ANNALS OF CAMPAIGN FINANCE: “The Supreme Court on Monday struck down a limit on the amount of post-election funds that can be used to pay back personal loans from candidates, further chipping away at federal campaign finance regulations,” our Josh Gerstein and Zach Montellaro report. — “In a 6-3 decision that split the court cleanly along ideological lines, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority that a cap that allowed federal political candidates to only use up to $250,000 in post-election fundraising dollars to pay back a personal loan from the candidate was unconstitutional.” — “The case was brought by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who intentionally sought to challenge the cap by personally loaning his campaign $260,000 shortly before his 2018 reelection. Roberts said neither Congress nor the Justice Department had offered an adequate rationale to justify the burden on the First Amendment which the court has previously found to be posed by campaign finance limits. The chief justice also argued that capping the amount of money a candidate can use to repay post-election loans could shrink the pool of candidates willing to run for office.” ODD BEDFELLOWS: U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Suzanne Clark teamed up with White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese over the weekend to pen an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal laying out policy solutions for what the pair says is a nationwide shortage of housing to the tune of at least 1.5 million homes. — “While the two of us don’t agree on every issue,” Clark and Deese wrote (quite the understatement!), “we agree that the shortfall is longstanding and must be addressed. The good news is that there are proven ways that the administration, Congress, state and local governments, and the private sector can work together to build and preserve enough homes to end the housing shortfall in America.” The Sunday op-ed came a day before the White House rolled out a road map for alleviating the shortage, which includes changes to zoning laws, addressing supply chain issues and rising costs, and expanding tax breaks to finance affordable housing. — But the collaboration drew a rebuke from a group newly formed to compete with the Chamber as advocates for the business community, the American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce. “Any time the federal government inserts itself in an effort to lord over local communities, the result is to the detriment of the American people,” former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, the group’s chair, said in a statement. — “As a former governor, I’ve witnessed firsthand the impact of rising house prices and lack of supply, but President Biden’s Housing Supply Action Plan is not the answer,” Branstad said, arguing that “by providing federal financing to developers, the Biden Administration is removing local authority — something our American communities thrive on — and the unfortunate result will be fewer single family homes, less safe communities, and overcrowded schools.” DEMOCRATS’ NEW CAMPAIGN FINANCE WORKAROUND: The New York Times’ Shane Goldmacher has a great look this morning at the “little red boxes making a mockery of campaign finance laws,” a phenomenon increasingly showing up across Democratic primaries in which candidates are essentially scripting ads for super PACs and other allied dark money groups in plain sight on their campaign websites, allowing them to skirt rules barring coordination between candidates and their big-money backers. — “From Oregon to Texas, North Carolina to Pennsylvania, Democratic candidates nationwide are using such red boxes to pioneer new frontiers in soliciting and directing money from friendly super PACs financed by multimillionaires, billionaires and special-interest groups.” — “Campaign watchdogs complain that the practice further blurs the lines meant to keep big-money interests from influencing people running for office, effectively evading the strict donation limits imposed on federal candidates. And while the tactic is not new to 2022, it is becoming so widespread that a New York Times survey of candidate websites found at least 19 Democrats deploying some version of a red box in four of the states holding contested congressional primaries on Tuesday.” — “The practice is both brazen and breathtakingly simple. To work around the prohibition on directly coordinating with super PACs, candidates are posting their instructions to them inside the red boxes on public pages that super PACs continuously monitor. The boxes highlight the aspects of candidates’ biographies that they want amplified and the skeletons in their opponents’ closets that they want exposed. Then, they add instructions that can be extremely detailed: Steering advertising spending to particular cities or counties, asking for different types of advertising and even slicing who should be targeted by age, gender and ethnicity.” TECH GROUPS ASK SUPREME COURT TO BLOCK TEXAS LAW: Insider’s Jyoti Mann reports that “two leading tech lobby groups have called on the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a Texas anti-censorship law, according to court documents filed Friday.” — “Texas' HB 20 law was reinstated on Wednesday, having been blocked by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last year. The legislation makes it illegal for social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to ‘block, ban, remove, deplatform, [or] demonetize’ users' accounts.” — “The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and NetChoice — which represent companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and Tiktok — is contesting HB 20, warning it would encourage extremist content on the platforms. … The CCIA and NetChoice urged the Supreme Court to not block government interference in online speech, arguing HB 20 would allow extremist content like ‘ISIS propaganda claiming that extremism is warranted, neo-Nazi or KKK screeds denying or supporting the Holocaust’ to proliferate.” — “The law would lead [to] a ‘massive change’ for social media platforms, potentially costing the companies ‘billions of dollars’ if companies are forced to undo years of work spent trying to improve content moderation standards, the CCIA and NetChoice said.” WHY LARRY ELLISON IS BACKING MUSK’S TWITTER TAKEOVER: “When Larry Ellison pledged $1 billion to back Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, Musk got more than just another investor: He also gained a powerful political ally, with ties to the MAGA right and a history of backing the ‘anti-conservative bias’ movement,” report Grid’s Maggie Severns and Jason Paladino. — “Behind the scenes, Oracle, which Ellison founded and oversees as chairman of its board of directors, has been engaged in a sprawling anti-Big Tech lobbying campaign, including funding a dark money group that presents itself as a conservative advocate against online censorship. Oracle targeted companies such as Google and Amazon with concerns about free speech and policy issues, like antitrust, in an apparent attempt to gain leverage over its competitors in Washington, interviews and records show.” — Oracle’s Washington operation, in addition to hosting lawmakers for fundraisers at its Capitol Hill townhouse, also includes donations to groups like the Internet Accountability Project and the Federalist Society — “between $7 million and $21 million since 2019 to dozens of organizations, according to company reports.” — “And the company’s network includes dozens of well-connected lobbyists across multiple firms, filings show. Nearly 60 of Oracle’s lobbyists are Washington insiders who previously served in government, according to the nonpartisan group OpenSecrets. In fact, a Grid analysis found Oracle spends more than its competitors on lobbying, when the companies’ sizes are considered, lobbying disclosures show.” SPOTTED at a reception Saturday at the home of Vogel Group chief executive Alex Vogel following the NRSC’s 2022 spring retreat, per a tipster: NRSC Chair Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Sens. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), Robert O’Brien, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears and Attorney General Jason Miyares, Ron Bonjean of ROKK Solutions, Mitch Rose of Comcast, Gina Joy Rigby of Aflac, Booth Jameson from American Chemistry Council, Chuck Prow and Jason Rossbach of Vectrus, Baker Donelson’s Barbara Comstock, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck’s Ed Royce and BGR’s Dan Murphy.
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