Stevenson’s army, May 5

Court decisions on campaign laws opened a big loophole that led to an amazing development in the Ohio Republican Senate primary. As CRS noted,
Unlimited Contributions to Independent-Expenditure-Only Political Action
Committees (Super PACs)
On March 26, 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held in
SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission24 that contributions to PACs that make only independent expenditures—but not contributions—could not be constitutionally limited. As a result, these entities, commonly called super PACs, may accept previously prohibited amounts and sources of funds, including large corporate, union, or individual contributions used to advocate for election or defeat of federal candidates. Existing reporting requirements for PACs apply to super PACs, meaning that contributions and expenditures must be disclosed to the FEC.
Peter Thiel formed such a super PAC, gave it $15 million, which went for campaign activities for J.D. Vance, who had few ads or activities funded by his own campaign. Since the law forbids “coordination,” the super PAC puts its key information including polls and suggested messages in an obscure place online. It even posted its oppo research findings on Vance, so he could know what attacks might be made.

In other news:  NYT says US shared intelligence with Ukraine that helped them target Russian generals.

Reuters says US has offered security assurances to Sweden if it seeks to enter NATO.

Defense News says some key congressional figures are now open to F16 sales to Turkey.

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).