December 1, 2025

In the News

Washington Post: Case that lets billionaires spend big on elections never reached Supreme Court

By Beth Reinhard

.....In 2007, David Keating was the executive director of the Club for Growth, an influential group whose political arm backed fiscally conservative candidates. The organization had built a reputation as a heavy hitter, yet Keating felt hamstrung. Every time he wanted to issue a fundraising appeal or political ad, the group had to consult with high-priced lawyers schooled in the byzantine world of campaign finance.

“I remember thinking, ‘We live in a free country. We have the First Amendment. We can say whatever we want, right?’” Keating said. “And the answer was, ‘No, no you can’t.’” 

In fact, the Club for Growth was one of several tax-exempt organizations that paid civil penalties in 2007 for failing to register with the FEC as political committees…

For legal counsel, Keating turned to Brad Smith, a Harvard-trained lawyer, former FEC chairman and author of “Unfree Speech: The Folly of Campaign Finance Reform.” A few years earlier, Smith had co-founded a nonprofit called the Center for Competitive Politics to push for deregulation of campaign finance laws.

“We had been kicking this idea around, about challenging the donation limits,” Smith recalled. “David came in to see me and as soon as he started speaking I said, ‘I’ve been looking for you!’”

Supreme Court

SCOTUSblog: Court to hear arguments on faith-based pregnancy centers’ challenge to state subpoena

By Amy Howe

.....The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Tuesday, Dec. 2, in a case brought by First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, a group of faith-based pregnancy centers that the New Jersey attorney general’s office alleges may have misled women about whether it provides certain reproductive-health services.  The question before the court is a somewhat technical one: Whether a federal court has the authority to rule on First Choice’s claim that New Jersey’s demand for information about the group’s fundraising practices discouraged it from exercising its First Amendment rights, or whether the group must instead litigate that claim in state proceedings. 

Ed. note: Read our brief in support of petitioner here and watch IFS Chairman Bradley Smith and IFS Senior Attorney Brett Nolan discuss the case on FIRE's "So to Speak" podcast here.

The Courts

New York Times: A Retired Police Officer Posted a Meme. It Earned Him 37 Days in Jail.

By Greg Lukianoff

.....The officers came to arrest Larry Bushart shortly before midnight on Sept. 21.

Mr. Bushart, a 61-year-old retired police officer living in Lexington, Tenn., had posted a meme on Facebook after the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10. It was a picture of Donald Trump along with Mr. Trump’s comment in response to a school shooting at Perry High School in Iowa in 2024: “We have to get over it.” The meme was headed by the caption, “This seems relevant today.”

Mr. Bushart shared that meme in a Facebook thread promoting a vigil for Mr. Kirk in nearby Perry County, Tenn. The Perry County Sheriff’s Office obtained a warrant for Mr. Bushart’s arrest, claiming that the post was a threat of “mass violence” at a school. The sheriff’s office did this even though the meme referred to a shooting that took place more than a year before at a school in Iowa. The only connection — if you can even call it a connection — was that the Iowa school also had “Perry” in its name.

Mr. Bushart’s bail was set at $2 million.

USA Today: Why this county wants to unmask an anonymous politics page on Facebook

By BrieAnna J. Frank

.....A satirical social media account focused on a central California county is at the center of a First Amendment debate over the rights to and limits of anonymous political speech. 

The controversy stems from a Facebook page called “Benito Beet Beat,” which was created in June and says it provides a “fresh, satirical slice of local politics and news” from San Benito County. 

But the county’s board of supervisors hasn’t taken kindly to the page and voted to approve a subpoena to Meta for records to reveal the creators’ identities, court records show.

Now, the First Amendment Coalition, free speech advocacy group, is suing to protect those behind the account and get the subpoena dismissed. The coalition filed the Nov. 26 complaint in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

It said the subpoena followed a since-deleted political cartoon the account posted in early November that referenced potential security cuts at the county’s behavioral health clinic.

AP News: Political consultant defies court order in lawsuit over AI robocalls that mimicked Biden

By Holly Ramer

.....A political consultant who sent artificial intelligence-generated robocalls mimicking former President Joe Biden to New Hampshire Democrats said Tuesday he will not pay $22,500 to three voters despite a recent federal court order.

The order, issued Friday in a lawsuit brought by the League of Women Voters, came five months after a jury acquitted Steve Kramer of voter suppression and impersonating a candidate. In the civil case, the judge entered a default judgement after Kramer failed to appear in court.

“I never responded to them because I was already acquitted on 22 counts,” Kramer said in an email, insisting that the lawsuit was a publicity stunt that wasted the court’s time. He also has refused to pay a $6 million fine issued by the Federal Communications Commission.

Though jurors sided with Kramer in the criminal trial, the judge in the civil case not only ordered him to pay $7,500 to each voter who sued but banned him from engaging in the same conduct nationwide. Caren Short, director of legal and research at the League of Women Voters, described the decision as a “critical precedent against the weaponization of artificial intelligence in elections.”

NTUF: The First Amendment Bans IRS Form 990 Schedule B’s Demand for List of Donors

By Tyler Martinez

.....NTUF’s Taxpayer Defense Center continues its fight for donor privacy, this time by filing an important amici curiae (“friends of the court”) brief in Buckeye Institute v. IRS on behalf of NTUF, the Pelican Institute, and the Defense of Freedom Institute. At the center of the Buckeye case is IRS Form 990 Schedule B, which lists all substantial donors to nonprofit organizations. This data collection exposes a citizen’s associations and political, religious, and cultural beliefs to IRS surveillance. 

In our brief, we point out that such a mandatory disclosure requirement is subject to close review by the courts, under the First Amendment and what is known as the “exacting scrutiny” standard. This high standard, recently reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta, requires “a substantial relation between the disclosure requirement and a sufficiently important governmental interest” and that “the disclosure requirement be narrowly tailored to the interest it promotes.” 

PUFP: PUFPF Files Amicus Brief Opposing IRS Collection of Nonprofit Donor Lists

.....In an amicus brief filed on November 26 in Buckeye Institute v. IRS, People United for Privacy Foundation urged a federal court to apply heightened scrutiny to an IRS rule requiring charities and nonprofits to turn over their confidential donor lists. The law’s disclosure requirement imposes a “chilling effect” on the freedom of association protected by the First Amendment, the brief explains…

The need to protect nonprofit donor lists from government collection was a hard-learned lesson of the Civil Rights Movement. During the 1950s and 1960s, segregationist officials in multiple states targeted the donor lists of organizations like the NAACP in an effort to force them out of business and incentivize harm to their donors. In Alabama, the tactic succeeded for nearly a decade until repeated U.S. Supreme Court rulings finally put sufficient teeth in the law to stop the abuse. The Court’s protections for nonprofit donor privacy were reaffirmed as recently as 2021 in Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFPF) v. Bonta.

Free Expression

Le Monde: Macron demands legislation change over 'false information' online

.....President Emmanuel Macron called on Friday, November 28, for changes to French legislation that would allow "false information" online to be urgently blocked. Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron, have long been targeted by false online claims that she was born a man. The French government has also repeatedly warned the public over Russian disinformation campaigns in Europe that have grown in intensity since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Macron said he asked the government for proposals to introduce summary proceedings against "false information" or "information that is harmful" to a person's dignity that is disseminated on social media. "I held a defense council meeting on information warfare, where I asked for help with a task that needs to be completed by the end of the year," he said in the northeastern town of Mirecourt.

Jonesing for Nonprofits: Russian Supreme Court Declares US Based Nonprofit a "Terrorist Organization"

By Darryll K. Jones

.....The Anti-Corruption Foundation, Inc. is a U.S. 501(c)(3) based in New York. Alexeli Navalny, a Russian lawyer, founded the organization in 2011. He was later poisoned in Germany by Russian secret service agents according to British and U.S. officials. He survived but was arrested upon his later return to Russian. He was sentenced to nearly 20 years and died two or three years later in a Siberian prison colony. The Russians banned his organization domestically but it was re-established as a U.S. nonprofit in 2022. In a secret proceeding last week, the Russian Supreme Court labeled the nonprofit a terrorist organization. There is no opinion or anything like that, just an announcement in the TASS Russian News Agency:

Candidates and Campaigns

The Hill: The use of AI-generated deepfakes in campaign ads: Lying is the problem, not AI

By Peter Loge

.....A recent campaign ad in Georgia that used an AI generated video of Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) saying things he never said is appropriately getting attention because of the ethical questions it raises. The answer to the ethical question is that it’s wrong, campaigns shouldn’t make things up about their opponents. But it’s not wrong because the ad uses artificial intelligence. The ad is wrong because it makes stuff up. AI isn’t the problem, lying is the problem.