“This bill would harm the rights of Americans guaranteed by the First Amendment to freely speak, publish, organize into groups, and petition. These rights are vitally important to Americans who work to advocate for better government,” Keating told the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration during testimony on the proposal on July 19.“Significant portions of the bill would violate the privacy of advocacy groups and their supporters—including those groups who do nothing more than speak about policy issues before Congress or express views on federal judicial nominees.
“Other key provisions would compel speakers to recite lengthy government-mandated messages in their communications, instead of their own speech. The bill would also compel the publication of misleading or false information to the public.”
Sinema hasn’t spoken publicly about her reservations about the DISCLOSE Act, but every one of her Democratic Senate colleagues, including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), with whom she’s often paired in dissent from President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats, is co-sponsoring the proposal.
A spokesman for Sinema didn’t respond to a request from The Epoch Times for comment.
The most controversial of the DISCLOSE Act’s provisions would reverse a 1957 Supreme Court decision that First Amendment advocates such as Keating cite as an essential protection for citizens and groups expressing unpopular opinions.
“This is a thinly veiled attempt to send the message that, if you support an organization that happens to support causes with which some disagree, you become a target for criticism, harassment, and intimidation—even if your support has nothing to do with the organization’s position on a certain issue,” he said. “It would fuel new frontiers of cancel culture and personalization of politics.”
The 1957 decision resulted from an appeal to the high court by the NAACP when the state of Alabama sought to force the civil rights group to make public the names of its donors. In that era, being publicly associated with the NAACP could literally be a matter of life and death in Alabama and other Southern states that were opposing then-President Dwight Eisenhower’s efforts to desegregate public schools across the nation.
“This tactic is not new. In 1957, in unanimously striking down an attempt to compel the NAACP to disclose its members, the Supreme Court stated that government-compelled disclosure of group affiliation violates the First Amendment. The Court recognized the ‘vital relationship between freedom to associate and privacy in one’s associations,’” Hagerty said.
Another provision of the DISCLOSE Act that’s drawing serious criticism is one that requires any speech, including print, digital, and broadcast advertising that mentions an incumbent federal official or a challenger to such an official to pass muster “under a subjective and dangerously broad standard that asks whether the speech ‘promotes,’ ‘attacks,’ ’supports,‘ or ’opposes’ (‘PASO’) the candidate or official.
This standard is impossible to understand and would likely regulate any mention of an elected official who hasn’t announced their retirement,” according to a legislative analysis by IFS Senior Fellow Eric Wang.
But Whitehouse rejected such criticism, telling the Senate panel, which is chaired by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), that the widespread corrupting influence of “dark money”—campaign and organizational contributions by donors whose names aren’t made public—is a major factor in the public’s disillusionment with Congress.
“I submit to you that the distress in our Republic has much to do with corrupting political influence acquired via unlimited anonymous dark money. That dark-money influence has created a disconnect between what Americans want their government to do and what it actually does,” Whitehouse said.
“So why are we here today? Because across our democracy, the disease of dark money has spread unchecked like a cancer,” he said. “Today, I’m proud to join with my colleagues to support the DISCLOSE Act, which I’ve long championed, and I’ve promised to bring on the floor for a vote.”
He introduced the first version of the DISCLOSE Act in 2010 in response to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) decision, which made it possible for unions, nonprofit foundations, and corporations to contribute to political campaigns and fund political opinion advertising.
The 2010 decision enraged many Democrats because it found unconstitutional a key provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 that limited political speech and vastly increased the power of the FEC to regulate presidential and congressional campaigns.
“For decades, Washington Democrats have looked for opportunities to expand the reach of unelected federal bureaucrats to police the political activities of private citizens. This DISCLOSE Act is just one more example of a troubling tendency on today’s political left: Quit trying to play by the rules and demanding a change in the rules instead,” McConnell told senators.
“The DISCLOSE Act was a key pillar of the sweeping election takeover Democrats have been trying to pass since they lost an election in 2016. For years, they’ve failed to convince majorities in Congress—or among the American people—that the future of our democracy requires the playing field to be tilted toward their side. But failing to overhaul the system hasn’t stopped liberals from sabotaging the guardrails that protect political speech from the inside.”
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