Philip Hackney NYT oped: The New York State attorney general yesterday filed a lawsuit against the Donald J. Trump Foundation and its directors, accusing the charity and the Trump family of violating campaign finance laws, self-dealing and illegal coordination with the presidential … Continue reading
Category Archives: campaigns
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy blogs. … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins: Not every Supreme Court decision about elections is a disaster, and the ruling in Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky striking down Minnesota’s very broad ban on wearing political apparel in polling places is … Continue reading
You can read the majority opinion by Chief Justice Roberts (with a dissent from Sotomayor, joined by Breyer) at this link. [My analysis to come.] … Continue reading
McClatchy reports: Several prominent Russians, some in President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle or high in the Russian Orthodox Church, now have been identified as having contact with National Rifle Association officials during the 2016 U.S. election campaign, according to photographs and … Continue reading
Politico reports. … Continue reading
Clarion Ledger: Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Jay Hughes is questioning whether Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann is promoting himself, rather than voting, with stickers being handed out at polls during Tuesday’s primaries. Hosemann is considered a likely Republican candidate for … Continue reading
Politico: President Donald Trump is plunging into the big-donor game, planning an appearance at a six-figure-a-head fundraiser benefiting his allied super PAC. Trump is expected to address America First Action’s leadership summit, according to the super PAC’s president, Brian Walsh. … Continue reading
Daily Beast: But the opacity surrounding the expenditure of money—combined with the fact that a good chunk of the spending has come after all efforts to recount the vote were terminated—has fed criticism that Stein was more interested in boosting … Continue reading
ProPublica has this report, with the subhead: “Facebook announced a new system to make political ads more transparent. It’s got holes” … Continue reading
Bloomberg: Breitbart News landed an election scoop that went viral in August 2016: “Exclusive: ‘Black Men for Bernie’ Founder to End Democrat ‘Political Slavery’ of Minority Voters… by Campaigning for Trump.” If the splashy, counterintuitive story, which circulated on such conservative websites as Truthfeed … Continue reading
WSJ: Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators have obtained a presentation prepared by an Israel-based private intelligence firm that outlines ways in which Donald Trump’s 2016 election was helped by fake news and fake social-media accounts, according to people familiar with … Continue reading
USA Today: In the months after Donald Trump rode to victory while calling for mass deportations, Russian operatives bought dozens of Facebook ads targeted at the Hispanic community seeking to further inflame tensions already roiled by the campaign’s racially charged rhetoric, according … Continue reading
Oh my: In a recent interview with HuffPost, Giuliani initially disputed the notion that Trump’s daily citing, in the final month of his campaign, of Russian-aligned WikiLeaks and its release of Russian-stolen emails constituted “colluding” with Russia. “It is not,” Giuliani … Continue reading
TPM reports. … Continue reading
NYT: Three months before the 2016 election, a small group gathered at Trump Tower to meet with Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. One was an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation. Another was an emissary for two wealthy … Continue reading
Politico: Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday endorsed the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential election to help President Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton. It’s a powerful bipartisan endorsement … Continue reading
It‘s not just the Federalist Society. Turns out that the group with big, dark money supporting the nomination of Justice Gorsuch and blocking Judge Garland was vehicle for giving large, unreported donation to Trump inaugural committee. Read the thread: Got … Continue reading
USA Today: The Russian company charged with orchestrating a wide-ranging effort to meddle in the 2016 presidential election overwhelmingly focused its barrage of social media advertising on what is arguably America’s rawest political division: race. The roughly 3,500 Facebook ads … Continue reading
Corporate Counsel reports. … Continue reading
NYT: A shell company that Michael D. Cohen used to pay hush money to a pornographic film actress received payments totaling more than $1 million from an American company linked to a Russian oligarch and several corporations with business before … Continue reading
Release: Independent expenditures (IEs) will be playing a significant role again in select House and Senate primaries leading up to the midterm election. And the Campaign Finance Institute will once again be tracking that spending through a primary tracking tool on its … Continue reading
Axios: The gritty details: Under Google’s new rules, people or groups who want to advertise in elections will have to go through a process that includes producing a “government-issued ID” as well as other information, like a Federal Election Commission identification … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins: Donald Trump’s new lawyer Rudy Giuliani took to Sean Hannity’s Fox News program Wednesday night to defend the president from the ongoing Mueller investigation and to calm the waters for the … Continue reading
I’m exploring them in this Twitter thread. … Continue reading
ABC News: The Trump campaign has spent nearly $228,000 to cover some of the legal expenses for President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen, sources familiar with the payments tell ABC News, raising questions about whether the Trump campaign may … Continue reading
WaPo: Behind just about every divisive Senate Republican primary this year, an amiable Midwestern businessman is bankrolling the candidate who claims to be the most hard-charging, anti-establishment conservative in the race. Richard Uihlein, a wealthy shipping-supplies magnate from Illinois who … Continue reading
NYT: The House Intelligence Committee released on Friday a roughly 250-page report on Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, laying out Republicans’ conclusion after a yearlong investigation that they had found no evidence that the Trump campaign aided Moscow’s efforts. [Read … Continue reading
Via the Intercept, comes this new definition from Facebook of what counts as a “political ad” which will count for certain new vetting procedures (my emphasis below): A “political ad” is defined as an ad that: Is made by … Continue reading
Steven Rosenfeld writes. … Continue reading
NYT: Mr. Blankenship offers no apology for his many contradictions and personal and business decisions, some of them previously undisclosed. Though he lives a baronial lifestyle thanks to a fortune built on coal scratched from West Virginia’s mountains, he says … Continue reading
Weigel: The chairman of the Democratic National Committee on Sunday defended a new multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the Russian government, the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, with talk show hosts asking whether it was distracting from efforts to rebuild the Democratic Party. “I don’t … Continue reading
NYT: The Democratic National Committee opened a new legal assault on President Trump on Friday by filing a lawsuit in federal court alleging that the organization was the victim of a conspiracy by Russian officials, the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks … Continue reading
If this doesn’t scare the hell out of you about the next election season, you are not paying attention. … Continue reading
AP: Donald Trump’s re-election campaign has demanded that Rep. Todd Rokita take down yard signs it says give the false impression the president endorsed the Indiana Republican’s Senate bid, two people with direct knowledge of the matter told The Associated … Continue reading
WaPo: The Congressional Leadership Fund, the leading Republican super PAC focused on the House, is booking $48 million in ad reservations ahead of the November midterm elections — giving its first indications of where it intends to focus its considerable … Continue reading
NYT reports. … Continue reading
Wired: WHEN YOUNG MIE Kim began studying political ads on Facebook in August of 2016—while Hillary Clinton was still leading the polls— few people had ever heard of the Russian propaganda group, Internet Research Agency. Not even Facebook itself understood how the group was … Continue reading
NYT: Two rogue billionaires — one on the left, one on the right — have emerged as the biggest political spenders of the 2018 elections, defying their own parties and pouring millions of dollars into confrontational campaign tactics. Tom Steyer, … Continue reading
The Intercept: Friends of Democracy is a Super PAC that was launched by Jonathan Soros (his father, George, has nothing to do with it). Its mission was to support members of Congress who support campaign finance reform — in other words, limiting the very … Continue reading
Release. … Continue reading
NYT: Last month, a friend of the wealthy conservative donor Rebekah Mercer arrived at Facebook’s Silicon Valley headquarters. His task: Find out what — if anything — could repair relations between Facebook, the world’s biggest social media company, and Cambridge … Continue reading
Jacob Metcalf for Slate. … Continue reading
Twitter is pleased to support the Honest Ads Act. Back in the fall we indicated we supported proposals to increase transparency in political ads. — Twitter Public Policy (@Policy) April 10, 2018 As with troubling foreign content on Facebook, … Continue reading
Release: Today, Facebook is announcing a new initiative to help provide independent, credible research about the role of social media in elections, as well as democracy more generally. It will be funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Democracy … Continue reading
Claire Malone for 538. … Continue reading
Tom Dickinson deep dive in Rolling Stone. … Continue reading
Via the NY Times comes news that Facebook will not only support passage of the Honest Ads Act (currently pending in committee where it may stay), but will also self-regulate “issue ads.” The self-regulation is important, because it may be … Continue reading
I have posted on SSRN the final version of my paper, Cheap Speech and What It Has Done (to American Democracy), 16 First Amendment Law Review 200 (2018). Here is the abstract: In a remarkably prescient article in a 1995 … Continue reading
USA Today: Though Facebook is pledging to bring “unprecedented” transparency over political messaging, executives refused to say if Facebook supports proposed federal legislation to regulate political ads on the social network and disclose the identities of those who buy them. And Facebook said it’s focused … Continue reading