FARA.US LAUNCH. Caplin & Drysdale has launched a website focused exclusively on the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Their new site is a centralized FARA resource feauring legislative history, descriptions of key enforcement cases, summaries of advisory opinions, and more.
ELECTION LAW NEWS. Wiley Rein’s January 2019 edition of Election Law News is available here.
END THE SHUTDOWN AND SECURE THE BORDER ACT. PDF (1300 pages). The package includes over $71 million for the Federal Election Commission and the following:
SEC. 735. (a) None of the funds made available in this or any other Act may be used to recommend or require any entity submitting an offer for a Federal contract to disclose any of the following information as a condition of submitting the offer: (1) Any payment consisting of a contribution, expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication that is made by the entity, its officers or directors, or any of its affiliates or subsidiaries to a candidate for election for Federal office or to a political committee, or that is otherwise made with respect to any election for Federal office. (2) Any disbursement of funds (other than a payment described in paragraph (1)) made by the entity, its officers or directors, or any of its affiliates or subsidiaries to any person with the intent or the reasonable expectation that the person will use the funds to make a payment described in paragraph (1). (b) In this section, each of the terms ‘‘contribution’’, ‘‘expenditure’’, ‘‘independent expenditure’’, ‘‘electioneering communication’’, ‘‘candidate’’, ‘‘election’’, and ‘‘Federal office’’ has the meaning given such term in the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (52 U.S.C. 30101 et seq.).
REFORM SOUGHT. WFB. “With Monday marking the ninth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, first-term Rep. Gil Cisneros (D., Calif.) called on Congress to support campaign finance reform, despite his campaign benefitting from Democratic super PACs, special interest groups, and tens of thousands of dollars from the financial services industry.”
CORPORATE PAC MOVE. NW. “California Senator Kamala Harris declared that she ‘will not take a dime’ from corporate political action committees in her 2020 run for the White House.”
IN: FORMS FOUND. NWT. “A few of the 2018 candidates not found on Porter County government’s campaign finance reporting page did indeed file their annual reports by last week’s deadline.”
NJ: FORCED DISCLOSURE. NJTV. “For two and a half years, Sen. Troy Singleton has been pushing a bill to make independent expenditure committees disclose their major donors the way candidates do.”
OH: PROPOSING REFORMS. CLE. “Councilman-at-Large Tristan Rader is set to introduce two related ordinances at tonight’s (Jan. 22) City Council meeting regarding the creation of a Lakewood Ethics Commission and instituting campaign finance regulations for city leaders.”
HAVE A GOOD DAY.