Plenty of ink and pixels have been spent on how the GOP tax bill was a $1.5 trillion giveaway to corporations and the very wealthiest among us.Source: Congress has been broken by the special interests – here’s how we fix it...
Today, after the Citizens United ruling, dark money floods elections nationwide, but Montanans are standing up to stop history from repeating itself in a struggle that has the potential to change the way elections happen nationwide.Source: “Dark Money” Documentary Selected for Sundance Film Festival...
The FBI is investigating whether a top Russian banker with ties to the Kremlin illegally funneled money to the National Rifle Association to help Donald Trump win the presidency, two sources familiar with the matter have told McClatchy.Source: FBI investigating whether Russian money went to NRA to help Trump...
Oprah Winfrey’s speech at the Golden Globes this Sunday sparked speculation over whether the billionaire celebrity might run for president in 2020.Source: Candidate Oprah? Campaign Finance Laws Would Give Her a Leg Up...
The First Amendment makes it very difficult to regulate "fake news," and it raises dangers that those who would regulate would do so not to stop the spread of misinformation but to protect their own political position. I have a paper coming out in the First Amendment Law Review on this very question, including the issue of foreign interference: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3017598 We may...
RNLA President Elliot Berke sent a letter today to the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of current FEC Commissioner Matthew Petersen, who has been nominated to the U.S.Source: Matthew Petersen Qualified to Serve on D.C. District Court...
Since the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, proponents of stricter campaign finance regulation have increasingly prescribed “disclosure” as an antidote to “dark money” in politics.Source: Staring at the Sun: An Inquiry into Compulsory Campaign Finance Donor Disclosure Laws...
The discovery that Russian-linked firms bought thousands of Facebook ads prompted the return of a common trope in America, namely, that foreigners are engineering our downfall by defiling our political purity. Russia, a familiar foe, now has a new tool: Facebook.Source: Facebook and the new Red Scare...
Update: This story has been updated to clarify Facebook’s ad-review process. In September, an ad with the headline, “New Approval Ratings For President Trump Announced And It’s Not Going The Way You Think,” targeted Facebook users in the U.S.Source: Facebook Allowed Political Ads That Were Actually Scams and Malware...
If you spend too many days at academic conferences — admittedly an occupational hazard if you are a professor — inevitably you will hear this phrase: “That problem is a feature and not a bug.Source: Congress could hardwire dark money into our democracy...
