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For Immediate Release
May, 19 2010, 05:25pm EDT
Contact:
(202) 466-3234,Joe Conn,Rob Boston,Sandhya Bathija
Americans United Asks IRS to Investigate Los Angeles Church That 'Tweeted' Candidate to Victory
Church’s Use of Web Site and Twitter to Endorse Candidate Violates Federal Tax Law, Watchdog Group Says
WASHINGTON
Americans United for Separation of Church and State has asked the
Internal Revenue Service to investigate a Los Angeles church that used
its Web site and the social networking site Twitter to urge congregants
to support a candidate for public office.
Oasis Church posted a statement on its Web site noting that a church
official, Alex Jones-Moreno, was seeking reelection to the Greater
Wilshire Neighborhood City Council. It asked church members to vote for
Jones-Moreno.
"Oasis Church's appeals might have been innovative, but they still
violate the law," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of
Americans United. "Federal law bars churches and other tax-exempt
non-profits from electioneering. The IRS should crack down on these
troubling tweets."
In advance of the election, the church Web site said, "Did you know
the Neighborhood City Council Elections are May 13th? Our very own Alex
Jones-Moreno, Director of Social Justice, is running for reelection? We
are asking everyone who attends, serves, gives or is a part of Oasis
Church to please cast your vote for Alex Jones-Moreno during the
upcoming elections. Having Alex elected will help us better serve our
community. Being a part of the Neighborhood City Council is extremely
important as we continue to grow and look to secure a future venue for
our church family."
The message has since been removed from the church's Web site, but a
similar one was later posted that read, "Our very own Alex Jones-Moreno,
Director of Social Justice, is running for reelection. We are asking
everyone who attends, serves, gives or is a part of Oasis Church to
please cast your vote for Alex Jones-Moreno during the upcoming
elections."
On Election Day, the church sent eight messages through Twitter
urging members to vote for Jones-Moreno. After the election, the church
sent a final "tweet" taking credit for Jones-Moreno's victory.
Federal law prohibits tax-exempt entities, including houses of
worship, from endorsing or opposing candidates for public office. In a letter
sent to the IRS yesterday, Americans United asked the tax agency to
investigate Oasis Church's intervention in this election.
"I believe these Web postings and Twitter messages are evidence of a
clear pattern of Oasis Church's deliberate intervention in a partisan
election with the aim of electing Jones-Moreno," wrote Lynn in the
letter. "They appear to constitute a violation of federal law."
Americans United is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom.
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Snowden Warns Today's Surveillance Technology Makes 2013 Look Like 'Child's Play'
"We trusted the government not to screw us," said Edward Snowden. "But they did. We trusted the tech companies not to take advantage of us. But they did. That is going to happen again, because that is the nature of power."
Jun 08, 2023
With this week marking 10 years since whistleblower Edward Snowden disclosed information to journalists about widespread government spying by United States and British agencies, the former National Security Agency contractor on Thursday joined other advocates in warning that the fight for privacy rights, while making several inroads in the past decade, has grown harder due to major changes in technology.
"If we think about what we saw in 2013 and the capabilities of governments today," Snowden told The Guardian, "2013 seems like child's play."
Snowden said that the advent of commercially available surveillance products such as Ring cameras, Pegasus spyware, and facial recognition technology has posed new dangers.
As Common Dreams has reported, the home security company Ring has faced legal challenges due to security concerns and its products' vulnerability to hacking, and has faced criticism from rights groups for partnering with more than 1,000 police departments—including some with histories of police violence—and leaving community members vulnerable to harassment or wrongful arrests.
Law enforcement agencies have also begun using facial recognition technology to identify crime suspects despite the fact that the software is known to frequently misidentify people of color—leading to the wrongful arrest and detention earlier this year of Randal Reid in Georgia, among other cases.
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Last month, journalists and civil society groups called for a global moratorium on the sale and transfer of spyware like Pegasus, which has been used to target dozens of journalists in at least 10 countries.
Protecting the public from surveillance "is an ongoing process," Snowden told The Guardian on Thursday. "And we will have to be working at it for the rest of our lives and our children's lives and beyond."
In 2013, Snowden revealed that the U.S. government was broadly monitoring the communications of citizens, sparking a debate over surveillance as well as sustained privacy rights campaigns from groups like Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Fight for the Future.
"Technology has grown to be enormously influential," Snowden told The Guardian on Thursday. "We trusted the government not to screw us. But they did. We trusted the tech companies not to take advantage of us. But they did. That is going to happen again, because that is the nature of power."
Last month ahead of the anniversary of Snowden's revelations, EFF noted that some improvements to privacy rights have been made in the past decade, including:
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- The emergence of end-to-end encryption of internet communications, which Snowden noted was "a pipe dream in 2013";
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The group noted that privacy advocates are still pushing Congress to end Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permits the warrantless surveillance of Americans' communications, and "to take privacy seriously," particularly as tech companies expand spying capabilities.
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Watch Milloy's remarks:
\u201cLaura Ingraham - Steve Milloy, a lobbyist, to talk about the thick smoke over the Northeast. He's worked as a consultant for Philip Morris\n\nMilloy also believes\n\nSecondhand smoke doesn't cause cancer\n\nDDT should make a comeback\n\nHuman activity has no affect on climate change\u201d— Decoding Fox News (@Decoding Fox News) 1686205124
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The EPA website says, to the contrary, that "particulate matter contains microscopic solids or liquid droplets that are so small that they can be inhaled and cause serious health problems."
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Investigative journalist Amy Westervelt observed in response to Milloy's Fox appearance that he "has been trying to recast air pollution—particularly PM2.5—as innocuous for decades, since he was working for Big Tobacco."
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Meteorologist Eric Holthaus added that "air pollution is literally the 4th highest cause of death globally."
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In a deep dive on Milloy's history last year, Westervelt noted that "one of his earliest jobs was running The Advancement of Sound Science Center (TASSC), which was created by Philip Morris and their PR firm APCO in the 1990s to deal with the mounting evidence that linked secondhand smoke and, more broadly, indoor air pollution, to cancer."
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Tens of millions of people on the East Coast of the U.S. are currently under air quality alerts, with some major cities classifying the conditions as "hazardous."
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A Democracy Crisis in the Making—compiled by the States United Democracy Center, Protect Democracy, and Law Forward—found that right-wing lawmakers in 38 states unveiled 185 bills from January 1 through May 3 that would enable legislatures to "politicize, criminalize, or interfere with elections." Of those proposals, 15 were enacted or adopted into law in 11 states while three others were vetoed by Arizona's new Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs.
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Since former President Donald Trump launched his deadly coup attempt following his loss in the 2020 presidential contest, GOP-controlled states have enacted dozens of voter suppression laws and redrawn congressional and state legislative maps in ways that disenfranchise Democratic-leaning communities of color and give Republicans outsized representation, which could help the far-right secure minority rule for years to come.
In addition to impeding ballot access, Republican lawmakers are further undermining the country's procedural democracy by obstructing the administration of free and fair elections, the new report notes.
Researchers identified five forms of interference that increase the risk of "election subversion," which they defined as instances when "the declared outcome of an election does not reflect the true choice of the voters." The methods are:
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Several Republican candidates who parroted Trump's incessant lies about President Joe Biden's 2020 victory lost in last year's midterms. But more than 210 others—including at least two who participated in the January 6 rally that descended into an attack on the U.S. Capitol—won congressional seats and races for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general, underscoring how election denialism is now entrenched in the GOP and poses a threat to U.S. democracy for the foreseeable future.
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NBC News summarized how two pieces of recently unveiled legislation could wreak havoc:
Republican legislators in Texas proposed a bill—H.B. 5082—that would give state officials the authority to order new elections in counties whose populations exceed 1 million people if there is "good cause" to conclude that 2% of polling places ran out of ballots and did not receive replacements. Such counties—like Harris County, which includes Houston—are home to a large share of the state's Democratic voters.
Arizona Republicans introduced a bill—H.B. 2078—that would, if it is enacted, allow candidates, political party county chairs, and certain ballot measure state committees to request post-election investigations that, under the law, would result in audits by the secretary of state.
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"The decisions that states make today will determine how elections are run in 2024," Ingram told the outlet. "Even when these bills don't become law, they keep lies and conspiracy theories alive and sustain the election denier movement."
According to a survey conducted in early 2022 by the Brennan Center for Justice, one in six election officials nationwide have experienced threats related to their job, and 77% say they feel such threats have increased in recent years. This spring, the Brennan Center found that 11% of current election officials are "very or somewhat likely" to step down before November 2024.
The new report urges voters to "be awake" to the "persistent threat" of election subversion and calls on state legislatures to "focus their efforts on the nonpartisan administration of elections, protecting election officials, and respecting the will of the people."
"Until they do," it warns, "our democracy is still far too close to a crisis."
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