Free Speech For People today is celebrating Legal Director Ron Fein’s decade of service with FSFP fighting for our democracy as he transitions to becoming Chief Counsel for American Oversight. FSFP is proud to announce that Courtney Hostetler, FSFP’s longstanding Senior Counsel, will serve as FSFP’s new Legal Director. Ron Fein became FSFP’s first Legal Director in January 2014 and has been instrumental in building the organization’s legal advocacy program across the country, challenging big money and foreign influence in our politics; protecting the right to vote and our elections; confrontin ..read more

Free Speech For People is seeking a Campaign Organizer with grassroots organizing and broad movement-building experience to join a cutting-edge non-profit fighting for democracy. Free Speech For People, is a national nonprofit nonpartisan organization working to renew our democracy and our United States Constitution for we the people. Since our founding in January 2010, on the day of the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC, we have served as a leading force in the country to defend our Constitution and to reclaim our democracy. Free Speech For People is a leader in the fight to ad ..read more

On April 15, 2024, disgraced ex-president Donald Trump will face trial in a New York state courtroom for falsifying business records related to hush-money payments he made to buy the silence of a former mistress during the 2016 election campaign. It’s worth retracing how we got here: specifically, how both the Federal Election Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice failed to enforce federal campaign finance law, leaving it to the Manhattan district attorney to seek some measure of justice.  In the summer and fall of 2016, with the presidential campaign in full swing, Trump (through ..read more

Free Speech For People joined more than a dozen pro-democracy advocates and watchdog organizations in an open letter highlighting former President Trump’s 34 felony counts in People of the State of New York v. Donald Trump and his criminal attempts at concealing secret payments and election interference. The letter is signed by Accountable.US, Clean Elections Texas, Common Cause, Constitutional Accountability Center, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Defend Democracy Project, Democracy 21, Free Speech for People, Indivisible, Lawyers Defending American Democracy, Mov ..read more

In a new article published in Forbes, Ian Simmons provides a detailed account of how foreign investors undermine the US economy and US elections. In a survey of just six states released earlier this year, nonpartisan watchdog OpenSecrets uncovered that at least $163 million of foreign-influenced cash flooded those states’ races between 2018-2022. OpenSecrets showed that in Montana, a tobacco company with foreign investor cash spent over $17 million to reject expanding health care for Montanans… In 2018, DaVita, a kidney dialysis company whose shareholders include Norway’s Norges Bank Investme ..read more

Following robocalls featuring deepfaked President Biden’s voice urging people not to vote in the New Hampshire Primary, the League of Women Voters has filed a federal lawsuit to block the use of AI technology to intimidate, threaten, coerce, or deceive voters.  MANCHESTER, NH – (March 14, 2024) The League of Women Voters of the United States (LWV-US), the League of Women Voters of New Hampshire (LWV-NH), and several individual New Hampshire voters have filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of New Hampshire against Steve Kramer, Lingo Telecom, and Life Corporation, who together delive ..read more

If passed in the House and signed into law, Hawaii would be the second state following Minnesota to ban multinational corporate money in elections. Honolulu, Hawaii (March 5, 2024) – The Hawaii State Senate today passed unanimously and with bipartisan support SB3243, a bill prohibiting foreign-influenced corporations from spending money to influence local and state elections.  The legislation, introduced by Senator Chris Lee, would bar corporations with significant foreign ownership from contributing to candidates, parties, or committees (including super PACs) or from engaging in their ow ..read more

On February 29, 2024, a federal judge struck down discriminatory, anti-voter provisions of two Arizona laws, H.B. 2492 and H.B. 2243, passed in 2022 that undermined Arizonans’ freedom to vote and violated federal law. The judge’s order also leaves a few anti-voter provisions intact. At issue in the case were discriminatory provisions of the two anti-voter laws, including one that denied the freedom to vote to Arizonans who did not list their birthplace on the state registration form and another that required county officials to investigate naturalized Arizonans’ citizenship status wi ..read more

The U.S. Supreme Court today has made a mockery of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court has ruled that–despite inciting and facilitating a violent insurrection that defeated federal law enforcement, conquered the seat of our national government, nearly assassinated the vice president and key congressional leaders, and blocked Congress from certifying his electoral defeat, thus disrupting the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in our nation’s history–the disgraced ex-president Donald Trump can run for office again because this critical pro ..read more

On Thursday, the federal district court in Maine granted a group of corporate plaintiffs’ motions to temporarily block a historic ballot measure prohibiting foreign government-influenced corporations from unlimited spending in Maine state and local elections. Thursday’s ruling, which is only temporary, will stop this important protection from going into effect while a full legal challenge is pending in court, but is not a final determination. Free Speech For People will continue to support Maine as it defends the law so that the state can protect its elections and preserve its democratic self ..read more