude with the Russians to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. This defense, which has been advanced … Continue reading
To read the DOJ complaint filed yesterday, click here. To read the FEC complaint filed yesterday, click here. To view the release online, click here. … Continue reading
Just to recap where we are: It is illegal for a person to solicit a contribution to a campaign from a foreign individual or entity. To solicit: means to ask, request, or recommend, explicitly or implicitly, that another person make … Continue reading
LAT: Gomez, a current Democratic state assemblyman, told The Times after the election he would try to delay his Assembly resignation to vote on extending the state’s cap-and-trade program, which requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gas. Negotiations on cap and … Continue reading
This is what Plutocrats United looks like. … Continue reading
This, from the SOS of a state whose voting security is most worrisome: Brian Kemp, the Republican secretary of state of Georgia, used the call to denounce Johnson’s proposal as an assault on state rights. “I think it was a … Continue reading
What a WaPo story: In political terms, Russia’s interference was the crime of the century, an unprecedented and largely successful destabilizing attack on American democracy. It was a case that took almost no time to solve, traced to the Kremlin … Continue reading